Oh. Right. And the whole revolution thing. We’re not even getting into the irony of the fact that Twitter has become a vital tool in the struggle for democracy and human dignity today. We’ve already got the irony quotient covered. Ditto on our unfortunate internet-based snafu rates, our attention-span FAIL levels, and just the plain old dumbness factor.
Turns out, Human Rights Watch sent out their anti-Gadhafi blast using a domain name controlled by Libya’s General Post and Telecommunications Company, whose chairman is Mohammed el-Gadhafi. Mohammed is also Moammar’s oldest son.
Oops.
Human Rights Watch isn’t alone either. The United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, for those of us who fell asleep that day in history class), the White House, the United States Air Force, The United States Chamber of Commerce, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, House Speaker John Boehner, Stanford University, Charlie Sheen, Paul McCartney and Kim Kardashian make up a short list of the thousands of people, organizations and companies that route their internet followers through Libya.
WTF. Seriously.
What is going on here? Why would ANY of these people decide to use Libyan email addresses? Particularly, the government and military types? If you’ve decided to bomb somebody, asking his kid to deliver your mail doesn’t seem like the best plan ever, right?
So what’s the deal? Well… turns out, Libya’s internet domain suffix is super duper cute.
Libya’s internet domain is .ly, which can be used for catchy websites for English language businesses and organizations. It’s also short, so .ly sites are easy to fit into Twitter posts. Between the cuteness and the shortness, lots of people have jumped on the “let’s trust Libya with our internet stuff” bandwagon. Especially “shortening” sites that produce compact, Tweetable links for major sites and companies that own longer URLs.
The Libyan General Post and Telecommunications Co told the Wall Street Journal that it has rented out more than 10,000 .ly domains, both directly and through resellers.
“It’s ironic and a little bit distasteful,” says Tom Malinowski, the group’s Washington director, upon being informed by a reporter of this unfortunate, little oversight.
No kidding, dude.
“It’s a bit of an emotional question,” Ryan Holmes, chief executive of HootSuite Media Inc., told The WSJ. Hootsuite is a Vancouver-based company that operates Ow.ly, a shortening service favored by the Salvation Army and the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “But at the end of the day, buying oil helps Gadhafi more.”
Totally. And the questionable practice of running massive amounts of information through something controlled by the kid of one of the world’s weirdest dictators is totes a non-issue, right?
Right.
****
I love dictators!