BC INTERNET
Saved by @Alex1Powell

VOA has “leaked” the code of conduct for the intra Afghan talks. They have shared 1 page on their website but there 3. Offering details here from the 3 pages that I have seen, knowing that this is not in any way sabotaging the peace process that many of us wish to succeed.

 Unofficial translation by me: The honor & Islamic identity of #Afghanistan depends on national unity. Our country will be saved from the direct or indirect interference of others when Islamic justice prevails. The Afghan negotiations that started on 12 Sept 2020 shall be based
on the following four principles:
A. The Doha agreement signed on 29 Feb 2020.
B. The desire of the people of Afghanistan for establishing sustainable peace.
C. The commitment of both sides of the negotiators to establishing sustainable/durable peace.
D. The expressed will of UN resolutions for establishing sustainable peace.

Parties to the negotiations agree on the following principles:

1. The first session will begin with the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran.
2. the other sessions will begin and end with prayer.
3. No subject against the sacred religion of Islam or the national high interests will be considered.
4. The negotiations will take place with the intention and faith of succeeding, with honesty and in good faith by both parties in a good/amicable atmosphere.
5. During the negotiations mutual respect and modesty of words must be maintained.
6. Both sides will listen to speakers carefully and will avoid unnecessary remarks.
7. In case during the negotiations sides don’t reach to a conclusion, a committee should be created from both
sides which can then come up with solutions for further debates.
8. If during the talks issues around interpretation of Sharia arise, both sides will resolve it together.
9. On important issues parties should seek to balance btwn speed & the time needed for further elaborations.
10.Both sides should introduce 3 clerks who will write the entire proceedings of the negotiations.
11.The clerks will take notes from the proceedings & at the end of every session will compare notes. Final reports will be certified by designated delegations chosen by both sides.
12.The head of each delegation is responsible for managing their own teams.
https://t.co/rdifHkeKEz the end of every session both sides will agree on a press release so that confusions are prevented. Both sides must refrain from irresponsible remarks.
14.If parties need consultations, a break will be announced at the request of the party needing consultations
15.There will be five breaks for prayers.
16.The facilitator and host only will have the role of a host and facilitator and will not be allowed to sit in the meetings.
17.Subjects that have been agreed upon, they will not be brought back for discussions but remains as part of the final agreement.
18.Confidentially is key & leaks that can sabotage the process must be prevented (except agreed press releases by both parties).
19.Both sides have a duty to reject any rumors that can create doubts and suspicion (in the process) and or can cause social and political problems.
https://t.co/d2vbyvBsEX who want to enter the premise of talks under disguise must be kept away.
21.All documents of the negotiations will be drafted in Pashto and Dari and are equally acceptable.

In principle a very well crafted code of conduct. Sides have overcome major hurdles. Let peace prevail!

VOA report here.
https://t.co/kq68eX0EMz
Forgive me for all the spelling and grammar errors :(

More from Internet

Amarnath Amarasingam
Amarnath Amarasingam
@AmarAmarasingam
1. (THREAD) So, it seems like the deplatforming debate is once again kicking off, so I thought I would introduce some of the earlier work that was done in this area back when ISIS was buck wild on social media. What have we learned over the last six years might be useful today:

2. One of the earliest studies that discussed the impact of suspensions of ISIS accounts was @intelwire and Morgan's piece: The ISIS Twitter Consensus.

They found that suspensions did have an impact on replies and retweets and overall dissemination.

3. After suspensions, the die-hard supporters dedicated themselves to creating new accounts, but others whittled away: “it appears the pace of account creation has lagged behind the pace of suspensions”

4. On the specific question of how suspensions impact the Twitter network, see this piece by @intelwire and @IntelGirl111, which explores how suspensions impact these groups, including major disruptions to dissemination and decline in follower count:

5. Another study by @Aud_Alexander similarly found that ISIS supporters were finding it hard to “gain traction” after Twitter took a harder stance on the group.
INTERNET , ALL
S
S
@seekingsrishti
Today WhatsApp wished it's users good morning. Accept the updated terms and conditions or say goodbye. (Thread 1/n) It is effective from Feb 8, 2021.


There are seperate hyperlinks for terms and privacy policies. Both these hyperlinks lead to multiple pages of contracts written in a very jargonised language. A few things I noted :

The information 'we' provide to #WhatsApp include our messages. Also WhatsApp claims that it is end to end encrypted BUT,


BUT if your friend / enemy / boyfriend / family or anyone is offline and your message sent to him cannot be delivered #immediately, it will be saved on #WhatsApp servers for 30 days.


Also: When you forward media msg in #WhatsApp that media is stored temporarily in encrypted form on it's servers to aid in more efficient delivery of additional forwards. Tada! (Consider a thousand times before sending any images; news anchors can officially read your chats.)
INTERNET
Advertisement
Elky
Elky
@Elky_Style
Company
Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump
By Twitter Inc.
Friday, 8 January 2021
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter —


we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. 

In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.

Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. 

However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are

not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement. 

The below is a comprehensive analysis of our policy enforcement approach in this case.

Overview

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form
INTERNET
Madhu Menon
Madhu Menon
@madmanweb
The Internet and mobile phones have taken over our lives. But it comes with increasing security concerns. Website data breaches, phishing attacks, and other online scams are commonplace. Here's a thread for regular people on how to increase your security online.
#StaySafeOnline

#1
Go to your Google account settings. Revoke permissions from all the apps you don't use: https://t.co/cMGgSgtRTI

Also check if any app has access to your contacts or - gasp! - your entire email. Strongly reconsider both, especially access to your email.

Giving access to your contacts lets companies spam those people.

Giving access to your email - email organising apps, for instance - renders your online security meaningless. Password resets are often done with email, and if an external entity can access that, game over!

#2
Go to your Twitter account settings and revoke permissions from all the apps you don't use or trust:
https://t.co/lXxCgdnaXH

Online quizzes and such sites often ask for permission to post tweets for you, read your tweets, and even your DMs!.

People click "OK" without reading the fine print.

But imagine the security and privacy risk with having some unknown entity be able to post tweets and read your private DMs just to post the results of what Game of Thrones character you are.
INTERNET
Giovanni Pagano
Giovanni Pagano
@giovanni_pag
What are the implications of using hacked data for research?

A short thread inspired by the fact that, before AWs took it down, #Parler was extensively hacked and user data was leaked.

The #Parler dataset seems crazy interesting for doing research, and my first reaction after the breach was to shre it with other #CompSocSci ppl.

However, I started having second thoughts, so what follows is to organize ideas and have it somewhere I can look back to.

2/n

Generally speaking, as far as the ethics of research goes a good advice would be to handle hacked data with caution.

First of all, there's an issue of quality. Data might be altered or incomplete, and the source cannot be considered accountable (assuming src is anonymous).

3/n

Secondly and more importantly, a researcher using the data would probably be violating users’ consent and acting against the data collector's will.

Finally, users’ privacy is at stake, since researchers could see material that users didn’t agree for other people to see.

4/n

Sharing private information without consent might put people at risk of harm.

This is all the more true in cases such as the #ParlerHack, where the leaked information is of particularly sensitive nature, and there’s a high risk of unintended consequences.

5/n
INTERNET

You May Also Like

Nicolas
Nicolas
@necolas
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.
TECH
Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.


1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.
POLITICS
Advertisement
Formula 1
Formula 1
@F1
After 17 years and more than 300 races, it could be @alo_oficial's last F1 race on Sunday 😭 He's given us a lot over the years... including some superb GIFs!

Here we have a rare example of a GIF you can actually hear. TOMA. 💪


The Spanish Samurai


Never give up. 💪 #GraciasFernando


Winning is everything. #GraciasFernando
SPORT
Adam McKay
Adam McKay
@GhostPanther
1) My Stan Lee story happened when I was in 5th grade. I was visiting NYC with my Dad and had read the address for Marvel in the comics I read constantly. I begged my Dad to take me and to his credit he did. And guess what? It was just an office.

2) We were down in the lobby and I was kind of crushed. I don’t know what I expected, The Thing and the Yancy Street Gang to be sitting around smoking cigars? Anyway, my Dad was taking a beat to figure where we were going next and a guy came up to us.

3) He was wearing a white shirt and tie and said to Dad “Is he disappointed because. The Marvel offices were just offices?” My Dad said yes and then the guy who had gray around his temples and a mustache said “hold on a second” and opened one of those office mailboxes with a key.

4) He then handed me a thick stack of EVERY SINGLE MARVEL COMIC COMING OUT THE NEXT MONTH. “Here you go. Keep reading Marvel comics” he said and then walked off. I left in a daze and about 15 minutes later it hit me “Gray around the temples, mustache... That was Stan Lee!”

5) Later when I wrote on the Ant Man movie I told Kevin Feige the story, the year, look of the guy etc and Kevin said “That’s exactly the kind of thing Stan would do and he would have been there then. That was him.” Rest In Peace Stan Lee and thank you for the comics.
CULTURE
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/Politics thread time.

To me, the most important aspect of the 2018 midterms wasn't even about partisan control, but about democracy and voting rights. That's the real battle.

2/The good news: It's now an issue that everyone's talking about, and that everyone cares about.

3/More good news: Florida's proposition to give felons voting rights won. But it didn't just win - it won with substantial support from Republican voters.

That suggests there is still SOME grassroots support for democracy that transcends

4/Yet more good news: Michigan made it easier to vote. Again, by plebiscite, showing broad support for voting rights as an

5/OK, now the bad news.

We seem to have accepted electoral dysfunction in Florida as a permanent thing. The 2000 election has never really
POLITICS