Somewhere at the heart of social media lies a new ‘human right’ that has been barely discussed, yet has opened a Pandora’s box of misplaced responsibility and global government enquiries.
It’s a human right to say whatever you like anonymously, or, at the very least, without responsibility for the truth of what you say or the damage it does.
It’s not a right that ever existed before, with nearly every legal system offering the facility to sue for libel, or slander in the event that misinformation was broadcast.
Somewhere at the heart of social media lies a new ‘human right’ that has been barely discussed, yet has opened a Pandora’s box of misplaced responsibility and global government enquiries.
It’s a human right to say whatever you like anonymously, or, at the very least, without responsibility for the truth of what you say or the damage it does.
It’s not a right that ever existed before, with nearly every legal system offering the facility to sue for libel, or slander in the event that misinformation was broadcast.
That legal framework previously and deliberately set boundaries to mistruths, with those who disseminated information required to prove its accuracy, or pay penalties and compensation.
Yet, as the world now grapples with a surge in fake news and turns to social media platforms to prevent that rise, few eyes have turned to the dislocation of action and responsibility that is the new foundation for our principal information channels.
At the extreme, anyone can now create an account on social media without any linkage to their identity: even linking an account to an email address can be satisfied with an email without any genuine identity.
Compare that with banking and financial services, which are replete with Know-Your-Customer regulations that require proof of identity and contacts to prevent fictitious accounts being used to launder money or fuel criminality.
Likewise, most regimes in the world now require proof of identity to purchase a phone SIM card in an effort to counter terrorism and end the consumer cons that had become commonplace from anonymous numbers. In all these domains, identity is the first base in responsibility and in preventing criminality.
Yet, when it comes to social media, no identity is necessary, which has created a global tool for illegality and manipulation.
That triggered a first wave of scandal over the streams of fake accounts being deployed to put out political messages. The information campaigns run by Oxford Intelligence were then further fuelled by apps that let mis-users access information about individual users’ profiles and interests, seeing Facebook hauled before parliamentary committees all over the world.
How was it going to stop this manufactured political interference? Yet, barely a mention was made of ID for every social media account. Indeed, the blind spot in the dialogue goes further still. Our social media platforms have been persistently pressurised to control content, and so we get Twitter’s policy of removing tweets that incite violence: which saw it permanently disable the account of former US President Donald Trump, in January this year, as he appeared to encourage democratic resistance that led to the ransacking of the seat-of-government Capitol Building in Washington.
It was the same policy, too, that in June saw Twitter delete posts from the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warning the south-eastern people of Nigeria of retribution for insurgency in support of Igbo separatism.
Twitter’s move in Nigeria promptly led to its banning and commentary around the world criticising the government for its authoritarianism in closing the channel. Yet, more recently, some voices have been raised asking how it is that we came to be in a position where a US corporation can define and intervene in African politics and the actions of a sovereign state or its president.
The same can be said for its actions in the US. Where the former US president can be found to have incited violence illegally, there are laws in place to handle that. We have international courts of human rights. We have sovereign supreme courts. We have law.
Why is it now the Twitter corporation that is our arbiter in a model that dislocates statements from personal responsibility? Certainly, it remains wanting in this, with some Nigerian commentators pointing to the platform’s scanty actions in closing down hate speech from the Iqbo separatists themselves.
It just would not be possible to create quite such ‘fake’ havoc in a world where every social media account had to belong to someone, who could be held accountable.
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