Take My Social Network, Please

As we look around at the social landscape at the beginning of 2012, we see that social network participation on popular sites is booming.  For instance, Facebook currently has over 800 million members and Twitter has over 100 million members worldwide.  Both are still growing.  And, if you are like me, you look in on one or both of those sites on a daily basis, and contribute content when the urge strikes you.  Likewise millions of us also use our smart phones multiple times a day to stay connected in other ways: to send messages, check email, and in general stay in touch with family and friends.

What would your reaction be if government turned all those things off off for a while? Just shut them down completely. No Facebook; no Twitter, no texing, and probably no access to the internet.  Would you feel annoyed? Inconvenienced? Disgusted.  Perhaps even outraged?  Would it even matter *why* they were shut off?

Surprisingly enough if you live in Britain, your reaction might be “content,” if a recent poll is to be believed. You will recall that last August there was some civil unrest (i.e., rioting) in some of the larger cities in the UK.  Prime Minister David Cameron suggested at the time that the government might consider shutting off access to social media and messaging services like Blackberry messaging in times of civil unrest.  And how did the good citizens of the UK react to that suggestion?  According to polls taken at the time, nearly 70% of people responding agreed that during periods of civil unrest, social media services (including Blackberry messaging) should be shut down! 70%!!

I don’t find it too difficult to believe that some people would  think this would be a good action to take.  But I find that the level of support for such an action incredible, and I wonder how Americans might respond if asked the same question.  Would there be overwhelming support for the idea (70% is pretty darn overwhelming IMHO)? I would like to think there would be an uproar against such an idea in a “free” society, but I could be wrong.  While often cited as an enabler of civil unrest, social media and Blackberry messaging weren’t responsible for the Arab Spring last year, nor were they responsible for the rioting in the UK.  Actually in the UK, a study suggested that Twitter and Facebook weren’t even particularly factors in fueling the riots (but Blackberry messaging seemed to be). 

Would shutting off access to these services even be effective against a populist uprising?  I suspect not.  After all, civil unrest has been around a lot longer than texting and social networks have, and I have a feeling that shutting off access to those means of communication wouldn’t have much effect.  It might temporarily impair the ability of groups to organize, but I think that people would find ways around the blockade pretty quickly.  They have done it before; there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t do it again.

But governments have a natural tendency to think that by disabling the most convenient ways for groups to communicate, they can solve the problem at hand.  You will recall that in Egypt, access to the internet was almost completely blocked by the government in an attempt to quell the uprisings.  And of course you all remember how well that worked.