Facebook’s Darwinian Encounter

In its harshest terms, Darwin’s quote can be read to say, “adapt or die.”  Facebook must now confront this grim reality for the first time in its existence.  Having held to their policies in a time saturated with change, they are being unimaginably criticized and boycotted. Perhaps a surprise to Facebook more than to many observers.

For at least the past ten years, Facebook has steadfastly dismissed most of the red flags that have been brought to their attention. Content empowering racism, division, and hate has been a major topic of disagreement between Facebook and anti-hate groups for a long time.

The historic problems with Facebook have been more obvious to members of the internet community who are more attuned to the intersection of extremist and mainstream internet, but the problems were there, and Facebook knew it. Many years would go by before any research was done into the extent, intent, impact, or players in the hate appearing on Facebook.  

Facebook’s policy, then and now, is to let more content on the platform to allow debate, discussion, and discourse. To bring more material to the Marketplace of Ideas. Although racism, xenophobia, misogyny and marginalization should all be discussed, it is a very different thing to just allow it. Such policies have always been exploited. That is not feeding discourse. It is feeding hate. Instead of allowing bad content as a rule and removing it in exceptional circumstances, perhaps a policy of restricting bad content and allow it by exception is more circumspect.

Facebook ascended, in part, as the result of an unpopular move by MySpace to implement an eceptionally strong policy against hateful and inappropriate content. Reasonably, Facebook leveraged MySpace’s radical change to its own advantage, luring countless users away from MySpace. Unfortunately, it appears the lesson Mark Zuckerberg took away from that episode is that anti-hate policies are destructive to a platform’s health.  Perhaps there was a time when that was true, but that time has passed.

Any content area on the internet, if left unmoderated, will eventually be abused.  We have seen it time and again. There are no exceptions that come to mind. Those situations makes the valid Marketplace of Ideas look a bit like a burned out storefront.

Trump’s strident, abusive, and often irresponsible rhetoric is supported and enhanced by his online content. A common tactic in traditional hate communities it to spread supporting, self-validating material over numerous platforms and listed under many names to obscure its intent. Over time, patterns emerge and manipulation taking place becomes obvious. The deception is exposed and the true motivations uncovered. Hate, marginalization, disenfranchisement, and alienation can often be the sum of many parts calculated to come together when desired.  

We came into the information age thinking we knew what it was about and how it worked.  If Facebook is not prepared to adapt, and act against the weaponization of its platform,  the results are inevitable. There is always another contender in the wings.  

Jonathan Vick, International Networks Against Cyber Hate, 
North American Representative

America's South Africa Lesson

South Africa, the once ultimate example of racial injustice, may have something to teach us about resolving the systemic racism in the United States. I was in South Africa (SA) in 2017 and saw how a country which could easily have tipped into a race war, decided to step back, and take another direction.

I am not black. Before going to South Africa, I knew little about it. I was there to work on emerging cyber hate and online abuse issues.  I came away with an immense respect for a beautiful country with amazing people who have accomplished something the United States has yet to achieve…creating a framework for interracial relations, airing grievances, and working towards solutions on deep-seated problems. This is not to say South Africa found the magic wand to all their problems, but they certainly have done something impressive.

The argument is often made that current populations should not be held responsible or pay the price for long standing problems. As it is very hard to hold the original instigators of a century old problem responsible, and it is the ultimate injustice to hold  unempowered victims of ongoing repression and racism responsible for their own situation, the only answer is for current society, as a whole, to be responsible for addressing inequity.

Many white South Africans may have lived within the apartheid system, but not many currently alive created the system. Similarly, no living Americans were slave owners, but many lived and accepted segregation in various forms. But there is no question that the legacy of the systems and laws put in place long ago are still a significant problem for populations of color around the world. As these disadvantaged, marginalized communities represent a significant percentage of the population, their suffering and frustration is unarguably impacting the larger society. In this way, bigotry, racism, tacit bias, amarginalizationnd  are more than just a black, immigrant or minority issue. It compromises society’s morality.

Looking back at history and pointing fingers at the players, policies, and political sources of racial issues provide context, but not always solutions. The context is important to help see the actions which allowed racism to become systematized and the way it is manifested today. The trap is not moving the conversations into the present. History cannot be changed but the future can be.

20+ years ago the vast majority of South Africa stood together to say, “this has to stop.” There was no question that it was going to be difficult, painful, costly, and dangerous. There was also no question that pointing at the past and saying, “I wasn’t there, it’s not my fault” was not deemed a reason for inaction by anyone. Everyone needed to participate.

The system that evolved with the leadership and inspiration of Nelson Mandela is, what I would call, a forum of obligation. Groups, councils, commissions and organization which were formed, abided by one overriding rule, if you join, you are included, your input will be taken, your voice will be heard in full, but you are required to sit and give that full consideration to everyone else who is included. No matter what. If you disrupt others, deny them their privilege to speak and be heard or storm out of the proceedings, you lose your seat at the table. This was my understanding and what I witnessed.

I attended meetings of various commissions and government bodies which were brutally frank in a way that no American legislative or policy body would ever withstand or tolerate.

Current generations taking responsibility for the past, empowers and enables them to have the hard conversations about the ongoing legacies of the past. This is what South Africa has done. Something the United States has not. In the U.S. reconstruction never finished the job of achieving equality, it was simply abandoned. The Civil Rights Movement moved the needle just enough to assuage people on both sides without ever making the fundamental, foundational, irreversible changes in society that were needed.  The hardest problems were just passed to the next generation.

Speaking the unspoken, the unspeakable, was a big part of the break from the monarchy and the establishment of the United States. Now we find ourselves in a position where tolerance, civility and “don’t rock the boat” culture has enabled the marginalization and abuse of many groups in our society. All of it wrong. All of it transgenerational.

South Africa showed us where to start. The U.S. can stop passing its bad racial and sociological legacies on to the next generation.  We can have the hard conversations. We can better understand each other’s pain and make the most difficult changes. We need to start by making a commitment as a nation and a people that racism and systemic bias against any group of people in our country or by our country damages and diminishes what we have, what we want and what we leave our children.

Trump Internet Age

The internet has a Donald Trump problem of its own making. In general, it was delighted with the emergence of the conflict, sensationalism, increased activity and profit which accompanied Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Now we know that very little consideration was given to where the advertising revenue came from, where the increased traffic came from and the implications of a precedent being set by giving unrestricted access to a known fabulist, misogynist and bully.

In 2008, I attended a generally congenial meeting, orchestrated by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), held at Stamford University, with platforms and service providers including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Twitter. At that meeting there was one overriding message,  “Hate, racism, and incitement on the internet was a pervasive and growing problem”. The hate protagonists were active in many places and coordinating their efforts across platforms.

Subsequent meetings, two years later, were attended by over a dozen industry representatives. At these events, co-sponsored by ADL and an EU Inter-Parliamentary group, evidence was presented of on-platform and inter-platform activity used to support off-platform agendas of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and terrorist groups. The uniform response by the industry was that there was no evidence that online hate had any connection to real world violence.

ADL suggested a study to determine the extent of cyber hate and the vectors of transmission being exploited. This could settle the issue one way or the other. The major industry companies declined at that time. They had no interest in opening that particular pandora’s box of knowledge. Once a study confirmed the online hate there would be no way to deny awareness of it or the need to consider responsibility.

For years, the portfolio of internet industry leaders maintained they were only responsible for activity on their own platform, that their terms of service adequately protected users, and their preeminent goal of allowing the broadest variety of speech was in the public interest. In response the ADL, and many other anti-hate, safety and public advocacy groups vocally called for explicit terms of service which would be rigorously and universally enforced.

By 2014, with the rising political polarization, social tensions and increasing hate online, the stage was set for the emergence of the Trump Internet Age (TIA). The first personalities paving the way for Trump’s online behavior were a collection of different racists, anti-Semites and segregationists. Their underlying motivations were unmistakable. Years of appeals to platforms regarding Terms of Service violations resulted in removal of the most egregious content. Much of the more subtle, manipulative, insidious dog whistle content continued unabated.

Political campaigns have long been considered a sacred place where free speech was given great latitude. Non-profit and publicly funded entities have long refrained from commenting on campaigns or endorsing candidates for fear of threatening their funding or not for profit certification. The internet companies, as self-designated “front pages” of public opinion, strove to make no judgement calls. We now know that this position by the platforms was manipulated to turn them into propaganda conduits. The companies were deeply entrenched in a philosophy that bad content and untruth would be eclipsed by the good. Bad actors quickly dominated every space on the internet they could.

The, August 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia irrefutably demonstrated how hate speech leads to violence and how inter-platform manipulation of the internet is used to support the real world agendas of hate groups. Many platforms quickly banned extremist users, websites and groups related to inciting, supporting, or celebrating the violence at Charlottesville. Significant changes in policies were also made in response to the violence and online exploitation linked to the riot. Unfortunately, this clearly points out that the industry was far behind in policies and enforcement despite warnings and repeated requests by experts on the issue.

The shift that started in in the aftermath of the 2016 election and Charlottesville violence and other mass attacks by extremists, has now caught up to political propaganda. Trump is extremely upset that the same latitude which allowed platforms to permit his misinformation, also impowers them to speak out against him and apply all their rules of behavior to him, if they so choose.

The internet industry must now confront the ecology they have created. When self-validating distortions by a small-time conspiracy theorist are treated as fact, it lays the groundwork for self-validating distortions by the President of the United States, or any member of government, to be treated as fact. The internet leaders are now at a junction where they must work together to create an industry policy and practice coalitions or face an imminent and inevitable effort by government to restrict and control the industry. Trump is their Frankenstein’s monster. They are Frankensteins and have created the possible means of their own possible demise.