Social Media Face Down with China

Social Media are learning to push the limits of places like China and Russia which want to control information inside their countries and use social media to do it.  They lable people who disagree with thier approaches "subversives" and rely on policies and laws that prohibit publication of subversive material.  They demand material be removed.  Facebook, Google, and Twitter have all experienced this with China and Russia.  

In today's Wall Street Journal, there is an opinion piece about Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to deal with being banned in China.  Zuckerberg has gone so far as to give a speech in Mandarin and invite the Chief Censor to his campus in the U.S. in hopes of learning how to adapt to Chinese rules on the Internet.  

China really doesn't care since it went its own way years ago by developing their own copies of social media.  They have Renren.com, the Facebook clone.  They would rather force their own people onto networks they control, then let someone they don't control operate there.  Sina Weibo doubles for Twitter and includes some aspects of Facebook too.  Russia is finally coming around to the Chinese way of thinking about their social media, so it won't be long before we see a Russian knock-off of these kinds of services.  

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that some countries don't believe in the free exchange of information.   The Vindu Goel and Andrew Kramer (Web Freedom Seen as an Issue) in todays

New York Times, add Turkey to the list of countries trying to get help from social media sites to control dissent.  Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Saudia Arabia all have some of the same types of control, though possibly without the hoopla that has gone with it.  

We are entering an age when the haves and have nots are not related to those with access to the Internet and those without.  The more Internet connectivity countries get, the less some like it.  When the Russians looked at the Arab Spring, they were sure it was a bad idea to allow the free exchange of information.  They want to manage (not control)  content on the Internet.  They want to control it in their own countries and, where they can, in any other country that don't agree with them.  Hacking Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Google accounts for dissenters, and hacking  newspapers to find sources are good indicators of what they are up to.