futurejournalismproject:

Twitter has refined its ability to block posts from appearing (read: censor) in user streams on a country by country basis.

As explained on the Twitter blog:

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but 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. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

“In the face of a valid and applicable legal order,” a Twitter spokeswoman tells TechPresident’s Nick Judd, “the choice facing services is between global removal of content with no notice to the user, or a transparent, targeted approach where the content is removed only in the country in question.”

I was (briefly) a guest on a BBC World Service radio program this morning discussing Obama’s state of the union speech and income inequality in general. To my mind, this has always been a no-brainer. My argument is: we’ve done this experiment (of lowering taxes on the rich) twice now, once in the 1920’s and again in the 1980’s (and doubled-down in 2000). We have also done the control experiment. Between 1945 and 1980 top marginal tax rates in the U.S. ranged from 70 to 90%.

The results are clear: high marginal rates correlate with broad-based economic prosperity and an expanding middle class. Low marginal rates correlate with extreme income inequality, reduced prosperity overall, and ultimately, economic catastrophe.

(Source : azspot)

alaingerlache:

En Flandre, les discussions à propos de la grève de lundi prochain font rage sur les réseaux sociaux.Le paradoxe, c’est que c’est l’ABVV, la FGTB flamande qui est à l’origine de toute cette agitation. Elle a mis en place une stratégie de communication tout azimut pour mobiliser en vue de la grève…