Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
What a mess! GLAAD, EqualityCalifornia, AT&T, and the threat to Net Neutrality
Troup Coronado, AT&T Handmaiden, Leaves Equality California Institute BoardBy: Teddy Partridge, Friday June 24, 2011 10:56 amHaving slithered off the GLAAD board of directors amidst other departures announced in that organization’s long-awaited statement, Troup Coronado, Esq., — the AT&T handmaiden who’s the source of all this travail in LBGT organizations that took “stands” on the T-Mobile merger and net neutrality — has left the Equality California Institute Board of Directors as well.It’s a good thing, too, since Troup Coronado’s anti-gay efforts in the Heritage Foundation and the GWBush Administration are coming to light, as well as his smarmy history of breaking “ethics” rules in place during the Wild West Denny Hastert/Tom Delay era as a House lobbyist.Earlier this week, Equality California withdrew a letter to the Federal Communications Commission from its then-Executive Director, Geoff Kors, about net neutrality. Here is I-ED Carroll’s recent e-mail and his letter to the FCC withdrawing that letter:On behalf of Equality California I have sent the letter copied below to the FCC withdrawing our previous letter. As it says in the letter it was never our intention to oppose Net Neutrality.And on behalf of myself I made an error in an interview yesterday with Chris Geidner in which I said that Equality California doesn’t have a policy with regard to our policy positions. In fact, there is a policy that allows the Executive Director to make decisions on policies that are core to the mission of Equality California. On issues that are outside of our core mission, such as support for our friends in labor or in the reproductive rights community, there is a policy that requires the board to weigh in if a board meeting is timely, or directs the matter to the Executive Committee. In the event of an urgent policy choice the ED can seek counsel from the Board President. I apologize for any confusion this might have created. I’ve only been Interim ED for 7 weeks!Jim CarrollJune 22, 2011The Honorable Julius Genachowski
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW, Room 8-B201
Washington, DC 20554
RE: Withdrawal of letter dated October 12, 2009 – Broadband Industry Practices (WC Docket No. 07-52)Dear Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners:On October 12, 2009, Equality California submitted a letter to the Commission urging the preservation of an “open and accessible Internet” and requesting an effort to reach out to the LGBT community. It has come to our attention that the phrase “open and accessible Internet” can be taken to indicate opposition to net neutrality, which was neither our intention nor our organization’s position. We fully support the principles of net neutrality.Accordingly, we request that you withdraw our letter of October 12, 2009.Very truly yours,Jim Carroll
Interim Executive Director
Equality California
Equality California promises a statement shortly; when I receive it I will append it as an update to this post.
Teddy, you'll note, is pretty tough on the orgs who've taken Troup Coronado into their bosom. Actually, it's not entirely clear that he has been engaged in unremitting evil masterminding.For that matter, there's been a lot of anguish in the LGBT community over the vilification of AT&T. It's pointed out that the company has an unusually good record on its treatment of LGBT employees as well as its financial support of LGBT organizations and causes -- money that's admittedly a drop in the bucket for a company of its size but that may spell life or death for the recipients of its largesse, always hard-pressed for cash, and obviously much more so in the desperate climate following the economic meltdown. Was it wrong for orgs to accept, even welcome support from a source that has long seemed on board with their causes?It seems kind of far-fetched that AT&T planted Troup Coronado on those boards as the linchpin of a scheme to infiltrate LGBT orgs to engineer the support that will put their anti-Net Neutrality crusade over the top. At the same time, it's a little scary to discover that some LGBT activists don't understand how damaging the AT&T-engineered breach of Net Neutrality will be, not just for LGBT causes, but for everyone who isn't a top-dollar supporter of the corporatist state.Net Neutrality sounds like such an abstract, minor technical issue, sort of the way "media concentration" did all those years when annoying Cassandras were warning of its danger to free and open expression. Well, nothing ever was done to slow the onrush of media conglomeration, and here we are in a world where an alarmingly paltry number of media moguls control an alarmingly large portion of what passes for mass-consumed news.If the result hasn't been quite as dire as the Cassandras warned (at least not yet), it's in good part because of the unforeseen rise of the Internet, making possible the widespread dissemination of non-corporate-blessed content. Thank goodness the corporatists won't be able to get their grubby mitts on that!Oh, wait.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
World's Strongest Net Neutrality Law Poised For Approval
AMSTERDAM -- The Dutch parliament approved a bill Wednesday forcing mobile Internet providers to let customers use Skype and other rival services on their networks without charging extra or giving preferential treatment to their own offerings.
Once the bill is passed by the senate – usually a formality – the Netherlands may set an example for Europe by enacting one of the strongest "net neutrality" laws on record.
Telecommunications companies including Vodafone, T-Mobile and the former Dutch state telecom Royal KPN NV had lobbied against the bill, claiming it may result in higher prices for customers or make it impossible to offer quality guarantees for key services.
However, advocates argued it will ensure the telecoms don't abuse their control over mobile networks to stifle competition and innovation. The Dutch bill was endorsed by consumer groups, "digital freedom" activists, and is seen as benefiting big software and content companies, notably Facebook, Skype owner Microsoft, and Google.
Although net neutrality has been debated by policy makers and the industry for a decade, the key provisions of the Dutch bill took shape in just two months as politicians reacted swiftly to a public outcry over telecom KPN's pricing policies.
"When it hits the wallet, it hits home," said Daphne van der Kroft of Bits of Freedom, an organization that opposes online restrictions.
In April, KPN announced poor first quarter earnings as customers using smart phones flocked to a messaging service called "WhatsApp." WhatsApp enables phone users with a mobile Internet subscription to send messages for no additional charge, sidestepping KPN's lucrative SMS business. In response, KPN chief executive Eelco Blok announced plans to charge customers extra for using Skype and WhatsApp.
The move backfired spectacularly.
Customers were outraged, and many began questioning for the first time how the company even knew which applications they were using on their phones.
Internet providers routinely monitor traffic on their network for a range of reasons, including removing bottlenecks, protecting customers from viruses and spam, and adhering to law enforcement demands.
But to track which customers are using WhatsApp or Skype, KPN would need to look relatively carefully at the data being transferred, using a practice known as "deep packet inspection."
KPN argued the practice is common in the industry and it doesn't eavesdrop on customers.
But the Netherlands' consumer rights watchdog demanded an investigation into possible privacy violations, and politicians, reading public sentiment, moved to stop the plan. One of the bill's co-authors, Labor MP Martijn van Dam, compared KPN to "a postal worker who delivers a letter, looks to see what's in it, and then claims he hasn't read it."
In a statement, KPN said it "regrets that parliament didn't take more time for this legislation," adding it is now considering other options to recoup lost revenues.
Vodafone said the bill would "lead to a large increase in prices for mobile Internet for a large group of consumers" by blocking the company from offering varying prices for varying services.
The Dutch bill comes at a crucial time, as most European countries are debating how to enact EU Commission rules on net neutrality.
Video: Spider Spins Zero-Gravity Web in Space
Thank God Vint Cerf Is on Our Planet
Here’s How the #Koch Bros. Put ‘Raise the Retirement Age’ On TV #SenSanders
Why is Bernie Sanders so sane and smart and humane? Oh right, he’s a democratic socialist who rightly appreciates the democratic-socialist institutions of America — Social Security, Medicare, compulsory education, labor rights, national parks, public transportation infrastructure, libraries, fire departments and other such ideas that were radical centuries ago and are now part of accepted humanity throughout the world.
Truck Nutz! [Koch Brothers Exposed]
Facebook Pages Can Now Be Personalized Based on Klout Score
Your Facebook influence, as measured by Klout, will determine your access level to select brand pages on Facebook — and it could net you perks.
The new Facebook-gating system is the latest product from social media marketing startup Involver, which has more than 400,000 brands using its platform.
Involver has teamed up with social influence tracking company Klout to release a set of Facebook applications that brands can use to tailor their Page experiences around fans’ Klout scores. The first app is free and is being released to brands Wednesday.
“We’ve taken Klout’s core business and brought it into our platform,” says Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Involver senior vice president of marketing and customer success. “The first application is a simple coupon-esque experience. A brand will be able to bring an application out of their Page, configure to deliver content to people above and below certain Klout scores, and then input whatever that content is.”
Content can take the form of a new trailer, product, coupon or any other unreleased material.
Involver will also release enterprise and professional-level packages that will give its paying clients deeper customization options so they can more tightly target Facebook users and serve content of their choosing.
“It’s ‘fan-gating’ on steroids using Klout scores,” Kaykas-Wolff adds.
The term “fan-gating” is often used interchangeable with “Like-gating,” and both refer to a common brand practice of hiding Facebook Page content behind a fan or “like” gate — when a fan “likes” the page, the actual content is revealed.
In Involver’s Klout interpretation on the gate model, a Facebook user’s Klout score will determine what type of Facebook content you see and what perks, if any, you get.
Audi USA will be the first brand to test Involver and Klout’s influence gate on its Facebook Page. Fans who click to find out their Klout scores will receive a perk — a custom desktop, ringtone or both — based on their scores. The process happens entirely on Facebook, with Involver pinging Klout and retrieving the user’s score in the background.
Involver’s latest Facebook initiative, internally referred to as “Klout Gate,” is the “promise of Facebook,” as Kaykas-Wolff sees it. “This is going to be a really interesting next step in the future of personalization for brands to their consumers on Facebook.”
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Google working on video chat for Chrome, Skype cowers in fear
Filed under: Software
Google working on video chat for Chrome, Skype cowers in fear originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jun 2011 04:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Electronista | 
CNET | Email this | CommentsWednesday, June 22, 2011
Russian eclipse enthusiasts launch floating globe to shoot the moon
Russian eclipse enthusiasts launch floating globe to shoot the moon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
PermalinkGizmodo | Garnelis | Email this | CommentsHelp Bring Back the Alien-Hunting SETI Telescopes
How to Verify Social Media Content: Some Tips and Tricks on Information Fore...
I get this question all the time: “How do you verify social media data?” This question drives many of the conversations on crowdsourcing and crisis mapping these days. It’s high time that we start compiling our tips and tricks into an online how-to-guide so that we don’t have to start from square one every time the question comes up. We need to build and accumulate our shared knowledge in information forensics. So here is the Google Doc version of this blog post, please feel free to add your best practices and ask others to contribute. Feel free to also add links to other studies on verifying social media content.
If every source we monitored in the social media space was known and trusted, then the need for verification would not be as pronounced. In other words, it is the plethora and virtual anonymity of sources that makes us skeptical of the content they deliver. The process of verifying social media data thus requires a two-step process: the authentication of the source as reliable and the triangulation of the content as valid. If we can authenticate the source and find it trustworthy, this may be sufficient to trust the content and mark is a verified depending on context. If source authentication is difficult to ascertain, then we need to triangulate the content itself.
Lets unpack these two processes—authentication and triangulation—and apply them to Twitter since the most pressing challenges regarding social media verification have to do with eyewitness, user-generated content. The first step is to try and determine whether the source is trustworthy. Here are some tips on how to do this:
- Bio on Twitter: Does the source provide a name, picture, bio and any links to their own blog, identity, professional occupation, etc., on their page? If there’s a name, does searching for this name on Google provide any further clues to the person’s identity? Perhaps a Facebook page, a professional email address, a LinkedIn profile?
- Number of Tweets: Is this a new Twitter handle with only a few tweets? If so, this makes authentication more difficult. Arasmus notes that “the more recent, the less reliable and the more likely it is to be an account intended to spread disinformation.” In general, the longer the Twitter handle has been around and the more Tweets linked to this handle, the better. This gives a digital trace, a history of prior evidence that can be scrutinized for evidence of political bias, misinformation, etc. Arasmus specifies: “What are the tweets like? Does the person qualify his/her reports? Are they intelligible? Is the person given to exaggeration and inconsistencies?”
- Number of followers: Does the source have a large following? If there are only a few, are any of the followers know and credible sources? Also, how many lists has this Twitter hanlde been added to?
- Number following: How many Twitter users does the Twitter handle follow? Are these known and credible sources?
- Retweets: What type of content does the Twitter handle retweet? Does the Twitter handle in question get retweeted by known and credible sources?
- Location: Can the source’s geographic location be ascertained? If so, are they nearby the unfolding events? One way to try and find out by proxy is to examine during which periods of the day/night the source tweets the most. This may provide an indication as to the person’s time zone.
- Timing: Does the source appear to be tweeting in near real-time? Or are there considerable delays? Does anything appear unusual about the timing of the person’s tweets?
- Social authentication: If you’re still unsure about the source’s reliability, use your own social network–Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn–to find out if anyone in your network know about the source’s reliability.
- Media authentication: Is the source quoted by trusted media outlines whether this be in the mainstream or social media space?
- Engage the source: Tweet them back and ask them for further information. NPR’s Andy Carvin has employed this technique particularly well. For example, you can tweet back and ask for the source of the report and for any available pictures, videos, etc. Place the burden of proof on the source.
These are some of the tips that come to mind for source authentication. For more thoughts on this process, see my previous blog post “Passing the I’m-Not-Gaddafi-Test: Authenticating Identity During Crisis Mapping Operations.” If you some tips of your own not listed here, please do add them to the Google Doc—they don’t need to be limited to Twitter either.
Now, lets say that we’ve gone through list above and find the evidence inconclusive. We thus move to try and triangulate the content. Here are some tips on how to do this:
- Triangulation: Are other sources on Twitter or elsewhere reporting on the event you are investigating? As Arasmus notes, “remain skeptical about the reports that you receive. Look for multiple reports from different unconnected sources.” The more independent witnesses you can get information from the better and the less critical the need for identity authentication.
- Origins: If the user reporting an event is not necessarily the original source, can the original source be identified and authenticated? In particular, if the original source is found, does the time/date of the original report make sense given the situation?
- Social authentication: Ask members of your own social network whether the tweet you are investigating is being reported by other sources. Ask them how unusual the event reporting is to get a sense of how likely it is to have happened in the first place. Andy Carvin’s followers, for example, “help him translate, triangulate, and track down key information. They enable remarkable acts of crowdsourced verification [...] but he must always tell himself to check and challenge what he is told.”
- Language: Andy Carvin notes that tweets that sound too official, using official language like “breaking news”, “urgent”, “confirmed” etc. need to be scrutinized. “When he sees these terms used, Carvin often replies and asks for additional details, for pictures and video. Or he will quote the tweet and add a simple one word question to the front of the message: Source?” The BBC’s UGC (user-generated content) Hub in London also verifies whether the vocabulary, slang, accents are correct for the location that a source might claim to be reporting from.
- Pictures: If the twitter handle shares photographic “evidence”, does the photo provide any clues about the location where it was taken based on buildings, signs, cars, etc., in the background? The BBC’s UGC Hub checks weaponry against those know for the given country and also looks for shadows to determine the possible time of day that a picture was taken. In addition, they examine weather reports to “confirm that the conditions shown fit with the claimed date and time.” These same tips can be applied to Tweets that share video footage.
- Follow up: If you have contacts in the geographic area of interest, then you could ask them to follow up directly/in-person to confirm the validity of the report. Obviously this is not always possible, particularly in conflict zones. Still, there is increasing anecdotal evidence that this strategy is being used by various media organizations and human rights groups. One particularly striking example comes from Kyrgyzstan where a Skype group with hundreds of users across the country were able disprove and counter rumors at a breathtaking pace. See this blog post for more details. See my blog post on “How to Use Technology to Counter Rumors During Crises: Anecdotes from Kyrgyzstan.”
These are just a handful of tips and tricks come to mind. The number of bullet points above clearly shows we are not completely powerless when verifying social media data. There are several strategies available. The main challenge, as the BBC points out, is that this type of information forensics “can take anything from seconds [...] to hours, as we hunt for clues and confirmation.” See for example my earlier post on “The Crowdsourcing Detective: Crisis, Deception and Intrigue in the Twitterspehere” which highlights some challenges but also new opportunities.
One of Storyful‘s comparative strengths when it comes to real-time news curation is the growing list of authenticated users it follows. This represents more of a bounded (but certainly not static) approach. As noted in my previous blog post on “Seeking the Trustworthy Tweet,” following a bounded model presents some obvious advantages. This explains by the BBC recommends “maintaining lists of previously verified material [and sources] to act as a reference for colleagues covering the stories.” This strategy is also employed by the Verification Team of the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF).
In sum, I still stand by my earlier blog post entitled “Wag the Dog: How Falsifying Crowdsourced Data can be a Pain.” I also continue to stand by my opinion that some data–even if not immediately verifiable—is better than no data. Also, it’s important to recognize that we have in some occasions seen social media prove to be self-correcting, as I blogged about here. Finally, we know that information is often perishable in times of crises. By this I mean that crisis data often has a “use-by date” after which, it no longer matters whether said information is true or not. So speed is often vital. This is why semi-automated platforms like SwiftRiver that aim to filter and triangulate social media content can be helpful.
