A Bit More Detail

[T]he most revolutionary service was Tencent's WeChat, released in 2011. At first glance, it looked like just another social network and messaging service. Yet it quickly morphed into something much richer, offering a free video-chat system, a taxi-hailing service, a bill-paying portal and a vast shopping environment. Today it's possible to bank on the system and send money to anyone. Invoking "The Lord of the Rings," some users joke that it's the "one app to rule them all." It now has more than 700 million users, including nearly everyone with internet access in China -- and another 70 million overseas.

Compared to WeChat, Facebook is a desert, with little allure to Chinese users. There aren't any public statistics on how many mainlanders use Facebook, but in my experience they're mostly Chinese who have lived or worked in the West, want to maintain friendships overseas, and have access to the technical means to avoid government blockades. For those without such connections, Facebook's only theoretical appeal is that it provides access to news, posts and videos that are otherwise censored. If and when Facebook is reintroduced, those advantages will disappear -- and so will the most obvious argument for joining.

But Facebook still has one thing going for it, which is surely on Zuckerberg's mind: Technology and social media evolve rapidly in China.

Only two years ago, Sina Weibo was China's biggest and most popular social-media platform. Then, after a government crackdown, it lost its political edge and many of its most popular users, and was left for dead. Even as the eulogies were being written, however, Weibo was reinventing itself. It soon became a platform for live-streaming bloggers and celebrity self-promotion, and it boomed once again, boosted by an astonishing 10 million live broadcasts between April and June of this year -- a 116-fold increase over the previous quarter. Today, Weibo is approaching 300 million users and its most popular live-streamers get multi-million dollar endorsements.

• Bloomberg notes the closure of Poland's frontier with Kaliningrad, looks at how Google is beating out Facebook in helping India get connected to the Internet, notes British arms makers' efforts to diversify beyond Europe and examines the United Kingdom's difficult negotiations to get out of the European Union, looks at the problems of investing in Argentina, looks at the complications of Germany's clean energy policy, observes that the Israeli government gave the schools of ultra-Orthodox Jews the right not to teach math and English, examines the consequences of terrorism on French politics, and examines at length the plight of South Asian migrant workers in the Gulf dependent on their employers.


• Bloomberg View notes Donald Trump's bromance with Putin's Russia, examines Melania Trump's potential immigrant problems, and is critical of Thailand's new anti-democratic constitution.


• CBC looks at how some video stores in Canada are hanging on.


• The Inter Press Service notes that the Olympic Games marks the end of a decade of megaprojects in Brazil.


• MacLean's approves of the eighth and final book in the Harry Potter series.


• The National Post reports on a Ukrainian proposal to transform Chernobyl into a solar farm, and examines an abandoned plan to use nuclear weapons to unleash Alberta's oil sands.


• Open Democracy looks at the relationship between wealth and femicide in India, fears a possible coup in Ukraine, looks at the new relationship between China and Africa, examines the outsized importance of Corbyn to Britain's Labour Party, and looks how Armenia's defeat of Azerbaijan has given its veterans outsized power.


• Universe Today notes proposals for colonizing Mercury, looks at strong support in Hawaii for a new telescope, and examines the progenitor star of SN 1987A.


• Wired emphasizes the importance of nuclear weapons and deterrence for Donald Trump, and looks at how many cities around the world have transformed their rivers.

• The Atlantic notes the import of the assassination of the head of the Taliban.


• The BBC observes Spotify has more revenues, but is still not making money.


• Bloomberg suggests Brexit would embolden central European populists and slow down growth, and looks at Coca Cola's end of production in Venezuela.


• Bloomberg View suggests a new class of educated Chinese professionals will hurt middle-class wages.


• The CBC notes the lifting of the mandatory evacuation order for northern Alberta oil sands camps.


• Daily Xtra looks at the importance of Facebook in spreading knowledge to PrEP.


• Gizmodo notes the proliferation of cephalopods in the world's oceans.


• The Miami Herald describes how desperate Venezuelans are turning to urban gardening.


• The National Post looks at Kevin O'Leary's interest in Canadian politics.


• The Toronto Star reports on the lifting of the American arms sales embargo against Vietnam.


• Wired notes Grindr can still be hacked to identify users' locations.

Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t had the best week.

First, Facebook’s Free Basics platform was effectively banned in India. Then, a high-profile member of Facebook’s board of directors, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, sounded off about the decision to his nearly half-a-million Twitter followers with a stunning comment.

“Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades,” Andreessen wrote. “Why stop now?”

After that, the Internet went nuts.

Andreessen deleted his tweet, apologized, and underscored that he is “100 percent opposed to colonialism” and “100 percent in favor of independence and freedom.” Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, followed up with his own Facebook post to say Andreessen’s comment was “deeply upsetting” to him, and not representative of the way he thinks “at all.”

The kerfuffle elicited a torrent of criticism for Andreessen, but the connection he made—between Facebook’s global expansion and colonialism—is nothing new. Which probably helps explain why Zuckerberg felt the need to step in, and which brings us back to Free Basics. The platform, billed by Facebook as a way to help people connect to the Internet for the first time, offers a stripped-down version of the mobile web that people can use without it counting toward their data-usage limit.

The authorities in Kazakstan have unblocked the LiveJournal blogging website, four years after shutting down access to it.

A government statement on November 11 said the decision was taken after unlawful material – religious and extremist propaganda and information about weapons – were deleted.

[. . .]

Commentators suspect that LiveJournal incurred anger because opposition leaders based abroad used it as a platform for attacking the government. One was Rahat Aliev, former son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who went into exile after being prosecuted, and proceeded to publish allegations of wrongdoing by Kazakstan’s leaders.

Aliev is no longer a threat to the government – he committed suicide in a Vienna prison in February 2015.

In all likelihood, LiveJournal is no longer relevant since most of its users have shifted to Facebook.

Pavel Bannikov, a Russian-language poet who used to use LiveJournal, recalls how influential it used to be – literary journals would find new content on the site and approach writers to seek permission to print their poetry.

“It’s good that LiveJournal has reopened. But in Kazakstan, LiveJournal won’t become what it was in 2007, when everyone used it as a news source,” Bannikov added. "I’ve noticed that in the last three years, virtually all the active, engaging users – the ones you’d like to read and hear their views – have gone over to Facebook.”

• blogTO reports on five of the smallest libraries in Toronto. Two of them are near me.


• James Bow notes the odd recent Facebook slowdowns.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly notes there is no such thing as a low-skilled job.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes three recently-discovered hot Jupiters.


• The Dragon's Tales notes geological evidence of ancient atmospheric oxygen in rocks 3.2 billion years ago and reports on the discovery of water ice on Pluto.


• Geocurrents notes the lack of support for Catalonian separatism in Occitan-speaking Val d'Aran.


• Joe. My. God. notes that the kissing marine couple has married.


• Language Log celebrated Korea's Hangul Day yesterday.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes toxic masculinity in team sports.


• The Planetary Society Blog considers the role of telerobotics in space exploration.


• Towleroad notes the definitive arrival of marriage equality in Ireland.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia's Syria gambit is failing, with implications for tensions among Russia's Muslims, and notes Crimean Tatar institutions' issues with the Russian state.

• Claus Vistesen of Alpha Sources notes that though the stock market might be peaking, we don't know when.


• blogTO warns that Toronto might consider a bid for the 2024 Olympics.


• James Bow thinks about Ex Machina.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly looks forward to her impending visit to Maine.


• Centauri Dreams features an essay by Michael A.G. Michaud looking at modern SETI.


• Crooked Timber finds that even the style of the New York intellectuals of the mid-20th century is lacking.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes that a search for superjovians around two nearby brown dwarfs has failed.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the flowing nitrogen ice of Pluto.


• Geocurrents compares Chile's Aysén region to the Pacific Northwest.


• Joe. My. God. shares the new Janet Jackson single, "No Sleeep".


• Language Log looks at misleading similarities between Chinese and Japanese words as written.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that the low-wage southern economy dates back to slavery.


• Marginal Revolution is critical of rent control in Stockholm and observes the negative long-term consequences of serfdom in the former Russian Empire.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes how Jamaica is tearing down illegal electrical connections.


• Savage Minds considers death in the era of Facebook.


• Towleroad looks at how the Taipei city government is petitioning the Taiwanese high court to institute same-sex marriage.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues restrictive zoning hurts the poor.


• Window on Eurasia looks at how Tatarstan bargains with Moscow, looks at Crimean deprivation and quiet resistance, considers Kazakh immigration to Kazakhstan, and argues Russian nationalist radicals might undermine Russia itself.

Facebook requires its users to use a profile name that’s the same as the name they use in real life, but some indigenous people say the social network is rejecting their real names because they don’t conform to its standards.

Earlier this month, Dana Lone Hill, a member of the Lakota people living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, tried to log in to her Facebook account. She was met with an error message asking her to change her name.

The message read: “It looks like the name on your Facebook account may not be your authentic name.”

Lone Hill's name is one she shares with her mother. Facebook required her to send in three pieces of identification to prove that her real name is real. Eventually, the social network reactivated her account.

Lone Hill wrote about her experience on the Last Real Indians blog, and she found she wasn’t the only aboriginal person to who had run afoul of Facebook’s “real name” policy.

In October, a number of people — with names like Lance Browneyes and Shane Creepingbear — had had their accounts suspended because of their names.

The 90s are back.

They’re back in fashion, they’re back in music, and they are most certainly back in technology.

In a way this makes sense; the top end of the Millennial generation was just entering high school in the 90s, and now they’re into the workplace and armed with spending power, so it’s easy to appeal directly to their nostalgia. Look, here’s Salt-n-Pepa shilling for Geico!

But um, hey everybody: the 90s were a decade of excess and mistakes and excessive mistakes. The rollicking good times of the 90s ended with the dot-com collapse of the early 2000s, the memories of which continue to shape the industry today.

So it's worth noting that the broad outlines of tech in 2015 look surprisingly like the late 90s. The major players are set up the same, the fights are the same, and the mistakes will almost certainly be the same. It's going to be pretty fun until it all blows up, actually — some of these ancient dreams might finally come true.

2015 will be defined by the Revenge of 90s Internet: media and tech giants flirting with each other, dominant players throwing their weight around, and portals, portals everywhere. And CES, starting this week, will offer a big glimpse into what all that 90s dark lipstick looks like on a modern face.

• blogTO notes that television comedian John Oliver called for Doug Ford's election, to amuse the rest of the world.


• Centauri Dreams considers philosophical considerations to SETI.


• The Dragon's Tales links to a paper simulating the tides and currents of the seas of Titan.


• Eastern Approaches notes the generally pro-European results of the Ukrainian general election.


• Far Outliers' Joel notes that dozens of Hawaiians were actively involved as combatants in the US Civil War.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that upstate New York is not like Alabama.


• Steve Munro offers new mayor John Tory friendly advice on transit in Toronto.


• pollotenchegg maps the results of the Ukrainian elections.


• Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc touches upon the many issues not raised in the Toronto elections juyst concluded.


• Torontoist notes the worrying ascent of anti-Muslim sentiment in Toronto's elections.


• Towleroad looks at homophobia and violence in Serbia and Macedonia.


• The Volokh Conspiracy considers if Facebook is a secure enough means of communication for a Facebook message to be legally adequate to let a potential father know of a partner's pregnancy.