Musk's Twitter Can Be Good for Activists and Business
Human-rights advocates command huge followings in countries where the platform has strong growth potential, but users might flee if they fear surveillance.
Uncertain times for activists.
Photographer: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
As Twitter users everywhere brace for changes to their beloved platform under new ownership, no group is more anxious about Elon Musk’s intentions than the large and highly influential community of democracy activists and human-rights advocates in the Middle East and North Africa. And arguably, no other group has more at stake.
Certainly, none has a closer appreciation of the platform’s potential — for both good and evil. This is the cohort that provided the world with its first demonstration of the power of Twitter by using it, along with Facebook and YouTube, to organize a revolution: The 2011-12 Arab Spring, in which social-media activism helped bring down long-serving dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.