UK seems prepared to crack down on social networks regardless of evidence

"Johnny Melfah is said to have posted several messages on a group that had been set up called “Letz start a riot”, encouraging people to riot in Worcester.

Yesterday the chairman of the bench at Worcester magistrates’ court decided to lift restrictions on identification, deeming it in the public interest, despite the teenager not having entered a plea.

A week ago the Crown Prosecution Service issued guidance to prosecutors to ask courts to “lift the anonymity of a youth defendant when they believe it is required in the public interest that the youth be identified”.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that she wanted as many of the young criminals involved in the riots as possible to be identified. More than 1,400 people have now appeared in court charged with riot-related offences."

UK riots: 16-year-old accused of inciting riot on Facebook loses anonymity - Telegraph

'via Blog this'

So the courts have spoken, not only will they treat posting to social networks as equal to actual disorder and violence offence, but they seem determined to make it even worse. All part of a pattern of crack downs on social networks in the west.

But is this real or just scapegoating. During the Arab Spring many people questioned the degree to which social networks like Twitter and Facebook were really making things happen. The very different paths of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria prove that history and culture are larger factors than technology in shaping the modern age.

The London riots were a feast for analysis firms like our own to understand tweeting role in social events, a recent study has confirmed what we assumed from our own work, that twitter was responding not leading the protest.

"A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian, appears to show Twitter was mainly used to react to riots and looting.



Timing trends drawn from the data question the assumption that Twitter played a widespread role in inciting the violence in advance, an accusation also levelled at the rival social networks Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger."

Twitter study casts doubts on ministers' post-riots plan | UK news | The Guardian

'via Blog this'

So if the evidence is clearly against social networks impacting criminality why are governments willing to crack down and kill the messenger? We see several key factors:

• The public clearly believes that social networks are the problem and the government is just following public opinion.
• Governments don't really understand social networks and are afraid of the chaotic element they add to social discourse.
• Governments don't like the idea that everyone can publish content and want to set up strict enforced limits to what is allowed, even in democratic societies.

Hate Groups on Facebook

Facebook Group Islam is of the Devil raises serious questions about how well the massively successful site is taking its moral responsibility.

When Murdoch tells his full site of the recent News of the World collapse you can be certain he will say that he did not know about the phone hacking that took place. Murdoch will claim that basic ethical lapses happened beyond the high level managements view. We may never know if this is true or not. But it seems that Facebook is content to institutionalize allowing the law to be broken on its site out of ignorance.

Though many hate groups on Facebook are hard to discover when the site involved uses a name like Islam is of the Devil one would image a simply search algorithm would find it quickly. Perhaps Facebook has not bothered to put this level of filtering in place. Though we support free speech as much as anyone Facebook is bound by the laws of the United States at the very least. Targeting a religion for attack is a hate crime and not only violates Facebook's ToS but the laws of the United States and California.

Social Networks need to take their duty to users and the law more seriously. Just as recent event in Egypt have shown the power of Facebook as a social movement tool, the certain reaction of hatred and violence must be dealt with. The ball is solidly in Facebook's court right now, can they tolerate digging deeper in to their profits to provide a safe and legal environment?

Will Google+ be the Windows 95 of cloud living?

Google+ looks good enough to beat Facebook and other social networking websites, MySpace co-founder and ex-president Tom Anderson has suggested.

Anderson has left a message on his new Google+ page at 10:55 a.m. (edited 11:37 a.m.) today, expressing his thoughts on the new Google social network and how it is “primed to make good on that original premise – that everything gets better when [it’s] social.”

Google+ will beat Facebook, says MySpace founder Tom Anderson - International Business Times

Well it is a bit soon to write off Facebook. Also Google has had a legacy of failed social networks including Buzz and Wave. The Hype around Wave a bit over a year ago was pretty massive.

Wave had a long waiting list and millions of people lined up to get a hold of it. IT magazines were full of Wave and I even had people tell me that SharePoint was Microsoft's Wave at one point.

So one should assume Google+ will fail before it will take off. Certainly the reviews to date have been rave, but so have the reviews for Windows 7 mobile. We know about the value of a rave, having written some rave reviews of the features of Nokia recent phones.

But Android teaches that Google is able of really big wins in this space. Google+ with Android might offer what Facebook can't: a solid mobile social experience. Despite twitters recent growth this is still, in our opinion, a wide open goal with people still willing to test new social platforms.

But Google+ has to offer something more than just a replacement to Facebook. Key features we would to Google+ to provide:

• A strong mobile experience that does more than just provide web site in mobile but provides a mobile appropriate experience.
• A bridge between garden fenced community with social networks and access to the larger more interesting bigger web. Today this is done with using Facebook with Twitter and YouTube. Facebook's main weakness is the information quickly looks inbreed very quickly. Google+ should provide social networks without the social incest problem.
• Overcome Facebook's technology limitations.
• A true customer/focused focused product. The biggest killer we have seen to date with social networks is that they become high school, and the customer service treats people like high school. They tend to treat you like cattle and blow lots of PR BS in your face if you have a problem. As yet a truly engaged social network that has the community features of a Wikipedia or Blogosphere do not exist in this space. In short maybe Google can support the level of engagement people get in truly crowd sourced solutions. Google should return to its "don't be evil" values and find a way to make money without limiting the community formation and free expression of users. Google+ should be about the people on it and not about Google. This is where MySpace and Facebook have fallen down badly.
• Media quality, Google has the ability to support image sharing (via Picasa), video sharing (via YouTube) and IM (Google Chat) along with email and search to provide all the basic features for a read write web. Blogger, YouTube, GMail are well established industry standards in Web 2.0 and they should be able to defeat Facebook's limited capacity as a photo and video sharing site.

In short everything is in place for Google+ to take off. The demand is there and we sense people are starting to get tired of Facebook. Google has strong technology around search, blogging, messaging, communication, video sharing and image sharing that can make a first class online experience. Google+ needs to place a social center to Google's product set, and then have a bit of good luck.

The end of Free Facebook

A pro Gaddafi site on Facebook, the combination of state terror and social networks has suddenly made Facebook a very unsafe place for Arab reformers.

Now that regimes all over the world are aware of Social Media the balance of power has moved to their advantage. For a poorly policed site like Facebook the combination of Social Networks and a Terror State will quickly neutralize any democratic aspirations on the that Facebook might have fostered.

We saw it first in Bahrain this development in Bahrain. Bahrain was one of the first regimes in the Arab world to take its battle against its own people to Twitter and Facebook. With Gaddafi joining the war on Social Media, Facebook is no longer a safe place for Arab reformers. Gaddafi is adding a new twisted strategy in their war on Facebook. Gaddafi supporters are identifying Libyans, many who live in the west, on Facebook pages and threatening them.

Given Gaddafi's record of terror and killing, even beyond his own border these sites on Facebook are deeply disturbing. But even more disturbing is the face Facebook is not doing enough to police this area, not even taking down sites with considerable twitter attention like this one. Hundreds of people have complained about this page, maybe even more. But Facebook system of policing activity seems unable to respond to a site that contains:

1. Creditable threats of violence,
2. Harassment of specific people,
3. Attacks on women and homophobic attacks,
4. And even IP violation using photos without permission.

It is pretty clear that Facebook's entire history is a series of unintended accidents. Its success has been more a combination of random factors than any strength of the product. And its role in Arab Revolts was also clearly an unintended accident. Sadly Facebook own blindness may soon have very serious negative consequences.

Libya Facebook page supporting violence against women

MISSON ACCOMPLISHED: After days of ranting and a report to the local FBI on our part Facebook has finally taken down the site that was identifying Libyan women and threatening them. The site, like a few others was developed by Gaddafi supporters. Gaddafi's thugs are taking their war of threats, murder and rape to Facebook.

If you believed that Facebook was helping Arab freedom movements this article will probably convince you otherwise.

The site names women who have stood up to the regime, and calls for them to be murdered

There is an arabic Facebook group called قائمة الخونة وعملاء الجرذان معا لفضحهم Which can be translated as a 'list exposing agents of the rats'. The list is a pro-Gaddafi group who find images of Libyan women, and one gay man we saw, who oppose who support democracy. It seems that Gaddafi's strategy of rape has been extended to Facebook.

Though the site is in Arabic its intentions are pretty obvious even without a Google Translate

This shows two very ugly things about social networks. First the ability to motivate crowds opens risks of cyber threats and potentially mob intimidation of people. But perhaps worse is that 48 hours ago we reported this site, which openly calls for violence to Facebook from the site. We also read about the site first on Twitter, among people trying to bring the site down.

Facebooks US contact phone number is 001 (650) 543 4800. They have a special line for law enforcement. If you can contact someone in law enforcement who suspects that their citizens are being targeted by this grew please have them contact the number above. Otherwise please follow this link and file a report. Use the report page link on the page to do so, Or you can contact the regional FBI at this email: san.francisco@ic.fbi.gov .about this site. The FBI has acknowledged our complaint, but nothing from Facebook and, not surprisingly, nothing from our voice message.

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Hopefully more exposure will bring the site down. We strongly believe in free speech, but free speech does not include threats directed at specific people, especially based on their gender or sexual orientation.

UPDATE: It is hard to express how pissed off we are getting at Facebook right now. We are in the third day running this story and we know thousands of people have seen it from our blog alone. We also know of people working with Libyan rebels trying to get the site taken down.

And yet the site, which violates US, EU and UN law and treaty remains. Frankly the content of this site is so disturbing we would imagine an ISP could potentially face arrests for hosting such a site. It identifies women who support democracy in Bahrain, many living in the west, and subjects them to abuse and threats. Given Gaddafi's use of rape as a weapon in his own country this is a very serious issue.

When people talk about Facebook having a role in recent protest movements in the Arab world correct them: people in the Arab world used Facebook without Facebook management knowing it. Facebook itself is morally neutral at best.

The use of Facebook as a tool to add opposition to regimes can not be imagined as somehow being a part of Facebook or its goals but as a strategic appropriation of the tool that Facebook's developers never could have imagined and would almost certainly not have liked.