My guess, which has also been suggested by others around the net, is that Facebook, YouTube and all Blogspot blogs were unblocked so that the Syrian government could more closely monitor users’ activity on these social networking sites. As Jennifer said, this was a really clever move by the Syrian government because it has the appearance of a progressive change in policy; indeed, human rights groups and net freedom activists have already praised the move. But as the below article suggests, there was no real change in usage patterns from Syrians. They had all found ways to access these social networking sites despite the 3-year ban — namely, by using proxy servers (that is, by putting a code into your web browser which makes it seem like your computer is accessing the internet from another location in the world) — and so lifting the ban wouldn’t necessarily have attracted new users or increased traffic from existing users. Now that the ban is lifted, I’d be interested to know whether Syrians will continue to use proxy servers in order to mask their physical locations.
The Syrian government recently announced they planned to lift a five-year-long block on Facebook, YouTube and Blogger. The move was welcomed by the State Department’s Alec Ross as a “positive move.” Indeed, traffic to YouTube appears to have markedly increased.
But over at Facebook, they aren’t seeing major changes in usage patterns in the country.
» via The Atlantic
