Where did the internet go wrong?
A glance at the news shows how, for some time, the internet has become little more than a propaganda tool for politicians and governments. Whether it’s the tedious but overwhelmingly proven Russian disinformation and divisive campaigns in the United States, creating thousands of fake profiles of US citizens to polarize debate and radicalize the vote; the genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya population remotely controlled by the government and the army; the Saudi regime’s social network campaigns to persecute dissidents using a paid infiltrator inside Twitter to obtain data; or the regimes of Thailand or Egypt engaged in the suppression of freedom of expression and dissent, it’s clear that the internet is no longer a means of empowering freedom of expression. At what point did the network stop enabling change such as the Arab Spring — regardless of what happened afterward- and evolved into the means by which Donald Trump became president?
Governments have always sought ways to control us. The idea of the media as the fourth estate, able to keep the government under control based on truthful and independent reporting was already tarnished before the appearance of the internet, which suddenly opened up global communication to anybody with a telephone connection. Before the internet, governments tried to buy or manipulate the media through subsidies, institutional advertising and other pressures. Now, many have created armies of trolls, fake accounts and micro-targeting campaigns to directly manipulate voters at home and abroad.
Donald Trump is Facebook’s biggest advertiser: so why would the US president spend so much money on a social network with the ability to personalize advertising to the limit, other than because he believes he can now control public opinion in ways never before contemplated? Before the internet, government control of the media was typically through clumsy means such as the USSR’s Pravda or Cuba’s Granma, accompanied by a ban on any independent reporting. State control of television is a reality in many authoritarian regimes, as well as in any number of so-called democracies. In which case, why should we be surprised that those same governments now use infinitely more effective means to continue doing the same?
Because now, private companies are being used by governments to do their dirty work and that everything, absolutely everything, is stored away in a server. Everything is traceable, everything can be unearthed. And while governments do not seem concerned, once they have achieved their ends, civil society should at least understand the new dynamics of the internet and fight against this kind of manipulation. Facebook’s newly created War Room is an attempt to stop this kind of misuse, but despite these efforts and signing up former politicians to raise awareness, the problem won’t go away until it is addressed systematically.
It’s worth noting that although it’s mandatory to use a real name when setting up a social network profile there are so many fake identities out there being used for misinformation and propaganda. Is it really so difficult to isolate those cases, eliminate them and report them? Or is the problem that doing so would mean cutting off the flow of millions of dollars of revenue? A few months ago, I found myself at the center of an episode that highlighted the problem: my Twitter account was being used by Venezuelan opposition activists who tagged or mentioned me in all their messages, as well as using other accounts with reasonably high follower rates, to obtain a multiplier effect. The issue was deeply embarrassing, not because I support the Maduro regime, but because my account is not a propaganda tool and the people who follow me do not do so based on my politics. How long did it take me to solve the problem? Was it at any point insurmountable? All that was required was to use the tools available on Twitter to immediately block tweets misusing my account. Anyone looking at that account would think I had a problem with Venezuela, but I was dealing with an organized campaign and the vast majority of the blocked accounts were bots, so I had to do something to clear up the problem.
If I can do it, somebody without sophisticated tools, what could the managers of a social network, able to see everything going on in detail, manage? If they don’t, is it because they’ll take anybody’s money? Shouldn’t the social networks begin to implement policies to expressly exclude government propaganda, or at the very least monitor them and limit them to specific accounts, instead of allowing their stated policies to be so easily breached by astroturfing, fake accounts and mass manipulation? Is it really so much to ask that Facebook and the like do something well within their powers to preserve the independence and neutrality of the internet? When a country’s media becomes a propaganda machine, people stop taking what it says seriously. Perhaps the time has come to severely limit our use of social networks by allowing themselves to be used by governments have become part of the problem rather than the solution.
At what point, as a society, do we think that such behavior is acceptable and that we’re prepared to vote for somebody who uses such methods?
(En español, aquí)
