Conspiracy, misinformation and censorship: the rocky relationship of social media and democracy
The suspension of the former President of the United States from social media sends a clear message, yet simultaneously sets an insidious precedent.
Trump supporters outside the Capitol Building. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
A president adamant to cling onto office, fomenting violence on the streets and manipulating social media for his cause. You would be forgiven for thinking this is in reference to the shocking scenes emerging from America two weeks ago. Republican protestors, incited by the virulent online rhetoric of former President Donald Trump, stormed the US Capitol Building, mounting an all-out assault on democracy and, in their attempts to prevent Congress from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, left five dead. In fact, these issues are equally the hallmarks of the recent Ugandan election, where the tribulations of the American nation find an interesting parallel.
The Uganda election of January 14 saw incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, aged 76, rebut energetic challenger Bobi Wine to win a sixth presidential term, garnering 59 per cent of the vote. Rapper-turned-politician, Mr Wine, 38, championed the fiery spirit of a disenfranchised urban youth in his campaign. Attempting to end Mr Museveni’s 34 years in office, the self-styled “ghetto president” is part of a movement across Africa striving to displace aged, autocratic leaders in a continent where the median age is below 20 and democratic freedoms are being curtailed.
Mr Trump’s pledge via his Twitter account to “fight like hell” against removal from office was clearly a mentality shared by President Museveni in his campaign. Government suppression of Mr Wine’s supporters in November killed 54 people, as two days of demonstrations saw armed police open fire into supporters of the opposition. Subject to beatings, arrests and what he claims were assassination attempts, Mr Wine now finds himself under house arrest following his defeat, preventing him from contesting the election’s dubious legitimacy. Mr Museveni, like his American counterpart, recognised the power of social media. On Monday of last week, three days before the election, Facebook announced it had taken down a network of fake accounts linked to Uganda’s information ministry, disseminating fraudulent information about Mr Museveni’s opposition. The following day, Uganda’s communication regulator ordered internet providers to block all social media platforms and message applications, extended to a full ban on internet access on election day. Mr Wine’s campaign, which as he articulated to CNN in December relied so heavily on social media to communicate with his supporters, was crippled. Restored after five days of the blackout, internet access in Uganda clearly acts as one facet of Mr Museveni’s machinery of state control.
The political influence of social media that Mr Museveni feared in Uganda finds form in the US. According to Pew Research Centre, 53 per cent of Americans rely on social media for news “often” or “sometimes”, with 39 per cent expecting the information provided on sites to be accurate. Given this unprecedented engagement with social networks, the dissemination of misinformation and conspiracy is a formidable weapon. The QAnon conspiracy theory and its adherents, many of whom were instrumental in the Capitol insurrection, is demonstrative of this threat. Vindicated by Mr Trump, who claimed members of the movement “love our country”, the conspiracy that a cabal of paedophiles in government is plotting against Mr Trump has gained disconcerting traction online through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Branded a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI, QAnon was banned by Facebook in October – three years after it first emerged. The proliferation of rumours of voter fraud, propounded via Mr Trump’s Twitter, have mired the election in controversy. Declarations online by Mr Trump, such as stating “VOTER FRAUD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY”, have gripped his supporters and the population in general, with only 59 per cent of Americans trusting that their votes will be cast and counted accurately.
When the long-simmering tensions on social media came to the boil in the US Capitol Building on January 6, social networks took the expedient response of banning Mr Trump. With Facebook and Instagram suspending Mr Trump temporarily, and Twitter opting for a permanent ban, the “de-platforming” of the former President of one of the most powerful countries in the world sets a dangerous precedent, a fact acknowledged on Twitter by the site’s CEO Jack Dorsey. The necessity to stymie Mr Trump’s fraudulent claims online is undoubted. Yet, allowing the CEOs of big-tech companies to arbitrarily decide who can appear on their sites is a precedent that, as articulated by Russian anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, could be “exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world.”
The insidious shockwaves of this decision have already been felt in Uganda. Mr Museveni’s government has appropriated the rhetoric of social media companies to justify the ban on these sites in their nation. Ugandan minister Betty Amongi, explaining the decision to the BBC, stated that “there has been a lot of misuse of social media to spread unfounded information that has been discrediting government officials”. In a nation where already 61 per cent of people believe that opposition parties are “often” or “always” silenced by the government, the precedent of private companies banning politicians’ online presence will only further consolidate Mr Museveni’s undemocratic grip on the mantle of power in Uganda.
The international community must act swiftly to ensure social networks’ barring of Mr Trump does not provide ballast for less-democratic governments’ curtailment of free speech. As advocated by the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, the US should follow her country’s suit in passing laws restricting hate speech and misinformation online, rather than give private companies this power of discernment. Yet, in the light of the First Amendment, any such debate in the US is fraught. Allowing corporate bodies, rather than public institutions, to guide the protection of democracy online risks private interests dictating censorship. The creation of external committees to make censorship decisions for these companies would go some way to combat this. Facebook has embarked on this path, creating a new independent Oversight Board to review appeals against the company’s decisions to censor content on their site. In Europe, the proposed EU Digital Services Act would further place power in the hands of public bodies, implementing checks and restrictions on sites to ensure powerful transparency in the online realm and a “clear accountability” for online platforms regarding content on their networks.
The bonds forged between social media and politics in recent years will only be galvanised by the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic. As so many aspects of life irrevocably shift into the virtual realm, it is paramount that governments and social networks work in tandem to clearly delineate the parameters of expression online and ensure censorship measures are both decided with the public’s interest at the forefront and, critically, enacted with caution. Speaking at his inauguration on Wednesday this week, President Joe Biden declared “democracy has prevailed”. Evidently, in the established democracies of the West, with their systems of checks and balances and (supposedly) high levels of popular accountability, the threat that online misinformation and censorship poses is frightening, yet thankfully not fatal. In Uganda, and across the African continent where political freedoms are in peril, it could be another nail in democracy’s coffin.
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