Twitter, the internet social network, is developing technology it hopes will prevent the Chinese and Iranian governments being able to censor its users. [...]
Mr Williams, speaking at the World Economic Forum, said he admired Google for its decision last month to confront China over censorship and cyberattacks on its service, but said Twitter was too small to take a similar stand.
“We are partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well,” he said. “The most productive way to fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is against what we are about. I am hopeful there are technological ways around these barriers.”
Mr Williams said Twitter had an advantage in evading government censors through operating as a network of internet and mobile applications, rather than as a single website. “Twitter is a network that is accessed in thousands of ways.”
Financial Times: Twitter works on technology to evade censors in China and Iran
(via Wired)
“Dangerousmeme is a subversive art project with a coterie of followers on the fringe.”
We are naturally drawn to hyperbole. I take furtive pleasure assuming the role of Cassandra or a ‘ Henny Penny‘. I ask people to question the source of their beliefs. We live in a soundbite-sized world where complex ideas are distilled as reductio ad absurdum. While my overarching themes tend to be dramatic, I also see humor in the outrageous, ominous ideas in our midst. I hope my followers they can muster a smile in the face of this dire information, have a better understanding of when it matters, and formulate their own informed opinions about the true nature of things.
I find irony in the number of people who follow me because they quickly read my tweets and accept them as truth, at face value. This is the tiny conceit in my concept. The net is wide, much greater than it would naturally be if I simply tweeted my own personal beliefs. However, by catching these ideological sleepers and gradually exposing them to a breadth of ideas, I hope I am ultimately not only preaching to the converted.
Globatron: Interview with @dangerousmeme
This sounds a lot like my philosophical approach to Technoccult for a long period of its existence. For various reasons, this has become more and more untenable and I’ve started to editorialized more and more.
A New York-based anarchist has been arrested by the FBI and charged with hindering prosecution after he allegedly used the social networking site Twitter to help protesters at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh evade the police.
Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September. [...]
The FBI said that as well as the computers and radio scanning equipment discovered at the motel, they also confiscated from Madison’s home 11 gas masks, five pairs of goggles and test tubes and beakers. They said they also took away anarchist books and pictures of Marx and Lenin.
Guardian: New York man accused of using Twitter to direct protesters during G20 summit
Unconscionable.
It’s certainly exciting to see technology being used in ways that amplify and extend the impact of movement organizing. I think it’s easy, however, to misread the technology as the cause of the movement rather than as simply a tool of it.
Fire, for instance, was a society-changing tool. Its revolutionary potential, however — cooking food and thus making it more digestible, nutritious, and lasting — was only realized through its strategic use.
Some people, awed by the fire, seem to confuse it with the food.
And besides:
In fact Twitter did not play that big role. The story is quite simple — young and active bloggers decided to have a flash-mob action, lighting candles and ‘mourning Moldova’ because of Communists victory, which nobody recognized due to the multiple violations before and during the campaign. They agreed on the time and place of the action through the network of Moldovan blogs (blogs aggregator blogosfera.md), and social networks like Facebook/Odnoklassniki, etc.
Rootwork: Why there’s no such thing as a Twitter revolution
(via Tara)
1. every Tweet has to be approved by legal.
2. you plan to use Twitter like a giant RSS feed,
3. you think using Twitter is a social media strategy
4. you think it’s a good idea to have someone tweet as if they are the president of the company.
5. you are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you.
6. you think paying for followers might be a good idea
7. you think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you
8. you want to protect your updates.
9. you plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics
10. You think you can market to people with whom you have no relationship
Full Story: BL Ochman’s blog
Several creative Twitter hacks:
PIMPY3WASH
Trackthis
Botanicalls
London’s Tubes
Twitddict
Twitsay
FuelFrog
Remember The Milk
Full Story: CNET
(Thanks Mac Tonnies)
Plus: 140+ Twitter tools (via Clifford Pickover)
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