The world is on social media.
The number of social media users jumped from 0.97 billion in 2010 to 2.46 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach 2.02 billion in 2021.
In the aftermath of allegations of Russian meddling in American elections, and most recently, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, the chorus for regulation social media has become louder.
In case of American elections, fake news played a major role in catapulting Donald Trump to power. Facebook, which boasted of helping 20 million people registering to vote was a major source of it. As Hannah Jane Parkinson wrote for the Guardian :
The influence of verifiably false content on Facebook cannot be regarded as “small” when it garners millions of shares. And yes, it runs deep. The less truthful a piece is, the more it is shared. In Zuckerberg’s follow-up statement, he seems to have shot himself in the foot, by saying it was “extremely unlikely” fake news on Facebook had an impact on the election, but also boasting that Facebook was responsible for 2 million people registering to vote. So which is it, Zuck? Does Facebook have influence or not?
As far as Twitter is concerned, the anonymous handles participating in it, i.e, the bots, served as a perfect vehicle for propaganda.
Moreover, it has been established that on social media lies spread faster than the truth. For example, Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Journal Science writes,
“Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information”..
“It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people.”
What is more concerning, is that majority of citizens, take the case of America, derive their news from the social media.
But what is the solution to this curse? Should the government regulate the content on social media? or should the social media giants be held responsible for the content they have their website?
Government regulating social media is a dangerous proposition. It would give them enormous powers to arbitrarily term anything fake news.
Take the case of Donald Trump. There has been a number of instances where Trump has declared anything critical coming on his way as ‘fake news’. Moreover, he has threatened to withhold licence of media organisations, thus, threatening the first amendment of the American constitution.
As Paul Levinson, professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University writes,
“The situation has gotten much worse over the past year. President Trump has tweeted about withholding the licenses of NBC affiliates and lashed out at other media not to his liking.
Although Trump’s bluster about limiting and punishing media may be easy enough to deride, the fact that he is in the White House – and has the ability to appoint FCC commissioners – means his threats must be taken seriously.”
We need to pay attention to the fact that there is a simultaneous rise of right-wing and fake news across the world. Expecting the governments to tackle fake news and propaganda on social media would be leaving the cat to guard the cream. What we need here is to find a solution without the interference of the governments.
The government cannot and should not decide what is fake news and what is not. It is true that anonymous accounts can be responsible for spreading the fake news but it is also true that anonymity also allows people, especially those who have very less democratic space, to express themselves. Anonymity, thus, is an important part of the democratic sphere.
And here, Germany shows us the way. It has come up with network implementation law, which makes these social media giants responsible for what content is present on the sites. Although, there are legitimate concerns about what they would be censoring and what not, the law tries to answer it.
As DW’s Jefferson Chase writes
Others detractors worry that the new rules will lead to “overblocking,” as social media platforms err on the side of deleting content rather than risking fines. Critics have concerns that politically controversial material might thereby be censored, intentionally or not. Such concerns are legitimate, but the law does contain mechanisms to address them. It requires social media platforms protocol and justify their decisions and appoint easily contactable people to deal with complaints – both about illegal content and wrong-headed deletions.
This lesson is for every country which is trying to protect itself from the boon of social media
There should be the development of algorithms and fact-checking engines that would automatically throw out those accounts and content which is found to be fake. Facebook and Twitter should be held responsible for the content analyser and fact-checking engines and there would be no administration by the government in flagging the content as fake or real.
Twitter here shows the way. If it can successfully tackle the Islamic state propaganda by removing such accounts, the same can be done with Russian bots or any other interfering account trying to influence our political decisions.
Freedom of expression once lost would be hard to regain. Self-regulation is the sanest thing to apply in the case of fake news. Moreover, it also keeps government away from any interference.