A 30 minute discussion from Ideas In Action. Includes, Jeffrey Gedmin, President, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, David Keyes, Founder, CyberDissidents.org, Christopher Walker, Director of Studies, Freedom House, Bari Weiss, Assistant Editorial Features Editor, Wall Street Journal.
The discussion of the measures/countermeasures taken between dissidents and autocratic regimes is fascinating. Walker makes the technical point that even the most autocratic regimes cannot hope to completely shut off the spigot, so they take countermeasures that are described as "playing the facebook game from the other side". Some measures? Attempts to do what is called "trolling" on line, and in the political talk radio realm is sometimes called "astroturfing", that is; having a collection of people dive into a conversation or comment stream posing as if private citizens, taking exception with the dissent, or arguing that the commentary is mistaken. Also, more menacing, but not surprising, regimes plant threats to protesters in facebook and twitter pages, thus suppressing turnout at protests.
No doubt they fish for personal information, in order to arrest or kill as well.
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