As recent events have shown, the Internet has played a vital role in various social movements across the Middle East. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are becoming the new places where people can be and have their say. As with all opinions, though, there are people who disagree with them and want to argue the other side or stop it altogether. A corrupt government or other leaders in power may try to use censorship to prevent an opinion from being heard. This is the recent case of the situation in Egypt, where the Internet was turned off for two months. Even though the Egyptian government thought that turning off the internet would stop protests over its political policies, this only fueled the fire after which the government was eventually overthrown. But what is censorship in both a literal and an anthropological context? What are the types of Internet censorship besides complete shutdown, and how many people actually use the Internet in Egypt? Merriam Webster defines censorship as follows: “Examining to suppress or eliminate anything considered objectionable; also: to suppress or eliminate as objectionable” This means that, if you consider an object objectionable according to your social standards, you attempt to suppress that object by deletion, redaction, or transfiguration. However, this does not explain in which social context the decision was made. Around the world, different cultures and societies have different definitions of what is “acceptable.” Since anthropology is “the study of human beings…in relation to physical character, environmental and social relationships, and culture,” seeing how people live will provide great insight into what might be considered…half of sheet... ...the protesters took to the streets. The act of censoring Facebook shows that it holds great cultural capital among the Egyptian people. Overall, the government was forced to resort to radical displacement rather than soft critical censorship. Overall, the protests succeeded in leading President Mohammed Hosni Mubarek to resign, but even before the government was overthrown, a 2008 comment by Wael Nawara, an avid blogger and vice president of Egypt's opposition El Ghad party tells the truth about the situation and what it has become. “I think the time for censorship is over,” he says. "The government realizes this, but is trying until the last minute to slow down the wheels of change. The forces of technology, changing cultures, changing modes of communication... This is a phenomenon that no government or alliance of governments can block. This is evolution and no one can stop it."