Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes

The use of the Internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements developed... This is a different world.

The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again.

Twitter, it can be said, completely changed the way activism is done, who can participate, and even how we define it.

I love social media, and it is an important part of how we make change happen. But we can't retweet ourselves out of our most serious problems.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

It's extraordinary that revolutions taking place around the world were sparked by communication on the Internet.

In the 21st century, you have to use technology as one of the tools in the toolkit to bring about social change.

Social media is its own sort of thing: Twitter and Facebook have changed the way everyone perceives everything.

When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.

The power of social media is it forces necessary change.

Society has changed so dramatically that it's empowered the individual, and technology has a lot to do with that. Years ago, if you had a bad experience at a restaurant, you could complain to the manager. Maybe you could picket. Now, you go online and write a review that may go viral.

If there had been Twitter at the time of the French Revolution, they would have claimed that the French Revolution was caused by twitter.

Now I know we have the power to incite change through the Internet - keep sharing our stories, our dreams, and our struggles.

I think the Internet is having an impact in very diverse ways anchored around amplifying voice, from enabling what I like to refer to as micro-activism.

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable.

I think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think.

The funny thing about Facebook and Twitter is, you can go on there and see what's going on in the world without watching the news. I get so much news off of social media. I think it's cool. It's changed everything, not just music. It's changed the world. It definitely is a good thing. I don't really know what I think of it yet more than that. I haven't really sorted that out for myself.

What happens when you combine blogs, Google and millions of dissatisfied customers? An e-mob.

Wildly successful sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Facebook offer genuinely portable social experiences, on and off the desktop. You don't even have to go to Facebook or Twitter to experience Facebook and Twitter content or to share third-party web content with your Twitter and Facebook friends.

In this day and age of texts, Twitter, and Facebook, we are very rarely surprised by anything anymore - something always leaks out and gets spoiled.

Those Ron Paul supporters … will Tweet the heck out of something if they are not happy.

Hacktivists, roughly speaking, are individuals who redeploy and repurpose technology for social causes. In this sense they are different from garden-variety hackers out to enrich only themselves.

People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.

The traditional media never gave Bernie Sanders the time of day. But he went viral the same way hip-hop and new dances go viral. And I'm part of that culture.

The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.