Foursquare for Tian’anmen Square

Early last month it was reported that the Chinese government extended its list of banned websites to include Foursquare. This was because Chinese citizens were using Foursquare to protest the Tian'anmen Square massacre of 1989 (an event where the Chinese government killed 3,000 protesters)

Citizens who wanted to mark the anniversary of the killings used foursquare to change their location to Tian'anmen square and thus check into the square even though they were not actually there. Foursquare was then used to leave comments about the killings and protesting statments.

This article reminds us that while in many nations the advancement of social media is being embraced, other repressive governments have launched an all out war on their spread. At the same time, this war may be as hard to win as the war on terror or the war on drugs simply because once people have the mind and tools to do something, they really cannot be stopped. In short, social media has advanced global communication to such great extents that not even a national policy of censorship can undo it. That is power.

The article is viewable here: http://tinyurl.com/3ytqnhp


http://tinyurl.com/3ytqnhp