Time to break up social media firms? MPs and activists on the threat to democracy from online disinformation

Western democracy is under severe threat from autocratic regimes' use of Facebook and Twitter

A gathering of MPs, lawyers, journalists and internet activists in London Tuesday night heard multiple calls for social media platforms to be held accountable for attacks on the democratic process by bots, hacking, troll farms and the spread of disinformation, with some calling for their breakup.

Conservative MP Dominic Grieve, chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, spoke of the nature of the global threat, which is being used to undermine public trust in democratic institutions and the media.

"The system is being abused by nation states, and other organisations and individuals to magnify, amplify or denigrate others in an artificial way by giving the impression that something is exciting great public interest when it isn't, or challenging something with thousands of interventions generated by machine," he told the audience at the Never Again event, organised by the campaining group The Convention.

The committee he chairs is working on a report that details Russia's cyber activities and activities on the Internet in hacking and trying to influence the outcome of the US election in particular, he said.

Grieve believes the answer is to educate the public on these methods, but he conceded the challenge is significant. As the recipient of a number of targeted attacks himself, he said anonymity of the web is troublesome.

"There is a powerful argument that anonymity on the internet is without justification, and there is a right to know from whence come those who wish to communicate on it," Grieve said.

Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat leadership hopeful, outlined the scale of the disinformation problem.

Five of the top ten Twitter accounts mentioning Brexit parties prior to the recent European elections were producing more than 140 tweets over an eight-hour or one in every 3.3 minutes, she said, while in Italy there were 23 Facebook pages which collectively had 2.4 million followers spreading false information on migration and vaccines.

"These are the threats we share to our democracy and our shared truth," Swinson said, calling for digital political advertising to require an imprint, like printed materials, and for an effective cap on political donations.

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr said the spread of political disinformation vial online platforms could not be more serious.

"Whats happening is more serious than just politics. It's an attack on our sovereignty and the rule of law," she said. The phenomenon is global, she went on, and it's being orchestrated by "the same authoritarians and being mediated by tech platforms."

Cadwalladr pointed to the lethargic, almost non-existent response to the abuse of electoral law by the British authorities, and the insignificant fines doled out to law-breaking campaigns. Facebook could make investigators' job easier if they would hand over the information on funding of political ads, but that is unlikely without significant pressure.

"The law won't save us, and the regulators won't save us, we have to save ourselves", she concluded.

Cadwalladr suggested using shame as a weapon against the tech giants. Despite a reprimand from the UN, Mark Zuckerberg has avoided making any public mention of the use of Facebook to propagate mass killings in Myanmar, she pointed out, and he and his deputies have also refused to appear before the government of the UK and Canada to answer questions about data sharing in political campaigns.

"There are clear moral lines," she said, adding that Facebook now had to pay more to attract employees as a result of its tarnished public image.

Paul Hilder, co-founder of the OpenDemocracy.net website and campaigning group Avaaz, said that across the globe oligarchs are seeking to extend their power through the use of social media. The early promise of the Web as a democratising force had been "mugged" he said, but it's not really about the technology.

"What went wrong is oligarchy," Hilder said. "The landscape at play is oligarchy and abuse of power. There are all sorts of loopholes and vulnerabilities in our democracies." Hilder added his voice to the growing demand for the power of big technology companies to be curtailed. "I think we need to work at the strategic level and think very big about things like breaking up big tech," he proclaimed.

Despite the lack of meaningful action by the authorities, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has had a "seismic effect on the public conversation," he added. Politicians from across the political spectrum are at least starting to feel the way the wind is blowing, even if it seems unlikely that many will follow through.

Delivering the final keynote of the evening, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Reuniting Britain Post-Brexit, Stephen Kinnock MP, said that social media giants need to spend a much larger proportion of their enormous earnings safeguarding democracy and the rule of law. "We need them to invest huge amounts more in fact-checking and balance, and to stop behaving as platforms and start behaving as publishers," he said.

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