Political activism is not failing because people are too busy watching cat videos online, but because of a fundamental collapse of citizen leverage on institutions of power like governments and corporations.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech - it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Freedom of speech exists theoretically, but access to platforms for expression is crucial for it to be effective.
Zeynep Tufekci's quote highlights the nuanced relationship between freedom of speech and the means of communication available to individuals. While the concept of free speech has always existed, it is insufficient without the infrastructure that enables people to share their voices and ideas. The internet, while a significant facilitator, did not initiate the idea of free speech, but rather provided a new means for those voices to be heard, emphasizing that without access, speech can often remain ignored.
Themes
FreedomSpeechInternetAccessExpression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of social media in modern speech.
More from Zeynep Tufekci
All quotes →Given exponential growth dynamics of infectious diseases, containing an epidemic is straightforward early on, but nearly impossible once a disease spreads among a population.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Attention, to a terrorist group, is often what the well-meaning, outraged response is to your two-bit Internet troll: it is the food that feeds them.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Much of what ails our modern life is exactly because we reduce the value of a human being to a number, say salary or consumer power.
Zeynep TufekciRead
You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn't understand the Streisand effect, and that can't be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it's China's.
Zeynep TufekciRead
A 'fair' fight between non-equals is not fair, and being blind to power is an implicit endorsement of the powerful.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Similar quotes
Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.
Aldous HuxleyRead
Truth is a remarkable thing. We cannot miss knowing some of it. But we cannot know it entirely.
AristotleRead
Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know
Virginia WoolfRead
Remember this-all the sighing, mourning, sobbing, and complaining in the world, does not so undeniably evidence a man to be humble, as his overlooking his own righteousness, and living really and purely upon the righteousness of Christ.
Thomas BrooksRead
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Thomas MertonRead
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead