Weibo worries Chinese Government’s secu

 Just read that Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, is causing sleepless nights for the  Government. Social media in an autoritharian regime is not all that great to keep your population at bay. So, some cyberutopians start mesmerizing about a twitter uprising already. 
Uhuh, nope, Dream on! Cyberutopian alert! Lets not forget that people using Weibo are not all trying to overthrow the government and you can trust the good ‘ol Chinese Party to keep a keen eye on anything suspicious happening on those platforms. I dont believe that it will cause big trouble in Little China.   

It does show that social media challenges the existing ways to control the flows of information. But a challenge is not by far the forerunner of a revolution.

But Maarten, for Gods sake, why so careful? Its a great new development, the first rays of light peeking through the slowly opening doors to democracy and freedom for all Chinese, i can hear some of my friends say.

I would say to that: Dont get me wrong, i am a strong believer in social media and the powers it harnasses to mobilise (not organise!) large groups of people. 
But heres my point: just because Twitter has proven some kind of mobilising ability elsewhere in the world will not make its bastardchild Weibo work in some Chinese province we never heard of.
Benghazi is not Shanghai, The Tahir square not Tienaminsquare. If Weibo or Twitter gain in momentum it wil be because of the people using it, not because of the medium itself. People will have to be willing to organise protests. Weibo can help mobilising people for these protests. But without some people organising in real life, nothing will happen. I am convinced of that.
The organising party will not be succesful or unsuccesfull BECAUSE OF social media. Its just a tool. A great tool, but just a tool.

To keep the debate going, here’s a link to a piece by Aaron Brady: very interesting, it helped me focussing your view on the China – social media debate as well. so, just to have an excuse to link to his piece, here it is.

Chinese response to #UKriots emphasizes importance of social media debate.

“The West have been talking about supporting internet freedom, and oppose other countries’ government to control this kind of websites, now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit [of their complacency] and they can’t complain about it,”

wrote one commentator in official Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily in reaction to the discusssion about social media that erupted in the UK after the #UKriots.

My point i made in an earlier post about the West pointing the finger to the east and telling them to open up internet is being supported already. The Telegraph called the opinionpiece a mix of ‘shock and schadenfreude’. I can imagine a boardroom full of Chinese CP officials giggling like little schoolgirls when watching the British experiencing their own dark side of unregulated internetfreedom.

A really serious debate about the relationship between internetfreedom and internetregulation has not been held in the West yet, it keeps being bogged down in a stalemate between ‘believers’, the people who think that internet is for free and governments should keep out and conservaties, who still think they can forbid things like in the old days of television and newspapers.

This more serious debate is needed, as the UK riots show. We -the West- must stop telling others, but ourselves in the first place, that internetfreedom is fundamental and that, if the net is liberated ‘a thousand blogs will bloom’ and everybody will walk hand in hand towards a sunset of eternal peace and prosperity. News: this will not happen. The internet will not liberate the world of tyranny and it has not shown itself able of regulating itself yet.  So regulation from above is, hate to say it,  a necessity.

The west, which has been constantly walking around yelling that internet freedom is fundamental for everybody and that more freedom of internet will help democracy prosper has to remember what one Yale Law Scholar, Jack Balkin, wrote recently. He wrote that there is a clear distinction between decentralisation of power and democracy and a difference between less authority and freedom. When it comes to social media people all the way up to the White House tend to forget that:  “The fact that no one is in charge does not mean that everybody is free”.  And decentralisation of power will not stop power being exercised over people.

The west must start to put more nuance in the debate over internetfreedom. Surely, social media and internet helps spreading ideas and it helps people organise in oppressed regimes. However, the other side: organising a national ‘steal your own sneaker day’ as in the UK and someone like Andreas Breivik sharing his own view on reality -or something remotely similar to what some  might call ‘reality’ 🙂 is also a fact of online life.

What is needed is a clear policy that strikes a balance between openess (i can watch any news  i want and i may have certain opinions online) and regulation (spreading hate, childpornography, organising massdestructionstampedes on Oxford Street) and so on must be countered.

This balance between freedom and regulation will differ from time to time, from country to country and from subject to subject. Sounds complicated, it is complicated. But without having a serious debate about this the problems will remain.  The internet and social media are here to stay, regulated or unregulated. So work with it!

And we dont want any more Chinese rolling under their chairs laughing their butts off about the cyberutopian stupidity of the West, now do we?