We have heard about “free speech” and fake news; but how is it realistically possible to encourage free speech while controlling hate speech that could polarise people and make them aggressive on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram?
The effect of social media on people is undeniable. And because it has so much reach and is easy to use, it gave the power to just anyone to say anything, which people seemed to love– individuals stating their opinion publicly, garnering public attention, and getting lauded sometimes for their takes, “going viral”.
The effect of social media on people is undeniable. And because it has so much reach and is easy to use, it gave the power to just anyone to say anything, which people seemed to love– individuals stating their opinion publicly, garnering public attention, and getting lauded sometimes for their takes, “going viral”. But this also means that groups of people who are determined to spread hate, divide people, spread all the fake news they want, and promote unhealthy practices, harmful beliefs, violence, and extend support for religious supremacists and patriarchy can freely do so.
‘Majority of fake news is targeted to a specific sample of the population with the aim of promoting a certain ideology by stimulating strong beliefs and polarising society‘ according to Chen & Sharma (2015). And fake news is not always just someone stating an opinion seeking validation from others or for mere entertainment. In the context of politics and control of media, it is much more than that. The results of this study on the effect on disinformation and polarisation in different countries confirm the definitive role of disinformation and hate speech in polarising societies
The influence of Facebook on politics, political campaigns, and users
Around this time, in developed and developing countries, Facebook, the social media giant had become quite popular and even kind of addictive for users. Social media in fact played a key role in how people started absorbing information from outside sources. As the world wide web’s reach expanded, people started getting accustomed to using smartphones for classic phone purposes and more than that, and news started going digital since print media would lose the race if they did not have online presence and social media accounts. This is understandable because where the users go, that is where organisations go, to get their users’ attention. But it’s not just organisations, even politicians and their partners recognised the importance of social media and political campaigns attempted to milk this opportunity as much as they could.
‘Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing,‘ said Brad Parscale, the digital director of Donald Trump. ‘Twitter for Mr. Trump. And Facebook for fundraising.‘ Over the course of the election cycle, Trump’s campaign funneled $90 million to Parscale’s San Antonio-based firm, most of which went toward digital advertising.
According to VOA News, by the time he was sworn in as prime minister, Narendra Modi had more than 16 million “likes” on Facebook, the second most for any politician in the world, and he was the sixth most followed world leader on Twitter.
Similarly, Facebook played a major role in the victory of Narendra Modi in the year 2014, too. According to VOA News, by the time he was sworn in as prime minister, Narendra Modi had more than 16 million “likes” on Facebook, the second most for any politician in the world, and he was the sixth most followed world leader on Twitter. ‘We saw a trend, we read this trend, where the youth of the country were embracing social media as their first tool when they started using the internet, and we made sure our presence was there,‘ said Arvind Gupta, who as head of BJP’s IT division.
Fact-Checking on Facebook
According to this source, Facebook began its fact-checking program in December 2016 to identify and address misinformation. This fact-checking program expanded to 100 countries involving fact-checking experts in 60 languages globally. According to Meta, outside of the USA, this program includes “key steps” in this order: identify false news and misinformation mainly based on feedback from the users, fact-checkers should review this reported content, which includes professional steps outside Facebook, like calling sources, consulting public data, and authenticating posts, label misinformation on the site so that users can clearly see that it is false information when they share it or see it on their feed, go a step ahead and make sure that fewer people get to see the false information, and take action against repeat offenders.
How effective was it, though?
Most of us would have seen labels of misinformation and fake news less often and lots of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and hate speech way more often on our social media feed. In fact, many of us would have also seen results of reports we raise on these social media platforms telling us that that the content we confidently reported as hate speech or false information is really not the case, so it will not be deleted.
One could argue that it is extremely difficult for organisations to control social media across the world, round the clock because of the volume of activity every day, every minute is so high. But what when it is done knowingly? Obviously, this fact-checking program on Facebook did not seem to live to the promises that were made.
Who controls the power of social media applications?
Most founders and businesspeople generally tend to keep a low profile when it comes to their own personal politics because they don’t want their opinions to affect their businesses because at the end of the day, their primary goals are only to beat the competition, get more users and retain their users, and to make money. Around this time, in such an attempt to eliminate any connection between Facebook and heightened influence of politicians among the public, Zuckerberg had also stated, ‘We stand for connecting every person. For a global community, for bringing people together, for giving all people a voice, for a free flow of ideas and culture across nations.‘
Zuckerberg had also stated, ‘We stand for connecting every person. For a global community, for bringing people together, for giving all people a voice, for a free flow of ideas and culture across nations.‘
But it seems to be the case that billionaires can sometimes reach a point where they want more than to just retain users and make money out of these businesses and move on to that phase where they want much more power or political allyship for some personal agenda, so they are willing to even destroy their businesses to get what they seek. Twitter is an excellent example of how a spoilt rich businessman who enjoys public attention on social media decided to buy a social media platform, change its policies and rules according to his personal wishes, drive away a majority of its loyal users, then went on to become the current president of the USA’s closest ally. Is Mark Zuckerberg taking a similar path (note that he has already bought applications like Instagram and WhatsApp)?
Recently, Zuckerberg announced that the fact-checking program will no longer be used on Facebook. According to Arthur Goldstuck, analyst and technology commentator, ‘this is entirely a political move to appease the incoming Trump Administration‘. It is believed that the fact-checking policy will remain effective in other countries and this change is applicable only to the USA. And this entrepreneur is the one who also got Trump banned on Facebook in the past! Whatever the intention might be, could one trust a platform like this, run by someone whose views keep changing depending on which politician would have the greatest influence that season?
Similarly, Facebook, which once claimed to be a strong supporter of equality by giving users the option to identify outside just male and female genders has done a 180 again. Early this year, Mark Zuckerberg announced the removal of queer identities across all of Meta’s platforms.
How are women and queer people reacting to these recent updates by Meta?
‘This is more than a slap in the face to the transgender and non-binary communities,’ said GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis. Hate speech, misogyny and nasty remarks at women and queer people is now officially acceptable on Facebook. To make it worse for liberals, feminists, women, and queer users in western countries, Zuckerberg made another controversial statement saying that “companies need more masculine energy”. All these recent moves have garnered a lot of unwanted attention and anger from activists, liberals, and the oppressed communities.
As a result, women, especially women in STEM fields which are mostly male-dominated and oppressive for women and even worse for queer people, liberal groups, and progressive communities want to permanently delete their Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts.
As a result, women, especially women in STEM fields which are mostly male-dominated and oppressive for women and even worse for queer people, liberal groups, and progressive communities want to permanently delete their Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts. As Twitter is not much different when it comes to all the hate speech the owner of the platform not just permits but also encourages, users in the west are thinking of deleting these social media accounts and moving to BlueSky, another social media platform.
Everyone acknowledges that it is not easy to delete your account after years of being active and finding supportive communities and making new friends. But users from the oppressed groups no longer feel safe on these openly-biased social media platforms, so many of them want to leave these applications.
Similarly, users quit X because on top of all its toxic content and policies, users of X were concerned about their data privacy, too. And after all this, one can never predict how much worse it can get! In the midst of all this blatant misuse of power by these social media platform owners, the social media platform Bluesky understands users’ requirements and needs and is building an Instagram alternative called “Flashes”, which is supposed to get launch soon.
For all businesses big and small, deleting their accounts which they built and maintained for a decade or more would not be easy, building a community from scratch again is not easy, but why would one stay on a platform that rejects all the causes they stand for and their identity and welcomes hate against them?
About the author(s)
Lakshmi Prakash is a psychotherapist and writer that loves behavioural sciences and everything out of syllabus. Annoying her is easy: tell her to conform. Befriending her is easy: crack silly jokes (the sillier your joke, the louder her laugh). She can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
