It would appear that Twitter, aside from helping to spread panic about Swine Flu, is creating all sorts of issues in countries which are probably still coming to terms with the impact of social media – and there are plenty of them these days, let’s face it.
Now a Guatemalan Twitter user has been arrested and accused of causing “Financial Panic”, because he encouraged followers to withdraw their funds from a bank in the country.
Jean Anleu (@jeanfer) suggested in a tweet that: “The first action people should take is to remove cash from Banrural, and break the banks of corrupt people.”
Evidently Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has been accused of links to drug traffickers and of siphoning Banrural funds for his wife’s “phantom” projects.
London-based user-generated picture agency startup Demotix is carrying pictures of him being arrested by police for causing a storm with his tweet, which is currently being re-tweeted hundreds of times in Guatemala, and is probably poised to make the hastag escandalogt start to trend (which apparently means Guatemala Scandal according to a commenter below). The arrest also lead to a newspaper cottoning on to the Twitter angle, below.
