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Armenia-Azerbaijan: Facebook war

Written byOnnik Krikorian

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Read this post in Português
Posted 5 July 2010 18:43 GMT

Despite the potential for new and social media to bridge the information gap between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two countries locked into a bitter dispute over the territory of Nagorno Karbakakh, The Armenian Observer highlights yet another example of the arguably greater activity present in the use or manipulation of such tools for the opposite purpose. Engaged in a mutual tit-for-tat information war, the blog notes that hackers in Azerbaijan are currently using Facebook localization tools to continue the almost two decades long war between the two neighboring countries in cyberspace.

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Written byOnnik Krikorian

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1 comment

  • Onnik Krikorian

    PanArmenian.Net, a local news site, now has an update on this story:

    PanARMENIAN.Net – A group of users calling themselves as AzPatriot (patriots of Azerbaijan) attacked the Armenian version of Facebook on July 5. Using Translation application for the localization of the social network in other languages, the group replaced the interface translation with Azerbaijani propaganda and insults.

    It became possible, as Facebook’s translation into the Armenian language is being beta-tested (it is localized by 73%). Armenian users informed Facebook’s management of the incident, but finally solved the problem themselves.

    “Within several hours, 600 users created control groups, thus uniting the Armenian internet community once again,” blogger Tigran Kocharyan told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

    There are around 50,000 users of Facebook social network in Armenia. Facebook’s localization in the Armenian language was launched in the end of 2009.

    http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/it_telecom/news/50966/Facebook_Armenian_version_recovered_after_Azerbaijani_attack

    6 July 2010, 14:31 pm
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