Facebook, Twitter Hinder Revolutions

Internet companies rush new tools for Iranian protesters

(NEWSER) - Twitter has taken extraordinary measures to keep its site running during the Iranian election protests, and now other websites are speeding up developments. Today Facebook launched an early version of its site in Persian, relying on 400 volunteers to translate pages into the local language. "We felt it was important to help more people communicate rather than wait," said a spokesman. More»

(NEWSER) - Pakistan has decided it's had about 139 characters too many of Twitter, yanking the microblogging site over material it says is offensive to Islam, reports al-Jazeera . The material in question was promoting a Facebook contest to post images of the prophet Mohammed—which are considered blasphemous, even those framed in positive terms. "We have been negotiating with them [Twitter] until last night, but they did not agree to remove the stuff, so we had to block it,'' says the country's telecommunications chief. No word on how long Twitter will be down. More»

From Facebook to Google, Silicon Valley frowns on flashy spending

(NEWSER) - Facebook's staff may be full of zillionaires, but don't expect Ferraris in the parking lot. Silicon Valley, where almost 14% of homes earn more than $200,000 per year, is deeply opposed to conspicuous consumption—hence Mark Zuckerberg's iconic hoodies and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's underground house. "The message here is, ‘Keep shipping product,'" an insider tells the New York Times . "If someone buys a fancy car and posts a picture of it, they get ridiculed and berated." More»

Sergey Brin sees threat from governments, Hollywood, Facebook

(NEWSER) - Internet freedom is under attack, says Google's co-founder. "It's scary," Sergey Brin tells the Guardian , saying he's "more worried" than ever about "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world." Once, Brin doubted the Internet could be controlled. "I thought there was no way" for countries like China "to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he says. More»

Firms accused of failing to remove blasphemous content

(NEWSER) - Facebook and Google are on trial in India for failing to yank objectionable content from their websites quickly enough. A criminal complaint alleges that sites including Facebook and Google's YouTube didn't remove content mocking religious figures, despite Indian laws against "blasphemous" and "ethnically objectionable" material online. The trial begins today, and execs from the Internet firms could face jail time if convicted. More»