Over the last few days I’ve seen a large number of tweets saying that the Perl module Net::Twitter is being used to post pro-government propaganda from Iran. If it’s true, this is almost certainly a reaction to the large number of people who are using Twitter to get around the Iranian government’s censorship.
It’s disappointing, of course, to see Perl being used as an instrument of propaganda and repression. But that’s one of the dangers you have to face when you release software under an open source licence. I only hope that people realise that Perl is a tool that can be used by anyone and that we don’t run the risk of being linked to Ahmadinejad’s regime just because of the programming language we use.
iransource seems to be one of the pro-Ahmadinejad bots, but it’s been quiet for a couple of days. Has anyone been tracking these bots? And is there any previous evidence of Perl being using by repressive regimes?
In Moldova, Twitter was used by nationalist opposition parties to start a riot, because they got less votes on elections that they wanted. But no Perl.
As for Perl, I know that spammers used Template Toolkit, LWP and other net modules are used to write exploits. And of course US government uses Perl :).