Social media platforms need clear policies on which they commit to a consistent refusal to help heads of state incite violence. This would help them to avoid complicity in grave human rights violations, and it is the responsibility of governments as well as civil society to hold them to account.
The social media companies reacted, first blocking particular communications including videos of the speech, and then suspending Trump’s accounts.
Trump has been barred from using Facebook and Twitter. The platform’s decisions have been criticised. Broadly, critics argue that social media companies should not “censor” a president or make what conservatives see as politically biased decisions about speech.
The latter claim wrongly assumes that all ideologically conservative speech is the same as harmful speech. Trump could have stopped at expressing dissatisfaction about the electoral outcome. However, he chose to insist that the election was “stolen”, calling for action. This took his speech beyond the realm of political opinion into the realm of incitement.
Recently, on June 2021, we saw that Twitter removed the blue tick, which lets people know that an account on the social media platform is authentic, from the personal handle of vice president M Venkaiah Naidu.
On November 2020, Twitter temporarily locked Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s account due to an “inadvertent error” and the decision was reversed immediately.
On May, 2021, Twitter also suspended Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor Manoj Sinha’s account due to an “automated systems error” and was restored later, reports news agency PTI.
There is a growing understanding that social media companies play a fundamental role in shaping public discourse and political participation. At the same time, these companies have been accused of failing to address serious abuse issues in various parts of the world, often for political reasons. This comment explores how international human rights law applies to social media companies and their platforms and suggests three areas where they should substantially improve their performance.
The greater the power, the greater the restrictions. Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies have enormous power, and can generate a lot of revenue from advertisers. Obviously they are not going to be banning someone like Trump who generates a ton of revenue through social media engagement, like tweets deemed to be breaking “Rules of Twitter”. But we may not need to wait for a whistle-blower to reveal shady practices of these companies. Just watch out for an insider with some inside knowledge that knows how things really work behind the scenes.
Social media companies already have strict policies against hate speech and threats of violence, but these can be hard to enforce when it comes to a democratically elected official. Governments may make it easier to prosecute such cases in the future if they are able to trace online messages back to a particular individual or group of individuals. The ability to do so could make social media companies less willing to allow controversial speakers.
Social media campaigns are becoming more and more sophisticated in their ability to spread disinformation and fake news. The threats to Indian democracy from both foreign and domestic sources, however, differ substantially and the issue of “fake news” in the form of a concerted disinformation campaign by a foreign country should be viewed as wholly separate from the issue of harmful, intentionally misleading information spread by domestic entities.
Social media has been playing a vital role in the political life of nation states in the contemporary period. These platforms have become a new fourth pillar, alongside executive, judiciary and legislative mechanisms. However, these platforms are now prone to being used for election meddling or online propaganda. The disinformation agents spread fake news to discredit electoral candidates and weaken public trust on social media platforms.
Disinformation is real and it's problematic, especially if we consider some of the facts and sources that were used to spread disinformation in India. For India, the question is whether the government is doing enough to combat this problem.