Reason TV: Tweeting Around Egypt's Web Blackout - Meet John Scott-Railton

The Egyptian government may have blocked Egyptians' access to the Internet, but it couldn't block the Internet itself. Thanks to the likes of John Scott-Railton, voices of countless Egyptian protesters continue to wend through the web.

Once the government imposed muzzling began, the 27-year-old UCLA graduate student reached out to friends in Egypt by telephone, gathered updates, and posted them to his Twitter account @Jan25voices, named after the day the protests began.

Nearly 700 tweets later, Scott-Railton (who up until last week was a Twitter newbie) soon found himself in the midst of the Middle East revolt. In one week he has attracted 6,700 followers and counting and his audio clips of Egyptian voices have been played more than 3.5 million times.

Reason.tv caught up with Scott-Railton at his UCLA office.

Approximately 5 minutes.

Interview by Paul Detrick. Shot by Zach Weissmueller. Edited by Detrick.

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Comments

[Suki]

Good afternoon reason!

[Serious Question]

Anybody know how much noise, clutter and disinformation is being fed into the Twitter pipeline? How reliable are the tweets? Are pro-Mubarek propagandists tweeting? What about anti-Mubarek propagandists? How much of the chatter may be trusted as newsworthy and factual?

[Crickets]

Chirp.

[Paul]

*shrug*

It appears on the internet. Proceed with caution. However, who cares? The revolution in Egypt was not fueled by twitter.

As one journalist on the ground in Egypt said: Don't forget, the large crowds were actually pretty successful at the old fashioned methods of communication: Talking to eachother on the street.

[Barry Dingle]

"Shot by Zach Weissmueller."

Please tone down the vitrol.

[Paul]

It's the cycle of violence!

[Almanian]

John Scott-Railton

Every time they list three names for someone, it's some murderer. So who did he kill?

[-]

Maybe Scott is his maiden name.

[Doktor Kapitalism]

Maybe he's a hyphenate. He looks like he could be British.

[Barack Hussein Obama]

I was wondering that too.

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Great article reason!

[Janet Napolitano]

*sigh* If only we could shut down the internet here...

Oh, wait, I can TOTALLY fuckin' do that. Now, all I need is a good excuse.

Say, would some of you "freedom"-loving types mind picketing somewhere, and fight back when SEIU thugs beat up on you? Thanks!

[MSNBC]

We'd get an exemption, though, right?

[Orel Hazard]

Wait, why would libertarians oppose the cessation of the internet?

If not for government (DARPA) research and development funding using jackboot-extracted tax dollars, there wouldn't be an internet. There'd be a proprietary IBMnet or some such.

In its most essential technical form, the internet is absolutely a collectivist expression. It is a cooperative consensus of a community of routers and networks. This is not the kind of free-market stuff that spins the libertarian propeller. You'd think Reason would be happy to see it go.

Why the sudden lack of faith in the free market to restore connectivity? Private businesses are the only entities capable of solving any problems, right? They'd just solve this too.

Geez, Reason, get out of the way and let the private sector handle it!

[Mr. FIFY]

Shut the fuck up, Oral.

[Orel Hazard]

Ha ha. You don't have an answer.

[Mr. FIFY]

OT, but a good story idea, Reason staff:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....tml?r=news

[slutmonkey]

Similarly Google has setup a voicemail number for Egyptians to call and leave twitter messages.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.....fully.html

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