[ooni-talk] Jordan report: Facebook live-streaming interference during protests earlier this year

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

Two days ago JOSA (Jordan Open Source Association) and OONI co-published
a research report which examines Facebook live-streaming interference
during protests in Jordan (between December 2018 to January 2019).

The research report is available here:
https://ooni.io/post/jordan-measuring-facebook-interference/

We also published a PDF version (thanks to JOSA!):
https://ooni.io/documents/jordan-facebook-interference.pdf

During protests in Jordan, locals reported that they were unable to view
live-streaming from Facebook. But they also reported that viewing
live-streaming was otherwise possible when protests were not taking place.

Therefore, our first hypothesis was that perhaps people in Jordan
couldn’t load videos on Facebook because they were using overloaded
networks (rather than Facebook live streaming being interfered with).

To examine this hypothesis and investigate further, we:

* Enumerated Facebook cache servers to identify and map out those
located in Jordan.

* Tested the Facebook cache servers in Jordan, using OONI Probe. OONI
measurements presented anomalies, providing signals of potential
interference.

* Ran a series of experiments using cURL.

As part of such testing, we were able to rule out the hypothesis that
Facebook users in Jordan couldn’t live-stream due to overloaded networks.

Our findings suggest that Facebook Live Stream was temporarily
interfered with in Jordan during protests between 20th December 2018 to
10th January 2019.

In this report we share our findings in detail, as these methodologies
could potentially be useful in examining similar cases elsewhere in the
world.

~ OONI team.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E


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