#you_tried. A jihadist Twitter account tried to solicit suggestions from the al Qaeda community Wednesday by creating the hashtag #اقتراحك_لتطوير_الإعلام_الجهادي, which roughly translates to #Suggestions_to_develop_Jihadist_media, according to a linguist fluent in Arabic who translated it for Business Insider.

There's a new jihadist recruiter on the Internet. Based in San Francisco and backed by a multimillion dollar bankroll, the recruiter orchestrates thousands of introductions every day, connecting people at risk of radicalization with extremist clerics and terrorist propagandists -- even facilitating online meetings with hardcore al Qaeda members. The recruiter is Twitter, and it's shaking up the world of online radicalization in ways both large and small.

Brazil said Wednesday it is moving to secure its communications through its own satellite and digital networks to end its dependence on the United States, which is accused of electronically spying on the region. "Brazil is in favor of greater decentralization: Internet governance must be multilateral and multisectoral with a broader participation," Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo told a congressional panel.

As far as the Internet goes, Cuba is the Western Hemisphere’s last frontier. Despite the island nation’s proximity to Florida — just 90 miles away — and the existence of a fully functioning fiber-optic cable linked up to Venezuela, only 25% of the population is online, according to last year’s government statistics, which are likely inflated. In June, Cuban citizens were for the first time legally allowed access at designated “cyber points” but few can afford the charges—the cost of one hour online matches an average Cuban’s week’s salary.

There's a new front in the social media wars: Israeli university campuses. In cooperation with Israel's national student union, Haaretz reported today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office is planning to create "covert units" of students who will fight for the country -- on social media, that is.

From popes to presidents to pundits, the world's most important conversations increasingly happen 140 characters at a time. Here's FP's annual list of the 100 people you should be following to make sense of global events.

How is social media affecting political participation in Brazil? Fábio Malini, who studies data patterns in Brazilian social media, spoke to AS/COA Online about how Twitter is changing the ways Brazilians interact with the government, as well as the role of social media in Brazil’s June protests. One of the heads of the Research Laboratory on Internet and Cyberculture (Labic) at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, Malini uses big data and data visualization to explore the evolution of social media in Brazil.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s volcanic revelations of ubiquitous US surveillance are in their third month. The aftershocks felt around the world continue. As Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum, the White House fell into anger and dismay. Computer scientist Nadia Heninger argued that leaking information is now becoming the “civil disobedience of our age”. The late historian and activist Howard Zinn described the act of civil disobedience as “the deliberate, discriminate, violation of law for a vital social purpose”.