Egypt: Bad Bad Facebook · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

Last week, the daily talk show, Misr El-Naharda (Egypt Today), that is aired on the Egyptian state-run TV channel, Al-Masreya, discussed Facebook and its effect on the Egyptian society.
Zeinobia writes in her blog about the episode, and how the discussions there were mainly tended towards attacking Facebook.
The show became the mockery of the Egyptian blogosphere, as the TV hostess, Mona El Sharkawy, along with the two guests there, Nadia Radwan and Gamal Mukhtar made many misleading – and even funny – statements during the show. The show was recorded and uploaded on YouTube [Ar], and bloggers like Aam Mina published the funniest quotes made there on his blog.
UltimateServ also wrote on Twitter how the hostess made an episode about Facebook, which she has never used before..
After the show, many bloggers started to think that it might have been a move from the government to repel people away from Facebook, in order to block it later on, especially given the recent developments in the Egyptian traditional and social media scene. Even some others started to wonder if the government might create an alternative social networking platform that it can control. Zeinobia wrote more about it in her blog.
Amira Al Tahawi wrote in her blog that an alternative sect-oriented Facebooks already exist in Egypt.
Finally the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology denied all the Facebook-blocking rumours [Ar]. However this didn't stop the ongoing mockery on Twitter for the possibility of having an Egyptian government-made Facebook alternative, and how it might look like [Ar/En].