Iran announced Thursday that they will be setting up a national Intranet and blocking sites like Google Plus, Yahoo, Google and Hotmail to establish a “clean internet”. Whether the goal is cleanliness or suppression is debatable, but this does mean that many of these American services will be replaces with government services like Iran Mail and Iran Search Engine.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
Recently, Reddit announced that despite their adamant stance towards free speech, they would be banning sites that had obscene content relating to children. Possibly taking a cue from that move, Tumblr has decided to ban some content on their site, specifically that related to self harm. In a post on their blog, they mention that sometimes “Tumblr gets used for things that are just wrong.” This underscores the responsibility that comes with a public, free social networking service — at some point you need to monitor content to maintain the nature of the site.
After a prolonged district court case ordered Google to take down images that may be offensive to Muslims, Google has agreed to do just that, and has began to censor its search results to remove offensive images. Facebook and Yahoo, also named in the case, are sticking to their guns and saying that they can’t police the content of their sites as that content is uploaded by users.
This guest post from Technology – Academics – Policy (TAP) goes beyond the headlines of the recent events in Egypt that demonstrated just how powerful communication via social networking can be. Also included are links to must-read articles on Internet censorship.
Startups with clever .ly domain names such as bit.ly and ad.ly could have their Web addresses pulled out from under them if the government of Libya, which controls the .ly domain space, objects to their content.
Online entrepreneur and consultant Ben Metcalfe wrote Wednesday that his registration of the domain vb.ly, which he co-owned with sex writer Violet Blue as a link shortener for adult-oriented links, was revoked without warning because content on the site did not comply with Libyan Islamic law. The domain was deleted by NIC.ly, the government-owned top level domain registrar around September 23rd.
“Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law, therefore we removed the domain,” wrote Alaeddin S. ElSharif of NIC.ly according to Metcalfe.
Metcalfe claimed that vb.ly contained no adult content, just links. He expressed his biggest concern over the idea that Libya was exercising editorial control over .ly sites. “I believe the .ly domains should be considered unsafe. Anyone running a business or relying on a website with a one, two or three letter .ly domain should be incredibly cautious,” he warned.
Metcalfe and Blue launched the service in August 2009, and had pre-paid for a second year before it was shut down.
ElSharif wrote that promoting the site as adult oriented, rather than as a generic link shortener such as bit.ly, was enough to violate the country’s decency laws. The full text of ElSharif’s response can be found on Violet Blue’s blog (warning: adult-oriented links).
Metcalfe summed up:
- .ly domains deemed to be in violation of NIC.ly regulation are being deregistered and removed without warning – causing significant inconvenience and damage.
- .ly domains are being deregistered and removed due to reasons that do not correspond to the regulations defined in the official NIC.ly Regulations.
- NIC.ly seems to want to extend their reach beyond the domain itself and regulate the content of websites that use a .ly domain. The concept amounts to censorship and makes .ly domains untenable to be used for user-generated content or url shorteners.
- Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law is being used to consider the validity of domains, which is unclear and obscure in terms of being able to know what is allowed and what isn’t.
- NIC.ly have suddenly decided that <4 letter .ly domains should only be available to local Libyans and this appears to create motivation to recover what premium domains they can to go back into this new local-only pot of domains.
Did you ever imagine that the US and England are among the main countries that attempt to block content from the public on Google? Countries like China, North Korea and Iran are the most notorious for imposing massive censorship on their population and Google has even taken measures to deny services in those regions. Now Google has built an interactive Transparency Report that reveals very surprising information about Western countries that also participate in the restriction of free expression. One specific report called Government Requests shows how, in fact, many Western Democratic countries such as your own have attempted to control your access to information via Google. This report reveals which countries’ governments have made requests to remove or retrieve private data from Google, how many requests were made, and how many were actually complied with.
Read more
A one-year undercover investigation has exposed a long-running censorship campaign run by a group of conservative Digg users. While Digg encourages individuals to vote stories up or down, this group engaged in concerted “bury” attacks on progressive and liberal stories and users, violating Digg’s terms of service. Known as the Digg Patriots, this group is responsible for buying thousands of stories and preventing them from reaching the front page, getting certain progressive Diggers banned, and attempting to monopolize Digg’s content to favor their own, conservative, political views. Read on for more details from this breaking story.
A new Facebook group was created – and subsequently deleted – that is creating some tension between the UK government and lawmakers, and Facebook itself. The group is a memorial page for Raoul Moat, a man who attempted to kill his ex girlfriend, killed her new lover, and wounded a police officer before shooting himself while cornered by police. Attracting more than 38,000 fans before its creator took it offline, the group “R.I.P. Raoul Moat You Legend” is still stirring up controversy over the question of governments and lawmakers versus public morality: Should governments have a right to step in when there is an issue of public morality at hand? And does the fact that this is occurring on a social network have anything to do with it?
Read more
Last week the media was abuzz with news of Pakistan blocking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media sites. The social sites were banned due to sacrilegious content that was offensive to Muslims. However, it was announced today that YouTube will be restored in Pakistan, though certain offensive videos will be blocked.
Read more
Yesterday AllFacebook reported that Pakistan has banned the use of Facebook due to an offensive group called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” Today, the Pakistani government has continued its attack on social media sites, banning YouTube as well due to “growing sacrilegious content” on the site.
Read more
