Eygeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion, in the interview with CNN talked about how dictators use the internet to control their societies. He indicated that many authoritarian rulers use the internet to their advantage to keep everyone under their regime. The rulers in countries, such as Russia and China, utilize the online tools to promote propaganda in support of the government or to show how the bloggers promoting democracy are ‘the advocates of the West’ or ‘CIA employees’. All of the discussions online are regularly monitored and under strict censorship. Morozov also indicated that people generally tend to believe the online bloggers and various other online sources than the media, as people speak up and are not as corrupted as the media is. Little do they know, however, that in China, for example, the government pays the bloggers to post propaganda blocks in favor of the government to keep people on their side. What is more, the government in the countries which currently deal with protests, use facebook and different facial recognition tools to decipher the people who posted the pictures of themselves during the protests, so that they can find them and ‘handle the situation’.
He agrees that internet can definitely be used to promote democratic views, spread the information and news to other communities; however, it is not possible in the countries with such high censorship as in Russia and China.
It is very troubling to know that people in those countries cannot have freedom even online. It is also somewhat amazing, however, how such underdeveloped countries can have so much technological power over their people and control them in every aspect of their lives. Those poor people cannot do anything without fearing that somebody might be watching and hunt them down for them speaking up their minds. Looking at all the protests and governments fighting its people, I realized how much we don’t appreciate all the freedoms we have and we just take everything for granted. I’m not saying that we live in a perfect country, as we are obligated to live ‘under certain internet rules’ as well, however, they are not nearly as strict in China or Russia. We definitely do not leave in a country, which supports freedom of speech as much as it says it does, but I’ll take that over leaving in a propaganda-type country any time.
It leaves me wondering, however, what will come first- democracy, so that people are free to speak up, or people need to speak up more so that democracy can be installed and promote the freedoms? Is that even possible in the countries, where the regime is so strict and everyone is under such control? I’m still hopefull…
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