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Concrete measures to bring Facebook back on the right track

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Ian Bremmer

President of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media and author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism

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Common sense measures can be imposed to prevent Facebook from dividing society without dismantling or harming the company. More generally, a global “COP” on the “disruption of the digital space” should be held every year.

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Facebook offers a product that provides social interaction, information and news consumed by 3 billion people. This is why it is crucial that critics, lawmakers and regulators have accused the company of using algorithms favoring extreme, hateful and often bogus content in order to generate traffic and maximize profits. Its CEO Mark Zuckerberg categorically denies these accusations, but governments around the world are beginning to understand the extent of the threat these practices pose.

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Let’s be clear: Facebook is not opposed to calls for new rules. The company does not wish to be directly responsible for safeguarding democracy. She wants to make money and keep her competitive edge. Its leaders are not trying to create algorithms for the purpose of polarizing the population. Their goal is to develop the business by retaining users. Facebook management said they wanted the government to fix, for the entire internet and social networks, new rules on how they work and on what information may or may not be published and that these rules be applied fairly to all businesses.

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Political paralysis

But part of the reason Facebook bosses are calling for change is because they don’t expect these changes to happen.

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Part of the reason Facebook bosses are calling for change is because they don’t expect these changes to happen.

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There is indeed unlikely politicians will change how Facebook works since they cannot agree on the nature of the problem let alone on what action to take. In Washington, right-wing public authorities accuse Facebook of giving in to “political correctness” pressure, a form of censorship imposed by the left: any honest discussion of serious political and social problems, they claim, often falls outside the bounds of what is considered “socially acceptable”. They cite the case of Donald Trump – who was “banned from platform” by the company earlier this year – to claim that the right is much more often silenced than the left.

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Meanwhile, left politicians believe that the real problem is at the level of the enormous influence and gigantic power of Facebook in the market and the dissemination by the platform of “fake news” invented by the right for, for example, to support the false accusation that the US presidential elections were “stolen” from Donald Trump. They warn of the danger of increased polarization in the country. If the right and the left cannot agree on this problem, they will not be able to find a common solution..

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Regulation hampered by the Chinese threat

This story also has a geopolitical dimension. The leaders of the United States and China are increasingly convinced that they are engaged in a struggle for future technological domination.

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If US regulators take action that could weaken tech giants like Facebook, they will undermine national security and the “online” values ​​they say they believe in.

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The United States critically depend on the creativity of the private sector in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to maintain the country’s competitive advantage in the development of artificial intelligence. The China it relies on state power to concentrate financial and other resources on a more centralized technology development strategy. If US regulators take steps that could weaken tech giants like Facebook – at a time when China is collecting and processing data produced by 1.3 billion Chinese people, without much privacy – they will undermine national security and the “online” values ​​in which they claim to believe.

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Common sense measures

However, it is possible to impose common sense measures to prevent Facebook from dividing society without dismantling or harming the company.

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Anonymous accounts and “bots” would be banned.

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First of all, it is necessary remove political advertising. This would prevent the spread of political “fake news” and raise the level of discourse. Then it is necessary modify algorithms to reduce the place taken by national policy on the site in general. Third, just like on the social media site LinkedIn, you need to ensure that each user’s data is verified and that they really are real people. Anonymous accounts and “bots” would be banned. We must also require all users to sign a pledge to abide by the rules against hate speech and disinformation, and then check that people expelled from the site cannot re-register under another name.

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These modest first steps could bring beginning of a solution to the challenges posed, not only by Facebook, but by all digital technologies. The best strategy for regulators and the public would be toopen a wide discussion on how best to adapt to a world in which tech companies have increasing power over their digital spaces.

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World leaders have met annually since the mid-1990s to discuss action to address climate change. Just like rising sea levels and the emergence of extreme weather events, we must act without delay to limit as much as possible the damage that information technology societies can inflict on democracy and to society. This is a top priority, as the technological evolution of our way of life, the way we collect information and our understanding of the world is much faster than global warming.

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