“So, you want to be a dictator?” begins a Duke University paper by the economist William B. Snyderwine. Too bad you’re living in this century. “It is tougher to lead an authoritarian regime in the face of democratic ideals, free speech and globalized media. Look to the Arab Spring [as] an example of dictators overthrown by these modern forces.” Snyderwine puts forth complex mathematical formulas that show a dictator how to stay in power with cost-benefit analyses of revolutions that take into account factors like bribes and the number of active revolutionaries killed. A similarly minded project, compiled last year by the coder-artist-engineer Laurier Rochon, “The Dictator’s Practical Internet Guide to Power Retention,” is a compilation of tips, gleaned from the experiences of leaders in China, Singapore, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and other countries, that illustrate just how brutal the modern, connected world can be for a tyrant. (“Regardless of how it is done, make sure you always have your internet’s switch at the tip of your fingers.”)

Social media in particular poses a problem for restrictive regimes, judging by their responses to it: President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus—often referred to as Europe’s last dictator—has cracked down on tweeters and bloggers. In Vietnam, social-media users are not allowed to quote “information from newspapers, press agencies or other state-owned websites.” India, Oman, and Bahrain have arrested or jailed citizens for unfavorable posts on Twitter and Facebook. Iran, which has sentenced bloggers to death, is moving to set up its own private Internet, where “unregulated social media and other content likely to encourage dissent” won’t be at an Iranian browser’s disposal. Russia has put in place a huge new surveillance and filtering system, which will block and possibly monitor undesirable speech. In China, many citizens now take to social media to voice their complaints. As the journalist Joel Brinkley wrote, ” China spends more money on internal security—including a massive online censorship office—than it does on its military. Persistent online critics are imprisoned or worse. That demonstrates a clear fact: The Chinese government fears its own people far more than it does any outside power.” The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recently said that “this thing called social media is a curse on societies.”

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has proved canny online. Blackouts have shut down the Internet at various moments in the past two years; according to the United States Institute of Peace, activists believe that the outages are perpetrated by the government to “thwart announcements about the international response to the ongoing conflict, or worse, to install sophisticated filter systems.” The state news agency blamed one blackout, in May, on “a malfunctioning fibre-optic cable,” but it was not lost on many that it was timed near a vote on a U.N. resolution on Syria.

Assad and his cohorts go beyond blackouts, however. Groups that support Assad, notably the Syrian Electronic Army, have hacked the Web sites and social-media presences of various news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, flooding their Web sites and Twitter accounts with pro-Assad messages. Earlier this week, the group targeted Organizing for America, a project of President Obama’s, by taking over its Twitter account and posting links to its own content, including a video “showing the truth about Syria.” Two and a half years ago, Syrian officials began to demand citizens’ Facebook passwords, sometimes to post conspicuously pro-regime content. Assad has his own Instagram account as well. In square frame after filtered square frame, Assad is met with celebration and applause; his glamorous London-born wife, Asma al-Assad, often stands by his side, bestowing awards, meeting children, and lovingly serving food to refugees who were likely displaced by her husband, all with a fitness band that counts calories and steps on her wrist.

Does it matter if this is a kind of misinformation? What does a social-media company do when a user known to be attacking civilians is blasting out feel-good content? I posed this question to Instagram about Assad’s user stream. Alison Schumer, who works on the company’s policy and communications team, told me that she cannot comment on specific accounts, even if the account is a global public figure. But she explained that, generally speaking, if a user created content that promoted violence, Instagram would remove it and possibly disable the user. Schumer stressed the importance of the context of the image in making those calls—a caption might make an image threatening, for instance—but also said that “context” is generally limited to content on the site. What matters, then, is that the picture Assad puts up depicts his wife assisting a disabled child—the caption on that one translates as “In order for the people with special needs to give and create, they must be directed out of the space of pity, charity and compassion The First Lady Asma al Assad #syria#Asma#Assad#handicapped”—rather than whether he is promoting a violent regime. Perhaps if he began to post videos of gassed children, Instagram would take down the account.

By now, we’re accustomed to subscribing to our friends’ streams, but the tacit forms of approval that come with social media complicate the companies’ relationship with the content, and ours. We don’t always consider a “follow” or a “fave” to be a vote of approval; we follow Taylor Swift even though we wouldn’t admit, in daylight, to liking her music, or 2 Chainz, to mock his predilection for shellfish, or to trackhis own lawbreaking tendencies.And yet, even within that complex framework, what does it mean to follow a man strongly suggested to be a war criminal, to have a virtual shrine to a dictators’ glory that can fit in our pockets?

Photograph: Rex Features/AP.


Emily Greenhouse was a member of The New Yorkers editorial staff from 2012 to 2014.

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