Analysis: Should “Political Memes” be regulated?

Laxmena
Laxmena
Nov 7 · 9 min read
Source: Nord VPN

Memes are not images with funny captions anymore. Though they started as a way to express humor, now they have turned into a much more powerful communication medium. Their potential to influence people is evident while looking at the impact it is creating on several communities around the world.

Recently, there is a huge controversy around the regulation of political ads on social media. While Facebook is defending the Political Ads on its platforms, Jack Dorsey- the CEO of Twitter has taken a bold decision to ban Political Ads.

One of the compelling reasons to ban political ads is their ability to influence people’s decisions by spreading targetted content. If that’s the case, then memes are as capable as Political Advertisements. They also can influence people with targeted content. Should we ban memes too?

If you feel your temper is rising after reading the above question, I can explain! We all love memes, I do too. But that love shouldn’t make us ignorant to view the chaos it could bring. All I’m worried about is the negative impact it could create. I have analyzed this a little bit.

1. Memes can MicroTarget

Microtargeting is a way to segment the audience and target a particular subset of people with common characteristics. Microtargeting people and feeding them constantly with specific content can easily influence their behavior.

Consider you are contesting an election, and your constituency has people from different ethnic backgrounds. The population is diverse, and each community will have its own specific needs and requirements. Micro-Targeting is an effective strategy here to increase your chances of winning. Microtargeting each community, constantly publishing tailor-made content on “how your policies would effectively help them in achieving what they want” will increase your vote bank.

Political parties used Political Ads on Facebook and Twitter to execute this strategy in the past, but since the Political Ads are banned on Twitter, they will start looking for other mediums, and Memes are compelling alternatives. Why?

When we look at Meme pages on Social media, most of them, share content specifically created for a particular subset of people. In other words, Each meme-page has its niche. So micro-targeting is already been taken care of!

If you do not own a Facebook or Instagram page already, this might be new info. They provide analytics and insights about followers like

  • Which countries do followers belong to?

Currently, the creators in the meme pages use this information to create tailored content to satisfy the specific type of audience they have.

There is an option, where Facebook and Twitter will help you reach more people with common preferences and characteristics by paying a nominal fee. This means that each meme page will have more followers belonging to a particular subset with similar preferences. If the follower’s count is significantly high, it can influence the set of people effectively with less effort.

2. People do not check for authenticity

Source: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/guardian-fact-check/

The majority of people today do not verify the authenticity of the content they consume and its mainly because they lack awareness. I do not blame them, because even the Millenials who are so profound in technologies and digital media sometimes fall prey.

An incident that I recently came to know — A little girl went missing, and her family drafted a message and forwarded it to their friends. They shared the girl’s picture, their address and mobile number to contact in case someone finds her. Fortunately, someone found the girl within a few hours and the girl was reunited with her family. Happy Ending? You think not.

The family shared the message with 100 friends initially. Each of those friends forwarded it to their 100 contacts, and the chain reaction was on. From then onwards, Whenever someone finds the little girl in the public, they bring her home every single time 😂

If a Cats Meme page, shares a notorious story about a new wide-spreading disease amongst cats, and preventive vaccines are available in a particular veterinary hospital, I can guarantee you that there will be an abundance of cats and its owners queued up outside the hospital.

Recently I saw a video of a Boston-Dynamics Robot look-alike. It was shared with me through Whatsapp. The robot was designed to handle pistols and weapons. A group of masked muscular guys tried to distract the robot by hitting it with a shovel, metal ram and a lot of other heavy tools. Robot withstood all the attacks and still hit the target with perfect accuracy. I was amazed by its capability. It could make Human Soldiers obsolete. (Here is the link to the video.) I had hundreds of thoughts going on in my mind, pro’s and con’s, will countries enter into an arms race competition building powerful military robots? Won’t it create chaos? I was not able to get rid of my thoughts wondering about the robot’s abilities, it was able to catch a rifle which was thrown at it. It was awesome, and also scary. After a few days, YouTube suggested a video by BossTown robotics, and that’s when I realized it was all choreographed VFX effects. (Here is the link for the making video ) I was shocked, I believed the video was true, I didn’t care to verify it. That’s when I realized, I’m also a person who belonged to the “most people”.

3. Memes have the potential to create a Movement

Source: HindustanTimes

What started as a series of memes in the southern part of India, lead to a massive protest by the people against the government. Towards the end of 2016, a group of regional meme creators started sharing their views and spread awareness about the ban on Jallikattu, a traditional sport of the region. The memes rekindled people’s love for their tradition and culture. In January 2017, this digital movement broke into a massive protest all over the state.

Memes brought all the people of the state together, despite the stark differences in caste, religion, and race. Over 2 Million people gathered in the state headquarters, to protest against the ban on the sport (To know more about this protest check out wiki: Jallikattu Protest 2017).

Analysis of Jallikattu Protest:

  • People in the protest had lots of differences amongst them: religion, caste, skin color, economic background.

Memes are double edged swords, It should be handled carefully.

So what’s the way forward?

EU Has passed a law to ban memes already

Article 13 was passed in the European Union early this year. The article is about copyright regulation, which indirectly banned memes. According to this law, you can’t use other’s content without a proper license. If you do, the tech platform should take it down, which is what the law states.

Many activists and campaigners argue that this is a badly written law, and is against the freedom of speech on the Internet. Which is true, this law directly impacts the freedom to express one’s opinions in the cyberspace.

Trying to ban memes can create widespread discomfort. It’s like chopping off the tongue, to prevent someone from speaking lies.

And history teaches us that when a government tries to impose a regulation by force, the resistance from the people will increase multifold. It might lead to disaster. Law which is intended to bring order might end up creating chaos.

So banning memes is not an option. Even if the government does that, it’s a bad decision.

Freedom of Speech should be protected:

Source: AZ Quotes

Freedom of Speech is the basic right of humans, and it should be protected either in the real-world or in the digital world at any cost.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

While the freedom of speech should be protected, we also should make sure no hatred should be promoted. People need to be protected from the bad intentions of unethical people. How do we do that? is a tough question. I could think of multiple ways to address this, but they might not be technically or practically feasible. I’m intending to spark a conversation amongst people here. These are my ideas:

Filtering content before uploading it in Social Media

This is what the EU had suggested too. But I’m suggesting a less intense variant. Today’s tech companies already have the technology and necessary tools to check whether the uploaded content has copyrighted content or not. They do not have to spend millions of dollars to create a new system from scratch. The existing tools can be tweaked and put to use to stop spreading wrong information, or at least restrict political advertisements before the elections.

YouTube is capable of identifying even a part of your video or audio is taken from other copyrighted content or not. Facebook is processing all the photos uploaded on its platform and generating a one-line caption about what and who is in the picture. These are some examples that show us that we already have the tech that is required to accomplish this task. When they are already doing it, why not use it for another better purpose?

Another question may arise, who can they decide which content should be flagged and which should not. It is a very valid question. If the existing government decides what should be regulated and what should not, there is a high possibility that they will use it for their favor. We need an unbiased body to frame the restrictions.

In my suggestion, an independent body, outside the influence of the political parties, corporates and governments should be created, and they should be given the power to make decisions.

Is there a way forward without regulating memes?

Yes. Banning Memes or Political Ads are the not the solution to the problem in hand.

1. People should be educated on how to consume digital content

People should be educated to Fact-check the content they consume on the internet. This could solve major issues. But the process is hard, but it has to be done. We could use the popularity of the memes itself to create awareness on this subject.

When people start to consider memes only as humor content, and not a bit more. When people can differentiate the targeted content from others, memes or other mediums lose their power significantly.

2. Independent Fact-Checking Body

An autonomous Fact-checking body should be created. The Internet has Certificate Authorities(CA’s) Issuing certificates to Secure Internet Sites, this can be identified by the Green Lock on the left side of the URL bar. The green lock signifies that the site is secure. A similar Authorities can be created, who can verify the content and provide a verified tag for the content. Displaying this tag on social media platforms can reassure the people that the content is verified.

What is your take on this subject?

These are ideas that I could come up with, do comment your take on this subject. I respect the freedom of speech, so even if you have a contradicting viewpoint, please comment below, we can have a healthy discussion.


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Laxmena

Written by

Laxmena

Lakshmanan Meiyappan

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