5 ms·

Facebook silencing Tunisian cyber activists involved in Revolution

45 points by takriz 16y ago

shareme 16y ago
You know most China citizens that need access to western news or websites for business reasons, etc can figure out how to get a VPN account somewhere.. FB and twitter are the last place any revolution should take place on as than you have adversary using same service to out the victims to dictator authorities..
cryptoz 16y ago
> TAKRIZ asks his members, friends, followers and readers to stop relying on Facebook and to disperse and follow TAKRIZ Twitter account twitter.com/takriz and check http://degage.tv http://degage.tv publishing the latest videos. Everyone is doing it wrong. Wikileaks, now these guys... Facebook and Twitter are companies. They have no obligation to help you out, and if you cause them any inconvenience they'll drop you. The Internet and the Web are open and free platforms. Dissidents should buy their own domain names, host themselves in different countries and stop trusting a single company to help you in a REVOLUTION. Something so important as a revolution should not depend so tightly on a single US company with a 20-something hip nerd as CEO. Edit: okay, they get some credit for the degage.tv site. That's pretty awesome. But don't be surprised if the twitter account disappears.
- jdp23 16y ago
  Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. You have no money to spend and if you try to start an open source project or a company you'll probably be arrested. To me, Facebook (etc.) looks like a pretty good option in that situation. What alternatives would you suggest?
  - mayank 16y ago
    > Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Certainly, but you don't necessarily want to have that contact list easily available to anyone armed with a Javascript keylogger or a nightstick.
    - jdp23 16y ago
      Exactly. If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. People can sign up to follow me if they want to be public about it, but don't have to. And the government got email passwords with its keystroke logging too.
      - cryptoz 16y ago
        > If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. But on Facebook, you do have a "Friends" list. That's the same thing as a contact list. If the government is keylogging for email passwords, they can keylog Facebook passwords too. Facebook isn't somehow "more secure" than email.
        jdp23 16y ago
        but information I post on Facebook doesn't just go to my friends. i'm not arguing more or less secure; i'm arguing that the risk/effort/cost/benefit profiles are different, and in most situations for younger activists and audiences the balance favors Facebook.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    Email. > You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. Email fits the bill here, 100%. Free, safe (SSL), distributed (choose any provider you like), anyone who has Facebook on their mobile device has email. Form big mailing lists, and send email around. Is there any particular reason that you think Facebook is better suited to this task than email?
- yread 16y ago
  Wasn't Wikileaks ... uhm ... hosting their own domain in a different country? It didn't help much. I think with these things it's much more important to be able to reach many people. And then start worrying about what is the government going to do against the thousands and thousands of IPs (and people) who access your content.
- awakeasleep 16y ago
  Do you ever think that maybe it's GOOD of Twitter and Facebook to deactivate these accounts? The information needs to be disseminated, but companies as large as the two mentioned may have enough conflicting interests that to allow a wanted person to interact with them would be a betrayal in itself. Kicking dissidents off Twitter and Facebook might be like forbidding children from playing in the street. "This system is not set up in your interests, pursue them elsewhere."
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    You were voted down, but I think you're making a good point. Twitter and Facebook weren't designed to provide the degree of compartmentalization and security such activists really need.
tfh 16y ago
A long time takriz follower here. Welcome to HN.
mayank 16y ago
Perhaps access to the NYT or other American news sources (or even HN?) is difficult in Tunisia, but what exactly gave a dissident political group the idea of hosting a "group" page on Facebook? Did it seem like a good idea because IPs get logged? Because everything is sent and hosted unencrypted and in the open? Because group membership is easily accessible with a subpoena, along with a list of your friends and family, and the locations they last logged in from? In this case, I'd say it's probably in their own interest that Facebook is "silencing" them...
- jdp23 16y ago
  why do you think you have the knowledge to judge what's in their best interest? the protestors in Tunisia forced the dictator to flee the country and have gotten the government to life its Internet censorship, at least temporarily. they know what they're doing.
  - mayank 16y ago
    I don't claim to know anything about their interests, but I'm fairly certain that hosting political dissent of any sort on Facebook is not in anyone's interest (well, except the authorities and the people you're um...dissenting against). Why do I feel that way? Because dissent, by definition, pisses some people off. If you are the authorities or the majority, it wouldn't really be dissent. If you're not, then you're essentially putting your Facebook members at risk, whether the information is gained by diplomatic pressure, subpoenas, or with the little keylogging Javascript monkey that the Tunisian government most recently tried.
    - jdp23 16y ago
      > I don't claim to know anything about their interests, but I'm fairly certain that hosting political dissent of any sort on Facebook is not in anyone's interest a) the second half of this sentence contradicts the first: you're claiming you know something about their interests b) you're wrong. Facebook is an extremely effective tool for activists in general, even in repressive regimes. in the Tunisian protests, it's been used to share vidoes, update people on news from Al Jazeera and other outlets that aren't controlled by the government, get word out about protests, and see the final status message of Mohamed Bouazizi -- the guy who killed himself in Sibi Bouzid and touched off the revolution. tens of thousands of people are putting their lives on the line by going out in the streets where police are firing live ammunition -- over 60 have died in the protests. by those standards posting something on their Facebook profiles isn't risky at all.
michaelchisari 16y ago
It's times like these, I wish I could move faster with Appleseed. It's quite functional, but I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending it to someone in the context of a revolution, yet.
- bloodbought 16y ago
  On that note, wouldn't it be mildly ironic to see BuddyPress used to facilitate a revolt?
- jdp23 16y ago
  I was thinking much the same. You're certainly doing the right thing by setting people's expectations that it's not ready yet ... but it'd be great to use this energy to help accelerate the process. Have you thought about a presentation or blog post on "the promise and challenges of distributed social networks for human rights" (or something along those lines)? the timing could be very good ...
jschuur 16y ago
Maybe there was some kind of automated system that locked down the page/account when other people outside of Facebook tried to repeatedly log into it and hack it?
martin_kirch 16y ago
This morning we saw this article at HN's top http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134542 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134542, now this one... I don't understand who's to be believed nor what is Facebook's true position.

45 points by takriz 16y ago

You know most China citizens that need access to western news or websites for business reasons, etc can figure out how to get a VPN account somewhere.. FB and twitter are the last place any revolution should take place on as than you have adversary using same service to out the victims to dictator authorities..

cryptoz 16y ago

> TAKRIZ asks his members, friends, followers and readers to stop relying on Facebook and to disperse and follow TAKRIZ Twitter account twitter.com/takriz and check http://degage.tv http://degage.tv publishing the latest videos. Everyone is doing it wrong. Wikileaks, now these guys... Facebook and Twitter are companies. They have no obligation to help you out, and if you cause them any inconvenience they'll drop you. The Internet and the Web are open and free platforms. Dissidents should buy their own domain names, host themselves in different countries and stop trusting a single company to help you in a REVOLUTION. Something so important as a revolution should not depend so tightly on a single US company with a 20-something hip nerd as CEO. Edit: okay, they get some credit for the degage.tv site. That's pretty awesome. But don't be surprised if the twitter account disappears.

jdp23 16y ago
Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. You have no money to spend and if you try to start an open source project or a company you'll probably be arrested. To me, Facebook (etc.) looks like a pretty good option in that situation. What alternatives would you suggest?
- mayank 16y ago
  > Put yourself in the shoes of an activist in Tunisia or elsewhere. You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. Certainly, but you don't necessarily want to have that contact list easily available to anyone armed with a Javascript keylogger or a nightstick.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    Exactly. If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. People can sign up to follow me if they want to be public about it, but don't have to. And the government got email passwords with its keystroke logging too.
    - cryptoz 16y ago
      > If I post something on Facebook or YouTube, I don't have a contact list. But on Facebook, you do have a "Friends" list. That's the same thing as a contact list. If the government is keylogging for email passwords, they can keylog Facebook passwords too. Facebook isn't somehow "more secure" than email.
      - jdp23 16y ago
        but information I post on Facebook doesn't just go to my friends. i'm not arguing more or less secure; i'm arguing that the risk/effort/cost/benefit profiles are different, and in most situations for younger activists and audiences the balance favors Facebook.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  Email. > You want to reach friends, acquaintances, and neighbors. You want a feed that people can follow from an account they check every single day. You want people to be able to find the latest information from their mobile phones. Email fits the bill here, 100%. Free, safe (SSL), distributed (choose any provider you like), anyone who has Facebook on their mobile device has email. Form big mailing lists, and send email around. Is there any particular reason that you think Facebook is better suited to this task than email?
yread 16y ago
Wasn't Wikileaks ... uhm ... hosting their own domain in a different country? It didn't help much. I think with these things it's much more important to be able to reach many people. And then start worrying about what is the government going to do against the thousands and thousands of IPs (and people) who access your content.
awakeasleep 16y ago
Do you ever think that maybe it's GOOD of Twitter and Facebook to deactivate these accounts? The information needs to be disseminated, but companies as large as the two mentioned may have enough conflicting interests that to allow a wanted person to interact with them would be a betrayal in itself. Kicking dissidents off Twitter and Facebook might be like forbidding children from playing in the street. "This system is not set up in your interests, pursue them elsewhere."
- stcredzero 16y ago
  You were voted down, but I think you're making a good point. Twitter and Facebook weren't designed to provide the degree of compartmentalization and security such activists really need.

tfh 16y ago

A long time takriz follower here. Welcome to HN.

mayank 16y ago

Perhaps access to the NYT or other American news sources (or even HN?) is difficult in Tunisia, but what exactly gave a dissident political group the idea of hosting a "group" page on Facebook? Did it seem like a good idea because IPs get logged? Because everything is sent and hosted unencrypted and in the open? Because group membership is easily accessible with a subpoena, along with a list of your friends and family, and the locations they last logged in from? In this case, I'd say it's probably in their own interest that Facebook is "silencing" them...

jdp23 16y ago
why do you think you have the knowledge to judge what's in their best interest? the protestors in Tunisia forced the dictator to flee the country and have gotten the government to life its Internet censorship, at least temporarily. they know what they're doing.
- mayank 16y ago
  I don't claim to know anything about their interests, but I'm fairly certain that hosting political dissent of any sort on Facebook is not in anyone's interest (well, except the authorities and the people you're um...dissenting against). Why do I feel that way? Because dissent, by definition, pisses some people off. If you are the authorities or the majority, it wouldn't really be dissent. If you're not, then you're essentially putting your Facebook members at risk, whether the information is gained by diplomatic pressure, subpoenas, or with the little keylogging Javascript monkey that the Tunisian government most recently tried.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    > I don't claim to know anything about their interests, but I'm fairly certain that hosting political dissent of any sort on Facebook is not in anyone's interest a) the second half of this sentence contradicts the first: you're claiming you know something about their interests b) you're wrong. Facebook is an extremely effective tool for activists in general, even in repressive regimes. in the Tunisian protests, it's been used to share vidoes, update people on news from Al Jazeera and other outlets that aren't controlled by the government, get word out about protests, and see the final status message of Mohamed Bouazizi -- the guy who killed himself in Sibi Bouzid and touched off the revolution. tens of thousands of people are putting their lives on the line by going out in the streets where police are firing live ammunition -- over 60 have died in the protests. by those standards posting something on their Facebook profiles isn't risky at all.

michaelchisari 16y ago

It's times like these, I wish I could move faster with Appleseed. It's quite functional, but I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending it to someone in the context of a revolution, yet.

bloodbought 16y ago
On that note, wouldn't it be mildly ironic to see BuddyPress used to facilitate a revolt?
jdp23 16y ago
I was thinking much the same. You're certainly doing the right thing by setting people's expectations that it's not ready yet ... but it'd be great to use this energy to help accelerate the process. Have you thought about a presentation or blog post on "the promise and challenges of distributed social networks for human rights" (or something along those lines)? the timing could be very good ...

jschuur 16y ago

Maybe there was some kind of automated system that locked down the page/account when other people outside of Facebook tried to repeatedly log into it and hack it?

martin_kirch 16y ago

This morning we saw this article at HN's top http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134542 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134542, now this one... I don't understand who's to be believed nor what is Facebook's true position.