So, Was Facebook Responsible for the Arab Spring After All?
SEP 3, 2011
The hot and at times vicious debate about whether Facebook (where "Facebook" stood for all things social on the Internet) unleashed the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia has been long on theory and short on reporting. Despite the shouting match, there is one thing everyone agrees on: activists in these countries used social media. Even Malcolm Gladwell who has argued repeatedly against Twitter's power wrote, "Surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please." The debate has pretty much accepted this as a given and has instead centered around what effect, if any, these tools had.
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Pollock's piece (and for the love of journalism read the whole thing, not just my reflection on it) follows the journey of two Tunisians known as "Foetus" and "Waterman" (their real names are unknown even to Pollock) whose organization, Takriz, helped incite the mass protests against Tunisia's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Takriz, Pollock writes, began as a "cyber think tank" in 1998. Early on, its aims were freedom of speech and affordable Internet access
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/
Wonder whether Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL Group was active in fomenting the Arab Spring?