Remember the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests that engulfed several totalitarian Arab states beginning in 2010? I certainly do, partially because it was viewed as a tipping point in which social media was ostensibly first used as a means of coordinating mass protests and undermining authoritarian regimes.
At that particular point in time, social media was a very novel concept that carried the potential to revolutionize how people communicated, received information, and made their voices heard. Moreover, it was hoped that social media would empower ordinary people while undercutting the stranglehold on the dissemination of information that has been a central pillar of totalitarian regimes for far too long.
My, how things have changed over the past decade or so. Today, we live in a world in which the freedom of speech is under siege like never before. Even worse,…
