@[email protected] @[email protected] Though I’m probably a bit older than you both, occupy was also the moment where I first engaged in a protest for a sustained period of time and then continued to do so after. There was a lot of incoherence around occupy that took me years to get my head around. But I’ve come to believe a totally horizontal, leaderless movement organized through social media platforms is dead on arrival. I thought I’d throw a few observations into the mix if that’s OK.

It was pointed out above that such a thing is like shouting “NO!” at the government; I fully agree with that. Bevins argues (at least in interviews; haven’t had a chance to read his book yet) that these spontaneous NOs can be dangerous: if they go far enough they can create a power vacuum that the most prepared (read: organized and ruthless) forces quickly move to fill. This is the real story of what happened in several countries during the Arab Spring, by Bevins’s read (I take it). So while folks are excitedly believing they’re participating in the birth of a new form of democracy, what they’re really doing is inflicting a dark Shock Doctrine on themselves. I have to confess that I, too, did not see this at the time.

There must be some kind of theory of change, pre-organizing to build power, and a clear-eyed recognition of the situation to avoid these DOA movements and have some hope of bringing lasting, meaningful change for a lot of people. Much of the US left (such as it is) seems allergic to looking reality squarely in the face. I’d almost go so far as saying there should not be attempts at lefty mass protest until such power is built, such theory is developed, and widespread recognition of our situation, grounded in reality, exists, exactly because of the danger that actors with very different goals from ours are better positioned to take advantage of the chaos mass protests generate.

Personally I’d refer to (what used to be) social media as “surveillance media”. The form the modern US state takes is public-private partnership, with many state functions dispatched by private corporations and actors. Though Musk clearly has his own aims, he is almost surely playing a state role with Twitter not too different from the one he plays through SpaceX. So, though social media’s always been corporate mediated, I’d add that recognizing the role of public-private partnerships in the modern US context leads to the probability that Twitter has become something else. In that view, the finances are almost irrelevant, and LOLing about this or that number going down or this or that many advertisers leaving the platform amounts to copium. If Twitter really is performing useful functions for the state then it will continue to exist no matter how much money it “loses”; failing to perform those functions is what would put it in jeopardy, not revenue figures.