Social media was praised so much for its contribution to conflicts outside western world, like middle east and North Africa. In the beginning of Syrian civil war for example; Twitter was the place where propaganda was streamed and extremists from all over the world would leave homes to join other extremists behading heads somewhere.
Now, we see the potential of social media to be a tool for coordinated attacks against the western world. Just imagine this attack during the protests last month in the same narrative that started civil wars in other parts of the world. When tens of people start shooting and killing eachother, nobody would discuss what triggered the chain of events.
This is a simple test that reveals how fragile is society in contrast to how much attention they pay
to Twitter. The worst, the value we get from social media is also unclear. Low quality, unreliable bits of information turned millions to pigeons jumping from there to there and those who own the seeds can control the mass.
The less conspiratorial take on this is that social media simply exacerbates and foments conflict, period. Maybe some of these involved significant coordinated propaganda efforts, but I doubt they all did. The mistake the western world made was thinking that this social media generated conflict was a result of some coherent "positive" motivation, when perhaps it was simply blind social media outrage that coincided with revolutions in places we thought were bad somehow.
It exacerbated it first in the middle east, maybe because those societies were close to conflict to start with, but the western world doesn't seem that far behind.
I found it very interesting how Facebook et al got so much flak right after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It was as if the DoD finally realized their little weapon could be turned against them and took action to reassert dominance.
Now, we see the potential of social media to be a tool for coordinated attacks against the western world. Just imagine this attack during the protests last month in the same narrative that started civil wars in other parts of the world. When tens of people start shooting and killing eachother, nobody would discuss what triggered the chain of events.
This is a simple test that reveals how fragile is society in contrast to how much attention they pay to Twitter. The worst, the value we get from social media is also unclear. Low quality, unreliable bits of information turned millions to pigeons jumping from there to there and those who own the seeds can control the mass.