Third-Way: The Titans Of Technology Strangled The News
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No other force has so dramatically reshaped how United States citizens consume news than the rapid expansion of technology and, specifically, social media. Technology has radically transformed political discourse in the United States, which now largely takes place on Twitter and other platforms where users can write murderous comments while stewing in anger behind their screens. That's not to disparage the positives of the digitized landscape of the news media. An increase in digital-native news and other sources means that anyone with a connection to the internet can learn exponentially more about current events as they unfold than from the daily paper. Politics presence on social media means more voters are engaged.
Nonetheless, there is still good reason to be skeptical of technology's positive impact on the United States' political ecosystem. Misinformation can spread with ease online, and its virulent spread is often tied with the radicalization of citizens, which has become commonplace rather than lurking in remote circles. A traffic-based business model has made it corporately profitable to publish polarizing content and has also raised challenging questions around whether to consider social media as part of the news media or as something else entirely. These pervasive technological issues come from a failure of the United States to grapple with questions of the digital sphere and its impact on politics for too many years. Now, forced to reckon with the full-grown beast of the internet, the United States needs to create overdue laws to keep digital power in check.
US adults who have ___ political knowledge
Social media's biggest detraction is its effect on how news is digested. The news media must inform and politically socialize United States citizens, meaning its distribution and accuracy are critical if it is to do this job well. News on social media does the opposite of this. According to a survey by Pew Research Center, a pollster, one in five US adults (18%) who use social media to receive their news are less informed and less engaged than other adults. The survey also found that those who receive news from social media were more likely to have been exposed to COVID-19 conspiracies and were far more likely to be less concerned about the impact of fake news. Those on social media tend to not even read articles that are shared or commented on, making informed and accurate discussion a rarity on the platforms. A clear line can be drawn between the dilapidation of shared common facts and the untimely death of complex discussion at the hands of Twitter's character limit.
What is more sinister about social media's impact on the news are the traffic algorithms that direct readers to conspiratorial groups and misinformation bots. Algorithms are perhaps the most often discussed problem that social media presents. This is for good reason. Just browsing through one group on Facebook, such as an alternative health group, can lead users down deeper holes. Nina Jankwoizc, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Wilson Center, did just this, and soon found her Facebook recommendations filled with white supremacist groups, COVID-19 conspiracy groups, and eventually QAnon. Algorithms set users down a path of increasingly radicalizing content. That is dangerous to the ideals of democracy, which require citizens to be critical of their beliefs to embrace pluralism. More moderate views, which do not spread as fast or become as popular as those that incite, are bound to be cast-off in favor of the radical stance. For the center-left and center-right, it is an existential threat.
Some critics of "the algorithm bugbear" argue that blaming social media platforms for doing their job, to connect people and offer a platform for free expression, is senseless. People such as Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a conservative supporter, have argued that social media only enhances the tribalism and political extremism that has always existed in politics. Thiel goes on to claim that social media outrage has replaced political violence, as users release their frustration through a flurry of tweets rather than a flurry of fists. Although Thiel is correct in arguing that extremism and political violence existed before social media, it is undeniable that algorithms have played a role in connecting extremists and building their ranks. Social media has also helped accelerate the acceptability of radical views in mainstream political thought by diluting Americans' news feeds with barmy, misleading articles created to spread like germs. Most saliently, violence is not diminished by social media but encouraged by it. Those who stormed the Capitol planned the attack on social media, and Facebook played a key role in inciting the Rohingya Genocide. Social media's garbling of fact and fiction in the news, whether done by algorithms or by bad actors, has undeniably increased political violence.
As the Third Way columnist discussed last week, algorithms are also corporately profitable, making them an even more pernicious problem to eliminate. The presence of journalists posting their opinions on social media has heightened the discussion of "subjective" versus "objective" news. Opinions from journalists generate far more followers than simple news, meaning journalists (or truly anyone) who wants to dominant public opinion need only be controversial to game the system. For the same reasons, digital-native news sites and cable news networks have followed suit, giving more air to opinion coverage and less air to news pieces derived from facts. This shift from news pieces to opinion pieces is so sharp that it has left United States citizens confused about whether what they read is fact or opinion. A study by the American Press Institute in 2018 found that while 75% of United States citizens can easily tell the difference between opinion pieces and news articles from standard news organizations, that percentage drops to 43% for both social media and digital-native news. These platforms profit immensely off of directing readers to pieces that will aggravate them and cause them to repost. Incentivizing anger is social media's forte. It does not take much to see how Schmittian styled posts about "us v.s. them" can quickly lead to a spiral of radicalization and online hate spilling out into real-world violence. It is also not challenging to connect the dots and see how news from social media is less informative and less accurate than from elsewhere, leaving the fourth estate in a confusing mess.
The Titans Shrug
The thorniest issue that social media presents is the problem of what can be said in political discourse. This issue has been raised by Democrats and Republicans alike, with Democrats trying to regulate and censor speech they consider harmful and Republicans doing the exact opposite. The 2020 election brought this issue to the front of United States political thought, as Twitter began fact-checking former-President Donald Trump's tweets about the election. culminating in the total banning of Trump from Twitter and nearly every other mainstream social media outlet this past month. Yet the total silencing of Trump, for all the good it has brought, should be understood as a temporary measure until legislators and thinkers can devise a better method for dealing with insurrectionist speech on social media. When even Alexi Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, and Angela Merkel, the leading figure of European power, claims that banning Trump's social media accounts crosses a line, it demands a pause for reflection.
Underneath all the connections between the news and social media lays the ontological question of what social media is. Trump, in a May executive order attacking social media companies for censorship, argued that the social media landscape is equivalent to a public forum, and, therefore, speech should be protected on it. An argument could be made, then, that social media censorship is tied to the first amendment. This is wrong as a matter of law. The first amendment protects free speech from government intervention but provides no forms of redress for speech prevented by private institutions. Tackling the issue of social media by perceiving it as the centre of public discourse is also the incorrect stance. The most prolific voices on Twitter are unrepresentative of the political stances of most United States citizens, which means the public forum is Democratic, but not at all democratic. Another way of understanding social media is as a publishing aggregate, where individuals can publish content so long as it stays in the boundaries of the platform’s rules. This view of social media is more accurate. Social media is an interactive computer service, meaning it falls under the jurisdiction of US Code §230, which prevents tech companies from being liable for restricting "access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers being obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." The law here is quite clear; Twitter, Facebook, and all other interactive computer services have the right to restrict access to content. When the interests of those tech-heads line up with what is good, this works out nicely. This, of course, leave open the possibility that tech bosses could restrict access to the words of a future president if their language does not appeal to the financial incentives of the company or if Silicon Valley employees pressure them enough. In the eyes of the founding philosophers, this may appear to be the people exerting too much power over the executive branch, or, conversely, technological plutocrats silencing the government. Considering the loudest, most liberal tweeters are the ones who dominate the conversation on Twitter, the website would likely defer to that audience, presenting a threat to its critics.
Another way of tackling the supposed "free speech" issue is to treat the problem as a "free press" issue. This would also involve the first amendment, but rather than weakening the case for social media companies to control what goes on their websites, it would strengthen it. If social media is treated as "the press", then it has more control over what it publishes, similar to how an editor controls which articles make it into a paper. The glaring problem with this is section 230 and its liability clause, as the news media can be held liable for what it says while interactive computer services cannot. While this will almost certainly change in the 117th Congress, as bi-partisan support for reforming section 230 has grown in the past decade, any altering of the law will still run into the ontological problem of what social media is.
Ultimately, whatever solution devised will be a political one. It may involve, as Alexi Navalny proposes, a committee in the government or of individuals who adjudicate the rules of speech on social media, although this approach is just as affected by generational gravity and political shenanigans as the tech bosses are. At the most basic level, the United States must develop a more robust collection of laws for Silicon Valley to follow. A clearer set of rules than section 230 is needed for an internet that has outgrown its infancy and has become an untamed Battlezone. The impetus to do is also on the shoulders of the tech giant heads, too, who should be far more consistent with the application of their bans, as death threats to other members of the government continue to avoid punishment. The American public agrees with the sentiment of change. A Pew survey found 62% of American adults felt that social media companies had too much control over the news people see. With support from both parties and the American people, the tech titans grip on the news media is certain to diminish at least a little bit under the Biden administration.
It is odd to see some on the left celebrating corporate power to determine what people can say and see some on the right groaning about it. That alone reveals the shocking ways in which social media has played a role in changing the base supporters and ideologies of both parties. Nonetheless, both of them have much to lose should social media remain untamed. Radicalizing algorithms have already thrown the Republican party into disarray by shoving those even slightly sceptical of the Democrats into QAnon territory. A similar (but certainly not as dangerous) effect could easily happen on the left if social media, which Democrats often use to raise awareness of movements and events, pushes liberals towards a wilier form of progressivism. On the little-d democratic level, social media has only hampered the role of the Fourth estate and complicated the sanctity of the news media in the United States. If the United States has any hope of reinvigorating a news media that is reliant on fact and able to inform rather than radicalize, the country must find a better way of grappling with the impact social media has on our political ecosystem.
