It’s easy to think that we’ve never seen this level of attack on speech, but as Drew Wilson explains, there’s actually a lot of history to work off of.
Correction: Corrected the first name of Pavel Durov.
One thing I say off and on is how speech has become the new piracy. Specifically, freedom of expression is increasingly becoming similar to online p2p file-sharing. The more I see the developments happening, the more I can’t help but think of what happened when file-sharing was the big news story across the internet back in the day. Sure, there might be some differences between the two, but as time goes on, the parallels become more apparent and numerous.
One of the first places I look at are the accusations of both. For instance, corporate interests kept arguing that one download means one lost sale. It has that similarity to mainstream media regularly accusing social media of being psychologically damaging to people in general. A similar comparison is that file-sharing is killing the music industry back in the day while today, the accusation is that social media is killing democracy. Both are quite inflammatory and both accusations aren’t actually true.
The reality with the former is that file-sharing represented a service issue in the marketplace. There were no online offerings that were convenient, so people often turned to the convenience of file-sharing. The reality with the latter is that we are pinning societal problems onto social media. To put it another way, we are blaming the communication tools for humanities own problems.
While the science says one thing, though, the reaction for certain stakeholders (and the government for that matter) is to ignore the science and evidence and act as though the accusations are really the unvarnished truth. Therefore, for them, they try to act accordingly. In the file-sharing world, the reaction by the record labels and movie studios was to litigate their way through this problem rather than adapt their business models to fit with the modern era. All they needed to do was sue enough music fans and the rest will magically go back to the record store again. File-sharers, in their view, would just give up on file-sharing altogether because it isn’t worth the legal risks.
Likewise, with social media, the mainstream media tried to push the narrative that it is bad for their health. Further, they push the narrative that social media is, in general, the place where misinformation flourishes. So, they strongly encourage users to stop using social media altogether. The idea, of course, is that people will stop using social media and will magically go back to watching the news on TV or reading the local newspaper, giving up on social media altogether.
In both instances, the campaign to crack down on both file-sharing and social media have reached schools. This is because both file-sharing and social media is especially popular among younger audiences. For file-sharing back in the day, there was a push by campus administration to block access to file-sharing networks by blocking the traffic associated with file-sharing clients. Fast forward to today and you hear about cell phone bans and various other efforts to curb the use of social media. Both of these are generally ineffective, but the idea was more about trying to “do something” rather than attempt to solve a legitimate problem.
Lobbyists, of course, worked around the clock to put in place to curb the use of both. In the file-sharing world, there were efforts to pass things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (which was successful, unfortunately), various three strikes laws, anti-circumvention laws, and other efforts. Similarly, there are efforts in government today to push laws to crack down on social media such as age verification laws, removal of Section 230 protections, Canada’s Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11)/Online News Act (Bill C-18), and so-called “Online Harms” bills.
Further, there are efforts to try and shut down social media networks altogether either by blocking the network or shutting it down entirely. This is not that dissimilar to file-sharing networks where there was litigation and arrests of those who created social media networks. The creators of Napster, for instance, were on the receiving end of a lawsuit that ultimately shut down the network. Morpheus, likewise, received a similar lawsuit through the MGM vs. Grokster case that ultimately resulted in the shutdown of that client as well.
Fast forward to today and efforts to either block or shut down social media networks are certainly under way. Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, was arrested in France under mysterious circumstances. At the time, many mainstream media outlets have called for “accountability” of social media networks. For some, the idea of “accountability” might revolve around, say, fines, or orders to take down certain kinds of content. However, for some in the mainstream media, when they use the term “accountability”, it means something very different. This is something I previously noted. Pay close attention to the careful wording of this Financial Times article:
The arrest, the most drastic attempt yet to hold a platform chief accountable for content, has thrust the fate of the elusive billionaire into the hands of the French judiciary at a time of highly polarised debate over social media’s responsibility for free speech versus online safety.
The wording here is extremely carefully crafted and designed to push a narrative, rather than tell the story. It’s not, “The arrest, as part of an effort to blame the owner of a social media platform for the actions of others”, it’s “The arrest, the most drastic attempt yet to hold a platform chief accountable for content”. What’s more, what does this even mean when they talk about “online safety”? It’s not actually clear here. When I talk about mainstream media pushing propaganda, this is a great example of what I mean.
While left leaning media outlets are pushing the narrative that owners of social media are responsible for the speech appearing on their platform (they are not), the efforts to crack down on social media and have owners arrested are not exclusive to left leaning voices. For instance, convicted felon, Donald Trump, recently threatened to put Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in prison for life. From the Independent:
Donald Trump has threatened to imprison Mark Zuckerberg for life if the Meta chief executive attempts to “plot against” him in the upcoming presidential election.
The former president has repeatedly claimed – without evidence – that the tech tycoon intervened in the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden, which saw the Democratic inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
Now, in his upcoming book Save America, Trump has declared that Zuckerberg will “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tries to cross him before Americans cast their votes on November 5.
“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison – as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote, according to an excerpt first seen by Politico.
If you want a third example, there was the very recent effort by a Brazilian judge to block X/Twitter in the country. This along with his, at least, temporary effort to go after VPN services as well, threatening anyone circumventing the ban with a fine.
Another thing to note is the reaction to such efforts to ban networks. When Napster was shut down, the numerous alternatives that existed at the time ended up getting a major uptick in users. Many users flocked to alternatives like Kazaa, Limewire, Bearshare, and eDonkey2000/eMule. Of course, as networks got hit with efforts to stop file-sharing, many users ended up turning to an even more decentralized system like BitTorrent. BitTorrent networks popped up everywhere and it caused the whack-a-mole game to continue indefinitely.
We saw the similarity to what happened when the Brazilian judge ordered the blocking of X/Twitter. Users didn’t stop communicating with each other because of the shut down. Instead, they flocked to alternatives like Blue Sky and Mastodon – both decentralized social media platforms.
Efforts to crack down on file-sharing were a bi-partisan affair. It was both major political parties, at least in the United States, pushing to pass anti-file-sharing laws. Similarly to today, efforts to crack down on social media is also a bi-partisan affair. Probably the only difference here is that there is major squabbling over how, in what way, does government crack down on social media. For left leaning politicians, cracking down on social media means cracking down on “misinformation” and stopping “addiction”. Meanwhile, for right leaning politicians, cracking down on social media means putting a stop to moderation practices and allowing users to basically promote right wing propaganda without consequence. Arguably, at least in the US, the squabbling over what form cracking down on social media takes is why we have seen little in the way of laws passing.
Because of all of this, I’m more of the opinion here that technological history really is repeating itself here. So, if history is repeating itself, what lessons can we take away from all of this? Well, earlier, I noted that the technological elements could evolve to be even more decentralized than ever before. I won’t re-write all of the details, but let’s just say it’ll be MUCH harder to crack down on social media if developments continue on down the path that they are already on.
What I will say, however, is that there is another angle to this. That is the business side of things. Much like how older file-sharing clients relied on ads built directly into the clients, numerous for-profit social media platforms today rely on advertising to maintain profits. Enforcement actions against numerous file-sharing applications have generally meant that many of these for-profit clients got hit and were ultimately shut down. Much of the commercialization of file-sharing was, ultimately, shut down, though it never fully went away. Similarly, should history repeat itself, multiple for-profit social media networks will likely get hit while the less commercialized, more decentralized platforms will continue to live on. This is largely the only source of success enforcement could hope to have in cracking down on social media if history is any indicator.
Ultimately, speech is not going to get shut down so easily. After all, we do have many anonymous tools today as well as the decentralization of social media in general. If one source gets shut down, users will simply move elsewhere because, well, people generally like talking to each other. What’s more, people will always say something you probably disagree with personally. That’s a constant that will never change.
Either way, social media is here to stay. Lawmakers have a choice: either they can work nicely with the platforms or choose to declare an unwinnable war on social media. A militarized, censorship resistant social media is unlikely something politicians and mainstream media wants, but if they continue to push in this direction, it very well may be what they end up getting in the first place. If speech can’t live with the laws being forced upon them, it’ll move to a location or form where it can. That’s all there is to it. If you are upset by this, well, welcome to the internet.
“We saw the similarity to what happened when the Brazilian judge ordered the blocking of X/Twitter. Users didn’t stop communicating with each other because of the shut down. Instead, they flocked to alternatives like Blue Sky and Mastodon – both decentralized social media platforms.”
Places where the owners of Bluesky and the owners of various instances will actually watch for and ban the Brazilian users who were helping to plot the coup in Brazil in 2023 – Something Twitter didn’t do.
Also, it’s Pavel Durov, not “Pablo” Durov, who is the Russian asset who isn’t cooperating with authorities to take things like CSAM distribution networks down.
“ Lawmakers have a choice: either they can work nicely with the platforms or choose to declare an unwinnable war on social media.”
So like… do you think that the platforms are more important than governments being able to hold CSAM distributors and fascists to account?
I never said that this is about supporting CSAM/fascists. Much like what Section 230 is all about, the liability of speech should fall on the users that post illegal content. Removal of Section 230, for instance, would go WAY beyond just going after those who post illegal content and put the liability on those that run the networks, sites, and services. Today, in this day and age, nothing is stopping authorities from investigating those that post illegal content. Yet, what government and certain lobbyists push for is the more lazy and ineffective solution of just shutting down whole networks just because some idiot posted something illegal. That means freedom of expression becomes collateral damage. It’s the equivalent of a drug deal going down in a parking lot at, say, CTV, and authorities calling for CTV to be shut down because illegal activity occurred on its property. It’s a gross over-reaction at minimum.
The consequence of taking this approach is that social media networks either evolve to evade such laws or are created to be substantially harder to shut down (just like file-sharing). There will be those who think that social media has value and someone out there will build something that ensures that it can’t be fully shut down. If authorities think it’s hard to enforce laws on social media now, just imagine how much harder it will be if everything is decentralized and fully encrypted on top of it all. Blanket shutting down social media platforms is going to backfire sooner or later if history is any indication.
Edit: And thanks for pointing out I messed up the first name of the Telegram co-founder. I’ve corrected the article. Was still experiencing heavy symptoms from a COVID-19 vaccine booster when I wrote that and probably let that slip past me when I’d normally catch that while writing.