Saving Social Media

As with many innovations, there are always a few people to ruin the party. A 23-year-old British man died of a caffeine overdose last year. Bath salts are used for a deadly high. Online piracy changes the integrity of entertainment.

The newest substance abuse? Social media, according to some UK officials.

In the aftermath of the two-day riot in London streets, UK Prime Minister David Cameron called for limiting use of networks such as Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry, inferring that the sites allowed for instant mobilization, worsening the riots’ destruction.

Soon London protest participants shocked the world as brazen tweets were uncovered, bragging about scoring “free” stuff looting in the riots earlier this month.

One reported message read: "If you're down for making money, we're about to go hard in east London."

British representatives of each company met Thursday to discuss alterations to decrease the misuse in crime sprees and keep people safe.

Although the UK government retracted its intentions to crack down post-meeting, like many, I wonder what may become of social networks when the parties become unsociable.

And don’t think the abuse is only across the pond.

Just weeks ago in Germantown, MD, a flash mob of teenagers overtook a local 7-Eleven, making off with hundreds of dollars and loot. According to a CNN report, “spontaneous incidents of group violence” have already occurred in several cities across the US this summer, including Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Washington, D.C.

One major problem for the authorities besides easy mobilizing lies in the difficulty of tracing accounts. Users can use fake identities to create accounts, rendering their use --and actions-- untraceable.

But even with its technological misuse, many used the same tool to fight back in a really beautiful way.

The barber shop of 89-year-old Aaron Biber was destroyed in London’s riots, and a photo of his surveying the scene caught the attention of the Internet (and of course, the networks), receiving more than 600 comments on one website alone.

Then interns at a London advertising agency called BHH raised over $50,000 for Biber’s shop by using Twitter hashtags, blogs, Facebook groups and the like.

The Twitter account @riotcleanup accumulated 50,000 followers in less than ten hours and #riotcleanup becoming the top trending topic in the UK, second worldwide. Several cleanup websites cropped up, with links to do any small part-- donate a few dollars, sweep, or even identify “disorderly” suspects on the Metropolitan Police Service website.

A Facebook group was set up shortly afterward, with 3,600 members by mid-morning after the protests (now, nearly 20,000 members). Eleven locations in London had volunteers arriving for cleanup operations in the days following. There are also similar operations in Bristol and Liverpool.

Social media itself is not good or bad. It is a tool and people decide how to use it. It’s clear by looking at these riots alone that the intent of users determines whether social media is damaging or beneficial.

Though I doubt those that are part of the mess are helping to clean it up, I am encouraged by the ease of mobilization for good.

Between the rumble and the rains of last week, Washington squeaked out without much havoc, rendering widespread looting unlikely. But I have no doubt that though some are willing to take advantage of tragedy through technology abuse, there is a greater, stronger force willing to fight it.