Why Social Media Platforms Should Be Treated as Critical Infrastructures
Stefan Heumann Director, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung
In order to function properly, democracies depend on open deliberations and fact-based discussions. As our public discourses have increasingly moved online, social media platforms have become critical infrastructures for our democracy. Citizens and politicians use these platforms to share information, to engage in discussions and to inform themselves. If these platforms do not function properly our democracy suffers. And if these platforms are used to spread disinformation, manipulate our discourses, and undermine our ability to engage in fact-based conversations, our democracy is being directly attacked.
How can we better protect our democracy against disinformation on social media? This is a difficult and complex problem. There are no easy solutions or silver bullets. Governments have only very limited information about how social media platforms work and how they might be exploited to spread disinformation. After all, social media platforms are operated and owned by private companies. Currently private companies make and enforce rules on their platforms and respond to the disinformation problem as they see fit without much government oversight or scrutiny. This is not a new problem. In order to facilitate information sharing and coordinate effective responses to threats in the IT-sector, governments have introduced the concept of critical infrastructure. Applying this concept to social media platforms can help us solve an important piece of the disinformation problem.
IT-systems play a central role in our economy and society. They run our energy systems, organise workplans and treatment in hospitals, and manage our banking operations. All these systems are owned and operated by private companies. But the government takes a strong interest in them. Cyberattacks directed at these IT-infrastructures could have devastating real-world impact such as an extended breakdown of the energy supply or a large scale manipulation of the financial systems. This is why the government has deemed them as critical. This has two important implications. First, operators of critical infrastructures have to share information regarding attacks against their IT-systems with the government. This gives the government the ability to better understand the scale and nature of attacks and craft appropriate responses in collaboration with the private sector. Second, the government can use the knowledge about attack vectors to define and enforce the implementation of higher technical security standards.
So what does it mean to apply the concept of critical IT-infrastructures to social media platforms? First, information-sharing: since social media platforms are critical infrastructures for our democracy, the government needs to be informed about any attempts to manipulate public discourses or spread disinformation. This will help government officials to better understand the scale and nature of the threat and to evaluate whether the companies’ responses to the attacks are effective and sufficient. Second, based on this deeper understanding the government can make and enforce appropriate regulations to better protect social media platforms against such abuses. This is not a quick fix but a long-term approach. Given that this problem won’t be quickly solved, long-term thinking is exactly what we need. And given what is at stake we have little choice to recognise and treat social media platforms for what they are: critical infrastructures of our democracy.
