Why autocrats hate social media

Its official. The Dear Leader hates social media and warns darkly of its many ills. 

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.

"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed...

He is not alone in this view either. The question is why?

In a word - its about control. Traditional media can be controlled; through a variety of means ranging from licenses to abuse of the tax code to intimidation. The number of media houses in a country may be few dozen and their identities well known which makes control possible.

The problem with social media is that one is dealing with hundreds of thousands of individuals, some of whom are anonymous. Since the individuals are not as easy to track and monitor as organisations they are a lot harder to get a hold of, let alone control. Lacking any obvious restriction they start to talk about things that the rulers would rather not hear about.

Some of what is said on social media may be foolish or trivial but amongst all the chaff there may lie seeds of doubt. Seeds that may cause people to think, or look at something differently. Something that may break the spell. In other words, very dangerous.

Doubtless todays autocrats look back with nostalgia to an earlier age, when ideas had to be shared on paper. In Romania Ceausescu  wanted every typewriter owned by the state registered with the Securitate, along with a sample of its type. A new decree forbade the renting or lending of typewriters, and the ownership of a typewriter required special authorisation.

Ah, they sigh. How much simpler things were then! Working out how to control social media is now uppermost on the minds of all self-respecting autocrats, and this is what they seemingly do when they meet at forums such as the Conference on Interaction and Confdience Building Measures in Asia (CICA) where the president uttered his missive against social media.

Interestingly the CICA was founded by Nursultan Nazarbayev, the strongman of Kazkhstan. According to the Economist he is:

...not only the president but also the “Leader of the Nation” and he can stand for re-election as long as he lives.

With more than two decades at the helm, Mr Nazarbayev has not built a system based on rule of law; instead he oversees a patronage network in which he stands as the final arbiter.

There are more than a few parallels with Kazkhstan, such as this:

In late 2011, a long-simmering strike in the western town of Zhanaozen, where oil workers were demanding higher wages, boiled over. Video footage showed police shooting unarmed protesters in the back as they fled. At least 15 people died, all of them civilians

 Birds of a feather will flock togther, no?

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf