Google rejects White House request to remove anti-Islam film clip

San Francisco: Google Inc rejected a request by the White House on Friday to reconsider its decision to keep online a controversial YouTube movie clip that has ignited anti-American protests in the Middle East.

The Internet company said it was censoring the video in India and Indonesia after blocking it on Wednesday in Egypt and Libya, where U.S. embassies have been stormed by protestors enraged over depiction of the Prophet Mohammad as a fraud and philanderer.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in a fiery siege on the embassy in Benghazi.

Google said was further restricting the clip to comply with local law rather than as a response to political pressure.

"We've restricted access to it in countries where it is illegal such as India and Indonesia, as well as in Libya and Egypt, given the very sensitive situations in these two countries," the company said. "This approach is entirely consistent with principles we first laid out in 2007."

White House officials had asked Google earlier on Friday to reconsider whether the video had violated YouTube's terms of service. The guidelines can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines.

Google said on Wednesday that the video was within its guidelines.

U.S. authorities said on Friday that they were investigating whether the film's producer, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year old Egyptian Coptic Christian living in Southern California, had violated terms of his prison release. Basseley was convicted in 2010 for bank fraud and released from prison on probation last June.

© Thomson Reuters 2012

YouTube rejects blanket ban on anti-Islam film

Washington: A day after the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, video-sharing website YouTube today said it has restricted access to the film both in Libya and Egypt.

"This video - which is widely available on the Web - is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube," a spokesman said in a statement.

"However, given the situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries. Our hearts are with the families of the people murdered in yesterday's attack in Libya," he added.

The video, made by Israeli-American deemed as offensive to Islam, was dubbed into Arabic and broadcast in part on some Egyptian-based television networks and Google-owned YouTube.

Condemning the attack on US envoy, several countries including Indonesia demanded that YouTube block the 'Innocence of Muslims' video, to prevent it from being watched around the world specially in populous Muslim nations.

Afghanistan has banned YouTube website to stop Afghans watching the film that sparked protests in Muslim nations.

Facebook may give you a call if your profile looks suspicious

Mumbai: Social networking giant Facebook is making a "huge effort" to weed out fake profiles to prevent misuse of such identities, a senior company official has said.

"Absolutely, there is a huge effort," Facebook India business manager Pavan Varma said when asked about the company's action on this front.

If Facebook doubts the ownership of an account, it will ask the user to identify himself/herself, he said.


The doubt about the authenticity of the account will arise if an account has a generic name instead of a proper name, uses images of celebrities/ cartoon characters as display pictures, or does not have "enough friends", Mr Varma said.

"It could even be that Facebook comes back to you saying, "could you help us identify yourself if you don't have enough friends, because we don't want fake identities," he said.

"We are worried about the experience we deliver....It's not about protecting our brand identity so much," he said.

Recently there were reports of fake accounts being created by computer programs, which are used for inflating the number of "likes" on Facebook page for a brand.

Facebook had recently said it would be taking out fake "likes" generated by spammers, malware and black marketers.

Mr Varma said advertisers must also shed the obsession with numbers. "How does an advertiser today treat a Facebook page? It is treated as a place where they just come with a number of people who are there. But that is a wrong way of doing it," he said, stressing that the conversations around the brand should assume importance rather than the numbers.

Mere "likes" on the page do not help a brand, he said.

Companies generally pay Facebook for a dedicated page on its platform that helps them connect with the target audience.

IDBI Bank claims it has over five lakh fans on Facebook, Varma said, on the sidelines of a banking summit.

He added that Facebook, as a medium, is completely secure and cited the case of ICICI Bank, which now offers basic services over the Facebook page by integrating its net banking platform with the social networking site.
  
From: NDTV

Govt issues guidelines for its departments for using social media

New Delhi: The government today issued guidelines for its departments using social media networks asking them not to post confidential information and "unverified" facts. (Read Govt guidelines)

With 40 million Facebook and 16 million twitter users in India, social media has emerged as a powerful platform for forming an opinion as well as generating mass support, the Information Technology Ministry said in its 38-page guidelines issued today.

"Great care must be taken to avoid propagation of unverified facts and frivolous misleading rumours," it said.

It asked persons handling social media for all government agencies including public sector undertakings not to "comment and respond unless authorised to do so especially in the matters that are sub-judice, draft legislations or relating to other individuals".

Asking social media handlers to be polite, discrete and respectful, the guidelines said personal comments for or against any individuals or agencies should not be made and professional discussions should not be politicised.

"Not all posts/comments need to be responded to immediately and individually. Also, wherever a response is required all posts should be kept short and to the point," it said adding infringement of IPR and copyrights of others should be avoided.

The guidelines said while employees were free to post response in their personal capacity, "it is mandatory that while they are doing so, they must clearly identify themselves, confidential information must not be divulged and should not be seen to represent 'official view' unless authorised to do so".

The guidelines stated that social media can only be used by the government to communicate existing government information and propagate official policy to the public.

Social media, it said, should only be one of the components of the overall citizen engagement strategy and government departments must desist from using only social media to communicate with their stakeholders.

"Initially, the departments may just aim to post information regularly. For example, if it is a Facebook page, posting may be done at least a couple of times a week and on Twitter slightly more frequently," it said.

The government's communication to citizens via social media should follow the same data retention policy as its communication through other electronic and non-electronic channels.

"When any information is shared or guidance given online, it is necessary to ensure that all relevant records are captured, trail is generated and records are managed appropriately," the guidelines stated.

The government said the guidelines have been formulated with a view to help ministries, departments and agencies to make use of social media platforms to engage more meaningfully with their various stakeholders.

World over, various government agencies use various social media platforms to interact with their stakeholders. In US, the White House has Facebook page and a Twitter profile.

Even the US Army has a Facebook page and a social network website called GovLoop.com was created within the US Department of Homeland Security to share experiences and best practices.

In India, the Prime Minister's Office this January launched social media initiatives and currently uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The Ministry of External Affairs is also present on Twitter.

Govt vs Twitter provokes angry reactions, hashtags like Emergency2012

New Delhi: Twitter has told the government that it needs more time to block 28 pages, which allegedly contain communally sensitive material. The micro-blogging site has written to the Department of Information and Technology to state that it's having technical difficulties in disabling these pages.

Twitter users spent the day today protesting against a government directive sent to Internet Service Providers,  asking them to block the accounts  of a few journalists, and Web pages of news organizations like Al Jazeera, Britain's Daily Telegraph, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

As hashtags #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks became trending topics, the government, in what appeared to be damage control, said the list of pages to be  blocked that was leaked online was not complete. The directive asks Internet Service Providers to block only the urls or web-pages specified, and not the main websites.

"It is a political decision, because of my criticism of the government," said Kanchan Gupta, one of the journalists targeted, who was an official in the previous government led by the Opposition BJP. Some Twitter users complained of difficulty in accessing their pages, though the journalists were able to tweet for large parts of the day because the ISPs blocked their profile pages, not the actual accounts, which only Twitter can disable. That meant that those targeted could post tweets that could be seen by their followers.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has warned Twitter of serious consequences if its orders are not followed. Twitter has around 16 million accounts in India.

Earlier this month, doctored photos and videos were circulated to falsely depict atrocities against Muslims in Myanmar and Assam. Images of people who died in natural disasters like earthquakes were represented as victims of ethnic violence. The campaign urged reprisal. Text messages sent to migrants from the North East in cities like Bangalore and Pune saw thousands of people boarding special trains to their home states.  The government has ordered Facebook, Google and others to block 310 web pages.

The Centre for Internet and Society, which analysed the 300 banning orders, found that they contained "numerous mistakes and inconsistencies". Some of the banned websites belonged to people trying to debunk the rumours, for example, it said.

"This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly," said CIS programme manager Pranesh Prakash.

Twitter has also been asked to block six accounts that masquerade as the official account of the Prime Minister's Office.

"Twitter has agreed to block the six fake PM accounts. They responded to our complaint saying we need to follow an internal channel to lodge a formal complaint in the matter," the Prime Minister's communications adviser, Pankaj Pachauri, told IANS.

"We have forwarded their communication to the ministry of communications and IT for necessary action," Mr Pachauri said.  "We had earlier complained through email to the six fake twitter accounts individually," he added.

In January this year, Twitter had announced its ability to block content in a  country but making it available in other parts of the world.  It had also stressed that "if and when we are required to withhold a tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld."

Internet giants like Facebook and Google have been fighting criminal and civil charges in Delhi courts where they have been accused of allowing content that provokes communal hatred.  The government has said that often, social networking sites are too slow to respond to requests asking for offensive material to be deleted.

(With inputs from Reuters)