An Orwellian Approach To Social Media

Politicians only know one of two ways to react to a situation, there is the tried and trusted knee jerk reaction or the equally time tested method where they simply bury their head in the sand.

In the Middle East and North Africa, China and many other countries around the world with poor human rights records, social media sites have suffered at the hands of regimes taking the sledgehammer approach to dissent and protest. Now it seems in the UK that the Government wants to follow suit and censor or shut down or limit access to social media and other types of messaging services.

Image via WikipediaThat the violence recently experienced in the UK was despicable and mindless is without question.  The issue now is: Do the Government of David Cameron and the Metropolitan Police really have the answers to the questions that are being asked of them now?

If the organisers were as sophisticated as the UK Government are telling us,  limiting access to any social media or messaging service is a waste of effort.  Users all over the world in countries with far more insidious control of their people have found ways to side step imitations imposed by Governments.  

Sidestepping the Cameron approach could simply be a matter of creating a new account, not something terribly difficult for the average 7 year old, let alone someone who has an agenda.

What is also being overlooked in this approach is that neither the social media sites or the messaging services are really broadcast services.  People interact with those they are following, or already within their network so the illusion of mass broadcasting of invitations to pillage the local shops are exactly that, illusions. 

Mind you, the UK Government is only treading the same path as authorities do in the US when they want to limit protests.  In San Francisco recently the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, better known as BART, shut down mobile phone towers to limit protests against after a police shooting.  In the article on NPR.ORG, it is reported that authorities limited the phone reception for 3 hours to control the protest, there is no suggestion in the article that the authorities thought that the protest would turn violent or endanger life in any way.

Playing shoot the messenger isn't going to work, especially when the same social media sites and messaging services are being used by volunteers to clean up after the violence.