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I'll shoot it right back at you because I don't necessarily agree with you either (all your points could be valid) but at that point, for me, it comes down to T

I'll shoot it right back at you because I don't necessarily agree with you either (all your points could be valid) but at that point, for me, it comes down to Twitter. All the points listed are "state changes". Protestors went from a group of 10s of thousands to allegedly 3 million, Mousavi went from being a free man to being under house arrest and the elections president went from supporting the election to allegedly calling it into question. Now, if I hear news of a "state change" such as there my first question is "what's the source. If it's an anonymous guy on Twitter I don't jump to believe it. If it's the BBC I probably think it's possibly true. So it still comes down to cognitive process or the lack there of represented by people who believed this stuff. Oh, and btw, since it's a pet peeve of mine. Even if some areas are 50 across I have to believe the crowd would have spilt into narrower areas (since no venue is designed to hold 3 million people). But even at a constant 50 across you're still talking about almost 12 miles worth of people.

jballanc 17y ago
From the images, the space the protesters were gathered appear to be of the same scale as Times Square. I was there for New Years 1999. So were 2 million other people. The crowd stretched from 43rd Street (where the ball is) to just north of 59th Street (at the south end of Central Park). They lined two avenues (Broadway and 7th Ave). In NYC, it's 20 streets/mile, so that was 0.8 miles along two avenues...
batasrki 17y ago
I agree that state changes being reported by one person are not necessarily true. However, a state change being reported similarly by multiple unconnected sources is helluva more believable. Also, remember that BBC/CNN/etc. did not jump on this story. As a matter of fact, they've ignored it for the whole weekend, even when their international stations were reporting it on other TV channels. Who knows what their motivation for that is, besides verification (which might not have been possible, considering that communication sources were progressively jammed by security forces). As for the number of people goes, if you take a look at the videos, you'll get a clearer picture as to how many people there are. From what I saw, it was 50+ across and it was pretty consistent width as far as the camera could see. I'm not saying that 3 million is accurate, I was just saying that videos show a lot more than 5 across and that's where you were off. ;)
- kevinpet 17y ago
  Well, the issue is that now with twitter there's no such thing as "multiple unconnected sources". You don't know who is independently corroborating something, and who is parroting.
  - batasrki 17y ago
    True, for Twitter news. However, there's been other sources, such as Huffington Post who have been getting similar reports through e-mail and YouTube. Those sources are not connected to Twitter, so no parroting there.

jballanc 17y ago

From the images, the space the protesters were gathered appear to be of the same scale as Times Square. I was there for New Years 1999. So were 2 million other people. The crowd stretched from 43rd Street (where the ball is) to just north of 59th Street (at the south end of Central Park). They lined two avenues (Broadway and 7th Ave). In NYC, it's 20 streets/mile, so that was 0.8 miles along two avenues...

batasrki 17y ago

I agree that state changes being reported by one person are not necessarily true. However, a state change being reported similarly by multiple unconnected sources is helluva more believable. Also, remember that BBC/CNN/etc. did not jump on this story. As a matter of fact, they've ignored it for the whole weekend, even when their international stations were reporting it on other TV channels. Who knows what their motivation for that is, besides verification (which might not have been possible, considering that communication sources were progressively jammed by security forces). As for the number of people goes, if you take a look at the videos, you'll get a clearer picture as to how many people there are. From what I saw, it was 50+ across and it was pretty consistent width as far as the camera could see. I'm not saying that 3 million is accurate, I was just saying that videos show a lot more than 5 across and that's where you were off. ;)

kevinpet 17y ago
Well, the issue is that now with twitter there's no such thing as "multiple unconnected sources". You don't know who is independently corroborating something, and who is parroting.
- batasrki 17y ago
  True, for Twitter news. However, there's been other sources, such as Huffington Post who have been getting similar reports through e-mail and YouTube. Those sources are not connected to Twitter, so no parroting there.