Protests Move From the Streets To YouTube 156
weighn writes "One factor driving the move of political statements to YouTube, and away from old-style street protest, is that on the Internet the chances of being personally associated with a protest are lower. Mounting your political message online is also safer in countries where taking part in a protest can result in your death or injury at the hands of your country's army. We've seen how street protests and online polls alike are being shunted aside and ignored. What is the future for the common person who yearns to be heard?"
Want to be heard? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Want to be heard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, I really believe in anti-globilization, but don't want to run the risk of catching a fire-hose or breathing some teargas... So I'll send a tersely worded internet petition to all my like-minded cowardly friends. That'll teach those nasty corporations that I can't be bullied.
There is value in standing up for something in spite of the danger of being beaten, imprisoned, or killed. There have been anonymous protests for ever e.g. roman graffiti, only problem is that it hasn't ever accomplished anything - unless I missed the chapter where Rome was sacked by anonymous graffiti artists. If you won't risk your skin it must not really be a cause worth fighting for. That is what makes the Rosa Parks, George Washington, John Hancock, and Mahatma Ghandi such icons. They believed in something strongly enough to publicly buck the system.
Re:Want to be heard? (Score:4, Informative)
Does the name "Vandals" ring any bells?
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is huge risk here. Person A creates a "protest." The government takes note, puts person A on list of troublemakers. Persons B through M watch the video. Government uses vague personal ID (IP addresses, for instance) and puts persons G through Z on same list.
The series of tubes that comprise teh intarwebbing are not generally anonymous by nature, and anyone who thinks they are is deluded, or worse. In the USA, at least, the ability to track your online activities has been in place for some time. On
Re: (Score:2)
And the beauty is, if no-one watches them and they sink without trace its not because you're wrong, its because Youtube/Google are suppressing them. They're part of the conspiracy! All your suspicions are confirmed, you get the positive feedback you c
Dial Up Nation (Score:5, Funny)
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1715?show=rep
Evolution of Protest (Score:4, Informative)
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you simply put a video on YouTube, then everyone can simply ignore it. In fact, most politicians are probably unaware of the existence of YouTube. How does that advance your cause?
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Indeed - the people making these videos are modelling them on O'Reilly, etc.
Armchair Rebels only need a curtain to be brave (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Armchair Rebels only need a curtain to be brave (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When American voters fed up with big government and voted in a Republican in 2000, they didn't get the change they wanted.
If you have ever believed that voting Republican was really a vote for smaller government, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you.
And since the 2006 midterms, when American voters fed up with war, paranoia, and moralism in government voted in Democrats, they haven't gotten that changed
4 months and we aren't out of Iraq yet, how shameful. Considering that congress only controls spending, and that the Constitution doesn't explicitly give them the right to end a war, the only effective way to get our troops out is to either attach timetables to a spending bill (done), and/or Impeach the President (they are working on it, but it needs more public support, a
Re: (Score:2)
I don't want your bridge, but I'm sure some of the Republican voters, the people I was actually talking about, would be interested.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, I really did hope/expect the Republicans would remember their conservative roots
Truth is Lincoln headed a very liberal party, and the 'pro-business agenda' adopted by the Republican party at the beginning of the last century, is rightfully described as 'economic liberalism'. Until 1964 both parties had wings which would be considered 'liberal' or 'conservative', passage of the civil rights act that year, flushed most of the southern conservative Democrats to the Republicans. The party line opposed it as a 'big-governement' act (well, at least publicly). That was the start of your par
Re: (Score:2)
With a Republican in control of the executive branch aint much is going to happen. You make it sound like there was a huge sweep in all branches, which is untrue.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is much more to it than that. You need to let your legislators know what you care about. You need to pressure them to make decisions that you think are best.
If all you ever do is vote, then your legislator will vote according to what they are hearing from other people[1]-- you've got to ensure that they vote in what you consider the best interests of your locality, county, state, or the whole country.
Write them a letter. Call their office. For local legislators, make an appoin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you mean the grassy knoll.
I voted against Bush twice. Yeah, you heard me right. The Democratic platform of "he's not Bush" worked nicely on me. Once, we actually managed to get the popular vote to come out against him, but the electoral college gave it to him anyway, because that's
Re: (Score:2)
Sure an individual's vote doesn't matter much by itself, but it does matter. A good citizen stays up with current events, and never discourages a voter. Some try to encourage voting by claiming it's importance, however I've learned that many seem to think that it matters more than it does, and when their choice fails, they get discouraged. They (and you) behave like a fair weather fan for a sports team, I on the other hand value my country and it's election process more than simple athletic contest.
Does it really matter which group of rich fuckers that don't actually give a shit about the people is in office?
All
Re: (Score:2)
What? I said I vote. So how do I behave this way? Are you just unable to read?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
When the masses start taking action, like boycotting products / companies as a result of Youtube video messages, I think the politicians will start listening & watching.
Several companies including Starbucks already responded via Youtube to videos that people have posted on Youtube against their companies, some with merit, others with less... political campaigns are also increasingly going online as Generation Y (or Z or i?) watches less TV and more and more Youtube.
The Internet remains one of the few but very significant tool left that humanity has to make itself heard to its governments. It is a significant shift of power (to the people) that can not go ignored. Whenelse in history has a single non-elected person been able to influence an entire Nation so fast and so deeply as today with the Internet (and specifically Youtube)?
Adeptus
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet you $1 Youtube is gone in 10 years, or if not gone, certainly forgotten.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The greater the number the harder it is to ignore and the greater the safety for participants from thugs in
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the problem with a street protest nowadays. If it doesn't cow-tow to the opinions of mass media moguls, then it is not visible to everyone. I remember when we had over 150,000 people marching in the streets of Melbourne against the Iraq war (biggest ever protest), and you'd read in the news and see on TV: "Thousands marched" or "scores" and not "A hundred and fifty thousand stopped the entire city" which is what actually happened - everything had to stop. However, if you didn't live in Melbourne, you wouldn't have thought much more of it. The politicians knew this and therefore didn't give a rat's about it.
Putting the protest on the net simply makes it even more useless. Unless you go there and look, you won't know.
However, what is working is the fact that more and more people are reading news from non-commercial sources and this is getting politicians a little nervous (hence the drive for censorship).
Re: (Score:1)
Though, the right way to do it, I'd say, is going out on the streets, then posting a video of that on youtube. Best of both worlds.
Re: (Score:2)
It would, but protests are not about offering people the opportunity to seek out information. That's what a library is for - and libraries are equally if not more important to the functioning of a free society.
Protests are for forcing people who would not willingly seek out certain information to be confronted with information that they may not be interested in learning. This is why anti-war activists don't just leave a copy
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus who says 150K people showed up? Did you sell tickets? Or did you just pull that number out of fantasyland?
The nice thing about the Internet is that you can see non-published photos of an event. The more cropped the photos are in the MS
Re: (Score:2)
Most media are in the business of selling attention. It's not good for business to give it away for free.
Inflitrate the old farts... (Score:2)
Or hell, just rake up so much debt, and we can all default at once, and all those old peoples investments go up in smoke.
Its real easy not to buy the corporate world crap, by default young people have more dynamic free thinking minds than old frozen minds.
If the govt does try to 'turn of the internet' , then riots are quite easy to do, there are more people than police or bullets.
Or just find out all th
One thing the terrorists understand (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
[Shhhhhhh! Don't tell them that, you fool!]
No, YouTube protests are highly dangerous and effective! We shall be developing technological countermeasures shortly. Curse those techies!
Signed,
The Man
Re: (Score:1)
YouTube videos are creations of the protesters.
Besides real life street protest does not automatically mean coverage and air time.
If you were living in a country like China,the only people watching you protest would be the police.
Re: (Score:2)
Two answers.
Serious answer: It gets the message out. Local protests are, well, local. The internet is global. Politicians will ignore it, but their paid pollsters won't.
Really serious answer: Protests are mostly pointless to the level of idiocy anyway. Ooh, here come the giant puppetheads! I don't care whether people s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Still, protests on YouTube won't carry the weight that a protest in meatspace will have, either positive or negative, for the reasons you cite. What's more, it becomes easy to discount the magnitude of a viewpoint put forth on YouTube, because there are no warm bodies backing it up. It's hard to argue with a quarter million people ma
Re: (Score:2)
It is also rather hard to avoid if your encounter violent police. Which makes using YouTube rather safer.
. What's more, it becomes easy to discount the magnitude of a viewpoint put forth on YouTube, because there are no warm bodies backing it up. It's hard to argue with a quarter million people marching peacefully in Washington for
Re: (Score:2)
Between "Macaca" and the recent Obama video, it's a pretty good bet that politicians have at least heard of YouTube.
That is, those politicians who realize the Internet isn't, in fact, a truck.
Re: (Score:2)
Do they need to know YouTube ? Actually, how does a YoutTube video get really popular ?
It does not get popular thanks to millions of people spending their time hooked on YouTube and trying to sort the best videos out of the flowing mess that's being uploaded everyday.
It gets popular because of a few people who upload the
Re: (Score:2)
the traditional media (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only protests... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in France as the presidential elections are coming near, the two main candidates, Ségolène Royal [youtube.com] and Nicolas Sarkozy [youtube.com], have more than their fair share of partisan and protest videos on YouTube.
I am against protests (Score:1, Funny)
General Strike (Score:3, Insightful)
On February 15 2003 the largest global protest ever [wikipedia.org] took place in hundreds of place around the planet. It was against the war on Iraq. They were ignored by politicians. Democracy is dead.
The only thing that i can see to get real change is to have a global general strike. Kick out the politicians everywhere. Institute democracy again. But lets do something different this time. Let's create a system that hasn't been tried before. One where we all have a say.
Theres lots of talk about democracy, but for most people, most of their days are spent at work where there is no democracy. Work is a dictatorship. I'm all for workplace democracy. Non-hierachical collectives running things.
When we have a system where our only say is to elect a so called representative every few years, we should expect to be ignored.
It's time we took back the power we all have. The power found in co-operation.
Time to overthrow these corrupt corporate bastards.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
If people were really serious about democracy: They'd take over the industrial base, like food and energy and start being mutually responsible towards one another... good luck with that one though, people are inherently lazy and prejudice to the core. You have so many different facti
Re: (Score:2)
While I agree with most of what you say, we should pay attention to how the "corrupt corporate bastards" came about; it's not a problem inherent in our economic system, or neither (to a lesser degree) our political system, so much as the fact that the average citizen doesn't take an active role in politics, and the average consumer doesn't "vote with their dollar". They are content to unthinkingly stick with a imperceptably decending status quo, content t
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it does. You can vote for big-government Republicans or big-government Democrats... or you can vote for someone who'll lose.
The people who pick the people you get to vote for are the ones who win in a democracy. That's why so many big corporations give money to _both_ Republican and Democrat candidates in US elections.
Democracy is the theory that the opinion of two idiots is worth more than the opinion of one gen
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Now we know that the only way to dispose of a corrupt government from the inside is with a small minority of very angry people with guns.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On February 15 2003 the largest global protest ever took place in hundreds of place around the planet. It was against the war on Iraq. They were ignored by politicians. Democracy is dead.
Huh ? Just using Australia as an example (since I'm a local), even being _extremely_ generous and saying a million people in total across the entire country, were protesting, would mean 5% of the population were involved.
Politicians not following the wishes of 5% of the population does not mean "Democracy is dead". Q
except that people are busy (Score:2)
You're forgetting one very important fact about representative democracy: the whole point is that someone else represents us, because we don't have the time to be involved in day-to-day political governance ourselves. When ANY of us take time out of our lives to correct our politicians, then they need to take notice. It's only when the majority of people who DO something have a differ
Re: (Score:2)
You're forgetting one very important fact about representative democracy: the whole point is that someone else represents us, because we don't have the time to be involved in day-to-day political governance ourselves. When ANY of us take time out of our lives to correct our politicians, then they need to take notice. It's only when the majority of people who DO something have a different view, that the minority who do something should be ignored.
So when I take the time to "correct" my local MP about this
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's try to apply that logic in a more evenhanded manner. Compare the number of people participating in the pro-war demonstrations to those participating in the anti-war protests. Now look at whom the politicians chose to listen to and whom they ignored. Are you telling me that in a country where a few religious nuts can get a supreme court nominee withdrawn, a massive grassroots movement ought to be completely ignored?
We never voted on whether to invade Iraq. I don't know whether such a vote would have
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
"Hmmmmm..... The democracy we have isn't doing what I want, and therefore isn't a democracy, or even a successful one. I know, I'll just say that it has failed as a
Re: (Score:2)
As for the latter half of your rant, just ask any older Chinese person how well collectivism worked during Mao's reign.
Re: (Score:2)
No it isn't. It is alive and well and has never been stronger.
Look, I too protested against the war in 2003. But I never expected that this could actually prevent the war. Demonstrations seldomly achieve this effect. Most politicians will in fact continue with their plans in spite and pat themselves on the shoulder for "not
Re: (Score:2)
Who says the politicians should be kicked? A global general strike is a strike that should be commited by EVERYBODY.
uhhh, that is kinda what a general strike is - a strike by EVERYBODY
Who are you to tell everybody what to do?
What kind of comment is that? I'm not telling everybody what to do. I'm merely making a comment on slashdot. Crikey mate.
Since when a business is a democracy
I never said it was a democracy. I said it was a dictatorship (mostly. There are lots of co-operatives, and lots of ot
Re: (Score:1)
What kind of comment is that? I'm not telling everybody what to do. I'm merely making a comment on slashdot. Crikey mate.
It sure sounds like you are telling what to do! You assume everyone wants to 'overthrow' the politicians. Heck, even your supplied url [earthanarchy.org] suggests that!
Since when a business is a democracy
I never said it was a democracy.
Ok well, I meant "since when a buisness should be a democracy".
Anyway, what bothered me the most about your post was the sheer rage it expressed and the inability to see the good things (and there aren't much) in the current system as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't assume anything. I'm just having my say.
come & see the violence inherent in the system (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The commentary that you advance sounds a lot like the mocking criticisms that came from European monarchs when the US formed their democratic government. I mean, without someone to call the shots, how can you hope to get things done? You mean your government is run by ro
Myspace (Score:1)
If there is easy access to outlets for banality, two things will happen:
1. The proportion of meaningful protest to Britney Spears wannabes is going to plummet
2. The average person will be more inclined to posting the banal; it is easier
3. Those expressing meaningful ideas will be marginalized and will gravitate to clusters which makes it easier to marginalize them
And that concludes my presentation on why a web for the common joe sucks. Thank you, and please be gentle with the shackles.
Politics (Score:2)
They'll create an independent political party based on truth and values, which will be largely ignored in favour of the incumbent elephants of politics who can spend orders of magnitude more on the campaign trail? Or they'll create a small community of supporters, with a dotcom lifestyle and even less effect on the world than the independent party.
Yeah, I'm pretty damn cynical about politics.
Nothing helps (Score:2, Informative)
The news channels showed police beating up unarmed students who were peacefully protesting. There was a hunger strike by students which went for weeks and was telecast on TV. The members of the National Knowledge Commission resigned in protest.
But the end result was th
Re: (Score:1)
Youtube protest chant (Score:4, Funny)
We're here, we're buffering,
We don't want any more suffering!
online can be traced... (Score:2)
answer (Score:2)
A:
The answer is very simple: your voice will always drawn in the sea of other voices. So what if you get a youtube account with potential for your street protest video to be viewed by millions? The same potential belongs to other millions of users of youtube who can post whatever they want with whatever text they want and whatever tags they want. It is true that your chances jumped from none to miniscule, when first videoshari
Protest by proxy (Score:2)
real protests (Score:2)
smaller protests, in comparison, say a million people, are also useful at eliciting media attention and government atten
Also safety against the police. (Score:1)
Mounting your political message online is also safer in countries where taking part in a protest can result in your death or injury at the hands of your local police.
Police in the USA beat and shoot and kill people, in other places ("Western" "Liberal" "Democracies") it isn't so bad, but seriously. The police aren't there to help protester
wow could we get ANY lazier? (Score:2)
Giving commoners a voice since 1999! (Score:2)
Large party politics HATES this because it is a threat to their two-party system. That is why they back all efforts to squash political blogs, and online political movements by trying to have them classified as 'lobbyists'.
As far as I know, there is no negative to giving the average 'joe' a voice when they are competing with two good-ol boy joes (Republicans and Democrats) with mil
So, then, the protestors have already lost? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been saying for a few years now that the only effective protest is a French-style protest where people walk off their jobs to clog the streets and a lot of those jobs are in transport and services so the economy is significantly crippled. Then power notices. Without even knowing the guy, I think I can almost guarantee you that George Bush doesn't give a rat's ass what you say about him on YouTube.
You can go to the internet for _information_ when the Mainstream Media won't give it to you. But _protest_ on the internet? That's just a few million people in the electronic forest baying at the moon. Didn't Nietzsche say something about real men and snarling dogs? Let's kill the fashion of 21st Century Schizoid Boy and get back to actually doing stuff. (Yes, I'm implying, like, back in the _real_ world.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yearning to be herd, eh? (Score:2)
2) Round up some useful idiots.
3) Print illiterut signs.
4) Compose mindless chant.
6) Ensure media camera angles and editing will keep all 71/72 of your protesters in the frame (with 3/12412 counter-protestors). (This is a gimme, you don't have to do anything. It's handled, dude or dudette!)
5) Let your well-reasoned position be heard! If you don't know what it is, those nice people at (1) above can help.
--
phunctor
Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
When they sit around in their couch and post stuff in YouTube, they aren't making any point at all. They are just whining.
Good! (Score:2, Insightful)
Should also help cut down on the trash and garbage left around following a protest, cut down on traffic jams, leave shop owners able to sleep at night knowing their store hasn't been smashed and looted, and actually promote a challenge-response over issues, rather
Re: (Score:2)
I think the future of any successful movement w
Anonymous on the Internet? (Score:2)
Beg pardon?
Do you really trust Google and your ISP enough to feel anonymous on Youtube? And even if you don't think your info will be turned over willingly, do you trust every last employee of those organizations not to do something shady at their desks? Do you trust their security measures to never get hacked and leak your info?
Unless you are covertly using a stolen Internet account from a well-hidden location, you are
I'm Sure You Meant... (Score:2)
Gut-less new generation of protestors (Score:4, Insightful)
Today most protestors seem to do everything they can to protect their anonymity. Being arrested is simply an intolerable inconvenience these days. Self-sacrifice is something to be avoided, not celebrated.
Ironic, amusing, and sad at the same time.
Re: (Score:2)
Gutless or too distracted by TV, video games and all the other forms of what basically amounts to a kind of fun-a-holism and escapism, a form of denial of the horrible state of things.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Gut-less new generation of protestors (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is, if YouTube had been available back then, would those protesters have been as ready to hit the streets and get beaten when there was another avenue available to get mass attention? The situation has changed, so that might have some effect on people's actions.
Also, assuming you're talking about the Vietnam War protests in the US, there was a military draft back then. Many of the protesters were literally fighting for their own lives -- if they didn't go out and get beaten by the police, they faced the prospects of going out and getting killed or maimed in southeast Asia. I suspect you'd see protests get a lot more serious in a big hurry if the draft were reinstated to send people over to Iraq.
It may be the way to go (Score:2)
This may be the way to go really because our governments are increasingly trying to prevent protests via new laws. In the UK we have a wide protest exclusion Zone around Parliament, which is really desig
I can hear the news story now (Score:2, Funny)
Breaking "Fake" news, Police march on Youtube headquarters and take their server farm down with a water-cannon. The protest about police brutality appears to have been ended with the loss of only one life. Police are not releasing the name of the victim but indicate one staff member at youtube unfortunately suffered a massive coronary after all of the magic smoke escaped from his computer room. Reporters caught 6 paramedics on tape attempting to carry what appeared to be an obese sysadmin from the building
Facts... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are people around the world (rhymes with CHINA) who will never see the light of day again, because words they posted on the internet were traced to them. The mode of protest is not as important as that it gets done.
Heard? (Score:2)
False assumption. The common person has NEVER been heard. It is only now, with the internet and cheap hosting, that the common person can start to make himself heard.
p.s. But if the common person keeps making death threats [slashdot.org], he's going to quickly lose that new ability to be heard.