Following Yahoo!’s shameful behaviour in China towards web users, Facebook is reportedly keen to enter the soon-to-be biggest internet market in the world: Facebook appears to have decided on acquisition as its preferred method of entering the booming Chinese market, after months of speculation about how the social networking website would tap the country’s rapid…
Showing all posts tagged internet
Blocking the friendship group
Syria bans Facebook. (Procrastinators in the West would never survive.)
Problems staying off-line
South Koreans love the internet (though it can sometimes lead to suicide and unwelcome gossip.) Now, groups are doing something about it: The compound — part boot camp, part rehab center — resembles programs around the world for troubled youths. Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there…
And then they came for us
Bobbie Johnson, Guardian Comment is Free, November 14: The suppression of online information is fast becoming a crucial political question, with China now the world’s second largest country on the internet population, and expected to overtake America within just a few years. As a result of such growth and success, Beijing is now setting the…
Free for all
OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has conducted a report on Nigeria’s 2007 election, the use of the internet and access to media: ONI has shown through its past research that countries that do not filter Internet content on a regular basis may nonetheless control Internet communications during election periods, and may use methods subtler than outright filtering…
More futile silencing
Just another oppressive day in China: Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned a five-year prison sentence and 40,000 yuan (€4,000) fine imposed today by a district court in Tianhe (in the southeastern province of Guangdong) on cyber-dissident Yang Maodong (better known as Guo Feixiong) for “illegal commercial activity.” “We are shocked by this harsh and unjustified…
Public eyes are watching you
Who do you trust? Chinese Olympic officials defended on Tuesday the collection of information on journalists, saying such databases would be used to help the media at Beijing 2008, not to create blacklists or hinder reporting. The comments came a day after state media said authorities were building a database of information on about 30,000…
From one torturer to another
One of America’s favourite torturing client states is at it again: The Arabic Network for Human Rights information and Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law sent a communiqué to the Egyptian Prosecutor-General , demanding to investigate into the issue of torturing Karim Amer in his prison. Karim who is an Egyptian blogger sentenced to prison for…
Mapping oppression
The explosion of social networking sites and Web 2.0 has changed the face of the internet. But in many countries around the world, repressive governments are restricting the ability of citizens to access a multitude of websites: But despite the potential of web 2.0, in regions ridden with censorship and where the state holds the…
Dealing with “hate”
Do internet search engines have a responsibility to remove “hate”? Google’s Israel head thinks not: Google is not the address for stopping online hate, the Israel director of the engine whose brand name is so well known that it means searching the Internet, told a conference on Monday. Organizers of the conference from the Anti-Defamation…