The rhetorical device "Remember when they told us that ____" is meant to imply that there was some legitimate, trustworthy authority that made a claim about the world that people should have been willing to trust, that turned out not to be true. And what I'm disputing is that the specific authorities - prestige English-language news and opinion organizations like The Atlantic - should ever have been particularly trustworthy, or even authoritative. The Atlantic writing an article in 2010 arguing that social media is bringing democracy to Iran by facilitating the Green Revolution should not even at the time have been considered to be a trustworthy, authoritative voice that people should put much creedence in. Indeed the actual text of that article is someone challenging the claims that (Western) social media were particularly important to what was happening at the time, presumably in response to other, more pro-social-media voices also speaking at the time.

My point is not necessarily to litigate what specific people writing for specific publications about then-current geopolitical events, and how good their analysis was in hindsight; it's to argue that any analysis of this sort is simply not a promise that anyone should feel betrayed about not being consistent with real events years later.

The idea that democracy doesn't exist in the world is not something that I currently agree with. Did you mean to say direct democracy?

Very similar take on free speech vs absolute free speech. Did your definition mean to include exceptions for libel, fraud, child exploitation? Etc.?

You seem to be insinuating something about me by saying "it's interesting you felt..." But you are the one who put the "unrestricted" qualifier next to capitalism and no such extreme anchors on the other two concepts.

It's also interesting that you chose to imply something about my character instead of reflect on your own choice of words and their objective meanings.