Social media moguls like Musk and Durov are getting into high profile spats with regulators, could this be the start of a more fractured internet?
With Pavel Durov being detained in France over the way his social media firm Telegram is run while Elon Musk’s Twitter is being suspended in Brazil I have seen plenty of discussion about free speech and moderation on social media. That makes sense, especially given reports of just how understaffed Telegram’s moderation team is in relation to Western alternatives – The Economist reports that Meta has literally several orders of magnitude more moderation staff than Telegram has total staff – and given how erratic and increasingly right wing conspiratorial Musk is getting. The more interesting issue to me though, is how long the global internet will last when different societies have so starkly different norms, cultures, and regulations surrounding free speech.
Every autocrat and totalitarian knows how important control over information is to make a repressive regime last. For the past thirty years few have made a comprehensive effort to try to control the internet, with the notable exception of China. But when what is okay to say starts to become an increasingly contentious issue even between countries with similar governance structures and similar democratic ideals like the USA and Brazil it is not difficult to imagine harsher controls of foreign sites and platforms in autocratic states. Add to that the fact that the world is increasingly multipolar with three great powers and a dozen or so regional powers all competing for power and prestige, and one starts to wonder how long the current system where most people in most countries can, if they share a language, communicate almost instantaneously will last.
Right now the people running big social media platforms like Telegram and X have the power to set the rules on what hundreds of millions of people in dozens of countries can and cannot say. In that sense they are more powerful than most prime ministers and presidents. States by their nature jealously guard their power and sooner or later the ones fortunate enough to have a homegrown social media giant will probably start using it. TikTok is instructive here, if you talk about Taiwan as a sovereign state or about pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong you will find out that the Chinese government has the power and inclination to make sure you keep to their version of the story. There is no reason to think that Telegram could not be co-opted to make sure that the currently very active ecosystem of amateur war-correspondence from both Russians and Ukrainians gives way to a Telegram where only the Kremlin’s version of the news is tolerated.
I also think we should be careful not to underestimate the extent to which liberal democracies might use their power over platform to spread preferred narratives. On any political issue there can be more than one truth, for example the Russian probably truly believe that their invasion of Ukraine was necessary to make sure not to have an aggressive and belligerent NATO on their doorstep and the Ukrainians see the war as an unprovoked act of aggression. But if the internet fractures into smaller more isolated islands then most people will only be exposed to the version of the truth that appeals more to their culture, state, or worldview.
I am not saying that this fractured information landscape is going to come quickly, it may well take a decade or two before it is truly realised but the direction of travel seems clear. I am also not saying that moderation is bad; France is detaining Durov over the way his platform has failed to remove child sexual abuse images, which should not be tolerated in any society. But the effect might still be to make it harder to reach Russia online, and legitimate gripes are likely to be used as an excuse from autocratic states to tighten their controls over the flow of information.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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