Thomas Friedman gave a talk in Anchorage in 2001, a few months before 9/11. In that talk, which was substantially about the changes wrought by the internet, Friedman talked about the internet's "Super empowered individuals" and specifically mentioned Osama Bin Laden. Relevant to this thread he talked about Big Brother but said that what was more likely to happen was a lot of 'empowered' Little Brothers.

This was before the distillation of hundreds of large internet powers to the few big names we are dealing with now. It is yet significant that in the Western World they do not APPEAR to be governmental or political entities so much as commercial.