The English Brexit, the plebiscite for peace in Colombia, but above all, that Trump became the US president for the first time, raised the power of social networks and converted their potential for dirty campaigns in an obsession that today we call “Fake News”. Since then, the pressure on the platforms that manage the main social networks to control speeches before, during and after the elections has grown, reaching a climax in the current US elections before the possibility of Trump's re-election. .
In the run-up to the US elections As described by Carlos Cortes, the platforms, "have implemented various measures on the progess that they apply inconsistently, leaving many questions for the future," they do so under pressure between the pandemic and a Trump who screams and anticipates - without evidence - that he will be the victim of fraud. In a spiral where even after voting day, during the count and as I write, November 4, Facebook kept announcing new settings.
The self-regulation that the networks had been designing on issues of disinformation, is far from ideal, content moderation based on community standards has many problems and state regulation is looming. In any case, until two months ago the discussions on content moderation in electoral times included reflections on how we transferred to this medium the paradigm of facilitating the dissemination of political discourse. With the 2020 elections in the US, the scare due to the democratic crisis they face has us praising control demands made by various actors, including civil society, with peremptory requests to remove content. That is to say: from thinking about measures that respect freedom of expression, we go on to ask to censor whoever aspires to lead one of the nations that is a power in the world.
Be it by pressure or by instinct for survival, social networks, managed by large companies, assumed a central role in controlling political manipulation and containing possible violence in a divided and polarized country. The measures were mostly justified in that the US is an exceptional election in which democracy must be defended by controlling the messages that circulate in the public sphere.
Yes, Trump is authoritarian. Yes, the country is divided. Yes, there may be excesses. But, none of that is different from so many other recent electoral races around the world. So, does this character justify developing stronger norms by giving the platforms more power to shape the political debate at the peak of democracy -the elections-?
It is not a minor question. Until recently - before social networks - the paradigm was not to control the candidates' discourse, but to facilitate their dissemination. The Inter-American Human Rights System, for example, privileges the dissemination of political speeches during elections, when the voice of the people who dispute public office must be given the widest possible diffusion, to the point that our countries grant spaces in the open television to reach every corner.
The jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court, CELE reminds us, helps to understand that the discourse "about" and "from" politicians is of public interest because it seeks to protect those who criticize the powerful, freeing them from threats with actions for damages, but also, it is supported by the idea that the Public criticism gives the ability to know and learn about the ideas of people in public office or with political aspirations, and it is these people who are responsible for their actions.
What is the problem? Is the problem that what the candidate president thinks appears on social media or is it that in a country like the US an authoritarian liar is the president and has the support of half of the voters? All elections since social networks have been protagonists have faced that question and could not be demonstrated that the lies that circulate in these networks have the power to massively change the vote. What we know is that they are a powerful communication tool for campaigns -that they use them for good and for bad- and that there is great concern and research on the effects of disinformation for democracy in a more structural way -on how they affect the information ecosystem-. Still, I can't help but think that instead of analyzing the global political crisis we are discussing how we do not show it.
So even if there are those who claim that social networks were not news on November 3rd Because the pressure was effective in containing the misinformation, it is a claim that is difficult to prove. There were so many changes in the regulations that it is not possible to contrast and have indicators, in fact, this is true for the moderation of content in general where the lack of transparency and uniform criteria do not allow evaluating, Instead, it is possible that to follow that route We lose the power to deny the messages of the political campaigns, we will not be able to criticize them publicly because for that we would need to know the messages and those that are not politically correct will tend to disappear. Let's think, if it weren't Trump, would we agree to prevent a candidate from airing doubts about electoral fraud?
Here are some questions to ask us the day after the US elections end, is it fear that should guide the displacement of the red lines that protect political speeches, our right to inform ourselves and know who they want to address us? during the elections? Or is it the rules of the electoral process that should guarantee that this happens by favoring more information, not less? How do we want social networks to be in the future as a space for political debate? We are at a very early stage to know the real impact of the networks, it is clear that we do not know what to do and the court is changing. But while we think about it, it's worth keeping an eye on the issue of freedom of expression and thinking about how we can protect it.
Article by: @carobotero
Article published in El Espectador de Colombia, 9/11/2020: https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/las-redes-sociales-el-dia-despues-de-las-elecciones-en-eeuu/
Photo Credit: @claybanks