Why it's important to understand social media's dark history

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It was in April 2016 that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media platform was providing its nearly two billion users the opportunity to livestream content. The move was viewed as a natural extension of the platform’s primary goal: providing a space for the average person to share their daily experiences, from the mundane to the meaningful.

Almost as quickly, users found ways to live-broadcast the worst of their nature, including the “Easter Day slaughter” in which the fatal shooting of a 74-year-old Cleveland grandfather was livestreamed.

In response, calls have increased for Facebook to either shutter the service or find a way to better regulate its content. Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example, remarked that Facebook Live is being used by people “as a platform to release their anger, their fears and their foolishness.”

Many have referred to these behaviors as Facebook’s “dark side” and demanded that the company find a solution to prevent such antisocial behavior.

However, a brief look through the history of social media shows us that dark behaviors are neither unique to Facebook nor something new to today’s users.

A dark history

Poet and technology author Judy Malloy wrote about the earliest precursors to social media networks as places of creativity and community. For example, programs such as Berkeley’s Community Memory allowed 1970s users a digital space to post content and share stories for others in the community to read, with popular content including personal ads and short stories.

An early French Minitel terminal. Early social media days had their dark moments as well.
Christian Heindel, CC BY-SA

Yet even those halcyon days had their dark moments. In 1985, author Lindsy Van Gelder wrote about her experiences with the CompuServe CB Simulator, one of the world’s first online chat rooms. Among the popular channels in CB Simulator were those devoted to romance and relationships, which were of particular interest to LGBTQ individuals who found it difficult to discuss gender identity and sexual preferences in public. While many users found love online – a 1991 wedding hosted in CB Simulator is thought to be the first online wedding – in Van Geldr’s case, she was deceived into an intimate online romantic relationship by a man posing as a disabled woman.

Stories of sexual aggression turned perhaps darker in 1998, when technology journalist Julian Dibbell wrote about a sexual assault that took place in a text-based online world called LambdaMoo. The notion of a sexual assault online might seem odd given that users have no physical contact with one another. Yet, a LambdaMoo user named “Mr. Bungle” hacked the program in a way that allowed him to have complete control over other users’ behaviors, such as their conversations and descriptions of their movements.

He used this hack to cause users to engage in obscene and violent sexual acts with their own bodies, having the players describe where and how they were touching themselves and others, but without consent, according to Dibbell’s account. Mr. Bungle claimed that his actions were just a prank, despite his victims’ insistence that they had been humiliated by his actions (or at least the actions that he forced them to perform or describe while performing). The story is notable, given that online relationships can be just as intimate and important as offline ones.

Fast forward to early 2006, and the story of Evan Guttmann and his friend’s stolen Motorola Sidekick mobile phone captivated the internet. What started as a simple blog about a teenager who refused to return the phone to its rightful owners turned into a story of a growing internet mob – followers of Evans’s blog tracked down the teen’s home address and harassed the family.

Later in 2006, users of MySpace would hear the tragic story of Megan Meier, a Missouri teenager who took her own life after the boy she met online (a MySpace user named “Josh”) shunned her. It was only later, after investigations were done, that Megan’s family found out that the boy “Josh” was really the mother of a girl that Megan had recently gotten into a fight with. That incident led to the passage of the United States’ first cyberbullying laws.

Understanding social media

These stories are examples of what can happen when a single user discovers ways to use a technology that weren’t intended by designers: using the anonymity of CompuServe to deceive, using clever programming scripts to alter other users’ behaviors, using blogs to draw attention to a minor offense, and using social media to create a false identity. In each case, deceptions and actions had dramatic real-life consequences for those involved.

How can we understand today’s social media?
Vasin Lee/Shutterstock.com

Most importantly, these stories serve as examples of how to understand Facebook specifically, and social media in general. It is important that users realize that the ethics of Facebook communication are no different than the ethics of any other form of human communication. Rather than dismissing social media as wasteful and distracting and passing this perspective on to our children, they need to recognize that the enterprise of human communication is as meaningful online as it is offline.

Commentators have blasted Facebook’s livestreaming option as “essentially barrierless broadcasting system,” but such critiques ignore the benefits of that “barrierless” broadcasting, such as connecting families separated by oceans and providing voice to persecuted groups. Even violent footage can, at times, be beneficial: The Facebook Live broadcast of a July 2016 police shooting in Minnesota served as a powerful reminder about social injustice and policing in the United States. Counterterrorism forces have come to rely on social media posts to track and better understand terrorist activities online.

To combat misuse of livestreaming, Facebook recently announced the hiring of an additional 3,000 monitors to screen live videos. However, in my view, ultimately, the responsibility for the content of social media falls to the digital citizens who create and interact in the space on a daily basis.

Nicholas Bowman, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, West Virginia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How corruption is fraying South Africa's social and economic fabric

Protests escalate as corruption and public sector incompetence in South Africa hamper the provision of basic services.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook

South Africans are not happy. According to the recent Bloomberg’s Misery Index, South Africa is the second-most miserable country on earth. Venezuela tops the list of emerging countries.

This isn’t too surprising considering that the country is embroiled in multifaceted crises. It also has among the highest unemployment and inequality levels in the world.

Unfortunately, recent credit rating agency downgrades as well as the fact that the country is in recession mean that these horrid conditions are unlikely to reverse soon.

Consequently, the poor in South Africa have little chance of improving their lives. They will therefore be even more reliant on the provision of state services. They will also increasingly be on the receiving end of the two extractive systems that are deeply embedded in country’s socio-political and economic systems.

The first is the patronage and state capture machinery as recently documented in a report by leading academics. The effect of this corruption is that the capital allocated for service delivery is wasted, the private sector is crowded out, and the monopolising positions of dysfunctional state owned enterprises distort the economy.

The second is where state capture merges with patronage politics at local government level. This is accomplished by managing and staffing municipalities with unqualified party loyalists – or close associates – who disseminate services inefficiently from a shrinking pool of capital, while further extracting rents through a sub-layer of corruption.

The effect is that the poor must pay an additional tax in the form of bribes for access to mispriced and inefficient state services. In addition, as the looting via state capture and municipal corruption intensifies, service provision and delivery declines. This means that the poor are then subject to bribe inflation to gain access to shrinking capacity. Violent service delivery protests inevitably escalate.

Demographics and education

South Africa’s five year average economic growth rate declined from 4.8% over the 2004-2008 period to 1.9% over the 2009-2013 period. Between 2014 and 2016 it averaged 1.1%. At the same time irregular, wasteful, and unauthorised expenditure ballooned. It’s therefore not surprising that the number of violent protests increased from an average of 21 a year between 2004 and 2008 to 164 a year between 2014 and 2016.

Unfortunately, South Africa’s demographics and education statistics don’t suggest that this trend is likely to reverse soon.

South Africa’s youth statistics are depressing. Young people between the ages of 15 to 35 comprise 55% of the country’s 36 million working age population. Of the 19.7 million youths, only 6.2 million are employed while 3.6 million are unemployed but still actively looking for work, and 1.53 million have stopped looking for work. The remaining 8.4 million are at school, tertiary education, or are homemakers.

Youth unemployment is 36.9%. This is nearly double the unemployment rate among adults. Among black youth, 40% are unemployed compared to 11% of white youth.

Taking the level of education into consideration, 2011 data show that the unemployment rate for 25 to 35 year olds who had less than a matric was 47%, compared to 33% for those that had a matric, and 20% for those with a diploma or post-school certificate. But if one looks at the younger group of 20 to 24 year-olds, 16% are in school, 12% are in post-schooling education, 21% are employed, and 51% are unemployed and not in any education or training.

Considering that the percentage of black professional, managerial and technical workers in the 25 to 35 age bracket dropped by 2% over the past 20 years (meaning that this generation is less skilled than their parents), the statistics in the 20 to 24 age bracket indicates that this trend is likely to worsen.

Worryingly, studies show that countries, such as South Africa, that have a youth bulge and poor education attainment are likely to suffer from political instability. This is because if the demographic transition occurs in a stagnant economy with a high level of corruption then the low opportunity costs increase the likelihood of political violence by poorly educated young men.

Fixing systemic failures

South Africa’s current crisis is a systemic failure extending across national and local government. Although it’s possible that the political cost of corruption is now reaching unacceptable levels, reversing the effects of state decay on the poor will take short-run and long-run interventions.

Short-run measures will need to include holding public officials to account, reforming state owned enterprises and reversing the numerous institutional weaknesses at all levels of government.

But public and private stakeholders will also need to formulate long-run policies that will improve the quality and through-put of the country’s junior and secondary education systems, and entrench youth employment incentive schemes. In addition, skills training will need to be reformed and reinvigorated, and the technical vocational educational system will need to be reconstructed.

If South Africa is to recover, then the country’s badly frayed socio-economic fabric will need to be restitched, not just patched.

Sean Gossel, Senior Lecturer, UCT Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Heated civil society meeting debates secret ballot

Opposing positions presented by Makhosi Khoza, Bantu Holomisa and Steven Friedman

By Barbara Maregele and Natalie Pertsovsky
12 July 2017

United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa at Community House in Salt River on Tuesday during a panel discussion hosted by #UniteBehind, a coalition of civil society organisations. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

ANC MP Dr Makhosi Khoza made headlines across the country recently by breaking ranks with her party. She has publicly supported a secret ballot in the lead up to the vote of no confidence in President Zuma.

“I was questioning, how do you divorce yourself from your moral compass from the decisions you make in Parliament? After that, I received numerous death threats. I was told that people would be coming to my house. Those who use social network will know my address because the ANC Youth League posted it online because they were going to picket at my house,” Khoza told a panel discussion at Community House in Salt River on Tuesday evening hosted by #UniteBehind, a coalition of civil society organisations .

Loud gasps and remarks of dissatisfaction could be heard in the hall when Khoza revealed that her daughter had also received death threats.

“We all believe in transparency and accountability, but we are here talking about real people who have gone through real situations. They are now sending these threats to my daughter. Why should I die in silence?” said Khoza.

But Director of the Centre for Democracy at the University of Johannesburg Steven Friedman said a secret ballot would “leave the door open to corruption”.

“The way a democratic system works is on precedent. If we have the secret ballot on this issue, then what other issues will be voted on using secret ballots? If we go this route this time, we open the way for more secret ballots, more unaccountability, and more brown envelopes,” he said.

Director of the Centre for Democracy at the University of Johannesburg Steven Friedman said a secret ballot would “leave the door open to corruption”. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Also on the panel discussion was United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa. The UDM took the matter to the Constitutional Court which ruled that the Speaker of the National Assembly has the power to decide whether a vote of no confidence in the president can be held in secret.

Holomisa said, “There are many implications for MPs who feel that Zuma has lied and they no longer want to tow the party line. They will be intimidated and labelled as someone who is ungovernable or may even be killed.”

Holomisa said that should the Speaker opt to not grant the secret vote, she will be expected to provide reasons for her decision.

“If the electoral system was transparent and promoted accountability, we wouldn’t be talking about this today. Mbeki was withdrawn overnight and no one made an issue about that. Zuma must face this secret ballot because he has threatened his own people. This secret ballot is going to protect those who want to vote and follow their own conscience,” he said.

But Friedman disagreed. “There are people in this country who want to buy politicians, and that’s part of what state capture is all about. If you have a secret vote, it is a lot easier to buy over politicians than if it were done in public.”

“Those who are elected, need to explain to us what they do and why they do it. You cannot have accountability if the people you voted for do things in secret,” he said.

Friedman said that he was willing to “make a pretty large bet” that the results of a secret vote would be the same as if it were done in public.

Khoza said, “I don’t think we will have a true reflection of what some MPs truly stand for if you tell some of the MPs that tomorrow they will not get an income if they don’t vote along the party lines,” she said.

Friedman replied: “The argument that MPs are worried about losing their salaries is one I have no sympathy for. If you’re a public representative then you have to accept that your job is to look after the interests of the people who voted for you.”

Chairing the event, Axolile Notywala, general secretary of the Social Justice Coalition announced that the #UniteBehind coalition will be having a mass march to Parliament at noon on 8 August to urge the ANC to recall President Zuma.

People’s vote

In anticipation of the Vote of No Confidence, the #UniteBehind Coalition, which includes the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), Equal Education, Women’s Legal Centre, Sonke Gender Justice and Right2Know, has been setting up polling stations in the Western Cape allowing citizens to cast their votes against or in favor of Zuma.

“The polling stations are meant to say that ANC MPs must vote President Zuma out,” said Notywala. “It’s a way to show individual people on the ground have had enough.”

According to Zukie Vuka of #UniteBehind, the coalition set up polling stations in Delft, Khayelitsha, Mowbray, Rondebosch, Fish Hoek, Mutual Station, and Maitland.
Notywala said they will announce the results from the polling stations the same day as the Vote of No Confidence.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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David Duke on South African Farm Murders (VIDEO)

David Duke speaks about the situation in Southern Africa that the mainstream media would rather have you not know anything about!

Kill the Boers, the song is sung by the majority, and for years now, nothing is done to stop the killing of farmers. Horrific, gruesome and senseless murders of innocent people that plague the country, yet the government fails to act.

To watch the video - please click on the South Africa Today Link - 

David Duke on South African Farm Murders

 

Children with disabilities grow old waiting for schools

Department has doubled placement but waiting lists are growing

By Moira Levy
12 July 2017

A year ago, <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/article/21-year-old-wheelchair-just-wants-go-school/">GroundUp reported on 21-year-old </a>Montoedi Nyangweni (photographed here with his mother, Nokukhuthala) who stopped school at grade 6 because of his disability and wants to return to school. He is still not in school and he needs a wheelchair. Photo: Manqulo Nyakombi

At a meeting of the Basic Education Portfolio Committee on the provision of education for children with disabilities, MP Sonja Boshoff (DA) raised serious doubts about the department’s claim that there are 11,461 disabled learners waiting for schools.

Boshoff believes the department’s figure does not come close, given that past figures place the number of children not in school because of disability at 300,000. Waiting lists for special schools increase every year, and those still waiting are getting too old to attend school as there are age limits for admission to schools.

The committee had called in the Department of Basic Education for a progress report on delivery of inclusive education and special education for children with disability.

Boshoff said she had seen children with disabilities in Mpumalanga who are out of school, but the provincial education department informed her it had no waiting list. The province says all children with special needs have been placed in ordinary schools until space is found for them in special schools.

KwaZulu-Natal reports 2,769 children with disability on its waiting list. The waiting list in the Eastern Cape is 2,160.

The South African Schools Act says that no learner should be put on the waiting list; their names are supposed to be placed on a central database if schools cannot accommodate them.

The Constitution, the National Development Plan, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Incheon Declaration of the World Education Forum were referred to in the committee meeting. They all confirm that the state has a commitment to provide schooling for children with disabilities.
The number of children with disabilities receiving some form of education has almost doubled over the last 15 years, according to the department.

It reported there are 464 special schools in South Africa and another 715 “full service” schools that make some sort of provision for children with disabilities.

The committee was satisfied to hear that the department had reached its target of placing more than 240,000 such learners in schools at the last count in 2015.

The numbers may have improved and R477-million was set aside this year to assist learners with severe to profound intellectual disabilities to access support and quality education, but even 11,461 is a lot of children awaiting intervention.

Recent evidence has also shown a number of the “full service” schools do not have the basic facilities required to qualify, such as ramps, suitable toilets and support staff.

Often little or no provision is made for children with disabilities in poor and rural areas. There are only 11 special schools in the Northern Cape and no units or special classes attached to ordinary schools throughout that vast province.

Other departments need to play their part

In response to questions from committee members who wanted to know when the last audit of special schools was conducted, Dr Moses Simelane, Director for Inclusive Education, said the official number of children living with disabilities who are out of school is close to accurate since the department has entered into a memorandum of understanding with StatsSA.

What also helps keep track is the department’s cooperation with the departments of social development and health, Home Affairs, and the South Africa Social Security Agency.

The department said it cannot achieve anywhere near universal education for the disabled unless other government departments, like Health and Transport, play their part.

The provision of transport across the provinces is skewed. Provinces like Limpopo and Mpumalanga do not have enough school transport for special schools and fee-paying schools are required to fund their buses, which have to adhere to certain requirements.

Children with disabilities are kept at home for many reasons. These range from incontinence to the dire shortage of properly trained educators equipped to deal with possible medical emergencies.
But of most concern to the committee was that the majority of children with disability are stuck at home because there is not enough space to accommodate them.

Another concern was that special schools have not been declared “no fee” schools and many parents were unable to pay the fees.
Director General Mathanzima Mweli agreed that the time has come for special schools to be declared no fee schools. He said the department needs to prioritise this.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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