from the arab spring to occupy wall street to no kings: when social media changes sides
Rock Candy Revolution, Facebook, and the uncomfortable question of who controls our digital public square.
There is a video called Rock Candy Revolution that got me thinking about how much our world has changed.
It reminds me of the days when social media was celebrated for helping ordinary people organize, share information and challenge those in power.
Remember the Arab Spring? Occupy Wall Street? The people who took to the streets because they believed the system was failing them?
Remember when Facebook was part of the story of how people found one another, spread the word and organized demonstrations that traditional media could not always keep up with?
Now look at where we are.
when facebook helped people rise up
During the Arab Spring, which began in late 2010 and spread across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, social media helped activists share information, publicize abuses and coordinate protests.
In Egypt, Facebook became an important organizing tool for activists challenging Hosni Mubarak's government. It helped people connect and brought events to the attention of audiences around the world.
Social media didn't create those revolutions on its own. People had lived with grievances, repression and economic hardship long before they went online. But suddenly, they had new ways to communicate, organize and make themselves heard.
The internet made it harder for information to remain confined to one street, one city or one country.
People were watching. People were sharing. People were joining.
And the world was learning just how powerful that connection could be.
occupy wall street: we are the 99%
Then came Occupy Wall Street in September 2011.
People gathered in New York's Zuccotti Park to challenge economic inequality and the influence of wealth over politics. The movement spread to cities across the United States and around the world.
Social media helped Occupy groups share information, coordinate demonstrations and build connections between people who might otherwise never have met. Researchers have examined how Facebook and Twitter helped the movement spread to new cities.
The slogan was simple: We are the 99%.
It was a way of expressing the frustration of people who felt that economic and political systems were serving the wealthy at everyone else's expense.
Occupy did not solve inequality. It did, however, bring questions about wealth, corporate influence and political power into conversations that reached far beyond the parks where people gathered.
And social media helped carry those conversations.
the promise of connection
For a while, there was something hopeful about the possibilities.
You didn't need a television network, a newspaper publisher or a wealthy sponsor to spread an idea.
You could take a photograph, record a video, publish a post or share an event with people hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.
You could connect with people who cared about the same things you did.
You could organize.
You could witness events as they unfolded rather than waiting for someone else to decide which stories deserved attention.
For artists, activists, independent writers and ordinary people, these platforms opened doors that had previously been difficult to access.
But there was a catch.
We were building communities on platforms we did not own.
We were building audiences using systems we could not see inside.
And the companies providing those connections retained the power to change the rules.
fast-forward to no kings
On October 17, 2026, the No Kings movement held rallies and voter-mobilization events across the United States.
That same day, the movement's official Instagram account became inaccessible during a major day of action.
Meta subsequently said an automated system had mistakenly suspended the account after detecting unusually frequent posting, sharing or commenting. The company apologized. The movement said its administrators had been unable to access the account even after it became visible again.
Let's be clear: the reported suspension does not prove that Meta deliberately targeted the movement for political reasons.
But it does demonstrate a problem that deserves serious attention.
A movement can spend weeks organizing an event, only to discover that its access to a major communication platform can disappear at a critical moment.
Even when a suspension is accidental, the consequences are real.
People can miss announcements. Organizers can lose access to their audience. Important information can fail to reach the people who need it.
And an apology after the event cannot restore the hours that were lost.
the same technology, a different kind of power
This is what troubles me.
The technology that helped people organize during the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street has become part of an enormous corporate system that controls how much of the world communicates.
The technology itself can still connect people. It can still help a movement spread. It can still bring attention to stories that might otherwise go unnoticed.
But the companies controlling the platforms also have the power to restrict access, remove content, suspend accounts and influence what people encounter.
Those decisions can affect political movements, community groups, journalists, artists and small businesses alike.
We don't need to assume that every suspension is censorship or that every automated decision has a political motive.
We do need to recognize that a system capable of connecting millions of people is also capable of interrupting those connections.
And when so much public communication depends on a handful of private companies, that power deserves scrutiny.
who owns the public conversation?
Facebook helped make the internet feel like a place where ordinary people could finally be heard.
We shared our photographs, stories, opinions, artwork and experiences. We found communities. We learned about events. We followed movements taking place thousands of kilometres away.
We invested our time in building connections, often without thinking about what it meant to depend on a corporation for access to our own audiences.
Now we have to ask harder questions.
Who decides which voices are visible?
How do we know whether moderation decisions are fair?
What happens when an automated system makes a mistake?
Can a person or organization get a meaningful explanation and a timely appeal?
And why should an important civic announcement depend on a single company's ability to keep an account functioning?
These questions matter regardless of whether we agree with the people whose accounts are affected.
Freedom of expression should not depend on whether a platform finds a particular message convenient, popular or profitable.
And the right to organize should not depend entirely on a company's algorithms.
we need more than a facebook page
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons from these movements is that communication networks matter.
We should be able to use social media without making ourselves completely dependent on it.
Independent websites, email lists, alternative platforms, direct community networks and accessible public information can help ensure that a single suspension does not cut off an entire audience.
Platforms should also provide transparent rules, meaningful appeals and safeguards against mistakes that interfere with civic participation.
The answer isn't to abandon every useful technology. It is to recognize its limitations and build alternatives.
Because the internet was supposed to make communication easier, not leave us wondering whether our ability to speak to one another can disappear overnight.
how our world has changed
When I think about the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and now No Kings, I see a question that stretches across all three.
What happens when people discover that they can organize together, challenge powerful institutions and make themselves heard — but the communication systems they depend on are controlled by corporations they cannot hold directly accountable?
The world has changed.
Social media helped demonstrate the power of people connecting across borders. But the growth of these platforms has also concentrated enormous control over communication in private hands.
The promise of connection remains. So does the vulnerability.
I don't want to believe that the tools that once helped ordinary people find their voices will become the very things that prevent them from reaching one another.
But neither do I want us to confuse having an account with having control over our own communication.
The real question is not whether social media can change the world. We already know it can.
The question is whether the people using it will have a meaningful say in how that power is exercised.
Because the ability to organize, share information and challenge authority should not depend on the permission of a platform.
And the next time a movement needs to reach the public, we should not have to wonder whether its account will still be there.
When the digital revolution depends on a corporate gatekeeper, who is watching the gatekeeper?
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