The chaos and fakery of social media are stress-testing democracy and its most important component, free speech. So far, the test isn’t going well, but I don’t think technology is entirely to blame.
We are not threatened by too much free speech, but by too little responsibility for what is said. And that is not an impossible problem.
At the dawn of the internet age, giving everyone the ability to speak to everyone else seemed likely to advance democracy. The opposite occurred, because we upset the delicate equilibrium of freedom and responsibility that kept our political system stable.
During the twentieth century, media gatekeepers avoided distributing false statements and deceptive advertising and upheld standards of taste and civility. Anyone could write or say terrible things, but local newspapers and broadcast stations would be held responsible for repeating offensive, dangerous or deceptive material. Legally, they were liable for defamation or fraud, and socially, their businesses depended on adhering to community standards.
Then social media replaced publishers. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, they were released from responsibility for content on their platforms. As faceless global networks, they’re also largely immune to social influence.
Traditional publishers had to guard their reputations, but multinational social media companies just need users to scroll and click. Freed of responsibility under law or social convention, they profit from anger, scorn, worry, and shock.
Social media award financial incentives to users who create and spread sensational falsehoods. Producers of disinformation draw clicks to make money, including concocting harmful medical advice that now has distorted our entire health system.
Some of the biggest pro-MAGA accounts on X were recently revealed to be based in Nigeria, Eastern Europe, India, Russia and other countries.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, earns 10 percent of its revenue, $16 billion a year, on scam advertising. It ignores complaints, rarely takes down even obvious scams, and uses its scam detection software to upcharge scammers. All this according to internal documents surfaced recently in an impressive Reuters investigation.
The company is essentially a bandit. In the documents, executives calculate the money to be made by working with the worst scammers. By its internal estimates, a third of all successful scams in the U.S. involve Meta products.
(By the way, I’ve noticed that when I post newsletters like this one, critical of the company, they don’t reach many Meta users.)
Authoritarian countries don’t suffer social media’s predation as we do because they regulate speech and punish people who don’t obey. This isn’t about technology, it is about how we manage information.
In free countries, we should not regulate speech. But we can make companies accountable for what they do. For a start, we could apply the law equally to publishers and internet companies, forcing social media platforms to take responsibility for defamation, scams, and deceptive advertising.
But in the U.S., democracy is failing this test. Given the extraordinary power of these companies in Congress and the Trump Administration, they will continue to operate without responsibility. And continue to give free speech a bad name.
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Painting: “Reading Woman” by Swedish artist Hanna Pauli (née Hirsch). Painted in 1886 with oil on cardboard. 15 x 19 cm.
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