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Twitter & Iran: Yes, Let's Be Real

As always happens, first came the hype, followed by the backlash.

After spending a few days talking about the Twitter revolution, reporters began (rightly) calling shenanigans. The tipping point seemed to be this smart post from Joshua Kucera a few days ago. Twitter as a source of disinformation? Tell me about it, bitches. By today there's a full-on backlash. You can tell the tide has turned because Jack Schafer just rowed his boat out past the break and dropped anchor. 

Okay, so yes, let's be real: Do you really think hundreds of thousands of Iranian protesters have configured proxy servers and other tech-savvy hacks to circumvent the government's blocks on SMS and Websites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in order to organize themselves online? Because that seems about as likely to me as Santa.

On the other hand, Schafer and the new backlash miss an important point: Virtually all of the photos and videos coming out of Iran are surfacing and being disseminated via social media sites.  Whether or not Iranians themselves are using these technologies en masse, the rest of the world is staying informed about what's going on there via citizen journalists, because some people have managed to circumvent the blocks.  Even as the professional class of cameramen have been confined to their hotel rooms, new photographs and videos are emerging on the Internet hourly. And what's more, this information does seem to be spreading internally in Iran as well, perhaps merely printout to printout--but it's getting out.

Several people have pointed out that Iran has had massive demonstrations in the past, notably 1999. This is meant to cast doubt on Twitter's usefulness as an organizing tool. But you know what else Iran had in 1999? A brutal government crackdown.  Ten years later, the Iranian (or any other) government can't pull that off in the dark anymore. It may yet happen, but if it does everyone both inside and outside of the country will know about it. And so while we'll never know, it's certainly possible that Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook--and all the rest of the social media tools that journos have such a love/hate relationship with--may very well be the bulwarks keeping the Evil Men With Guns at bay.

Writing in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum argues that "And if we westerners had to rely on only a single news source to tell us what what going on, I'd still choose the dwindling band of serious outlets that provide real reporting from dangerous (and expensive) places." Word. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd go with a crack squad of BBC reporters over citizen journalists. But what if I don't get to choose? What happens when a nation kicks all those reporters from serious outlets out? Or locks them in hotel rooms? Or simply prevents them from bringing cameras into the street?

I mean, did you watch the news yesterday? Have you read the goddamn paper lately? Those serious outlets are relying largely on footage from amateurs.

Look, I don't know about you, but I have no illusions that changing my icon green or my time zone to Tehran time is going to directly help anyone on the ground in Iran at all. I don't think it's going to confuse Iranian authorities, or bring down the wall, or any other such nonsense. What I do think it accomplishes is to help force a meme, so to speak. It keeps people talking about what's happening in Iran. It's an insignificant act taken alone that in aggregate has quite a bit of power. That's how Twitter works.

So, again, let's be real. Let's have some fucking perspective instead of simply rushing to pimp or tear down the latest conventional wisdom. Get over the organizing tool distraction. (though even if it helps a handful of key people organize, that in itself is something.) But it isn't just about organization.

Thanks to their ability to spread images, videos, and first-person accounts of events on the ground, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and other social media platforms are both keeping us aware of what's happening and perhaps just as if not more importantly stimulating global conversations in ways that articles in the New York Times or Slate don't have the power to do. And the Iranian government is well aware of that.

Twitturglary plagiarism followup: I was robbed. And maybe CNET was too.

After finding The Telegraph published my words last week without correct (and worse, with improper) attribution, I was both pleased and pissed. I was flattered that a big time newspaper like the Telegraph saw fit to print my words, but pretty unhappy that they more or less stole them. (Short summary: I wrote a story for the February issue of Wired. On June 10, several news outlets published a paragraph from that story, slightly altered, and attributed it to another source. The online news site INDenver cites the Telegraph as the source.)

On Friday, I wrote several of the Telegraph's published email addresses, and contacted it via the online submission form. I was hoping I would hear back from Telegraph over the weekend. It bothered me all day on both Saturday and Sunday. When I still had heard nothing by 9 am Pacific Time today, I tried sending messages via Twitter, both completely openly and less so.

The entire incident has me kind of flummoxed. On the one hand, it seems like just a sloppy mistake. But then how would text from one, completely unrelated, story make its way into another published months afterward? And why was it slightly altered? All this was made the more maddening in that it wasn't a bylined story and the Telegraph gives no good way to contact them.

The only thing I've been sure of from the giddyup, when a Wired reader first alerted me by email, is that those words were mine. The text in question was pretty distinctive. It's one of those rare pleasing paragraphs that passed all the way from first draft to publication without changing very much.  I created it. I take pride in it. My words. And words are my livelihood. 

I wanted to see how bastardized it had become. And the answer is quite a bit; I'm disturbed by how many sites already publish my words attributed solely to Israel Hyman--the source of the story. (I reached Hyman, who says he never said anything like that.)

But also there, in the results for "spendy bicycle" and Hyman, I found this story from CNET, dated June 8th, in an article by Elinor Mills on the Twitturglary. And I think it may hold the answer as to what happened.

The real-time aspect to mobile uploads makes this situation even more risky and location-aware technology seems like it would be a great tool for spies of all kinds. In this excellent article in Wired, Mathew Honan records his experience being a social geoapps guinea pig.

"Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town?" he writes. "Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my spendy bicycle, and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map. Hell, with a few clicks you could get driving directions right to my place--and with a few more you could get black gloves and a lock pick delivered to your home."

Hey. That's the exact text in question.

The Telegraph story changes "he writes" to "he said." Otherwise it's the same--critically both omit the same sentence that appears in my original article. In the original, where the he says/he writes appears, my text reads "It wasn't just leaving my wife home alone that concerned me."

It seems very unlikely that, within forty-eight hours, two separate publications would independently edit my text in nearly the same way, four-plus months after it originally appeared. I've tried not to speculate about what happened, but after reading the CNET story it seems pretty obvious.

So this is my hunch: A writer or editor at The Telegraph sees a story on CNET, and copies large parts of it for The Telegraph's own use, but changes it slightly. I can't know what the motivation or intent was, but I'm pretty sure that's the how. CNET may even have a content sharing or syndication arrangement with the Telegraph. (Which wouldn't be surprising, CNET seems to be in every other paper in the world.) But whether it was an accident, intentional copying, or just a grand coincidence the bottom line is the same.

The bottom line is: Someone in an editorial capacity at the Telegraph swiped my words.

A lot of people have asked me: Why don't you just let Wired deal with this? It's a good question. Some of it is just timing. I have talked to them about it, and even received some guidance, but I only discovered it late in the day Friday. Key people who need to be involved were then and still are in New York for the Wired Disruptive by Design conference. In the meantime I'm trying to see what can be done about it before the mistake proliferates across the Web even more. Because it ultimately comes down to wanting to protect my intellectual property.

My words. You put them in somebody else's mouth. In doing that, you stole them from me.

Is This Plagiarism?

An article on the "Twitter burglary" (which, for the record, is a silly story that is likely little more than coincidence) lifts a passage from my WIRED feature "I Am Here" and attributes it as a quote to the victim of the burglary. I initially came across it in the free UK daily Metro, and assumed that was the source, but a little digging has turned up the same story in the UK Telegraph and the INDenver Times (which seems to have simply reprinted the story from the Telegraph).

Here's the passage as it appears in the Metro published on June 10, 2009:

When they finally returned home, they found their Arizona home had been broken into and looted.

Mr Hyman said: "My wife thinks it could be a random thing, but I just have my suspicions.

"Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town?

"Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my spendy bicycle, and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map.

"Hell, with a few clicks you could get driving directions right to my place - and with a few more you could get black gloves and a lock-pick delivered to your home."

This is the passage in the Telegraph, also published June 10, 2009

Israel Hyman posted that he and his wife were "preparing to head out of town," that they had "another 10 hours of driving ahead" and later, that they "made it to Kansas City."

But when Hyman, who has approximately 2,000 followers on Twitter, came home, he found that someone had broken into his house.

Thousands of dollars worth of video equipment, which he used for his video business, IzzyVideo.com, had been stolen.

"My wife thinks it could be a random thing, but I just have my suspicions," he said. "They didn't take any of our normal consumer electronics.

"Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town? Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my spendy bicycle, and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map.

"Hell, with a few clicks you could get driving directions right to my place--and with a few more you could get black gloves and a lock pick delivered to your home."

And here's the passage as it originally appeared in my story published January 19, 2009:

The trouble started right away. While my wife and I were sipping stouts at our neighborhood pub in San Francisco (37.770401 °N, 122.445154 °W), I casually mentioned my plan. Her eyes narrowed. "You're not going to announce to everyone that you're leaving town without me, are you? A lot of weirdos follow you online."

Sorry, weirdos—I love you, but she has a point. Because of my work, many people—most of them strangers—track my various Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, and blog feeds. And it's true; I was going to be gone for a week on business. Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town? It wasn't just leaving my wife home alone that concerned me. Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my spendy bicycle, and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map. Hell, with a few clicks you could get driving directions right to my place—and with a few more you could get black gloves and a lock pick delivered to your home.

Note one sentence is (intentionally?) omitted in the story as it appears in the Metro and Telegraph, but that they are otherwise identical. I'm not quite ready to call it plagiarism, but whatever the explanation, it's not cool.

(Also: big thanks to Greg F. who emailed me to let me know about this.)

UPDATED IN COMMENTS 

The Double Dipsea

Dispea race marker, originally uploaded by Mat Honan.

I've got the Double Dipsea coming up on June 27, so I decided to go give the course a run-through yesterday. It was gorgeous, and an amazing experience to run from Mill Valley, up Mt Tam, down to Muir Woods, back up Mt. Tam, out to Stinson Beach, and then back again. But I also seriously underestimated how tough this was going to be. Yesterday's was a little more than 4600 feet of climbing, and I did not even run the entire route. Last night I felt brutalized. This was largely due to all the downhill running. The uphill is exhausting, but *descending* 4600 feet--much of it quite steep--takes a real toll on your joints. My ankles, knees, and back were all seriously achey last night. My IT band was flared up and unhappy as well.

It's gonna be a tough race.