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Jesse Brown: Flash mob Facebook protest in UK gets results in 48 hours

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 | 06:15 PM ET

By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist.

gordonbrown.jpg


British PM Gordon Brown was planning to exempt Members of Parliament from transparency rules that would require them to disclose their expenses, just like all other public servants. The exemption (unsurprisingly) had wide, cross-party support and was sailing ahead into law.

But then the Internets happened.

In perhaps the quickest victory so far for Facebook politics, a citizens' protest group sprung up, gathered 7,000 members, fired off 4,000 letters to MPs, and reversed the government's plans - in 48 hours.

Tom Steinberg of MySociety spearheaded the effort, and he'll talk more about it on the next episode of Search Engine.

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