Interesting article I found on the New York Times about how “On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic”.
It is kind of funny to think that right now some mafia dressed in some stereotypical black suit smoking a cigar is sitting in front of his computer, surfing Facebook. Maybe only a decade ago, the only people who spent any significant amount of time on the internet were probably geeks and nerds. So uncool. And one day, being on the net is not only cool, it is necessary. I don’t know how many of those thousands of members in the mafia Facebook groups are real mafia, but I am quite sure that mafia members are definitely using the internet in some form or another, be it emailing or using Facebook to send coded messages to one another. (But seriously, with data encryption technology, I really want to tell Mr. De Lucia that sending a secure email is much more cost and time efficient than developing a whole new cryptography system to send coded messages on a public Facebook group).
The anti-Mafia prosecutors in Italy are taking the Facebook groups very seriously. Glorifying the mafia on Facebook is a bad, bad thing. But making a movie is fine. It says something that social media is at least considered to be as influential as mainstream entertainment. Or maybe the Italian officers just hate Facebook…
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