I am very explicitly not taking a stance either side, but: it's hard to argue that social media and the echo chambers it inevitably creates are extremely dangerous and make individuals much more susceptible to 'radicalization'. This is something we've been talking about and worrying over for years.

These echo chambers can easily motivate people into violence who otherwise wouldn't. The cheapness and ease of forming mass groups to organize such events is also a huge problem. If it weren't so easy to build a group online and you had to do it in person, how many fewer of these groups would form?

How good or bad it is kind of depends on your perspective. For the current government, activists planning protests and organizing to push for government reform or equality or whatever issue, this is an extremely bad and dangerous thing. For a plurality of citizens it's an extremely good and necessary thing. The same applies to hate groups planning mass shootings or whatever. They think it's just and necessary work and some parts of our government would be thrilled to encourage it.

Either way, the current authoritarian regime has a vested interest in shutting down this and other types of free expression and speech and association. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen. Turns out that human psychology and society are quite complicated and messy.

That is frankly an entirely wrongheaded approach to speech, in seeing the reach of speech and ability as a problem. When the entire point of speech is to reach people and influence them. That is exactly what speech is supposed to do. It isn't a good thing to 'moderate' the reach of speech. It is supposed to allow organization of mass groups. Trying to divide it into good and bad speech makes even less sense than trying to define good and bad gravity.

Control of speech is the One Ring, that governments are always tempted towards, always rationalizing it as the solution to all of their problems, and under no circumstances should be allowed to possess. Of course it is bad in an authoritarian regime! Messy and complicated does not override the overwhelming evidence, it does not in fact remain to be seen.