TP O’Mahony: Social media must uphold values of a free and democratic society

Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter operate in an unregulated digital space with no effective accountability, writes TP O’Mahony

Twitter owner Elon Musk made it clear earleir this year that he would role back Twitter’s community standards and safety guidelines, reinstate Donal Trump along with scores of other accounts suspended for violence and abuse, and open the floodgates of disinformation.

 

SOCIAL media platforms today threaten not just the future of newspapers but also, because of their unaccountable power, the future of democracy. And fears about how that power might be used have been heightened by the successful takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk in a $44bn deal.

The deal means the world’s richest man is now in control of a social media platform with 230m users. Twitter is a platform, according to Karl Paul of The Guardian, “that plays an outsized role in the political and media landscape due to its following among journalists, commentators, celebrities, and politicians”.

This is part of a trend which has seen the super-rich buying social media sites.

“For more than two decades the world’s democracies slept peacefully while a small group of global corporations acquired a stranglehold on the most powerful communications technology since the invention of printing,” says John Naughton, the technology editor of The Observer.

He adds that democracies were slow to realise that if they didn’t take steps to rein in the unaccountable power that was now loose in their world, “they may wind up as democracies in name only”.

But placing effective curbs on the power of tech giants still has a very long way to go. This is why a new book by Jamie Susskind called The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century is so timely.

The basic question posed by Susskind, regarded as one of the leading intellectuals of the digital age, is one of the great political questions of our time: how can freedom and democracy survive in a world of powerful digital technologies?

In the newspaper age, the pre-digital age, it is true that some newspapers were owned and controlled by wealthy individuals. One need only think of William Randolph Hearst in the USA or Viscount Rothermere in Britain — but ultimately all papers could be held to account.

Today we are in a whole new ballgame. The likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook (now renamed Meta) operate in unregulated digital space, with no effective accountability.

Senior politicians have already warned Musk over content moderation on Twitter, with the EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, stressing that in Europe the platform will “fly by our rules”, and others expressing concerns over hate speech under the billionaire’s ownership.

Trump to return to Twitter?

At another level, it is indeed ominous to learn that former US president Donald Trump has said he is happy Twitter was in “sane hands”.

“As technologies like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have become more and more consequential for how the public gathers information about politicians and elections, so has the power of those who control them,” according to Joan Donovan of the Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. And she has warned that Trump’s return to Twitter “could signal a smash-and-grab on the White House”.

The social media site removed Trump in January 2021, saying the former president’s tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021”.

The door appears open for Donald Trump to return to Twitter.

But earlier this year Musk said he would reverse that ban, calling Twitter “left-biased”. Now that he is the owner, Musk seems set to welcome back the former US president.

“Musk made it clear that he would role back Twitter’s community standards and safety guidelines, reinstate Donal Trump along with scores of other accounts suspended for violence and abuse, and open the floodgates of disinformation,” said Angelo Carusone, the president of the advocacy group Media Matters for America, a coalition of 26 other human rights groups.

But, as Susskind’s book clearly demonstrates, “expressing concerns” is never going to be anywhere near enough.

“Self-regulation has been suggested as an alternative way to hold the tech industry to account. But when tech lobbyists speak of self-regulation they are not describing it as it is understood by professionals like doctors. Unlike in medicine, there are no mandatory ethical qualifications for working as a software engineer to a technology executive. There is no enforceable industry code of conduct. There is no obligatory certification. There is no duty to put the public before profit.”

Digital republicanism

What Susskind wants to see, and what he powerfully advocates, is what he calls digital republicanism.

“For the digital republican, the law’s purpose should be to keep the awesome power of digital technology from escaping acceptable bounds of control, and to ensure that tech is not allowed (by design or accident) to undermine the values of a free and democratic society.”

He also recommends the use of citizens’ assemblies to offer a rich new layer of legitimacy to tech policymaking by states, and singles out for praise the role of such citizens’ assemblies in bringing about legislative change in Ireland.

“My hope is that digital republicanism offers an alternative. Instead of turning a blind eye to unaccountable power, it seeks to identify and reduce it at every turn ... Technological advance should be a blessing for humanity.”

The Digital Republic by Jamie Susskind is published by Bloomsbury at €21.50