Election Interference in the Digital Age: Accountability of the Online Sphere
Iskra Kirova, Senior Analyst, Open Society European Policy Institute
There are more ways to steal an election today and get away with it than there have ever been. The unregulated nature of the Internet — our new public sphere — has a lot to do with it. To protect the integrity of elections in the digital age, we need to ensure the integrity and accountability of our online sphere.
Over the last few years, we have seen the online sphere mutate from a space for free expression into a tool for disinformation and manipulation of unsuspecting users. It has made it possible for state and non-state actors to work globally to target voters on a massive scale with misleading or outright false information whose source and financing are easily obscured; and to do so through sophisticated psychological profiling techniques to get to people on a personal level — something no other medium can deliver.
Beyond the influence of malicious actors, the addriven business model of social media and other platforms such as Facebook or Google, and the need to maximise the time users spend online have privileged sensationalist low-quality information and reinforced ‘echo-chambers’. The spread of conspiracy theories or aggravation of personal biases are therefore not merely a secondary effect of today’s online discourse. They are built into the algorithms of online media, distorting informed debate, and more than that — polarising, even radicalising, political views with damaging effects on the quality of our democracies.
To address these problems we need a new social media ecosystem.
The online sphere is the locus of activism, political campaigning and social mobilisation today. It should remain an open space for opinion and expression. But policymakers should not be confounded by what is a false dilemma between censorship and freedom of expression. In fact, what regulation should ensure is transparency and a competitive marketplace of ideas.
Attempts to regulate content do not offer real solutions or could be outright dangerous. The initial experience of Germany’s NetzDG legislation has shown how, by adapting their vocabulary, offenders can easily remain within the grey zone outside the scope of hate speech rules. ‘Fake news’ laws belong rather to the arsenal of authoritarian regimes such as in Egypt or Azerbaijan than democratic governments.
But this does not mean that regulation as such is a bad idea. It should focus for starters on significantly increasing transparency around how and why content is curated and delivered to us, and preventing bad actors from manipulating the system. Different platforms raise different problems. For example, Twitter is more vulnerable to activity by bots (automated accounts), crowding out the space and raising the profile of messages that in fact might be far less popular, while on Facebook, Google or YouTube (the latter is owned by Google) the main issue is the algorithm they use to surface content. Improving the health of the online sphere would require some first steps to address current algorithmic use in order to increase access to quality information and open up filter bubbles.
Secondly, more should be done to encourage industry cooperation with experts and civil society, particularly by sharing data so as to enable the expert community to investigate and respond to manipulation and disinformation more effectively, as well as play an active as a watchdog and in policy development.
Long-term, more difficult solutions, that policymakers, industry and civil society need to begin considering in earnest concern the current extraordinary concentration of power over information and the digital market within the hands of a handful of companies and the fundamental business model of the web that relies on tracking and monetising users’ data.
If all parties play their part, we could begin to see a more accountable and democratic online public sphere.
