Social Media and Protest User to Go Together Not anymore.

SINCE THE 2010s, social media has been identified with protesters. In the early years, this was intuitive. Protest movements wanted attention, but mainstream media outlets were often slow or reluctant to give it to them, unless, of course, things got out of hand, at which point they would get plenty.

- Screen Time: John Herrman

Social media, by contrast, was an effective tool for activists to communicate with one another and directly with the public, providing counternarratives to the ones laid out in the Establishment press. An opportunistic embrace of progressive causes by social-media executives cemented the perception: Twitter was with the activists.

This created a powerful dynamic: Social-media platforms that were used to organize protests were then used to circulate encouraging imagery of those protests, helping movements like Black Lives Matter spread across the country. As most leftist activists would have told you at the time, this was always going to be a temporary arrangement. It contained clear dangers from the start; as much as Twitter and even Facebook leaned into their roles in “democratizing” the media, they were never truly building tools for activists but rather surveillance networks for advertisers. And despite the social-media visibility of some left-wing movements, the ability to translate on-the-ground action into shareable content was valuable across the political spectrum—including to the far right. To whatever extent the concept has meaning, January 6 was a social-media protest too.