Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you trust what The Atlantic and Foreign Policy had to say at the time? Anyone can tell you anything ; that's no reason to take them so seriously you're disappointed if events years later show their claims to be wrong.
It’s just an example that there exists a “they” that were making these claims.
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.