Between this, China ("bringing China into the W.T.O. doesn't guarantee that it will choose political reform. But (...) it will make the imperative for the right choice stronger."), and the peace dividend Clinton's FP tenure was a disaster.
The most interesting thing in Facebook's evolution from mostly-free (albeit without pseudonymity) platform to aggressively controlled between 2015 and 2020 is how involved European governments were in the process (thread).
The most important thing about Facebook is that it can be used to reach the great mass of Gen X and Boomer adults who are not Internet natives and comprise most swing voters. Dark Facebook Manipulation from Russia and Vote Leave was blamed for both Trump 2016 and Brexit.
These two events provoked an avalanche of books, news articles, government reports, NGOs, and hearings (including in 2018 in the US Senate) about how Facebook microtargeting would end democracy. Example:
In 2015, Twitter was "the free speech wing of the free speech party" according to CEO Jack Dorsey, even avoiding collaboration with the NSA (unlike Google, Facebook). By 2019 it was one of the most censored, monitored, and controlled social media networks in the world.
YouTube was the biggest and most monetizable platform, Reddit the most important discussion forum, Amazon needed for authors and websites, and Google Search the only way to surface niche info sources. Twitter mattered as the social network of the intelligentsia.
In 2015, Twitter under Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde began reinterpreting their existing rules much more broadly and banned hate speech, to "keep Twitter safe." Chuck Johnson was banned for tweeting that would "take out" (attack digitally, not murder) a BLM activist.
Alaric on 2010s feminism and sexual norms. He sees it as a concrete, sharp break in 2014 alien to anything that came before. which almost overnight made anti-male sentiment the most pervasive cultural force in the Western world.
2014 saw a huge top-down feminist media campaign both motivating and caused by government initiatives and international institutions. This was the true start of Woke as a feminist and internationalist movement, before it became more racialist and parochial.
2014 redefined consent and made rape and street harassment, low and falling for decades in the American mainstream, centerpieces of American social consciousness.
Another thread on the closure of the Internet. Amazon, like other major tech giants, had little content policy beyond "no illegal content, spam or scams/fraud" in 2015 and by 2020 had a well developed censorship infrastructure for both the web store and AWS.
Amazon is particularly important for two reasons: (1) AWS making it, like Google Search, a major Internet chokepoint and (2) 50% book and 80% e-book market share; Amazon banning a book is the closest a non-classified book can really come to being banned in the US.
The first cracks in Amazon's neutrality appeared in June 2015, when a media blitz and political pressure campaign (sparked by Dylan Roof) led to Amazon removing all Confederate flag (a completely normal American symbol) merchandise from the site.
WIRED: Silicon Valley gay networks are so influential because gays are "cross-generational" allowing settings where "established wealth meets emerging talent."
Gays run Silicon Valley, lesbians and fat people hardest hit.
There is a common Hollywood upwards mobility narrative for early 20th century European immigrants. It's not really true; for most origins earnings for both first and second generation were similar and were already above average in generation 1.
Relative rank order didn't change much either.
I know you might be wondering "why are Italians so high and Norwegians, Swedes, etc so low." Answer: farms.