The Wrong Way To Weaponize Social Media 90
BorgiaPope writes "NYU's Clay Shirky, in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, calls the US government's approach to social media 'dangerous' and 'almost certainly wrong,' as in its favoring Haystack over Freegate. The Political Power of Social Media claims that the freedom of online assembly — via texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Twitter, humble email — is more important even than access to information via an uncensored Internet. Countering Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, Shirky looks at recent uprisings in the Philippines, Moldova, and Spain to make his point that, instead of emphasizing anti-censorship tools, the US should be fighting Egypt's recent mandatory licensing of group-oriented text-messaging services." Only part of Shirky's piece is available for non-subscribers, but Gladwell's New Yorker piece is all online.
Re:Weaponizing social media? (Score:3, Informative)
It took about 15 years, but it worked against the Cult of $cientology.
PROTIP: The Internet's war on the Co$ predates Anonymous's hijinks by about 15 years. The USEN*T group alt.religion.scientology was arguably the first large-scale infowar. Yes, we lost anon.penet.fi, but in the end, we won the war. The cult is a shadow of its former self.
Social media: overrated (Score:4, Informative)
As far as the Philippines goes, Shirky has got it wrong. Shirky claims that text-messaging mobilization brought Joseph Estrada down. Not true. Estrada's political capital was on a steady decline owing to accusations of corruption and shady deals. Then he had a falling out with his ally, a prominent politician and gambling lord, who tattled on their agreements. Estrada was impeached for, among many other reasons, forging a signature. From there, it was downhill all the way to the precipice: opportunistic politicians made backroom deals, army and police generals withdrew their support, the judiciary colluded, and Estrada's then-vice president Gloria Arroyo took over.
Text messaging? All it did was whip up the mob which provided cover for what can be called, for all intents and purposes, a coup d'etat.
In the latter years of Gloria Arroyo, herself rocked by corruption scandals, all sorts of people tried to use social media to mobilize the crowds: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, what have you. Apart from the noise and the wasted electrons, did it result in her fall from power? No. Because business, congress, judiciary, and the military did not want any turbulent transition.
Social media did play a small role in bearing enough public pressure on Arroyo whenever she and her cronies tried constitutional change and term extension, but only as far as drawing attention of the international media (and the US and Chinese governments) to possible unrest and instability.
As to the actual transition, we did it the old-fashioned way: elections.
This is a joke, right ? (Score:4, Informative)
instead of emphasizing anti-censorship tools, the US should be fighting Egypt's recent mandatory licensing of
u.s. is emphasizing anti-censorship tools ? like how they pressured spain government to put out a censorship law, and failed ? like how they pressured heaven knows how many other governments to put out censorship laws ? like wikileaks ? like coica ?
...
this has to be a joke