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Ive always wondered if social media companies had any nefarious parts to play in the arab spring, since it all started on social media and this was before the a
by nautilus12 7y ago
Ive always wondered if social media companies had any nefarious parts to play in the arab spring, since it all started on social media and this was before the accute awareness of bots to cause crazes on social media. Things like this make me wonder more.
- buboard 7y agomakes you wonder how it all stopped rather
- Mizza 7y agoThey absolutely did - at the behest of the US State Department. Twitter was scheduled to have some planned downtime during the Egyptian Arab Spring, but they postponed it at the request of State. Evgeny talks about this.
- rrdharan 7y agoSince I wasn't sure who this was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Morozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Morozov
- im3w1l 7y agoI wouldn't call that nefarious.
- Mizza 7y agoThat depends on your perspective. I support the intentions of the Arab Spring, but I still think it's inherently nefarious for a private technology company to partner with the US government in order to overthrow governments. I also seriously doubt that they were simply sitting idly by and hoping that the revolution went their way, as we now see that most all world governments have their own online propaganda divisions.
- lonelappde 7y agoWould it be nefarious if the State Department asked Twitter to stay open during a hurricane? Or on Election Day?
- Mizza 7y agoI think a better question would be: Would it be nefarious if the State Department asked Twitter to stay open during Pinochet's coup of Salvador Allende?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pvg 7y agoIt's a long way from postponing scheduled downtime to 'partnering with the US government in order to overthrow governments'. I don't have any difficult seeing how someone could view the former as nefarious but they aren't the same thing.
- jolmg 7y agoYou mean the latter not the former.
- pvg 7y agoNo, I mean what I wrote. I don’t have to agree with it but there are plenty of people who think cooperation, however indirect, with a US foreign policy goal is bad. It’s a viewpoint. Calling a thing something that it isn’t is not a viewpoint, it’s just wrong.
- jolmg 7y agoI think perhaps you misunderstood me? You're saying: > I don't have any [difficulty] seeing how someone could view [postponing scheduled downtime] as nefarious but they aren't the same thing. Didn't you instead mean the following? > I don't have any [difficulty] seeing how someone could view [partnering with the US government in order to overthrow governments] as nefarious but they aren't the same thing. Or maybe you did mean that postponing scheduled downtime looks nefarious to some. It just seemed like a weird thing to say compared to the other option.
- Cyph0n 7y agoAt first, I thought the US Department of State requested that the downtime occur during the revolution. But how is keeping social media open to the masses a nefarious thing? Unless the parent is one of those autocrat supporters?
- nautilus12 7y agoAt a minimum it makes you wonder what vested interest the state department had in making sure twitter stayed up. It couldn't have just been for the humanitarian benefiet, it makes me think that they also had a part to play in the social media traffic itself.
- nautilus12 7y agoI mean, i dont want to make this political but who was the secretary of state during this time and was simultaneous receiving funding to their foundation from saudi arabia as well?