Stop Panicking! YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Are Not Destroying Democracy
Matthew Lesh, Head of Public Policy at the Institute for Economic Affairs, has written a great piece for Spiked pointing out that the social science research about the role of social media in driving political polarisation and extremism is decidedly mixed and certainly insufficient to demonstrate a need for further restrictions on free speech. In other words, the case for the Online Safety Bill and other attempts to censor social media is unproven.
For example, some research suggests that social media ‘reinforces the expressers’ partisan thought process and hardens their pre-existing political preferences’. But other studies have found that partisanship has grown more among groups who are less likely to use social media, that it has grown more in the US despite social media expanding across the planet, and that Facebook’s news feature may even reduce polarisation by exposing people to more viewpoints.
On the question of filter bubbles and echo chambers for news, the evidence is just as mixed. One study found that Facebook’s algorithm fails to supply people with news that challenges their attitudes. But other studies suggest that most users (and conservatives especially) subscribe to a variety of media outlets, that social media actually drive a more diverse array of news sources, and that social media might actually help decrease support for right-wing populist candidates and parties.
Then there’s the issue of foreign disinformation allegedly warping elections. While there is evidence that material from Russia’s Internet Research Agency has reached tens of millions of people in the West in recent years, it is less clear that this has had a strong impact. Russian trolls have largely interacted with individuals who are already highly polarised. Furthermore, studies indicate that just 0.1% of people share 80% of the ‘fake news’ that is in circulation.
To the extent that serious issues with social media have been identified, many studies indicate that they are not widespread. For example, one study found that just 5% of users are in a news echo chamber. On the question of YouTube rabbit holes, another study found that extremist videos are largely watched by people who already hold extremist views and that other people are not driven to that content by recommendations.
This all points to the possibility that partisanship, extreme views and political dysfunction are driven by deeper social and cultural factors. To the extent that you come across more extreme views on social media it is because individuals who are more partisan are more likely to use those platforms. But it is easier to blame social media for, say, the election of Donald Trump than it is to address the disenchantment that drove his victory in 2016.
Worth reading in full.
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They are certainly destroying democracy, but not in the way the woke globalists might pretend it is.
They are destroying democracy by restricting freedom of speech, by suspending and banning and shadow banning accounts and posts that don’t fit the woke globalist political agenda and pushing their own views as much as they can get away with.
Like most people, I’m afraid you have it backwards. Or not quite right. Social media platforms aren’t destroying democracy. The establishment is. Social media companies aren’t even remotely interested in censoring anyone. They didn’t at all until governments started telling them to. It all kicked off with Brexit and the idea that the “wrong” result emerged because of all the terrible misinformation on social media. Then came Trump to reinforce the notion. What really happened is that the establishment temporarily lost its monopoly on informing to the public and the result was that for a short period, the public started expressing what it really thought and wanted and started getting political results that reflected that. The establishment wasn’t having it which is why they’ve reined in the social media companies and essentially put them under their control. And of course they’ve allowed themselves to because they weren’t really given much of a choice. Even still, social media remains the only place where one can at least see some glimpses of truths that the establishment would rather you didn’t know. Put it this way, none of us are finding out about vaccine injuries, about alternative opinions to the establishment agenda from… Read more »
Well, that’s part of it and yes the establishment are certainly trying to destroy democracy and freedom of speech. It’s also true that social media platforms don’t censor everything and thus allow people like us to communicate. But I think it’s also pretty obvious that the big tech firms are firmly signed up to a woke globalist agenda, much like most other big firms.
I agree with both of you here. A very clear politic has emerged amongst the leaders of very big, global companies. And of course, the state is fearful of free speech.
Twitter were itching to ban Trump and only waited as long as they did because he was the sitting President.
Put it this way, I don’t think Twitter and Facebook had to be drug kicking and screaming to the Orwellian solution. They are willing accomplices. I think the Big Government “stick” did work on them, but they also have received some “carrots” and perks by playing ball.
A pox on all of them.
I think it all started after 9-11 and the fallout from that. Counter terrorism would find “lone wolves” or remote groups all gathering information on the internet to back up a common cause or argument.
All these individuals could then be linked on the basis of having the same dangerous thoughts.
This has now filtered through to mainstream thinking whereby anybody who entertains thoughts not officially approved by governments then they can all be linked to each other much like the terrorist organisations before using the exact same methods.
How else do we explain parents in USA or ordinary citizens in other countries being classed as and treated like terrorists?
So I think we can all agree that the problem isn’t the social media companies themselves but the establishment that uses state power to put the brakes on free information and free expression.
My point ultimately is that it’s important to be precise about what we call out. The thing to call out is the establishment’s hijacking of social media companies to further exert its control.
I don’t think we can agree on that
It’s both
Big business are actively pursuing woke agendas way above and beyond any legal obligation or government pressure because woke ideas are now mainstream and the accepted norm in Western liberal democracies
And yet the only place I get information and hear people challenging the woke agenda is through YouTube, Twitter, apps like Telegram and other websites.
If you are going to challenge those that give in to state bullying and become active participants in pursuing establishment agenda, then I wouldn’t begin with the social media companies. I would begin with the corporate media.
All I’m saying is, let’s not be the useful idiots of the corporate media who would absolutely love to get rid of social media or at the very least make it as controlled and useless as they themselves are.
Yes, you make a good point, though in general we should favour social media platforms that don’t have political agendas, or have agendas that coincide with ours. Telegram and YouTube cannot really be lumped into the same bucket.
Ultimately the war we need to win is the one of ideas – hard to do if you can’t get your ideas across and the idea of freedom of speech itself is no longer accepted (which it isn’t – try asking your friends if it should be legal to post racist material, see what they say).
Big business (or rather, certain big businesses) are similar to the state in the respect that they provide a commercially safe haven for all kinds of parasites seeking to transform society in this or that way. Hence, it’s not so much big business pushing that but an army of SJW pencil pushers are using big business to push that, just like they’re also using the state, or whichever parts of that they control, for this.
The SJW pencil pushers seem in many cases to have risen to the top
I was kicked off Twitter for quoting the UK and US governments. Jack could have just let it ride.
I have had countless factual and polite (but counter-narrative) comments and posts removed from LinkedIn, no explanations given. Everyone here knows why that is, and it’s not because I use Microsoft Windows.
Indeed. What I can’t work out is whether these business leaders actually believe all this woke bollocks or just go along with it to keep in with the government and media establishments – in other words has big business been captured by the wokeists in the same way that the rest of the establishment has.
Toby seems keen to pass on the message that social media might not encourage right wing extremists or organisations but it seems to me the real and present danger is froim left wing ones. They seem to live and breed through social media, which is empathetic to them, at least.
For crying out loud, what has become of social media, that in a time of heavy internet usage where there are a greater number of alternative news sources than ever before, that one would resort to Facebook’s news feed to inform their knowledge of current affairs? Social media is a bit of fun, a bit of downtime after work, that is all it really is and should be. Whether there’s news / fake news / information / misinformation should be irrelevant. It’s just a conversation platform where people can casually exchange views, not a purveyor of “dangerous misinformation”, or a source of “fake news”, “rabbit holes”, “echo chambers”. Anyone who gets uptight about social media harms (such as architects of the Online Safety Bill) needs to get a grip. Seriously. How about a Vaccine Safety Bill – why hasn’t something like that been passed yet? Just throwing that one out there, since the type of legislature being laid down these days one could be forgiven for thinking that online safety is more important than physical health! And as far as freedom of speech, freedom of expression etc goes, why can’t these things just happen outside the hypnotic realm of social… Read more »
This Israeli doctor says do not trust the government data on Covid. Do not trust the prestigious medical journals like The Lancet either, he says. Excess death is being covered up. “Covid deaths” are still being inflated. His bottom line:
“I am assured that the science around COVID has been corrupted to an unbelievable extent. Anything that might threaten the “safe and effective vaccine” narrative will be suppressed as much as possible.”
I say listen to the dissenters like this brave, contrarian physician.
https://shahar-26393.medium.com/covid-vaccine-research-in-israel-no-troubling-questions-please-ee7f8389af1b
UK culture secretary Nadine Dorries reportedly arrived at a meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters recently and immediately asked when they were going to get rid of algorithms.
For $deity’s sake. And that’s the lady (…) who thinks she must regulate what other my write on the internet to protect children. An algorithm is a sequence of steps intended to solve a particular problem. The everyday example would be a cooking recipe. The methods for adding, subtracting or dividing numbers which used to be taught in elementary school when the curriculum stilled contained stuff beyond homosexuality appreciation lessons for minors are also algoritms. More generally, a computer program is an algorithm expressed in programming language which can be – either directly or after automatic translation into a so-called machine language – executed by a computer.
Dorries’ ignorant statement is thus roughly akin to demand that computers, especially insofar they connected to networks of other computers, must not be used anymore. Doubtlessly, she either sent or received an urgent message on her smartphone next.
Nadine wants to ban logic itself.
Sorry Toby, you’ve had a logic breakdown and made a category mistake with this statement:
“In other words, the case for the Online Safety Bill and other attempts to censor social media is unproven.”
No level of “proof” justifies the Online Safety Bill because it is wrong as a matter of principle. If you don’t understand this, you allow that some level of completely irrelevant to the principle, proof, can mean the online safety bill is justified. If you allow that, you can bet your bottom dollar proponents of the bill will reach for the first emotional argument they can find and then say, by your own logic, the bill is justified.
Almost no-one believes in more or less absolute freedom of speech, not even the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, sadly sometimes IMO too willing to compromise which leads to miles being taken when inches are given. I think the starting point has to be that anything goes, barring libel and slander (which must be founded in facts not opinions, so saying someone is a c**t is fine, but saying they have a criminal record when they don’t is not find) and possibly direct incitement to commit a specific crime.