Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday after parliament was recalled to discuss the English riots Prime Minister, David Cameron, used part of his speech to highlight the way that social media was used by rioters. He spoke about how the government would look into seeing if it would be right to stop them if they were using social media to incite violence.
He was taking his line apparently straight from the Sun and Daily Mail, which earlier this week blamed Twitter for fuelling London's riots. It is a worrying sign. You can not regulate the internet or ban people from social networks. It is the wrong approach entirely.
Here's what Cameron had to say:
"Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.
"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.
"And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.
"So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."
His comments highlighted the few who have used social media to organise for violence, and others using the Blackberry Messenger app, while many many more have used it as a force of good as I blogged recently. I blogged again about more examples of people using it for good.
These examples are growing in number and they are quite moving. Take the story of the ad agency interns who set up a site to help the 89-year old Tottenham barber Aaron Biber whose store was attacked.
Cameron is right in that these people should be stopped, but that should not involve banning people from using the internet or social media. What you can do is punish them if they do use it to incite violence.
Quite rightly, that has already started to happen as two more men and a youth were charged over use of Facebook to incite trouble in the Channel Islands.
Elsewhere Essex Police have also made a Facebook riot incitement arrest and Scottish youths have also been arrested.
All good work by the police and exactly what is needed: to come down hard on people and remind them and others that this is behaviour that will not be tolerated. Banning people on the other hand is not the answer. It never ends well. It is simply the prime minister playing to middle England and the Daily Mail.
Sure you can work with Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry to find these people that makes perfect sense. These companies have all said they are willing to help. But as Twitter founder Biz Stone said at the end of January ,at the height of the Egypt uprisings, its position "on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed".
You have to let social media flow and you can't blame it and you can't talk about banning it. In the same way you can't take away the right to stand on a street corner and allow people to speak their minds.
Those using social media to stir trouble and violence have to be educated and taught that it isn't a free for all and that freedom of speech, in whatever medium, is a right and not a privilege. If you abuse it you will be punished, but you can't simply remove the right.
That doesn't help. It isn't the problem. You might as well blame the Sun and Mail, blame the BBC and ITV for some of their coverage.