Government and Social Media
What was social media hoping to accomplish with the aid of the worldwide web (www)? Was it to realize hopes and dreams come true for most humans lucky enough to get access to the internet? Was it the realization of the basic UN human rights charter?
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
That is not always followed and in some countries it is non-existent.
Note (governments also had internet browser development projects that was done before social media (SM). It was there for populations that does not have access to internet as a result of restrictions from within their countries. This was called TOR which gave rise to the dark web and deep web where all kinds of unimaginable crimes take place openly. If crimes from the dark web are aired on the www sites today this will be called fake news and buried.
Let’s get back on track to the subject of how social media affects governments.
- How does Social Media (SM) affect governments?
- More people have access to voice their opinions, decisions and demands (in real democracies)
- More Transparency as to what the governments are doing with taxpayer money (don’t apply to regimes and communist governments).
- Governments are being held accountable in real practise and not just with some writing in a constitutional, convention or international law.
This last point is where SM has done an incredible job world over for democracy. When democracy would slip to a regime class people had no choice and couldn’t imagine taking instant action as done today using SM.
- The Arab spring that toppled Egypt’s government was first started by people’s Mobiles and SM. After that the other Arab nations fell too but that was a government called the Deep State taking advantage of the SM revolution the Egyptians started ( a too big of a story to talk about here).
- Most recent event is how the public in Korea organised peaceful protest to oust former prime minister Park from office for corruption, sent the prime minister to court, found guilty then into prison.
Some people in the US are right now dreaming of this happening in their country too, but that’s unlikely (second part will explain why) .
- How does government affect social media?
So why do I think some impeachment like in Korea won’t happen and the people planning for it will eventually give up.
Trump has the support of all the deep state members that directs policies on oil, banks, mining and military (he’s a prisoner already). US democracy has been a show for some time, and when John f Kennedy found this and went public he paid the ultimate price.
His quotes:
And recently the Trump government made privacy illegal in the internet. This effects the whole world as every corner of the public interacting internet, connects to the internet streets, homes and offices that can’t afford an Intranet system of their own will be accessible and no warrants required to spy. Snowden(NSA Prism Program) was an infant compared to what’s about to happen; with this it’s considered not spying.
As the internet started in the US, DARPA program without realizing they laid the groundwork’s for a flawed system around privacy (internet’s purpose was to bring information from all corners of US to underground command bunkers without losing data should the network break in one state as a result of nuclear attack. This design is what the NSA later came to realise can be used to spy on people, not just US but all. this is possible because of the old architecture on how the internet was laid and then connected to the rest of the world. The world connected but didn’t build sewer farms or the major infrastructure of the internet on their countries; they just built routine servicing nodes. All information routs through the US as all information must go through the gate that is the NSA that has free reign to pick on all info today.
You can say only china is free from being spied by US as their internet is more like their own closed intra-net; people can’t access outside China Servers as great firewall sees to that.
So why is this not just part of the architecture that makes internet privacy illegal for all? Well like all Trump bills are written with the least amount of words (min 5.37), allowing it to be re interpreted any way that the NSA want to read it.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
This quote is very much now the reality, hope it doesn’t stay that way.
It was just few years ago that the hope was rising with more rigorous internet privacy laws being passed so that open SM will see a rise in the internet world wide. With the leader of that falling a victim to a spiralling out of control to an oppressive system similar to (George Orwell, 1984 )
It’s highly likely world over countries will close in words like China.
next time we’ll talk about: issues and challenges of SM.
That’s all this week. Stay cool
Rashmika