Maybe the civil rights movement wouldn't even be possible in this era.
This is a very narrow scale when taking the bigger picture, as these are just prominent events in Middle Eastern history since the growth of social media usage, say after 2011.
You are not even considering the travesties avoided due to social media, what regulatory action has been avoided (or taken) to avoid social media backlashes.
You are being extremely disingenuous, and you are directly attacking some peoples' only hope of minimizing repression. I urge you to reconsider your beliefs. This directly and critically affects me.
Where I live, we’re already free from repression and social media threatens to reintroduce it.
I guess the question is, how should citizens communicate with each other? Who should apply the restrictions? If the authoritarian state is applying the restrictions, then it's probably for their own goals.
But really, people should communicate with each other by means not including algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement. Preferably including as little emotion as possible when it comes to discussing policy.
I think that's the problem, not "social media". We're typing these comments on social media, after all.
Liberal ideas require more explaining and historical context, and they don’t play well when everyone has been triggered and trolled into limbic system mode by rage bait.
Liberal politics speaks to the neocortex. Authoritarianism speaks to the brain stem.
>downvoted out
Erm...
Also there’s a world of difference between people registering dislike on an online forum and the use of state power. It seems like a lot of people these days draw no distinction between removal from a private space or even people just showing disapproval and actual state force.
It created a world where: when disapproval inside an echo-chamber fails to a critical mass of people telling the truth, just pretend the content doesn't exist and then gaslight people using official media outlets, including Congress and the White House.
So it gave people the impression there's no difference between the two. Not only were disapproval and state force in agreement, they colluded.
That's odd because I don't see a lot of that. Care to elaborate?
I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of these sites on development of young people. We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this Australian experiment. We'll see.