Social Media Fuelling Riots, Civil Unrest, Etc

While I think social sites like the ones you suggested may make communication and organising of such events easier I think it is much more important to tackle the underlying cause of the riots than it is to try and prevent people wanting to riot from communicating - they will always find another way to organise demonstrations.

However, it might be useful if social media sites collaborated with the police and showed a strong opposition against the organising and encouragement of demonstrations. Social media sites could, for example, agree to help police with their enquires if such events took place and this might deter people from using them in a destructive way.

From an economic perspective, these sites could be seen to have negative externalities from the economic damage caused through various demonstrations. I think if the government were to intervene and encourage a strong relationship between the police and the sites it would definitely help. Some sites may be reluctant to do this because of costs associated with upgrading their report functions and may also feel they are discouraging users from voicing their opinions.

I agree with your first point, but Twitter and Facebook make the riots come into fruition. Many of these weren't organised demonstrations but fuelled by tweets and excitement.

I think in general the internet needs to have heavier penalties for what can be conducted. Planning violence, etc should have stronger discipline than it currently does. Some may argue that twitter and Facebook are there to express your views, but people don't understand that the internet is a stage that most people can access (and one that is recorded, unlike a conversation) so there is no excuse for simply saying it's fine because it's on the internet.

A bit of a tangent I know, but the underlying message is that I feel that if the authorities could enforce heavier penalties for things posted on Twitter and Facebook, there wouldn't be a need for policing.

Yes, you may argue this is turning into 1984 and Big Brother, but as I mentioned before, the internet is a record. If you want to say it in conversation with no consequences, that's fine, but if there's a permanent record, you should be prepared for the consequences.

I agree with the idea of being able to use the social media sites to prosecute people for encouraging violence etc. (As I mentioned in my second response) But this opens a whole other whirl of "can we prove that person actually posted that" etc. But I suppose that is not the economic side of discussion

Groat wrote:

I agree with the idea of being able to use the social media sites to prosecute people for encouraging violence etc. (As I mentioned in my second response) But this opens a whole other whirl of "can we prove that person actually posted that" etc. But I suppose that is not the economic side of discussion

Groat wrote:
Yes, but there's no reason why it has to be a solely economic viewpoint we're having.