Anthony De Rosa

There’s a bit of a debate going about whether Twitter’s new censorship policy is reasonable or not. My colleague Paul Smalera wrote one of the better posts leaning toward Twitter’s policy having some merits, in the way it makes it easier for those outside censoring countries to see what’s being censored. But I also see some flaws with this, which Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin helped me realize. She calls it “a polite step down a slippery slope”

First, the very act of tweets being censored in those countries, even if those outside the country can read them, removes an early warning system for the folks in country to know of incoming danger. Let’s say, for example, there is a riot on the march toward the village they live in, or there is police activity by an oppressive regime under which they’re force to live headed their way. Twitter’s supposedly enlightened method of censorship isn’t going to protect them.

You also can’t assume everyone is a geek. Some activists use Twitter simply because it’s a broadcast medium and have no idea how to hack their way around censorship. They may have no knowledge, for example, about Tor, an application that can help sidestep the type of blocks that countries try to use to stop citizens from reaching certain bits of information or, in some cases, the entire Internet.

According to Xeni, the real reason Twitter would want to implement this policy is because they want to have a physical presence in these countries. And they can’t have boots on the ground without giving in to some of the demands of the governments in places like China, India, and in the UK, where there are more nuanced defamation laws.

It’s easy to accept censorship in other countries when you’re privileged enough to know what’s being censored. I would like to assume that the ability to see what is being censored will lead to something being done by outside parties, but that requires political courage, and possibly even military action, that many countries ravaged by global recession neither have the resources nor the stomach for.

View the full discussion that came up in response to my support for Paul’s column — “Is Twitter’s censorship policy a good one?” — on Storify.

A social media first occurred this evening when President Barack Obama held a Google+ Hangout to take live questions from five Americans and a few people who were taped beforehand, including a homeless veteran and an Occupy protester.

He answered questions about the economy, job creation, small business, and the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama referenced a New York Times story on the use of drones, which he called “overwritten,” and said that the use of drones had not resulted in an unusual number of civilian casualties. Asked about the anti-piracy legislation that set the Internet on fire, Obama said, ”When SOPA came up on the hill, we expressed some concerns about the way the legislation had been written.”

Almost as fascinating as the Hangout itself was the discussion of the Hangout on Twitter.

Many wondered who chose which questions were posed to the president from the more than 130,000 submissions. Alex Howard, who covers “open government” for O’Reilly Media, said Steve Grove, head of community partnerships at Google+, picked the questions.

Was it a campaign stunt, an ad for Google, a great opportunity for citizens to connect with the president, or all of the above?

The videoconference lasted thirty minutes and ended with a request for the president to show off some dance moves. He declined, but suggested he might use a future opportunity to sing. “In some future Google+, I may sing another tune,” he said.

I hear he does a great Al Green.

Update: CNN’s Security Blog points out that during the Hangout, Obama casually admitted to drone strikes in Pakistan

“a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA, and going after al Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military actions than the one we’re already engaging in.” (FATA being the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and many Taliban are ensconced).

Obama also made another bit of news by addressing a question regarding a young UK man named Richard O’Dwyer who the US is trying to have extradited for copyright infringement. He runs a website called “TV Shack” that offers streaming video of movies and television programs. Obama was asked “Why are you personally supporting the extradition of UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer for solely linking to copyright infringing works using an extradition treaty designed to combat terrorism and bring terrorists to judgement in the USA?” to which he responded that he was “not personally doing anything” because the president does not get directly involved in those type of decisions.

“One of the ways our system works is the president doesn’t get involved in prosecution decisions and extradition decisions and this has been a decision by the justice department,” he said.

“Broadly, we want to make sure intellectual property is protected we want to make sure that the creative works of people in this country aren’t expropriated, but we want to do it in a way that is consistent with internet freedom.”

The Huffington Post has more on this particular story.

Watch the Hangout, via the White House, starting at the 1:02 mark:

Credit: YouTube/WhiteHouse

Word came down yesterday that Twitter will begin giving the governments of some countries the ability to request to have messages censored over their service. This is a big change from Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray’s previous statement from last year that the company was “from the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

Twitter claims they have not yet censored anyone under this new policy and will tell the public when they do, possibly with greater cooperation with the website Chilling Effects.

One has to wonder if the Arab Spring could have happened the way it did under this new policy. Since censored tweets will still be available for people outside of the country doing the censoring, does that simply make those banned tweets more powerful? If everyone else in the world can see what is being blocked, will it have the opposite of the intended effect and bring greater worldwide attention to possible injustices?

For a reasonable, smart analysis of the new Twitter policy, check out this great post by Paul Smalera.

Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys Storify’d my live tweeting of a great panel here at Davos that included California congressman Darrell Issa, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond, Scribd founder Trip Adler, and moderated by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore. A full video of the session can be found here on Mashable.

I interviewed congressman Issa after the panel, here’s the video.

Will a change in leadership at Research In Motion help change the prospects of this floundering company? The prospects do not appear good. Here’s my video report on location from Davos, Switzerland.

I’m going to level with you. I have little more than a vague idea of what I’ve gotten myself into here. An assembly of heads of state, titans of industry, the cliched 1%. I feel a bit like a fish out of water. What on earth is someone like me going to do among these power brokers?

I’ve got questions, for sure. What, if anything, has been accomplished as a result of the World Economic Forum since its inception? Going by Mohamed El-Erian’s assessment, it seems not much. I don’t say this out of malice. It seems like a well-intentioned idea to bring together people who have the power to effect change in the world. Nobody is expecting them to solve the euro zone crisis over the course of a week, but have they seized that opportunity because of coming here? I arrive with an open mind but a skeptical pair of eyes.

Are there examples we can point to where a Davos meeting led to the brokering of some improvement in the world? Perhaps we may never know. Many meetings here happen behind closed doors, out of the sight of nosy press like me.

It’s far easier today than ever before for people to tap into what is occuring in nearly any part of the world, directly from the people living there, without the filter of media or government. It’s easier for the people within those same places to communicate and organize among themselves. People who were previously unseen and unheard now have a voice. It’s a very disruptive development for gatekeepers. Some may even be wondering if they really hold as much power as they think.

The upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa over the last year has proven, once more, that leaders are only as in control as the people they govern allow them to be. That may sound a bit hyperbolic, as things are still very much in flux, but few predicted how far the citizens of these countries have already come, how many leaders would fall, and with potentially more on the way.

Maybe that’s the lesson those at the WEF should heed: to consider listening a bit harder not just to their fellow attendees, but to the people they’ve left behind.

Earlier today Reuters reported that file sharing website Megaupload.com was taken offline and charged with copyright infringement by a U.S. grand jury.

In response, the loose knit hacker collective “Anonymous” has organized a protest using a brute force method of flooding a website with so many requests it falls under its own weight, a tactic they call a LOIC (low orbit ion cannon) or DOS attack (denial of service).

The victims of their attack so far: the Department of Justice, the RIAA, MPAA, and Universal Music. As of the publishing of this post, only the MPAA had regained its footing and the other sites remained inaccessible.

The FBI issued this press release about the Megapupload arrests.

BuzzFeed has been getting a lot of attention lately, for their high profile hire of well respected political reporter Ben Smith, from Politico and for a recent influx of $15.5 million in new investment. I headed to BuzzFeed headquarters downtown here in Soho to find out what they’re planning to do with the money and how they’re going to differentiate themselves from sites like the Huffington Post.

Interview with founder and CEO Jonah Peretti and politics editor-in-chief Ben Smith

Interview with political reporter and video researching wunderkind Andrew Kaczynski

I am pleased to announce that Matthew Keys will be joining Reuters as our Deputy Social Media Editor. He will produce online content for Reuters.com; expand our presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and on new platforms; and play a key role in helping to train Reuters journalists on best practices in social media.

Matthew is well known in social media circles as a reliable source for news and was recently nominated for an Online News Association award in the category of “Breaking News excellence” for his coverage of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Matthew is a recognized leader in helping journalists turn social media into valuable reporting tools. His online tools—a journalists guide for Tumblr, a guide for finding breaking news video on YouTube, as well as a guide for finding breaking news images on Twitter –have helped many journalists taking their first steps into social media.

Before joining Reuters, Matthew was  an online content producer and manager for KTXL FOX40, a Tribune Broadcasting television station in Sacramento, and an online news producer for KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, California.

Matthew will be based in New York and report to me. Please join me in welcoming him to Reuters.