Comment by everdrive
5 days ago
>Remember the Arab Spring and how Twitter was hailed as a tool for the masses to fight against their oppressors?
The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes; just increased geopolitical instability. Twitter has always been a social media platform, and definitionally it has therefore always increased extremism and populism. I find it incredibly disheartening that people think Twitter has only become a malevolent force under Musk. Musk's changes to the platform are certainly unsettling, but Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone.
> The Arab spring was a populist uprising. It's not clear that there were actually positive outcomes
Tunisia is now arguably better off, but even beyond that: the longterm effects of such things aren't always immediately apparent. The French Revolution led to terror, then to an Empire and devastating wars and finally back to the old monarchy, but it cast a very long shadow on the 19th century and beyond.
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This is gratuitously snarky and adds little to the discussion.
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The point is that social media was used by people to connect and organise which led to the overthrow of a number of dictators/military junta.
What has happened since is the old order has mostly reasserted itself - with a clamp down on social media, and mechanisms put in place to cut access if things get too fiesty.
Take Egypt - they kicked out a miltary juntu - forced elections - then the 'wrong' people won the elections and the military took over again, clamped down on the media and are in still in place today ( president has been in power for 10+ years with no signs of stepping down ) - and they are so representative of the people that the US think they might be able to persuade the Egyptian leader to take part in ethnic cleansing of it's neighbour.
Whether that's a good thing depends on whether you think people like el-Sisi know what's best for their country, whether the people agree or not.
The Egyptian case was so sad: the first elections run elected Islamists, who failed to make a pluralist democracy stick (which was what the Twitter protestors largely wanted!) and instead ended up running similar levels of repression but with a Muslim flavour.
I think it's complex - being elected to a head of state that was previously rife with corruption is a very difficult job, not made easier by the previous regime and their foreign friends trying ( and succeeding ) to reverse the revolution.
In the end I think it's easiest to stick to the facts - which is the elected PM was overthrown by the military and sentenced to death, and eventually died in prison.
At least at the time, we thought it could be a tool for populist uprisings in authoritarian countries. Now it seems like they just want to promote populist uprisings in democratic countries.
I'd argue it's a tool for extremism and populism everywhere; the weakest Arab governments simply crumpled first, however the same pressures are applied to all governments.
Isn't there a common theme though whether authoritarian or democracy? That's the tension between those in charge who think they know better ( and may well do ) and the populace.
In my mind, the failure on the democracy side has been the rise and rise of managing the message, and the fall of free speaking politicians - modern political comms is positively Orwellian - in part in response to the overwearning power for certain media groups to run a negative campaign to get what they want. Politicians were cowed.
If you look back at historic TV footage of politicians from 50 years ago - the level, subtlety and honesty of debate is much better.
Not sure how you fix it - the money+internet allows anybody to try and control the democratic process - but part of it has to be politicians being braver in speech and deed.
In speech, for example, Bernie Sanders didn't shy away from owning the word socialist - when he first came to prominence it was used as an unthinking label that the media thought should instantly disqualify him - but instead he took the opportunity to re-define it.
In deed - rather than clamp down on the voices of the many, the government should be looking to curtail the power of the few - Elon Musk is currently dismantling government and while I'm sure there is lots to fix, the reason democratic governments and laws exist is to challenge and constrain the power of the few ( every one is equal before the law ).
Twitter was a net positive for many. Millions of people around the world relied on it for timely news and updates in the absence of other avenues. This was particularly pertinent in places like Africa where state infrastructure wasn't able to provide or indeed, the middle east, where censorship prevented accurate news being disseminated.
So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
Also, the Arab spring overthrew several decades-long brutal dictatorships. Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
>Given that overthrowing The Taliban (lol) and Saddam is hailed as a positive of the trillions of dollars and millions of lives spent on the GWOT, at least give the people of the Middle East the courtesy of acknowledging the overthrow of Ben Ali, Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi.
I don't believe either of those ended up positive either. The Taliban waited out the US; they may have been overthrown, but given that he Taliban are back in power it seems like the entire effort was waste. In Iraq, Saddam was the only force holding back the Shia majority. Iraq has largely devolved into another proxy for Iran, and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone. I'm not supportive of Saddam, either; he was truly evil in ways that people don't always understand. My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
> and I don't believe it can be argued that Iraq is any better off with Saddam gone > [....] My point would just be that populism and revolution do not necessitate positive outcomes.
The current worse state of Iraq ( post Saddam ) is nothing to do with populism - and all to do with foreign inference.
Though I agree with the general point about revolutions - one of the key problems with violent revolutions is quite often the most hardline nutters ( of whatever flavour ) tend to end up in charge as they are the most prepared to be violent.
And you didn't even get to Libya.
> So your assertion that "Twitter was _never_ a net positive for anyone" is not only false but an absurdly biased and frankly wrong view on how the world accesses information.
I presume the grandparent was being rhetorical and trying to say Twitter was always a net negative for society as a whole.
Even today, its a net positive for plenty of people (myself included).
Indeed. It was always a drama tool for me. Short and clickbaity.
That occasional good information also succesful spread, doesn't mean that information would not have also flowed with different communication tools and maybe then even in a better way.