Not a day goes by without new reminders of the damage that the internet generally but social media in particular have done (and continue to do) to our political landscape. Dangerous echo chambers, amplified misinformation/disinformation, catalysed hate, compromised democracy, intensified culture wars...
Yet it's worth noting, occasionally, that the internet is still seen very differently elsewhere in the world. For Afghani women and girls, for instance, it has been a source of vital connections and a means of personal emancipation through education - a chastening reminder of a positive, revolutionary potential that we in the West have almost completely lost. But as the BBC's Mahfouz Zubaide recently reported, this "last hope" has now been extinguished by the Taliban, and the picture seems bleaker in Afghanistan too.
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