Farhad Manjoo has an important piece in Slate today on How the Internet helps Iran silence activists.
On Wednesday, a reader alerted the Lede to an Iranian government Web site called Gerdab.ir, where authorities had posted pictures of protesters and were asking citizens for help in identifying the activists. That’s right—the regime is now using crowd-sourcing, one of the most-hyped aspects of Web 2.0 organizing, against its opponents. If you think about it, that’s no surprise. Who said that only the good guys get to use the power of the Web to their advantage?
Looking at #iranelections or any other Iran-related hashtag makes chaos visible. Who do you trust, what do you trust, and my, how easy to befoul the stream of news.
The point? Not to get carried away in the internet wondrousness of it all. Transformation is as transformation does. Read Farhad. We got a long way to go. Still, it was, briefly, hella exciting. Story not over.
Power to the people.
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