Tomorrow, Donald Trump comes to the inglorious end of his life as President of the United States of America. It follows not long after the end of his incendiary life on social media.
The prolific Twitter user had his @realDonaldTrump account permanently suspended soon after the fatal January 6 storming of the Capitol by his supporters. Twitter cited the “risk of further incitement of violence”. Facebook has banned Trump indefinitely.
The bans have highlighted the way social media platforms enable anyone to say just about anything to an unknown audience without the intervention of an intermediary, an editor or even a censor. It has opened the door wide to the thorny world of censorship vs free speech vs surveillance capitalism.
For decades, Trump has used media of all kinds to burnish his brand and hawk his wares, to label mainstream outlets as ‘fake news’ and turn falsehoods into ‘truths’. Trump instinctively understood how to use Twitter as a weapon of lies, conspiracy theories…and, ultimately, sedition.
Twitter had already begun to place warning labels on his claims. But the missives kept coming. Until the connection between the rhetoric on Twitter, a speech and an insurgency was too much to ignore.
The ban was intended to prevent further incitement to violence and seems to have curbed some of the volumes of misinformation being posted on Twitter. But it came too late. The genie had left the lamp years ago. Worse may yet come from those who use the Trumpian model to conduct their politics or business and who find Facebook, Twitter et al useful and willing associates.
The problem of misinformation and extremism online is much bigger than Trump. It is an entire ecosystem that allows hatred to spread and fester unchecked, because that creates content which, in turn, generates private data, which others find useful enough to purchase. Those who pay the platforms – for anything from ‘targeted advertising’ to spreading falsehoods – are doing so because the platforms provide the most useful personalised data anywhere. Social media platforms gained enormously from Trump’s rants – he provided content and entertainment to millions upon millions of followers.
The real problem lies in the trust we have placed in the main social media platforms and those who run them. We rely on a handful of private platforms that operate in surveillance capitalism mode, using our data for their profit, and the profit of their clients, to be maximised in the attention economy. We trust the platforms to use our most personal data for their own gain. It is the bargain we have made for using the service ‘for free’.
The solutions cited so far all point to regulation – remember GDPR? Campaigners have long wanted social media to be treated as “publishers” rather than “platforms”, which would mean more regulation of anything published online.
Opponents of the idea argue that it could allow governments to limit debate in the online public sphere. Social media platforms, the argument goes, should be agnostic. The attraction of the internet was, and remains, the ability for any citizen to ‘say everything’.
Meddling with this ‘right’ is indeed a very challenging issue.
The real, long-term solution, of course, lies in fostering a society that is more media and digitally literate. A society where television viewers and social media users employ a level of discernment that prevents more of them from being sucked into extremist or violent behaviour.
This is an education issue that no government, here or elsewhere, has ever taken very seriously. Except, perhaps, until now.