“It’s incredibly messy, and the definitive rules of the game have yet to be written….we’re seeing the medium invent itself in real time.” —Clay Shirky

On Saturday, I joined a Facebook group called “100 Million Facebook members for Democracy in Iran” where Michael from Edinburgh had posted on a discussion board:

If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. “Security” forces are hunting for people blogging about the current abuses of pro-democracy protesters using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians’ access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on.

And why not? Anything I can do to help, I thought.

But after I changed my Twitter’s profile settings, I was stuck with a lingering suspicion that I was missing some broader picture.  After all, the Iranian security state isn’t alone in reading tweets from Tehran.  Suppose my Twitter subterfuge obstructed a larger, nobler effort by professional journalists, Oprah Winfrey, or The Real Shaq. Then I’d be a villain, a digital James Frey of 2009’s #IranElection—the most buoyant hashtag in Twitter sidebar history.  All I’d be doing is very-publicly getting in the way.

-Pablo Manriquez, read the entire piece here.