In 2011, shortly after his release from detention, Egyptian engineer and activist Wael Ghonim famously told reporters:
“If you want to liberate a society, all you need is the internet.”
Ghonim had been detained for his role in the revolution that helped topple President Hosni Mubarak—a movement widely recognized for its unprecedented use of social media to rally citizens around a common political cause.
But more than a decade later, under the rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Ghonim’s hopeful vision has all but vanished. Egypt’s digital landscape is now tightly controlled. Social media platforms are heavily monitored by state authorities, and citizens face arrest for even the mildest forms of government criticism.
In 2018, the Egyptian government passed legislation ostensibly aimed at combating online misinformation. In practice, however, the law has been used to suppress dissent. Egyptians today navigate a murky and often perilous digital space where the limits of acceptable speech are unclear. The result: widespread self-censorship and fear of surveillance.
As a scholar of political communication and new media, I have written extensively on the global dynamics of social platforms. In my classrooms, we often explore Egypt’s evolving relationship with digital media—particularly TikTok, which serves as a striking example of both digital empowerment and state repression.
TikTok: A New Frontier for Cultural Expression—and Crackdowns
Since 2020, TikTok has exploded in popularity in Egypt, with an estimated 33 million users over the age of 18. While it lacks the overt political charge that defined Facebook and Twitter during the 2011 revolution, TikTok has nevertheless become a flashpoint for controversy.
Its ability to create viral content and overnight celebrities has connected Egyptians across socio-economic divides and sparked a new wave of cultural conversation. Yet this same visibility has made TikTok a frequent target of government crackdowns.
In recent years, a number of Egyptian TikTok creators—many of them young women—have faced arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for content deemed “immoral” or “violating public decency.” While these charges are often framed in terms of cultural norms, they also reflect deeper political anxieties about control and expression in the digital age.
TikTok’s rise has exposed generational and ideological rifts in Egyptian society. It has created a space—however precarious—for playful rebellion, identity exploration, and critical commentary, much of which escapes traditional censorship mechanisms.
A Digital Tug-of-War
What is unfolding in Egypt today is a digital tug-of-war: on one side, a youthful population eager to express itself and engage with the world; on the other, a state apparatus determined to regulate and restrain that expression.
TikTok may not yet have sparked a revolution, but its growing influence underscores the continuing power—and peril—of social media in repressive environments.
As Egypt’s young generation pushes the boundaries of what can be said and shared online, the question remains: will the internet once again become a tool for liberation—or remain a tightly patrolled frontier?
