Uzbekistan plans state-funded social media network

Uzbekistan plans state-funded social media network: Convinced that popular social media sites such as Facebook, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru are seducing the country’s youth, the country’s State Committee for Communication and Information it is to launch its own network. “Protecting young people from the negative impacts of alien ideas and movements is an urgent task, and these  ideas spreads mainly through foreign social networks,”  an unnamed expert from the Center for Spirituality and Enlightenment was recently quoted as saying on the country’s Youth TV Channel. “The Internet today is the weapon of the future, leaving machine guns and nuclear bombs in history … Social networks have become an instrument of foreign forces… They pose an immediate danger to our public policy and our sovereignty “.