Don't Blog

Thomas Crampton: Bloggers Investigated for Inciting Paris Riots

In France bloggers have been investigated by police for inciting the riots.

Also, my audiocast on the riots for the New York Times website. (My first podcast-style effort)

Blogs and sms messages were apparently used to coordinate violent action on a large scale.

phil : 11/30/2005 06:57:00 AM.

Boing Boing: Journalist, blogger Steven Vincent killed in Iraq: Freelance reporter and blogger Steven Vincent was murdered Tuesday night in Basra, Iraq. Reports Vincent wrote on ties that link Iraqi police with extremists likely led to his killing.

phil : 8/05/2005 02:15:00 PM.

Steve Rubel posts:

Robert Scoble is getting a life and giving up his linkblog. Good for Robert. Marc Orchant also is getting a little blog-worn, as is Neville Hobson. And Richard Edelman is taking a blog break. Even I was only able to get two posts up today. Maybe there's a trend here. Blogging can lead to success and fame. Couple this with an economy showing life and what do you get? Burnout. No worries. I am still here to keep my blogging pace. Travel, client work and new business pitches do make it challenging, at times. How would you feel if I took the blogging equivalent of a "mental health day?"

phil : 3/24/2005 08:21:00 PM.

Irony and beauty.

• Irony: this happened at a small blogging company (they're all small).
• Beauty: the transparency of this transaction.

1. Marginally risky art work provokes disproportionate feedback,
2. directed at the blogger's employer.
3. Employer spells out the effects to blogger,
4. who chooses to further explain/excuse the art and removes the picture.

p.s. No bloggers were bullied in the making of this post. I overstated management pressure for the sake of a corny headline.

phil : 3/09/2005 06:06:00 PM.

Not yet, but American copyright law makes it possible. Blawger Reasonable Man says you own your own words when published. Conceivably commenters might sue for a share of ad revenue, or a partnership stake in the blog.

"Who owns blog comments?" also suggests a blog's Terms Of Service can be written to assign some of the commenter's rights to the blogger, so a blogger can keep the post as part of the web site and protect its conversations.

As bloggers add defensive TOS, look for some bloggers to create predatory terms where all your comments belong to the blogger, no rights left for the commenter.

phil : 3/02/2005 07:41:00 PM.

via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing (quoted in full) and the Orlando Sentinel:

Would-be kidney transplant recipient denied because of website. Alex Crionas needs a kidney, and his friend Patrick Garrity would like to give him one. But the transplant was recently blocked by a coordinating group because Crionas published an account of his need for the procedure on a personal website. The group said Crionas' online outreach gave him an unfair advantage over other candidates who may not have internet resources.

They went through rigorous blood and tissue testing last month at LifeLink HealthCare Institute, which coordinates the transplant program for Tampa General Hospital, and say they were declared physically compatible for the operation. But the hope of a new life for the 28-year-old Crionas didn't last long. Crionas got a letter earlier this month from LifeLink, a Tampa nonprofit that links patients and donors, telling him his request for surgery was rejected because Crionas had a Web site seeking a donor. "I was dumbfounded," Crionas said. "We didn't even meet through the Web site."

• Claudia's Freedom of Thought
• Book of Joe: 'Transplant Denied"
• The blog of Bioethics.net
  

phil : 2/25/2005 04:18:00 PM.

Ilkka Pöyry, the headmaster of the Muhos Korivaara school, who has been using (and approving) questionable methods to give fundamentalist religious schooling to kids in the elementary grades (3-4), has sued Jani of Marginaali for libel. (Well, not really sued, it's more like asking the police to look into the matter by claiming that a crime has occurred. I don't know the English words for that.)

phil : 2/23/2005 10:47:00 PM.

Karshed :

As I'm sure as most of y'all know by now, I no longer have my job because of this website. Management had monitored my computer for over a month, tracked what sites I visited and blog posts I wrote and tried to place me between a rock and a hard place over things said on this personal site about people at work (even when said people and said work was never mentioned explicitly). more...

Karsh, 01/29/05.

Related to dooced, being fired for your weblog.

Talking Points:

1. Quitting a job to protect your blog is a serious step. What's your tipping point?
   
2. Would quitting actually protect your blog if your former employer sends lawyers to attack?
3. What might a request to stop blogging tell you about your boss? About your company?

phil : 2/23/2005 07:40:00 PM.

Reyhan Harmanci, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, wrote Time to get a life -- pioneer blogger Justin Hall bows out at 31. A great interview with Hall, Rebecca Blood and others. Is there a Samson and Delilah Effect where new love leads to a loss of bloggy powers?

phil : 2/22/2005 03:57:00 AM.

• talking about other students and teachers.
• sharing information about tests.
• attracting perverts.

phil : 2/11/2005 01:20:00 PM.

When I did a Technorati trawl on "macromedia" earlier today I found collections of old Macromedia press releases on two Blogspot properties, the old addresses for Vernon Viehe and Bob Tartar. I don't know what the scam is here -- it looks like the perp knocked out the old content ... my guess is that they're trying to get search engine prominence for eventual highlighting of their own viagra links, or something.

phil : 2/08/2005 11:01:00 AM.

Andrew Sullivan says he's taking "a breather" from The Daily Dish, now the 9th most popular blog out of millions. Imagine Oprah putting her daily television show on hold at the height of her success. Burnout must really hurt.

phil : 2/04/2005 09:07:00 PM.

InformationWeek cover story: "The Weblog Question: People are starting Weblogs in growing numbers but the owner of the content isn't always clear" by John Foley. Examples of this conflict from General Motors, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Google, Hewlet-Packard, Microsoft, Amazon, Sun Microsystems. Factors: formal policies, blog predating employment, agreements that carve out rights, use of company time/systems, content related/unrelated to work, disclaimers.

phil : 2/01/2005 01:36:00 PM.

Losing your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, website, etc.

Did you hear Mary got fired yesterday for writing about Becky in her blog? Yeah, she got dooced.

Source: Jennifer, Feb 26, 2004

Seen elsewhere:

• NPR: Digital Culture: Firings Raise Questions of Blogger Freedoms.
  
• BBC: Looming pitfalls of work blogs.
• NevOn: Don't Be Dooced in 2005. "dooce dodging"
• Wagner's Weblog: A review of dooced bloggers by cause.
  
• bizgirl - international librarian of mystery: Three posts on being dooced. Read the dozens of comments.
• Heather B. Armstrong's Dooce.com dooced archive: the posts the led to and followed Heather being fired.
  

phil : 1/24/2005 11:38:00 AM.

The Blog Business Summit invites the greedy to blog, and bloggers to cash in. The same medium that's a window into cultures, the minds of people everywhere, the basis for a global community is being pimped for its ability to make your no-name business Googleworthy, to make you famous, rich, popular, secure, with little effort. And without a heart. See you there.

phil : 1/23/2005 09:14:00 AM.

Back in 2003 I wrote this fictitious news story, trying to imagine the role of a weblog in an ongoing crime:

Outlaw Blogs Kidnapping of Baby Jane Doe. The blogger known as Adam Adam Adam continutes to post pictures of a scared little girl. A3 posts via mobile phone, Internet cafe, public library, and the occasional dial-up while evading a national dragnet. FBI asks Attorney General to lock down the blogosphere. Senator Grubb filibusters.

In Deadly Blogging, Elliott Back documents how Rachelle Ann Monica Waterman poured her heart out in her smchyrocky LiveJournal. And reported her mother's death. And the police seizing her computer. And her arrest.

1. As the blogosphere grows past the 10 million mark, it starts to look a lot like a big city. In any big population, there will be all manner of human behavior. Including murder.
   
2. Her weblog will be used to convict her, just like a paper diary. If not in arraignment, or in court, then in the media.
   
3. Since this diary is in public, will it affect the jury pool? Will the comments?
   
4. Will commenting in her diary put you on the suspect list?
   
5. If you were on her buddy/friends list, were you contacted by the police?
   
6. If you left a comment encouraging this unbalanced 16 year old to act out, how much are you legally culpable?
   
7. Imagine a crazy person reads your whining, and does a violent favor for you without asking.
   

phil : 12/09/2004 10:37:00 AM.

"Reporters Without Borders has strongly protested against the Iran government's relentless efforts to stifle free expression online after the arrest of five webloggers in less than two months, the latest on 28 November 2004."

1. Dariush (http://www.dariushkabir.com)
2. Omid (http://www.shurideh.com)
3. Payvand (http://gayaneh.net)
4. Mojtaba Saminejad (http://man-namanam.blogspot.com)
5. Farid Modaressi, (http://farid.blogset.com)
   

phil : 11/30/2004 11:07:00 PM.

"I want you to tell your friends to be CAREFUL about what they say on the Internet, because someone IS reading it and it CAN come back and bite you on the ass. And as nice as the Sekkrit Service dudes were (and honestly, they WERE very nice – we even gave them coffee and shit, and they laughed with us and were generally very cool about the entire situation), you don't want them coming to your house. It's just not very fun. Because …

"What you say on the Internet can affect your real life. Due to what I said online, I now have an FBI file. And due to certain policies that a certain administration has instituted, I could now be placed on the government's "no-fly" list, could be subject to random searches of private property without my knowledge or permission, and could be subject to wiretapping surveillance. I doubt that any of these things will happen (except with the "no-fly" list – according to my attorney, that's a strong possibility and is something we are looking into), and I could just be being paranoid, but after the Secret Service showed up on my doorstep, I think I'm entitled to a little paranoia. Because shit, I never thought THAT would happen, either. So be aware."

phil : 11/10/2004 10:35:00 AM.

The truth doesn't lie in a progress report or a single data point. While the collective intelligence of blogs stands up well to isolated idiocy, the blogosphere really can't be held responsible for journalists not checking their facts, for readers not comparing sources, or for statistical illiteracy.

Blogs Blamed for Exit Poll Fiasco
(AP) 03:45 PM Nov. 03, 2004 PT

NEW YORK -- News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls showed an initial surge for John Kerry, but also blamed bloggers for spreading news that gave a misleading view of the presidential race.

The exit poll data was delivered at several points Tuesday to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press by the National Election Pool, a company formed in the wake of the networks' blown calls on election night 2000.

The first wave showed Kerry with a lead of three percentage points in Florida and four points in Ohio -- both battleground states won by President Bush when the votes were actually counted, giving the president his margin of victory.

"Once one part of it is in question and is wrong, it kind of puts the whole thing in question," said Marty Ryan, Fox News Channel's executive producer for political coverage. "It was disappointing.... During the primary season, it worked very well for us, we were happy with it. But that was not good last night."

Other network representatives said their confidence in NEP remained unshaken.

The Florida and Ohio exit poll results, along with those in other states where Kerry was strong, was quickly disseminated on websites such as Slate, the Drudge Report, Wonkette.com, Atrios.blogspot.com and Command Post.

Some of these sites cautioned readers not to make too much of the information. The Command Post delivered the news under the headline "Grain of Salt." Drudge removed the numbers almost as quickly as they were posted. And Slate warned: "These early exit poll numbers do not divine the name of the winner."

"I didn't have any real compunction about putting it up there," said Alan Nelson, co-manager of The Command Post. "I didn't struggle with the decision, because I knew it was going to become a global news item within about 30 seconds.

"Our approach is: We post, you decide," Nelson said.

But the people who read these numbers -- among them, thousands of ordinary Americans with an intense interest in the election -- put too much faith into them and leaped to conclusions, said Bill Schneider, CNN's polling expert.

"I think people believed them, and it's particularly the case with internet bloggers," said Kathy Frankovic, CBS News' polling director. "That's unfortunate because it sets up expectations that may or may not be met. I think it's a good exercise because it reminded people that early exit polls can be unreliable."

Bloggers picked out different numbers to use for their purposes, said Joseph Lenski, who ran the poll with partner Warren Mitofsky for the NEP. As the day wore on, later waves of exit polling showed the race tightening.

"Doing an early poll is like reporting the results of the game at halftime," Lenski said. "You only have about a third of the information. No other survey research is held to that level of accuracy."

The NEP had enough concerns that its early exit polls were skewing too heavily toward Kerry that it held a conference call with news organizations mid-afternoon urging caution in how that information was used. Early polls in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Connecticut were then showing a heavier Kerry vote than anticipated.

Pollsters anticipate a postmortem to find out why that happened. Some possibilities: Democrats were more eager to speak to pollsters than Republicans, or Kerry supporters tended to go to the polls earlier in the day than Bush voters.

"The exit poll is one of several tools that AP uses to call races," said Kathleen Carroll, the news agency's senior vice president and executive editor. "After every election, we look back at how all our tools worked. We'll be doing that in the next few days with our election experts and our colleagues at the National Election Pool, and expect to be able to address any concerns in that process."

NEP members note that the organizations that commissioned the poll did not use the information to mislead the public.

None of it was used to wrongly call a state, due to extra care after the disastrous election night of four years ago when networks twiced prematurely declared Bush the winner in Florida.

For particularly close states, NBC relied on actual vote counts, said Bill Wheatley, NBC News vice president.

Still, some correspondents subtly telegraphed the polls to viewers. On the evening news, NBC's David Gregory said Bush "appeared subdued," while ABC's Terry Moran noted the president had expressed a "rare sense of doubt."

Fox News Channel correspondents bluntly addressed the polls early on election night, at about the time Bush campaign officials were alerting reporters that their analysis of the actual vote count showed they were doing better than the exit polls indicated.

"The view in Boston is that if the exit polls are right, it's going to be very difficult for George Bush to win tonight," Fox News analyst Susan Estrich said.

In the end, those polls -- or the reading of them -- proved to be incorrect.

phil : 11/04/2004 01:47:00 PM.

A Delta Airlines air stewardess has been suspended without pay for including photos of her in airline uniform on her weblog. She received no warning or request to remove the pictures until she was called to a meeting 6 October and suspended without pay or health benefits. Delta described the photos as 'inappropriate' and said the suspension would last until their investigation was finished. more...

phil : 10/28/2004 01:18:00 AM.

Slashdot reports on the case of a Malaysian blogger threatened by
legislation that may brand his weblog a potential danger to "national security."
Did he leak military secrets? Call for the assassination of public figures? Not
quite. Apparently one of his readers posted a comment (later removed) that was
derogatory to Islam. The people calling for this guy's head must not get out in
the blogosphere much, because if that counts as a national security threat,
Malaysia is really, really insecure.

phil : 10/05/2004 08:24:00 PM.

I was a wreck when my little bro -- the last of our line -- took off for college a month ago, and it was all I could do to not imagine him doing all of the things that I did as a college freshman. When I found a link to his new college blog on his IM profile, I took a casual look, thinking it'd be something about streaking or drunk sorority girls. And yeah, I should have seen it coming with this kid: the converse sneakers, the long hair, the weird taste in music, the high school delinquency … he screams "Stoner" from 100 yards. But did I need it spelled out for me? And did I need to find out via an online journal? Not so much. D+ -- Cristin

phil : 9/28/2004 08:53:00 AM.

• abusively addictive relationship
  
• 6 hours a day
  
• not healthy
  
• regaining self-control and stability
  
• losing one's mind
  
• lost touch
  
• one-sided perspective on people
  
• saw a limited segment of the world
  
• guilt for not engaging
  
• the feelings of intensity overload
  
• the cruel pain of being a true information junkie

One more victim of information overload, sipping with a straw from that fire hydrant of a blogosphere.

phil : 6/14/2004 01:31:00 PM.

... She led 12-year-old Satomi Mitarai to an empty classroom during their lunch hour Tuesday, slit her neck and arms with a box-cutter, and left her to bleed to death. ... All signs pointed to a close friendship between the girls, who were in art class together, played basketball together, shared a group diary and passed notes on a home page bulletin board. ... But Mitarai angered the girl when she wrote negative Internet messages about her appearance, the Kyodo News Agency reported. The girl told police she decided to kill Mitarai when a final message commented on her weight.

phil : 6/03/2004 11:46:00 AM.