Mediaboss Marketing

The reason for the ban on Wikipedia were statements in several articles that the Turkish government considered offensive

The Turkish public has regained access to Wikipedia after two and a half years of a block, the New York Times reports.

The site was blocked on April 27, 2017 after Wikipedia refused to remove pages that the Turkish government considered offensive.

Several pages talked about Turkeys ties with terrorists and Syrian militants. Also, Turkey had claims against articles about the failed coup in 2016. Turkey accuses well-known Turkish theologian Fethullah Gulen of organizing a coup, and demands his extradition from the US.

However, many international experts consider these statements by the Turkish government unfounded.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Turkey between Erdogan and Gulen

Who is Fethullah Gulen?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

The Turkish Constitutional Court the highest court to consider this issue ruled in favor of Wikipedia after the lawyers of the online encyclopedia managed to prove that the ban violates the right to freedom of speech, which is protected by the Turkish Constitution. This was told to reporters by Stephen Laporte, legal director of the Wikipedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia.

The reason for the ban on Wikipedia in Turkey was a complaint against several articles that the Turkish government considered insulting, including about connections with Syrian fighters and regarding the allegations of the American preacher Gulen

Follow this link:
Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after 2-year block - JAMnews

Tom McBride's "Perspective" (December 27, 2019).

Not so long ago I went to YouTube and watched a few old Roy Rogers TV episodes. They brought back how much I, as a kid, admired Roy as a Western hero. In a single episode, he could sing three songs, ride his palomino at full gallop, beat up and capture a few bad guys, and still, his cowboy outfit yet looking resplendent, share a few jokes about Nellybelle, the cranky old jeep on the show. Not even Superman was that good. Superman never sang a note.

Imagine, then, how disillusioned I was when someone told me that Roy, upon opening one of his chain restaurants in Washington, D.C., uttered a profanity when someone smushed a pie in his face. But the most disillusioning website is Wikipedia. If you look up someone there whom you admire, take my advice and skip the Personal Life section. Another of my Western heroes was Hopalong Cassidy, played by William Boyd. Hopalong wore all black but rode a white horse and never ordered anything stronger in a bar than milk or sarsaparilla. But when I checked out William Boyd on Wikipedia, I discovered hed been married about six times.

Its true. There really is such a thing as too much information.

This is Tom McBride, and this is my overly-informed Perspective.

See more here:
Perspective: The Disillusionments Of Wikipedia | WNIJ and WNIU - WNIJ and WNIU

Written by Karishma Mehrotra | New Delhi | Updated: December 30, 2019 10:03:57 am Automated filtering and quick takedown requirements would disrupt the volunteer model of real-time editing of information, Wikimedia has said in a letter to IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. (File Photo)

The nonprofit that funds Wikipedia has said its model would be severely disrupted by the intermediary guidelines that India intends to institute by the middle of next month.

Automated filtering and quick takedown requirements would disrupt the volunteer model of real-time editing of information followed by the online encyclopaedia, the Wikimedia Foundation has said in a letter to Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Because the resource is curated by language and not geographic market, the rules would change the entire website, not just Indians access to the knowledge, the Foundation said.

The collaborative system of people would be severely disrupted by obligatory filtering systems that monitor for and automatically remove illegal content across the website. Short response times for removals that would essentially require the use of automatic systems would interfere with peoples ability to collaborate in real time on Wiki, the collaborative, open editing model that has been crucial to Wikipedias growth, the letter said.

It is impossible to restrict changes inside a Wikipedia article from being visible in one country and not another. Fulfilling mandatory content removal requirements from one country would leave problematic gaps in Wikipedia for the whole world, break apart highly context-specific encyclopedic articles, and prevent people from accessing information that may be legal in their country.

Wikipedia is very popular in India. Users in the country visited the encyclopedia 771 million times last month, the fifth highest in the world, the letter said. It urged the Minister to release the latest draft of the guidelines, and suggested a layered definition to social media intermediaries similar to The Personal Data Protection Bill, which was introduced in Lok Sabha earlier this month. The letter also expressed concern over the unrealistic burden on nonprofits, and said that traceability requirements were a serious threat to freedom of expression.

The Indian Express reported the proposed draft guidelines in December 2018. After the Ministry opened them up for public consultation, Wikipedia joined several stakeholders who took issue with a number of provisions: censorship concerns highlighted the rule that would require platforms to proactively eliminate unlawful content, while surveillance concerns focused on the proposed guideline that intermediaries must hand over certain information to the government.

When the draft law was released, WhatsApp had said that, if notified, they would require a complete re-design of the platform, threatening its signature encryption. An major concern for the company was the provision on supplying the government with the originator of information. In an ongoing case in the Supreme Court involving WhatsApp and Facebook, the IT Ministry has submitted that it will update these laws by January 15.

In November, the IT Ministry told Parliament: Key features of proposed amendments in the due diligence to be followed by intermediaries are: (i) periodically informing the users for compliance of rules & regulations, users agreement & privacy policy, (ii) traceability of the originator of the information, (iii) significant intermediaries having more than 50 lakh users to have an office in India and to appoint a nodal officer for liaisoning with law enforcement agencies, (iv) removal of malicious content in 24 hours upon receiving a court order or when notified by appropriate government, (v) deployment of technology based automated tools or appropriate mechanisms for proactively identifying and removing or disabling public access to unlawful information or content, etc.

For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App

More here:
Wikipedia writes to IT Minister: New govt guidelines will severely disrupt our model - The Indian Express

Two FIRs. Both filed after CAA protests turned violent in the Sambhal district (UP), but vastly different. One, against 17 persons for alleged rioting and the other one related to the killing of 23-year-old Mohammed Sheroz. In the first segment, Kaunain Sheriff, talks about the differences in the two FIRS, the glaring gaps they reveal and how they will affect the two cases. Next, Naveed Iqbal talks about SMS services being restored in Jammu & Kashmir and the changes that the region has seen in the last couple of months. And last, Karishma Mehrotra explains why Wikipedia is worried about the guidelines that the Indian government is soon intending to implement.

You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook and Twitter @expresspodcasts, or send us an email at podcasts@indianexpress.com. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts, so other people can find us. You can also find us on http://www.indianexpress.com/audio.

What two FIRs of CAA protest in UP show, J&K gets SMS and Wikipedias worryTwo FIRs. Both filed after CAA protests turned violent in the Sambhal district (UP), but vastly different. One, against 17 persons for alleged rioting and the other one related to the killing of 23-year-old Mohammed Sheroz. In the first segment, Kaunain Sheriff, talks about the differences in the two FIRS, the glaring gaps they reveal and how they will affect the two cases. Next, Naveed Iqbal talks about SMS services being restored in Jammu & Kashmir and the changes that the region has seen in the last couple of months. And last, Karishma Mehrotra explains why Wikipedia is worried about the guidelines that the Indian government is soon intending to implement.You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook and Twitter @expresspodcasts, or send us an email at podcasts@indianexpress.com. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts, so other people can find us. You can also find us on http://www.indianexpress.com/audio.

View post:
What two FIRs of CAA protest in UP show, J&K gets SMS and Wikipedia's worry - The Indian Express

All major social networks are financed by advertising and thus free to users who trade access to their data for cat videos and sometimes questionable news content. Wikipedia co-founder and internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales wants to change that. He is currently rolling out his donation-based "news focused social network" WT.Social to people interested in high-quality journalism and productive discussions.

There are a few things that set WT.Social apart from its competitors. First off, it's completely independent from venture capitalists and other beneficiaries (including Wikipedia), running only on Wales' own investments. The network is also not interested in your data and doesn't show you any ads. If you want to, you can support it with donations pre-set to $13 a month or $100 a year (or 12/90 and 10/80). Wales says he doesn't expect his product to be profitable, though he thinks it could be sustainable when he maintains the current "barebones" staff of five, including himself.

The homepage/frontpage.

Once you've signed up for the service, you get access to what looks like a hybrid between Facebook, Reddit, and Wikipedia. You can join or create so-called subwikis tailored to your interest, covering every conceivable topic, ranging from "Fighting Misinformation" and "Long Reads" over "Computers: Windows, Apple, and Linux" all the way to "Dank Memes." It looks like an upvote/downvote system currently determines in which order content is shown in your front page feed, though in a Reddit Ask-me-anything, Jimmy Wales says he and his team are "going to experiment" what solution works best. Note that in contrast the the network's spiritual predecessor WikiTribune, you'll find barely any original content on WT.Social itself; it's mainly an aggregator and crowd-based curator for existing news websites.

Onboarding: Choose your favorite subwikis.

What really sets WT.Social apart from Facebook and Reddit is the ability to edit any post, no matter if you published it yourself or not. Just like on Wikipedia, a transparent history of edits shows who contributed which changes, so authorship becomes fluid. WT.Social hopes its users will catch misinformation early and edit posts accordingly, in addition to standard options to report spammers and vandalism. The team is also on-boarding more administrators and volunteer developers to cope with its sudden growth.

An overwhelming overview of all the changes on the website.

Other than that, the network feels pretty barebones, but that might be precisely how it's supposed to be. The grey-and-beige interface doesn't scream "attention" all over, and it looks like no autoplaying videos are trying to suck you in. The lack of bright eye-candy ads certainly makes browsing it a much more intentional and focused experience, too.

The question remains whether WT.Social is going to be able to scale up to properly compete with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the like. The network effect is real, and it's going to be hard to convince people to switch, especially since WT.Social seems to be pretty niche with its focus on high-quality journalism. Then again, Wikipedia's donation-based model still works great in this day and age, so I wouldn't write off Wales' network too fast.

Profile page.

If you're interested, you can join a waiting list to get in on the service. The team had to resort to this measure so it could deal with sudden loads of sign-ups following press coverage (yes, I see the irony here). You can also choose to pay the donation fee right away if you want to skip. Mobile apps don't exist at the moment, but that's on the roadmap as the network grows.

Read the original here:
Wikipedia co-founder created an ad-free social network that wants to be a better Facebook[citation needed] - Android Police