And that’s OK when used for good, not evil.
As was the case for the massive social outcry about the Vancouver rioting following the Canucks loss to the Bruins Wednesday night. A Facebook group quickly formed to gather photo and video evidence against the rioters, and by Thursday night it had 80,887 likes.
Girl brags of riot activities on Facebook
Facebook comment from photo on Vancouver Riot Post Your Photos
These snitches gathered photos of rioters and encouraged people to tag anyone they recognized. As well, they gathered screenshots of Facebook users bragging in their statuses about their illegal exploits.
On Twitter, the Vancouver Police Department encouraged the public to submit tips, photos and video through the Crime Stoppers account.
And on Tumblr my favourite tactic – a public shaming project.
And it’s not just snitching on a local level that’s going on.
The Globe and Mail reported this week that social media users are helping NATO fight Gadhafi in Libya. “On Twitter, Facebook and other services, they discuss satellite images, vessel tracking data and the latest gossip from their sources inside the country.”
NATO officials have acknowledged that social media reports contribute to their targeting process – but only after checking them against other, more reliable, sources of information.
Regular folk are combing satellite images to find clues, such as military vehicles, to report coordinates to NATO.
As ever more content producers post their works, and with a growing, world-wide audience as witness, it will become more and more difficult to hide any bad behaviour. In this way, social media can be a society’s conscience.
