CNN: Social media blocked as Liberians protest ‘corruption and creeping dictatorship’. “Thousands of Liberians gathered in the capital Monrovia Friday to protest ‘corruption and creeping dictatorship’ in the country. Social media sites were later blocked to quell the protests, according to the internet monitoring platform NetBlocks.”
censorship
China social media: WeChat and the Surveillance State (BBC)
BBC: China social media: WeChat and the Surveillance State. “China’s WeChat is a site for social interaction, a form of currency, a dating app, a tool for sporting teams and deliverer of news: Twitter, Facebook, Googlemaps, Tinder and Apple Pay all rolled into one. But it is also an ever more powerful weapon of social control for the Chinese government.”
Business Insider: Bahrain threatens legal action against people who follow government critics on Twitter
Business Insider: Bahrain threatens legal action against people who follow government critics on Twitter. “Bahrain has threatened legal action against people who follow Twitter accounts which criticize the country’s government, part of a drastic new crackdown on political dissent.”
The Verge: White House launches tool to report censorship on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter
The Verge: White House launches tool to report censorship on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. “On Wednesday, the White House launched a new tool for people to use if they feel they’ve been wrongly censored, banned, or suspended on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.” The privacy policy on this form is kind of eeeeeeesh.
Courts to Government Officials: Stop Censoring on Social Media. (EFF)
EFF: Courts to Government Officials: Stop Censoring on Social Media.. “The Internet, and social media in particular, is uniquely designed to promote free expression, so much so that the Supreme Court has recognized social media as the ‘most important places’ for speech and sharing viewpoints. Like most of us. government agencies and officials have created social media profiles and use them to connect directly with people at a scale previously unheard of. But some public officials, by silencing critics, are using these pages as a tool of censorship rather than a tool of governance.”
CNET: The Great Firewall of China blocks off Wikipedia
CNET: The Great Firewall of China blocks off Wikipedia. “Multiple reports confirm China blocked Wikipedia across all language URLs sometime in late April. The country is using DNS injections to prevent its citizens from accessing the online encyclopedia, according to a report from the Open Observatory of Network Interference on May 4.”
Quartz: Benin’s government has shut the internet ahead of an election that has no opposition
Quartz: Benin’s government has shut the internet ahead of an election that has no opposition. “Benin’s legislative elections today will have no one contesting from the opposition parties. Another thing that voters won’t have access to: the internet.”
