Fergus Finlay: We have to take on all of the things that undermine democracy

Trump controls the political system, the courts, and now the primary means of communication for millions of Americans. What about the rest of us? Are we really hopeless and helpless?

Meta is to scrap its longstanding fact-checking programme in favour of a community notes system similar to that on Elon Musk's social media platform X. Picture: PA

Can I tell you something? I’ve always been really proud, and never more so than now, that I work for a newspaper that values true stories and that works hard to expose lies. We live in a world where the values of newspapers like this have never been more important. I’m just an opinion writer, but the professionals who work in this newpaper are increasingly called on to stand in defence of some of the most important characteristics of a democratic country. In what is now routinely called a post-truth world, the endless drip of lies is tearing holes in vital fabric every day.

So what do we do about it? Are we completely powerless? Do we have to just hope its power won’t be turned on us? Must we live with the fear that if we open our mouths, hundred of jobs will disappear?

It’s becoming clearer and clearer now that what we used to call social media has the potential to become the most anti-social weapon in our world. The most powerful social media operators and owners in the world have now jointly declared, effectively, that they will bend to the will of the highest bidder. Right now the highest bidder is Donald Trump.

But what malign actors will be next?

Last week I wrote about the damage that an entirely unfettered (and unhinged) Elon Musk is seeking to do in the US and the UK. The attacks he has launched on members of the British government are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They are vicious in their language, and designed to create an utterly poisonous atmosphere in UK politics (which they seem to have done).

But they bear no relation whatsoever to the truth. Everything Musk has said about Jess Phillips, the UK Minister responsible for the safeguarding of children, and about Keir Starmer, bears all the hallmarks of a big lie

The theory of the big lie is often attributed to both Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels — “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

The big lie, of course, is now associated, at least in a lot of American minds, with the big steal. That was a phrase invented by Trump after he lost the 2020 election, and the big lie technique has ensured that a large number of Americans believe without question that Donald Trump was robbed in 2020.

Telling a big lie is one thing. When you add into the mix more or less total control of the world’s social media, the capacity to use a big lie to create carnage is multiplied a thousand times

Zuckerberg

When I wrote about this threat a mere week ago, the issue was Elon Musk. X became the purveyor of the big lie. But then it was only X, bad and all as that was. In the week since, Mark Zuckerberg has also caved in. It means, in effect, that Trump will be hugely instrumental in every message disseminated in future on X, Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. And there will be no pressure from within any of those companies to adhere to facts or evidence or truth. There will be no pushback against lies.

I don’t know what motivated Zuckeberg to abandon everything he had proudly proclaimed as his principles. I’m guessing fear — the knowledge that if Musk and Trump came after his companies he wouldn’t be able to withstand them. But his nauseous capitulation to them means there is now no social media company left that will refuse to disseminate lies and hate.

In the first instance, that will have terrible repercussions within the United States. If Donald Trump decides to deport millions of people who have made their homes in America and fed its economy, social media will describe him as a hero. If he decides to abandon the people of Ukraine, social media will paint that as patriotism. If he decides to take revenge against anyone who has ever opposed him, it will lead to a social media campaign for his canonisation.

This is now a man with, as Joe Biden once said, the morals of an alley cat. But he controls the entire political system, at least in Washington, and the courts, and now the primary means of communication for millions of Americans

That’s the future the US might face. What about the rest of us? Are we really hopeless and helpless?

I’ve written here for years about the need for regulation of the internet. Zuckerberg calls that censorship now, but that’s not true. It was never censorship to insist that a publisher refrain from wilfully allowing lies to be published.

For years in Ireland we relied on the most pathetic form of regulation imaginable. There was a body called the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland. They had a website (ISPAI.ie), and they published a Code of Practice. The weirdest thing you’ve ever seen — written and published before social media was invented and never once updated. And more or less completely ignored by its members.

They sponsored another website called Hotline — a place where you could report harmful or dangerous content. The guy who runs it is called Mick Moran, and I regard him as a serious person. The work it does, based on its own annual report, is important work. But it is almost entirely confined to reports about child sexual abuse. Last year they received and acted on almost 30,000 reports of illegal activity online. Five of them were classified as “racism or xenophobia”.

I have always wanted Hotline to succeed, but its almost exclusive remit is in helping to tackle the sexual exploitation of children, itself a horrible crime. Neither Hotline, nor anyone else right now, is taking on hate, malice, dishonesty, misogyny, homophobia, false information, and the kind of material exclusively aimed at fostering alienation and distrust.

Internet service providers are the key to this. Without availing of difficult technology, you can’t access any social media platform unless your internet provider makes it available. 

Elon Musk can evade and disparage regulation as much as he likes, but Vodafone can’t, neither can Eir or Three. They’re the companies that make social media available to you

I don’t know who represents the internet companies now in Ireland. If you look up ISPAI.ie you find a website for sale. The company seems to be in existence, at least according to the Companies Office, but it seems to be moribund. Perhaps they have decided that the best way to evade their reponsibilities is to go into hiding.

Maybe that’s because at last an independent regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has been established. It’s been a long time coming and has published one annual report so far — and that was almost entirely taken up with the work of preparing. So far, so fine. But it’s clear now that online safety is not enough. The remit has to be widened. Either alone or (hopefully) as part of a wider European assault, we have to be ready to take on all the things that undermine democracy and cohesion, and that means we have to be ready for a lot more battles.