The Web, weaponised
Online pioneer warns of a concentration of power that affects ‘which ideas and opinions are seen and shared’
Online power, consolidated in a few large players, has enabled them to “weaponise the Web at scale”, says the man who invented it, Sir Tim Berners-lee. Web Foundation founder Bernerslee, marking his creation’s 29th anniversary, wrote this week: “This year marks a milestone in the Web’s history: for the first time, we will cross the tipping point when more than half the world’s population will be online.”
But he warns of something we’re all too familiar with in this post-truth era: “We’ve seen conspiracy theories trend on social media platforms, fake Twitter and Facebook accounts stoke social tensions, external actors interfere in elections, and criminals steal troves of personal data.”
The problem is that the concentration of power in the hands of a few big tech firms has compressed “a rich selection of blogs and websites . . . under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms”.
Berners-lee doesn’t specifically name them, but he means Facebook, Twitter and Google. More damaging, especially for the media industry and freedom of expression, is that Google and Facebook claimed 60% of last year’s digital advertising spend, according to a new survey.
Berners-lee warns that “this concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared”.
These “dominant platforms” maintain their strength “by creating barriers for competitors” by buying startup challengers and new innovations, while hiring the best talent. “Add to this the competitive advantage that their user data gives them, and we can expect the next 20 years to be far less innovative than the last,” he says.
It’s a dire warning, confirmed by a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was published in the journal Science last week. It notes that fake news spreads “further, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information”.
“False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1,000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1,000 people,” the study found.
We have come to know this as true in SA, having lived through the Gupta Twitter bots and the evil Bell Pottinger — but it has now been confirmed by the Web’s inventor and this study.
Despite the threats, South Africans have used these platforms to good effect. Last week, after Malusi Gigaba told parliament he hadn’t conferred citizenship on the Gupta brothers during his previous stint as home affairs minister, South Africans took to Twitter with pictures of ID books, a passport, voter registration and even a picture of the Gupta family voting. This is the same minister who lied under oath when he was last home affairs minister, according to a high court ruling.
As bad as social media can be, this fightback proves it can also be used for good.