Graham Linehan Finds That Twitter And Reddit Are Like Brass Eye – Only Less Believable
by Anorak | 9th, August 2011
GRAHAM Linehan – a writer on Father Ted, The IT Crowd, Brass Eye and more – finds that writing for twitter on 140 characters or fewer can create problems. has made it to the front page of Reddit. His Tweet was:Forget @DeanEsnard and do searches for anyone else boasting about involvement in riots. Take screengrabs. #riotprevention
Hello… Is this a call to your inner vigilante? Stuff the vapid kidzzz and their their theft and smashing larks – what we want is gangs of adults looking for the kids and administering instant justice. One man in Salford might not be enough.
Reddit reports his words thus:
Graham Linehan – 18:06 – repsonds:
Made it on to the front page of Reddit, but not in a way I would ever have anticipated…
Hi, Graham Linehan here under my username of Mrs.Doyle. I want to make it clear that I was asking Twitter users, not the company, to collect this information. The last few days have been very frightening and upsetting for ordinary Londoners. I thought the #riotprevention hashtag might help remind them that the rioters don’t hold all the cards, and I thought if there was enough online activity like this, it might make the rioters paranoid enough to think twice about continuing the destruction of the city.
Not advocating vigilantism either, but there doesn’t seem to be an efficient way of getting this information to the police. And if the police start acting on this information during the day, it might mean less chaos and injury at night.
True story: I once spoke to a policeman and asked him if they were finding social networks were helping them catch bad guys, prevent public order disturbances, locate missing persons etc. He listened patiently but then shook his head and said “Problem is, we don’t have that kind of technology.”
Posted: 9th, August 2011 | In: Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
