This chaotic world has always been a theatre for the big powers to flex their might, with one’s rise orchestrating another’s fall. Each unnerving more than its opponent, from giving death stares to each other in the cold war, engaging in various indirect brawls at foreign territories, to sometimes ending up in a Thucydides trap.
The last century witnessed the battle of ideologies which ended with the so-called ‘victory of Democracy’. Despite all other competitive ideologies, the world in the 20th century was always more democratic than the past, with newer and newer democracies emerging, older democracies becoming more stable, free and vibrant and even the autocracies softening and opening up. But that’s not the case anymore; the current century has proved to be the century of Democratic regression with the rise of newer powers in the world like China and the resurgence of old powers like Russia; each presenting an alternative model, is a big fat threat to Western Democracy. Technology is somehow seem to be in favour of these competitive ideologies, with cancel culture on the rise, the West is not only receding back to identity politics, tribalism and Patrimonialism but also seems to be falling out of love for the very idea that they have nurtured and fought for many centuries; the sweet democracy.
Selective Freedom of speech and the Cancel culture: Our understanding of the world is today mediated most of the time by the screens not only in poor or developing states but also the first world states. The three big Tech corporations- Facebook, X (formerly called Twitter) and Google are messing with democracy in unprecedented ways.
Previously, it was Facebook and Zuckerberg’s meddling with people’s voting behaviour in the Project Alamo for the Trump presidency and the Cambridge Analytica’s venture for BREXIT that rattled the political pundits all over the world. Things have changed exponentially since then. Think beyond that, what if a single person, who is CEO of an online media platform could determine if a certain candidate will be allowed to use his platform for his campaign or not? Or maybe influence masses using this platform?
No need to think further, our wildest dreams are reality now. It’s not Facebook but rather X (formerly called Twitter) that has raised hackles in the political community now. While Elon Musk claims to be a“free speech absolutist” he turned out to be a selective absolutist; only for those who share his ideology. After Trump’s election as the new president, the platform X has complied with 83 percent of requests made by the governments for censoring or surveilling accounts of the critics.
The same platform cut a deal with Turkish president Erdogan, who demanded X for censoring and blocking his political opponents and the platform complied with it. Similarly, The Government of India’s, request for removing a controversial documentary of BBC on Narendra Modi was also accepted and all the accounts of the critics were blocked.
The future of the world shall be in the hands of a dozen people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg who will decide and influence our voting behaviour. It will be a major downgrade from democracy being all about people to, Democracy by the Mark, for the Elon, and of the Steve.
All these are blunt attacks on the freedom of speech strangling the political debate, essential for nurturing mature political culture. Democracy’s promise of giving equal grounds to everyone in the electoral process is doubtful today. Even in the USA, the First Amendment put restrictions on the Government against it suppressing or putting any restriction on the freedom of speech, but none on individuals, or the corporations that have so much power and influence over the political behaviours of the masses, capable of determining the outcome of the elections.
Disinformation is like dandelion dust, you put something on social media and it goes to places and countries you haven’t even heard of. And there’s virtually no way of determining its authenticity and neither does one go through the hard task of filtering. Moreover, these media corporations decide themselves what is hate speech’ and every now and then a person becomes a victim of this Cancel culture, and when this particular person decides to speak against all that, he gets blocked by X (Twitter) or Facebook.
From men of deeds to men of clicks: Another problem that has emerged due to social media is political impassivity; democracy is not a spectator sport but rather requires the active participation of each and every individual. What these Social media platforms have done is that they have taken away the avenue of any‘ concrete action’ from the people and replaced it with a fake, self-defined sense of achievement and satisfaction associated with posting status, tweets on X or liking a particular post. You go on to your social media account and post something against racism, liked a tweet against Extremism, you have stroked your ego and feel self-conceited that you have already performed your part of the duty by liking that tweet on X which says “Every human irrespective of race, color or religion should be respected”.
The real political participation involving the arduous task of mobilizing people for a cause, pressurizing the legislature for law making, going to the courts, getting a law passed; to bring about a social change is actually a hard one and Gen-Z people settle for something easier and within their comfort zone, picking a screen, logging in and posting on their accounts about it, liking all the relevant posts, retweeting it and all is done. These online platforms have transformed, if not killed, the concept of participatory Democracy; where the only participation left is limited to a few clicks and taps on screens.
The unfair market of ideas: The classic liberal concept of free market of ideas is also failing democracy due to the rise of technology and social media. The notion that good ideas always out-compete the bad ones in democracy has proved to be a farce, rather studies show that these social media platforms have become a cesspool of lies, disinformation and propaganda. And these not only fare well in this online market of ideas but also outperform the true information all the time. It’s not that these platforms like Meta, Facebook, Twitter (formerly called X) or Google are inherently evil, but rather it’s their business that is built this way; the more activity, engagement and debate there is the more they get monetized. The physician and author, Hans Rosling in his book Factfullness talks about a shrewd play of two phenomena controlling this, known as the fear instinct and the negativity instinct; which implies that normal and good is bland for humans and such are always overtaken by something that is negative, sensational, or anything that manipulates or plays with our fears and arouses emotions. The liberal notion of a free market of ideas is not compatible with the human psychology; with people who are operated, controlled and manipulated by their fears and emotions as these take over our rational decision making.
We are experiencing a revolutionary change, the notion of democracy that has been evolving from the times of Greeks is indeed witnessing yet another big change in the age of technological disruptions. What happens in the future is to be determined by us, whether the governments take these private individuals and corporations under their control, taking down their personalized, selective regulation of free speech and let the classical liberal idea of free market of ideas prevail, or let these tech Giants control and decide what things can be said and who is ‘appropriate’ to exercise this freedom.
In which case, the future of the world shall be in the hands of a dozen people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg who will decide and influence our voting behaviour. It will be a major downgrade from democracy being all about people to, Democracy by the Mark, for the Elon, and of the Steve.
