Right Wing astroturfing A non-scientific analysis of the patterns in forum board discussions on a variety of topics. The gist: discussions of issues in which there's money at stake (like
climate change,
public health and corporate
tax avoidance) are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption by rightwing libertarians who are pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Discussions of issues in which there's little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions.
posted by novenator
on Dec 20, 2010 -
79 comments
Metafilter's own Sean Tevis made history with his run for Kansas House of Representatives in 2008. Read more
here,
here, and
here. Sean is back and ready to commence
'Option 4', once again changing the way politics is done in Kansas. From his website "
Sean Tevis is visiting more than 50 politicians who can make open government a reality. He wears a different shirt with each politician. Eash shirt is unique and displays the names of 100 people like you. These shirts also have messages on them, which are Twitter-sized: 140 characters or less. The politician receives a copy of this shirt, too, for meeting with Sean. You get an account of this visit."
posted by jlowen
on May 6, 2009 -
25 comments
In 2009,
a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will
have to learn to say "No we can't",
Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield,
economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye,
governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees,
we will judge our commitment to sustainability,
scientists should research the causes of religion,
we will all be potential online paparazzi,
English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless),
Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops,
Iran will continue its nuclear quest while
diplomacy lies in shambles,
the sea floor is the new frontier,
we should rethink aging,
(non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project --
but cheap travel will continue to buoy it --
though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and
a Nordic defence bond will blossom.
The Economist: The World in 2009.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 27, 2008 -
31 comments
Time Capsule: the internet and E-democracy. “
Peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted and we must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality personally.” - Susan Crawford, University of Michigan School of Law.
In recognition and memory of the beginning and continuation of the political internet, they have organized a Time Capsule of e-democracy's beginnings - everything from using e-mail to plead your friends to vote to flash animations that set the web alight. It is to be sealed on September 22.
Help tell the story of internet politics.
posted by parmanparman
on Sep 15, 2008 -
2 comments
Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet.
Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.
posted by caddis
on Jun 12, 2008 -
143 comments
1000 Angry Monkeys, Blogging About Politics... The
partisan political blogosphere has been humming along nicely for the last several years. But where the
progressive and conservative ideologies intersect, at technology, they can possibly be best categorized as libertarian, particularly if limited to the development, growth, corporatization, regulation, and taxation of the internet. As such, there's much news worthy of our attention. More inside...
posted by rzklkng
on May 4, 2006 -
21 comments
Internets: Serious Business! These last few months have seen an increase in the attacks on the participatory culture of the web. The mainstream establishments, both political and corporate, have been looking with a cautious eye towards this new developing place.
So far we've established that
blogs can get you fired,
keep you from getting a job, give
pedophiles a place to ruminate on snatching your children, threaten journalistic integrity *snicker*,
endanger the marketing ,
product planning, and
product life cycles for automobile manufacturers, can
infect your computer with virii, and have
all sorts of negative consequences. The internets (both of them) can cause
your children to be charmed, seduced, and addicted by readily available porn, and can also provide access to extremist radical and fundamentalist groups, prompting
Congress to discuss more restrictive legislation (
NSFW), but only for the porn. It has even been claimed that the web has given
"Al Qaeda wings". P2P is blamed as causing record loses by the music industry, despite their investments in
local station marketing payola. The FEC has held
public hearings attended by both hemispheres of the blogosphere (amazingly in near-agreement)
discussing the regulation of political speech online. The figureheads of
a certain political party fear that their affiliated slice of the blogosphere may be too far-left. Newspapers and TV are leading the charge, with the internet standing in for pharmaceutical scares, yo-yo diets, and missing white women.
The question is, how will the libertarian-minded digerati respond to this very real attack on the essence of web culture?
posted by rzklkng
on Jul 29, 2005 -
34 comments
Iran systematically filters political websites: In contrast with what the
Iranaian President had said in the UN summit on Information Technology last year, the
OpenNet Initiative, in its latest bulletin, concludes that "Iran is indeed engaged in extensive Internet content filtering beyond just pornography, including many political, religious, social, and blogging websites.
"Most of these censored websites are Iran-specific; very little non-pornographic, "global" content is filtered from Iranian users. "
posted by hoder
on Aug 19, 2004 -
8 comments
I am Blogger, hear me roar! (3.1mb PDF) - A new study shows that
"Online Political Citizens are not isolated cyber-geeks, as the media has portrayed them. On the contrary, OPCs are nearly seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues. OPCs are disproportionately “Influentials,” the Americans who “tell their neighbors what to buy, which politicians to support, and where to vacation...” " They are “canaries in the mineshaft for looming political ideas” and tend to be more young, white, single, college educated, and affluent than average.
I just feel so influential. Now where's the friggin paycheck...
posted by troutfishing
on Feb 6, 2004 -
16 comments
Dem Blogs This community is filled with bloggers and I wondered if anyone had seen Maureen O'Dowd's take on how the Presidential Candidates are starting to use, for better or worse, "blogging" as a method to get their "message" across. ( Registration required )
posted by RubberHen
on Aug 13, 2003 -
9 comments
Saving the Net isn't just really about saving the net: the article is a great point of confluence on the issues of Intellectual Property, Property and Success as American values, as well as the future of the Internet as a true commons. Especially interesting is the observation that Presidential candidate Howard Dean's campaign contribution lead – raised via the Internet – is owed to a huge number of small donations, not to a small number of large special interests. If he's being bought, it's by his voters."
[via Slashdot]
posted by weston
on Jul 23, 2003 -
9 comments
With
the wee hubbub that's going on at the moment in our government, it might be nice to take a step back and look at what this means for us Internet users (and more specifically, bloggers). When I pondered this for a moment, my mind drifted to that
briefly bearded granola and silicon presidential hopeful of
times long forgotten. Well,
Al Gore may have
invented the Internet (or, as he put it, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"), but it is
this man who has truly
embraced the medium.
The greatest difference between this man and the cowboy currently shootin' from the hip in the Oval Office isn't about
taxes. It's not about
health care. And, yes, I contend it's not even about
women's rights. The greatest difference between the
Son of Bush and
the Dean isn't about left or right or conservative or liberal. It's all about
the flow of information.
[More inside]
posted by Hammerikaner
on Jun 14, 2003 -
9 comments
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act is being spearheaded by Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. He wants to prohibit the sale of any device that can play, copy or electronically transmit one or more categories of media unless special protection technologies are incorporated. Anyone intentionally violating the CBDTPA would be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including prison terms. Welcome to the 21st century.
posted by Hackworth
on Mar 22, 2002 -
18 comments
Another day, another piece of
unconstitutional net-censorship legislation in Congress. And this time it's authored by your pal and mine, John "Watch Out for Charlies!" McCain. Perhaps we should start a deadpool for all these bills, giving out some cash to whoever guesses the dates on which the courts throw them out?
posted by aaron
on Jun 27, 2000 -
4 comments
