Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey was required to appear for a Parliamentary hearing earlier this month after being accused by social media users of bias against particular political views. He did not. As the conversation around social media, fake news and online censorship gets intense in the run-up to the general elections, it’s worth considering whether these companies are interfering with India’s political process, and what could be done about it.
At the core of these debates is the question of what “political interference” is. There are two types of actions a social media company could take to influence political outcomes. The first are acts of commission: The alleged actions that led to Twitter being pulled up before Parliament. These involve, by implication, deliberate strategies to silence voices from one part of the political spectrum, or support another. They could range from blocking or discrediting accounts to allowing unscrupulous advertising practices. Facebook, for example, did the latter when it accepted Russian advertising in the 2016 US presidential election. It even led to its CEO being pulled up before the US Senate.
The second are acts of omission. Twitter and Facebook are known to allow the creation of echo chambers due to their algorithmic recommendations, which let users consume only the kind of content they want. Twitter is also egregious for how its platform is misused by trolls to silence voices from either side of the political spectrum—graphic threats of sexual and physical violence are all too common. In these cases, not doing something also has political consequences.It’s obvious that anything social media companies do—or don’t do—has serious ramifications for society. This is because they are where society now interacts. By their very nature, they can and will have effects on political discourse and behaviour.
Twitter India is not registered as a media company, and it is not bound by the guidelines issued by the Press Council of India. The PCI’s guidelines are in any case self-established standards, which cannot be legally enforced by the state, meant to ensure the press is both “free and responsible”. This is for the best, given the risk of governments attempting to regulate the free press, often by accusing them of anything from “fake news” (Smriti Irani in 2018) to “scurrilous writings” (Rajiv Gandhi in 1988).
As most social media companies are platforms that merely share user-generated content, it is difficult to bring them within the ambit of existing media guidelines. Further, users can choose between news outlets, but they often can’t choose between social media platforms due to their pervasiveness.
So they should be subject to some oversight, but it should be forward-thinking and take into account the important role the firms play. “Foreign” companies aren’t automatically hostile to Indian interests. Chinese apps such as TikTok are certainly exploiting inflammatory and illegal content to engage more and more users.
And yet, they play an important role in expanding the digital economy and act as platforms for connecting citizens. So India’s response cannot be a blanket ban. Rather, it needs to shrewdly configure the companies’ own decision-making to make their actions serve national interest without cumbersome regulations that impact citizens’ rights.Political interference, deliberate or not, results from profit-seeking, poor understanding of social consequences and regulatory confusion. These could form the basis of an oversight mechanism.
If companies wish to grow into India’s diverse markets, fine. Expand the maturity of the digital economy to make it more valuable for them, and to give them an incentive to cooperate with Indian actors. In the long term, they could be encouraged to develop their own guidelines, similar to the Press Council, and oversee compliance in accord with representatives from civil society (without political affiliation—perhaps retired judges). Mutual competition between them to ensure compliance could lead to effective mutual oversight instead of the monopolistic “user data cartel” that seems to exist now.
Beyond a critical mass of users, virality on any tech platform can lead to the proliferation of material ranging from the crude but harmless to the violent and illegal, and the social costs of unmoderated content begin to outweigh the benefits. Sensing this, in China, well-equipped regulators have been able to force TikTok to hire over 10,000 content moderators. Tech behemoths in India could be encouraged to hire more local content moderators once they cross a certain user base.
This creates economic opportunities and also facilitates a better understanding of social consequences by creating more groups with “skin in the game” instead of distant Silicon Valley algorithm creators and rural Indian consumers.
Any regulation needs to ensure that companies’ activities fall within the bounds of existing Indian law, with adjustments for the new technological context. For example, platforms should be required to investigate calls to violence against any group if they cross a threshold of impressions or user-generated flags. The data they store on Indian citizens should be stored within India and conform to India’s data protection laws. Foreign advertising should be controlled during elections.
Any state body that deals with social media companies needs accountability, ability and vision to manage them in ways that create positive social and economic externalities. Otherwise, accusations of “interference” without understanding context and consequences will only lead to more CEOs ignoring Parliament’s summons.