
The cyber world moves fast. In both good and bad directions. Just as protesters in Iran are using Twitter as their de facto news outlet, passing thousands of links daily to video of the ongoing unrest, it seems the Iranian government too has taken to Twitter to tell their side of the story.
Though unconfirmed by the Iranian government, a number of increasing obvious propagandist links and opinions are beginning to pop up on Twitter creating a cyber fog of war where the truth behind any post can no longer be trusted.
This is a critical crossroads in social media as now one must wonder whether any link can be trusted, and in a forum where the rule of social conduct was explicitly based on trust, Twitter as a news outlet becomes a kind of CraigsList, a place to delved into carefully for fear of sham, hustle and sometimes dangerous lie.
The alternatives for Twitter are few. Policing the site would spell its quick and certain death. Allowing the site to be co-opted by organs of corrupt regimes, tolls a similar death knell. It remains to be seem what the outcome will be, but surely social media, either way will have suffered a major blow.
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