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.
Weaponizing social media? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are we going to do, make fun of the Taliban until they all go emo and commit suicide?
Shirky and Gladwell are more or less in agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
Borgiapope's summary misses the point of both articles. In fact, the two authors are largely in agreement- it takes a well organized and disciplined group to organize change. Social media isn't enough by itself, although it might be useful as one tool among many in such an organization and it might be able to create an environment in which such an organization can flourish. If you accept these conclusions then you pretty much have to agree with Shirky that a policy focused on the short term exploitation of social media to effect quick change isn't the smartest strategy for US foreign policy. I don't think that Gladwell would disagree with that at all.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there are limits to this for good reason. Less because of reality, more because of how people work and think.
If I go ahead and spread, anonymously or pseudo-anonymously (by pretending to be someone or inventing a few people), lies about you, slander you and ruin your reputation, while at the same time cross-referencing it all to myself (my alter-egos) to make it appear credible, I can essentially and quite successfully ruin you. "igreaterthanu is a pedo". Let's repeat that a billion times for the next month or two, make sure your neighbors get copies of your face with that allegation, drop your name into the various hysteria spreading pages that don't even bother to check once whether any allegation is true and reference to that page... I bet your rep is down the loo quite fast.
I with the solution was just to educate people to not believe every bull and hype they run across, but I guess neither media nor government would have any interesting in that kind of education, so I'd guess it's a bit of a lost cause.
If you have any idea how to prevent this from happening, I am all for total anonymity. Also because I essentially agree with you, if it wasn't for the slander problem.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate the catholic church, believe all religion is just a mixture of superstition and obsolete social codes, enjoy pornography and advocate for abortion rights and the use of contraception online.
I value my future employment, and know that employers like to google on candidates. I'll use my real name when that church's hell freezes over.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)