I first shared these views on air in a conversation moderated by Michel Ghandour, Al Hurra TV, with Walter Isaacson as the principal guest, and although years have passed the central question still cuts cleanly through the noise, namely whether social networks ignited the uprisings or merely helped them prevail, and my answer then as now is that the match was lit elsewhere while the Internet, with its open pipes and permissive protocols, carried the flame to every doorstep that could still be reached.
Social networks are a visible layer; the Internet is the substrate
During those last weeks of 2010 in Tunisia the street discovered its own voice and found in social platforms an outlet that moved at the speed of anger and hope, yet I argued, and continue to argue, that we should not confuse the tools we touch with the infrastcrucure that made them possible, because the platforms were new while the Internet was already decades old and architected for openness, which is precisely why any service could rise overnight, scale with the moment, and survive attempts to block it by routing around the damage.
A fifth estate emerged and the balance with power shifted
What unfolded was a new center of accountability in which citizens used the network to scrutinize the traditional powers of legislation, administration, judiciary, and mass media, and the grammar of the relationship between ruler and ruled began to change as information flowed more freely, responsibility followed that flow, and the cost of suppressing truth rose because you could not suffocate a society’s voice without also choking the very channels its economy needed to breathe.
Tunisia taught a simple lesson: voice travels where openness exists
Before 2011 many Tunisians felt effectively voiceless as expression was constrained, independent media throttled, and even YouTube blocked, which bred self‑censorship and isolation that the network then broke, and in the early days when mainstream coverage lagged, short posts, shaky videos, and improvised streams stitched neighborhoods together into a single civic conversation that did not create courage but lowered the cost of coordination and made truth contagious; when Egypt faced an Internet blackout, international companies offered dial‑in access and tools that converted voice messages into text that could circulate online, and I wished we had seen more support from regional firms because resilience should not be an import but a habit.
This lesson echoed again later in the region: in late 2017, as the war ground on in Yemen, authorities and operators imposed recurring disruptions and tightened social media access, and civil society documented repeated interruptions that fractured families, constrained reporting, and forced people to fall back on scarce and fragile links; over those same years in Libya, rival factions periodically targeted telecom facilities or leaned on operators, and whole cities found themselves partially unplugged, which proved once more that connectivity is a civic lifeline rather than a luxury and that redundancy is not a technical nicety but a democratic safeguard.
The fight was never only about platforms; it was also about governance
I warned then of a quiet struggle inside institutions where the rules of the network are drafted, because some actors, including those working under multilateral umbrellas, sought to narrow the open model through new controls, while at the same time the United States spoke loudly about Internet freedom yet took positions in certain venues that seemed misaligned with that principle, and I argued that consistency matters, since if openness is our value it must hold in standards bodies, in treaties, and in commerce or else the rhetoric dissolves the moment people need it most.
Freedom is not a feature; it is a practice
Connectivity helped, but it did not substitute for daily civic work, because freedom grows when people defend it every day, when they document abuses, when they organize peacefully, and when they keep bridges open even under pressure; social networks amplified that work without replacing it, and the same network that lowered barriers also demanded discernment, as rumor and truth traveled together and societies had to learn verification, privacy hygiene, and secure coordination as baseline civic skills.
What endured, and what must be built next
What endures is the simple architecture of an open network and the disciplined habits of a public that knows how to use it; what must be built is resilient access with multiple paths so that a single cut cannot silence a city, stronger local capacity so regional firms provide continuity during crises instead of waiting for outside help, protection of the open layers through active participation in technical and policy venues where permissionless entry can be defended, widespread digital literacy that treats verification and safety as everyday practice, and durable support for independent media and archiving because memory disciplines power and documentation is the sibling of protest.
The Arab Spring was never the child of technology but the child of people who refused silence, and while the Internet made their resolve legible at scale it also made clear why the open network deserves serious stewardship, since if we keep it open societies can correct themselves while if we close it everyone suffocates, including those who imagine they govern from a place above the flow; I believed that on air during those tense weeks, and I believe it now with even greater clarity.
Video available at this link: https://youtu.be/WxPOZyxPLjA?t=2249
