Having done a significant amount of protest interviewing, nothing here is in opposition to the idea that the particular way Facebook operates in particular and social media in general have had significant impacts on protest trajectory. Also, protest interviewing is tricky.
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After the Arab Spring the obsessive interest in the role of technology (which is what I've long studied but what we saw was journalists *and* tech companies swooping in with claims) led to protesters blatantly lying to interviews about tech aspects. (I know because they told me).
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In reality, I'd rarely seen a community so interested in Facebook's algorithms (and also how trending on Twitter worked)—because it affected everything they could and could not do. Social movement people is who I learn about algo changes: they often sense it before it's public.
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Technology companies were super happy to claim part in Arab Spring (they had a part!) and now want to act like they're irrelevant—except to advertisers, of course, to whom they say they're the place to convince people (they are!). That's why we need *independent* & calm research.
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Replying to @zeynep @alexleavitt
Aide note: My memory is that FB specifically didn't really play that up at the time, though Twitter did.
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Replying to @deaneckles @alexleavitt
Yes, Twitter certainly did, and I can try to look up with public statements from Facebook but lots of Facebook people certainly did. And it did play a role! The problem is that neither platform recognized the complexity of their role (at least not at the time).
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This is Zuck's letter to investors right ahead of the multi-billion IPO. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-letter/zuckerbergs-letter-to-investors-idUSTRE8102MT20120201 …pic.twitter.com/UwASU8IKhH
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(That was only one year after the Arab Spring! But already a good chunk of the problems that would later plague the platform were evident. I wrote my first public NYT piece asking Facebook to create a transparent database of political ads about a month after the 2012 IPO).
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Replying to @zeynep @alexleavitt
Though also notably not mentioning any of those places. I recall one of FB's favorite examples for a long time was One million voices against FARC.
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Replying to @deaneckles @alexleavitt
Though notably making very bold claims about the platform's role in the public sphere. I mean, I can find lots of great sounding examples (my book is full of them). The issue is, in the end, Facebook is and was a business and it made business decisions, of great consequence.
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But it neither understood (some of this is willful—it did not pay attention until forced) nor invested in understanding its impacts. Its quasi-monopoly status amplifies its consequences (though, in contrast to many, I think it likely mutes some harms as it can afford to do that).
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