International Politics

[benji]

Graunaid publishing a lot of articles demanding British imperialism and restricting the rights of people globally:

I worked at Twitter for most of Trump’s presidential term, serving as the most senior executive outside the US.

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It’s hard to convince people now who didn’t use the product during happier days, through events such as the London 2012 Olympics or early X Factor, but Twitter used to be joyously good fun to use. A laissez-faire approach to abuse sadly allowed much of the carefree humour to be scared off.

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The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society.
The idea that a boycott – whether by high-profile users or advertisers – should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful. Other countries have banned the app, but we probably don’t want to find ourselves in a WhatsApp group with Russia, Turkey and Venezuela, the other countries on that side of the argument.

In the short term, Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability for their actions under existing laws. Britain’s Online Safety Act 2023 should be beefed up with immediate effect. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team should reflect if Ofcom – the media regulator that seems to be continuously challenged by the output and behaviour of outfits such as GB News – is fit to deal with the blurringly fast actions of the likes of Musk.

What else should change? Social media should have norms and standards that are publicly accountable. Users should have the right to have their grievances reviewed and acted on by a real person within a week, and escalated to an ombudsman if they don’t like the resolution. Ofcom should have the right to demand certain voices, like Tommy Robinson’s, are deplatformed. Anyone who doubts the practicality of this should take a look at social media in Germany, where platforms are significantly more accountable. In Germany, illegal Nazi content is routinely removed within minutes of it being reported. Liability extends to local leaders and it is incredibly mobilising.

In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines. Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind. It’s also worth remembering that the rules of what is permitted on X are created by one of Musk’s lesser known advisers, a Yorkshire man called Nick Pickles, who leads X’s global affairs team.

What’s the answer to this problem? Ideally, all politicians, journalists and influencers would defect en masse from X and use somewhere else as the global exchange for instant news and opinion. So far that’s presented a collective action problem: even governments who loathe X don’t want to leave while it remains a central forum.

It’s clear that schools should be teaching information hygiene, so children learn to avoid fake news the way they would avoid poisonous food. Clear, too, that we need online safety legislation with teeth and if, as Sadiq Khan has suggested, that means toughening up laws so new they are yet to be fully implemented, so be it. I like the idea of fines for social-media companies that don’t honour their own declared standards, though many are so rich they won’t feel it: better to fine the directors of those companies, hitting them in their own pockets. And, as Lies That Kill, a timely new book by Elaine Kamarck and Darrell West argues, given that this is a global problem, it will require a global solution: which “means that countries need to negotiate with each other on ways to cooperate in the fight against disinformation”. If 2025 sees Starmer sit down with a President Kamala Harris, this should be one of the first items on the agenda.

For now, though, there needs to be clarity on the nature of the problem. Lies can indeed kill and, though there are of course many others, one of the world’s most prolific enemies of truth is Elon Musk. He is surely the global far right’s most significant figure, and he holds the world’s largest megaphone. As he may put it, a battle to defeat him is now inevitable – and it has to be won.