Twitter reinstates racist leader’s account

Twitter was supposed to have cracked down on “alt-right” racism back in mid-November, but it appears to be having second thoughts. The social network has reinstated the account of Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader whose groups were an important part of the crackdown. He’d originally been banned based on Twitter rules barring “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and multiple account abuse,” although there weren’t clear examples of violations at the time.

A Twitter spokesperson tells us that it restored Spencer’s account because it allows people to reinstate one account when they’ve been banned for creating “multiple accounts with overlapping uses.” Notably, it also points to a BuzzFeed reporter’s tweet arguing that Spencer isn’t abusive on Twitter like many of those who share his racist beliefs. He’s unlikely to get his wish of reinstating other accounts, however. Twitter has shared the email it sent to Spencer, and it’s adamant that his extra accounts “will remain suspended.” You can read both statements below.

While this helps clarify what prompted Twitter to ban Spencer and why he’s back, it’s not going to make people happy. Many had assumed that Twitter was banning Spencer and his organizations based on his hateful ideas and ability to foster abuse by proxy, not because he had multiple accounts. The move isn’t going to please users (or potential buyers) concerned that Twitter isn’t doing enough to curb systemic harassment that scares some away from the service.

“Our rules explicitly prohibit creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. When we temporarily suspend multiple accounts for this violation, the account owner can designate one account for reinstatement.”

Email to Spencer:

“Hello,

As referenced in our November 18, 2016 communication, creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping use is a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).

Please select one account for restoration; the others will remain suspended. This account will need to comply fully with the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Please reply to this email with the username of the account you would like reinstated and we will make sure to answer your request in a timely manner.

Thanks,

Twitter”

Source: The Guardian

Twitter says no to law enforcement protest policing tool

Twitter has cut off access for a tool that law enforcement was using to monitor the social network for protest-specific keywords. Those included “Mikebrown,” “Blacklivesmatter” and “imunarmed” according to documents obtained by The Daily Dot. Media Sonar has been selling social media surveillance software to police departments for thousands of dollars. Twitter, for its part, cut off the firm’s API keys in October and has vowed to terminate Media Sonar’s attempts at making more.

Remember, using Twitter’s data feed for spying and surveillance is a violation of the service’s developer agreement. With the list of keywords, the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union’s evidence suggests that Media Sonar was selling itself as a way to monitor African Americans specifically. One column groups keywords together under a heading named “Mike Brown Related.” Mike Brown was the unarmed black teenager shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

Further documents (PDF) show that the firm pitches itself as a way to “avoid the warrant process when identifying social media accounts for particular individuals.”

What’s more, the company apparently directed law enforcement officials to not mention the Media Sonar by name in court, instead using “proprietary search engine” or “internet tools” when pressed for information under oath. It’s a far cry from issuing cyanide capsules to its customers, but still pretty telling of the company’s intent to keep its secrets safe.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has done this, and it likely won’t be the last organization to mine social media data for policing. This fall, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter cut off access to tracking systems from Geofeedia. We’ve reached out to Twitter for more information and will update this post should it arrive.

Source: The Daily Dot

NASA has shared its massive GIF archive with Pinterest and GIPHY

NASA’s been making a concerted effort over the past year to share its enormous archive of images and video with the internet. Last October, the agency teamed up with Flickr to feature thousands of Apollo era mission pictures. Thursday, NASA once again opened its vault — this time to unload thousands more animated GIFs onto its Pinterest and GIPHY pages. If you already have accounts on either of these platforms, you now have full access to NASA’s archive. And thanks to GIPHY’s API integration, you’ll be able to embed these images into your tweets directly from the Twitter app.

via GIPHY

Source: NASA

Twitter in 2016 was a pretty depressing place to be

Let’s not be mealymouthed: 2016 sucked. As a stark reminder, Twitter has released its “Top 10 Global Conversations” for the year, a change from last year’s #YearOnTwitter format. This time, it lumped events into categories like #RIP, #Brexit, #Trump and #Oscars, perhaps as a way to give equal time to the rare good news stories. Otherwise, the list would be pretty much death, politics and Trump.

First, the grim — at least one person you love or admire died in 2016. The unfortunate #RIP list includes Muhummad Ali, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Alan Rickman, Garry Shandling, Garry Marshall, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, Anton Yelchin, Arnold Palmer, Gwen Ifill, Florence Henderson and Fidel Castro. Let’s hope 2017 isn’t so cruel.

As for #Election2016, #Trump and #Brexit, I think we’ve all had enough of those for four years, let alone one — but feel free to revisit them if you really want to. #BlackLivesMatter carried over from last year, 2014 and 2013 because, unfortunately, violence and systemic racism is still a problem for black people. Large protests happened in NYC, Chicago and Washington DC.

When the Pokemon Go servers are down pic.twitter.com/JQS9X5UzSp

— Pokémon Go! (@ThePokeGoNews) July 16, 2016

On a more positive note, we have #GameOfThrones season 6, which drew record viewers thanks to, well, death and politics (plus dragons, a resurrection and a few epic battles). #PokemonGo was, if nothing else, a great distraction from other events on this list. It gave us all some much-needed exercise and outside time, then sort of died — hopefully, the latest tweaks will give us new reasons to play.

#Oscars is another welcome category, because we can finally stop talking about Leonardo DiCaprio’s lack of one. The ceremony also notably featured Chris Rock’s biting satire on the lack of diversity in Hollywood, along with Joe Biden’s speech and Lady Gaga’s emotional performance for survivors of sexual assault. (Brie Larson hugging every survivor was also a great moment.)

#Euro2016 was also inspiring, especially for winner Portugal and underdogs Iceland and Wales, but not so much for also-ran France (le sigh). Oh, and the finals were a great night to be a moth. Twitter optimistically placed #Rio in first place, which is nice, as it featured moments like Usain Bolt’s cheeky 100 meter victory, Mo Farah’s historic UK win, anything to do with Simone Biles and Phelps winning his 23rd gold medal with his game face on.

Source: Twitter

Twitter acquihires a new VP of product focused on connections

The latest update in Twitter’s executive shuffle is the arrival of a new VP of Product, Keith Coleman. The ex-Googler arrives by way of acquisition, as Twitter is absorbing his company, Yes, Inc. and shutting down its apps wyd and Frenzy. No, we’ve never used those either, but they have the usual modern look with lots of stickers and emoji. The apps were about connecting with friends either locally (Frenzy) or remotely (wyd – What You Doing).

Lately, Facebook has been lifting features from Snapchat and it wouldn’t surprise me if Twitter started doing the same thing to attract more users. wyd , especially, has a familiar look, but so far there’s little indication of what is in the works. In a blog post, the Yes team says it’s “excited to bring our efforts to connecting the world at a huge scale.” Finally, following an all-too-familiar trend, Coleman doesn’t appear to be a prolific Twitter user, with only 143 tweets. Hopefully, that doesn’t get in the way of further developing the company’s services, but it also probably won’t bring Vine back.

Thanks to the Yes Team and all our users who made the last 2 years an awesome adventure 🙂 https://t.co/GqwJLV3b2X

— Keith Coleman (@kcoleman) December 1, 2016

Yes! Keith and team are joining Twitter to help lead and strengthen our service! https://t.co/5aFouFxTsh

— 🚶🏽jack (@jack) December 1, 2016

Source: Yes, Inc.

Mirai botnet targets Deutsche Telekom routers in global cyberattack

The German Office for Information Security confirmed on Tuesday that not only had nearly a million routers on the Deutsche Telekom (DT) network been recently attacked but that the assault was part of a larger campaign stretching across the world.

The Mirai botnet, which knocked a number of US service sites — including Spotify and Twitter — offline on October 21st, is reportedly the culprit. These attacks targeted unsecured IoT devices like baby monitors and security cameras, taking control of them using common exploits. Once the devices are under the botnet’s control, they can be used to flood sites with traffic (aka a DDoS attack) in order to overwhelm their servers and knock them offline.

“It was a global attack against all kinds of devices,” Dirk Backofen, a senior Deutsche Telekom security executive, told Reuters. 900,000 or roughly 4.5 percent of DT’s landline customers were targeted as well as a number of German government routers. Routers in Ireland, Great Britain, even as far away as Brazil were also targeted.

The routers in question are three models made by Taiwan’s Arcadyan Technology — though DT resells them under the brandname, Speedport. The company pushed a patch live on Monday to correct the vulnerability. For its part, DT apologized to its customers and has begun applying “filter measures in the network to prevent the remote maintenance interface from being accessed by the attackers in order to exclude a new infection of devices,” according to the site’s FAQ. More software updates are expected for the next few days as DT network engineers continue to shore up the vulnerability.

Source: Reuters, Deutsche Telekom