Cartoon: Tom Janssen, The Netherlands

Dutch cartoonist Tom Janssen uses a familiar emoticon to show how Facebook (the company) is probably feeling about the upcoming IPO.

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A lot of investors will soon be scrambling to pick up some shares.

The social media giant has hundreds of millions of users around the globe.

But for our Geo Quiz we are looking for Facebook’s fastest growing markets.

In other words, we want to know which countries are experiencing an explosive growth of Facebook users?

Brazil and India are the answers to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Zeynep Tufekci, professor at the University of North Carolina. Tufekci teaches the social impacts of technology at the University.

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Most of these words (for the time being) originate in English, and migrate to other languages. Some languages go with two words: their adaptation of the English word, and something made up in their own language. Chinese, for example, has a couple of ways of expressing email: 伊 妹儿 (yimeir, which sounds a bits like email) and 电子 邮 件 (dianzi youjian: electronic mail, often shortened to 电邮: dianyou).

When it comes to naming the as yet unnamed, social networking sites are fantastically helpful. My colleague at The Big Show, Jonathan Dyer, used Facebook to great effect when he posted this request:

“Is there a word for someone you have never met yet you share dozens of friends in common and they like or comment on just about everything your FB friends post? If not, will someone invent one so that I know how to refer to <name withheld> when/if I ever meet him?”

Here’s what he got back:

Perifriends

Pre-friend

Viral acquaintance

Virtual friend potential or possible electronic frenemy

Franger

E-quaintance

Strend

Friends once removed

Pseudofriends

Digifriends

Half-lifes

Visiblings

Friendeavours

Friendvilles

Friends-once-removed

Second-friends

Secondhands

Seconnections

The Uninvited

Friendlings

2nd-degreers

Beyonders

Outsidekicks

Plus-twos

Members of my unnetwork

Twoodles

Stalkwards

Collabores

Commentals

Michele Bachmann

Facebrat

Jonathan’s favorite, though, was Facequaintance.

Also in the pod this week:

• The Iran-based translator of Firoozeh Dumas’ “Funny in Farsi” has vanished, probably arrested. (Check out an earlier segment on Dumas in a Persian-themed podcast.)

• Debunking myths about the Chinese language and things Chinese leaders are believed to have said.

• Multilingual Angolan singer Lulendo.

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1. Where did Ghonim physically do his admin work on his Facebook page?
As a Google executive, he lived in Dubai. But as an activist, he split his time between Dubai and Cairo. And wherever he was, that’s where he’d discretely take care of admin on the Facebook page that initially made the appeal to Egyptians to turn out at Tahrir Square.

2. Did Google mind Ghonim’s activism?
In the lead-up to Tahrir Square, Google provided Ghonim a lot of wiggle room to do his job with the company and attend to his activism in Egypt. So did his wife, Ilka.

3. Where was Ghonim during the protests?
When the protests began on January 25, 2011, Ghonim was in Cairo, with the crowds at Tahrir Square. Two days later he was arrested, and was in custody for 11 days. When he got out, “I felt like I was captured for eleven years.” Everything obviously had changed.

I asked Ghonim what happened while he was in custody. The first few days he was interrogated by Egyptian security. The interrogators were determined to catch him lying. But he also faced grave misunderstandings on the part of the interrogators, such as their belief that Google and the CIA were working together. That still makes Ghonim laugh, despite his ominous situation in detention. Here’s Wael Ghonim commenting on that.

Many city dwellers have the habit of checking the traffic report before getting in their cars to go somewhere. In northeastern Mexico, some people check their local Twitter hashtags to avoid shootouts.

A shootout in the border city of Matamoros was one of the multiple attacks in four cities on September 27, 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas. Local media made no mention of the violence.

Journalists in some areas are often under severe pressure from the drug cartels not to report the violence. Some government officials also prefer that the media stay silent so as to avoid bad publicity.

The recent gunfights and grenade attacks in Tamaulipas were, however, documented in real time on Twitter using city-specific hash tags.

A Tamaulipas resident who asked to be identied only with his Twitter handle, @MrCruzStar, said the purpose behind these real time reports is to minimize panic by providing information to residents about which parts of the city to avoid. He said timely alerts also allow people to notify relatives who may be on the streets to get out of harm’s way.

It is the kind of information Tamaulipas residents don’t have access to via traditional outlets. Media in the northeastern border state is likely the most censored in all of Mexico. When the split between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas, erupted in all-out street battles between rival bands in early 2010, authorities in Tamaulipas dismissed reports on social media sites as “panic” and “collective psychosis”.

@MrCruzStar said when the government began to deny the situation on-the-ground, people started posting video, photo and audio evidence online. That, he said, is when the local government began to acknowledge acts of violence.

A similar situation exists in other parts of Mexico like the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

Gilberto Martinez Vera opened a Twitter account in May in order to keep up with security risk reports using the “verfollow” hash tag, which covers the port city of Veracruz. He said he recalls signing in once on his phone after he came out of a movie theater with this family and hailed a taxi. When he saw news of a shooting – as his taxi driver headed for the area – he asked the driver to change course.

Martinez Vera and another social media user, Maria Bravo Pagola, were arrested in late August, for spreading unconfirmed information online about an attack on local schools. Both were charged with terrorism and sabotage.
“When they took me before the judge and I saw the paper, it really scared me,” Vera said. “I thought ‘My God; thirty years for 140 letters! It’s not possible’. It was just too severe, excessive and unfair.”

Veracruz authorities say the information they put on Twitter, which turned out to be a rumor – reportedly caused more than 20 car crashes as parents rushed to pick up their kids from schools. Both of the so-called “Twitter terrorists” say they were only repeating information that had already circulated by phone and in the streets.

As the pair sat in jail, Veracruz lawmakers modified the state’s penal code to make spreading unverified information via social media a criminal offense.

During the floor debate, state representative Karime Aguilera spoke in favor of the bill saying penalties are needed to punish those who damage society by causing alarm, panic, and the unnecessary movement of people and resources.

False information spread online deemed to have caused a disturbance of the peace and provoked damage is now punishable in Veracruz with up to 4 years in jail and a fine equal to more than $4,000.

The two Twitter users were released the same day state lawmakers passed the so-called “Anti-Rumor” law. At least two other Mexican states are reportedly considering similar legislation. While he no longer faces terrorism charges, Gilberto Martinez Vera says the new law is a restriction on free expression.

“I recognize that it’s wrong for someone to act with the intent to cause harm, but that’s not what we did at all,” Vera said. “The #VerFollow hash tag wouldn’t even be necessary if the government would give information or alerts about which areas to avoid due to security issues. There are ways for them to let people know.”

Hours after legislators passed the “anti-rumor” law, gunmen dumped 35 bodies of murder victims near an underpass in a commercial district of Veracruz during rush hour traffic. The news, along with photographic evidence, was first reported on Twitter by local residents using the #Verfollow hashtag.

While criminal violence, media silence, and possible legal penalities can make social media users Iin Mexico feel trapped in a catch-22, the situation does have an unexpected benefit.

Tamaulipas blogger and Twitter user Mr. Cruz Star says the group experience of people looking after each other’s safety has created a sense of civic awareness and community. It’s a sense he hopes will one day be reflected not just online, but in real life as well.

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Lisa Mullins: There were huge anti-government protests in Syria, today. In fact, they were said to be some of the biggest demonstrations yet, against the Syrian regime. Activists say that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets around the country to demand that President Bashar al-Assad step down. The government responded with violence; Several people were reportedly killed. Some of the protests in Syria are being coordinated by activists using Facebook, and the protestors are also using social media to come up with names for their demonstrations. Today, in fact, the protests were dubbed “Depart Friday.”Wael Tamimi is a Syrian broadcast journalist with the BBC’s Arabic Service. What does “Depart Friday”mean?

Wael Tamimi: Actually, it means a command for Bashar al-Assad- President Assad- that you have to leave, now. The protestors across Syria, as you have just said- hundreds of thousands- They are saying the words -Depart. Leave. Bashar Assad, you have to go. Now.-

Mullins: Can you give us some of the names of previous Friday protests, and whether or not they all carry a message like that?

Tamimi: Most of them were carrying messages. Last Friday, it was “The Friday of the fall of Legitimacy.”It holds very big meaning that the regime has no legitimacy, whatsoever, and the regime has got to go- got to fall. So they name it “The fall of Legitimacy,”and as what happened to day, also, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Syrian cities. The Friday before, the named it “Prominence Alawite,”a rebellion against the French occupation in Syria. You know that President Assad is from the Alawite minority, a sect of Shia. They want to give the message to the rest of the Syrian people that it’s not a Sunni Muslim uprising against minorities, so they wanted to name it by the name of this guy in a clear show of solidarity and national unity. So they are always choosing symbolic names, if you like.

Mullins: So the names are supposed to be symbolic, and they are voted on by anyone who goes to this particular Facebook site, and we’re going to make a link, in fact, on our website, theworld.org. Who’s doing the voting, and how does it work?

Tamimi: In the earlier days or month of the uprising, the name was chosen by the admins of the Syrian Revolution page on Facebook, so the people did not used to vote on the name of the Friday. But actually, they complained to the admin. They told him, “We want a democratic Syria, so you have to give us a chance to vote for the name of the Friday.”And actually, the admins of these pages responded positively, and they started to put names on their pages maybe on Monday and Tuesday of each week, and then let the people vote on it. “Everyone, you can vote for the name. Everyone can vote for it.”Then, the results would be announced on Wednesday evening, and then the name would be adopted on Friday.

Mullins: What does this represent in terms of the larger picture of how social media is still making an impact? To what extent is it?

Tamimi: Actually, I can easily say, without social media networks, there would be no uprising in Syria. The Facebook, Youtube- more than Twitter, actually, because Twitter is not very popular in Syria- Facebook and Youtube are the major factors of the uprising in Syria. Yesterday, there were many protests in Allepo, Syria’s second largest city. It was totally organized and coordinated by the Syrian Revolution page on Facebook. The Syrian regime is preventing any independent media from going inside Syria, and the only way to see the pictures of the protests and the protestors is through Youtub Facebook.

Mullins: Alright. We’re going to make a link, once again, to the activists’ Facebook. It’s in Arabic. We’re going to make a link, anyway at theworld.org. This is where Syrians are voting on the Friday protest names. Wael Tamimi, of the BBC’s Arabic Service in London. Very nice to talk to you.

Tamimi: Thank you.

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Cuneiform script on the Kurkh Monolith depicting Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (9th century B.C.), kept at the British Museum (photo: David Castor)

Why spend so much time on a “dead” language? Because this was the world’s first written language, according to most experts. The cuneiform script — used first for the Sumerian language, and then to write Assyrian and Babylonian — inspired that better-known ancient writing system, hieroglyphics.

The raw material for this dictionary was text written on Mesopotamian clay and stone tablets. There were legal and medical documents, love letters, epic poems, the lot. There is now hope that ancient history will now be rewritten, giving pride of place to Mesopotamian culture. Egpytians, Greeks, Romans: your time is up.

Also in the pod this week, Donald Keene’s love affair with Japanese has culminated with his move from New York to Tokyo at the age of 89. Keene recently stopped teaching at Columbia. His retirement received far more coverage in Japan than in his native United States. He learned Japanese in the 1930s, then honed his skills interrogating captured Japanese troops during World War Two. In New York, he leaves behind him a Japanese cultural center named after him.

The pod features two other items: France prohibits broadcasters from saying Facebook or Twitter on the air. And is the word Canuck offensive? Not to most Canadians, says Vancouverite (and Vancouver Canucks fan) Andrea Crossan. However, the delighfully cheesy song Andrea dredged up to make this point may offend even if Canuck does not.

By Daniel Estrin

The technology wizards behind the social networking site Facebook are finding themselves flung from their cozy offices in Silicon Valley into the thicket of political drama halfway across the world.

The Third Palestinian Intifada is a Facebook page calling for just that – a third Palestinian uprising against Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. The anonymous founders of the page have called for neighboring countries on May 15 to “march towards Palestine.”

Israelis have taken notice.

“Are social media paving way to potential Palestinian revolutions – not directed to their own leaders, but against Israel?” said an Israeli anchorwoman in a recent TV news report on the booming popularity of the Facebook page which attracted more than 340,000 followers.

Some users wrote anti-Israel epithets on the page. Others posted video clips, including one of a little boy reciting world capitals by heart.

“What’s the capital of Israel?” the boy’s father asks from behind the camera.

“There is no Israel,” the boy says. “It’s all Palestine.”

The page caught the attention of Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s minister of public diplomacy.

“When we looked at the page, there were direct calls for violence, incitement against Israel, death to Israel, death to Israelis, things that are unbearable and far beyond the lines of free speech,” Edelstein said.

The Israeli minister sent a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to immediately remove the page from the site.

“Facebook is a wonderful and very positive invention,” Edelstein said. “It’s very important for us to see that Facebook is a place where people argue about things, discuss things. But it shouldn’t be violent.”

Navigating global politics

Facebook’s stance has typically been not to take a stance. But certain photos and comments started disappearing from the Intifada site yesterday, and Tuesday, the Facebook page was gone without a trace.

It’s the latest example of Facebook’s tech geeks trying to figure out how to navigate a completely different terrain: Global politics.

Jillian York, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, said when it comes to defining inappropriate content, Facebook’s judgment can seem spotty.

The site allows pages promoting Holocaust denial, as a matter of free speech, “but on the other hand, Facebook has taken down content that I would consider far less offensive, such as photographs of mothers breastfeeding children. It’s a strange line that Facebook tries to walk on this,” York said.

Facebook has been reticent to publically address its vital role in the recent revolutions sweeping the Arab world. Others, like Twitter and Google, have taken a different approach: When Egyptian authorities shut down the internet, the online behemoths launched phone lines so Egyptians could leave voice messages that were translated into text on Twitter.

Facebook is different for a reason, because if it were “to come out and identify as political tool or advocacy tool, there’s a strong chance that more countries block them,” said York.

China and Vietnam are the only countries left to block Facebook, after Syria unblocked the site about a month ago, York said.

Just because Facebook is staying tight lipped on Middle Eastern events doesn’t mean the site’s not getting involved. At the height of protests, the Tunisian government set up a fake Facebook page. Tunisian users unknowingly revealed their passwords to the government. Soon after, Facebook rolled out an option to ensure Tunisian users safe login – before the service was offered worldwide.

There is, however, one cause Facebook has embraced publically: peace.facebook.com, a site that tracks Facebook friendships divided by conflict. According to the site, in the past 24 hours, there have been 15,604 new friendships between Israelis and Palestinians on Facebook.

If there’s something the social networking giant is willing to take a stand on in the Middle East, it’s getting Israelis and Palestinians to be friends or, at least, Facebook friends.

• A new Facebook page that came up after the original was taken down

His energy is contagious. His dark eyes scan the sea of tables. They stop on me. I nod. He nods back.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, in French, sliding into the booth next to me.

“Not a problem,” I say.

My fixer asks if he wouldn’t mind sitting across from me; she knows that it’s easier for me to interview someone with a microphone face to face. The young man rolls his eyes with annoyance. He stands heavily and plops down on the far bench.

My pizza arrives. I pick up a slice and take a bite. It’s not bad. The crust is thin, the way I like it, but there’s a bit too much cheese and not enough tomato sauce. When you’re from New York no other pizza ever compares.

“Can we get started?” the young man says impatiently. “I have an interview with The New York Times in few minutes.”

“You’re an hour late,” I say, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin. “We all have busy schedules.”

He doesn’t seem to see a need to respond. It’s easy to understand Najib Chaouki’s impatient, slightly arrogant attitude. This Moroccan Facebook activist – one of the architects of Morocco’s “February 20th” democracy movement – has gone from a largely unknown, behind-the-scenes social media surfer to a national hero practically overnight.

All of the foreign press wants to talk to him. His time has become extremely valuable. He seems drunk with it. He leans forward importantly.

“Vas-y,” he says. Let’s go.

I ask him to respond to the often-repeated criticism of Morocco’s youth that they are uninterested in politics.

“Young people are not interested in the official discourse of the regime,” he says, “but we can’t say that young Moroccans are not interested in politics. When young Moroccans don’t go to vote that’s a political statement. We’re very interested in politics, but not in the politics of the state.”

He goes on to tell me how he’s been an activist for years, and how he’s grown accustomed to being followed, harassed and generally monitored by Moroccan intelligence. “State terror,” he says with a smug smile, “you get used to it.”

I ask him if he was surprised that the online movement’s call to protest brought into the street sectors of Moroccan society that normally wouldn’t sit together at the same table: secularists, Muslim activists, Berbers, angry, unemployed, uneducated youths from the
country’s poorest neighborhoods.

“That’s my Morocco!” he says enthusiastically, aggressively. “This isn’t about ideology. All of the different currents of our society came out to demand the same thing of our king: democracy and freedom.” He leans back. His eyes are scanning the café again.

Throughout the rest of the interview Chaouki seems slightly frustrated, as if this is bothersome, beneath him. But when it’s over he leans close. “I am also a journalist, you know. I write for an Arab language website. It is filled with the best scoops. All the
foreign journalists go to it for the latest news.”

“They all read Arabic?” I ask.

“Soon it will be in French,” he says gruffly. He looks slightly embarrassed. “I need a pen.”

“I don’t have one,” I say.

Chaouki points to his briefcase, still resting next to me on my side of the table. He does not ask me to please pass it to him. He doesn’t ask at all. He just points. I hand it across the table.

He writes out the name of the website, his cell phone number and his name on a scrap of paper. He makes sure I can read the spelling of it.

“Thank you,” I say. “I think I’ve got it.”

“No problem. Are we done then? Because I have my rendezvous with the
New York Times.”

“Vas-y,” I say. Chaouki stands and shakes my hand and picks up his bag and moves briskly across the café to another booth, where a western looking man and woman await. I watch him sit down and lean forward as reporter’s pads open.

This young man has reminded of someone but I can’t put my finger on whom. Then it hits me. A young Fidel Castro. Or at least the descriptions I’ve read of his youth in biographies. The fiery, revolutionary spirit, the love of attention, the sense of one’s own importance. It seems to me that Chaouki has the same sort of ego-driven drive required to stomach the nasty business of becoming the leader of a nation. I wonder if that’s what destiny has in store for him.

Then my fixer, who’s been sitting silently throughout the interview, finally speaks.

“You know, I like what he has done,” she says. “But I would never, ever follow that man.”

I know what she’s trying to say. But maybe others will. I double-check the spelling of Najib Chaouki’s name on the scrap of paper. It’s a name I plan to follow.

Avenue Habib Bourguiba is full of people once again. People are back to work and back at the cafes. (Photo: Sabri Ben Achour)

Along the main boulevard in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, stores are open and people drink coffee at sidewalk cafes. Just a few weeks ago this street was a war zone, with tear gas, stones and bullets whirring through the air.

While all that was happening, there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of it on Tunisian television.

“The whole country was burning, people were revolting, and you know what they were showing on TV? A program on obesity, for God’s sake!” said Noura Houisi, a 20-year-old student in Tunis. She said like many there, she had little use for the old Tunisian media.

Hmidah Ben Romdhane, the new director of La Presse, one of Tunisia’s major newspapers, said before Tunisia’s long-term president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, media chiefs there owed their jobs to the dictator.

“When the boss who is faithful to the dictator, the journalist can’t do anything because if you write a piece that seems unpleasant to the boss, you can’t publish it,” Ben Romdhane said. “This situation provoked a kind of self-censorship for the journalists.”

It was this reality that led Ben Romdhane to write an editorial, with the title, “Mea Culpa,” on the front page of La Presse, two weeks after Ben Ali departed. Ben Romdhane apologized to readers for providing “everything but the news,” and promised a press that would be accurate, inclusive, and diverse.

Now, journalists at the paper are chomping at the bit to make that happen, he said. “People find themselves free and they behave as if they were always free, so there is no any kind of self censorship now,” Ben Romdhane said.

Security is still present near government buildings in Tunisia (Photo: Sabri Ben Achour)

Web pages are, ostensibly, no longer blocked — apart from pornography and terrorism related sites. But there are still traces of the old ways. Some have complained about deleted Facebook pages and blocked videos of police brutality against protestors.

Beyond the lingering censorship, self-censorship is a hard habit to break. On a national TV talk show a few weeks after the regime fell, one guest challenged the hosts after, he said, someone back stage told him not to talk about politics.

“This is happening on national TV,” the talk show guest said. “You are scared about your jobs. We have to get used to saying no. You should expose yourselves to losing your jobs like some of us who exposed our chests to bullets,” the man said on the air.

A transition to a free press

Ten years ago, Riadh Ben Fadhel was shot twice in the chest by unidentified gunmen after he wrote a commentary in the newspaper, “Le Monde,” calling for Ben Ali to step down.

Accounts differ on whether Facebook pages were actually shut down, but control over the internet under Ben Ali was severe. (Photo: Sabri Ben Achour)

“Unfortunately, it has led to some excesses. Some journalists have a tendency to say everything. There was such a thirst for liberty, but this thirst has resulted in some unprofessional behavior,” Ben Fadhel said. He pointed to some journalists who repeated and ran stories from Facebook that turned out not to be true.

Ben Fadhel said that Tunisia needs to get back to the basics of professional journalism, and he added that he thought that Tunisia’s journalists are trying to do that. A national council on communication is being set up to give guidance and training, though most are learning by trial and error.

“These excesses will be quickly corrected. It’s better to have excesses with freedom of the press than to have responsibility with no freedom,” Ben Fadhel said. “The ideal is to have freedom and respect for the fundamental principles of the profession.”

As one young man at a Tunis café put it, Tunisia is in the middle of tracing its own destiny. Like a prisoner freed abruptly after years of captivity, it will take a little bit of time to learn to be free.

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr make is easy to share our lives online. But, too much sharing can backfire.

People have been fired, or have seen their marriages fall apart, because of a picture posted online that they’d forgotten about. The European Union is currently working to rewrite its directives on digital privacy. And as part of that, some are suggesting giving users the right to be “forgotten” online.

Author Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger thinks people should be allowed to put an expiration date on their uploaded information.

“I suggested that we have a renaissance of forgetting in the digital age,” says Mayer-Schoenberger, author of the 2009 book “Delete.”

There are programs designed to help. German computer researchers have developed Xpire, a system that allows you to put an expiration date on your photos.

Helping out your digital footprint

“We just realized that more and more people joined social networks, and they tended to put in much information on the very first day, including lots of pictures, that later on became disadvantages for their job search and also for their private life,” says the head of the Xpire project Michael Backes.

Users can use the Xpire software to encrypt photos before they’re uploaded, specifying a date when each picture will expire.

“Once this specific date has been reached,” says Backes, “the key server will just not give out this key anymore. So, it’s like a time protection. Whenever the expiration date has been reached, the key is not accessible anymore, and so no one on Earth can still view this image.”

A similar project, headed by Yoshi Kohno at the University of Washington, is called Vanish. It allows users to set an expiration date for the text they post online. But Kohno admits there are limits. He says, “if someone has access to the data before the timeout, and they want to preserve a copy, they can do so. The simplest example is that you send an email to a friend, and they want to keep a copy forever, they can make a copy of the screen.”

Backes admits that there is currently no ultimate solution to securing online privacy. But he can imagine many different applications for the technology.

“You can use it to let whole web pages expire, whole blogs expire if you want,” says Backes. “Other things that we are currently investigating is full automation, so full integration with the browser, so that whenever you upload to Facebook, you just automatically set an expiration date.”

Currently, Xpire only works this way with the Firefox browser. And it costs about $3.50 per month.

A small price, some might say, for having some incriminating evidence from your college years automatically remove itself from YouTube before a potential employer finds it.

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• German developers release digital eraser software
• Software: Xpire would add expiry dates to potentially embarrassing photos

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