What happened?

Just took em a second to figure out how.

People love to talk about how 'the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots.'

It's easy to talk about big dramatic battles.

The truth is that it's really a never-ending struggle that requires sweat.

How many people bother to show up for primary elections? How many are willing to get a petition signed to get a good candidate on the ballot?

What did the Arab spring give the people in the end?

Syria? never ending civil war between factions controlled by foreign interests
Lybia? never ending civil war between factions controlled by foreign interests
Tunesia? temporary improvements now to be revoked by a new authoritarian
Egypt? temporary improvements followed by an US backed coup installing an even worse military dictator

Maybe we were just naive in thinking that social media back then wasn't already doing the bidding of governments against people.

There's a good retrospective on the mass protest movements of the 2010s called If We Burn. The main takeaway I got was that leaderlessness and horizonalism do not work.

If you don't pick your leaders, they will pick themselves.

Yeah, how is that going in the Arab Springs countries though? Was that actually a glorious people's uprising, or just another despot using an angry mob to do his bidding?

It was never not being weaponized, and never stopped being a place to organize.

They found out how gullable religion has made Americans. They will literally believe anything and fall in line like sheep.

"A Republican would eat a steaming bowl of shit if it meant a liberal had to smell their breath after"

The oligarchs got scared, then they got even.

Monetization of human weaknesses. By this I mean our biased, emotional, prone-to-addiction brains being colonized for data and ad-revenue.

It's almost like They realized something...

amazing how at the drop of a hat the mainstream media will shill for de-anonymizing trolls when someone makes fun of a corrupt politician

We let the normies into our spaces.

In a word, commercialisation.

That's when they noticed it could be used to topple governments and decided to use selfishly.

People put way too much weight on the "power of human ideas." They think if thee is a "free marketplace of ideas" then naturally the best ideas spread and take over. But that's not how the real world works at all. The ideas that are propagated are those that reflect what is "going around on the ground" to speak, not whether or not the ideas are actually good or bad.

How has it been weaponized against democracy?

It’s still the best way to get info not filtered by MSM. There’s a reason politicians in both parties are calling for increased social media censorship.

Arab Autumn

The ruling class, against whom the internet was a critical tool in the name of democracy, decided they were not going to let us have that tool anymore.

Oh so you like the Internet eh?

Well, Kraut of all people should know how one can change their mind in the span of a decade.

I won Time's Person of the Year in 2006. I have no worries about imposter syndrome. I've already been validated.

...it has?

I thought countries like China, Iran, India, and Pakistan ban access to social media and the greater internet because of the threat it still poses to information being shared and utilized by common citizens.

I'm fairly certain the flow information still has a net positive despite attempts to crackdown and control online interaction both from corporations and governments.

Pakistan's PTI is still alive despite being stabbed by the military because they can effectively reach their voterbase via the internet. I don't think anyone has actually taken a picture or video of Imran Khan ever since he was thrown in jail, yet he is as popular as ever.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/supporters-pakistans-imran-khan-call-off-protest-local-media-says-2024-11-27/

Well the reality is that democracy is a shitty form of government to. So the internet helps fight shitty forms of government. The problem is that the internet doesn't seem to help provide good alternatives. It is essentially indiscriminate on what replaces the currenty shitty form of government, even if the replacement then restricts the internets ability to fight the new shitty form....

Anonymity.

When you can set up thousands of bots and say whatever you want without consequence of course this would be the result.

Elon Musk happened. Twitter's staff banned Trump after 2020 elections, but (luke warm take) Musk bought Twitter to reinstate Trump

Bless the color revolutions! Thanks Facebook and the CIA!

Or maybe mediums are inherently neutral?