The Broken Dream Of Social Media

Recently we have been getting a lot of articles analysing what happened to the dream of the Internet. Why what a decade ago was seen as a tool taking humankind to another level is today more seen like a threat. 

Zeynep Tufekci portrays the shift from enthusiasm to where it all went wrong, taking us through everything from the Arab Spring, protests in Iran, and Obama's election to the unregulated platforms. Those unregulated platforms seem to be the key—alone, without regulation, they gathered more and more data and dealt with various problems in a way they deemed fit. Which was usually good for them but not for the public. 

But then the author also tries to explain why she thinks the Internet issue happened and what can be done. And that it is not all just the fault of technology being hacked by Russian hackers. It's much more complex.

The greatest quote from the article for me is one about Hosni Mubarak cutting the Internet connection during the Tahrir protests:

He hadn’t understood that in the 21st century it is the flow of attention, not information.

The rest I leave for you to read.