

Facebook silencing Tunisian cyber activists involved in Revolution - takriz
http://takriz.com/press/24-1-2011-english.txt

======
cryptoz
> 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> 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
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?

~~~
stcredzero
Someone should package a distribution of Diaspora for easy hosting on the
Amazon cloud with a utility for someone to indirectly export their friend
network through Yahoo. There would be an email link going to a page which
would ask for a password _distributed by a secondary channel_.

One instance of such a site would be fairly easily penetrated by a government.
However, if you divide up your organization based on strong personal
relationships, you can require an adversary government to penetrate dozens or
hundreds of such sites. (cells?)

EDIT: Add Rackspace and Linode and whoever else can provide low-cost hosting.
A government might shut down one hosting provider. Shutting down the top 10
might cripple an economy.

EDIT: Also, use Google Voice as an SMS forwarder so that those without
smartphones can at least have obfuscated comms. Or maybe a custom app with
Twillio?

~~~
jdp23
I agree that a distributed, secure, privacy-respectful social network would be
very useful here for the activists to work together and am looking to the
point where Appleseed, Diaspora et. al. are ready for it. It doesn't solve the
same problem, though. Facebook is all about reaching people who aren't the
core activists -- 600,000,000 people in the Diaspora universe yet.

~~~
stcredzero
Yes, but have them switch to something that Facebook or another single company
can't shut down at the behest of some government.

Another idea: Have such sites continually back themselves up to Amazon S3.
This way, if a government does try some knucklehead move like banning Linnode,
then people an just resurrect the site on another provider. (And chances are,
a government besides the US won't be able to block network between that
provider and S3.)

------
mayank
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
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
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
> 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.

~~~
mayank
> 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.

When you're going out on the street, you're putting yourself at risk. When you
use a service like Facebook for dissent, you're also putting family and
friends at risk (and likewise if your family or friends use it). The specifics
may vary according to the situation, but the principle doesn't.

~~~
jdp23
when somebody is photographed at a street action, they're putting their
friends and family at risks. everybody knows it. as you say, it's a general
principle: repressive regimes will target the friends and families of anybody
who gets their attention sufficiently.

but the risk profiles are very different:

\- go out in the street: risk getting killed, or bashed with a nightstick, or
photographed (in which case you wind up on a list and they may target you,
your friends, and your family

\- share a link on Facebook: risk winding up on a much much longer list (so
they're less likely to have the resources to target everybody on it, let alone
their friends and families)

------
michaelchisari
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.

~~~
jdp23
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 ...

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martin_kirch
This morning we saw this article at HN's top
<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.

------
jschuur
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?

------
tfh
A long time takriz follower here. Welcome to HN.

------
shareme
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..

