Tech Toinks!

The morning after French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he will run for a second term, several parodic Twitter accounts have mysteriously been suspended.

@_nicolassarkozy , an account created in September 2010 and clearly labeled as a satirical Sarkozy impersonation, was suspended on Feburary 16th.

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Powerful People & Targeted Botnets: the End of @ Political Satire?

@_nicolassarkozy was managed by Kaboul.fr, a French political and satirical online webzine, that holds many other satirical Twitter accounts, like @_Carla_Bruni, Sarkozy’s wife, @_Jacques_Chirac, the former french president, and @FrancoisHolland, Sarkozy’s main competitor in the ongoing presidential race.

According to Kaboul.fr, which, after complaining, received an answer from Twitter, @_nicolassarkozy was “suspended after being reported.” Twitter also told Kabul.fr that to be granted such priviledge, the suspension had to be made by Sarkozy, or someone acting on his authority.

In fact, the official response, leaked to Pastebinshows Twitter describing the account as “engag(ing) in non-parody impersonation.” The chance that the parodic nature of the account could be missed is slight.

More troubling, three other accounts, all clearly opposing Sarkozy’s political views, were suspended at the same time: @mafranceforte, @fortefrance and @SarkozyCaSuffit. Those accounts where not related to Kaboul.fr, nor impersonating local politician, but straight-ahead, and recently-created, politically-oriented Twitter accounts.

Although the news is making a huge buzz in France, it isn’t the first time a such censorship has occurred in the country. Other Twitter accounts that were problematic to the French president’s personal brand management were massively suspended last summer, those belonging to French gossip website Mixbeat.

A total 29 accounts managed by Mixbeat where suspended during July 2011. The only three of theirs that weren’t suspended were created from a different I.P. address, according to Mixbeat’s Carl de Canada.

The massive suspension of Mixbeat’s accounts occured a few days after its webmaster tweeted some rumors about Carla Bruni, president Sarkozy’s wife, concerning her pregnancy.

All other accounts opened since by Carl de Canada have ended up being suspended, and despite a public dispute with Twitter, and many posts publised on Mixbeat, the website is still unable to be on Twitter in any way, fighting some mysterious forces and an uncooperative Twitter customer service.

The Gallic Infowar @Twitter

Information war on Twitter is a common practice, especialy since the beginning of the Arab Spring, in January 2011. Twitter has proven to be a solid propaganda platform used by many authoritarian regimes.

Twitter botnets, consisting of a network of centrally-controled twitter accounts, are a common practice. By mass-reporting a targeted account as spam, a group can easily get a Twitter account suspended.

But according to Mixbeat, this is not what happened to its accounts. Carl de Canada claims some special messenger from Sarkozy asked Twitter to suspend them.

Still, the Twitter botnet “targeted spam report” technique could explain the three other suspicious account suspensions which occured last thursday. Such tools are quite common, and are actualy far from being the most sophisticated infowar tool made to cheat and deceive social networks. The U.S. army accidentaly posted in June 2010 a call for proposals on its website for a very sophisticated software called “persona management.” A Twitter botnet is far from being as complex.

Five months ago, a large Twitter botnet of several thoursand accounts was mapped by an eReputation management expert team, spotted as they were massively posting and retweeting content supporting Sarkozy. More recently, French State Secretary Nadine Morano was accused of buying false followers on Twitter just like Newt Gingrich.

France is one of, if not the leader in online warfare, when it comes to digital weaponry designed to be used against civilian using the Internet. A market recently estimated by Wikileaks to around $US10 billion. France sells Internet surveillance technology to numerous African and Middle East countries, including Syria , Iran and Qaddafi’s Libya. Both Twitter and Facebook are battlefields for dictatorships willing to extend political oppression to the online world, and, since the Tunisian Revolution, the market is skyrocketing.

As Sarkozy officially opened the race for the presidency in France last week, it looks like this will be France’s first presidential election in which the Internet could play a major role. But it also looks like it will not be, in any way, what happend during Obama’s first run for the presidency. In France, the Internet will most probably be used in a very dirty way.

As we say in the startup world : eat your own dogfood

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Discuss

The morning after French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he will run for a second term, several parodic Twitter accounts have mysteriously been suspended.

@_nicolassarkozy , an account created in September 2010 and clearly labeled as a satirical Sarkozy impersonation, was suspended on Feburary 16th.

Sponsor

Powerful People & Targeted Botnets: the End of @ Political Satire?

@_nicolassarkozy was managed by Kaboul.fr, a French political and satirical online webzine, that holds many other satirical Twitter accounts, like @_Carla_Bruni, Sarkozy’s wife, @_Jacques_Chirac, the former french president, and @FrancoisHolland, Sarkozy’s main competitor in the ongoing presidential race.

According to Kaboul.fr, which, after complaining, received an answer from Twitter, @_nicolassarkozy was “suspended after being reported.” Twitter also told Kabul.fr that to be granted such priviledge, the suspension had to be made by Sarkozy, or someone acting on his authority.

In fact, the official response, leaked to Pastebinshows Twitter describing the account as “engag(ing) in non-parody impersonation.” The chance that the parodic nature of the account could be missed is slight.

More troubling, three other accounts, all clearly opposing Sarkozy’s political views, were suspended at the same time: @mafranceforte, @fortefrance and @SarkozyCaSuffit. Those accounts where not related to Kaboul.fr, nor impersonating local politician, but straight-ahead, and recently-created, politically-oriented Twitter accounts.

Although the news is making a huge buzz in France, it isn’t the first time a such censorship has occurred in the country. Other Twitter accounts that were problematic to the French president’s personal brand management were massively suspended last summer, those belonging to French gossip website Mixbeat.

A total 29 accounts managed by Mixbeat where suspended during July 2011. The only three of theirs that weren’t suspended were created from a different I.P. address, according to Mixbeat’s Carl de Canada.

The massive suspension of Mixbeat’s accounts occured a few days after its webmaster tweeted some rumors about Carla Bruni, president Sarkozy’s wife, concerning her pregnancy.

All other accounts opened since by Carl de Canada have ended up being suspended, and despite a public dispute with Twitter, and many posts publised on Mixbeat, the website is still unable to be on Twitter in any way, fighting some mysterious forces and an uncooperative Twitter customer service.

The Gallic Infowar @Twitter

Information war on Twitter is a common practice, especialy since the beginning of the Arab Spring, in January 2011. Twitter has proven to be a solid propaganda platform used by many authoritarian regimes.

Twitter botnets, consisting of a network of centrally-controled twitter accounts, are a common practice. By mass-reporting a targeted account as spam, a group can easily get a Twitter account suspended.

But according to Mixbeat, this is not what happened to its accounts. Carl de Canada claims some special messenger from Sarkozy asked Twitter to suspend them.

Still, the Twitter botnet “targeted spam report” technique could explain the three other suspicious account suspensions which occured last thursday. Such tools are quite common, and are actualy far from being the most sophisticated infowar tool made to cheat and deceive social networks. The U.S. army accidentaly posted in June 2010 a call for proposals on its website for a very sophisticated software called “persona management.” A Twitter botnet is far from being as complex.

Five months ago, a large Twitter botnet of several thoursand accounts was mapped by an eReputation management expert team, spotted as they were massively posting and retweeting content supporting Sarkozy. More recently, French State Secretary Nadine Morano was accused of buying false followers on Twitter just like Newt Gingrich.

France is one of, if not the leader in online warfare, when it comes to digital weaponry designed to be used against civilian using the Internet. A market recently estimated by Wikileaks to around $US10 billion. France sells Internet surveillance technology to numerous African and Middle East countries, including Syria , Iran and Qaddafi’s Libya. Both Twitter and Facebook are battlefields for dictatorships willing to extend political oppression to the online world, and, since the Tunisian Revolution, the market is skyrocketing.

As Sarkozy officially opened the race for the presidency in France last week, it looks like this will be France’s first presidential election in which the Internet could play a major role. But it also looks like it will not be, in any way, what happend during Obama’s first run for the presidency. In France, the Internet will most probably be used in a very dirty way.

As we say in the startup world : eat your own dogfood

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Discuss

Over the past several years, the US Army has developed an exemplary program in exploiting numerous social media methods, and done so without a lot of flash, expense, or personnel. They have an engaged audience, numerous followers, and maintained a multi-pronged campaign into all of the major social media networks, including recent beach-heads in Pinterest and Google+. All this, and with a five-person team based in the Pentagon and without spending much in the way of budget too. They are a worthy case study for organizations that are trying to make their own assaults on social media and haven’t been as effective.

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Just look at this slide showing the numbers. Granted, with a potential audience of millions, it shouldn’t be all that unusual that they have the number of Facebook and Twitter followers that they do. But the number of engaged users is what is interesting here.

Let’s take a tour of the Army social media landscape and show you what they are doing right. Regardless of your politics, I think you will agree that they are leading by example when it comes to social media.

• They are a content machine. Each week they coordinate the posts on their various social media properties and there is plenty of fresh content. Any social media strategy needs to be based on terrific content, and regular infusions of it. They have this one covered, in spades. Just look at the two dozen pinboards they have already created on Pinterest, where our soldier on a camo couch lead image was taken from (you didn’t see him at first, admit it).

• Leadership is essential.The Army’s efforts are led by Major Juanita Chang who is the Director, Online and Social Media Division for the past two years in the Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs. Chang is a career soldier who has been in active duty since 1996 and served at one point as a chemical weapons officer before she got into PR. Having someone who came up through the ranks is key, because they can emphasize with the boots on the ground and know the entire Army ecosystem too. When you pick your social media team leader, keep this in mind.

• They have solid guidelines for usage. The Army has a 50-page social media manual (which incidentally is a Slideshare link, kudos for that) that walks everyone through what is and isn’t appropriate for posting to particular sites. There are guidelines specific to security, including turning off the GPS or geotagging features of your smartphone and cameras, asking the soldier what could the wrong person do with the information that is posted online, and recommending that photos don’t reveal sensitive information. Also, a soldier should talk to their family members about operational security and be sure everyone knows what can and can’t be posted. Here is just a snippet from their manual:

  

• They aren’t heavy-handed about it either. The guidelines are all common sense and not what you would expect from an organization that believes in the chain of command. “If we can trust our soldiers with guns and grenades, why can’t we trust them with Facebook?” Major Chang asks. That doesn’t mean they are completely hands-off. A Twitter post from a random civilian that wanted to make note of the recent Medal of Honor winner Salvatore Giunta, was unauthorized, and the Army asked that the relationship be clarified.

• Despite such a broad footprint, they pick their targets and have solid engagement goals. Just like you might expect from them. “We don’t have to be everywhere all the time. We have our goals and want to pick and choose our platforms to establish our presence,” Major Chang told me.

• Humor counts, too. Again, somewhat unexpectedly, the Army has a great sense of humor, at least how it is displayed across its social media empire. Humor is a very important engagement mechanism and a great way to break the social media ice for social media noobs. Take a look at the photo that topped last week’s list of most frequently-shared pics from their Facebook site:

  This was shared more than 375 times and Liked by more than 2,000 Facebook users. Granted, pet pics do well but still. Of course, it helps to have more than a million Facebook followers too.

• Know your audience. “We know the audience that we want to reach,” says Major Chang. “We want to connect America with its army. People don’t always know what we do for the everyday Joe Taxpayer in Idaho.” Look at this post on Google+ about a new Army concept vehicle at the Chicago Auto Show. This exposes their comment stream to non-Army Internet users and potentially widens their reach.

• Blogs matter and could be the center that holds everything together. I know in our rush to embrace all that is new we tend to forget about the old, but blogging is still important and can cement the other social media pieces. The Army has one blog destination: the ArmyLive blog which has stories about its soldiers, methods, and values. Six stories were posted in Februrary, making it a vibrant and active place to come read about its doings. Can you say the same thing about your bloggers? And it isn’t all cheerleading either: an article by the Sergeant Major of the Army, Raymond F. Chandler on new uniforms is enlightening. These and other blogs complement its main corporate website.

• Be cost-conscious and leverage free resources. Unlike those stories of thousand-dollar toilet seats and other cost overruns, when it comes to social media the Army is very thrifty. Major Chang was proud that what she has accomplished has been on the cheap: she hasn’t paid for any ad campaigns and mostly relied on word-of-mouth to grow her various properties. “Experts are doing it all for less money. We use the free versions of every platform and do everything in house,” she says. For example, there is the Army’s YouTube channel here that has more than 2600 subscribers and posted five new videos last week (see content point above). Yes, they could have set up an extensive and expensive video streaming site, but why bother when you could it for free?

  If you have a captive audience and focus, you can do this too. Remember, the traffic that you quickly gain can quickly leave to other memes-of-the-moment: organic growth is best.

Discuss

Over the past several years, the US Army has developed an exemplary program in exploiting numerous social media methods, and done so without a lot of flash, expense, or personnel. They have an engaged audience, numerous followers, and maintained a multi-pronged campaign into all of the major social media networks, including recent beach-heads in Pinterest and Google+. All this, and with a five-person team based in the Pentagon and without spending much in the way of budget too. They are a worthy case study for organizations that are trying to make their own assaults on social media and haven’t been as effective.

Sponsor

Just look at this slide showing the numbers. Granted, with a potential audience of millions, it shouldn’t be all that unusual that they have the number of Facebook and Twitter followers that they do. But the number of engaged users is what is interesting here.

Let’s take a tour of the Army social media landscape and show you what they are doing right. Regardless of your politics, I think you will agree that they are leading by example when it comes to social media.

• They are a content machine. Each week they coordinate the posts on their various social media properties and there is plenty of fresh content. Any social media strategy needs to be based on terrific content, and regular infusions of it. They have this one covered, in spades. Just look at the two dozen pinboards they have already created on Pinterest, where our soldier on a camo couch lead image was taken from (you didn’t see him at first, admit it).

• Leadership is essential.The Army’s efforts are led by Major Juanita Chang who is the Director, Online and Social Media Division for the past two years in the Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs. Chang is a career soldier who has been in active duty since 1996 and served at one point as a chemical weapons officer before she got into PR. Having someone who came up through the ranks is key, because they can emphasize with the boots on the ground and know the entire Army ecosystem too. When you pick your social media team leader, keep this in mind.

• They have solid guidelines for usage. The Army has a 50-page social media manual (which incidentally is a Slideshare link, kudos for that) that walks everyone through what is and isn’t appropriate for posting to particular sites. There are guidelines specific to security, including turning off the GPS or geotagging features of your smartphone and cameras, asking the soldier what could the wrong person do with the information that is posted online, and recommending that photos don’t reveal sensitive information. Also, a soldier should talk to their family members about operational security and be sure everyone knows what can and can’t be posted. Here is just a snippet from their manual:

  

• They aren’t heavy-handed about it either. The guidelines are all common sense and not what you would expect from an organization that believes in the chain of command. “If we can trust our soldiers with guns and grenades, why can’t we trust them with Facebook?” Major Chang asks. That doesn’t mean they are completely hands-off. A Twitter post from a random civilian that wanted to make note of the recent Medal of Honor winner Salvatore Giunta, was unauthorized, and the Army asked that the relationship be clarified.

• Despite such a broad footprint, they pick their targets and have solid engagement goals. Just like you might expect from them. “We don’t have to be everywhere all the time. We have our goals and want to pick and choose our platforms to establish our presence,” Major Chang told me.

• Humor counts, too. Again, somewhat unexpectedly, the Army has a great sense of humor, at least how it is displayed across its social media empire. Humor is a very important engagement mechanism and a great way to break the social media ice for social media noobs. Take a look at the photo that topped last week’s list of most frequently-shared pics from their Facebook site:

  This was shared more than 375 times and Liked by more than 2,000 Facebook users. Granted, pet pics do well but still. Of course, it helps to have more than a million Facebook followers too.

• Know your audience. “We know the audience that we want to reach,” says Major Chang. “We want to connect America with its army. People don’t always know what we do for the everyday Joe Taxpayer in Idaho.” Look at this post on Google+ about a new Army concept vehicle at the Chicago Auto Show. This exposes their comment stream to non-Army Internet users and potentially widens their reach.

• Blogs matter and could be the center that holds everything together. I know in our rush to embrace all that is new we tend to forget about the old, but blogging is still important and can cement the other social media pieces. The Army has one blog destination: the ArmyLive blog which has stories about its soldiers, methods, and values. Six stories were posted in Februrary, making it a vibrant and active place to come read about its doings. Can you say the same thing about your bloggers? And it isn’t all cheerleading either: an article by the Sergeant Major of the Army, Raymond F. Chandler on new uniforms is enlightening. These and other blogs complement its main corporate website.

• Be cost-conscious and leverage free resources. Unlike those stories of thousand-dollar toilet seats and other cost overruns, when it comes to social media the Army is very thrifty. Major Chang was proud that what she has accomplished has been on the cheap: she hasn’t paid for any ad campaigns and mostly relied on word-of-mouth to grow her various properties. “Experts are doing it all for less money. We use the free versions of every platform and do everything in house,” she says. For example, there is the Army’s YouTube channel here that has more than 2600 subscribers and posted five new videos last week (see content point above). Yes, they could have set up an extensive and expensive video streaming site, but why bother when you could it for free?

  If you have a captive audience and focus, you can do this too. Remember, the traffic that you quickly gain can quickly leave to other memes-of-the-moment: organic growth is best.

Discuss

It was just over a week ago that the Canadian government was preparing to table its new Internet surveillance legislation.

For the Conservatives, it was supposed to be a very good week. Tough posturing on crime has been a vote-winner for them in the past, and the only people who care about civil liberties are those herbal-tea-swilling vegan-sashimi-ordering bicycle-riding bleeding hearts* who’d never vote for them anyway – right?

Sponsor

And then Public Safety Minister Vic Toews went and said something that galvanized a community that went far beyond the herbal-tea-swilling crowd (or as I call them, “my people”). Replying to a questioner in the House of Commons (or “House of Representatives” to Americans, Australians and New Zealanders), he said:

We are proposing measures to bring our laws into the 21st century and to provide the police with the lawful tools that they need. He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.

The government promptly rebranded the bill, hastily changing its name from “Lawful Access Act” to “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” And all holy hell broke loose.

This being Canada, by “all holy hell” I mean there was a hashtag – #TellVicEverything. Twitter’s Canadian users bombarded Toews with the mundane details of their lives. One of the country’s leading voices for online freedom, Michael Geist, summed it up:

Yesterday’s Twitter-based #tellviceverything was the perfect illustration for how the Internet can fuel awareness and action at remarkable speed. Through thousands of tweets, Canadians used humour to send a strong message that the government has overstepped with Bill C-30 (my favourite remains @kevinharding’s Hey @ToewsVic, I lost an email from my work account yesterday. Can I get your copy?). Alongside the Twitter activity are dedicated websites, hundreds of blog postings from commentators on the left and right of the political spectrum, thousands of calls and letters to MPs, and nearly 100,000 signatures on the Stop Spying petition at Open Media.

By the end of the week, several of the country’s editorial pages that are normally pretty sympathetic to the Conservatives’ agenda had swung against them on this issue. A Twitter account appeared, revealing purported details of Toews’ personal life, and then went dark again. And the government was signalling it might be open to amending the bill, with at least one Conservative Member of Parliament saying it’s “too intrusive as it currently stands.”

This isn’t the first time our politicians have accused defenders of privacy and civil liberties of siding with child pornographers. But it’s the first time it’s backfired this spectacularly.

Maybe it’s because Canada’s net activists were spurred by the success of the fight against SOPA/PIPA in the United States (a fight many of us played some small role in waging). Maybe it’s because we’ve become a little more sensitive on online privacy issues, after a few high-profile clashes with social networking giants. Or maybe it’s just that we won’t tolerate being lumped in with terrorists, child pornographers, thieves and counterfeiters whenever it suits a politician’s or lobbyist’s communications strategy.

Whatever the reason, Canada now has a northern counterpart to the wired community’s newfound activism in the US. And #TellingVicEverything is only the beginning.

* Or as I call them, “my people”.

See the full Noise to Signal collection here!

Discuss

It was just over a week ago that the Canadian government was preparing to table its new Internet surveillance legislation.

For the Conservatives, it was supposed to be a very good week. Tough posturing on crime has been a vote-winner for them in the past, and the only people who care about civil liberties are those herbal-tea-swilling vegan-sashimi-ordering bicycle-riding bleeding hearts* who’d never vote for them anyway – right?

Sponsor

And then Public Safety Minister Vic Toews went and said something that galvanized a community that went far beyond the herbal-tea-swilling crowd (or as I call them, “my people”). Replying to a questioner in the House of Commons (or “House of Representatives” to Americans, Australians and New Zealanders), he said:

We are proposing measures to bring our laws into the 21st century and to provide the police with the lawful tools that they need. He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.

The government promptly rebranded the bill, hastily changing its name from “Lawful Access Act” to “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” And all holy hell broke loose.

This being Canada, by “all holy hell” I mean there was a hashtag – #TellVicEverything. Twitter’s Canadian users bombarded Toews with the mundane details of their lives. One of the country’s leading voices for online freedom, Michael Geist, summed it up:

Yesterday’s Twitter-based #tellviceverything was the perfect illustration for how the Internet can fuel awareness and action at remarkable speed. Through thousands of tweets, Canadians used humour to send a strong message that the government has overstepped with Bill C-30 (my favourite remains @kevinharding’s Hey @ToewsVic, I lost an email from my work account yesterday. Can I get your copy?). Alongside the Twitter activity are dedicated websites, hundreds of blog postings from commentators on the left and right of the political spectrum, thousands of calls and letters to MPs, and nearly 100,000 signatures on the Stop Spying petition at Open Media.

By the end of the week, several of the country’s editorial pages that are normally pretty sympathetic to the Conservatives’ agenda had swung against them on this issue. A Twitter account appeared, revealing purported details of Toews’ personal life, and then went dark again. And the government was signalling it might be open to amending the bill, with at least one Conservative Member of Parliament saying it’s “too intrusive as it currently stands.”

This isn’t the first time our politicians have accused defenders of privacy and civil liberties of siding with child pornographers. But it’s the first time it’s backfired this spectacularly.

Maybe it’s because Canada’s net activists were spurred by the success of the fight against SOPA/PIPA in the United States (a fight many of us played some small role in waging). Maybe it’s because we’ve become a little more sensitive on online privacy issues, after a few high-profile clashes with social networking giants. Or maybe it’s just that we won’t tolerate being lumped in with terrorists, child pornographers, thieves and counterfeiters whenever it suits a politician’s or lobbyist’s communications strategy.

Whatever the reason, Canada now has a northern counterpart to the wired community’s newfound activism in the US. And #TellingVicEverything is only the beginning.

* Or as I call them, “my people”.

See the full Noise to Signal collection here!

Discuss