States and social media: should we distrust one, the other, or both?

@ElentirENG ES 8·27·2024 · 5:31 0

Maybe it's because of my age, but I realize that I'm beginning to tread carefully when it comes to expressing my opinion on these issues.

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If experience teaches you anything, it is that the world is more complex than we sometimes think and not everything is what it seems. I say this in light of the growing debate over freedom of expression on social media, a debate fueled by events such as the arrest of the owner of Telegram in France, accused of not collaborating with the authorities of that country in the prosecution of various crimes, or the letter from Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, acknowledging pressure from the Biden administration to censor his network without going through the courts, which is a clear violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Pavel Durov's arrest: a political decision by Macron?

On the case of Telegram owner Pavel Durov, yesterday the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, said that the arrest was not a political measure, and added: "It is up to the judges to decide on this matter." However, the arrest order came from the Ministry of the Interior within the framework of an investigation by the Prosecutor's Office, which, as is the case in Spain, is at the government's disposal.

What interest could Macron have in Telegram?

What would Macron be seeking with this arrest? It is obvious: to exercise greater control over Telegram, under the excuse of pursuing crimes, but with an eye on controlling behavior that is absolutely legal. I do not remember France taking such drastic action against Twitter when that network tolerated the Taliban while censoring Trump, at a time when Jack Dorsey seemed intent on expelling all conservatives from that social network. There was also no scandal when at the same time, Twitter tolerated messages calling for the attack and killing of members of Vox, a conservative party that has been the victim of a wave of harassment and attacks by the far left.

Twe take into account that Macron has been seriously threatening fundamental rights in France for years, so he does not deserve any credibility when he says he defends freedom of expression. Let us remember that in 2023, the French president also singled out Meta (Facebook) and Google for not having very strict moderation policies, something that sounds like a bad joke given the repeated attacks by these companies on freedom of speech, especially that of conservative people and organizations.

Some things to keep in mind about Telegram

Does that mean Telegram is completely blameless? No. In fact, I don’t think any social media company is. Yesterday, Russian opposition journalist Konstantin Sonin made a point in The Moscow Times that we should keep in mind before taking too passionate an opinion about a person like Pavel Durov:

"In fact, nobody knows what Telegram shares with which governments and under what conditions. There’s no question that Putin’s secret services and intelligence agencies wanted Durov to give them control over Telegram, just as they did with VKontakte. It’s less clear how much he actually yielded. During protests in Bashkortostan a few years ago, it seemed that the FSB was able to use Telegram data. During the Russia-Ukraine war, a popular Ukrainian channel helping Russian soldiers to desert was censored."

Sonin believes that Durov "certainly made good use of the opportunities provided by Putin’s corrupt and militaristic regime, but he is also a victim of that same regime. It’s a complicated case, no matter how you look at it."

Big tech companies and their ability to influence

Obviously, as a classic liberal, I distrust all states, and I believe that political power must be clearly limited because rulers have historically demonstrated their propensity to abuse their power, in one way or another. Such abuses also occur in democratic countries, and the state attacks on freedom of expression that we are seeing lately are a clear example of this.

However, just because we should distrust states does not mean that we should direct our distrust exclusively against them. We classic liberals too often forget that abuse of power is not a flaw exclusive to politicians: it also occurs among companies, particularly among the largest ones, such as the big technology companies, including the main social media companies: some of them have more power than many states, due to their enormous capacity to influence public debate on an international scale.

Three years ago, in the midst of another debate about the censorship being applied by some of these companies, I pointed out here that if these companies decided to invade the political sphere, they could effectively take over a country by stifling public debate and altering an electoral campaign to their liking, to benefit the party or candidate that favored them the most. This is what some of them clearly did in 2020, as demonstrated by Zuckerberg's letter in favor of Biden.

What happens when a state and a big tech company join forces

Despite my disagreements with him, I must point out that Donald Trump wanted to put a stop to these practices with Section 230 and with his "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship", which denounced the following:

"One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military. Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights."

This shows that a social network can be a dangerous ally of a state that wants to attack fundamental rights, and something like this should alert us to the risk that this social network could decide on its own what can and cannot be said at a global level. We must bear in mind that the thirst for power is much more dangerous than greed and it does not only occur among politicians. I think it is great that there are businessmen who are active defenders of freedom of expression, like Elon Musk, but I think it is necessary to have a certain distrust towards all those who have too much power in their hands, whether they are politicians or businessmen. Power corrupts even more than money.

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Photo: Camilo Jiménez.