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[UPDATED] Is Twitter Helping Users Get Around Its New Censorship Rules?
Jan 27th
Some of the messages Twitter is sending about its new policy on censoring tweets in certain countries seem ambiguous at best.
Perhaps the biggest piece of confusion for people trying to make sense of yesterday’s announcement is Twitter’s inclusion of a link with instructions on how to change your country setting. The change would appear to at least temporarily allow some users to read messages banned in their country by overriding the IP-address detection mechanism Twitter uses to assign a country to a user.
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“We also offer the option to set your country to ‘worldwide’ – which will show all public Tweets.”
According to the policy, users in countries where tweets are blocked will be notified when they have been denied access. That presumably means if I were in Germany, where posts about pro-Nazi content is banned by law, I could change my country in Twitter settings to the United States and be able to view the blocked content. The page notes that the manual override is there for users whose country has been misidentified.
But as one commenter noted last night, it seems as if “Twitter is trying to pull of a weird balancing act here. I don’t know if they can.”
We’ve asked Twitter for clarification and will update as soon as we hear back from them.
Update: “We use the IP address to identify a user’s country, and give the user the option to correct his or her country in settings if our system has misidentified it,” said Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson. “We also offer the option to set your country to ‘worldwide’ – which will show all public Tweets.”
Twitter is trying to make it clear that it will only censor tweets if it receives “a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity.”
There are other questions about the policy as well. For example, even though a blog post and support pages say these rules are being enacted so Twitter can continue to “make our services available to users everywhere,” but Olson told us in an email Thursday “there are still countries to which we will not go.”
Update: “We want to reach every person on the planet, and to make Twitter available to people everywhere as a service,” Olson clarified on Friday. “The distinction is there are still countries to which Twitter will not operate in as a business.”
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[UPDATED] Twitter May Censor Certain Tweets In Certain Countries
Jan 27th
Twitter will censor tweets in certain countries while still publishing them throughout the rest of the world, the company said Thursday on its blog.
“As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there,” the company said. “Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.”
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Twitter said it has not yet used the ability, which is outlined on its Help page, but when it does it will try to retroactively notify the sender. The company also announced an expanded agreement with Chilling Effects, a blog monitoring Internet legal activity and censorship, to increase Twitter’s transparency on free expression issues.
Update: In an email, Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson said the company was not backing off its commitment to free expression.
“Just to be clear, this is not a change in philosophy and there are still countries to which we will not go,” Olson said. “We hold freedom of expression in high esteem and work hard not to remove Tweets.”
The three major, U.S.-based social networks are all currently banned in China, a country analysts all agree is crucial for future growth. While Twitter’s post did not specifically mention China, it clearly positions the company ahead of Facebook and Google+ in articulating a career policy for handling content that may rile Chinese government officials.
While the Great Firewall of China currently blocks most of China’s 500 million Internet users from accessing the service, some tech-savvy Chinese citizens have managed to work around the firewall to access Twitter. It’s not clear if Twitter’s new policy will impact those users.
Twitter has previously been a stalwart in protecting free speech. In making today’s announcement, Twitter even a year-old blog post in which it said it would allow tweets to continue flowing even as Arab Spring uprisings escalated in Egypt. “There are Tweets that we do remove, such as illegal Tweets and spam,” the company said at the time. “However, we make efforts to keep these exceptions narrow so they may serve to prove a broader and more important rule–we strive not to remove Tweets on the basis of their content.”
Update: “This launch gives us the ability, when we have to, in response to a valid legal request, withhold a Tweet in a specific country and to keep that Tweet visible for the rest of the world,” Olson said Thursday. “Our policy in these cases is to 1) promptly notify the affected users, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so; 2) withhold the content in the required countries only, rather than worldwide; 3) clearly indicate to viewers that a Tweet or Account has been withheld, and 4) make available any requests to withhold content through our partnership with Chilling Effects.”
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[UPDATED] Source: Next Xbox Won’t Play Used Games
Jan 26th
An unnamed source is telling video game news site Kotaku that the next version of Microsoft’s Xbox will not play used games.
The person, identified as a “reliable industry source” also told Kotaku that Xbox 720 will be able to play Blu-Ray discs, an option not offered on current versions of the Xbox. The next generation of Xbox is expected to be released later this year or early in 2013.
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We’ve asked Microsoft for confirmation and comment. We’ll update if they get back to us. So far most speculation about the new machine is just that, as Microsoft hasn’t even confirmed if the new system will be called Xbox 720, or when it will be available.
Update: “As an innovator we’re always thinking about what is next and how we can push the boundaries of technology like we did with Kinect,” said Microsoft spokesperson Allison Milton. “We believe the key to extending the lifespan of a console is not just about the console hardware, but about the games and entertainment experiences being delivered to consumers. Beyond that we don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”
It was unclear how Microsoft planned to thwart people from playing used games on their consoles. Game publishers have long complained that the used game market erodes their bottom line, but users, who are expected to pay more than $300 for the new units, may bristle and turn to systems on which they can still play second-hand games.
Other rumors tied to Xbox 720 is that it will mark the debut of Kinect 2, Microsoft’s highly-praised hands-free sensor. The newer version of Kinect would contain an on-board processor to better detect user motions, according to Kotaku.
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[UPDATED] Anonymous Trolls Tech Bloggers, But Who Are The Real Trolls?
Jan 25th
Noticed some Facebook downtime? We have. It’s intermittent, but Facebook has some trouble with uptime right now, and a Twitter account representing Anonymous claims responsibility (somewhat obliquely, in order to troll tech bloggers).
In some kind of conflation of Facebook with the government, a puppet representing Anonymous threatened Facebook with an attack in retaliation for SOPA/PIPA (though other Anonymous sources denied involvement). That was scheduled for three days from now. The organization has declared war against Facebook in the past, but Facebook is no ordinary target. It’s the cream of the crop. It’s practically never down. Has Anonymous finally cracked it?
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cough cough, uh, looks like facebook.com is having a slight accessibility problem. #Anonymous
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) January 26, 2012
Well, no. Facebook is still working right now, but not reliably. It has completely failed to load in a few of our tests. Thomas Knoll posted a screenshot of the outage on Google+ at 5:17 p.m.. (Update 7:10 p.m.: We’ve confirmed with Facebook that the site issues this afternoon were caused by a code push. That’s all it was.)
Just two days ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) drafted a new readiness plan for dealing with attacks from the likes of Anonymous. Maybe President Obama’s “cyber threats” from last night’s State of the Union address are real, after all.
UPDATE 5:45 p.m.: The @YourAnonNews account claims to have called off the attack (again indirectly).
You are now free to play Farmville and Mobwars.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) January 26, 2012
UPDATE 6:37 p.m.: One “official” Anonymous outlet denies responsibility outright.
#Facebook.com is NOT under denial of service attack. STOP LYING.
— AnonOps (@anonops) January 26, 2012
Now the first one says it trolled us. And it did. But I ask you: Who are the real trolls here? The ones who make stuff up, or the ones who report their made-up stuff as dubious, probably made-up stuff?
Facebook down? goo.gl/lZo9n — Bwahaha, trolled! #Anonymous ^_^
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) January 26, 2012
See also: How Could Anonymous “Destroy” Facebook?
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[UPDATED] Google+ Has 54 Million Daily Active Users, 90 Million Total
Jan 20th
Google just announced its Q4 earnings, and CEO Larry Page is “super excited.” Revenue for the full year was up 29%. The quarter missed Wall Street’s expectations, but Page has no reservations. It was a big quarter for Google+, and Page says that’s a key to the company’s strategy. “By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+,” he says, “we will create amazing experiences across our services.”
Page says Google+ “now has 90 million users globally,” which is more than double what he announced three months ago. This quarter, Google integrated Google+ into search, so now it’s a part of life for anyone who uses Google (unless they opt out). Page says that 60% of Google+ users “engage daily,” and 80% are active weekly. That either means Google+ has 54 million daily active users, or, as Forbes points out, it might be sleight of hand, saying only that 54 Google+ users use Google services daily. But since Google+ is built into most of Google now, including search, that distinction is pretty moot.
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One of Page’s priorities as CEO is to increase “velocity of execution,” and he touts Google+ as an example of that strategy paying off. Page says Google+ has shipped “a new feature every day since we launched in June.” That’s more than 200 updates in total. “Understanding who people are, what they care about, and the other people who matter to them is crucial if we’re going to give users what they need when they need it,” Page says.
Page says Google is trying to “double down on the really big bets we have made.” It closed many existing products last year to make space for Google+, Android, Gmail and Chrome, the projects Page focused on in today’s earnings announcement. With 65% of Web searches, 90 million Google+ users, 350 million Gmail users, 250 million Android devices and the #2 desktop browser in the world, Google has an abundance of opportunities to display its ads. What Page didn’t say in the earnings call is that the returns on those ads are in decline. Google’s average revenue per click declined by 8%, and with all these fancy new features Google is building, its costs for gaining new traffic rose by 18%.
The average Google was paid for each click dropped 8%, while the company’s “traffic acquisition cost” rose by 18%.
— Horace Dediu (@asymco) January 19, 2012
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Google Accused of Fraud Against African Competitor [Updated: Google Statement]
Jan 14th
Mocality, a Kenya-based crowd-sourced web and mobile business listings company, has accused Google of fraudulently stealing its customers. In a blog post today, Mocality’s CEO Stefan Magdalinski maintained that Google has targeted its database, the core of its company, and lied to its users in an attempt to get them to join up with Google Africa’s Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO) program.
Shortly after GKBO began in September, Mocality “started receiving some odd calls” from customers who were confused by pitches to build them websites that came from Google in apparent partnership with Mocality. There was no such partnership and Mocality claimed to discover it was Google lying to its customers to bring them into GKBO.
Google has released a statement which we have included at the end of the article after the jump.
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Mocality did some pretty deep forensics on their traffic and discovered a specific IP, which used a Kenyan ISP and utlized the latest Chrome build, was extensively accessing their business listings. So on December 21, they re-directed a percentage of the inquiries from that IP to a page that gave a different phone number – one that connected to the Mocality call center. The calls that came in were startling.
Here’s an example, a call from someone identifying himself as Douglas, from Google Kenya, who tells the person who answered the phone, whom he believes is a business owner using Mocality, that Google and Mocality are collaborating on a new website service. Another call, available here in transcript, has the speaker accusing Mocality itself of fraud. They estimated the team identified as Google Kenya made 20-25 calls per hour to Mocality customers.
After a Christmas break, Magdalinski said there were no more instances of access from that IP. Instead, a new trend started from an Indian IP which belongs to Google. The calls began again, but this time from India. Here’s an example, starring a caller named “Deepthi.”
“It looks like Google has now outsourced the Getting Kenya Businesses Online operation to India!” wrote Magdalinski. He continued:
“When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.
“I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.”
We contacted Joseph Mucheru, Google’s senior lead for Sub-Saharan Africa. We met and interviewed him in October in his office at Google’s Nairobi headquarters where we talked, among other things, about the GKBO program. We have yet to hear back from him. We also contacted Magdalinski. If either respond, we will update this article.
Forbes reported that Google’s policy manager for Africa, Ory Okholloh, said the company would make a statement by the end of the day. It is the end of the day in Kenya and all we have been able to get is a boilerplate line from Google’s corporate PR department.
“These are clearly very serious allegations, and we are doing everything possible to investigate them.”
Other publications, including The Register, have carried a different statement.
“We’re aware that a company in Kenya has accused us of using some of their publicly available customer data without permission. We are investigating the matter and will have more information as soon as possible.”
Clearly, Google is looking to shift the focus onto the fact that the information in Mocality’s database was user generated. However, as Magdalinski notes on his Twitter account, “The real issue is not taking 30% of our ‘publicly available db’ – it’s what was said to our customers on the calls.”
UPDATE: Here is the statement from Nelson Mattos, Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets:
“We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologized to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.”
As Matt McGee notes on Marketing Land:
“The statement doesn’t specifically say that Google itself was doing the scraping and attempting to contact Mocality’s customers. By saying ‘a team of people working on a Google project,’ Google keeps open the possibility of placing responsibility for the incident on third party contractors – which is similar to what happened last week when Google said that ad agencies were responsible for a poorly-executed sponsored blog post campaign for Google Chrome.”
During my conversation with Mucheru in October, he spoke of GKBO as a Google program, conducted by the Kenya office he oversees, and not by a contracted group. If this was inaccurate, I hope he will correct it in his response to ReadWriteWeb’s questions.
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Google Search App For Android Updated
Jan 12th
Google announced on the Google Mobile Blog that they have updated the Google Search App for Android. The new update makes it easier and faster for searchers to use. The new additions include: New color scheme and simplified UI Faster Enhanced suggestions and query editing Better localized…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Where Do The Leading Republican Presidential Candidates Stand On SOPA? [UPDATED]
Jan 9th
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sounds like a guy who really, really wants to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act.
But Romney just can’t bring himself to mention SOPA by name.
At a New Hampshire campaign stop late last month, a small business owner asked Romney how he felt about SOPA. Without directly mentioning the bill the proposed legislation that would put curbs on Web sites in a bid to crack down on copyright violations, Romney said he opposes “bills like this” that focus solely on “stopping bad acts.”
“The job of a regulator is not to just to catch the bad guys and stop bad acts, it is to encourage the economy and encourage the good guys,” he said in comments similar to those he’s made in other public appearances.
While most of the support for SOPA is coming from members of Congress, it is possible the issue will be something the next President has to deal with. Heading into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, which, based on polling Romney is expected to win, here are how the other leading Republican candidates stand on SOPA:
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Ron Paul: Not surprisingly Paul, who plays more like a Libertarian than a Republican, opposes SOPA. Whether Paul fully understands the bill or is simply exaggerating its ramifications for effect (Paul has said SOPA “will take over the Internet” and “monitor everything we do”) is still unclear. But Paul does remain the only Republican still in the hunt who has voiced a clear-cut position on SOPA.
Rick Santorum: When asked about SOPA at a campaign stop over the weekend, the conservative, former Pennsylvania Senator said “there are limits to freedom on the Internet.” That is perhaps understandable, given Santorum’s woes with Google.
Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry: Gingrich and Perry have both been notably quiet on SOPA. A Google News search did not turn up instances where either had been directly asked for their opinions on SOPA.
Update: While he’s no longer a contender for the presidential nomination, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said on Monday he would vote against SOPA.
“The Internet is one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history. It should stay that way,” he said in a statement. While SOPA “attempts to address a legitimate problem, I believe it creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse.”
Ryan, an influential Republican who considered a run for his party’s presidential nomination last summer, follows a Reddit campaign that targeted Ryan, who had previously been neutral on the issue.
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Hitwise: Google+ Approaches 50 Million Monthly Visits [updated]
Jan 2nd
According to data shared by Experian Hitwise US, Google+ received around 50 million visits in December. That’s a jump of nearly 20 million from the month before and its biggest month of traffic since its launch at the end of June.
Google’s social network launched a holiday barrage of commercials featuring the Muppets and pro basketball stars using Google+ video Hangouts. CNET called the commercials “desperate,” but according to Hitwise’s numbers, the effort paid off.
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TechCrunch reported comScore numbers last month showing nearly 67 million unique visitors in November worldwide. Today’s Hitwise numbers show visits from the U.S. only. As TechCrunch’s Eric Eldon pointed out, third-party numbers are never 100% accurate. Still, both comScore and Hitwise agree that Google+ traffic is rising slowly but steadily. In its Q3 earnings call, Google reported 40 million registered Google+ users.
Google+ also got some significant upgrades in December that may have contributed to better traffic. It got better noise control in the stream of posts, somewhat clearer notifications, and a new interface for photos. It added long-awaited features for managing brand pages as a team. And video Hangouts, the distinguishing feature of Google+, got major updates on the desktop and mobile to be more visible and accessible.
Google+ is now integrated into long-standing Google properties like Gmail, Blogger and YouTube. Google reported that ‘Google+’ was the #2 worldwide search term last year. Its momentum made Google+ our top social Web product of the year.
Post has been updated to reflect that the comScore numbers reported by TechCrunch were worldwide, whereas these Hitwise numbers are U.S.-only.
Are you using Google+?
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Did New Year’s Eve Well-Wishers Crash Twitter? [UPDATED]
Dec 31st
There were reports of widespread outages of Twitter’s main Web site Saturday, with speculation centering on the problems stemming from a flood of New Year’s greetings.
We asked Twitter for comment and will update as soon as we hear back. “Our engineers have identified the issue and Twitter is now almost fully recovered,” Twitter spokesperson Carolyn Penner said in an email at 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday.
By 2:50 p.m. ET, MSNBC was reporting that the site was “slowly coming back online” and there seemed to be few problems with accessing the site and posting messages by 4:15 p.m. ET. The only official indication from Twitter that something was amiss came Saturday morning, when the company posted “Users may currently be experiencing some site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue” on its status microblog.
If the site goes down again — particularly as you hope to send out your New Year’s tweets as the calendar turns in your part of the world — try using an app or the mobile site. Some users reported success posting messages using clients like HootSuite, TweetCaster and Twitter’s own TweetDeck during the earlier outage.
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