[WS:] I've seen that quite a bit during the period leading to the emergence of Solidarity in Poland. They used a different technology (copy machines and couriers, my place served as one of many contact points), but the concept was pretty much the same - to let independent voices be heard through a medium ostensibly free of propaganda and censorship. There was real concern though that government used "false samizadats" to disseminate its propaganda. The answer to that concern was similar to what you just described - let's the community decide.
I am pretty much for community mediation in deciphering the meaning behind the news, but I have to admit that is not foolproof, and may lead to great distortions. I saw people believin any story that had an obvious anti-government tenor, even if a story would raise serious eyebrows of any critically thinking person. Likewise, stories that did not appear to be anti-government were often judged suspect. In such environment, there was no effective way of telling truth from bullshit, and this is not very helpful. People can swallow any bullshit or a propaganda lie as long as it conforms to their pre-conceived idea of what a "true" message should look like.
Wojtek
On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Dennis Redmond <metalslorg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And how do you separate real tweets from propaganda
>> bots?.
>
> I don't. No one person does. The community does that work -- thousands
> and thousands of calls, tweets, SMS, etc. Over time, the Libyan
> community, sympathizers, and the diaspora gradually figured out who
> was telling the truth, who could be trusted, and who was full of BS.
>
>> How much of the Libyan population has got internet access? It was off,
>> and only recently turned back on, as far as I know...
>
> The liberated cities of the east and the Nafusa mountains turned the
> internet back on pretty early in the revolution - plus, tech-savvy
> citizens like Mo Nabbous were webcasting via satellite from day one.
> But the main flows of media were via thumbdrives. The rebels would
> record events, put on them on thumbs, smuggle them into Misurata or
> Benghazi, then upload them to the world.
>
> -- DRR
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