In “If We Burn,” Vincent Bevins recaps the mass protests of the 2010s. He argues that they’re communicative acts, but power has no way of negotiating with or interpreting them. They’re “illegible.”

Here’s a “yes and” to Bevins. I argue that social media companies have a detailed map of all protesters’ connections, communications, topics of interests, locations, etc., such that, to them, there has never been a more legible form of social organization, giving them too much power over ostensibly leaderless movements.

I also want to plug Bevins’s book, independently of my post. It’s extremely well researched. For many of the things that he describes, he was there, and he productively challenges many core values of the movements in which I and any others probably reading this have participated.