The Dark Side of the Force

There's a potential dark side to the Twitter revolution. The New Republic's Jason Zengerle points to an Ethan Zuckerman interview on NPR's On the Media from April in which Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, talks about his study of Moldova's Twitter revolution. Zuckerman found evidence that several days into that rebellion, Twitter was "being used as a disinformation channel by forces who might have been aligned with the government, essentially trying to scare people away from demonstrating again." How long before the secret police start sending out organizational tweets—"We're massing at 7 p.m. at the Hall of the People for a march to the Hall of Justice!"—and busts everybody who shows up?

link: Let's not get carried away about Twitter power's role in Iran's demonstrations. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine