Arab protesters would have succeed in overthrowing dictatorships in their countries even without Facebook, said Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. “It's not a Facebook thing, it's an internet thing,” he said.

“I think Facebook was neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things to happen,” he added.

Protesters in Arab regimes often got around government control by scheduling activities on Facebook, and circumvented censors by publishing footage from rallies and news updates on Facebook and Twitter.