Some Good, Bad and Ugly of Social Media in London

But first, this is all so Social Media, Social Justice.

The good…

Using Twitter handle @Riotcleanup, citizens are coming together following protests of the police shooting a Tottenham man. The Twitter account is raking in thousands of new followers per hour in the process. (At last count they had 59,000.)
Meanwhile, Riotcleanup.co.uk lists times and locations for clean up efforts, along with suggestions for equipment that people could bring along.
Facebook pages such as Post riot cleanup: Let’s help London and Riot Cleanup are keeping up with the aftermath as well, and serving as launch pads for other local communities to begin their own work.

From After London Riots, Social Media Plays Janitor, Cop

Aaaand the bad…

THE destruction in dozens of parts of London began to look like the first “BlackBerry riots” yesterday, with gangs using the smartphones to co-ordinate some of their targets for looting and burning.

From BlackBerry riot driven by the mob mentality

And some ugly…

On Monday, RIM tweeted: “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.”

As a result, a hacktivist group going by the name TeaMp0isoN (cute) hacked into RIM’s official blog on Tuesday to post the following menacing reply:

Dear Rim;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment…. if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..

From London rioters organized looting with BlackBerries
As RIM works with police to identify rioters, the company’s receives a threatening message