Yet we know that the effects of colonialism continue to be felt, as indigenous people even today resist dispossession, cultural invasion, and genocide. Consider next another starting point, the Idle No More movement, a campaign by indigenous peoples in Canada to protect their ancestral resources. Like many activist movements, Idle No More has become a smart user of social media to promote its cause and enlist supporters. The telegraph pole used to link the Bororo into networks of colonial power has given way to a tool on which even the victims of colonization would now seem to depend. … Reflecting on the use of social media during the campaign's protests, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a scholar, writer, and artist of the Nishnaabeg people, wrote that "every tweet, Facebook post, blog post, Instagram photo, YouTube video, and email we sent during Idle No More made the largest corporations in the world . . . more money to reinforce the system of settler colonialism. . . . I wonder in hindsight if maybe we didn't build a movement, but rather we built a social media presence that privileged individuals over community, virtual validation over empathy, leadership without accountability and responsibility."

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 22