Iran has been offline for more than 64 hours
twitter.com
twitter.com
Get the population of Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc hooked on Google/Twitter/Facebook and take away the local governments ability to cut it off, and suddenly you can influence hearts and minds worldwide. Whoever controls those tweets can overthrow any government at will.
Those same platforms project US culture and norms, eventually giving the US government indirect control of the policy of a target country. For example, gay marriage and acceptance of smoking weed have both spread to much of the world via US influence, primarily exerted over the internet.