How Blackberry, not Twitter, fuelled the fire under London’s riots | Hacker News Reader

How Blackberry, not Twitter, fuelled the fire under London’s riots

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31 pointsbaha_man36 comments

Setting aside the riots, the prevalence of BBM amongst teenagers is a really astonishing phenomenon. Blackberry is the smartphone brand amongst British teenagers and if a peer group has "gone BBM" the network effects mean that no other brand is even worth contemplating. In the UK at least, RIM have practically given up on the corporate market and BlackBerry is increasingly seen solely as a youth brand. BBM is so deeply entrenched that there's a palpable backlash[1].

I'd love to see some research done on the ethnography of it all. The common argument is that BBM is a very cheap way of keeping in touch - unlimited data is £5 a month even on a prepaid tariff - but I'm not sure how well that argument holds up. Unlimited SMS has been that cheap for years and there are plenty of other options.

I think the real reason is more sophisticated. I think (but can't prove) that many of the enterprise features in BBM are hugely valuable to young people. Ubiquitous, instant delivery and read receipts are helpful for corporate users, but they're vital if you're a teenager who has just asked someone out on a date. The simple but highly nuanced implementation of message groups was clearly intended to allow easy and ad-hoc communication for business groups, but allows teenagers the fine-grained control they demand over their social circles.

In many ways, what Google are trying to achieve with Circles in Google+ has been achieved by teenagers using BBM. I think in many ways BBM is as important as Twitter, but entirely invisible to the outside world. I think we have a huge amount to learn from the runaway success of Blackberry amongst the youth.

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt8hECfLu-k

In South Africa, Blackberry was voted "Coolest Brand" in a 2011 survey of urban youth, so the phenomenon is not limited to the UK ( http://www.newstime.co.za/ScienceandTech/Generation_Next_Nam... ).

>BBM is a very cheap way of keeping in touch - unlimited data is £5 a month even on a prepaid tariff

Anyone know of a cheap American service plan that supports BBM?

I think a lot of the looters using BBM failed to realize that RIM will hand over the message data upon receiving a police subpoena, plus BBM is much more tightly attached to a persons real identity than say a twitter account.

Pretty much anyone who sent a self-incriminating message or incited violence/rioting is likely to get arrested over the coming weeks.

You can transmit information without incriminating yourself. To wit, "Shits getting real at Goodge Street! You gotta come see!"

The police will have a lot of photographs, film, etc. of what went on. The hardest part is matching those images to people, identifying who was at the scene of the crime via BBM, etc. makes that a lot easier.

Happened with phones too. I know of at least one riot in NSW, Australia was done with SMS.

'On 12 January 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald reported over 600 people had been arrested for their alleged involvement in the riot or related events. Offences included 1,151 traffic-related, 17 riot-related, two malicious damage by fire and three for sending text messages.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDcr6AYUOBc

I'm in Colombia this week to give a talk, and I was asking people about their phones. Turns out that if you've got lots of money to spend on your phone, you get an iPhone, if you've got some money, you get an android, and if you're poor or working class you get a blackberry.

It's fascinating that blackberry has moved from the phone of business, to the phone of the poor and youth.

Heh, no, that demographic gets BlackBerrys because rappers like Jay-Z rap about them, they are an accessory, the same demographic buys Rolexes while people who actually have money to spend on a watch get a Patek Phillippe.

It's not often this flavor of condescending twattery makes it to HN.

Why do you think Jay-Z raps about/endorses it? If the answer is as simple as, "He's paid to," then surely he'd be rapping about other brands beyond the traditional Escalade/Cristal/etc. The real answer is that Blackberry is an inexpensive smart phone option that is not the "white and corporate" option. You've got an unrealistic idea of what poor and urban looks like and acts like.

A Blackberry IS an accessory, but only because it's considered a symbol of being part of a particular group, not because rappers endorse it.

"Real money buys Patek Phillippe." Give me a break.

Encore was released in 2003, long before BB was the "inexpensive smartphone".

Jay-Z is a businessman first and foremost. Kids don't care about Exchange integration or whatever. He namechecks the brands he likes (as far as I know, he has no official relationship with the brand) and his fans buy them. Same with Rolex, I don't think they have marketing arrangement with any rappers but they get namechecked all the time.

You're right, if it wasn't for Jay-Z black people would be using iPhones. Also I'm not sure how a mention in 2003 has spurred adoption in 2011.

Why play the race card? Living in London you will see that "urban youth" comes in all shades. They don't buy BB because it is the cheapest (it isn't) or "the best" (for whatever values of best), but because it's fashionable, because style icons for whatever reason have adopted it. I don't know why you want to argue with this.

FWIW I have a BB myself, I am certainly not disparaging anyone else who has one...

I live in Brixton, where the 'riots' spread to last night. Didn't sleep very well, though the magnitude surprised me when I awoke (I'm now immune to sirens at all hours - the 'Brixton whistle' doesn't disturb me).

Definitely a degree of organisation and cohesion. When I went for milk this morning, people had smashed into Tesco and Lidl (big supermarket chains) but left all the independent grocers alone.

Overhearing the word on the street, there's not much more to be done in my area, but bigger targets (Oxford Circus in particular) will cop it tonight. Of course, the real BBM message may be different...

Tesco (and to a lesser extent Lidl) stock higher value goods than most independent grocers...

Tesco is big and corporate and therefore evil. In riots in Copenhagen similar rationales has been offered quite explicitly.

Tesco stores frequently sell high-value electronics, dvds, etc. They also sell high-cost consumables like razor blades and condoms which are frequent targets for shoplifters.

It's much more likely greed was the cause of the decision of what to loot rather than ethics.

This article provides very little facts to support the thesis that BBM was the core medium behind the protests. It all boils down to "BBM is non-public", "Blackberries are cheaper than Androids and iPhones" and "Duggan used BlackBerry Messenger to send his last message to his girlfriend".

And the linked post? All it has to prove the connection is the output of bbm+tottenham query from, yeah, you guessed it, Twitter. All in all not very convincing if you ask me.

Not sure if it adds much, but here's the Guardian's take on the same story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-fac...

I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from this. BBM is the weapon of choice for the modern rioter? I confess I've never used the software - does it include special features to incite rioting?

Neither Blackberry, Twitter, nor Facebook fuelled the fire under London's riots, any more than the internet, radio waves, or electricity did. Violent, hateful people did that.

What I took away from this article wasn't that BBM should be blamed (or, I guess, credited, depending on your point of view) for the riot, which is how some people seem to have read it.

For me it was basically a puff piece reminding us that, just because RIM has big problems, it doesn't mean their devices (and software on them) aren't popular. It just so happened that a big news story could be used to make that point, which is what gave the story enough traction to be worth writing at all.

Actually, if we drop the Victorian mindset that people are innately criminals, we might look to the social and economic causes - massive unemployment amongst black youth, closure of youth services, almost complete political disenfranchisement - for something of an explanation of the riots.

I think "we want free stuff" is a pretty good explanation for the vast majority of the looting, and "smashing stuff is fun" for the destruction.

There are plenty of places with high-unemployment, political disenfranchisement, etc. which haven't turned to rioting.

While it may have been a contributing cause (if you've got less to risk you might be more willing to get involved in looting, etc.) to say it was the primary reason is insulting to the million of law-abiding individuals from struggling economic and social backgrounds.

Your answer is a diversion. You changed the reason to "these people want free stuff".

That doesn't help. Why aren't YOU looting and rioting and "wanting free stuff"?

We're back to the same question again. Why these people? Why this group?

This is a "deprived" area of London, but the question is, what are they being deprived of? What is it that they had before, that has been taken away? What do other parts of London have that they do not?

If you want an answer, it's that successive governments gave them free stuff, everything from their housing up, and now they can't really tell the difference between stuff you just get and stuff you're free to take anymore.

You don't need to have lost something to be deprived. You can be deprived of chances that others have.

Which are what exactly?

Unless I'm mistaken the people of Tottenham get free educations to the age of 18 same as everyone else in the UK. They also have as good a public transport infrastructure as anywhere else and can work anywhere in London.

Well that's what we're trying to find the answer to: what's different about this group of people?

And I told you. They've been given so much they can't now see why they can't just take anything they want.

Seriously, you don't fight for freedom/education/"a chance" by nicking a 50" plasma TV. And doing so is an insult to people like, for example, the Libyans and Egyptians who really did - and do - fight for something worthwhile.

But that's no answer at all - all of this "free stuff" you talk about is available to other groups who did not loot.

They probably also had different upbringing, and grew with mindset that society owns them something. Why? Who knows. Just because. It simmilar where I am. People don't bother to go to elections and then complain to no end how bad tha parlament is as if that parlament was somehow forced onto us…

I don't agree. "Just because" is no answer. And your first point is an opinion, not a fact, your last point is a different issue.

Yes, except if I want a 50" plasma TV (I still have a 28" CRT!) I would earn money and then buy one.

So what's the mindset called where any behaviour, no matter how egoistical and anti-social, is excused and blamed on something else (often a government entity is implied)? And when can we drop that?

I'm not saying that being jobless in this economy and being politically disenfranchised is exactly a recipe for success, but where do we draw the line between criminal behaviour and legitimate grievances. There are a lot of people with undesirable job situations who feel politically disenfranchised, but who somehow manage to live inside the law. I wonder what will happen to their feeling of disenfranchisement if looters are given a pass?

I think this is plain silly. The article does not provide any proof besides telling us how BBM could have possibly be used in such cases. Did you really catch people who planned it using BBM ?

Showing couple of BBM results from twitter is a clear case of ignoring the elephant in the room (twitter itself) and going after a fly.

In Venezuela for example, Blackberry penetration is quite a phenomenon.

Also, it has become a symbol of status and a desired luxury item to the point where people are literally getting killed for it.

Yes, Iphone and Android are growing like weed and we all know RIM's latest setbacks. But outside the USA, BB is quite strong.

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