We've known for a while that online social networks did play a part in the civil unrest in many nations in Asia, Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East.
If you'll recall the near overthrow of the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, the Iranian government moved very quickly to shut down those social networks.
In fact they had their own intelligence people scanning through those social networks to find out who was behind it all.
Many of the people in Iran who were involved in the attempt at overthrowing the government, and the massive protests and riots were worried about retaliation.
Thousands of people immediately canceled their Facebook account to remove themselves, to prevent the Iranian police forces from coming to their home, dragging them out, torturing them, or putting them in prison, maybe worse.
The same thing is happening in Syria right now, as many of the protesters are now trying to hide the information they put on Facebook and other social networks because they are worried the authorities will come after them.
As you know already 1000s people have been killed in Syria (estimate), and 7000 people arrested.
So it's pretty serious.
Indeed there was an interesting posting on Read Write Web on May 25, 2011 by Curt Hopkins titled; "Facebook Loses Traffic in Middle East" - and the article stated "Adoption of Facebook by citizens of the Middle East started increasing prior to the Arab Spring, but in the wake of the protests, that number spiked upward dramatically.
This month, however, the region "has lost thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users in some key countries," according to Inside Facebook News.
" Many nations which did not have riots, their citizens are worried that they might be put on some type of watch list.
And people who belong to these social networks didn't want to be thought of as troublemakers.
The nations that did have protests such as Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia had also lost tons of users off their networks.
Because the Egyptians succeeded in overthrowing their government, their ranks have increased.
Now then, it will be interesting to see in the future what will happen in places like Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria, and other places.
This is something that those to analyze social networks will definitely be looking at.
And the question remains will the Arab Spring turn into an Arab Summer Via the same online social networks? Remember that there have been major uprisings in many other countries were social networks were not involved, so merely having users remove themselves or rescues themselves from posting on social networks, does not in any way protect regimes which are hostile to their own people.
And that's something else we should be considering.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.
If you'll recall the near overthrow of the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, the Iranian government moved very quickly to shut down those social networks.
In fact they had their own intelligence people scanning through those social networks to find out who was behind it all.
Many of the people in Iran who were involved in the attempt at overthrowing the government, and the massive protests and riots were worried about retaliation.
Thousands of people immediately canceled their Facebook account to remove themselves, to prevent the Iranian police forces from coming to their home, dragging them out, torturing them, or putting them in prison, maybe worse.
The same thing is happening in Syria right now, as many of the protesters are now trying to hide the information they put on Facebook and other social networks because they are worried the authorities will come after them.
As you know already 1000s people have been killed in Syria (estimate), and 7000 people arrested.
So it's pretty serious.
Indeed there was an interesting posting on Read Write Web on May 25, 2011 by Curt Hopkins titled; "Facebook Loses Traffic in Middle East" - and the article stated "Adoption of Facebook by citizens of the Middle East started increasing prior to the Arab Spring, but in the wake of the protests, that number spiked upward dramatically.
This month, however, the region "has lost thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users in some key countries," according to Inside Facebook News.
" Many nations which did not have riots, their citizens are worried that they might be put on some type of watch list.
And people who belong to these social networks didn't want to be thought of as troublemakers.
The nations that did have protests such as Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia had also lost tons of users off their networks.
Because the Egyptians succeeded in overthrowing their government, their ranks have increased.
Now then, it will be interesting to see in the future what will happen in places like Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria, and other places.
This is something that those to analyze social networks will definitely be looking at.
And the question remains will the Arab Spring turn into an Arab Summer Via the same online social networks? Remember that there have been major uprisings in many other countries were social networks were not involved, so merely having users remove themselves or rescues themselves from posting on social networks, does not in any way protect regimes which are hostile to their own people.
And that's something else we should be considering.
Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.
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