https://www.wired.com/story/the-two-myths-of-the-internet/

On January 21, 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed a crowd at the Newseum in Washington, DC. She was there to proclaim the power and importance of “internet freedom.” In the previous few years, she said, online tools had enabled people all around the world to organize blood drives, plan demonstrations, and even mobilize in mass demonstrations for democracy. “A connection to global information networks is like an on-ramp to modernity,” she declared, and the US would do its part to help promote “a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that benefits us all.”

Clinton’s speech acknowledged that the internet could also be a darker instrument—that its power might be hacked to evil ends, used for spewing hatred or the crushing of dissent. But her thesis rested on the clear beliefs of techno-fundamentalism: that digital technologies necessarily tend toward freedom of association and speech, and that the US-based companies behind the platforms would promote American values. Democracy would spread. Borders would open. Minds would open.