Tech giants are not up to the task of guarding public sphere
In the shocking images of extremist rioters pouring in to the U. S. Capitol there was, if you looked carefully, a strange twist: Scenes of violent thugs, holding up their cameras, livestreaming their acts to the world online.
It was, in one sense, a testament to the impunity these insurrectionists felt. But, in another, it was a clear sign that the violence perpetrated in the name of President Donald Trump was intimately tied into the internet, to the audience there, and the networks of hate and conspiracist lunacy that have flourished online.
It was an online riot, made for and by the internet. And, if the cameras were one end of the madness, the other was the web of conspiracies and falsehoods, often spun by the president himself, amplified on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, that then spread out across the internet and around which mobs like this can gather — and as we saw — take action.
One is left asking a number of hard questions, in particular about the role of Facebook and Twitter in this mess. Both companies, after months of pressure, finally saw the violence as a line in the sand and cut off Trump’s accounts, and Facebook at least blocked the absurd,
surreal video the conspiracist in-chief posted in af aux attempt to calm the tension.
For their role in this, some called this week’s shocking events the fault of Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter respectively. But we are, in fact, in a far more complicated situation than just Big Tech gone bad. Rather, we are faced with a double bind. On the one hand, both Facebook and Twitter have utterly failed in their positions as guardians of the public sphere. And yet, at the same time, the issues that have led to the current situation extend beyond just technology and instead are about the social and cultural ills of the 21st century.
For the part of the tech giants, one need only look at their ham- fisted response to see their failures. After years of resisting it, Facebook finally blocked Trump’s account hours after the violence, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying for some time that he does not want Facebook to be an arbiter of truth. It also decided to belatedly block broader calls for violence, or protests after Washington’s curfew.
Yet as Facebook’s outspoken former chief security officer Alex Stamos stated, the bumbling, late response came from a lack of clear policy, and that “clear, publicly discussed red- lines would have allowed both platforms to act in minutes, not hours.” Despite four years of Trump’s presidency, Facebook’s complete reversal suggests they are simply illequipped to deal with the new reality of extremism and hate, and only changed their minds after it was clear Trump had lost.
Though Twitter has done somewhat better, more aggressively changing policy, their decision to leave the bizarre Trump video up, allowing people to quote- tweet it, highlights that what is at stake in these decisions to leave up or take down content. It isn’t a neatly abstract idea of “free speech” in the traditional sense, but about amplification — about the ability to not just say what you want, but to have it spread to millions.
In that sense, the platforms have been an unmitigated disaster. The web has wrought profound changes. In allowing people to promote clearly false ideas, gather around them on various networks, and encourage each other, it has given a home to outlandish conspiracy thinking and hatred.
The violence we saw in Washington was a result of how the web can act as megaphone and clubhouse, with a president egging on a growing mob of extremists who can use the web to discuss, plan and recruit. By failing to police that rise, Facebook and Twitter have shown us that they are not to be trusted in their self- appointed role as society’s online public square. Where then does that leave us?
For one, it is clear that the kinds of decisions involved in taking down or leaving up content are too important to leave to private companies.
How we deal with the delicate questions of free speech and amplification in the era of the web should be debated by elected representatives in houses of parliament, not by executives in tech company boardrooms.
Secondly, we need to understand that instances like the insurrection in Washington are not tech problems alone, but how technology exacerbates and amplifies socio- cultural ones.
That means that we cannot only think about technological solutions, of how and when online content gets blocked, but instead must delve into the much harder work of attacking the cultural and socio- economic roots of extremism, and refusing to allow others to parrot the sort of bigoted, backward rhetoric espoused by people like Trump.
Yet, for all that, how we think about technology and its relation to our current social woes remains complicated. We can neither say tech is entirely to blame, nor that technology is somehow neutral or innocent. It is always both at once. That means our work is twofold, doubled, always about both the causes and effects.
But what is clear is that our tech giants aren’t up to the task of guarding our public sphere. And as those shocking images from the American capital suggest, there is too much at stake to sit idly by and let them act undisturbed.
For the part of the tech giants, one need only look at their ham- fisted response to see their failures