David Cameron on social media

[james_davis_nicoll]

In February 2011:

"This movement belongs to the frustrated Tunisian fruit seller who can’t take his product to market. And to the students in Cairo who can’t get a fair start, and the millions of Egyptians who live on $2 a day. In short, it belongs to the people who want to make something of their lives, and to have a voice. It belongs to a new generation for whom technology – the internet and social media – is a powerful tool in the hands of citizens, not a means of repression. It belongs to the people who’ve had enough of corruption, of having to make do with what they’re given, of having to settle for second best."

August, 2011

The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.

Comments

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Flash crowds. Niven got the phenomenon right, but had the wrong enabling technology.

Cameron's actual words, quoted above, have echoes of many non-technical managers in my memory suggesting that they could do wonderful things with text-parsing software (a Director I knew about 15 years ago wanted to be able to generate digests of legal cases automatically). I'm sure that if he's envisaging anything, it's some nice filter that blocks bad messages and lets the good ones through. This will be possible when we have Mike Holmes running the filtering system; instead we would get a filtering system which would look as though it had been written by one of the less competent bureaucrats in an Eric Frank Russell story...

[monarda-if.livejournal.com]

It is irrelevant whether it's technically possible or not. Whether it would work well or not. Or whether it would be well run.

The government has no intention of doing this.

Really. No intention. Read his words.

Let me help, here's the immediate next part of the same speech:

"I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers. Specifically on facemasks, currently they can only remove these in a specific geographical location and for a limited time. So I can announce today that we are going to give the police the discretion to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity."

Compare and contrast "look at whether it would be right" with "we are going to". Here's an example to help:

"I am going to do my chores."
"I will look at whether it would be right to do my chores."

This may seem like semantics but it reflects the political reality for Cameron. Sounding like he's doing something is free political capital, actually doing something will require a bruising battle with his coalition partners and an unpredictable quasi-libertarian wing of his own party.

Another example for Americans. Suppose Obama were to announce his plans to impose a 90% tax rate on the top 10% of earners. This is impossible for him to achieve but it wouldn't stop Fox News going bonkers, and it would energise elements of Obama's political base. The internet chicken-littles screaming that the sky is falling and the internet kill-switch is coming do strongly remind me of Fox News at this point.

Finally, and a separate point, look again at the new quote from Cameron's speech. Read it with the same stupid paranoia as the first part. Hasn't he just announced the police can remove burqas and other Islamic headdress whenever they feel there might be criminality (i.e. whenever they like)? [Meta: No, he hasn't.] Heard anything about that from the amateur civil libertarians burning up with news of Twitter being banned?