Berkman Buzz: March 14, 2014

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Judith Donath delves in to the Twitter handle black market

In September 2012, the Twitter account of Daniel Dennis Jones, with the username @blanket, was hacked. When he logged in, he found that the account hadn’t been touched except that the username had been changed to something obscene. By following tweets referring to @blanket, he found a black market of stolen Twitter names and was able to follow the conversation, on Twitter, between the new possessor of @blanket and his hacker friends. They were kids, trading and selling stolen names – and giving them to girls they hoped to impress. Their feeds were filled with bragging and put-downs, complaints about school and plans to play Xbox.

From Judith Donath's post for The Conversation, "Joyriders make a black market of prestige Twitter handles" About Judith | @judithd

Out 4 Change #TransformativeMedia Organizing survey just launched! http://bit.ly/octopsurvey #mediajustice #queer #civicmedia >—Sasha Costanza-Chock (@schock)

Ethan Zuckerman discusses Myanmar's changing media environment

Thankfully, there are few truly despotic societies in the world, but Myanmar was one of them from 1962 until quite