Ed Webb's List: activism through social media

• Social media is a minefield for the unwary. Some things demand vetting if not outright verification, because the risk is to be an utter dupe. The BBC has especially sound practices in this regard, but it, too, was fooled.

  It's worth noting that traditional and new media organisations were instrumental in unmasking the falsity of the "gay girl" blog. Among others, National Public Radio's Andy Carvin asked his Twitter audience for help, and got plenty, while the Washington Post did its own digging into the matter; meanwhile, the Electronic Intifada website pieced together some evidence as well – and all kinds of people with no media affiliations contributed what they knew, learned or surmised.
• Sounding real is not the same as being real. The fake Amina's blog was especially well done, with details that sounded authentic even to native Syrians. Its unmasked author said he was telling larger truths, but we have a name for this technique: fiction.
• pseudonym. This is a much-used method online – not revealing one's own name but having a consistent identifier. It's one step away from outright anonymity, where there is no accountability whatever
• It is up to us to cultivate an abiding distrust for speech when the speaker refuses to stand behind his or her own words – that is, by using one's own name.
• it is essential to preserve anonymity (in special circumstances), even if we discourage it, while simultaneously improving trust.
• What we should all fear is what too many in power want to see: the end of anonymity entirely. Governments, in particular, absolutely loathe the idea that people can speak without being identified. It will always be possible to create and disseminate anonymous speech with adept use of technology, but governments and their corporate handmaidens are working hard to make it much more difficult – and I fear there will soon be widespread laws disallowing anonymous speech, even in America. We should not allow them to succeed.

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• In his book The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov elegantly identifies the authoritarian trinity – censorship, propaganda, and surveillance – tactics by which a repressive government can take the upper hand digitally.  Yet in each case the government loses the numbers game: if there are enough people countering the tactic, it loses effectiveness. More is different.
• With small acts of censorship a government builds a population that is gradually savvier about circumvention and with large actions of censorship the government risks speeding that process.  It’s a catch-22 in which every act of censorship runs the risk of inspiring a citizen to learn how to circumvent it.

• surveillance exploits a characteristic of the Internet that actually benefits authoritarian governments. Public information about the world’s citizens, their thoughts, and their relationships is now freely available to be tracked and parsed for signs of opposition.

   

  Yet surveillance also runs up against the numbers game.  As Zeynep Tufekci likes to point out, the government is a resource-constrained actor.  Even if they know that one million people are planning to converge on the capital, there is little they can do to stop them other than extreme violence which will encourage more citizens to oppose the government.  Once the opposition out-numbers the government, surveillance is no longer useful because the government no longer has the means to act on it effectively.
• China rules in censorship and Russia rules online propaganda.  Both governments have successfully marginalized the opposition such that they can be controlled, while the majority of citizens remain apolitical or actively support the regime
• what are the critical points of mass connection needed to defeat censorship, propaganda, and surveillance

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