Social Media Governance

Social Media: Heralding a New World Order

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/social-media-heralding-new-world-order

With technological advancements, social networking sites eventually became news sharing platforms, which to a large extent is being produced by individuals themselves. This also creates multiple narratives making their role pretty much evident in the flow of information. It, therefore, enables different social actors to influence and build opinions on important issues. This dissemination of information at such a large scale becomes a problem if it is fake or doctored. With so much anonymity, easy access and no watchdogs, this information becomes riskier and all the more problematic because it tends to set narratives that might be one-sided.

Examples: #metoo movement; Govt clamp down/information black out as in Kashmir August 2019; Cambridge analytica; Trump ban in Twitter, 2014 election in India; Masculinity narratives, and violence, cyber violence; Dangerous Speech

​Rethinking the Democratic Dilemma Navaneeth M S  EPW Vol. 56, Issue No. 22, 29 May, 2021  https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/22/postscript/%E2%80%8Brethinking-democratic-dilemma.html?destination=node/158479

 
Viewing tech giants like Facebook and Twitter as principal agents of free speech has far-reaching consequences on the health and functioning of a democracy.

The WhatsApp move to sue the Indian government is a red herring https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/the-whatsapp-move-to-sue-the-indian-government-is-a-red-herring-6948131.html MONIKA KRISHAN MAY 27, 2021  While user actions are constantly being tracked, recorded , quantified and analysed, AI companies (eg: Amazon Web Services) remain notoriously secretive about the processes.. States push for rapid AI development across multiple domains of civilian and defense applications,  the prospect of an AI-dominated world looms large. An AI-dominated world would essentially be an AI-Corporation-dominated world ..The use of cloud systems to store vast quantities of both civilian and defense data would make states even more vulnerable to corporate nudging...

If democratic states and indeed democracy is to survive it would do well for nations to: a) resist the temptation to place all their intellectual and economic eggs in the AI basket, b) renew their vows to uphold the principles of democracy so as to build deeper ties with their citizens based on mutual trust, and c) work together to encourage tech companies to adopt a more inclusive and evolved standard of engagement with customers

Comment: political institutions must address the threat that state power itself poses to the liberty and security of individuals..

To meet this threat constitutional government is the principal institutional instrument. Constitutional government is to be limited through a combination of public rules delineating the boundaries of legitimate state authority (rule of law), devices for fracturing state power to keep it from transgressing those boundaries (federalism, separation of powers), and arrangements for monitoring government conduct for possible transgressions (judicial review, legislative supremacy).(https://www.humansfuture.org/politics_power_abuse.htm )

Since Artificial Intelligence and Data Sovereignity is also power, there is need to seperation of powers between Corporates, Government and other democratic systems; due process and procedures. Most important the user or the citizen should be the primary focus of decision making. So while it is fair that the Platforms take a decision about content in their own platform, but when the platforms reach of position of power by becoming the vehicle of free speech,  it should follow the basic principle that :justice must not only be done it should be seen to be done.  Unfortunately, both State and Corporate prefer back-room dealings, so that each can serve their own power:  the former - political and the latter commercial.  Thus the third sector.. namely the "people sector" or civil society must have a bigger role in the new dispensation ( fact checking sites, algorithyms  for example have become an important vehicle of civil power ) . Unfortunately here also we have seen, corporates, the media, as well as government conspiring to limit this empowerment.  For example the recent closure of the Amnesty International in India has not shaken the democractic consciense of the judiciary as well. 

The middle class and the media has cried hoarse about the "law of the land" forgetting the dictum the father of the nation gave us.. https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/gandhi-and-civil-disobedience When the Boer legislature passed a law requiring that all Indians register with the police and be fingerprinted, Gandhi, along with many other Indians, refused to obey the law. He was arrested and put in jail, the first of many times he would be imprisoned for disobeying what he believed to be unjust laws.

While in jail, Gandhi read the essay “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau, a 19th-century American writer. Gandhi adopted the term “civil disobedience” to describe his strategy of non-violently refusing to cooperate with injustice, but he preferred the Sanskrit word satyagraha (devotion to truth).

https://thewire.in/rights/free-speech-social-media19/Apr/2017 Rajshree Chandra: In principle, it offers the possibility of enhancing free speech and gives a voice to millions. It makes authors and opinion makers of folks who otherwise would have been passive consumers of opinion. But there’s also another face that social media wears – a face that is sometimes ugly and threatening. Often, it can blur the lines separating fact from fiction. The multitudinous voices can, at times, be deeply offensive, divisive, violent and plain disgusting. If you are feminist and a woman, and vocal on Twitter, you know what I am talking about.

Citing six instances, Chandra says..  the one common thread is the use of state power to discipline and punish anything interpreted as an offence against sovereign power. But on the social media morality-meter, these posts and remarks were quite mild and temperate.

Where does this exaggerated sense of indignation and intolerance stem from? Is it a bloated sense of righteousness or just a bad sense of the democracy? In either case, the response is the use of state power delivering a subtext of fear.

Obeisance to whataboutery demands that I put on record that this is not the first time that state power has been used to come down on speech-acts on social media.

On October, 26 2019, Twitter suspended the account of senior advocate Sanjay Hegde. The reason? According to the social media platform, the image violated Twitter’s ‘hateful imagery’ guidelines, despite the photo being around for decades and usually being recognised as a sign of resistance against blind authoritarianism. https://thewire.in/tech/twitter-arbitrary-suspension-public-space 

Sanjay Hegde can come back to Twitter if he deletes his ‘offensive’ tweet—but says he won’t oblige Oct 31, 2019
Senior Supreme Court advocate, Sanjay Hegde is furious with Twitter for suspending his account-- twice consecutively-- in the past week. Speaking to ThePrint, Hegde said that deliberate targeting and mass reporting of his account by certain forces is what caused his account to be suspended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_feGuKnSko

After KRK, another Indian decides to take on Twitter legally for suspending his account 5th Nov. 2019 https://www.opindia.com/2019/11/sanjay-hegde-twitter-account-suspended-international-court/