Civil Rights

Reporters from Myanmar Now news agency escape military arrest

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YANGON, Myanmar – Their office was raided Feb. 8, but staff had already fled the scene. Instead, authorities took their computers and office equipment.

Last week, security forces arrested reporter Kay Zan Nway of Myanmar Now while she was reporting news during a protest.

Myanmar’s state-run media announced Feb. 8 at night that the military had revoked the licenses of five media outlets working in Myanmar. They are Myanmar Now, Kit Thit, Mizzima, DVB and 7 days media.

By Htay Win
Photo credit- Shine

Proud Boys join al-Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Shabab on Canada’s Terrorist Entity List

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The far-right American group famous for its participation in the January 6th insurrection in Washington is now officially a terrorist organization in Canada, based largely on the events at the U.S. Capitol.

Public Safety Canada detailed the group’s inclusion in their terrorist list: “Members of the group espouse misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and/or white supremacist ideologies and associate with white supremacist groups. The group and its members have openly encouraged, planned, and conducted violent activities against those they perceive to be opposed to their ideology and political beliefs. The group regularly attends Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests as counter-protesters, often engaging in violence targeting BLM supporters.”

Canadian Criminal Code requires businesses and individuals to immediately disassociate from groups on the Entity List.

By Milan Sime Martinić

WhatsApp is changing today – Users must give the app permission to send their private data to Facebook or lose account

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WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, but has thrived while promoting itself as a privacy-respecting messaging app that now has 1.5b monthly active users. This week, though, WhatApp sent out an update to users’ phones that they must ‘consent’ to a new policy or lose access.

Whatsapp will now share more of your data, including your IP address (your location) and phone number, your account registration information, your transaction data, and service-related data, interactions on WhatsApp, and other data collected based on your consent, with Facebook’s other companies. Facebook has been working towards more closely integrating Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

Users who do not agree to ‘consent’ to the new policy will see their WhatsApp account become inaccessible until they do ‘consent.’ These accounts will remain dormant for 120 days after which they will be ‘deleted.’

The biggest change to the user policy, which many people ignored and clicked ‘agree’ to, thinking it was just another unimportant app update message, now reads,

‘We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports. This also includes information about when you registered to use our Services; the features you use like our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group picture, group description), payments or business features; profile photo, “about” information; whether you are online, when you last used our Services (your “last seen”); and when you last updated your “about” information.’

Notably, Elon Musk tweeted on the news, saying that WhatsApp users should switch to Signal, one of several popular privacy-focused messaging apps similar to WhatsApp.

The data sharing policy change doesn’t affect people in Europe due to GDPR data protection regulations.

President Trump silenced on top social media platforms after mob storms Capitol

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President Trump silenced on top social media platforms after mob storms Capitol
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The US president was locked out from posting new messages on his Facebook and Twitter accounts after an unruly group of supporters assembled outside the capitol building where Biden’s election win was being confirmed.

The lockdown on Twitter lasted 12 hours until the president removed tweets Twitter said violated its ‘civic integrity policy,’ but Zuckerburg said that Trump would be silenced on Facebook and Instagram for at least two more weeks until his presidential term was over. Facebook and Twitter are two of the main ways the president communicates with citizens and the world.

It is the first time social media platforms have chosen to limit the free speech of such an important figure.

Trump’s tweets from Jan 6, 2020, as recorded by thetrumparchive.com

Many news organizations covered the story using language such as ‘Trump Incites Rioters.’

Following Trumps ‘ban,’ there was renewed talk about treating social media platforms, where people share informative content, as publishers themselves, in part because their algorithms amplify things shared when those things are engaging. There was also talk about how the social media platforms that censored the president’s content did so as a response to content or events but without first drawing their ‘red line’ and saying which content is and isn’t allowed on their platforms.

Some of Trump’s staff resigned following the incident at the Capitol building, and there were also a lot of questions why the national guard wasn’t capable of handling the incident properly.

UPDATE January 8: Twitter permanently banned Trump’s account. Google removed Parler, an app like Twitter used by Trump supporters, from the Android app store to make it harder for people to download it, saying Google requires social media apps to have content moderation policies to remove posts that incite violence.

Swiss Court Fines Man for Liking Defamatory Comment

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The original post on Facebook was about whether animal rights groups should be allowed to take part in vegan street festivals, and it became discussed heatedly.

Several people were fined by the courts for making comments it deemed defamatory, and one man was fined for “liking” some comments which accused an animal rights activist of racism and antisemitism.

That activist was Erwin Kessler, who brought the lawsuit against the participants.

According to the court, “the defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own,” when he hit the “like” button.