Hashtags act like memes in the way that they "spread indiscriminately regardless of whether they are helpful, neutral, or positively harmful to us" (Blackmore). For example, there can be hashtags ranging from Middle East Peace to Kanye for President. Through the invention of hashtags, a new mechanism commonly referred to as “social activism” (Gladwell) has emerged in which people use the power of social media sites like Twitter to protest and spread activism from behind a screen. In 2009, social protestors took credit for protests against Moldova's communist government, labeling them the “Twitter revolution” (Gladwell). Mark Pfeifle, former national security advisor, went so far as to say: “without Twitter the Iranian people would not have felt empowered and confident in defending freedom and democracy” (Gladwell). Gladwell strongly disagrees with Mark Pfeifle's reasoning and quotes Evgeny Morozov, a Stanford scholar who points out: "Twitter has had little domestic significance in Moldova, a country where very few Twitter accounts exist" (Gladwell). Gladwell believes that social networks are incapable of carrying out acts of the significance of a revolution and states: “Social media platforms are built around weak ties” and “weak ties rarely lead to high-risk activism” (Gladwell). People feel addicted to this new method of social activism