Emmalii Rahmon: Tajikistan Blocks Facebook

The Republic of Tajikistan has blocked local access to Facebook and two Russian-language sites that published an article critical of its long-serving president -Emomalii Rahmon. The shutdown was ordered by the state-run communications service, the local Internet providers told Reuters, requesting anonymity. Users who tried to access Facebook or the two websites, which published a story critical of President Imomali Rakhmon, were automatically re-directed to the home page of their provider.

Freedom of the press is officially guaranteed by the government, although independent press outlets remain restricted, as does a substantial amount of web content. According to the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, access is blocked to local and foreign websites including avesta.tj, tjknews.com, ferghana.ru and centrasia.ru and journalists are often obstructed from reporting on controversial events. In practice, no public criticism of the regime is tolerated and all direct protest is severely suppressed and does not get reported in the local media. Read the full article »»»»

Inside Facebooks Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade: Where Camel Toes are More Offensive Than Crushed Heads

Amine Derkaoui, a 21-year-old Moroccan man, is pissed at Facebook. Last year he spent a few weeks training to screen illicit Facebook content through an outsourcing firm, for which he was paid a measly $1 an hour.

He’s still fuming over it.

“It’s humiliating. They are just exploiting the third world,” Derkaoui complained in a thick French accent over Skype just a few weeks after Facebook filed their record $500 million IPO.

As a sort of payback, Derkaoui gave us some internal documents, which shed light on exactly how Facebook censors the dark content it doesn’t want you to see, and the people whose job it is to make sure you don’t.

Facebook has turned the stuff its millions of users post into gold. But perhaps just as important as the vacation albums and shared articles is the content it keeps out of user’s timelines: porn, gore, racism, cyberbullying, and so on. Facebook has fashioned itself the clean, well-lit alternative to the scary open Internet for both users and advertisers, thanks to the work of a small army of human content moderators like Derkaoui.

Facebook China

When it comes to China, Facebook should consider itself forewarned. Cracking the world’s biggest Internet population might seem an obvious ambition for the social networking giant as it trumpets its global growth before a $5 billion initial public offering, but the chances it will succeed look slim. Facebook said last week it was contemplating re-entering China, the world’s second-biggest economy, after being blocked nearly three years ago. Facebooks offering would likely face intense competition, political meddling and little commercial success.

There are just six countries in the world where Facebook is not the most popular social networking site,  Mark Zuckerberg clearly has his sights set on all six.

Japan, India and Korea currently have popular local alternatives to Facebook, and the Chinese government has no intention of lifting its ban on the site. Read the full article »»»»

UK Parents Using Facebook To Find Children They Gave Up For Adoption or Abandoned

Hundreds of adopted children in the United Kingdom have been contacted by their birth parents, who used social media sites like Facebook to track them down. One adoption support group in Victoria says the process can be illegal, and a mother of three adopted children in the UK says it can be highly traumatic.

Adopted children can sometimes spend their whole lives wondering about their birth parents because the search process through official channels can take years. One adopted teenager in the UK received a message on Facebook saying “Hello, I am your father.

I have been searching for you ever since you were stolen by social services. You look beautiful. I love you so much.” The father who wrote the message is a registered paedophile, whose children were removed by social services and later adopted.

It’s a development that has concerned some psychologists, who fear the destabilizing impact that kind of sudden contact could have.

In Britain, health services fear that some birth parents, and in particular those who may have been abusive in the past, could track down their birth children via sites like Facebook to establish or re-establish contact. 

Some psychologists have reported that adopted children have displayed troubled behavior after their parents had unexpectedly re-established contact :: Read the full article »»»»

CHINA: Beijing Orders Micro-bloggers to Register Real Names

Beijing city authorities on Friday issued new rules requiring microbloggers to register their real names before posting online, as the Chinese government tightens its grip on the internet. The city government now requires users of weibos – the Chinese version of Twitter – to give their real names to website administrators, its official news portal said. The new rules will apply to weibo operators based in Beijing, which include Sina – owner of China’s most popular microblogging service, with more than 200 million users – as well as users living in the Chinese capital. Weibo users reacted angrily to the new rules, saying this was an attempt to muzzle online criticism and debate.

Indias Kapil Sibal Set to Ban Offensive Facebook Posts

We love a good rant out of India, and have pretty much given up on making any sense of the rhetoric that falls from the mouth of Communications Minister Kapil Sibal, in his latest rant though he seems to have outdone himself? He has vowed to ban offensive material from the internet after Facebook, Google and other major firms told the government they were unable to screen content before it was posted. Kapil Sibal said talks with the internet giants had failed to come up with a solution following complaints that he had lodged three months ago over “unacceptable” images.

“My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded,” Mr Sibal told reporters in New Delhi. ”We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. They will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it.”

In his usual hypocritical tone, Mr Sibal said the government supported free speech and was against censorship but that some material on the internet was so offensive that no one would find it acceptable. He said he had shown some of the worst images to the internet companies, who had said they could not control all distribution. Read the full article »»»»