THE GROWING THREAT TO FREE SPEECH IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TITANS

Fri 01 November 2024:

How safe is the information that you share in confidence on social media platforms with your friends and loved ones? How long does the data that you share remain on the electronic servers of social media? Is it advisable to share personal information and family photos on social media applications? How safe is end to end encryption promised by the free media proponents? Why is there no provision to delete the emails sent by mistake to a stranger? Why didn’t the social media platforms give an option to recall messages/emails? Even if they had provided an option, once sent, will it still remain on their servers? Is somebody watching/monitoring your messages/mails at the other end? How safe are social media applications?

The questions are many and the answers are few! People are scared to make normal telephone calls to talk to their friends, peers and family members, instead they prefer to make online calls on social media applications for privacy. Is this perception safe?

Let us keep aside the hackers for a minute. How do the online media Moghuls exploit the data that we share on their platforms?

Agreed, one may argue that all these depend on privacy policies, security features and how individuals key in their privacy settings. Again, it raises a plethora of questions. Are these features genuine and safe?

It is an indisputable fact that social media applications are not safe either from the service providers or from the hackers. Many social media platforms collect and store huge amounts of user data on their “servers” for various purposes. Users only know that they are being used for advertising and other purposes. But users have no idea what is happening back-end of their applications. In other words, users are naïve on data breaches. Unauthorized access can occur at any time. Even if one keyed in wrong information on his profile, still the messenger platforms can collect your IP addresses and telephone numbers, which are connected to Aadhar or Social Security numbers. Each device that connects to the web world (Internet) has a unique identifier, which is similar to a postal address.

This address makes life easier for law enforcement agencies to track social media messages by legal requests and warrants, typically to prevent crime. In the United States of America, The Stored Communications Act (SCA), enacted in 1986, provides statutory privacy protection for customers of network service providers. The SCA controls how the government can access stored account information from entities such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In other words, law enforcement agencies can access all electronic communications, account information, emails as well as subscriber and billing information. In India there is no direct equivalent to the US SCA Act. However, various Indian laws and regulations govern data access by law enforcement.

Until the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov and Elon Musk were penalised by France and Brazil, everyone thought social media platforms are a safe harbour for information exchange. Under the stringent punishment actions of the courts and ruling dispensations, the Citadels of the New Information Czars are crumbling.

Caught in the legal wrangles in France, Telegram has announced that it will hand users’ Internet IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities with “Valid legal requests”. The embattled CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov said , “the changes to the messaging application’s terms of service and privacy policy should discourage criminals”, using his platform.

He went on to say, “while 99.999 percent of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001 per cent involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.”

Truly, this miniscule percentage of bad actors jeopardize the integrity of the platforms, creating panic among its billion users. It also has inherent threats. There is a speculation that Russia may have a backdoor to the applications of encrypted communication that the west is now pressurising the CEO of Telegram. What does this mean? Moscow fears the West will decode secrets and stop disinformation. Interesting! It’s a significant reversal of the aim with which it was started.

Flipside, The CEO of X (formerly twitter) blinks in on his standoff with Brazil Supreme Court judge Alexander de Moraes who not only imposed a ban on his X platform but also ordered a freeze of all his X-unrelated accounts. Musk is now ready to come to terms with censorship in Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union and other nations. After all, these are huge populous countries and Brazil is one of X’s most international markets. His platform now agrees to

appoint a legal representative in Brazil, willing to pay fines and agrees to take down accounts that the Court had ordered.

An international panel on the Information environment (IPIE) and its co-founder Philip Howard, a professor of internet studies at the University of Oxford, said the global information environment was at a “critical juncture”.

“One of the most pressing concerns highlighted by our survey is the influence of social media platform owners. Their control over content distribution and moderation policies significantly impacts the quality and integrity of information. The unchecked power of these entities poses a grave risk to the health of our global information environment,” he said.

The IPIE launched as a non-governmental organisation last year after warning that biased algorithms, manipulation and misinformation were a “global and existential threat”. The report warns that many politicians have “instrumentalised” conspiracy theories and misinformation for political gain, with the knock-on effect of eroding trust in reliable sources of information and democratic institutions.

Whatever may be the business interests of the mighty Czars, nobody is above the law. Elon Musk tried to fight the law but the law appears to have won. This leaves us with a question, Are social media owners, politicians and governments the biggest threats to a trustworthy online news environment?

Under these circumstances, will users continue to share their views on the platforms fearlessly? The answer may be a Yes and NO and depends on the individuals as to how they look at the consequences. As long as there is moderation it might sail through without any trouble. But who defines moderation? Nobody wants to hear criticism.

IPIE asks its respondents as to how to counter the problems highlighted in the report, the respondents recommended “promoting a free and independent media; implementing digital literacy campaigns; encouraging fact checking, and labelling misleading content”, need to be adhered to.

Agreed, the un-checked powers of these entities poses grave risk to the entire environment of free speech. But at the same time the Czars in the business should not crawl when they are asked to bend.

Author:

V Ramakanth

Ramakanth is a senior journalist and former Additional Director General of All India Radio and Doordarshan. He was also instrumental in reporting, anchoring and producing a new show “News World” on International relations.

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