This is a very strange approach to discourse. What action do you think was taken and where's the documentation?
The administration was openly showing support for the Arab Spring mobs and even built up a military coalition in its support. Lack of knowledge on current events isn't the same as taking a skeptical stance.
Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign. This was something that everyone wanted a bit of credit for, but was ultimately totally uncontroversial because terrorists bad and no one complains when companies deplatform them.
Your assertion is orthogonal to the original thread. When the "Arab Spring" started all the talking heads were going on about free speech, Democratic values, the positive role social media is playing, and beating the war drums. It's only after the situation had started threatening geopolitical interests did the tune change.
>Social media companies actually had a hugely successful anti-ISIS recruiting and propoganda campaign.
I question if that's the case. That's like closing the barn doors after the horses have already left. The networks were already in place. The damage already done.
Aggregators like r/syriancivilwar had no shortage of atrocities to share most of which directly from social media.
I'm having a hard time seeing your point. It seems like you're saying that because [entities] only started to do online counterinsurgency once ISIS was somewhat established, those entities didn't actually try to shutdown extremist content.
And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.
The second is well until 2013 or 2014, ISIS wasn't really a thing (of note). So no one cared. For better or worse, denoting something as a terrorist organization matters. Countering terrorist propoganda sounds a lot better than countering propoganda put out by arab spring protestors agitating for more democratic governments.
And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.
I'm just very confused, what point are you trying to convey.
The start of this thread is a comparative juxtaposition of anti-vaxxer and terrorist content. I think that's an interesting thought experiment but requires historical context with an emphasis on the roles social media and realpolitik played. Put bluntly, social media is socially corrosive, we are experiencing a non-partisan leadership vacuum, and all these polarizing events aren't as different as they seem.
>And well that's silly for two reasons. The first is that the social media landscape was very different 10 years (yeah really!) ago when the Arab Spring started, the companies didn't have "stop terrorism" on their radar.
10 years later and social media is still driven by polarizing engagement metrics and addictive anti-patterns. Banning content is an insufficient bandaid at best and scapegoat at worst. Fundamentally the same landscape.
>And actually a third is that a lot of the initial arab spring was explicitly about pro-democratic and non-muslim or more secular governments. So this whole complaint doesn't make a lot of sense. Like yes, people were in favor of the use of social media for democratic organizing.
It's not a given that it was about democracy any more it's a given antivaxxers are about safety/freedom. Are these the real issues, are they proxy issues, or is it layers of both?
