The day after the United States Congress officially certified Donal Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg – chairman of Meta, the parent company of digital platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – announced the termination of Meta’s fact-checking program in the US.
Soon after, Meta announced the end of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In an interview with infamous podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg declared that the corporate world has become “culturally neutered” and could thus use a boost of “aggression” and “masculine energy”.
Zuckerberg reportedly co-hosted a party following Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington DC. Well, that was fast.
Commentators in US media have already remarked on the remarkable – if unsurprising – rightward turn of business and tech oligarchs since Trump’s election.
Zuckerberg is not alone: Elon Musk, whose Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration raised few eyebrows, had assumed the role of the president’s self-appointed confidante and advisor well before the election; the rest of the usual suspects – Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman – have variously but swiftly followed suit.
Also read: The Rise of Oligarchs Around the World
When fact-checking goes wrong
While the rollbacks announced by Meta are only applicable to the company’s US operations at the moment, the rest of the world has reasons for concern – not least, India herself, Meta’s largest market.
In recent years, with Donald Trump’s first electoral victory in 2016 being the turning point, Meta has struggled at home and abroad with the spread of misinformation on its platforms and the company has repeatedly come under scrutiny for failing to remove, or, perhaps worse, willfully ignoring hateful and inciting content rapidly spreading on its users’ feeds.
Given that the bulk of Meta’s fact-checking resources were allocated for its US operations, it might come as no surprise that the “Facebook problem” has been particularly acute in the subcontinent, home to hundreds of millions of users often posting in languages likely foreign to both moderator and algorithm.
In 2018, the Sri Lankan government resorted to temporarily blocking social media access when anti-Muslim riots erupted in the country’s Central Province; thanks to fact-friendly journalism, we know that the company had repeatedly failed to address urgent appeals to moderate its platforms, where hate speech aimed at minorities spread freely in the leadup to violence.
The digital public square
The well-worn metaphor of the public square used indiscriminately to describe digital spaces feels woefully inadequate. Social media might be free to use, but is it public?
Unlike public spaces, the digital “squares” all of us populate daily are the property of a handful of the wealthiest individuals, now clamoring for a seat at the presidential table.
Also read: Trump’s Inauguration Speech Makes It Clear He Wants the US to Go Backwards
Trump, like many of his authoritarian peers globally, is averse to moderation – yet keen to censor his detractors – whether it takes the form of fact-checking or corporate guardrails. In this, they stand in agreement with Big Tech, whose CEOs know better than to antagonise powerful leaders, who use these platforms as political propaganda tools, and digital access to their citizenries as a negotiating tool.
Both know that with the right mix of algorithmic sorcery and political might, it is easy to control the digital “public” square.
Case in point: as reproductive health rights are increasingly coming under attack in the United States – thanks to the Trump-adjacent, right-wing ‘MAGA’ movement, now more emboldened than ever – Meta appears to have blocked content from abortion pill providers on its platforms.
All this has nothing to do with ideology, of course; principles be damned. Zuckerberg’s macho reinvention and his claims for a return to Meta’s roots – free speech, connecting people and the like – ring hollow.
In siding with Trump, Big Tech is requesting to be relieved of accountability for the immense power it has amassed. Simply follow the money to understand these changing political dynamics. We pay for our ostensibly free media sociality with our data. The goal is the so-called engagement – the more time we spend on these platforms, the more data we produce, and the more money their owners make.
The algorithms that power them are deliberately designed, in their engineers’ words, to get us “hooked”, to maximise user engagement. In other words, it is done to ensure that we spend as much time as possible scrolling, liking, tapping, commenting.
Also read: Elon Musk, the Global Right-Wing and India’s Place in This Escalating Friendship
Fact-checking, DEI initiatives, even the performative defense of free speech itself – despite its proponents’ loud pronouncements – were in fact roadblocks, money badly spent, curtailing, rather than maximising engagement.
It takes two to tango. So, while engagement makes money, it also makes for obedient citizens, a valuable tool in the service of authoritarian leaders.
Truth and the social contract
To be sure, truth is a murky concept and facts even more so, at once elusive and readily available to support the most unlikely of theories in this datafied age of endless information. Fact-checking was far from perfect, and clearly never quite managed to turn the authoritarian tide threatening to submerge us today. It is ultimately a question of power, rather than truth. To own these platforms means to control the flow of information; it means, profoundly, to be able to influence public opinion.
Big Tech has effectively taken over our digital public square: it’s one thing to be present online, quite another to be heard. Algorithms, entirely opaque to most users and easily manipulated to various ends, determine how content – news, opinions, advertisements, “hot takes”– flows across feeds and screens.
To seek the truth online today amounts to a Sisyphean task. What will it take to speak truth to power?
Sam Altman of OpenAI recently suggested that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence will necessitate a renegotiation of the social contract.
Perhaps, the time is ripe to consider the corrosive effects of unchecked corporate power on our polity. Those violating the social contract are hiding in plain sight and AI is not one of them – for now, at least. They must not evade accountability, otherwise we will pay the price for Big Tech’s newfound freedom.
Alexios Tsigkas teaches Sociology at FLAME University, Pune.
