Social media offers power without accountability
IT has always been the case that those with wealth and power often attempt to exert their influence in politics.
In the past perhaps the efforts have not been as obvious because someone like Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere worked behind the scenes.
We would perhaps hear of meetings with party leaders and the mogul's worldview was apparent in the stories their journalists would write. But for the most part the media baron himself remained in the shadows.
Elon Musk is different in that his increasingly forceful interventions come directly from him; the world's wealthiest man owns one of the biggest platforms on the planet and screams out his inklings and obsessions on an almost hourly basis.
Perhaps never before have we seen so clearly how those people with clear agendas and nearly limitless resources bring pressure to bear on elected politicians. He is lobbyist, outrider and donor all rolled into one.
For all the anxieties among the populist right about nation states being held ransom by international treaties, obstructive civil servants or sinister figures at the World Economic Forum here is a case of a single man exercising unprecedented control over public discourse.
In the past perhaps the efforts have not been as obvious because someone like Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere worked behind the scenes.
We would perhaps hear of meetings with party leaders and the mogul's worldview was apparent in the stories their journalists would write. But for the most part the media baron himself remained in the shadows.
Elon Musk is different in that his increasingly forceful interventions come directly from him; the world's wealthiest man owns one of the biggest platforms on the planet and screams out his inklings and obsessions on an almost hourly basis.
Perhaps never before have we seen so clearly how those people with clear agendas and nearly limitless resources bring pressure to bear on elected politicians. He is lobbyist, outrider and donor all rolled into one.
For all the anxieties among the populist right about nation states being held ransom by international treaties, obstructive civil servants or sinister figures at the World Economic Forum here is a case of a single man exercising unprecedented control over public discourse.
Last month Musk's frenzied discussion of US Congress' plans to fund government business over the next three months derailed an agreement among legislators.
As the BBC reported, his posts on X about the proposed deal rapidly reached triple digits and made liberal use of "inaccurate allegations" from conservative commentators.
In real-time the world was bearing witness to a man with a personal fortune of almost 500 billion - but without any democratic mandate of his own - dictating political decisions via public commentary.
As the BBC reported, his posts on X about the proposed deal rapidly reached triple digits and made liberal use of "inaccurate allegations" from conservative commentators.
In real-time the world was bearing witness to a man with a personal fortune of almost 500 billion - but without any democratic mandate of his own - dictating political decisions via public commentary.
Veteran senator Bernie Sanders noted that the idea that an immense fortune gives you a veto over key legislation is the very definition of oligarchy. Except of course oligarchs' influence tends to centre on a single country, whereas Musk has much bigger ambitions.
The UK's news agenda for the past week has largely been shaped by his sudden fixation with the grooming gangs scandal and ferocious criticism of the Labour government.
On one hand it's hard to deny that the proclamations of such a prominent public figure, perhaps the closest confidante of the incoming US President, are newsworthy.
And yet if Musk was treated more like the so-called "legacy media" he so derides, would outlets like the BBC and Sky really give this level of coverage to what amounts to an angry op-ed published in two line instalments over several days?
Yes newspapers could and often do publish investigations or reveal information which sends the entire Lobby into a frenzy, but the difference is that there is generally something new to report. Musk has chiefly garnered attention by citing some of the most extreme figures in British public life and using truly blood-curdling language but should his opinions - however strongly held - be allowed to carry quite this amount of capital?
In dealing with Musk the media must first acknowledge that - whether he admits it or not - he is one of their own. He is an owner and editor in chief of an outlet which has a global reach of hundreds of millions.
The UK's news agenda for the past week has largely been shaped by his sudden fixation with the grooming gangs scandal and ferocious criticism of the Labour government.
On one hand it's hard to deny that the proclamations of such a prominent public figure, perhaps the closest confidante of the incoming US President, are newsworthy.
And yet if Musk was treated more like the so-called "legacy media" he so derides, would outlets like the BBC and Sky really give this level of coverage to what amounts to an angry op-ed published in two line instalments over several days?
Yes newspapers could and often do publish investigations or reveal information which sends the entire Lobby into a frenzy, but the difference is that there is generally something new to report. Musk has chiefly garnered attention by citing some of the most extreme figures in British public life and using truly blood-curdling language but should his opinions - however strongly held - be allowed to carry quite this amount of capital?
In dealing with Musk the media must first acknowledge that - whether he admits it or not - he is one of their own. He is an owner and editor in chief of an outlet which has a global reach of hundreds of millions.
It is easy to be beguiled by the notion that social media is just so many billion individuals each having their own say. But if Twitter, as was, started as a forum for general discussion today it has become a political instrument - and a ferociously partisan one at that.
Musk's algorithms favour certain types of content, just like a traditional newspaper might choose its strand of politics. And with the owner's insistence that every single user is made privy to his outbursts - whether they follow him or not - it is no longer a place where users have all that much agency over what they consume.
As with the once dominant newspapers, the reader sees what someone has chosen to set in front of them.
The failure to account for this has meant that a man with perhaps the single biggest audience in world history is not bound by the same basic framework that would apply to a trainee reporter starting on a weekly paper with a readership of 30,000.
Press regulation in this country is imperfect and in need of improvement as the Leveson Inquiry proved a decade or so ago. But there are nonetheless long-established checks and balances.
Ofcom compels broadcasters to exercise impartiality, even if its set-up has been strained by the creation of channels like GB News - with a clear mission to incense rather than inform.
Newspapers sign-up to a code of of practice and must issue corrections if found to have fallen short of standards. Again we can question whether all this is adequate - a brief apology at the bottom of page six is hardly comparable with a wholly misleading splash a fortnight earlier - but the system exists nonetheless.
By contrast social media giants face little in the way of statutory requirements and are increasingly scrapping even the scant safeguards they put in place themselves.
In the name of freedom of speech, Musk dismantled attempts to regulate content and this week Facebook and Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg charted a similar course with the announcement that, starting in the US, his company would do away with independent fact-checkers.
Paired with algorithms which often prioritise controversy, this failure to filter what people are seeing is a major boost to Covid conspiracy mongers, climate change deniers and those populist politicians who thrive in a fact-free environment.
Giving a free hand to the pedlars of misinformation poses a risk in democracies where people deserve credible sources. We have increasingly lived in fear of hostile governments attempting to sow division and erode trust but it seems the threat from private individuals running private companies is just as acute.
As with the once dominant newspapers, the reader sees what someone has chosen to set in front of them.
The failure to account for this has meant that a man with perhaps the single biggest audience in world history is not bound by the same basic framework that would apply to a trainee reporter starting on a weekly paper with a readership of 30,000.
Press regulation in this country is imperfect and in need of improvement as the Leveson Inquiry proved a decade or so ago. But there are nonetheless long-established checks and balances.
Ofcom compels broadcasters to exercise impartiality, even if its set-up has been strained by the creation of channels like GB News - with a clear mission to incense rather than inform.
Newspapers sign-up to a code of of practice and must issue corrections if found to have fallen short of standards. Again we can question whether all this is adequate - a brief apology at the bottom of page six is hardly comparable with a wholly misleading splash a fortnight earlier - but the system exists nonetheless.
By contrast social media giants face little in the way of statutory requirements and are increasingly scrapping even the scant safeguards they put in place themselves.
In the name of freedom of speech, Musk dismantled attempts to regulate content and this week Facebook and Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg charted a similar course with the announcement that, starting in the US, his company would do away with independent fact-checkers.
Paired with algorithms which often prioritise controversy, this failure to filter what people are seeing is a major boost to Covid conspiracy mongers, climate change deniers and those populist politicians who thrive in a fact-free environment.
Giving a free hand to the pedlars of misinformation poses a risk in democracies where people deserve credible sources. We have increasingly lived in fear of hostile governments attempting to sow division and erode trust but it seems the threat from private individuals running private companies is just as acute.
Perhaps even more so. Had Putin opined on Labour's handling of predators in Rochdale I'm not sure it would have made the 10 o'clock news.
Belatedly legislators in some countries are starting to recognise the risk and taking steps to protect their populations. Spain's Action Plan for Democracy includes provisions to tackle "professional hoaxers" online, Australia meanwhile has imposed a ban on under 16s setting up social media accounts.
It could be argued that these measures are still only dancing around the edges of the problem, but at least there is an acknowledgement that it exists.
And yet the pushback is already in progress. Zuckerberg's announcement came with the warning that jurisdictions outside America were pressing forward with regulation which amounted to government censorship. This was, in his view, a trend that needed to be checked.
In his framing, foreign countries are stifling fair debate and US companies are suffering as a result. But another way to look at it might be that politicians don't much appreciate a handful of commercial operations overseas having such an oversized influence in almost every facet of public life and, in the case of Musk, actively using his platform to damage and destabilise.
Silicon Valley's insistence that all information is equal and it shouldn't be for their platforms to act as arbiters is dangerous.
Belatedly legislators in some countries are starting to recognise the risk and taking steps to protect their populations. Spain's Action Plan for Democracy includes provisions to tackle "professional hoaxers" online, Australia meanwhile has imposed a ban on under 16s setting up social media accounts.
It could be argued that these measures are still only dancing around the edges of the problem, but at least there is an acknowledgement that it exists.
And yet the pushback is already in progress. Zuckerberg's announcement came with the warning that jurisdictions outside America were pressing forward with regulation which amounted to government censorship. This was, in his view, a trend that needed to be checked.
In his framing, foreign countries are stifling fair debate and US companies are suffering as a result. But another way to look at it might be that politicians don't much appreciate a handful of commercial operations overseas having such an oversized influence in almost every facet of public life and, in the case of Musk, actively using his platform to damage and destabilise.
Silicon Valley's insistence that all information is equal and it shouldn't be for their platforms to act as arbiters is dangerous.
First of all the aforementioned algorithms often bake-in some form of bias, so even when companies lay claim to a hands-off approach someone somewhere is benefiting. In Musk's case the democratisation of public debate became something of a dictatorship the day that Musk, pissed that Biden was getting rather more attention than him, tweaked his systems to ensure no single person could boast anything like his reach.
Facebook meanwhile had long deigned that people didn't much want to see political content - a ruling that made my old job as a local government correspondent effectively moot to the newsroom's digital chiefs. Yet latterly Zuckerberg has detected a change in the public zeitgeist, which is presumably totally unconnected from his recent meetings with President-elect Trump, and has decided political coverage - with the railguards off - is suddenly much in-demand again.
More's to the point, claiming that it's wrong to impose standards is rather at odds with the fact that almost every type of content put out for public consumption comes with obligations.
In the UK false advertising has consequences, scientific papers are peer-reviewed, books are checked for errors and might even be pulped if a particularly bad one is missed. Newspapers who defame or steal content from others might be sued; if they prejudice criminal trials they could find themselves in court themselves.
I often think about the various information which found its way to my old weekly - frequent diatribes from the BNP activist, libellous rants from a paranoid schizophrenic, and one particularly peculiar letter from a reader about what he claimed to have discovered his wife doing with the family dog.
Had I "published and be damned" during my brief stint as editor I would have found myself out of a job or possibly in the dock for allowing some of that content out there. There's a responsibility of anyone who is circulating content there that could destroy a reputation or livelihood, put communities at risk or cause undue harm.
We must stop pretending that conversations on social media are no more than quiet little chats at the pub. The town square that Twitter started as is now dominated by a man with a megaphone. People shout abuse and threats which in the normal course of events could get them arrested or - were it indeed a pub - barred. Extremists spread lies which can cause street-level violence or put public figures at risk. If the enablers of this are allowed to think they are above all laws or democratic norms then we have got a real problem.
I often think about the various information which found its way to my old weekly - frequent diatribes from the BNP activist, libellous rants from a paranoid schizophrenic, and one particularly peculiar letter from a reader about what he claimed to have discovered his wife doing with the family dog.
Had I "published and be damned" during my brief stint as editor I would have found myself out of a job or possibly in the dock for allowing some of that content out there. There's a responsibility of anyone who is circulating content there that could destroy a reputation or livelihood, put communities at risk or cause undue harm.
We must stop pretending that conversations on social media are no more than quiet little chats at the pub. The town square that Twitter started as is now dominated by a man with a megaphone. People shout abuse and threats which in the normal course of events could get them arrested or - were it indeed a pub - barred. Extremists spread lies which can cause street-level violence or put public figures at risk. If the enablers of this are allowed to think they are above all laws or democratic norms then we have got a real problem.
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