The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [18]
From Milk Shakes to Molotov Cocktails
Jared Cohen’s praise of Facebook’s organic ability to promote democracy may be just a factual statement. Everything else being equal, a world where so many Chinese and Iranians flock to the services of American technology companies may, indeed, be a world where democracy is more likely to prevail in the long run. It’s hard to disagree with this statement, especially if the other alternative is having those users opt for domestic Internet services; those tend to be much more heavily policed and censored.
That said, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the current situation is not the result of some cunning and extremely successful American strategy to exploit Facebook. Rather, it’s the result of both intellectual and market conditions at the time. Until recently, authoritarian governments simply did not give much thought to where their citizens chose to do their email and share their pasta recipes; American companies were often the first to offer their superb services, and most governments did not bother to build any barriers. They may have been piqued by the success of American platforms as opposed to local Internet start-ups, but then their domestic fast food industry was also losing ground to McDonald’s; as long as no one could mistake McDonald’s vanilla triple-thick shake for a Molotov cocktail, this was not something to worry about.
Nevertheless, once the likes of Jared Cohen start lauding Facebook as an organic tool for promoting democracy, it immediately stops being such. In a sense, the only reason why there was so much laxity in the regulation of Internet services operating in authoritarian states was that their leaders did not make the obvious connection between the business interests of American companies and the political interests of the American government. But as the State Department is trying to harvest the fruits of Silicon Valley’s success in the global marketplace, it’s inevitable that previously carefree attitudes will give way to increased suspicion. Any explicit moves by American diplomats in this space will be watched closely. Moreover, they will be interpreted according to the prevalent conspiracy theories rather than in light of the stale press releases issued by the State Department to explain its actions.
In July 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one of the Chinese government’s finest research organizations, published a detailed report about the political implications of the Internet. It argued that social networking sites threaten state security because the United States and other Western countries “are using them to foment instability.” It’s hard not to see this as a direct response to the words and deeds of Jared Cohen. (The Chinese report did cite unnamed U.S. officials as saying that social networking is an “invaluable tool” for overthrowing foreign government and made good use of the U.S. government’s involvement via Twitter in the Iranian unrest of 2009.) When American diplomats call Facebook a tool of democracy promotion, it’s safe to assume that the rest of the world believes that America is keen to exploit this tool to its fullest potential rather than just stare at it in awe.
American diplomats have been wrong to treat the Internet, revolutionary as it might seem to them, as a space free of national prejudices. Cyberspace is far less susceptible to policy amnesia than they believe; earlier