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Recently, Facebook announced that it will not allow new political advertisements 7 days prior to the US election day on the 3^rd of November. This decision is driven by a well-known rise in fake news on the platform and the resulting political unrest that plagues the US. Are political advertisements on social media influencing voters or even driving particular election outcomes?

 

According to Pew Research, 60% of US’ voters retrieved information about political campaigns from social media. This might not seem harmful. Yet, social media platforms are designed to keep people on the platform by offering related information in consideration to their viewer history. In this way, voters with a particular political preference are targeted with positive information about their political preferences, and sometimes with negative information about political opponents. In addition, social networks are designed to create communities for people with similar interests. This also creates feedback loops which intensify while using the platform. Unfortunately, recent posts and postings during the election campaigns in 2016 have proven that some political advertisements contain misinformation and disinformation. These posts also enter loops on social media platforms and shape people’s opinions and beliefs. Resulting in voters that base their vote on mis -and disinformation. This malicious strategy is used by many political campaigns to improve self-image and hinder opponents.

 

When considering these findings, we should ask ourselves whether these social networks are promoting the democratic process of elections. Of course, free speech and the sharing of campaign information is crucial. Yet, the design of feedback loops on social media platforms intensify beliefs and shut out perspective. All in all, social media is a powerful tool which contributes to successful political campaigns, but it also divides people by enlarging certain beliefs without a much-needed perspective.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54015328

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37945486

The social dilemma

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/additional-steps-to-protect-the-us-elections/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-political-ads-lies.html

4/5 (1)

 

Consider the influential company Tencent which owns WeChat, a Chinese application serving over 700m users in services like we know as WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype, Amazon, Uber, PayPal and many other services that have not even been digitized in most of our (western) daily lives. Yet, according to the New York Times it is not the variety of things you can do on WeChat that makes it so powerful, it is the fact that it is all installed in one application. The groundbreaking structure of WeChat provides an all-in service for which we do not need anything or anyone else. What should we prepare for if concepts such as WeChat start to get really powerful and influential in Europe?

 

In order to create an application that can integrate all the services you as a consumer need, the company needs data. Of course, it is clear that an enormous amount of value can be created when an application knows where you live, what your interests are and what you like to eat, but that brings some ethical and economic questions. For instance, are we willing to sacrifice (some) privacy to create a more efficient and effective application? Or, do we let network effects create increasingly powerful monopolists to promote convenience and interconnectedness? These and many more questions are tradeoffs that we, as a society, need to consider whether that is through regulation on government level or in our personal daily lives.

 

Of course, aside from these general questions and issues, we have not considered WeChat’s main stakeholder yet, namely the Chinese government. The great wall of China is nothing in comparison to “the Great Firewall of China” or as the New York Times calls it; China’s intranet. As current western “hub” companies are banned in China, a handful Chinese companies created their own monopolies in every aspect of the upcoming economies and considering China’s 1.4b inhabitants, it makes a pretty big impact. As data-driven companies such as Tencent are forced to share obtained data with the Chinese government, an “Orwellian” society arises. Entering a single-application-society would likely lead to an all-knowing company (or government) which uses user data to define company strategy (or political campaigns and regulation). Our daily lives turn into data points. Is this a bad thing? That depends on the people leading a company or country. These data points can be used as a powerful tool in social control. History teaches us that malicious people have risen to the top or even have been democratically chosen to lead. That is why we, as a society, should ask ourselves the question if we want to centralize this power of data into one company, one government, or even one person.

 

In conclusion, company ethics, regulation, and our personal believes will either keep us from entering a single-application-society, drive us into a prosperous and value creating single-application-society or push us in an Orwellian society in which our daily lives are just data points for governments and powerful companies.

 

References:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/wechat-and-tiktok-taking-chinese-censorship-global-says-australian-study/articleshow/77996952.cms

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/14/wechat-trap-chinas-diaspora

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec77S25kuVs

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/wechat-china-united-states.html

https://www.ft.com/content/6b61aaaa-3325-44dc-8110-bf4a351185fb