My wild guess is that while the 2014 generation were led by people "addicted" to Facebook, the current younger generation don’t use FB; they thinks FB is "too old" for them.



FB is the most popular social media in HK. It was most popular five years ago, it still is today. The only different is that it is no longer popular among the teens now. The young ones prefer Instagram or Snapchat.



Five years ago, FB was the venue for online discussion about the so-called "Occupy Central" action plan. Political figures, online influencers and netizens actively participated in the discussion. How to improve the plan, why I disagree with plan, what to do next after the occupation… Discussion like flooded our FB feeds.



Many say the problem of FB is that it is an echo chamber. It amplifies the voices similar to your existing beliefs and you will not aware of other opinion.

This is the long term effect, though.

During a major social event like Umbrella Revolution, what also happened is that FB grouped people who are anti-government in the same space, then argument about how to implement the protests started to appear, and appear a lot.



Remember, occupation and civil disobedience were new ideas for most HKers, people simply have zero experience. So, different "school of thoughts" arise and FB put together all these different thinking in the same space. Then people argued.



Remember, FB algorithm encourages "engagement". Posts feed on comments and comments feed on replies. What kind of posts draw most comments and replies? Ideas that one half of the people disagree with the other half.



During the 2014 movement, FB acted as an amplifier of the disagreement between different "school of thoughts" on the protest. Whenever a new idea comes out, say storming the Legco, you can easily find disagreement on the FB news feeds.

"It’s a trap set by the police!" "These acts will ruin the whole protest!" "The ones who suggest this are traitors!"

Disagreement divided support for most new ideas and discouraged protestors from "experimenting" new tactics. The whole protest soon evolved into "philosophical discussions."



Now, fast forward to 2019. FB still full of disagreement about how the protest should move forward. However it doesn’t have much effect on how the protests actually proceed.



Simply, those who "act" might not even have a FB account, and they wasted no time on engaging the arguments.