Tweeting Tyrants Out of Tunisia: Global Internet at Its Best | Threat Level | Wired.com#iframe_height=300#iframe_height=300#iframe_height=300#iframe_height=300

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The Special One 2 weeks ago

Look people - No one's saying that the internet brought down the Tunisian Government all by it's self. What this wired piece is trying to say is that the internet can be a useful tool in bringing about dialogue, peaceful change, agreement, information and the truth all of which can help prevent bloody warfare it is hoped. Of course there is also disinformation on the internet but like any tool (example: an Axe) it can be used for good purpose or bad purpose! - It's up to you!

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Mithrandir 2 weeks ago

Ubuntu FTW.

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Simon Jester 2 weeks ago

Now we just need to make it work in the US.

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MediocreScientist 2 weeks ago in reply to Simon Jester

and I thought it already happened in 2008 .......... and in 2009

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Angelo99 2 weeks ago

Wow, all these douchey armchair revolutionists actually think they played a part in this? Look you useless, elitist wastes of oxygen... tweeting about something or spreading some picture around the internet means nothing. The people in the street are the ones making change and taking the risk. Just because you tweet some crap which makes it a bit easier for CNN to rehash on their website and channels does nothing to help the situation.

Governments already know what's going on. They have intelligence agencies dedicated to this. A few street level pictures being shared on blogs and twitter accounts is just a joke. What you do is nothing more than public masturbation. Twitter and Facebook did not topple anything and never will. They are just a soapbox for the masses of idiots with nothing else to do. The internet is what facilitates citizen level dispersion of information, not social media sites. All of this info could just as easily be emailed to CNN, the BBC or whoever.

Just because these sites allow more people to easily access the information is meaningless when 99.999999999999999% of those people have no way or intention to use that information outside of satisfying their own curiosity and wasting some time while at work.

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üø 2 weeks ago in reply to Angelo99

the CIA didn't even know that the "evil empire" (USSR for you youngsters) was on the verge of collapse until it had, in fact, collapsed.

so much for your notion of omniscient governments and their grossly misnamed "intelligence" agencies.

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nhfoley 2 weeks ago in reply to Angelo99

The beauty of the internet, and even facebook, is that while you may primarily use it to lurk girls you went to highschool with, others can and do use it to rapidly and dynamically spread up-to-date information that is significantly more important than the sloppy new year's eve photos your old secret crush Jessie just posted.

I think virtually every subsection of this article strives to show, and mostly succeeds in doing so, that the people on these websites were doing something much more substantive than just "public masturbation." Particularly the DDoS attacks by anonymous... how, exactly, should they have got "on the street" when the vast majority of them were neither in the country, nor (likely) within a thousand miles of it?

But then again, you probably didn't mean too much by the masturbation comment. It just slipped out, because your thoughts were already on the next sentence about facebook.

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corradosando 2 weeks ago in reply to Angelo99

says the anonymous surfer...

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AbdulahZinDaHouse 2 weeks ago

A nation is only a bunch of single person together. Great dictators have always know that to divide people is the way to stay on the throne. Internet, nor WikiLeaks, nor Twitter, nor Anonymous did bring down the Tunisian government. But it provided them with a sense of being together, stronger, and that "the timing was right", given that, it's the courage of the people in the street who made it happen, of course. But it's fair to say that Internet and all the "actors" cited above played a very important role as well. United we stand, divided, we fall.

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Jon Fraud Carry 2 weeks ago

To all of you self-pleasuring tweeters, I hope you are enjoying the fantasy that you have created social change in Tunisia. I also hope that you are willing to accept some responsibility when then whole thing devolves into mass violence, death, destruction and the imposition of a dictatorship.

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mattolejack 2 weeks ago

This is such an idiotic premise.

Ben Ali was not brought down by twitter, facebook or wikileaks. He was brought down by lower class demonstrators from the hinterlands who burned themselves alive and threw themselves at the guns of the army and police. The yuppies and middle class people didn't start demonstrating until he was already finished. The people in Tunis and the big developed coastal cities didn't start demonstrating until the last week, after a month of savage violence and protests in the underdeveloped parts of the country. When the people from the poor neighborhoods of Tunis finally started rioting and sacking the villas of the rich in Hammammat last week, that's when the Army decided it was over for Ben Ali.

And these people don't use Twitter.

Please stop with the solipsistic twitter revolution stories, Wired. You're supposed to be smarter than this. The whole world does not operate on the same premises as middle class hipster tweeters from San Francisco and New York.

This revolution was built on blood and pain, not social network utilities.

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lollertron 1 week ago in reply to mattolejack

Exactly. Everyone acts like the Internet is going to save the world. Stop relying on other people to stand up for yourselves and get off your lazy (and most likely obese) can.

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Karen Yukie Yamada 1 week ago

See Facebook Karen Yukie Yamada
See twitter.com/FernSpoke

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rastafari365 1 week ago

Elvis has left the building

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fartblossom 2 weeks ago

Not to be a grammar nazi, but the last sentence is missing a word.

I haven't been following this story as closely as I should have, so I didn't know about the anonymous connection. Nice article.

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Ian Hyzy 2 weeks ago

SuperSecretWikileak: I'm betting over 2/3 of Americans do not know or care about this. This story is horrendously under-covered by news agencies. Wow Wired, this article really
*sunglasses*
shocked me

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üø 2 weeks ago

too bad President OilPhRMA wants to make "twitter" an arm of US intelligence

when will we be rid of our own tyrants?

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