The Revolution Will Be Twittered • Hacker News Board

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#11

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 12:59 PM UTC

tezza wrote: post #7

Twitter will only be any good for this flash mob style communication. To that end it seems to have replaced pirate radio / ham radio. :: Back then the problems were the same: Listeners had to be listening on the same channel, they had to have listening equipment, and they needed to act on the information. People broadcasting had the problem of being traced and executed Strategy, tactics cannot be discussed via an ope…

How long will activists be tweeting when @IranianGuard busts down @IranFreeNow ' s door and sprays her with bullets?

It's when large numbers of people are willing to defy that risk that things change.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#12

Post by joel_feather » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 1:26 PM UTC

The united states has a huge vested interest in this reelection failing. I prefer to withhold my opinion till I hear from BOTH sides of the conflict, and not just from the side that aligns with western interests.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#13

Post by jazzyb » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 1:32 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #4

How will Twitter self-organisation fare if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard decides to start shooting? It's great that the Iranian people can self-organise despite all the attempted censorship of the government, and certainly the free flow of information is a powerful tool in the hands of the people... but guns are powerful tools too. It's also curious why they did not clamp down on Twitter. After all, the Chinese gov…

"...perhaps there should be a non-profit that exists for the sole purpose of providing rapidly changing and shifting anonymising proxies to people everywhere, to make it so that it is effectively impossible for any government in the world to block something like Twitter."

Check out tor (http://www.torproject.org/). It's slow, but it's the closest thing we have to that right now.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#14

Post by jimfl » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 2:19 PM UTC

spazmaster wrote: post #5

i'm just a tad confused. if all internet and mobile lines are cut, how can they use twitter?

I agree. There's something about this story which strains credulity. But we're in the early phases of what seems to be a significant news story, and so in the rush to scoop, careful analysis is rarely job #1.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#15

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 2:37 PM UTC

frisco wrote: post #2

It's 5:30am on the East Coast and I've just been up all night, watching with rapt attention Twitter feeds since 11pm. The media's been inexplicably out of it (see #CNNfail, but CNN isn't the only one), but Twitter's been amazing to watch. There's been a revolution -- who knows if it'll go anywhere, much less be successful -- organizing in front of me. Users in Tehran debating whether meetups are traps (the 12:30pm "M…

Great picture. Thanks for the link.

Twitter gives a sense of immediacy and importance to, well, rather mundane things. I wonder if it might be magnifying the effect here. After all, even a few thousand temporarily upset people many times don't amount to much than a few protests.

I don't know one way or the other -- just speculating that Twitter may actually out-do cable news in hyping news stories. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch the mix of technology and society.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#16

Post by diN0bot » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 2:56 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #15

frisco wrote: post #2

It's 5:30am on the East Coast and I've just been up all night, watching with rapt attention Twitter feeds since 11pm. The media's been inexplicably out of it (see #CNNfail, but CNN isn't the only one), but Twitter's been amazing to watch. There's been a revolution -- who knows if it'll go anywhere, much less be successful -- organizing in front of me. Users in Tehran debating whether meetups are traps (the 12:30pm "M…

Great picture. Thanks for the link. Twitter gives a sense of immediacy and importance to, well, rather mundane things. I wonder if it might be magnifying the effect here. After all, even a few thousand temporarily upset people many times don't amount to much than a few protests. I don't know one way or the other -- just speculating that Twitter may actually out-do cable news in hyping news stories. Whatever happens,…

it is real "reality tv". i think that keeps it a tad more honest and a ton more interesting.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#17

Post by smhinsey » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 2:58 PM UTC

spazmaster wrote: post #5

i'm just a tad confused. if all internet and mobile lines are cut, how can they use twitter?

i probably don't have any info you don't (assuming you're following the story) but i do know that satellite dishes are very common in the middle east. it wouldn't surprise me if satellite phone and internet service are equally popular, particularly among the set of people who are most likely to be involved in twitter.

that said, i'm sure there are a lot of fakes out there right now, but there are those who do seem legitimate enough that the information from them is worth weighing against everything else as we try to understand this situation for ourselves.

[edit]

as with all news stories involving dubious sources, it's important that you establish a set of baseline facts of the situation that you can use to help evaluate the credibility of what you see. for example, if they mention eating breakfast, make sure it's not 6pm where they claim to be. if they mention locations, do what you can to verify them. fact check to the extent that you can. this won't keep you from being duped by a motivated person, but it can help you establish a comfort level with respect to how far you are willing to trust what you've learned. if something doesn't seem right, it probably isn't, but keep in mind that cultural and language barriers can dull your sense of deception.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#18

Post by tphyahoo » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 3:20 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #4

How will Twitter self-organisation fare if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard decides to start shooting? It's great that the Iranian people can self-organise despite all the attempted censorship of the government, and certainly the free flow of information is a powerful tool in the hands of the people... but guns are powerful tools too. It's also curious why they did not clamp down on Twitter. After all, the Chinese gov…

That's an interesting idea.

What if the bad-guy governments use these proxies themselves to spam/dos and generally behave badly.

Proxies get blacklisted.

Government can get back to rounding people up.

I guess at some point, if you're going to try to overthrow the government, you have to reach out to your neighbor and take to the streets, regardless to what technology you have available.

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#19

Post by TomOfTTB » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 3:29 PM UTC

frisco wrote: post #2

It's 5:30am on the East Coast and I've just been up all night, watching with rapt attention Twitter feeds since 11pm. The media's been inexplicably out of it (see #CNNfail, but CNN isn't the only one), but Twitter's been amazing to watch. There's been a revolution -- who knows if it'll go anywhere, much less be successful -- organizing in front of me. Users in Tehran debating whether meetups are traps (the 12:30pm "M…

What exactly are you watching on Twitter? Other than "There are riots in the Tehran over the election" what more is there to say right now? Anyone who is watching the situation knows the communication lines have been cut.

As for CNN they did report on it during their news casts. What else would you have them do? They have no footage (cameras are being confiscated), no direct communication with reporters and therefore no accurate information. So there's nothing really to report (other than people on Twitter who are either making things up or regurgitating news reports that repeat the same known facts over and over again)

Do you really want a media that reports on something even though they have no facts?

Re: The Revolution Will Be Twittered

#20

Post by KC8ZKF » Sun, Jun 14, 2009, 3:31 PM UTC

We might be overstating Twitter's role in this situation. Because we are receiving so many good reports via Twitter, those of us who aren't in Iran might be committing a type of spotlight fallacy by believing that Twitter is having a large effect on the events themselves.