Does social media have a downside during revolution?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/07/how-social-media-undermined-egypts-democratic-transition/

"During the heady days of revolution, social media seemed to unify Egyptians across disparate ideological trends around a limited, shared goal. That didn’t last. As time went on, social media encouraged political society to self-segregate into communities of the like-minded, intensifying connections among members of the same group while increasing the distance among different groups."

"The mobilization of fear was concentrated more in the politically activist communities than in the broader public. One of the most striking findings in the statistical analysis is the extremely low incidence of “fear basket” terms in the Couch Party cluster. Contrary to the common portrayal of Egypt as a society consumed by fear and chaos during this time, the apolitical group was not consumed by fear, or at least not talking about it on Twitter. Instead, fear basket terms seem to be most found within the activist cluster and the Islamist cluster, the most politicized of the groupings."

So people form cliques.  I see this every day on social media.  But I guess that's their point - what happens to a revolution when the cliques start forming?  Can you still maintain a revolution or is this a sign of the end?

Did Occupy Wall Street accomplish anything?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/measuring-occupy-wall-strreet-impact

"While critics of Occupy took issue with it at the time for its lack of specific demands, a clear organizational structure or strategies for next steps, it has come to resonate politically, said Heather Gautney, a sociology professor at Fordham University.
She pointed to Sanders' campaign, saying Occupy's injection of income inequality into the discourse paved the way for the Vermont senator's calls to get money out of politics, rein in Wall Street banks and provide free public college education.
Nicholas Kiersey, a political science professor at Ohio University, said Trump's political presence is part of Occupy's impact, as well.
'If Bernie Sanders represented a left-wing popular suspicion that had felt all of a sudden very legitimate in expressing its grievances, Trump, I think, represents the mirror of that from the right,' he said. 'They both, in a sense, have ridden the momentum of popular dissatisfaction.'"

The concentration on the 1% vs. the 99% came from Occupy Wall Street.  that is built into our political discussion now.

How Bahrain stopped the Arab Spring there

http://observers.france24.com/en/20160906-bahrain-monarchy-arab-spring-repression-revolution?ns_campaign=reseaux_sociaux&ns_source=twitter&ns_mchannel=social&ns_linkname=editorial&aef_campaign_ref=partage_user&aef_campaign_date=2016-09-06

"As the months went by, the Bahraini government went about methodically silencing voices of opposition and discontent. Today, there are practically no opposition figures still free. Professor Valeri says that the regime really started to crack down in earnest after the legislative elections in 2014.

'Up until 2012, world powers like the United States and the United Kingdom were pressuring Bahraini authorities to reform. But after 2012, the US and the UK were under the impression that the Arab Spring movement in Bahrain was over [Editor’s note: The Arab Spring movements that took place in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya had all managed to unseat their dictators by this point] and that all that was left of the struggle were small skirmishes going on in some of the villages. The diplomatic tone changed and these governments started saying that Bahrain would undergo reforms but that it would be a slow process.

Then, in 2014, the US and the UK started pressuring the opposition al-Wefaq party, the main Shiite group in the country, to participate in the legislative elections. Al-Wefaq was trapped. If the group participated in the vote, it would cut off its electoral base, which wanted more radical reforms. However, if it refused to participate, then then it would be accused of standing in the way of reconciliation. It ended up choosing the second option. The Bahraini government took it as a go-ahead to carry out a widespread crackdown on the legal opposition.'"

Saudi Arabia sent in vast numbers of troops to stop a peaceful protest.

Is inconveniencing others a method for successful protest?

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37374-the-political-significance-of-being-inconvenienced

"So remember, the next time a demonstration stops your evening commute or gets loud outside of your office window, protesters are not hoping to raise your awareness or tug at your heartstrings. They are teaching you of the deep political importance of being inconvenienced, and helping you to get used to it."

The author kind of meanders a bit, but the main point is that inconveniencing others is a great method for forwarding your Just and Important Cause.  She gives examples of the current pipeline standoff in North Dakota, where Native Americans are trying to block an oil pipeline to protect their water, and the takeover of a lot next to the notorious Homan Square police station in Chicago.  These I would actually agree with, since they are directly confronting the group that is their concern.

But I strongly take issue with using this tactic to, say, shut down a major street corner in some city, where the geographic location and the people thus inconvenienced have nothing to do with what you are protesting.  Wise protesting is very much tied up with not only your message, but in how you conduct yourselves and what you are doing.  Your message is MUCH more clear when you are protesting at a location that points to your object of concern, when you are doing something that relates to your concern, and when you act in a way that shows you are respectful of your audience (that being everybody that you want to sway to your side).  I fail to see how inconveniencing mere bystanders (and probably not even bystanders - simple ordinary people with NO connection to your cause) will bring anybody to your side, or make them want to listen to what you are complaining about.

How the Internet helped stop a coup, in 1991!

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/08/the_1991_soviet_internet_helped_stop_a_coup_and_spread_a_message_of_freedom.html

"The coup attempt collapsed on Aug. 21. Overall, during the three days, Relcom transmitted 46,000 “news units” throughout the Soviet Union and around the world. Regime No. 1 was a revolutionary idea, although not everyone realized it. Radio transmitters spread information in one direction, outward. But Relcom worked in both directions, spreading and collecting information. It was a horizontal structure, a network, a powerful new concept in a country that had been ruled by a rigid, controlling clique. In the 1950s, the first Soviet photocopy machine had been wrecked because it threatened to spread information beyond the control of those who ruled. Now the power of those rulers was being smashed—by a network they could not control.

Another principle was also demonstrated during the coup: The programmers did what they thought was right and did not ask permission. They acted because the free flow of information was threatened. They also knew that they had the support of thousands of subscribers, making the network stronger. The very first time the internet had a role in Russian politics was during the three days in August 1991, and back then it helped to crush the security services’ operation by undermining Kremlin’s monopoly on spreading and sharing information."

I got on the Internet in 1993.  Usenet became my home.  I still love the free communication of the Internet and have seen the power it has to help people organize.

Turkish coup plotters used WhatsApp, and we get to read and follow along

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/07/24/the-turkey-coup-through-the-eyes-of-its-plotters/

"A group of plotters of the failed Turkish coup attempt used a WhatsApp group to communicate with each other. Bellingcat has transcribed, translated, and analysed the conversation, thereby cross-referencing the messages with photos, videos, and news reports of the evening, night, and morning of July 15-16.

The transcript is composed of two different sources. The first source is a video which was uploaded to Twitter in the morning of July 16, and appears to show the conversation on the phone of a surrendered, captured, or killed coup plotter. This video revealed the WhatsApp conversation from its start at 21:15 to 22:45. The second source is 21 photos that show the rest of the conversation, has already been transcribed. The photos are courtesy of Al Jazeera Türk’s Selahattin Günday, and we are thankful that he was willing to share them with Bellingcat. We owe many thanks to “Has Avrat”[1] for fully translating the transcript, as well as contributing to the analysis. All times mentioned are in the local time zone, which is EEST (UTC+3)."

wow.  I think this has to be the first time we can follow along with the coup plotters, and even see what they were doing via video.  This is an historically amazing record.

Did British intelligence attempt to derail the Arab Spring?

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gchq-url-shortener-twitter-honeypot-arab-spring

"In the fall of 2010, I was an early member of the AnonOps IRC network attacked by JTRIG and used by a covert GCHQ agent to contact P0ke, and in 2011 I co-founded LulzSec with three others. The leaked document also shows that JTRIG was monitoring conversations between P0ke and the LulzSec ex-member Jake Davis, who went by the pseudonym Topiary.
Through multiple sources, I was able to confirm that the redacted deanonymizing link sent to P0ke by a covert agent was to the website lurl.me."

Well this is weird.  and sad.

Coup plotters; ignore the Internet at your peril

https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cyberpower-crushes-coup-b247f3cca780#.3kaa9mipq

"Today, the TV and radio are not the only means available to get information to people. The Turkish putsch took over some TV stations and did the standard coup style announcement: “we’re doing this for you, blah blah blah.” But they failed to eliminate the Internet, and any blocking that they were able to do was ineffective. In no small part because the Turkish people have spent years learning how to circumvent the social media blockades that Erdogan has put in place at various times. This made the population resilient against attempts to mitigate the cyber weapons they deployed."

This is a really well done article.  It explains mainly that the Internet is a method of communication that must not be ignored.  

How to "smarten up the hive mind"

https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematical-bs-detector-can-boost-the-wisdom-of-crowds

"One reason that crowds mess up, he notes, is the hegemony of common knowledge. Even when people make independent judgments, they might be working off the same information. When you average everyone’s judgments, information that is known to all gets counted repeatedly, once for each person, which gives it more significance than it deserves and drowns out diverse sources of knowledge. In the end, the lowest common denominator dominates. It’s a common scourge in social settings: think of dinner conversations that consist of people repeating to one another the things they all read in The New York Times."

Solution?  Sort out who actually knows pertinent things and give their view more weight.

"Assemblies of the Commons" in France

https://www.popularresistance.org/assemblies-of-the-commons-emerge-in-france/?utm_content=bufferfd0df&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

"After this festival, several Assemblies of Commons begun to emerge explicitly in Lille, Toulouse, Brest and several other big cities in France. It must be understood that these assemblies are all at the 'incubation' stage, and each of them is inventing its own operation as informal structures. For most, they met only once or twice.

They have a French wiki to document and exchange practices, and a website to communicate to the outside.

The main purpose of these assemblies is to be a forum to exchange experiences and bring together commoners. They also aim to promote the creation of an ethical economy that can create livelihoods around the commons. They try to identify and develop commons through mapping and meetings."

This sounds somewhat similar to Occupy Wall Street.  An embryonic idea to fix society when politics isn't working.