Taking back control of our technology

Look back a decade, and the political horizon of social media looked very different than it does today. Critiques of the increasing dominance of corporate social media platforms were overshadowed in the past by an enthusiasm for what social media were seemingly making possible. In his book Why It’s Kicking off Everywhere, Paul Mason was able to quote an activist involved in the Arab Spring saying that it was a revolution ‘planned on Facebook, organized on Twitter and broadcast to the world via YouTube’.