Social Networks, Rebellions and Anonymity

Interview with Stephan Shakespeare co-founder YouGov

Stephan Shakespeare is one of the most famous British parliamentary bloggers and co-founder of YouGov. He was among the speakers on the panel discussion Democracy without journalism. In a brief interview he mentioned the risks of being blogger in countries with repressive governments:

“There are lots of countries, where people can go to jail. It is very hard to organize anonymously. People are saying that Twitter and Facebook are great source to organize rebellions, but they are also great sources for the secret police to find you. Now they can see your network of contacts via Facebook. So I think we need some kind of social media tools that are more covered. And we need to think about how do we use these tools bearing in mind the corporations like Google and China, Vodafone and Turkey. They would do what the government says because otherwise they will go to jail. I have seen some human rights groups in London, giving an award to a tool that allow people in China get around the firewall. So there is technology that can defeat all those worries. If you are organizing a thing in a repressive regime you need to think about anonymity.”

Dobriyana Tropankeva