Any good librarian checks a fact in three different sources before stating it as a fact. Twitter is a valuable resource, and I think the Iranians used it to “get their message out” for precisely the same reason that we should be very cautious in using Twitter as a news source: because it is easy. It’s self-publishing. You don’t need to know someone on a newspaper blog or a television production team; you can just go anywhere with an internet connection, and post.

I guess the question I’m asking is: is ANY information better than FACTUAL information? And what sort of impact will social-media-based mob rule have on future events? What if I got a bunch of my friends to say that someone blew up a mosque in Pittsburgh, PA, as a sort of flash mob, and then the news media (who, generically, often cull Twitter for “stories”) picked it up and there was backlash against local Jewish communities…because nobody bothered to fact check?

The world is a smaller and smaller place, especially with technology, but it’s still bigger than 140 characters. The sooner we realize that the things we do online, whether it be blogging, posting pictures on Flickr, searching on Google, or Twittering about something we don’t necessarily know anything about: we are having an impact on a much wider range of people than we did even five years ago. Social consciousness begins with disseminating truth.

How did you? Seriously, no snark. What source did you perceive to be valuable and reliable on the Iranian protests? Because, as you’ve pointed out with your Prop 8 example, the major news outlets apparently can’t be trusted, either. And it seems you’re no fan of Andrew Sullivan. So, what does that leave you?

Well, of course, nothing much seems to have changed in the end. But the protests – whatever value you might think they have, or not, for Iran in the long run – were fuelled by Twitter, for instance: There were the proxy servers set up by outside Twitter users to help Iranian protesters get their videos out, or the fact that a number of the protests were organized via Twitter. A big part of my objection to Claire’s post (and yours has the same flaw) is that it ignores the ways in which the Iranians were using Twitter throughout the protests. Sure, it’s easy to mock someone for turning their avatar green, but if Twitter’s so useless, why was it the medium of choice for so many of the protesters themselves? (Or, as I asked Claire, do you think all those Tehran accounts were faked?)

You’re welcome. What did you do?

Seriously, though, I don’t understand this rant (and really don’t understand what it has to do with vagabonding). If you read Andrew Sullivan during the Iran protests (who was easily the highest-profile blogger covering events in Tehran), he was always careful to put the immense flow of words from Twitter in context. I don’t know anyone who took anything on Twitter to be “absolutely factual” – but unless you think there were hundreds/thousands of people faking their Twitter accounts, these were real impressions of real people on the ground. That has value. Did you also think the Neda video was worthless since it wasn’t fact-checked? Or did it perhaps occur to you that raw, un-checked data can help to raise awareness and oh, I don’t know, make people on the other side of the world care a little bit about faceless strangers fighting for their lives?

Would you prefer that everyone simply ignored the situation entirely, the way the “fact-based” MSM did until the Twitter/blogger-shaming got to be too much for them?

Sorry if I come across as harsh, but seriously. I was shocked to read this here on Vagablogging. Twitter’s an easy target for mockery, but I think belittling the effort to help the Iranian protests is just tasteless.