Crediting technology platforms with the Arab Spring is a really misleading and troublesome narrative that a lot of people blindly accept.
"Credit" confuses causal importance with (human) responsibility.
Normal Borlaug engineered a variety of wheat that fed a lot of people and saved a lot of lives. What deserves credit? The wheat or the inventor? Or Mendel et.al, for pioneering the principles of genetics that Borlaug used in his work? Even if "someone else would have done it if Borlaug didn't", he is still (one of) the most important human actors responsible for averting the crisis. The materials/products used are causally important; not humanly-responsible.
In this case, humans were responsible for the Arab Spring. For the most part, social media platforms were causally important to the process.
It gets much harder to draw that line, though, when the platforms are behaving in activist ways (e.g. $literally_any_technology_headline_in_the_last_week).
"Credit" confuses causal importance with (human) responsibility.
Normal Borlaug engineered a variety of wheat that fed a lot of people and saved a lot of lives. What deserves credit? The wheat or the inventor? Or Mendel et.al, for pioneering the principles of genetics that Borlaug used in his work? Even if "someone else would have done it if Borlaug didn't", he is still (one of) the most important human actors responsible for averting the crisis. The materials/products used are causally important; not humanly-responsible.
In this case, humans were responsible for the Arab Spring. For the most part, social media platforms were causally important to the process.
It gets much harder to draw that line, though, when the platforms are behaving in activist ways (e.g. $literally_any_technology_headline_in_the_last_week).