Military Announces New Social Media Policy
Many months behind schedule, the Department of Defense on Friday issued a new policy that, on the surface, seems likely to expand access to popular social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter by troops using military computers.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Department of Defense's new policy reverses course after three years of tightening screws: the 2007 decision to put MySpace and other social sites off limits on military networks, the Air Force's sweeping blog blocks in 2008 that cut off many personal sites, and the 2006 wave of soldiers shutting down their own blogs under command pressure while under fire.
Issued months behind schedule, the policy opens YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to troops on military computers — a pivot from blanket denial to managed access at the moment those platforms were becoming mainstream communications infrastructure, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
First-order effects
- Troops using military computers regain direct access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, undoing the practical effect of the 2007 ban for the named platforms.
- Unit commanders and network operators shift from enforcing a blocklist to policing what troops post once access exists.
Second-order effects
- Operational-security review moves from the network perimeter to individual behavior, forcing the services to build training and monitoring around public posting rather than preventing it.
- Facebook and Twitter gain an institutional user base inside the military, giving both platforms new stakes in how government accounts and authentication are handled.
Third-order effects
- If managed access holds, the military's relationship with social platforms shifts from adversary to dependent user, laying groundwork for official communication channels — and eventual tension between open access and information-control missions.
- Other large institutions that copied the blocklist approach face pressure to justify blanket bans when the Pentagon deems managed access workable.
The trend: Large institutions that responded to early social networks with blanket bans are moving to managed access as the platforms become unavoidable communications infrastructure.