> The counter argument to that is in the age of the social media there is no need to take to the streets to show that there is dissent.

you can find dissent to anything and everything at any time on the internet. Dissent exists always. Dissent that causes people to take the streets and risk being murdered, gassed, beaten, arrested, or even just tracked using facial recognition and fake cell phone towers, that's something else entirely.

> Motivating other people to take a stand -- I do not think this is true either.

People in this discussion have already stated that protests have caused them to reevaluate their position on things protesters were demonstrating against.

> Change comes from the ballot box.

If that were true there'd never have been any change in countries that aren't democracies or where voting was a complete sham only to give the appearance of one. Fairly elected or otherwise, politicians can ignore mean facebook posts. They can't as easily ignore thousands of people protesting outside of their home or office.

Where democracy exists at all, protests can change people's minds about their situation, especially when those protests demonstrate and expose horrific abuses by the state. Even if I didn't support whatever was being protested, if I witness things that shouldn't happen in my country and the current administration defends those things and/or threatens worse, I'm going to reconsider my support the current administration and I won't need 7+ months to do it