Social media is hard to categorise into being merely a public service or a private institution. It's immense strength and popularity rival that of the largest governments, and it is increasingly used by those governments as a platform for carrying out the country's business, particularly in the age of Trump and Twitter. However, they are still capitalist, profit-focused organisations, that write their own rules and control their own algorithms. Outside of public pressure, there is no requirement for them to act in the best interest of their users, or indeed democracy.
But this has opened up social media to a whole host of criticisms, as well as the wider world of 'big tech', culminating in plans proposed by former US presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to break up social media companies, and an executive order by Donald Trump to ban the use of TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, in the US unless it is sold to an American company. Social media has been accused of silencing conservative voices, promoting hate speech, and allowing disinformation to spread like wildfire, and companies like Facebook and Twitter have been blamed for the rise of populism, the election of Donald Trump, and the Brexit vote in the UK.
But do social media companies have any responsibility, beyond a moral one, to act in the interests of the countries in which they operate? Social media is incredibly useful in authoritarian states for exposing human rights abuses and speaking out against governments and dictators, but in more developed countries, it is increasingly becoming a tool for voter manipulation and the harbinger for the end of democracy as we know it. This article will examine both sides of the argument: that social media has an obligation to protect freedom of speech, and that social media has no such obligation at all.
Social media as a public forum
The days of the town square are over. Print media is rapidly declining, and, according to a 2019 Ofcom report, half of people now get their news from social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the new sources of information, and (whether they intended to or not) these social media companies now have an obligation to protect their users' freedom of speech.
Indeed, social media is far larger than any traditional news source ever was. Fox News' Sean Hannity show can get up to 3 million views each episode. The News Of The World, once Britain's most popular newspaper, sold just 7.5 million copies at its peak in the 1950s. CNN's website gets over 200 million unique viewers every month. These are paltry numbers compared to the almost 4 billion active users on social media. The power and scope of social media is so vast that the law has taken steps to ensure that freedom of expression is similarly protected online as it is in the real world. The Human Rights Council in 2016 asserted as much in its draft report, and again in their General Comment 34 which dealt with how restrictions must be as limited as possible, and "in strict conformity with Article 19."
There is a great deal of advice issued by intergovernmental organisations, from the UN to the Organisation of American States which attempts to protect and defend the Article 19 right to freedom of expression, and this includes the right to lie. By providing the possibility of censoring disinformation, the floodgates are open to disingenuous governments censoring legitimate speech that goes against their narrative or even forcing excessive punishments on those who make legitimate mistakes. In Malaysia, for example, the crime of making statements that intend to cause fear or alarm to the public has been used to silence dissidents, including a reporter in February 2020 who wrote three Facebook posts on reports of Chinese individuals coming to Malaysia on a cruise ship at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in South Asia. While these claims weren't necessarily false, they were nonetheless punishable by a prison sentence for going against the rhetoric of the state. A similar situation exists in Singapore, which recently passed anti-disinformation legislation in the form of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019, which not only criminalises false speech on social media but does it regardless of whether or not the social media post originated in Singapore, meaning posts from any other country are being removed on social media platforms if they are deemed by the Singaporean government to be 'false'.
This brings us on to one of the key concerns when it comes to policing false speech, or indeed any speech that could be harmful: who decides? The then-UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, David Kaye, wrote in response to the Singaporean legislation that government agencies should not be the arbiter of lawful speech, but instead, this should be the responsibility of an independent judiciary, as if it is left to the government it "may confer excessively broad discretion to prosecute criticism of the government, political campaigning, or the expression of unpopular, controversial or minority opinions." We have already seen similar cases of this happening across the world, such as in Myanmar when a priest had charges levelled against him for speaking out against religious persecution by the military.
By policing what can and cannot be said on the internet, we immediately are faced with an important conundrum of what is and is not valid speech. All the big social media platforms have codes of conduct, with Facebook prohibiting everything from violent and graphic content to speech which is "cruel and insensitive," but the vast majority of commentators are content in condemning the failings of Facebook, among other social media platforms, for failing to uphold even their own standards. Twitter, for example, received much criticism for deciding against 'fact-checking' tweets by President Trump, and then received a similar amount of criticism for hiding Trump's tweets which glorified violence against protestors. In hearings on 'big tech' at Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers attacked Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon for silencing conservative voices when there is no concrete evidence of bias against right-wing views. There was, however, a clear bias against views that attacked minorities or engaged in 'dog-whistle politics', and there happens to be a clear overlap between the far-right and this kind of speech.
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced legislation that would require social media companies to prove they are politically neutral, but the definition of political neutrality differs depending on the political bias you are approaching it with - conservative thought on free-market economics has not been silenced, but conservative Islamophobia and anti-Semitism has been. An attempt to regulate the kind of speech you can have online has inevitably handed unprecedented power to governments to decide what is right and what is wrong (no different to Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministry Of Truth), or handed power to social media companies with no human rights expertise to determine the scope of this fundamental human right.
As such, the only way freedom of speech can be protected on social media, which is currently the largest public forum in human history, is by refusing to regulate it, warts and all.
Social media as a private entity
The second perspective is a more libertarian one: social media, as a private organization, should be allowed to decide its own content rules, without being pressured by the government to remove or regulate speech on its platform.
Social media are inherently capitalist, centred around growing profits through advertising, and expanding their business. If social media banned conservative commentators, including President Trump, their supporters would likely boycott the platform and move to a competitor, and so companies (despite the growing popularity of political businesses) have no interest in alienating such a large proportion of the market. Social media algorithms, particularly those on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are designed to favour popular content, and controversial content is popular content. A post about a kitten may receive many likes, comments, and shares, but a post antagonising a particular group will receive much more, from those who agree with the content and from those who disagree with the content. Conspiracy theorists, such as QAnon, have no platform in the conventional media due to their lack of trustworthiness, but these individuals flourish on social media, where they gain traction for their controversial stances that ignite debates between supporters and sceptics.
These companies, therefore, have a vested interest in allowing disinformation and hate speech to flow, because even though they are widely criticised, the amount of users stays relatively steady, and even increases. As established in the first section of this article, social media's incredibly large platform allows for the diversity of information and propagation of freedom of speech (no matter how accurate or popular) that is so central to a democracy. Despite Singapore's law requiring social media companies to take down what it deems to be 'false' information, Facebook has continued to speak out against potential regulation of this kind and refuses to comply with the legislation enthusiastically, with the caption "Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information" on offending content - hardly a ringing endorsement of the Singaporean position.
When it comes to accusations of bias against conservative commentators and users, social media has no obligation to permit such speech in the first place. You would expect a pro-Trump comment on an apolitical baking blog to be removed because it is understood that the moderators of that blog have the right to control the content that appears there, and social media should be no different. If Twitter and Facebook do have liberal leanings, and a bias (either real or perceived) against conservatives, then those conservative individuals have the option to either leave the platform and post their views elsewhere or comply with the content guidelines of that social media company. A great deal of criticism surrounding the 'takedown' policies of social media companies has focussed on the lack of human rights expertise, but there is no requirement for social media to be concerned with the human right to freedom of speech when they are simply companies trying to make a profit by providing a service.
While the current power and scope of social media companies is unprecedented, there is no need for social media companies to be regulated to ensure they uphold freedom of speech. Indeed, the virtue of their existence is evidence that there is freedom of speech, and they have every right to moderate their own content and be punished or rewarded for that content by informed consumers and the free press.
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An interesting, informative discussion of a highly topical issue. Thought-provoking. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I think if we broke up social media monopolies it would make a big difference.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. Lots of international guidance believes that monopolies do damage freedom of expression, and diversity of news sources is important when sharing information. This doesn't necessarily mean breaking up social media, as social media isn't inherently its own news source, but some believe we should be requiring social media companies to promote a wide range of news sources, rather than having algorithms that favour larger news organisations and monopolies.
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