Sunday Times’ "Facebook racist" pic 3yrs old
August 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
On Sunday the Sunday Times – under the heading “Wanted: Facebook racist” – led with a story about a picture of a white man posing “over the apparently lifeless body of a black child – like a hunter celebrating his kill.” It said that the “undated picture”, which it published prominently on its front page, ”is on the social networking site in the profile of a user called ‘Eugene Terrorblanche’” and that “While it is not known if the photograph is genuine or has been manipulated, a child protection charity has expressed concern for the well being of the youngster.”
The newspaper had sent a link of the picture to the Hawks unit of the South African Police Service and they had immediately launched an investigation. “The search is now on for the person or persons responsible for the picture, for whoever created the user profile and for those who have seen the photograph but failed to report it.”
Although the Sunday Times’ did not date the picture or establish whether it was posed, digitally created or real, its report was picked up by AFP which sent the story around the world.
The picture, seemingly documenting, at the very least, the degradation of a black child by a white man, provoked a Tsunami of fury and outrage. DA leader, Helen Zille, released a statement calling for “all South Africans to assist in finding the originators of this picture so that the law can take its course.”
At about the point where this tidal wave was peaking Mandy Wiener, the Eye Witness News reporter and author of Killing Kebble, commented on Twitter that she was ” surprised by Sunday Times lead story re Facebook racism. I did the story for EWN several years ago it was well known then.”
In a follow up message she said that in May 2008 “EWN exposed the picture which is on the front page of the SunTimes on a FB group called ‘Ek laaik nie ‘n houtkop nie so what’.” In answer to a query as to whether the man with the rifle was ever tracked down she added: “I tried at the time and seem to recall it was a hoax.”
The story on the racist Facebook group – established by a few students at the University of the North West – was extensively reported on in the press in early October 2008. A Sapa report on October 6 2008 stated:
“The North West University (NWU) on Monday expressed shock over the existence of a racist group on Facebook and the involvement of some of its students as officers of the group…It was reported that the group called “ek laaik nie ‘n houtkop nie, sou what” (I do not like a ‘houtkop’, so what?) contains inflammatory comments posted by members. The group apparently also showed a photograph of a young white man holding a gun while posing over the trophy of a young black boy lying on the ground.”
The Facebook group and the photograph were subsequently mentioned in reports and analyses in Beeld, Die Burger, Volksblad, the Independent Group newspapers and the Mail Guardian. (In November 2008 a student linked to the page was expelled from the university, an action which again received extensive coverage in the press.)
The Times, then edited by Ray Hartley, also reported on the incident. In an article (October 7 2008) it stated that the university’s management and the Human Rights Commission had been alerted to the existence of the Facebook page. Adding: “the ‘k-word’ is used frequently page, and a picture of a white man holding a gun while standing over a young black boy on the ground is displayed. The picture has been removed.”
On Twitter on Sunday Hartley – now editor of the Sunday Times – defended the decision to publish this extremely racist image on the front page of his newspaper despite its being at least three years old, saying: “Our story is about an extremely racist image being published on Facebook now, in 2011. We must find the person who published this image.”
Update: Beeld reports that the Hawks are now saying that the police had already investigated the photo in 2007. The man concerned told the police back then that he had paid the child to lie like that.
The Times report October 7 2008:
For more read Chris Vick’s analysis, in the Daily Maverick, of the whole debacle.
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Users to decide winner of Google-Facebook battle
August 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Since the day Google Plus was launched, internet analysts have compared it with its more established social networking peer Facebook, and concluded that both have advantages and disadvantages. But it is the user who would be the ultimate judge on where to stay longer.
Google Plus began with a bang in June, but since then the response has not been along expected lines with its 3.8 million users finding it hard to comprehend what the social networking site is all about. In complete contrast, the 33 million Indian users on Facebook seem to be showing no signs of tiring. In fact, users from India grew by nearly five per cent in the last 30 days, says data from online analytics firm Socialbakers.com.
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To start with, Google Plus had captured the Indian audience with features such as Hangouts that facilitates group video-conferencing for free. “A group of people have even taken Hangouts to the next level by hosting the longest Hangout ever, which is still going on after completing a staggering 30 days (http://hangoutongplus.com/),” says Harsh Jain, founder managing director, Red Digital, an interactive engagement specialist firm.
He says the most preferred activity on Facebook is sharing photos, which forms the site’s primary user engagement tool. “Third party games and applications have also been a preferred activity on Facebook and have helped it to exponentially increase its user base over the last few years.”
Himanshu Bias, a Bharti Vidyapeeth student who maintains an active Facebook account and recently signed on to Google Plus out of curiosity, claims: “The game apps on Facebook are not only much more diverse but more social since you can play in real-time with your friends online. Most games on Google Plus are already on Google browser’s Chrome app store so there’s nothing new to discover.”
But another Google Plus user, Ravi Kumar, a technical architect by profession, begs to differ. “The advantage for me playing games on Google Plus is the ability to rank and compete with other Google Plus users.”
Jain of Red Digital says: “Google Plus users are mostly early adopters and that means that they do not have their social graph in place on the site yet. This makes it impossible for users to use Google Plus as their primary social networking site, thus reducing engagement rates and hours spent on the portal.”
Yet early this month, comScore announced that Google Plus had reached 25 million users within months of its launch, a milestone that Facebook took three years to achieve, while micro-blogging site Twitter touched the numbers in 2.5 years.
The war against Facebook, however, looks like a long drawn one for Google Plus. With over 40 per cent of 100 million internet users in India accessing Facebook, the site has enviable levels of user engagement. On the other hand, Google Plus has launched 16 game titles onto its platform developed by ten different companies.
Facebook rose to prominence last year with Zynga’s Farmville. The game alone boasts of nearly 80 million users from Facebook’s total user base of over 750 million. Shahana Chakraborty, a Pune-based homemaker and an avid Facebook user says: “I was one of the many thousands from India who played Farmville. It was addictive and I logged in several times a day to tend to my virtual farm and collect my reward points.” Chakraborty has now moved on to playing word and card games with her friends and relatives on Facebook, in real time.
In contrast, Google Plus is taking a more controlled approach when it comes to users endorsing an app on their profile pages. In Google Plus, most users’ posts are confined to a certain number of people. Users are allowed to choose which circles they want to develop (like game scores or information sharing) to be known. This is already a disadvantage for game apps that are micro-marketed as opposed to Facebook’s in-every-user’s-friend’s-face approach.
Chaitanya K, a Chennai-based web designer, says: “What I like in Google Plus is that it has kept users away from unwanted notifications and messages that game apps generate on Facebook. You can play games by just pressing the games button.”
But games on Google Plus have not increased the user’s affection for the site. “If I wanted to play games, I would have stuck to Facebook. I deleted my Facebook profile two weeks back as I was bored with the site and its spam updates on my wall,” says Chaitanya, adding that an active Twitter account and a Google Plus profile is all that he can maintain.
With more than 200 million Facebook users playing games on the site, the social networking giant spruced up its gaming experience soon after Google Plus announced games on its platform. The enhancements rolled out by Facebook are aimed at making games accessible to users, as well as making it easier for friends to share game activities.
To begin with, social games such as CityVille, Zoo World, Monster World and Mystery Manor can now be played on a full-screen gaming window. A gaming activity stream alongside the apps, which updates users on games their friends are playing and their progress, was also added. For Facebook, social discovery of apps like games is only driving its growth further. The top 80 games on Facebook have at least one million active users across the globe.
As Rohit Rakshit, another Google Plus user from Ranchi points out: “Google is obviously still tweaking its games and privacy changes are inevitable. Currently, after playing a game on Google, I couldn’t find an easy option to control the information the game provider could access from my profile page.”
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