

At RightsCon in Toronto, Anger Swells at a Sponsor: Facebook
With the constant flood of headlines about Russian meddling in the U.S. election, many forget that nation-state manipulation of Facebook is a global problem, and a new coalition formed at the annual RightsCon conference in Toronto to keep this issue on Mark Zuckerberg's radar. The group – comprised of human rights activists and organizers from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Philippine, Ethiopia and Syria – is quick to note that 72 percent of Facebook's users

Shining electric light on Facebook at RightsCon 2018 in Toronto
"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman," Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis After the Russian meddling and Cambridge Analytica scandals, Facebook has struggled to assure users that it takes their privacy seriously. It now finds itself at the center of a different controversy in announcing that it will rank news organizations based on trust. On Thursday, I will be flying to Toronto for RightsCon, an annual conference on

Book Announcement: "Günaydın from New York"
In his essay “It Is the Dark We Have to Fear,” Edward Albee wrote: “People don’t like the light — it reveals too much.” As true for self-knowledge as for freedom of information, Albee’s observation is particularly urgent today in Turkey, the world’s leading jailer of journalists. That’s why I am proud to announce that the Edward Albee Foundation has granted me a fellowship to write a nonfiction book “Günaydın from New York,” about a U.S. court case that Turkey’s President R