The War Against Social Media

Social media has no doubt become a powerful tool in recent years, and it reflects the modern paradigm shift from a market of tangible goods to a market of information. We are becoming increasingly linked, and it seems that, for many people in developed countries, the only way to achieve the peace that comes with isolation is to travel far from civilization -- I can attest to this from my trip to Big Basin state park last Summer.

Social media, much like the printed book or even a gun, by itself represents an idea. A printed book represents a freedom of information and access to that information; a gun represents the power and authority placed into the hands of an individual or government; social media represents the flow of ideas and a shared, collective intelligence among society. However, it's only a matter of time before books become an enabling tool for education and propaganda, guns become a tool for hunting and genocide, and social media becomes a tool for revolution and prosecution.

The internet, another enabling technology, has seen a deluge of news articles and blogs on cyber-sharing's role in dissent in Egypt and Tunisia, and it's been sparking rebellion and revolution in countless other countries in a cascade of power shifting. This part of the story has been covered over and over, leaving few rocks unturned. I would like to explore another face of the story: the story of the political response to this new interconnectedness and freedom of sharing among those people who, previously, were under the tight control of their government. It used to be the case that rulers could trickle information to their people, shaping views and restraining dissent; but, in the same way that the printing press freed our dependence upon holy men to read Latin scripts to their congregation, social media has allowed the sharing of ideas -- including ideas of change.

Many political responses have been as expected, such as Egypt's attempt at severing the internet to cut off the flow of dissent, reveiling that the Middle East is vulnerable to such cyber tactics. Some responses, however, have been a tad shocking, if not also concerning. Water and squirt gun fights, organized over Facebook as mere fun demonstrations, have been interpreted has threats and squashed by police forces in Iran, and even the UK has jumped the gun and made arrests for such non-violent events organized over social media outlets.

Some responses have been much more extreme, illustrating that governments and organizations are seeing social media as a serious threat to their status quo ante. Britain's Prime Minister has even gone so far as to consider restrictions on social media. Incidents have even occurred here in the U.S. Recently, protests planned at BART stations in San Francisco sparked BART to shutdown cell phone networks in an effort to hamper the events. The highly controversial decision ignited fierce debate and even called in the FCC to be involved.

Social media has not just been an enabling technology for change and revolution through the free flow of information. It has also been a powerful force in the political world, and it is not one which we can ignore.