I just received an email from a coworker with a link to a video presentation by Clay Shirky titled “How Social Media Can Make History”. This is a fascinating video!
As I was watching, he brought up an interesting story – China has been the most successful country at censoring what its citizens are posting on the internet. When the earthquake happened in early July of this year, a lot of that control was lost due to everyone having cell phones with photo capabilities, Facebook, Twitter etc where people can post things and flood the internet with updates and real time stories and events. Clay Shirky said that the Chinese government even found out about the earthquake from Twitter!
He then went on to say that the Chinese government let this one “slide” (it was way to late at this point anyways!) but shortly after, they actually banned Twitter and a handful of other social media platforms which I find incredibly interesting.
I found an article in the Huffington Post about it and thought I would share it with you.
I am stunned by the fact that a government can simply “not allow” someone to use a platform like Twitter or Facebook! I understand a company blocking employees from using it, but an entire country? Wow! Very interesting.