The Facebook Caliphate

Why hasn't the Rogue Page been dispatched to protest at polling booths in Cairo?

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!

As usual, Steyn uses his wit and intelligence to get to the crux of the matter. As a software platform, Facebook has been oversold and some new novelty will gradually replace it. Social media is merely a means for communication. Egypt's 'Arab Spring' will bring about the installation of the Muslim Brotherhood as the power in charge; the Brotherhood and sharia law go hand in hand. The 'Arab Spring' is the fight for an ideology, not for Western-style democracy.

What social media such as Facebook do is give the participants a vastly over-inflated sense of their own importance. (Admission: I am on Facebook but I only have 22 friends--mostly relatives--which makes me somewhat of a failure.) You post something and your followers click "like" and you feel just a bit warmer and fuzzier. (I refer to that trend as the click-claque--which should earn me some points for wit but doesn't.)

Anyone now has access to publicity in a way that just wasn't possible before. Facebook is a gossipy tabloid. Clicking "like" a million times does not result in social or any other change. Often it's a substitute for doing something meaningful. Clicking "like" for some worthy cause, can almost feel as if you've done something real.

Facebook is great if you want to exchange photos of your latest trip or keep in touch with distant cousins. (It has also been used in some really creepy and damaging cyber-stalking incidents.) But those who really have power and know how to wield it, are not going to be deterred if they don't get "clicked" on Facebook.

Ugh! National Review.

Much better link here

rita, Facebook is also a tool for police and news investigations and can be used for intimidation ('net swarming). Facebook and Twitter permanently archive personal information. For these reasons and because it appears to me to be a time-waster (too much chit-chat!) I'm not on Facebook or Twitter.

When it started, I followed the Occupy movement via the link on the Adbusters site. What the instigators of the Arab Spring and Occupy protests weren't counting on was the unpredictability of human behaviour and events over time. Thus, the protests and backlashes against them.

In the early stages of revolution, students are often on the front line, mainly because they’ve got nothing else to do all day.

Gee. That sounds familiar for some reason.

Yup. Months ago, when all the MSM were strokin' themselves over the "forces of Freedom" takin' back the streets, I couldn't help but notice that women (especially the uncovered, liberated variety) were rather under-represented in the MSM videos.

chutzpahticular, you are right to remind me that Facebook has many uses, some of which are a lot more serious than sharing holiday pictures.

I think one of the points of the article and one I was trying to make is that people increasingly are substituting clicking "like" and showing cyber-support for various causes, and mistake that for true political engagement. It takes more than people chattering on Facebook and Twitter to effect political change.

One application I have absolutely no use for is facebook. I've lost track of the number of invitations I've had to join friends on facebook, but I have no online presence there under my real name. I've created accounts under fictitious names to be able to read postings by teenage patients who seem to think that facebook is "private".

Facebook is a goldmine for investigators who can see exactly who a persons friends are and can tease out social linkages. I deliberately pay for everything I can in cash to avoid statist snooping about my purchasing activities and there's no way I'm going to make it easier for statists to know who I'm associated with. Email, encrypted when possible, is how I communicate with friends. (Some people just can't figure out how to use PGP). I have lots of throw away email addresses under assumed names which I use when preservation of anonymity is required.

Watch for the muslim brotherhood to start tracking down all of the student demonstrators from the "arab spring" who posted on facebook or twitter and quietly eliminating them. These useful idiots have served their purpose and are now a liability.

"Facebook and Twitter permanently archive personal information."

Beyond that reality that you're actually giving your personal data to Facebook, there's the simple fact that people don't seem to realize they're posting to the WORLDWIDE web. There is absolutely no privacy protection out there because nobody "owns" cyberspace.

The writ of your country's privacy laws cannot protect you from someone accumulating your personal data in, say, China.

"I have lots of throw away email addresses under assumed names which I use when preservation of anonymity is required."

Excellent advice. Yes, email accounts are so painless to set up it makes no sense at all to have only one.

I routinely use three.

The first is a personal address for use with family and close friends, named in such away that only they can recognize me.

The second is a business address, restricted to my contract work and financial matters.

The third is your "throw-away" email: an address that can simply be abandoned if necessary without inconvenience. This is the one I generally use for public sites.

I think Steyn is a remarkable and very penetrating writer, as well as very funny.
At present his NRO piece at the link has 457 likes and 113 tweets attributed to it. I liked it, but I did not "Like" it because I neither "Facebook" nor "Tweet".
Hopefully most of the people reading the piece realized the irony of "Liking" it. I just looked up something on HuffPo (got the Canadian version when I "googled" it) for comparison; something about student protest video going viral - 17,000 share on Facebook clicks.
Yikes!
However, a HuffPo piece on the Egytian election had only 5 share on Facebook clicks and only 18 tweets, so maybe the people who populate HuffPo and Facebook prefer to watch videos and don`t read any more than they have to.