*As a disclaimer, I had to write this for class. So sorry this week you won’t be reading about my expertise in Cedar Crest dining services. If you have any complaints, please email Christine Schiavo.
Until seventeen, I was not allowed to have a Facebook page. I never had an AIM or a MySpace. When I graduated high school, my mother finally decided it was time to give my sweet internet freedom. I’m not sure how she would have reacted if I decided to use the page to start a revolution in Egypt as opposed to connecting with fellow recent high school graduates.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and other familiar social media organizations are business corporations. In this YouTube video, Mona Eltahawy argues that these social media corporations have a responsibility in the name of human interest to help activists in other countries, specifically the Middle East, join together in the name of democratic revolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAlbajRFgUE
The question of responsibility to these activists from social media corporations is up for debate. Facebook and YouTube have both created obstacles, as stated in the video, for activists who want to use their sites as a tool to bring other activists together. But these are not necessarily the means or values of these social media sites.
If social media sites are either not in favor of or do not want to side with the activists, it is not necessarily in their business model to do so. It is not in the terms of service that these social media have to help the activists. And if they were to make exceptions for activists, would they have to then give these freedoms to the other users of their sites? If these social media corporations want to change the way their sites work to accommodate these activists, that is completely up to them, but as of right now, they are in no regards to do so.
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