China continues to censor the Internet

With the next Olympics being hosted by Beijing, there was some hope that the Chinese government would begin to loosen their ties over Internet censorship. There is no telling how the international community will react when millions flood into Beijing for the Olympics and are held to the same restrictions as the Chinese people. With that said, it doesn't look like the Chinese government is letting up anytime soon. According to this NY Times article it seems to only be getting worse as the Olympic games get closer.

In an attempt to crackdown on dissent, the Chinese government has now banned YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Blogspot and Wikipedia. These are all websites that arguably have no discernible political content. Because of this, we are seeing a certain type of social resistance that is uncommon in Chinese society. Resistance is taking form in many ways such as in lawsuits against the government to a growing network of software writers constantly working at codes to override the Chinese restrictions.

With the Chinese government going through so much trouble to censor the Internet, I have to ask myself - what exactly are they so afraid of?

In mid-January, Wei Wenhua was clubbed to death by city inspectors when he was caught taking pictures on his cell phone of the inspectors beating villagers who were trying to stop them from unloading trash near their homes. Wei was clubbed for five minutes straight and was dead on arrival by the time he was transported to the hospital.

The blogosphere pinned this "citizen journalist" a martyr. Is this what the Chinese government is trying so hard to keep down? Citizen journalism?

Apparently so.

In response to Wenhua's death, blogger Wang Gongquan wrote "Eternal repose to Citizen Wei Wenhua. In the face of violence and brute power, he lifted a citizen's rights, conscience, responsibility and courage."

Well then, let the resistance rise.

I wonder if Human Rights Watch is all over this?

This blog is long and gone (at least for school purposes), but when I saw this article I decided to come in here and re-post it. Hopefully some of you are still reading your RSS feeds. 

Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report

By Kim Zetter

A 23-year-old student journalist in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report that is critical of the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (at right), who is a journalism student at Balkh University and a writer for Jahan-e Naw, was sentenced last October after downloading a report from a Farsi website that criticized Islamic fundamentalists who misrepresent statements in the Koran to justify the oppression of women. Kambaksh was arrested after someone filed a complaint against him. He is accused of blasphemy for distributing the report to other students and teachers at his school.

He was tried by a sharia court (which oversees Islamic religious law) and was not allowed legal representation, according to news reports. The Afghan Senate passed a motion this week supporting the sentence, according to the British newspaper The Independent.

Other journalists have been warned that they would be arrested if they protested in support of Kambaksh.

The Independent has launched a campaign to support Kambaksh, urging readers to pressure the UK Foreign Office to intervene with the Afghan government. The newspaper has posted a petition online for readers to fill out and submit.

Source: Wired

- - - - - 

This is definitely no good. 

When did a social network site get so powerful?

Many of us are on MySpace and if you're not, you've surely been asked "Really? Why not?!" MySpace really put this whole concept of social networking on the map (and don't say Friendster did because I'll take that as a joke), but now its social power and influence on people has reached a level no one ever thought it would.


Last October, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after she received hurtful and taunting messages from a MySpace friend she believed to be named Josh Evans. Megan and "Josh" were only online friends and "Josh" had contacted her in effort to make new friends because he had just moved into town. They had developed friendship, so when Megan logged into to MySpace one afternoon and saw the hurtful messages from "Josh" she became upset.



Examples of the messages -

You heard me, I said I don't want to be friends with you anymore because you're not nice to your friends.

The world would be a better place without you.

Megan and "Josh" replied to each other over the course of two days. After Megan showed the messages to her mother on the 2nd day, her mother insisted that she log off and then Megan immediately ran to her room. When her mother went to Megan's room to check up on her 15 minutes later, she found her hanging from her bedroom closet.

Weeks after Megan's death, the Meier family discovered that "Josh Evans" was fake and the profile had been created by Lori Drew, a neighbor who lived down the street. Drew created the profile in an effort to get closer to Megan in order to earn her trust and find out what she thought about her daughter. Drew's daughter and Megan had been "joined at the hip" but stopped being friends when Megan transfered schools.

Prosecutors have found no grounds to charge Lori Drew, but her hometown of Dardenne Prairie have now adopted a law that says engaging in Internet harassment is a misdemeanor.

If you're interested, you can read the following news' stories for more details.
Wired
ABC
New York Times

So, what are your thoughts on this story? What can we do to prevent something like this from happening again? Or, is this even preventable? And, what does this say about the power of MySpace in today's society?

Blog Power at a New Level

Dr. Weisgerber often tells us how many people out there can stumble across our blogs daily without us even knowing it. This type of frequency and the ability to connect with people all over the globe is a unique aspect of blogging. Because of this, there has been an increase in using blogs to find missing persons all over the world.

A new Wired article entitled "International Hunt for Missing Backpacker Harnesses Blog Power" tells the story of Canadian Nicole Vienneau, 32, going missing on a trip from West Africa to Turkey by the way of the Middle East in April. After Nicole failed to make her bi-weekly phone call back home, her brother Matthew began to worry. He expressed his distress though Live Journal posts. When it became apparent that something had to be wrong, he made a desperate plea to readers in the region of Syria (where she had last been seen.)

Eight months have passed now and Matthew's Live Journal serves as a command center for the global search of Nicole. Matthew's connection with readers has helped spur hundreds of volunteers in the region who have been actively helping in searching for Nicole, gathering clues of her whereabouts, and translating articles and flyers from Arabic to English and vice versa.

Matthew told Wired News the following -

This has been a huge thing to be able to do from my office here in Canada. It's like I have physically had hands thousands of mile away in Syria. As I started having problems solved by people who had read the blog, I realized that it was an effective tool in finding out information the police were unable or unwilling to follow up on as quickly as I'd like.

Nicole has yet to be found, but with the help of Matthew's Live Journal the search is still on.

- - -

Stories about people like Nicole are heartbreaking, but it's good to know that blogging can serve as a tool to promote publicity for cases like this and help speed up the process of searching that sometimes oversea embassies and local police officers just can't do by themselves.

So much Facebook talk in the web 2.0 world!

I won't make a lengthy Facebook post because I've been reading about it all day on my RSS feeds, but I do feel it is important to talk about it at least slightly.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook finally responded back to weeks worth of criticism concerning their Facebook Beacon Ads. It's a lengthy response posted on the Facebook blog, but here are some highlights if you haven't read it yet.

We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends. But we missed the right balance.

Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better.

Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely.

Zuckerberg's response is incredibly late, but at least his effort is there. Hopefully Facebook can look at this as a lesson learned and not make the same mistake twice. Next time they add a new feature to Facebook, what do you think they can do beforehand to prevent such a mass of negative criticism?

In other Facebook news -

Next time you get a new Facebook message you won't have to log into the website to read it! This has always been a pet peeve of mine. I love getting notifications of new messages in my inbox, but I hate having to click on the outside link and go through logging in just to read it. Whatever, call me lazy.

Facebook changed that policy tonight. The complete message is now forwarded to your inbox and you can now decide if you want to log in to respond. Yesss! So, happy message reading and replying Facebook users. I don't know if it'll actually make me better at responding, but we'll see.

Bye Bye Traditional Debates!

The new technologies of the web 2.0 world have made all our lives easier and faster, but they have also given us a new outlet in which we can directly connect with those who take part in our national government. Much of the apathy that is found among our nation's youth stems from the fact that we feel we have no voice or relation with our leaders. While this may very be true, it cannot be fixed without active participation. You can't complain if you don't try and do anything about it, right? So, if you haven't been keeping up with the presidential race (since it is a bit far away) there are some new things being tried out this time around.

On Monday night, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain took part in a national town hall event hosted by MySpace and MTV. Different from any type of presidential debate or forum ever held, this forum features only one candidate and questions are proposed through real-time emails, instant messages, and direct audience questions. The email and instant message questions chosen are selected on the spot rather than the typically screened and non-challenging questions prosed to candidates in a traditional debate. This type of candidate forum is more transparent and less controlled and functions as a direct dialogue.

Another unique feature of the MTV/MySpace dialogue is that voters are able to rate the answers given by the candidate. Results are tallied and instantly displayed on the web and in the live debate broadcast. The candidate can hear how positively or negatively his/her responses were taken by the audience almost immediately. What better way to let a candidate know how you feel about his/her stances on issues than this?

So far, only Barack Obama, John Edwards and John McCain have participated in the hosted MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue. I think this says a lot about these candidates no matter how you might feel about their stances on issues. Presidential campaigns are historically paranoid about any type of debate because it puts their candidate out in the open and makes them vulnerable to criticism. I say if candidates can't answer a few hard questions, how are they going to be able to run a country?

With that said, what are your thoughts on the use of social media and the upcoming presidential election? What have you seen by other candidates (or the ones mentioned) that is setting them apart from the rest of the pack? Do you think any of this is really effective? Anything!

If you've missed out on any past MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogues, you can watch videos and read the transcripts here.

Quick Bit

I religiously read my RSS feeds everyday and I know some of you might do the same. If you're using Google Reader (which you should be! so easy!), Google has recently added a new feature to the Reader. Based on your subscriptions, Google Reader now generates a list of several feeds that might be of interest to you. They take into account feeds you're already subscribed to as well as your web history and location. It's extremely convenient and another thing Google has added to make our lives just a little bit easier.

Oh yeah, they don't break any privacy policy rules either. Take that Facebook!

Google Reader
Google Reader Recommendations