Well, while I've been running on at the mouth about labels and meaning and context, CK's been setting things on fire over at Sister Sage.
I'm even going to pass up a chance to slag Julian for this. Seems the PMO's going to use our hard-earned tax dollars to "correct misinformation" on teh Tweeter and in the blogosphere.
Again, once the initial rush of outrage subsides, it's hard not to see the humour and the opportunity for further mockery. Consider: the more "misinformation" they have to correct, the more resources they're going to have to devote to the effort: search algorithms, political-dissent-hunting bots, and armies of little Attack ParrotsTM and cyberwarriors.
Our task is clear, brothers and sisters. I'll start:
Stephen Harper is a poopyhead!
"Poopyhead"? Shouldn't it read:"Herr Poopyhead"?
ReplyDeleteGiven that the Harper government is not the only Canadian government to have kept an eye on what goes on in social media spheres, or the only party in power to have done the same, or the first to quietly (in one way or another) slip it's own propaganda into the discussions, I just can't get too worked up about this.
ReplyDeleteIt's an issue now because someone said out loud what any of us who were paying attention already knew has been going on since before Harper became PM.
As I said over at my place "...let them enter the arena, put forward their thoughts, ideas, and "corrections", and let them stand the same test that the rest of us face with every comment we leave in blogspace".
Yeah, well. I have you to thank, SL, for the fact that Santa didn't bring a pony for my kid last Christmas.
ReplyDeleteMy response is over at your place. So there.
Social media wasn't nearly as prominent, nor were most of those sites even created before Stevie was elected.
ReplyDeleteFacebook, while created in February of 2004, didn't have nearly the users it has today, nor the functions; Twitter didn't come out until 2006. So no, no other Canadian gov't has had an opportunity to monitor social media.
Other than perhaps dictatorships where material is censored and social media sites are monitored (if accessible to the population, as in those regimes, those sites tend not to be), what other supposed free country does a government go monitoring social media sites? (Not counting the Excited-States where they see Muslim commies under the bed with a gun in each hand).
I'm tired of the old stand-by, "but they did it", well, weren't your buddies, the Harpercons supposed to change all that? Another reason while other governments may have set precedents, no one, but no one, has abused teh powers of the PMO more than Steve.
It is is under his watch the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history happened with the Toronto G20. Arresting people for dissent, or worse, for simply being in the midst of protesters??
Come on CK, social media (whether it was called that at the time or not) has been around for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI ran an anonymous political discussion forum (called "The PDF" oddly enough) in the mid-90's - the government was there because what went on and what was talked about pi$$ed them off. I know this because I was told by ordinary MLA's that cabinet ministers frothed at the mouth over what was talked about, and because the feds yanked me in court over content.
Prior to the advent of the graphical web there was IRC... I know that many like to consider that venue a quaint vestige of time long passed but it's where we gathered at the national and international level to discuss a wide variety of things and we all knew that various government folks were in there with us.
Pyra Labs launched Blogger in 1999, and, as we all (at east should) know, blogs existed in one form or another before that time. The government was watching and one would have to be fairly naive to think that they weren't participating anonymously.
With regard to your question "..what other supposed free country does a government go monitoring social media sites?" let me suggest to you that all of them do. Do you really believe that they don't?
I am not justifying what the current government is engaged with "but they did it" - I'm stating a simple fact. I would go as far as to say that a thinking person would expect that as soon as government and the political parties recognized the impact various forms of web based social interaction were having on the landscape that they were in there seeing what was going on and trying to work it to their advantage..... being for the most part a bunch of stoogie old white guys they were probably quite late coming to that realization but it was inevitable that they get there sooner or later.
What we have is [quote]"progressives"[/quote] up in arms because some said out loud that the Conservatives were doing what others have done - and I am ultimately confident that had this "news" come out under a Liberal government we would see exactly the same alarmist rhetoric coming out of Conservative blogs because that's the way [quote]"political discourse"[/quote] goes these days isn't it?
How would you personally address this CK?
Other than, of course, replacing one PM who is directing this action with another who would do exactly the same thing that is.
If you two can't keep quiet back there, I'm stopping the car!
ReplyDelete