By framing it as a human rights issue, Amnesty International says it hopes to be able to push Twitter to enforce its own policies consistently and be transparent about how it’s doing so.

“Twitter’s failure to adequately and consistently enforce their own policies is leading women to either silence or censor themselves online,” Dhrodia told me. “So women are either leaving the platform, they’re thinking five or six times over before they post anything, they’re taking social media breaks. They’re coming up with a whole bunch of different coping mechanisms in order to avoid violence and abuse because they know by speaking out, it’s not going to be dealt with.”

Although Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly said the company is looking for help to address its issues around safety, Amnesty International says Twitter has declined to provide the organization with any “meaningful data on how the company responds to reports of violence and abuse.”

This report comes after Amnesty International’s 14-month investigation that combined quantitative and qualitative research. The report is based on interviews with 86 women and non-binary people, including journalists, politicians and everyday users across the U.S. and the UK about their experiences online.

“When talking to them about their experience of violence and abuse, Twitter came up consistently as the platform where most women had experienced violence and abuse and also where they felt it was the company that was doing the least to remedy the issue,” Dhrodia said.

The report goes on to outline some recommendations for Twitter moving forward. The first is to share specific examples of the type of violence and abuse Twitter won’t tolerate. Another is to share data on how quickly Twitter responds to reports of abuse, while another is to ensure its decisions to restrict certain content are consistent with international human rights law.

Earlier this month, Twitter began soliciting proposals from the public to help the platform capture, measure and evaluate healthy interactions. The goal is to come up with metrics to measure the health of the interactions on Twitter. But Twitter eventually wants to take that a step further, Dorsey said in a public conversation via Periscope.

“Ultimately we want to have a measurement of how it affects the broader society and public health, but also individual health, as well,” Dorsey said.

As Twitter embarks on its journey to make its platform a safer, more productive place for everyone, it’s relying on third parties to step in to determine the best ways to capture, measure and evaluate health metrics. Perhaps, more importantly, Twitter needs help determining exactly what those metrics entail.

I’ve reached out to Twitter and will update this story if I hear back.

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Source: TechCrunch

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It follows criticism from Chinese businessman Li Shufu, who recently said the firm “must be watching all our WeChats every day”.

In response the Tencent-owned firm said suggestions that it was watching users was “pure misunderstanding”.

All Chinese social media platforms are required to censor public posts deemed illegal by the government.

Mr Li is quoted in Chinese media reports as saying he believed Tencent monitored everyone’s account.

The high-profile businessman owns Geely Holdings which in turn owns the Volvo car brand. It is one of China’s largest automobile manufacturers and is one of the few not controlled by the government.

Privacy score

In a post on its social media platform in response to his comments, WeChat said it: “does not store any users’ chat history. That is only stored in users’ mobiles, computers and other terminals”.

“WeChat will not use any content from user chats for big data analysis. Because of WeChat’s technical model that does not store or analyse user chats, the rumour that we are watching your WeChat everyday is pure misunderstanding.”

WeChat’s privacy policy states that it may need to retain and disclose users’ information in response to a request by the government or law enforcement.

In a 2016 report on the privacy of messenger apps, compiled by rights activists Amnesty International, Tencent scored zero out of 100.

“Not only did it fail to adequately meet any of the criteria, but it was the only company which has not stated publicly that it will not grant government requests to access encrypted messages by building a ‘backdoor'”, the report read.

In September, the Chinese government fined Tencent, alongside Baidu and Weibo, for failing to properly censor online content, asking them to increase content monitoring methods.

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Source: BBC

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The Chinese intellectual and activist, who championed non-violent resistance as a way of overcoming “forceful tyranny”, is the first Nobel peace prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, the 1935 recipient, who died under surveillance after years confined to Nazi concentration camps.

Liu was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May, while serving an 11-year sentence for his involvement in a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08 that called for an end to China’s one-party rule.

Last month he was granted medical parole and moved to a hospital in northeastern China, where he was reportedly treated in an isolated ward under armed guard.

World leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, had urged China to allow the dying dissident to travel overseas to receive medical care that supporters claimed could have prolonged his life. But China refused, prompting criticism that its Communist party’s leaders were wilfully and intentionally shortening the dissident’s life in order to deny him one last opportunity to denounce their rule.

On Thursday night authorities in the northeastern city of Shenyang, where he was being treated, confirmed his death in a short statement.

News of Liu’s death sparked an immediate outpouring of grief and condemnation of the way he had been treated. Liu’s peaceful activism and biting criticism of one-party rule meant he had spent almost a quarter of his life behind bars.

“It is so hard. I don’t know if I can say anything,” said Tienchi Martin-Liao, a longtime friend, breaking down in tears as she learned of Liu Xiaobo’s death
“I hate this government… I am furious and lots of people share my feeling. It is not only sadness – it is fury. How can a regime treat a person like Liu Xiaobo like this? I don’t have the words to describe it.
“This is unbearable. This will go down in history. No-one should forgot what this government and the Xi Jinping administration has done. It is unforgivable. It is really unforgivable.”

“Liu Xiaobo is immortal, no matter whether he is alive or dead,” said Hu Ping, a friend of almost three decades who edits a pro-democracy journal called the Beijing Spring. “Liu Xiaobo is a man of greatness, a saint.”

Patrick Poon, an Amnesty International campaigner who also knew Liu, hit out at Beijing’s “incomprehensible” persecution of someone he remembered as a kind and principled man: “He represents the sad reality of being a political dissident in China … We will definitely remember him for ever.”

Eva Pils, an expert in Chinese law and human rights from King’s College London, said that while Beijing bristled at comparisons between Liu and Ossietzky, “in a way, unfortunately, this ending reinforces that comparison – because effectively they have just let him die in their care”.

Pils added: “It’s a grim ending.”

Hu said his friend’s plight highlighted the bleak realities facing activists living under President Xi Jinping, who has presided over what observers call the most severe political chill since the days following the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

“I think the situation in China now is deteriorating – and the way in which Liu has been treated clearly shows us what the current situation is, and how it goes beyond our imagination.”

Born in the northern province of Jilin in 1955, Liu was part of the first generation of Chinese students to go to university after they reopened following the upheaval of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. He studied Chinese literature and went on to become a revered writer and public intellectual.

When pro-democracy protests broke out in Beijing in the spring of 1989, Liu was lecturing in New York but decided to return despite having previously shown little interest in politics.

“He thought: ‘This is where I should be and this is where I can make a contribution. So I am going there’,” said Perry Link, a Chinese literature expert from the University of California, Riverside, who knew him.

Liu flew back to Beijing and headed to Tiananmen Square, where he played a central role in the protests. He led a hunger strike shortly before the 4 June military crackdown in which hundreds, possibly thousands of lives were lost. He was jailed for almost two years for his role in what Beijing called “counter-revolutionary” riots. The experience served as a political awakening that transformed Liu into a lifelong activist and champion of democracy.

Over the coming years Liu continued to speak out, despite two more stints behind bars, railing incessantly against China’s authoritarian regime in essays and interviews. Link described Liu as a “Gandhian type” who was committed to peaceful resistance but who wrote “with clearly no fear of what might befall him”.

He was also a serious intellect. Link said he had been “smitten by the range” of topics covered in his friend’s texts, which covered everything from Chinese humour, to the history of sex, Confucian philosophy, Olympic gold medals, Obama’s first election and even poems about St Augustine and Emanuel Kant.

The “crime” that lead to Liu spending his final years behind bars was Charter 08, a 2008 declaration inspired by Charter 77, a manifesto published by Czechoslovakian dissidents in 1977. “The current system has become backward to the point that change cannot be avoided,” it warned, calling for an end to one-party rule.

Authorities did not approve. Hours before it was due to be published, Liu, who had been one of the document’s drafters, was detained at his Beijing home. The following year he was handed an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power”.

“The charter was the first public document since 1949 to dare to mention the end of one-party rule,” said Link. “But of course the problem with having an influence is that the crackdown has been effective. A lot of young people don’t know about the charter and don’t know about Liu Xiaobo now.”

In 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. He was represented at the award ceremony by an empty chair. When he was informed of his victory he reportedly said: “I dedicate this prize to the lost souls of 4 June,” in reference to the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.

Human rights and democracy campaigners saw Liu’s Nobel prize as a triumph for their cause. But for his wife, the poet and artist Liu Xia, with whom he had fallen in love during the 1990s, it was a catastrophe. She was immediately placed under house arrest and has spent recent years living in almost total isolation, under constant surveillance.

“She is a wonderful woman. A really wonderful woman,” says Jean-Philippe Béja, a French academic and longstanding friend. “I don’t even dare to imagine how she feels now.”

Pils said Liu would be remembered for his “wise and forceful” style of political resistance. Supporters had been counting the days until his expected release from prison in 2019. “Now this is extremely disappointing. Naturally, I, like many others, had been counting down to the time of his release. It’s so unfair.”

Link said Liu would be remembered as “a stubborn truth-teller” and someone who opened “the possibility of a different kind of China”.

“That is a lasting legacy. The model of how an independent intellectual stands up to the state will be admired if it is not completely obliterated.”

Béja said Liu’s ideas would continue to inspire, long after his death. “It’s always very hard to evaluate the impact of a thinker or of an actor but I am sure that – despite all the efforts by the party – he won’t be forgotten.”

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Source: Guardian UK

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Some members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have been blamed for violent attacks on their opponents following the party’s election victory.

[contextly_sidebar id=”5cuwaAvhuqAEykyLiENszhVOJ5iYKXFi”]Some of these incidents have involved attacks on National Democratic Congress (NDC) sympathisers and vandalism of state property.

For instance, on Monday, persons identifying as NPP youth had illegally taken over the Tema Motorway toll booth, sacked the officially designated toll collectors and were illegally taking the tolls themselves.

Despite similar occurrences in the days following the NPP’s election victory, the Director of Amnesty International Ghana, Lawrence Amesu warned that though the attackers may purport to be members of one party or the other, their allegiances could not be verified.

Thus such incidents will continue if police do not disassociate the skirmishes from the political parties and act on them solely as criminal activity, Mr. Amesu insisted.

“Amnesty international would like to advise that when people take action, we should not politicise it. It is very difficult to say that it is NPP who is organising this for supporters to do this or that NDC organised it. When you talk to those people, they may just be putting on the party paraphernalia for nothing.”

This continuous association of the acts of lawlessness with political parties could end up escalation into a vicious cycle of retaliation, thus “so long as we are tagging parties to people who are committing individual crimes, we are just encouraging the situation to continue,” he explained.

Mr. Amesu instead suggested that “we should just deal with people the way we will deal individuals at other times. It doesn’t matter if it is election time and somebody is committing crimes then we would want to deal with the person as party A and party B.”

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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