Now Egypt Has a Facebook Anti-Revolution

It was always overly-simplistic to refer to Egypt's uprising as a "Facebook revolution," especially considering how difficult Facebook made it for protestors to organize. Add to that the fact that the revolution's opponents are making ample use of social networking sites as well.

The Guardian today has column by the 19-year-old founder of the Facebook page "I'm sorry, Mr. President," which is being used to coordinate pro-Mubarak protests as the ex-president's fate is decided. He writes:

Facebook is not just for the revolutionaries; we're using it to gather people together, and our page "Ana aasif ya rayyis" has over 83,000 supporters. We're not against change. But it should be change with a better attitude, not chaos or division. President Mubarak fought in the [1973] October war and won us back the Sinai, we can't forget this. A lot of people love him and a lot of people want to defend him

And on Twitter, Google executive Wael Ghonim, one of the heroes of the revolution, sparked a backlash with its own hashtag when he tweeted that revolutionaries haven't been focusing enough on the economic problems facing Egypt: #unfollowedghonimbecause. "He's a sell-out. Falling for the "economic stability" manipulative tactic!!" tweeted one user, according to helped by Obama holding him up as an example in his big Middle East speech today.)

Hey, at least it's not Syria, where the government recently unblocked Facebook with the specific goal of hacking into activist's accounts. Are we calling it the Facebook government crackdown yet?

[Image of pro-democracy Egyptian protestors via Twitter]