We must hold social media Wild West to account, even if it takes drastic action – the threat to society justifies it
WE are living through the last phase of the Wild West of social media.
In the same way we look back on giving cigarettes to children, we will look back on the current lack of regulation of social media as a huge and disastrous social experiment.
And we are already paying the price for this experiment.
Teenagers who are increasingly anxious or suicidal after spending all their time online, seeing how their idealised/filtered friends’ lives look on Instagram or Facebook compared to the reality of their own.
The spurring on of anti-Muslim, racist and fascist attacks on the streets of our country based on active disinformation.
The fact that the Russian state has whole “troll factories” of intelligence officers working to spread fear, hatred and division in our society via social media should tell us all we need to know about the potency of the threat and our perceived vulnerability to it.
Outright lie
When it comes to disinformation, it is clear how pivotal it has been to spreading hatred and fear on the streets in the past week.
Outright lies about who perpetrated the attack on young children, live streaming of attacks on mosques, migrants, refugees and frankly anyone who looks different, justification of the violence.
This has come from the usual suspects — hard-right headbangers, overseas and domestic neo-Nazis, Russian bots.
It has also been amplified by what used to be mainstream politicians such as Nigel Farage peddling conspiracy theories — people who should know better.
We will always have people like these, ready to lie to promote their agenda or simply willing to be irresponsible for attention.
But what they all have in common is the platforms they use to spread their bile: The Wild West of social media. From X to Facebook, TikTok to Snapchat and Telegram, these sites are spewing hatred into our society.
The defence of these multibillion pound companies is that they are just a platform. They don’t decide content, they just provide a platform for free speech.
That is an outright lie.
In fact, what these companies do is build algorithms which actively promote particular content to your feed and the content that they promote is conflict, hatred and violence.
They haven’t done this in most cases because they have evil intent.
It is simply that promoting that kind of content gets people to stay online longer, which boosts their advertising revenues. The end result is pretty stark: Promoting violence and extremism to earn cash.
Perhaps the worst example at the moment is X, the platform that was previously Twitter.
Under its new ownership it has sacked most of the teams responsible for taking down the most extreme content.
It’s hard to look away
Not only that, it is allowing people to pay for promotion on the site without any checks on their accounts, and unsurprisingly, among the first to take up the offer are the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and violent thugs.
If it wanted to stop this, it could.
It’s amazing how good the outlets are at spotting copyright infringement when you post a video with a song in the background — because they know they will get sued.
They don’t want to take down this violent content because it gets engagement — like watching a car crash, it’s hard to look away.
And that’s where government comes in.
It is time to hold social media companies to account for spreading lies, disinformation and, ultimately, violence.
If that means drastic action, so be it, the threat to our society is significant enough to justify it.
Such measures targeting the companies doesn’t take away anyone’s free speech, everyone can say what they like as long as it doesn’t break incitement laws.
What it does is hold platforms responsible when lies are told and promoted by them.
The past few weeks has brought shame on our country.
One of the most tolerant countries in the world has had its global reputation sullied by a handful of racist thugs. Communities which have lived together for years have been devested by marauding gangs intent on violence.
Rebuild our reputation
Rebuilding our communities and our country’s reputation will take some time.
It will require holding to justice those who participated in attacks and those who spurred them on. It will need a much wider effort and resourcing to rebuild connections in communities.
But unless we also tackle the poisonous social media system that has promoted and spread these vile attacks, the foundations will be built on sand.
I am optimistic that our country can deal with the racist thugs, can rebuild its reputation as one of the most tolerant places to live in the world and that we will look back on this era as a social experiment gone horribly wrong, but one that we learnt lessons from.
One of the main lessons will be to end the Wild West of social media and ensure people who spread hatred and violence are held accountable.
Brendan Cox is a campaigner and widower of murdered MP Jo Cox.