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Freedom of speech
is a privilege that the public has fought for, and given their life for. But I
think the public in the west might be taking this privilege too much for granted now.
Connecting with
people from different parts of the world and hearing about their fight for
freedom of speech is a good reminder of the tremendous importance of these
rights and that it is not something we can take for granted. It is something we
have to always be aware of and make sure is not taken from us.
When things get
tough, when people get desperate, it doesn't take long to lose the rights we
take for granted. Hitler was democratically chosen because he offered solutions to
a grave economic situation. Within days after he took power, civil rights had
been removed, protesters killed and the rest is history. We've seen how US citizens, as well as US visitors have
lost much of their rights because of new regulations following 9/11. Driven by
fear, people accepted what would have been an outrage only few months earlier.
In January last year a
very moving editorial was published in a newspaper in Sri Lanka. A post mortem
article from an editor who wrote about the chances of him being killed and why
that was. He was killed before the article was published.
We are seeing how
people are fighting against oppressing governments in China, Iran and elsewhere
in the world, where journalists are jailed and sometimes disapear, where all
mainstream media is edited and censored, where access to the internet is
restricted and where the government is using all methods they can think of to
control access to information. China even tried to control who Barack Obama would meet with and freedom fighters in Iran are filling the streets today in their green revolution. Social media is an extremely powerful tool to
fight this oppression of the freedom of the speech. We are seeing how
demonstrators and independent minds are trying to get the word out through
blogging, through twitter and through other channels of social media.
When China closed access to Twitter on June 4th, they were censoring me. I have twitter friends in China which I talk to and share information with and now what I say can not reach them. Well, until they found a way around it.
The China hacker attack on Gmail, the Iranian gmail censorship, the hacker attack on Norwegian online newspapers that published the drawings of Mohamed just last night are all examples of forces that are trying to suppress the freedom of speech and censor the information flow.
But these are
dangers to the freedom of speech we are maybe more aware of. There are threats
to freedom of speech much more closer to us than we like to think. Whether in
Iceland, the US or Europe, there are forces which maybe don't try to censor
information directly, but very strategically try to manipulate the information
that gets through, and the way they are portraited. That's maybe something that
will never be prevented as people try to get the story out in a form that best
benefits them selves, but it's important that we are aware of those efforts and
threats and do our own fact checking.
In the last war
in Palestine we saw the propaganda war that was being fought in both the
traditional media as well as in social media. That was expected. What I did not
expect was when I started hearing from people who were posting pro Palestinian
videos on YouTube and Facebook that were removed. You see, these websites are
extremely important in modern day information sharing and the power of the
managers of the site is disturbingly much.
This doesn't only
apply to a conflict like the Israeli-Palestine conflict. This also applies to
pictures of breastfeeding that were removed from Facebook, false reviews
companies are paying people to write, etc. There's a rumor about "The 50
cent army" in China, an army as big as 300.000 people that get paid 50
cents for each comment or forum post that reinforces the views and
"truth" of the government and by that distorting and manipulating a
healthy critical discussion. That is a kind of manipulation that a political
party in the west might easily think of doing.
So let's remember
this:
There are two
sides to every story. Before aggregating a story, do a fact check and listen to
the other side.
Never take the
freedom of speech for granted.
Fight for others freedom of speech. Like the German poet Niemöller said:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
"The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
ps. if you want to follow the events in Iran today and hear what you can do to help spread the word, follow Negar Chevre on twitter.
pps. The image is from a brilliant photographer on Flickr and an old friend of mine, Timbersmith.
Tried out Google Buzz this morning and my first reaction is 'not impressed'.
1. 'Open' sharing? The most obvious reason is that Google Buzz is for those with gmails and google profiles. As Graham Jones points out on his blog this morning Microsoft live has double the number of visits as gmail has and yahoo has five times the traffic.
2. Innovate - don't imitate. The Buzz brings nothing new to the market. It's pretty much like friendfeed or any other sharing platform out there. It will probably be used by some number of people, but it's very unlikely to attract any crowd. Not even the name is new. Yahoo already has a Buzz.
3. Over promise - under deliver. Google manages to create an enormous hype and attention around a new product that brings nothing new. The next wave? The result is widespread disappointment.
4. Need to know or nice to know? Google automatically picks out people for you to follow based on the ones you communicate the most with via gmail and gchat. It's not a suggestion, they follow them for you. Well, maybe Id like to keep my buzz for my friends only, or collagues only. Or there are people I exchange mny emails with because I have to, not because I want to and would absolutely not want in my buzz stream. That should be my decision but not Google's. Suggesting the people is smart, adding them automatically is not.
5. Privacy violation! Google doesn't only automatically add connections to your profile, but makes them public to the world by default. Google being reckless with our privacy information is a serious matter, considering how much information Google has about most of it's users. You can read more about that on Lifehacker.
And finally, one reason to follow the Buzz - It's got an integrated search engine driven by Google :)
Hjörtur
