339 Manuel R. Torres Soriano Internet as a driver of political change about the nature of the activities that net users carry out in countries with a lack of freedom. Cyber-pessimists have assumed that those societies lacking freedom make extensive use of cyberspace as a tool for political activism. However, their patterns of utilisation of the net are similar to those from democratic countries. The topics of most of the contents of the blogosphere are trivial matters. The demand for truthful information has been over-estimated. Then again however, the importance of entertainment as a means of escape, or as political demobilisation promoted by those particular regimes, has been under-estimated. On the other hand, political activism does not just move in one direction. The measures aimed at demanding liberties and participation co-exist with the fans of authoritarianism, who use cyberspace in order to demonstrate support for their governments or the official ideology, promoting a toughening of their policies or assisting with the persecution of dissident net users. d. The defence of the importance of cyber-activism ends up becoming a self-denying prophecy. The prevailing optimism about Internet has brought about the paradox of some of the more perverse effects of this technology, taking place when its users attribute certain unreal effects to them. Net users have carried out a kind of activism that, far from producing the desired results, has put them in a position of greater vulnerability when facing the anti-democratic forces. Those regimes are extremely prone to feeling insecure and to reacting in a tough way against those who they identify as potential threats. So it is easy to understand why this type of governments have, in an acritical way, assumed the vision that is taken from the West about the power of the net users and their nature of being a “Trojan horse”. Cyber-pessimists have become a priority target of their apparatus of repression, substantially limiting the room for manoeuvre that they can operate with. The dissidents’ actions are rendered sterile in the content of a constantly alert government. In spite of the small amount of impact that their activities have, they are subject to an extreme reaction in the form of arbitrary arrests, torture and prolonged periods of imprisonment. The logic for this tough approach lies in a fear that has been nourished by the optimistic predictions that are made from the free world about the capacity of these individuals to overthrow tyrannies. e. There is no “dictator’s dilemma”. It is a mistake for the cyber-pessimists to believe that tyrannies cannot develop a system that enables them to control Internet, without abandoning their economic benefits to do this. There are numerous examples of how it is possible for governments that have not abandoned the integration of their economies into the global market to exercise a subtle form of control of the net5. The key to this lies in performing this intervention by 5 SCHMIDT, E. and COHEN, J. (2010): “The Digital Disruption”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, Nº 6, pags. 75-85.
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