Subjects Archives: Internet

Apple has touched off a pretty major row in the halls of marketing. Apparently, the next version of its Safari browser will restrict the creation and retention of “cookies,” which are little computer codes that allow big businesses to collect increasingly rich data, without acknowledgement or permission, on internet users.

Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet.… [But as a now-global monopoly] the company has an incentive to suppress information about itself.

There are plenty of reasons to be interested in—and, even more, concerned about—Facebook. Many of them are raised in the recent review of Facebook-related books by John Lanchester [ht: db]: the fragmentation of the polity (via the targeting of posts), the dissemination of “fake news” (which played an important role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election), the undermining of other livelihoods (such as journalism and music), the level of surveillance of users (much more than any national government), the violation of anti-monopoly rules (via individualized pricing), and so on.

The US market evidently has a powerful influence on social trends elsewhere in the world. It has been shown not only by the popularity among youth of wearing low-hanging trousers and baseball caps backwards—although, thankfully, these trends have, like, faded—but also by how a system designed for an elite US university, Harvard, could end up becoming the world’s largest social media site.

In a move critics characterized as a dangerous threat to freedom of expression, the German government announced on Friday its decision to shut down a left-wing website it claims has links to violence that broke out during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany last month.

Like many other episodes of extraterritorial political interference up to and including military intervention, America’s meddling in Thailand is done on behalf of corporate interests seeking to expand their respective and collective hegemony both regionally in Asia vís-a-vís Beijing, and globally.

While Google’s Information Age dominance has long been recognized to have some unsavory consequences, the massive technology corporation has, in recent months, taken to directly censoring content and traffic to a variety of independent media outlets across the political spectrum — essentially muting the voices of any site or author who does not toe the establishment line.

We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes. In order to see it, all you need to do is look at the words coming out of their mouths. The alt-right isn’t yet united, but it soon will be.

Preliminary indications are that we took roughly a 10% hit to overall traffic in April and May, a significant part of which may have been from the same cause.

The company said in a blog post that the central purpose of the change to its search algorithm was to give the search giant greater control in identifying content deemed objectionable by its guidelines. It declared that it had “improved our evaluation methods and made algorithmic updates” in order “to surface more authoritative content.”

The article discusses surveillance in today’s capitalist society with a reference to a recent revelation that the German intelligence agency spied upon scores of foreign journalists.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Foundation for Criminal Justice dinner, Denver, Colorado, July 24, 2015 A few months ago, I spoke to a group of lawyers in Los Angeles.  I talked about legal ethics.  I mentioned Henry Drinker, author of ABA ethical rules, author of a book that was the basis for the […]

E.g., Syrian Revolution 2011 Fidaaldin Al-Sayed Issa, the Swedish administrator of the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page (11 May 2011): “We have analyzed the IP addresses of our users and about 35% are Syrian residing in Syria, 50% are from the Syrian Diaspora around the world and the remaining 15% are other Arabs in other […]

  27 June 2011 Luay Hussein: This is the first time we meet in front of our people so we have huge responsibilities. Luay Hussein: Those meeting here are not advocates of violence. Fadi Salem: Media was allowed in the first session and Syrian local Radio Cham is broadcasting live. Munther Khaddam: Who would have […]

  It appears from Iranian Islamist blogs that the honeymoon between Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic’s Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is finally over.  Some reject Ahmadinejad in favor of the Supreme Leader while others show unwavering support for Ahmadinejad. It all started when President Ahmadinejad accepted the resignation of the Iranian Minister […]

Cyber activists have created a group on Facebook calling for a “Day of Anger” on Friday in the eastern Saudi region, following the arrest of a Muslim cleric.

Mubarak: Leave, stay, leave, stay, leave, stay. . . . God damn you, Zine Ben Ali. May you burn in hell. It’s impossible to fix things now. Damn it. I think I’ll go make a speech — maybe things will quiet down a little.

  Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.   See, also, <twitter.com/3arabawy/status/30662957587234817> and <twitter.com/3arabawy/statuses/30747797716209664>. | Print  

  Mubarak to Ben Ali: “I’m coming to stay with you in a few days.  Get me reservations at a good place.” Le journal du ZABA / يوميات زين العابدين بن علي The videos above were released by Kharabeesh on 19 January 2011, 27 January 2011, and 3 February 2011.  For more information about Kharabeesh, […]

  No more censorship on YouTube! Restore CubaDebate! Iván Lira is a Venezuelan artist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 16 January 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Javier Rodríguez, “Censura de Youtube a Cubadebate desató movimiento solidario” (CubaDebate, 13 January 2011); Ellery Biddle, “Cuba: Cubadebate’s YouTube Channel Taken […]