Uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and across the Middle East and North Africa offer the most recent manifestation of the power of the use of the internet. More recently, in 2018, the internet played a key role in Sudan's youth-led revolution against Omar al-Bashir. Today, the internet has been used as a practical tool, to mobilise and organise protests on the ground. To start with the obvious limitations of the argument: no technology will make people take to the streets. There must be a reservoir of anger at the situation and desire to improve society. There must be baseline levels of literacy, education, infrastructure, and technological skill among would-be protestors, and so forth. With these conditions present, the use of the internet cuts in favour of democracy.
We can bend the arc of the internet towards democracy. It is not the technology itself, but the way we use it and build it, that matters. The way that skilful activists are using the internet and digital media today, especially mobile technologies, favours those who are seeking to express themselves and to organise their peers, not those who are seeking to close debate and to prevent crowds from gathering in the streets. Few can deny that the internet and social media have enabled the most significant advance in freedom of expression, opinion, and association in contemporary Arab history. To that end, the internet and social media have served the cause of democratic progress in sweeping two authoritarian regimes from power and have chronicled the battles between the Libyan opposition and pro-Gaddafi loyalists.
Despite this, the fact remains that the duality of the internet, as a tool to promote democracy or authoritarianism, or simultaneously both, is a complex puzzle. There is a need to find balance between showing the information needed and controlling it. As too much of internet freedom can also put democracy at stake. It is important to find an equivalent of licensing and public broadcasting in the world of internet. Governments can find a regulatory or social or legal measure that will make this technology work for people, society and democracy overall. Applying regulations to the online world the same kinds of regulations that have been used in other spheres can help a society achieve transparency, privacy, data, and competition. An instance of this can be Internet advertising, where people today can know when and why they are being shown political ads or any type of ads.
However, there is a flaw with censorious remedies as they can be ineffective to a large extent. These remedies can prove problematic as they may lead curbing of free speech. An instance of this can be Saudi Arabia who in the name of content moderation crush political dissent. There is, therefore, a need for a new independent expert agency that promotes the values the Internet originally promised to enhance. For example, think tank Public Knowledge proposed, a new agency would gain and share expertise with other agencies across the government in emerging technologies with a focus on supporting democratic values.
