Facebook and democracy

Multinational companies have always had a thorny relationship with accountability. This is largely because they are extremely powerful and some of their stakeholders, even States, are much less so. This has become worse in the age of social media platforms such as Facebook, which are vast global empires but the jurisdiction to hold them accountable is strictly local. How can the government of a developing country even start to consider how to hold a company as large and powerful as Facebook accountable when its valuation is more than five times the GDP of that country? 

This week Facebook accepted the role it played in spreading and escalating the anti-minority or anti-Muslim violence in Digana in 2018. While the social media platform cannot be blamed entirely for what transpired it certainly had a significant role to play. The danger is that the situation in Sri Lanka came after Facebook recognised what happened in Myanmar and despite many platitudes failed to prevent it happening again. This opens up more concern about the impact of Facebook and other social media platforms, especially on the functions of democracy or election outcomes. 

Facebook’s role in elections and spreading hate speech are often discussed as two separate problems. But in reality they are both closely interlinked and play off each other both in reality and virtual spaces. For example, as Sri Lanka heads to Parliamentary Elections, there has been a close co-relationship between the rise of hate speech and the general political atmosphere in the country. COVID-19 has created an additional layer of spite, particularly against the Muslim community but these are all just different facets of the same problem. 

There is also the issue of posts championing a military Government or more militaristic running of the Government layered into the online discourse. Facebook is a space where memes of military leaders being preferred to political leaders is frequently shared and there is a discourse eddying around these posts of the supposed benefits of extensively delaying elections until the country and economy have “recovered” from COVID-19. These posts glibly skip over the fact that this would be a violation of the Constitution and would undermine other branches of Government in one of Asia’s oldest democracies as well as severely constrict personal liberties, transparency and accountability. 

Facebook in this context helps frame democracy has a “failed experiment” and lends credibility to the acceptance of a version of nationalism and militarism that is deeply problematic and divisive. The legitimacy provided by Facebook to these discourses can have very serious real world consequences on Sri Lanka’s democracy and branches of power. Political leaders need to be more aware of these challenges and respond to them, though there is much concern that they cannot mount a productive counter narrative without displaying real world achievements that benefit the public to underpin their dimmed credentials. 

Facebook’s attempts to solve the issue through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and slightly larger components of local staff have been largely dismissed as ineffectual. Election monitors who observed the last election Sri Lanka unanimously agreed that social media was a huge concern that needed to be addressed. But with few tools and little time, it would seem that Facebook’s grip on the political sphere of Sri Lanka will remain largely intact.