Social Media Warriors

By ROBERT H. REID

Parler is silenced, Twitter is purging, and Facebook and YouTube are being hammered by critics from the left and the right.

The social media world has been thrown in turmoil since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot. Critics accuse Big Tech of allowing its platforms to become virtual dens of conspiracies on a scale the Communist International could only dream of.

Conservative critics accuse those same Big Tech titans of silencing voices on the right.

It all seemed so different 10 years ago when I had the honor to lead AP’s crew reporting on the Arab Spring, widely hailed at the time as “the world’s first social media revolution.”

Back then social media organizers were the good guys. They were the bright boys and girls — conveniently fluent both in English and mathematics — who were using keystrokes and algorithms to outwit the forces of repression and lead the masses to freedom.

Or so it seemed. Truth be told, the role of social media in the Arab democracy uprisings was probably overstated. Nevertheless, we journalists always gravitate to the new and unusual.

So when the Arab Spring revolution spread from Tunisia to Egypt in January 2011, we found something new — social media as a means of stirring the masses.

Tech savvy democracy activists used Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter to exchange ideas, post photos and video and plan rallies.

Those digital warriors built a global following online, which cheered the “dawn of freedom” when the authoritarian regime of President Hosni Mubarak collapsed.

In the euphoria of the moment, pundits in America and Europe crowed that social media had empowered people in ways that dictators and autocrats could never control.

We journalists like to say we are writing the “first draft of history.” However, we all know what happens with first drafts.

Surprise! Autocrats or their friends can be clever and creative too.

In the years that followed the “Facebook Revolution,” autocrats have learned how to shut down social media platforms or manipulate them to their own advantage.

“You can now create a narrative saying a democracy activist was a traitor and a pedophile,” wrote author Anne Applebaum. “The possibility of creating an alternative narrative is one people didn’t consider, and it turns out people in authoritarian regimes are quite good at it.”

Turns out that social media, like every tool, is only as good or bad as the person who uses it. As gun rights advocates say, “guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” sometimes with guns.

Or expressed in another way, the free flow of ideas is most palatable when you agree with the ideas.