Re: Twitter and Iran Elections

Hi all - Just an FYI - Earlier today I received an email alerting that 
the Iranian Govt was filtering Twitter for links to other information 
sources and then blocking those links.  The sender suggested direct 
messaging people in Iran rather than sending links in public 'tweets'. 

Cheers,
Graham Clarke

Harry Halpin wrote:
> I'm sure everyone has now heard about the roll Twitter is playing in
> the current protests in Iran (apparently 15,000 tweets an hour, which
> I'm trying to follow rather unsuccessfully). In particular, it has
> received lots of news coverage [1] as Iran has shut down Facebook [2]
> (although apparently now access is unblocked, which should be familiar
> to those of us who remember Iran filtering Orkut.
>
> This got me thinking of the importance of open social networking and
> open micro-blogging, and how if these technologies were more widely
> people in Iran might not have such a precarious grip on what are now
> clearly important journalistic and political tools - after all,
> Twitter would have gone for scheduled maintenance apparently, leaving
> some of its users in Iran without Twitter, had it not been for
> intervention by the U.S. Yet, would it not be better to have a
> technical solution rather than rely on the U.S. govt. asking Twitter
> not to postpone their maintenance?
>
> So, to sketch a use case - how can investment in such an open stack
> help people not have their social web services so easily shut down,
> either inadvertently (such as when a server crashes) or on purpose
> (such as a government using the domain name system or legal threats to
> shut down a single social networking or blogging site)?
>
> I'd like to hear thoughts, and especially links to enlightening news
> stories or use-cases?
>
> [1]http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/twitter.iran.tweets.2.1046306.html
> [2]http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/05/iran-ahmadinejad-islam-facebook-social-networking-mousavi-tehran.html
>
>
>   

-- 
Graham Clarke
53 Technology

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Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2009 20:51:55 UTC