Dark Side of the Moon - Need for regulation in Social Media

2011 London riots shocked the world but what was more shocking was the role played by social media. Blackberry’s famous BBM service was used extensively by the rioters to send out information about Police activities and to collaborate. Police and Government had no control over the BBM service and therefore were unable to stop the riots from spreading. Social networking is a double edged sword and if used by anti-social elements can prove to be disastrous.

You can read more about it here: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/07/bbm-rioters-communication-method-choice

According to  reports from Wall Street Journal and CNN, terrorist organizations are leveraging the social media to promote their anti-social activities, this poses a challenge for the Governments and national security agencies around the world. 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304713704579091720477473610?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304713704579091720477473610.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/27/world/rivers-social-media-terror/

The ability to bring together and connect people of social networking sites is so powerful that we just can’t leave these social platforms unguarded; we need to protect them from misuse by anti-social elements and terrorist groups. And therefore, we need some kind of regulatory authority to overlook social media. We know that, People don’t like NSA type snooping (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html) and people have an inherent distrust in the governments, therefore what we need is an international authority that will have access to various data-centers of different social media and will safeguard these powerful tools from misuse. 

The implementation of the regulatory authority may face many political and tactical challenges but if we don’t control this teenager now, he may grow up to be a rowdy adult. We are living in a world where technology is changing the way we see things and interact with people every 5-6 years. Most people can’t cope with this change leave alone understanding the implications. And hence, we need to guard and regulate it before it snowballs into something uncontrollable.

Ramblings of a concerned Cyber citizen

Shreyansh Tewari,M14