Libya Warns Against Use of Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "Many Libyan Internet activists have declared their support for the pro-democracy movements and revolutions in the Middle East. After seeing the power of the people succeed in Tunisia and Egypt, they created groups on Facebook to call for political and economic reforms in Libya. Libya's dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, has responded by warning against the use of Facebook."

Comments

There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[Kenja]

But this isn't one of them.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

The printing press was not good for authoritarians. Neither is online collaboration.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[FuckingNickName]

All governments reflect the will of the majority, except in the very short term. No dictator could stand without popular support. This horrible truth makes "Western Democracy" a polite facade for the same experience everyone's endured since one guy first discovered he could win friends and influence people.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[tysonedwards]

As much as I personally object to the implementation of Facebook and how the masses seem to regard it as the be-all, end-all source for communicating, playing games and generally dicking around, I completely agree that the dissemination of information is generally for the greater good.

Enabling people to openly speak their minds and to enable reform to happen within their governments when they object to the way that things are being run has been shown to create dialogs to enable peaceful change to happen.

When such opinions and discussions are forced to be kept in secret, the only action that can be taken is out of anger and violence, and as the mighty Yoda once said: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[ElectricTurtle]

I think you wildly conflate "support" with "acquiescence". A dictator can maintain power so long as the majority would rather not act against him. They don't have to like, let alone act positively toward, that administration.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[gad_zuki!]

Your administrator has set your Sonicwall router to do that explicitly. Sonicwall as a corporation isn't blocking Facebook for all the world, your IT guy is. Take it up with him. Maybe your boss thinks you're dicking around too much on the internet.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[Nadaka]

Or his secret police are too effective.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[FuckingNickName]

Unfortunately so. Just as today, capitalism is the will of the majority (sell what enough people want), and poverty is the method of purging the undesirables - whether by keeping them wage slaves or simply letting them die off through lack of good security and healthcare. It's not that there are alternatives - the outcome is inevitable, whatever label you put on your political or economic system.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[FuckingNickName]

No, I'm not saying anyone "deserves" a dictator - I'm saying that the existence of a dictator/regime implies popular support for the dictator/regime. This doesn't mean the whole country supports the dictator; it may even be that the majority would prefer something different if it were presented to them but lack the imagination to think it up themselves (this is why propaganda is such an effective tool, both from within and without).

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[Loosifur]

If you're talking about the Libyan army, last I checked the Russians made T-72's and T90's. Also, we don't exactly have a warm and fuzzy relationship with Libya. Bahrain has some US hardware, but the M60 Patton and the M113 APC aren't exactly the cutting edge of armor; they both came out in the 60s. And if you think Bahraini protesters should hate the US on the basis of military hardware, might I suggest that they also hate the British, French, Swiss, Swedish, and Germans for the same.

I'm not sure, but I think the tanks that the Egyptian army did not turn on protesters are a combo of American and old Soviet tanks.

Secret police, being secret, don't advertise whatever tech you think they might be using, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the CIA did not provide any help to Libya in that regard, either, seeing as this is the country led by a dictator whose house we bombed in the 80s for general naughtiness, among other notable diplomatic fun-facts.

Although "people don't like us" is a deliciously vague phrase, I'm going to translate that as, "the US is unpopular in the Middle East". Then I would say that we're actually not as unpopular as you might think, or as we might seem at times. Also, the Middle East encompasses a large enough area and diverse enough population that it is probably a gross oversimplification to assign one opinion to all people in the entire region. Then you have the problem of how to accurately measure opinions of populations who might not have the freedom to speak openly, in countries led by hostile regimes, and who may or may not be truly random selections (i.e. not government plants). Finally, it seems that most people in the Middle East are quite capable of separating a distaste for American foreign policy from a dislike for the United States as a country or Americans as people.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[FuckingNickName]

You're describing the beginning of the process. The end result in any market is a few dominant players, often cooperating, to satisfy the vast majority. It is possible for a few irrelevant small businesses to struggle along temporarily ("successful" is rose-tinting it), all vigorously defending the system because each dreams to become a big player.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[spun]

"Popular support" usually implies a majority, I guess that was what threw me. But it appears you are saying that a dictator requires a certain amount of popular support, and a certain amount of apathy or lack of imagination. That I can agree with. I believe the real reason for this recent slew of revolts is the recent string of crop failures driving up food prices. Poorer people who are apathetic when bread is 50 cents a loaf can suddenly become very motivated when the price tops two dollars.

Re:There are many reasons to beware of Facebook.

[FuckingNickName]

You're not very good at this. "Computer hardware" is such a vague, overarching term that it's embarrassing you propose a market for "computer hardware". You need to do it like this:

Market for general purpose CPU: Intel, ARM, (AMD).

Market for desktop operating systems: Microsoft, Apple.

Market for search engines: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.

Market for smart mobile phone operating systems (much newer market - this still varies quite a bit): Google, Apple, Nokia, Blackberry.

If you think even half a dozen competitors in a world of almost 7 billion people is impressive, you're missing the point entirely.

Here we go again

[Lyrata]

Help, help, I'm being repressed!

Re:Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

LIKE!

Then Warn Against the Internet!

[BoRegardless]

The "old guard" has no clue. Stiffling communication today will not work much longer.

The free information exchange makes people want to be free.

Re:Then Warn Against the Internet!

[LWATCDR]

I wouldn't bet on that. You sure do not hear about any protests in North Korea.
I fear that the dictators of the world have learned well from this. If you are going to be a dictator be a brutal ruthless dictator. Watch the news and will see that now when protesters show up tanks will too and not a show of force but as brutal force.
It is easy to talk about an uncrushable human spirit when you do not have a tank crushing your, your wife's, and or you children's bodies. Yep the old guard has learned well. No half measures anymore. If you are going to rule then rule with a brutal iron fist. Welcome to the world of unintended consequences. The results of the Internet revolution may be getting ride of the just moderately bad dictators but creating more really brutal ones.
BTW just to be clear I REALLY HOPE I TURN OUT TO BE WRONG.

Re:Then Warn Against the Internet!

[Turn-X Alphonse]

People don't want to be free, they want the illusion of freedom while being kept safe, The Internet isn't making people want freedom, it's showing them behind the curtain and the corruption there.

Re:Then Warn Against the Internet!

[ArhcAngel]

Or there are more people who support the dictator than oppose him. There are quite a few North Koreans (and Chinese) who believe the propaganda of their government and fully support them.

Re:Then Warn Against the Internet!

[Locke2005]

Historically, revolutions don't happen when people are completely oppressed. They happen when oppression is partially lifted, giving the populace the resources they need to revolt. The protesters in Egypt are well educated and well versed in modern technology, not exactly the starving poor. Historically, the very poor by themselves never lead revolts. People are easier to control when they have no freedom at all, they become harder to control when you give them a little freedom.

Re:Then Warn Against the Internet!

[LWATCDR]

That is just it. To have a real revolution you must have some hope of victory and frankly living to see it. People in the west and even slightly free nations really do not get it.
If you see masses of people being killed you will not join them. Look at the very limited resistance in European nations durring WWII. The movies really over blow the size of the resistance. The French resistance was actually pretty minnor until liberation was near at hand. AKA they thought they had chance to live to see victory. The Warsaw uprising was when Russian troops where near btw that was a shameful thing the USSR did letting them die.
The nation that did the best at resisting was Norway. The reason that did so well. Hitler gave them the most freedom and thought that they would actually fall in line because they where Nordic. BTW I am not saying this to take anything away from the Norwegian resistance. On the contrary they pretty much invited a brutal occupation because they took a moral stand. IMHO Norway was the unsung hero of WWII.
But all this brave talk on Slashdot means nothing. Most of us are really clueless to how good we have it and how free and safe we really are. When push comes to shove almost no one here would stand in front of tank that just ran over another protester. It goes counter to the basic will to live.

there goes Lybia - don't they learn a thing...?

[pyalot]

I mean, it's not like, duh, obvious or something? Left and right dictatorships are sucumbing to public protest, riot and facebook. And they *all* did the very same thing first, restrict the ways in which citizens can organize themselves, which in turn angried the citizens even more, and the whole thing totally spirals out of control. Dear would-be dictator of some soon to come fledgling and hopeful dictatorship. If you let it get as far as that you have to forbid people from using facebook, you're doing it wrong.

Re:just how many ways DOES he spell his name?

[Locke2005]

I believe HE spells it in Arabic script. All of your examples are attempts to phonetically spell it with Latin characters.

Thirds rule

[elrous0]

There used to be a "rule of thirds" advocated by some historians of the French Revolution. For a revolution to happen, you needed at least 1/3 of the population to actively support it, no more than 1/3 actively opposed, and around 1/3 to be neutral (less if you had more than 1/3 supporting).