The role networking sites had in recent uprising in Egypt is well-known.
While this is a welcome sign for those in repressed States, there is also the danger of Alien States misusing them( even States misuse in their own country).
With the evolution of the Internet and growth of Soc-ail networking sites our thoughts are being conditioned;we read what we are presented with(in this connection read my Blog on Media Fixing content filed under media).
We need to have an open mind on any subject/views;
Here at OSM we’ve been bringing you news about the growing role of social media and social networking sites in growing protests around the world, as in the recent Tunisian Twitter Revolution, the unrest in Libya where the Internet was shut down, and also in theprotests in Egypt, a revolution helped in part by the use of social media.
The protests and demonstrations in Egypt eventually led to President Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarek stepping down from power, a move that led to jubilant scenes across the country. Now we hear that one new proud Egyptian father has chosen to thank Facebookfor the role it played in the revolution, by naming his daughter “Facebook.” Emil Protalinski over on ZDNet reports on this news, sourced from Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram and translated by Tech Crunch.
The newspaper told of a young Egyptian man who wished to show his gratitude to Facebook (the social networking site) and so named his child “Facebook Jamal Ibrahim.” Apparently people have gathered round the baby girl to give gifts to Facebook (the baby) and show continuing support for the revolution and Facebook (the social networking site).
There’s also news that the Egyptian army, which is temporarily running the country, has also opened its own Facebook page. Along with that, in the fourteen days following the first day of the revolution, 32,000 new Facebook groups were established in Egypt with 14,000 pages created.
If you’re interested in learning more about the role that Facebook played in the Egyptian protests you might want to check out an intriguing article by Abigail Hauslohner on TIMEwhich takes an in-depth look at one of the protestors, 20-year-old Khaled Kamel, and how he used Facebook to push for change in the country.
The story of a man naming his daughter “Facebook” (whether you like it as a name or not), is a rather heartening reminder of how Egypt has come a long way in recent months and should also remind us never to take the role of social media for granted, as we use it in our everyday lives. What do you think of this news? Let us know with your comments please.
A lecture published on the video-sharing website Vimeo shows an unidentified man apparently giving a roomful of Cuban intelligence agents a crash course on social media and the Web. According to the speaker, opposition blogs are being funded by the U.S. to “fuel the counter-revolution in Cuba”.
The man, later identified on Cuban blog Penultimos Dias as Eduardo Tato Fontes Suarez by people claiming to be his former classmates, works for Cuba’s interior ministry. Over the course of the 58-minute video, Suarez explains how new technologies are being used by cyber activists around the world. He says the U.S. is “trying to turn bloggers into a new category of enemies of the state”.
Fontes goes on to point out that bloggers such as Yoani Sanchez, author of the award-winningGeneration Y blog, has become a Twitter sensation and could organise protests in Havana similar to Iran’s Twitter-fueled protests in 2009.
Fontes also alleges that the NGOs founded by young Cuban Americans are different from “historic terrorist groups like the [Miami-based] Cuban American National Foundation (CANF)”.Historically, Cuban-exile groups such as CANF and the US Cuba Democracy PAClobbied lawmakers in Washington to uphold staunch policies against Cuba like the US embargo and the travel ban of American citizens to the Caribbean island. In recent years, younger generations of Cuban Americans have been proponents of liberalising the US-Cuba policy. Unlike their elders, Fontes says, these new NGOs and online communities have the power to effectively “deceive Cuban youth” and paint the Cuban Revolution in a negative light.
The video has been leaked at a time when the Internet and social networks have been used by young people across the Middle East and North Africa to organise recent anti-government uprisings.
Felice Gorordo is the co-founder of US-based Roots of Hope, one of the organisations that Fontes attacked in the attached video. Roots of Hope was behind Colombian rockstar Juanes’s ‘Peace without Borders’ concert. In the video, Fontes blames Roots of Hope for wanting to cancel the concert. In fact, Juanes had threatened to call it off if Cuba refused to loosen draconian security measures. According to the organisation’s website, Roots of Hope is a privately-funded organisation that does not receive any U.S government funding and “seeks to empower Cubans to be the authors of their own futures”.
They acknowledge in the video itself that we [Roots of Hope] threaten them. It’s clear that the Cuban government doesn’t know how to handle our message, which is apolitical and only seeks to increase contact with Cubans on the island and Cubans overseas.”
Following the legalization of cell phone access in 2008 by President Raul Castro, Roots of Hope launched their ‘Cell phones for Cuba Project,’ which aims to give every Cuban citizen a free refurbished mobile phone.
The Internet in Cuba does not work in the same way it does in other Communist countries like China or Vietnam, where the Web is generally accessible despite a high level of government control. In Cuba, legal Internet access is only available to a privileged group of government officials and doctors, or by purchasing prepaid cards in hotels that cost the equivalent of 12 euros an hour.
The average salary in Cuba is approximately 15 euros a month, making legal access to the Internet a luxury for most Cubans. The prohibitive Internet access price also serves as an effective extension of government censorship. Most Cubans rely on illegal connections to access the Web, at extremely slow speeds.
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