Egypt’s internet shutdown backfired by driving protesters into the streets.

Evidence

Silicon Valley platforms were indeed indispensable to these uprisings. Egyptian protesters described how they used “Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” Wael Ghonim, Google’s marketing executive in the Middle East, became a key figure after creating a Facebook page protesting the death of a fellow activist. As the protests escalated, the Egyptian government blocked Twitter and Facebook and ultimately shut down the internet altogether—a decision Ghonim later called their fatal mistake: “They forced everyone…to go to the street to be part of this.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 260

Categorization

• QUESTION: The fact that cutting the internet pushed people into physical space is a paradox worth pursuing when formulating whether flattened digital distribution really created ‘blankness’ or merely shifted where culture happens.