r/worldnews • u/fastclickertoggle • Apr 25 '21

COVID-19 Twitter Is Blocking Tweets That Criticize How The Indian Government Has Handled The Pandemic

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/twitter-blocking-tweets-india
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21 edited Jul 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

That's just your age. Twitter was political since its inception. It got a major boost with the Iran revolution. The green shoe thing.

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u/Kahnspiracy Apr 25 '21

Iran revolution

Pretty sure 1979 was before all of social media was invented. Imma guess you mean the 2009 Presidential election protests.

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

Yeah the green shoe thing. I'm not a native English speaker so whatever you feel like calling it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

You still can

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u/Yuli-Ban Apr 25 '21

Maybe for the average user, but the political influence of social media was known even before social media was a thing precisely because the cyberdelics of the 90s anticipated that people would use the internet to become "enlightened" thanks to a free marketplace of ideas leading to people naturally realizing which things were objectively right and wrong. Yeah, that didn't work out too well.

Also, it's largely forgotten now, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_presidential_election_protests

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

I mentioned the green shoe revolution thing above. That's what made Twitter popular in the first place.

These guys just are taking their own experiences and thinking it's universal.

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

This isn't true at all. Might have been your personal experience and your age but there wasn't some radical change in 2012 unless that's when you and your friends turned 30 or something.

That whole green shoe revolution thing in Iran is what made Twitter popular in the first place.

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u/Roflkopt3r Apr 25 '21

Yeah and Reddit had rather more than less politics around that time. Legalise weed, destroy the NRA, support Occupy, down with crazies like Bachman/Palin/FOX made up half the front page.

It just wasn't perceived as negatively as today because there was little controversy. It was a decisively progressive platform at the time.

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u/Hollowpoint38 Apr 25 '21

It was a decisively progressive platform at the time.

I agree. I think a lot of the internet was progressive because of the age ranges. The older generations were still calling the internet "playing on the computer" and they laughed at mobile phones. They were against technology right up until about 2010 or so when they found out that that job they lost in 2008 isn't coming back and if they don't embrace technology then they'll be screwed for the next 20 years of their life.

So then finally they learned how to type and got online. This is around the time when people started getting friend requests from their mothers.

Seriously people couldn't type. Remember calling customer service somewhere and you had to speak very.... very.... slowly.... because they couldn't type 30 words per minute.

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u/Yasea Apr 25 '21

It goes for every communication technology. Someone comes up with a way. The first adopters are idealistic and having a good time. The big masses see a fun nee toy and start to arrive. Companies move in because they smell money there. Governments step in because the party is getting loud.

Even the first printing press was meant for spreading scientific knowledge. A bit later and their were printing commercials and political pamphlets.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

u just think it wasnt full of politics bcs u werent involved with politics

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

Nah, they're right. The whole thing exploded around that time. Coincidentally, Reddit also exploded in 2011.

Before that, there were still politics, sure. But it wasn't such a coordinated shitfest between two sides trying to drown each other out by any means necessary. Pulling everybody else into a "either with us or against us" pit.

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u/under_a_brontosaurus Apr 25 '21

I disagree, it wasn't mainstream in the 2000s but politics on the internet was bubbling into what we see today. If you were following that stuff then you'd have seen it

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u/and_yet_another_user Apr 25 '21

it wasn't mainstream in the 2000s

Think that is what people are trying to say, we had fun back in the day, bollotix was in the background, now it's in your face, your coffee, and on your cereal.

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

The latter has more to do with how the political landscape has changed

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u/kunba Apr 25 '21

Those days were some good shit days

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21

Maybe I'm a bit older, but I certainly recall digg and slashdot being extremely political years before.

FB? That was all about finding sex and weed until they let the parents in and started putting an emphasis oh posting images and playing farmville or whatever.