When Bulls Fight: Of Social Media Platforms’ Power and the Future of Digital Democracy

This article is part of the series—Raisina Edit 2022

---

The United Nations (UN) Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation dubbed this the Age of Digital Interdependence, with “uncharted peaks, promises untold and the risks of losing our foothold apparent”. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic and a series of catastrophic events across the globe have given credence to just how relevant this framing is, as the panel launched a call for digital cooperation to be added to the already packed global governance agenda. Collectively, the crises that have kicked off this decade elucidate the primacy of digital technologies across political, economic, and sociocultural spheres. The war in Ukraine is particularly significant in spotlighting issues that will impact digitalisation and technology governance. Social media platforms, in particular, have expectedly been a key theatre of information dissemination, communication, and organisation. The Ukraine government has fully leveraged these platforms to speak to the world, and issue calls to action. Ukrainians have also been documenting and narrating on-ground events firsthand. Much of the world is one click away from real-time insights, not only from the established media’s news cycle, but also—and possibly to a greater extent—via the apps to which we congregate online.

< style="color: #006a96">The Ukraine government has fully leveraged these platforms to speak to the world, and issue calls to action. Ukrainians have also been documenting and narrating on-ground events firsthand.

The platforms and tech companies have, in turn, taken unprecedented steps. Value judgements have been made and explicit actions taken—from granting exemptions to prevailing hate speech rules  , to suppressing circulation of content from Russian state-affiliated media, to downranking sites on search engines (associated with Russian disinformation), to suspending advertising and new sales of tech products and services to Russian audiences. The significance of these unilateral decisions made by search engines, software vendors, and social media platforms warrants critical inquiry. For one, they have challenged the notion that tech companies are neutral actors and mere service providers. What it means for private actors to determine how governments use their platforms is a shift in power balances and technology governance with implications beyond this war. While the tech companies’ actions seem to pass muster in western capitals, how they are interpreted by other regions, including by Russia, are an important dimension to observe in the near and long term. This display of power by these technology companies brings up several urgent questions. Politically, this crisis has been described as a fight for democracy, which is under threat worldwide. Digital democracy, it follows, is what is at stake in cyberspace. What then do we make of these decisive actions by private actors that have impacted the information environment with lasting public consequences?  Do the platforms’ moves pass the democracy litmus test? As analysts have pointed out, there is little to no legal requirement necessitating the actions these corporations have taken. Instead, these are individual companies making decisions on technology access and reach, with reverberating consequences beyond cyberspace. Related questions are on transparency and accountability for these corporations’ (in)actions, and the decisions they can make and have made in other domains and geographies, notably in developing countries. To which governments and laws are they answerable? Are the actions taken symbolic of defending democracy, or are we to take it that defending and enforcing digital democracy is about actions and decisions whose reasoning we collectively are inadequately informed about?

< style="color: #006a96">Related questions are on transparency and accountability for these corporations’ (in)actions, and the decisions they can make and have made in other domains and geographies, notably in developing countries.

These actions have signalled yet again the sheer power that a few private companies have over the flow of information and on digital communication. In the case of state-affiliated Russian media, these corporations have benefitted from amplifying these platforms in the past, to bolster engagement metrics against which they have served eyeballs for advertisements. While the rationale seemingly is to suppress misinformation and disinformation, it indicates that social media giants are the judge, jury, and executioner of what comprises democracy and democratic action in cyberspace. Russia, in response to Meta’s hate speech exemptions, has moved to ban Meta platforms from operating in the country (with the exception of WhatsApp); Russian courts have found the company guilty of engaging in 'extremist activity’ and demanded that the tech giants be held accountable for their actions against Russia. Meta’s hate speech exemptions have also been condemned by the UN Secretary General. These moves will be noted across various capitals in the world, perhaps as precedent and plausibly as a threat. There will likely be consequences, intended or otherwise. Take Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy—in June 2021, the government banned Twitter indefinitely for deleting a post by President Muhammadu Buhari that violated its policies. The ensuing events are particularly instructive for the kinds of catalytic effects platforms’ decisions can have. The Nigerian government’s justifications for the ban—allowing its platform to be used in “undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”, Twitter’s purported “double standards” and not understanding the local context—were  given impetus by Twitter’s actions, which did not entail contacting the Nigerian government prior to deleting the provocative post. The seven-month ban on Twitter presented the Nigerian government an opportunity to additionally ban the use of virtual private networks to bypass restrictions and to pursue draconian social media regulations. Nigerian citizens, meanwhile, were caught in the crosshairs, starved off a key means of communication and business for months. While the ban has since been lifted, it is under an emboldened Nigerian government’s demands that Twitter establish a local office in the capital Abuja, pay taxes locally, register as a broadcaster, and “commit to being sensitive to national security and cohesion”, demands to which the company acquiesced.

< style="color: #006a96">The seven-month ban on Twitter presented the Nigerian government an opportunity to additionally ban the use of virtual private networks to bypass restrictions and to pursue draconian social media regulations.

If these platforms’ executives continue to operate in a manner that is inconsiderate of the disparate geographies, political economies, and complexities within which their users exist, digital democracy could become a pipe dream as the battles between platforms and non-western governments illustrate. For one, it could accelerate the trend of governments ordering shutdowns or instilling bans. These could be facilitated through the passing or amending of cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection laws and regulations to include clauses that infringe on the very freedoms that such legislative instruments are expected to protect. When bulls fight, it is the grass that suffers. The casualties in the stance that social media platforms have taken on the war in Ukraine are citizens, as was the case in Nigeria. With the Ukraine war, a wall disrupting information exchange across political and ideological divides has been erected, and it will have long-lasting, and possibly, devastating effects for the future of an interconnected information environment. The legitimacy of digital democracy as an ideal is now up for questioning, and that could yield adverse technology governance (re)actions by states. That these corporations are not answerable to many a domestic law could catalyse the formulation and adoption of draconian laws and regulations in other politically fraught contexts, as regimes grapple with how to exert their own power in the digital realm and over the tech giants. If these are the foothills of the digital age, we have ourselves a steep climb ahead.

• Media and Internet
• Cyber and Technology
• European Union
• Russia and Eurasia
• USA and Canada
• The Pacific, East and Southeast Asia
• Covid-19 pandemic
• crises
• cybersecurity
• CYBERSPACE
• data protection laws
• democracy
• digital
• Digital Democracy
• environment
• Nigeria
• Privacy
• Social Media Platforms
• technology
• Ukraine
• UNGA

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.