Money Troubles Take Personal Toll in Greece

ATHENS — His face contorted with anguish, Anargyros D. recounted how he had lost everything in the aftermath of the Greek economic collapse — the food-processing factory founded by his father 30 years ago, his house, his car, his Rolex, his pride and now, he said, his will to live.

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Despite Restrictions, Microblogs Catch on in China

Nelson Ching/Bloomberg NewsCharles Chao’s company, Sina, has come to dominate microblogging in China with Sina Weibo.

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“On Weibo, I’m mostly interested in current events, what my friends are saying, and some information related to health and psychology,” Mr. Wang said. “Every day I log in over five times, using either my computer or mobile phone. And I stay on for two or three hours.”

Mr. Wang and Weibo’s 140 million other registered users are one big reason American Internet companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube want to get into China. It has the world’s biggest Internet population, about 457 million users, and they are mostly young people who spend long periods engaged in social networking, online games and electronic commerce.

But for now, they cannot enter China. Although there are no regulations that prevent American companies from operating here, the three popular American Web sites have been blocked in China for several years. Analysts say this is probably because the Chinese government wants to prevent the services from distributing uncensored information.

Meanwhile, the Chinese social networking companies are booming. Two weeks ago, shares of the Chinese social networking site Renren soared after a dazzling initial public offering on Wall Street that, for a time, gave the start-up a market value of close to $7 billion.

But Renren, despite being called China’s Facebook, is not even the leader of this country’s hottest Internet craze. That company is Sina.com, the 13-year-old online portal that has reinvented itself with Sina Weibo. Shares of Sina listed on the Nasdaq exchange have jumped about 250 percent during the last year, and some analysts estimate that the company’s microblog unit could alone be worth $5 billion.

It’s all about traffic. In the two years since microblog services became widely available in China, they have attracted more than 220 million registered users.

Now, as microblogs have a powerful effect on public discourse and advertisers start to create campaigns aimed at microblog users, other Chinese Internet companies are scrambling to develop and promote their own microblog services.

“This is a big, big category,” said Zhao Chunming, an Internet analyst at the Susquehanna International Group. “The news media and celebrities are tweeting; so are C.E.O.’s. This is changing the way people receive their news and information.”

What is striking is that microblog services are booming here despite a recent Chinese government crackdown on social networking sites in the wake of democracy demonstrations in North Africa and the Middle East. The restrictions, which typically involve deleting or censoring politically charged content, seem to be aimed at preventing microblogs and other sites from being used to foster dissent or organize antigovernment protests.

Still, young Internet users in China seem unfazed by the restrictions, in part because microblog services are a compelling alternative to this country’s more heavily censored state-run media and, perhaps more important, because microblogs are a powerful tool for self-expression.

“There are just so many talkative people on Weibo,” said Guobin Yang, an associate professor at Barnard College in New York and the author of “The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online.” He said, “They talk about anything, from Marx and McLuhan to personal relationships and love affairs. So the real success of Weibo is that it offers a place for this kind of chitchat.”

American companies have not given up. Groupon, the online coupon giant, recently formed an alliance with Tencent, China’s biggest Internet company. And last December, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, visited Beijing and toured the offices of Sina and Baidu, China’s huge online search engine.

Facebook has dismissed rumors that it plans to enter China by teaming up with Baidu. Company executives have said only that they are exploring a way to enter China.

Analysts warn that the growth of Chinese microblogs could be curtailed if the government decided they have become too powerful a force in public opinion. But for the time being, microblog services are complying with censors and winning over new users, while social networking sites, like Renren, are struggling to keep pace, according to iResearch, an analytics firm based in Shanghai.

1 2 Next Page »A version of this article appeared in print on May 16, 2011, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Despite Restrictions, Twitterish Microblogs Are Booming in China.Sign In to E-MailPrint Single Page Reprints

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Britain Set to Announce Ambitious Environmental Steps

BRUSSELS — Britain is poised to announce some of the world’s most ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — a striking example of a government committing to big environmental initiatives while also pursuing austerity measures.

Chris Huhne, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, is expected to release a statement on Tuesday that the British government will set in law a goal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions about 50 percent by 2025.

That reduction, based on 1990 levels, would be far deeper than theEuropean Union’s goal of cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020, and it would mean that Britain would make faster emissions cuts than other similar size countries, including Germany. The goal could require households to spend on new energy-saving devices for the home. It could also revive stalled government support for large projects, like those that capture power from tides and that bury carbon dioxide emissions.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change declined to comment before a formal announcement.

Governments in Britain and North America have broadly retreated from far-reaching pledges since the financial crisis began two years ago.

Since then, many leaders have seen sharply reduced public spending as incompatible with wholesale changes to their countries’ energy production and consumption.

That makes the pending decision in Britain, where the government is making the deepest spending cuts in decades to trim its debt load, all the more remarkable.

The expected decision has already lifted optimism among scientists and policy makers that fighting climate change remains viable even as economies continue to show, at best, feeble growth.

“This is an outstanding example of the kind of action by developed-world countries that’s needed to bring climate change under control,” said Bert Metz, an adviser to the European Climate Foundation, a group in Brussels that advocates lower emissions, and a former member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It’s also really going to push the British economy in the direction of growth.”

Some British ministers had been wary of putting too much strain on households and companies that were already facing painful austerity measures. Manufacturers warned over the weekend that the measures would damage competitiveness and growth.

Environmental groups broadly welcomed the decision but had some reservations.

Jason Anderson, the head of European climate and energy policy at WWF, the conservation group, said that the British government appeared to have resisted making greater near-term emissions reductions, at least until other European Union countries also made such cuts. Mr. Anderson said that pursuing deeper near-term cuts would have sent a more powerful signal to the European Union about acting early, while helping ensure Britain could successfully reach the goal for 2025.

A primary reason the government is moving ahead with ambitious goals even in troubled economic times is the Climate Change Act, which took effect in 2008. The act requires Britain to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 and requires a series of interim goals.

Britain is also moving ahead because an independent advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, already made recommendations on how the country can best achieve its targets under the act. The recommendations were hard to ignore for Prime Minister David Cameron, who has pledged that his government would be the “greenest ever.”

Even so, the government had chosen a goal that the Committee on Climate Change described as the minimum necessary to stay on track to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050, Mr. Anderson said.

The proposed move also shows a commitment by Britain to diversify its economy and reduce its reliance on financial services after the economic crisis, and to develop a new focus on manufacturing in sectors — like wind and power grids — that show increasing promise.

“The current mood among many people in the U.K. government is, don’t get left behind in the race to develop new industries,” said Tom Burke, a founding director of E3G, an environmental consulting firm, and a visiting professor at Imperial College London.

Several big questions about the pledge remain, including how much of the cuts will come from refreshing Britain’s fleet of nuclear reactors, and how much will come from burning more natural gas and capturing some of those emissions before they reach the atmosphere.

Mr. Burke said he expected the government to continue its push for nuclear power as part of a low-carbon energy mix despite the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which knocked out reactors and led to radioactive leaks.

But Mr. Burke said that over time, natural gas would probably be a better optiwon than investing in reactors with their long history of delays, cost overruns and waste disposal problems.

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E.U. Presses Ahead With Bailout Talks Despite I.M.F. Chief's Absence

BRUSSELS — Despite the absence of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, European finance ministers on Monday approved a bailout package for Portugal and debated new aid for debt-strapped Greece.

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YouTube Spits In The Face Of Its Users By Refusing To Address Their False Flagging Problem

So today's post is by my guest blogger Devon Brown, who run into quite a serious problem with his YouTube account:

By: Devon Brown
http://RenegadeSuccess.com/youtube-false-flagging

Go to Google. Do a search for “YouTube False Flagging” or “YouTube False Flagging Problem”. It won’t take you long to find scores of individuals who have been affected by this issue.

So what is False Flagging? While the original meaning has more to do with deceiving an individual or group into believing something that is untrue so as to carry out an agenda (usually in a military or political context); False Flagging has a slightly different meaning with regard to the world of YouTube.

You see, YouTube is a community of users who post and share videos. As with any community (especially communities of the Social Media/Web 2.0 variety), there are inherent rules put in place to serve the best interest of the community. YouTube refers to these rules as “Community Guidelines”. Examples of community guidelines may include things like: no pornography, no hate speech, no commenting excessively on the videos of others for the sheer purpose of advertising your webpage, no spamming, no videos making threats, no predatory behavior/bullying, etc…

When one community member sees another community member who is breaking these rules (or, if a YouTube admin feels like the rules have been broken) then the video that has committed the “crime” is flagged. Once your video has been flagged you receive a warning. If it happens again (within a 6 month period of time) you’re banned from putting up videos for a period of time (usually 2 weeks). If it happens a third time, your account gets shut down.

At face value, this is a sound idea designed to help contribute to the overall wellbeing of the community. But what happens when a video is flagged that has NOT broken the rules of the community? This is what is known as False Flagging and it happens all the time.

Let me say that again. FALSE FLAGGING is when a video has NOT broken any rules, but still gets flagged; and the owner of the video gets a strike against their account, even though they’ve done nothing wrong. This might happen because some moron doesn’t like your video so they decided to flag it (this happens a lot with religious/political videos that people just don’t agree with). Or, maybe it’s your competition and they’re going around flagging all of the videos that compete with their video. Or maybe someone falsely accuses you of copyright infringement under what’s known as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) like this douche-bag did: http://bit.ly/lKcsJo , or maybe you just caught someone on a bad day and your video was flagged just for the sake of being flagged. Whatever the reason, the FACT is that you did nothing wrong, but your video got flagged and now your account has a strike against it.

And guess what…there’s pretty much NOTHING you can do about it!

Now, you may not think this is such a big deal, but for people like me who have spent YEARSbuilding a channel that has literally hundreds of videos, hundreds of subscribers, thousands of friends, and tens of thousands of views…it represents YEARS of effort being wiped away with the push of a button.

But I’m not the only one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObsvzgKUiy4
http://bit.ly/iXIF8V (check out the discussions on the right hand side)
http://bit.ly/mf5l81
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW1xmEr3Ii4
http://bit.ly/lKcsJo

My problem with the whole false flagging thing is not only with the idiots who go around false flagging people’s videos – although they DO deserve blame, the fact of the matter is that jerks will be jerks and there are WAY too many of them to catch – my problem is also with YouTube for not providing a way to allow legitimate rebuttals/appeals of false flagging AND with not penalizing individuals who are caught false flagging so as to dissuade them from doing it anymore.

(Q.) “But Devon, can’t you just contact YouTube and ask them why the video was flagged?”
(A.) Nope…I mean, you can try…but they will NOT talk to you. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, give them a ring and see if you get through. Here’s YouTube’s phone number:
1-650-253-0000 (remember, they’re owned by Google so that’s how they’ll answer the phone)

(Q.) “So you’re telling me that I can’t appeal the flagging?”
(A.) Go ahead, give it a shot submit an appeal after they’ve flagged you and see if you get a response

(Q.) “What about emailing customer support and explaining to them that your video is clearly NOT in conflict with their community guidelines?”
(A.) Go ahead e-mail them and see what kind of response you get
support@youtube.com
copyright@youtube.com
web@youtube.com

(A.) And while you’re at it you can go here and ask them about it on their forum http://bit.ly/iroGd2

(A.) And then you can go here and try to submit a support ticket
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=tou
After you’ve exhausted yourself trying to figure out why YouTube refuses to help the very people who make their site what it is; you may then ask yourself… “but what about the really elite people who have been on YouTube for years and have a bazillion views, friends, and subscribers”?

Well, there’s no course of action for them either….

How do I know? Simple, because I’m one of them. And while I don’t have a “bazillion” videos views; my 200+ videos, 700+ subscribers, 1,400+ friends, and 100,000+ video views are good enough to make my channel amongst the top 20% of YouTube channels and good enough for YouTube to give me “partner” status (which allows me to upload videos longer than 15 minutes and place advertisements on my videos if I want to)

And over the past 2 months my channel (http://YouTube.com/renegadesuccess ) has received 2 different flags. One more, and all of the work I’ve put into my channel since 2009 gets wiped out!

Why have my videos been flagged? I don’t know…no one will tell me. Here’s how my conversation went when I called YouTube to discuss the matter

Me: Hi, my name is Devon Brown and I need to talk with someone in your YouTube department regarding my video being falsely flagged

YT Chick: Sir, there’s no one here that you can talk to, but I can direct you to the website that shows our community guidelines

Me: Look lady, I’ve already been to your site and that’s the problem, its NO HELP. Can someonePLEASE just talk to me about why videos that I put up over a year ago are now magically getting in trouble?

YT Chick: Sir, there’s no one here that you can talk to, but I can direct you to the website that shows our community guidelines

Me: Woman, are you on drugs? You’re not listening to me. Screw your website and let me talk to a human being!!

YT Chick: Sir, there’s no one here that you can talk to, but I can direct you to the website that shows our community guidelines

I think you get the idea…

(Q.) “But Devon, you’re one of their “top tier members/partners”… It’s people like you and channels like yours that help get YouTube all of their traffic. Why would they spit in your face like that and not even allow you a means of even ASKING what you could do to fix your videos”

(A.) Heck if I know. But I do know enough about business to know Pareto’s Principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes).
In YouTube’s case, this means that about 20% of the channels (those who have achieved “partner” status) probably account for 80% of their video views; so it’s probably an especially good idea to not mistreat those individuals

(Q.) But Devon, I checked out your YouTube channel and you’re clearly in the “Home Business” industry. Isn’t that industry is bad and full of scammers?

(A.) LOL, did you just paint an entire industry with one broad brush stroke and lump everyone together? That’s like saying “Aren’t all videos put up by liberals simply designed to help the government takeover and destroy capitalism?” Or, “Aren’t all videos by conservatives just designed to crap on Non-Christians and poor people?” Besides, the question is not “Do you like my industry and/or agree with my point of view?” the question is “Does the video meet the community guidelines?” If the answer to the 2nd question is YES, then there is no need for the video to be flagged.

(Q.) But Devon, wouldn’t it just make more sense for YouTube to tell you WHAT they didn’t like about your video so that you could fix it and make sure that you don’t break the rule again?

(A.) Makes sense to me. But why they don’t operate like that is a mystery to pretty much everyone out there who has been false flagged.

My suggestion is simply this: If for some reason a video is flagged (and a strike placed against the video owner’s account) then YouTube should provide it’s users a legitimate way to dispute the malicious false flagging, AND/OR explain to the video owner WHY they were flagged so that they know not to do it again. The funny thing is that if YouTube were to simply say “here’s how to fix it” the VAST majority of us would willingly comply!

But they don’t…

YouTube would rather ignore the problem and hide from their users. As of the time of this writing, I’ve had to make back ups of ALL of my videos and start using Viddler.com to host videos for people to watch when they visit my blog. And while I realize that in the eyes of YouTube/Google; that I’m just a little ant, and that they could care less whether I use their service or not. The fact of the matter is that “little ants” like me are the ones who make up their community; and they owe it to their community of users to at least address an issue when it arises.

What YouTube needs to understand is that when false flagging occurs (and accounts get shut down) it’s not only hurting the owner of the particular video/account that got in trouble, it’s also hurting the thousands of individuals who enjoy watching videos from the person who created that account/channel.

The truth of the matter is that this problem has been going on for years. But it’s one of those problems that no one really pays attention to until it happens to them.

So, what can we do about it?

Well, you can start by going to the YouTube forum and suggesting that they fix the false flagging problem http://bit.ly/iroGd2 . You can also “Like” this facebook fan-page and keep an eye out for false flagging updates: http://on.fb.me/kWVsaj

Next, if you know anyone from YouTube then email/call them and ask them what the deal is regarding their false flagging policy. You can also use the contact information shown earlier in this article to try to contact YouTube and suggest they offer a way for legitimate channel owners to appeal false flags. Lastly, you can take this article (as long as you do NOT edit it and you leave my name/bio/information in tact) and feel free to repost it all over the internet.

A former YouTube insider told me that while he was working for YouTube, he was trained to NOThelp any users who had a problem. So, needless to say, the only way YouTube will pay attention is if enough of us start to make some noise about it.

Hopefully my little article sheds some light on the situation. The sad part is that Google/YouTube have MORE than enough money to hire the small group of people it would take to oversee this problem…and if they are short on funds, I’ll show them a few ideas on how that can make their site a little more profitable so that that can have the enough money to start treating their users with a little bit of respect; as opposed to completely ignoring us and spitting in our faces.

By: Devon Brown
http://RenegadeSuccess.com/youtube-false-flagging