Deplatforming US President: Are Tech Giants Waking Up?

The last week has been quite eventful, there have been two seemingly unrelated developments involving Facebook that deserve close attention. The bigger event, storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters is being discussed and written upon by nearly everyone who is capable of forming an opinion and is interested in US and World politics. So for now I would prefer to not wade into the politics except where it intersects tech ecosystem.

Posted By Danish 5:43 PM

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Tech Giants Need To Take Their Societal Responsibilities More Seriously

(Courtesy : nasafcu.com )

Over the decade social media platforms have grown phenomenally, in early years there were comparisons of user base of Facebook, for example, with the population of the US and then with India's and China's but now that the number has reached 2 billion and growing that particular metric has been discarded. It is no longer about the numbers alone now but the volume of information being disseminated on them which is pretty much eclipsing traditional media and becoming the dominant space for all kind of discourses globally and especially political discourses.With such monopoly over information dissemination and ability to impact societies and polities significantly it is but natural that governments and the political system would turn their attention towards them and some of them seem to be happening lately. 

Posted By Danish 1:57 AM

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Aadhaar Challenge: A Perception Battle

Lately my Twitter timeline has been providing me with some sort of amusement at what seems to be a counter-campaign by the UIDAI and its supporters to control the narrative or at least fight the perception battle to the relentless anti-Aadhaar campaign being run on the micro-blogging platform by online activists since last few years. It has perhaps became important for UIDAI to take initiative as the discourse on Twitter has largely been controlled by those opposed to it and a part of the mainstream media, since the media inevitably picks up the dominant narrative on Twitter. Also, with the Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar coming out any time, it might have seemed imperative for the UIDAI to undo some damage to the reputation of the Authority on social media, which would undoubtedly be important if the Court makes the Aadhaar truly voluntary. Whatever be the motivation, the fact is there is a Twitter war over Aadhaar in progress and its an interesting one. 

Posted By Danish 12:49 AM

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Rumours, Psychographics And Social Media

Source: Wikimedia Commons

What do the Cambridge Analytica scandal, alleged Russian interference in 2016 US elections, Brexit, rise of right wing ideologies around the world and mob lynching of more than 20 people in India based on WhatsApp rumours have in common ? Of course it is the peddling of fake news through the social media platforms that have now become ubiquitous across the classes and demographic segments. The bigger question though is how and why these misinformation campaigns originate and spread and how this malicious threat can be checked.

Posted By Danish 2:08 AM

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Is Modi's Solar Alliance At COP21 The Real Deal

(Image Courtesy: UNFCCC )

Quite recently I heard an eminent academic speak on the need for PM Narendra Modi to improve his relationship with the press. I think it was the economist Jagdish Bhagwati, a known Modi supporter but I could be wrong. Anyway, a recent event did make me think that perhaps he is right, by not directly engaging with the mainstream media, Modi is not only allowing his image being transformed to that of an opaque personality but also some of his real achievements get ignored and completely sidelined in the nation discourse.  But before that I must confess that though I see Modi the politician as a product of the RSS ideology, Modi the Prime Minister seems be too ambitious to be restrained by ideological shackles especially when it conflicts with his attempts to create his own legacy. This twin personas were especially evident when he was on election campaign in Bihar, his rhetoric being aggressive and almost uncouth and then his statesman like oration in the Parliament at onset of the Winter session which was way mature. However what really surprised me was the lack of adequate reportage by media as well as support from his own  supporters on social media on his successful launch of International Solar Alliance of 120 countries along with French President François Hollande during the Paris COP21 climate summit.

Posted By Danish 8:30 AM

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Facebook Profound Changes' Profound Implications

For sometime now social media as well as traditional media sites have been buzzing with information on Facebook undergoing profound change. Lately, creating a media hype before release of a product (Google+) or a major Facebook upgrade (video chatting feature)  has become an indispensible strategy but in this case I would wager that the change may really be profound. Facebook hasn't just changed the layout of the profile page, it has reinvented it too, incorporating various social web behaviour like listening to music or reading a book. The Gesture concept when properly applied may take us a whole level forward towards the Semantic Web. However,the idea of Facebook incorporating so much users data in their profiles is alarming , the privacy issue on Facebook gets more complicated and then there is the chance of Zuckerberg locking the users in.

Posted By Danish 5:17 AM

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Portrait Of An Internet Troll Or Is It Twroll ?

Lately I have come across the word "troll" being used extensively on the Web and especially on Twitter and to be honest, every time I come across it there is a bit of resentment in me. Internet trolls are almost as ancient creatures as their folk-lore counterparts are supposed to be but the perhaps the former needs to be redefined. But then trolling was once considered an art  (even if a dark art) which required some sort of skill but the latest breed of trolls on Twitter are more like sociopaths with 0 IQ.

Posted By Danish 8:19 PM

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Facebook,Google Pwning The Web: Why You Should Care ?

The current phone-hacking controversy is a reminder that in the age we live in information is power. Well, my emphasizing it doesn't make it a breaking news,this has been known throughout history which is why the flow of information has been controlled by the powerful (which also means that they powerful because they controlled information). The Internet brought with it new means of communication,World Wide Web made the flow of information to ordinary people easy but it is its evolution into a communication platform called Social Web that broke all barriers to the free flow of information. The investigation into phone-hacking controversy has revealed how much political power media moguls like Rupert Murdoch possess but Wikileaks and its fallout and social media showed the power of information in motion. From Arab Spring revolution to crisis management to raising quality of life, information systems have been playing key roles in our lives and society.

Impact of Wikileaks
A key characteristic of the Web and most of its services is that they are unplanned, serendipitous which in turn makes them popular as they are designed as per user demand, but Julian Assange probably knew what he was doing when he founded Wikileaks. The impact of Wikileak has been much greater than is visible because it is too subtle. Leaked  embassy cables and other confidential correspondence documents presented to us,a picture of the world much different than we were accustomed to from traditional media. Interestingly, in the Arab world a lot of people already suspected the double-speak, corruption and despotism prevalent in ruling circles but Wikileaks making it public as well as global gave them the impetus to revolt and bring the despots  down.

Role of Social Media
Social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook played very important role in the protests as most people active on Web are acutely aware of. Facebook provided an excellent platform for the protestors to organize against  the brutal regimes more fearlessly. Twitter had already proved itself as a potent politcial tool during the "Twitter Revolution" in Moldova, for the Arab protestors it was the holy grail of communication and coordination. Videos of police brutality on civilians circulating through Youtube and the uncensored reports and opinions through blogs brought the reality to the fore. The fact that the protestors knew that the global community was aware as well as in solidairity with them, is what turned a spark to blazing fire,two powerful dictators were brought down within days.

The Battle For Social Web
If you are not living under a rock you might be aware of Google's new Social Web service Google+ which is doing pretty well in comparison to its previous two attempts. For little less than a decade, Google has been the most dominant player on Web but the threat it now faces from Facebook  is a serious one, especially since it seeks to make Google's mostly-algorithmic base, redundant in comparison to its own people powered base.Google has hit back at Facebook with Google+, a service that resembles most Facebook core features and given the wide range of services it owns,it's cosiness with Twitter, and the fact that it already has a vast user-base in its search engine users and those using Gmail as primary mail account,  Google has a fairly good chance of pwning Facebook.        

The Ungoogly Alliance
However, Facebook is not alone, Microsoft seems to have thrown its lot behind Facebook by not only investing in Facebook but also collaborating with it through the newly acquired Skype to bring in-browser video chatting. Besides, Microsoft is also upbeat about the yet to be released features of its search engine, Bing which is already indexing Facebook 'likes'. Further, Microsoft's 2009 alliance Yahoo and its latest alliance with leading Chinese search engine Baidu reflects the animosity with which it is trying to eat into Google's user-base even if it means losing millions of dollars. An alliance as formidable as Facebook-Skype-Microsoft-Yahoo-Baidu may be capable of defeating Google even pwning it if Google wavers a little in maintaining lead in search industry. Corporate rivalries are not new,but they are now taking an ugly shape, Google is already sitting over loads of user data gathered through tracking visitors and websites, Facebook on the other hand has a treasure trove of social data, either of them getting pwned would mean the winner taking over the entire web. The battle between the companies has become so fierce that I am sorely tempted tempted to quote  the tagline of the last Harry Potter flick - neither can live while the other survives. (Prof Trelawny's prophecy).

Why Should We Care ?
What should concern us more is not the economic fallout of such an event, the socio-political fallout could be unimaginable. Now while we gloat over the power of social media and the Internet's role in democratizing the world, we tend to overlook the fact that social web services are created and owned by companies and much open to abuse at various levels.We have discussed above on the power of information and the effect Web has over our social and political lives,any corporation that can control the flow of information would become a superpower in itself, perhaps the first non-territorial entity that could change governments, regulate market prices, dictate government policies and pretty much do everything it wants to. It is a bit hard to believe but we have too many evidences to ignore beginning with the fact the none of the companies have been politically neutral.

In the ongoing Arab Spring Revolution the social media companies are just not only passively assisting protesters through there web-based  services,they have gone ahead and provided innovative means to help the protesters communicate after the government started blocking the conventional means of communication and later even the Internet. Of course, we applaud them for taking proactive steps to help liberate oppressed people break free from tyranny and transition towards a  democratic society. However noble their intentions might be and more importantly, in complete harmony with our own ideology, the fact remains that the companies do take sides which also means that they can be willingly or unwilling be used as tools by the dominant powers as is likely to have happened during mass protests in Iran, against alleged electoral fraud (remember GW Bush's controversial  electoral victory in 2000 ? ) Considering the support the regime still possessed,it could well have been a crowdsourced  black operation.

It doesn't really matter if Google triumphs or Facebook,Microsoft and allies do,its the web users and common people who lose. May be not. If wisdom of crowd and democratization of information has enabled the masses to topple dictators without taking up arms, Murdoch's News of the World had to be shut down completely as the information proliferated through each and every nook and corner of developed world, a corporate superpower too can brought down using the same platform. If everything fails, there is still an  option,the reset switch ;)

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Reference:
    Pwn : A Leetspeak slang used especially in online gaming environment to mean something more than defeating. It originated from a typographical error by a writer who intended to use the word "Own". Ironically, the word "Own" or "Owning" wasn't adequate enough to describe the act, which meant thoroughly destroying the opponent and take over everything. ( remember Carthage ? Tyre or recent Palestine?) as to make it seem that they didn't exist in the first place. 
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pwning

Originally composed on 6/15/11   

Posted By Danish 7:47 PM

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Digressive Rhetoric Dominating Public Discourse In India

Public discourse is essential for the functioning of a progressive democratic society but sometimes too much of it can be counter-productive especially in a society such as ours where politics dominates every sphere of our lives. For a long time public discussion was compered by print media journalists, radio hosts and electronic media,which took and transformed  most  somber debates to desi tamashas. Social media revolution has had a very different impact,while it has thrown numerous thought-leaders who would otherwise have passed away in obscurity or limited success,social media has also brought in partisans,radicals and mischief-makers. I refuse to call them "trolls" which was originally used for Usenet users with single-point agenda,but even they were far more knowledgeable than some of the current twitter celebs :p (note to self: post a short entry to elucidate the point).Anyway, blaming a horde of hare-brained web users can hardly be blamed for hijacking public discussions on national television shows. The fault must lie with the greater part of the debating public.

Posted By Danish 6:09 PM

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Trial By Social Media

Television Journalism is a funny business indeed, it pays even when you are being burnt at the stake. NDTV might have gained a record TRP tonight as Barkha Dutt hosted a debate on the Radia Tapes controversy in which she herself is at the center and which also explains why it has been dubbed/hashed #barkhagate!

Lately, I have been bit preoccupied to keep track of the latest buzz on the social web. But I must admit to having listened to the audio tapes on Youtube yet being the simpleton that I am, I couldn't see the connection of the conversation with the scam. I presumed there was more and I was simply unaware...may be I am still ignorant because I still don't see the connection. Of course, I don't mean to say that Barkha Dutt is absolutely innocent, but at the same time it would be wrong on my part to go on a condemnation spree simply because everyone else is. I do want to criticize and deride every person who is in that tape but I am also looking for a reason to fully justify it! Despite my best mental efforts I was unable to link these people with the current telecom scam and other cases of corruption.  

Posted By Danish 1:26 AM

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Social Aggregation Without Unified Social Stream ?

Which is the best Social Aggregator ? There is a lively discussion going on a LinkedIn group over this question in which I have participated but think my thoughts on the topic required a more open and more personal space - this blog. This post in a threaded conversation involving a lot of participants would only disrupt the flow.

So what is a Social Aggregator ?

Posted By Danish 1:12 AM

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Roar On The Web, Tigers Are Dying Out In Jungles

There are only 1411 tigers left, what are you going to do to save our national animal from extinction? This question was put to me by a friend of mine who had shown little concern for any social,environmental or wild life conservation cause, as of yet. Quite clearly his question was directed at me solely because he knew that I blog, tweet and facebook and the television commercials of telecom provider Air Cel calls upon viewers to use social media to help save the tigers from extinction. I have done my bit or may be my two-bits ( corresponds to exactly two retweets ) but refuse to be sucked into the media campaign. My problem is that I cant see how we can save a species from extinction by blogging,tweeting, facebooking or using any social media platform ?

Posted By Danish 3:14 AM

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The N00B's Guide To Twitterverse

Picking up the thread from the last post, I will try to demystify the basics of Twitter for the benefit of the complete N00B. Here is how twitter works and the meanings of the terms that baffle you the first time you start using it.

Twitter Jargon

Tweet - The only question that drives Twitter is "What are you doing?" and a Tweet is a response to that question. If you are into social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut or even a Skype or GTalk user, you must already know what the status message means. But unlike the other services, the status message on Twitter i.e. the Tweet is not a passive message but the medium of communication or the counter-part of the IM you send to your chat buddy. However, a Tweet is generally visible universally unless, of course you have blocked a person. A Tweet can be of 140 character length only, which could be one of the reasons why Tweets travel faster than anything else i know of.


Handle - Username, this is important as it is likely to become your identity on Twitter, for example my Twitter handle is danishctc. You can find my profile on twitter by simply typing http://twitter.com/danishctc in the location bar or your browser. You can also reply me or mention it by simply prefixing my handle with the @ (at) symbol : @danishctc

DP - Stands for display picture or avatar. It is highly recommended that you put up your own picture as DP.


RT: Retweet is nothing but the same tweet being posted again by another user. There could be many reasons for doing this but the most common ones are- the person liked the particular tweet and would like to share it with her/his followers  and the original Tweet is kept to make sure that the response is seen in the context. To retweet, you can copy the whole tweet along with the original tweeterer's handle (prefix the @ (at) symbol to the handle ) and type RT right at the beginning. (Most clients make this easy, explained here just to make sure)

Screenshot of my convo with de3p , pushkarbhatt
Replies/Mentions: these are tweets by other users who have either replied,addressed or mentioned your handle. A handle prefixed by @(at) symbol is treated by Twitter as a tweet meant for that particular person and shows up on his timeline; for example- "danishctc: @anandmisra hi"

DM: Direct message, visible only to the recipient. Normally, all clients have a functionality to let you send direct messages to your friends but you can send dm by simply typing the character D before the handle.
Example:
"danishctc: D anandmisra this a dm"

Friends - Twitter is people-driven, if you want to harness its power then you have to follow people whose updates you would want see. You could start following people in the suggested list that Twitter displays when you sign up or celebrities you already know ( for example Shashi Tharoor, Celina Jaitly, Gul Panag) but it is important that you find other like-minded users to make your tweeting productive. As with so many services, Twitter can also import your contact list from other accounts and suggest your pre-existing contacts that are already on Twitter. To follow them you can go to their profile page and click on the link "Follow" (Note:  Following a large number of people in a very short time is seen suspiciously by Twitter since spam bots seem to follow a similar pattern, trying interacting as much as possible )

Followers - These are people who are following your updates. They are important from your point of view since they are your main audience as well as customer-base.

Favorites- If you find a particular tweet interesting and dont want to lose it in the melee, you can add it to your favorites. To add a Tweet to favorites, click on the star icon, the Tweet can now be found in the  favorite section of your Twitter profile.


 One of the major advantages of Twitter is the fact that it is not limited to a single client, single domain or even single device. I prefer tweeting from mobile rather than the desktop.

The original interface for interaction was Twitter.com and continues to be so since that is where you manage your account and set preferences. This is also the site you should be using if you are a new user.However, this interface lacks certain features for more advanced users but this is aptly compensated by numerous third-party clients.

Clients- There are plenty of clients avaible, download the one which meets your expection. On desktop/laptop, i find Tweetdeck the best, followed by Twhirl and Seesmic. Firefox add-on, Twitter Fox is another client that i find myself using a lot. On mobile (i use Nokia N95 8GB), Gravity comes across as the client with best features but i have also used Fring and Twibble for tweeting.
There also some very cool web-based clients that you should check out: http://dabr.co.uk and http://slandr.com 

Update - Thanks to Softykid for reminding me about Snaptu, a mobile client that i had heard a lot about yet  never got to installing it. But now that i have done it, it is strongly recommended that you try it out :)

P.S.: Thats it for now, hope someone finds it useful coz i didn't get much pleasure compiling it! not my kinda thing ;)

The Twitter Song 

Posted By Danish 8:05 PM

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Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?

For the past 24 hours #Iranelection and hash tags related to Iranian election has been trending on Twitter . What it essentially means, (for those unfamiliar with Twitter) is that the election in Iran and its fallout are the most talked about topic on Twitter. We have already seen the profound impact ¹ that Twitter has had on socio-political events in the past but this could be the biggest one considering the fact that the mainstream media was late in reporting the protests and has since been lagging behind the micro-blogging service. ( Please check out, Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter For News About Iran )

However, what really intrigues me is the question, whether the protest in Iran truly reflects the aspiration of the nation as a whole or is just a partisan struggle fueled by external powers. Once again the sources of most these news are either almost anonymous twitterers or those belonging to the opposition camp. The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between, the call for probe by Ayotallah Khameini indicates it. Ironically, Ashton Kucher, who has the largest following in Twitter, has likened the issue to the controversy around G.W. Bush's electoral victory in 2000!

Either way it is Iran's internal issue, it is, after all, the only country in the region that has some sort of democracy (that has not been forced on). So why is the global social media so obsessed with Iranian election results ? I guess it has more to do with the fact that the West is not comfortable with the fact that a hardliner like Ahmadinejad came so close to defeat and still survive. Of course, i am just speculating that he survived but anyway, this was an opportunity that a lot of people would have hated to let go of. That would also explain why the opposition is on the street but euphemisms like "tweeting revolution", coming from American and West European "social media activists" seem to me part of propaganda warfare in the lines of black operations. Only this time the agenda has been outsourced to the crowd populating the social web. John Robb has in his earlier blog posts discussed various 4GW strategies and manoeuvres that the US could adopt to bring down Iran, some of the proposed ones have been black operations of these nature.

At this juncture ishould confess that i don't have much love for Ahmadinejad nor for the ruling elite of Iran, but i cannot deny the fact that he has considerable support from the Iranian electorate as the numerous pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations indicate. So all talks of freedom and democracy by activists on web sound hollow when one considers the fact that there was hardly any murmur of protest when China banned nearly all major web sites and services on the anniversary of the Tianmen massacre. Similarly, the torch-bearers of liberty and democracy were conspicuously silent when just few weeks back the Burmese junta filed fresh case against the famous Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi just days before her 13 year old detention was about to expire! As i have already mentioned what we are witnessing might well be a crowdsourced black operation, not unlike propaganda warfare except for the fact that in this instance its far too decentralized and viral in nature. The majority of the participants may actually have no clue about the underlying agenda if at all there is one !

Update:
1. Twitter one hour maintenance downtime has been postponed as demanded by bloggers/twitterers.

Posted By Danish 4:06 AM

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Fake IPL Player Blog: Adding Viral Marketing To Cricket

It seems PC was correct all along, polls and cricket tournament can't go together. They are just too BIG ! No, I am not talking from the security point of view which denied India the opportunity to host IPL (and in the process diluted my zeal to follow live scores), the distraction now comes in the form of a blog posted by someone who could be part of the Kolkota Knight Riders squad. Well, the very URL, http://fakeiplplayer.blogpot.com suggests that the author might not be a "real player", but the posts refer to people, facts, events and even predictions which an outsider would not be able to know. But the most interesting factor for me is the fact that the author doesn't seem very keen to prove his claim, the posts seem impromptu musings of a person who has been around in domestic cricket for some time and now want's to give out the insider view of IPL, especially about dressing room conversations, equations between players, coach, owner etc.

Overall, the blog is quite refreshing and informative as well. This week I intended to update this blog with something related to elections but then as PC said cricket and election have nastier habit of eating into each other's fan base far more than SRK and Aamir Khan do. IPL this year hadn't really captured my attention, I wasn't following each and every match but then I came across this IPL ANONYMOUS's blog and was compelled to defer my post on election :)

Btw, this blog has already turned viral (in terms of marketing!) so I have a hunch that if this blog goes on to become as big a hit some other "insider" blogs have become, it could have some impact on Social Media Optimization and Internet Marketing in general. Lets wait and watch....

Posted By Danish 1:22 AM

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