posted on Aug, 28 2011 @ 07:00 PM
There is one thing though that i must get off my chest having thought about this for a while. During the recent riots here in the UK it has emerged
that alot of cordination was being done using the Blackberry messenging service which apparently unlike other smartphones is encrypted. Twitter and
Facebook were also utilised as well. The Government has recently called a meeting of the main social media providers including Blackberry to discuss
ways of disabling the facility to incite riots, i assume from this there will be filters and blocking mechanisms in place so if someone uses the word
riot in their message it will not be sent. I can understand this sentiment in preventing the criminal use of social media networks. However what i do
find quite uncomfortable is politicians deciding what is acceptable and what we are allowed to use social media for. What if God forbid there is a
coup overnight in the UK and say the military takes over and imposes martial law. The population would be up in arms, and quite rightly so and i for
one would certaintly resist and join a democracy movement. So in this scenerio then would our ability to use social media be curtailed? Whilst rioting
is wrong, there are two sides to the same coin. Social media is a very useful tool FOR democracy. We have seen this in the Middle East with the Arab
Spring where it has been used to organise protests against dictaorships.
So i feel that the Government has to be damn careful in how they go about in responding to the riots. And i feel uneasy about the attempts to
control social media in this context. We are in danger of losing an important tool in maintaining democracy in the UK. I remember the last time we
had riots, Notting Hill, Liverpool, Manchester back in the 1980s and back then blackberries, twitter and facebook was non existent. We are living in a
furturistic age now. My very first mobile was a startac flip phone as i just had to have a mobile that resembled the Star Trek communicators! Now we
are carrying around mini computers in our pockets. With increased ability to communicate in a wide variety of formats we should be mindful that we do
not lose our freedoms we currently enjoy now.