A decade after the rise of what was controversially dubbed “Facebook revolutions” in the Arab world, a critical investigation of the roles that social media platforms play in the everyday life of the region is still missing. This project aims to go beyond the techno-deterministic celebratory narratives that conceived of social media as tools of political mobilization. It examines how the social imaginaries around these platforms have changed from sites of emancipation to sites of surveillance and fake news. Bringing together approaches from political theory and media studies, we investigate the relationship between social media platforms, states, and online publics.