Independence Day For The Internet! New U.N. Resolution Expands E-Freedoms

Congratulations!  If you are reading this right now, you are exercising one of the most recently-expanded universal human rights!  As of July 1st, by order of the United Nations, access to the internet (which had been considered a basic human right since 2011) has been supported even more thoroughly by the organization, who condemned any “measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online.”

In grand internet tradition, a cat meme seemed the best way to celebrate.
(Image courtesy funnyjunk.com.)

Pride Vs. Prejudice: Anonymous Gaily Hacks ISIS Twitter Pages

When acts of terror occur, one wonders at the source of the vitriol towards certain intended targets. Often, it seems that ignorance, hatred, and other motivators of malevolent acts may be based in a person (or a fanatical subculture’s) self-hatred, or repression of certain aspects of their lives. This creates a strong means of turning the terror back upon itself...for instance, in this faaaaaaabulous way.

Oh myyyy.
(Image courtesy techly.com.au.)

Fighting Trump Fans On Twitter? There's A Bot For That

The 2016 presidential election for the United States has already been weird, dirty, and unsettling, as any form of major or minor media will be happy to inform you of. Now, a chatbot posing as a Donald Trump fan (or foe?) has only added fuel to the fanatical fire…

Yell all you want at the AI Trump supporter...
like the hair of the Don, it is ultimately unflappable.
(Image courtesy play.google.com.)

Sucking Dox: Facial Recognition Software Used To Harass Porn Stars' Real Identities

Facial recognition software has long been touted as a necessary aide to combat crimes, from street-level surveillance up to complex police analysis of individuals' tattoos for identification.  Now, a piece of software that allows you to search for faces as easily as one might search for a cupcake recipe has backfired to those who don't really want to be identified...well, for their facial features, at least.

They sell their bodies for a living, which enrages those who'd never get a buyer,
or any kind of lover at all.
(Image courtesy monsters4ever.com.)

R.I.P. To A Young A.I.: Microsoft's Savage "Teen Girl" Twitter-Bot Lobotomized Within One Day

It's one thing to have society be taken over by industrious labor-bots...it's another thing when the machines are "smart" enough to form opinions after assessing popular input.  While it's a fascinating and fun future that holds promise of a robot that outsmarts experts at one of our most difficult board games, or knows massive amounts of trivia, when artificial intelligence is outsourced to the internet, the supposed "intelligence" comes across as...well, something less than that.

We keep learning the hard way that the digital natives are a vicious tribe.
(Image courtesy @geraldmellor.)

Your Drunk Tweets = Their Science Deets

Well, it's St. Patrick's Day, and we're here to confirm your invasive thoughts that maybe you should totally do a whole bunch of drunk social media posts to tell all of your friends and family and exes and pizza deliverymen how much you love them.  What?  Why?  Because at one point in New York City, it was totally helping science.

We're not talking about the science of mixology, though that counts too.  *Burp.*
(Image courtesy scientificamerican.com.)

Glory Feed: New Christian-Themed Social Media Site Launches

If you feel that you're being set upon by the devil when you see scandalous images appear on your social networks, maybe it's time to go with god and ascend to a higher form of Facebook.  For the holy who like to keep in touch, the new "FaceGloria" network exists...

Every time you post a selfie while boozing, you end up in a lower circle of hell.
(Image courtesy newsnation.in.)

"Clear" For Takeoff: New App Removes All Of Your Objectionable Social Media Posts

If you have some kind of a social media account, chances are you've at some point made a statement or posted an image there that you're not particularly proud of.  Maybe you've let it get buried in a tidal wave of tech and time, but if it still exists, it can still be found...and possibly used against you.  Take this power away from your enemies with a new app...

(Image courtesy failbook.com.)

"Like" After Death: Leave A "Legacy Contact" To Manage Your Facebook Postmortem

Like millions of people the world over, perhaps you enjoy reporting the diverse details of your life on Facebook.  But what about...after?  What happens to your e-life when your real one is over?  Better find someone very trustworthy to handle your e-estate...

If You Only Have Something Nice To Say, Say It On The Outpour App

Privacy on the internet is an important and valuable commodity, even for those who claim they have "nothing to hide."  Though arguments on privacy frequently focus on the idea of not having to worry if you're not doing anything wrong, what if you're interested in remaining private because you're doing something wildly (and possibly uncharacteristically) nice for someone?

It's not always as hard as you think it might be.  Even if it is, your discovery and notation of it increases its value.
(Image courtesy twitter.com.)

Enter a new app, Outpour.  As reported by wired.com, Outpour abets those who would like to deluge someone in positive comments but can't quite say them to their face or their facebook.  When freedom of expression just needs a new method of expression, Outpour steps in so you can brighten someone's day with a nice note, sans your name.  The idea is to spur people to say something sweet that they might otherwise have left bottled up, like so much maple syrup that could never saturate your mental pancakes.

"GODDAMNIT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH."
(Image courtesy redtri.com.)

Yes, it could be used for evil, but the design is based against that.  One would have to specifically seek out their victim's profile and consciously ignore all other nice messages before violating the "social norm" of the site with their message.  For those who would buck that norm, their rantings can be deleted by the user, and the vitriol-spewer's account may be blocked.  Numerous blockings could result in a site-wide ban.  A unique phone number is required for sign-up, to prevent multiple accounts.

Outpour is available for iOS, with web and Android versions arriving next year.  So if you're not near enough to someone to send a drink down the bar, or if you're not close enough to know where to send them a card, Outpour could help bring some small, secret joy with just a few keystrokes.  How sweet.

Anonymous love is still love.
(Image courtesy shinyshiny.tv.)

Sky-High Five: New App Lets You Say Hi To An Astronaut

If you're a fan of the astro-adventurers who make their living by working on the International Space Station, a.k.a. possibly humanity's greatest collaborative scientific achievement, you've probably at some point wondered how they were doing up there.  Maybe it's because you feel a connection to their self-imposed earthly exile, maybe it's because you think they might be looking down over your city at the moment, maybe you just read a lot of our Space Station Sunday articles and feel a faraway friendship with these folks.  Whatever your motivation, the new Friends In Space app lets you chat with one of the human stars of space.

According to wired.com, the app was developed by Italian company Accurat and provides a host of spacewatching options.  You can track past, present, and future orbits of the ISS, chat with other stargazers, check out audio and video from the ISS, and see the astronauts' daily schedules.  But the coolest part is the connectivity:  when the ISS passes over your region, the app will alert you, and you can send a hello up to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

"Like"!
(Image courtesy diregiovani.it.)

The idea was created when Accurat co-founder Giorgia Lupi was interacting on Twitter with Cristoforetti, who is currently serving as Italy's first female space station astronaut.  Cristoforetti, who has nearly 84,000 Twitter followers, agreed a social network for space might be a fun idea.  Lupi said, “She liked the idea of doing something that wasn’t scientific...something that reminded people on Earth that there is a human up there talking to them.”

Even though the astronauts can technically see all of us, it's nice for them to be reminded that we're still here supporting them.  And who knows what sort of fascinating posts may show up on this new space-based social media?  With lots of data available for fans and the whole world at the astronauts' hands, it will be interesting to see the daily grind from someone who is outside your normal social orbit.

They totally should have called it "Spacebook" though.
(Image courtesy Accurat.)

Secret Service Using Totally Cool Sarcasm Detector While Watching Social Media

The United States Secret Service has escalated their social-media surveillance methods as of late, and it makes things soooo much better for the common person. If you don't have a specially-crafted program to filter that sentence, it contained sarcasm, which has become a problem for Big Brother by creating false positives for threats during their nitpicking of our online brain droppings.

The new technology is considered superior than tasking agents with creating fake profiles to gather and assess the public's social media commentary.  According to www.nextgov.com, the technology also includes the abilities for “sentiment analysis,” "influencer identification," "access to historical Twitter data," “ability to detect sarcasm," and "heat maps" or graphics showing user trends by color intensity, agency officials said.

The program will operate in real time and totally respects your opinion.

Facebook: A Company That Really Listens to Its Users

Many would probably like to believe it's good that more and more companies are listening to their users. But this is probably not what they had in mind. From the International Business Times:

On the same day that Facebook touted sweeping new efforts to protect users’ privacy, the company confirmed that it plans to save data captured by smartphone microphones, potentially enabling the social media giant to listen in on private conversations.  

In a press release issued Wednesday, Facebook announced a forthcoming app update in which a new feature uses the phone's microphone to capture sounds in the user's environment, then identifies the song, movie or television show the user is watching based on what it hears. Once the sound is ID'd, users have the option to share it as a visual component of their posts.

Though Facebook assured that "no sound is stored,” the company acknowledged to International Business Times that it does intend to archive the data gleaned.

Twitter Partners with Pakistani Speech Police

From the New York Times:

At least five times this month, a Pakistani bureaucrat who works from a colonial-era barracks in Karachi, just down the street from the former home of his country’s secularist founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, asked Twitter to shield his compatriots from exposure to accounts, tweets or searches of the social network that he described as “blasphemous” or “unethical.”

All five of those requests were honored by the company, meaning that Twitter users in Pakistan can no longer see the content that so disturbed the bureaucrat, Abdul Batin of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority . . .

Google+ May Soon Come to an End

Is it over yet? From Tech Crunch:

Today, Google’s Vic Gundotra announced that he would be leaving the company after eight years. The first obvious question is where this leaves Google+, Gundotra’s baby and primary project for the past several of those years.

What we’re hearing from multiple sources is that Google+ will no longer be considered a product, but a platform — essentially ending its competition with other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

A Google representative has vehemently denied these claims. “Today’s news has no impact on our Google+ strategy — we have an incredibly talented team that will continue to build great user experiences across Google+, Hangouts and Photos.”

According to two sources, Google has apparently been reshuffling the teams that used to form the core of Google+, a group numbering between 1,000 and 1,200 employees. We hear that there’s a new building on campus, so many of those people are getting moved physically, as well — not necessarily due to Gundotra’s departure.

NYPD Social Media PR Stunt Backfires

From the New York Times:

When the New York Police Department asked Twitter users on Tuesday to share their photographs with police officers, they were perhaps expecting a few feel-good neighborhood scenes or tourists with police horses in Times Square. A few posted pictures of themselves with officers, smiling. Most did not.

Almost immediately after the call went out from the department’s official Twitter account, storms of users took the opportunity to instead attach some of the most unfavorable images of New York City officers that could be found on the Internet. And judging by the output on Tuesday, there are quite a few.

The Daily News was more forthright about the nature of those images.  Excerpt:

But instead of happy pictures of cops posing with tourists and helping out locals, Twitter erupted with hundreds of photos of police violence, including Occupy Wall Street arrests and the 84-year-old man who was bloodied for jaywalking on the Upper West Side earlier this year.

Just before midnight, more than 70,000 people had posted comments on Twitter decrying police brutality, slamming the NYPD for the social media disaster and recalling the names of people shot to death by police. It was the top trending hashtag on Twitter by late Tuesday, replacing #HappyEarthDay.

Police officials wouldn’t respond to questions about the negative comments or say who was behind the Twitter outreach. They released a short statement on Tuesday evening, when users were posting more than 10,000 tweets an hour.

Of course, none of this is surprising. After Federal Law Enforcement agencies, local police departments are the most dangerous state-sponsored terrorist organizations in the United States. 

Submit: The Failure of Social Media "Activism"

Social media have, without a doubt, already begun to revolutionize the political process world wide, and has been credited with facilitating popular uprisings and even the toppling of governments the world over. However, in many cases, it also serves a more reactionary function: to create an appearance of activity and engagement that masks a more fundamental social and political passivity.  A new study out of UC San Diego shows the superficiality of social media slacktivism.  Excerpt:

“The study is an important counter-balance to unbridled enthusiasm for the powers of social media,” said UC San Diego’s Lewis. “There’s no inherent magic. Social media can activate interpersonal ties but won’t necessarily turn ordinary citizens into hyper-activists.”

In the case of the Save Darfur campaign, the Causes Facebook app appears to have been “more marketing than mobilization,” Lewis said. It seems to have failed to convert the initial act of joining into a more sustained set of behaviors. For the vast majority of the members, he said, “the commitment might have been only as deep as a click.”

USAID Cuban Social Media Front Outed by AP

From The Associated Press:

The U.S. government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" — a communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks . . .

USAID and its contractors went to extensive lengths to conceal Washington's ties to the project, according to interviews and documents obtained by the AP. They set up front companies in Spain and the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail, and recruited CEOs without telling them they would be working on a U.S. taxpayer-funded project.

"There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement," according to a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord Inc., one of the project's creators. "This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the Mission." . . . 

USAID said in a statement that it is "proud of its work in Cuba to provide basic humanitarian assistance, promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to help information flow more freely to the Cuban people," whom it said "have lived under an authoritarian regime" for 50 years. The agency said its work was found to be "consistent with U.S. law."

Interestingly, the initial subscriber base appears to have been put together after the shell corporations illicitly obtained the contact information of thousands of Cubans targeted by the government.

The social media project began development in 2009 after Washington-based Creative Associates International obtained a half-million Cuban cellphone numbers. It was unclear to the AP how the numbers were obtained, although documents indicate they were done so illicitly from a key source inside the country's state-run provider. Project organizers used those numbers to start a subscriber base.

Social Media Censorship Leads to Tor Surge in Turkey

From The Daily Dot:

Turkey’s online censorship and banning of Twitter is fueling mass adoption of Tor, the most popular anonymity network online, as a tool to circumvent government obstruction.

Just days ago, the software had already hit a pace of 10,000 new users per week. Now the pace has picked up significantly; Turks are now moving to Tor at a rate of 10,000 new users per day for a total of over 50,000 users and growing.

Facebook to Government: Back Off! Spying on Facebook Users is OUR Job!

From the NYT:

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, has complained directly to President Obama about the continuing revelations that the United States government has secretly spied on the activities of some of his company’s 1.2 billion users.

Mr. Zuckerberg spoke with the president on Wednesday following the most recent news report on the National Security Agency’s surveillance tactics. The account, published in The Intercept from documents leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, described how government computers sometimes masqueraded as Facebook servers in order to send malicious software to infect the machines of Facebook users. The documents say the process was automated so the N.S.A. could target millions of people for the attacks.