In November 2017 I published a blog called “Social Media in Crisis”.[i] I was referring to the live partisan congressional hearings that had been held in Washington DC where Facebook, Google and Twitter were subject to severe criticism over publication of fake news that had influenced the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. One senator said “You showed a lack of resources, commitment and lack of genuine effort”. He said that the Senate Intelligence Committee had been studying this issue since January and were extremely unimpressed by the failure of these companies to respond. They had created a monster over which they exercised little control.

It wasn't just in the presidential election where these companies were at fault. In this blog I also referred to the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims by the military in Myanmar which was largely fuelled by misinformation and anti-Rohingya propaganda spread on Facebook. I also referred to widespread panic, lynchings and other problems in the Jharkhand region in Eastern India which was destabilised by a viral WhatsApp message that falsely claimed that children in the area were being abducted by gangs. In South Sudan political operatives both inside and outside the country had used Facebook to spread rumours and incite anger between rival factions fostering violence that threatened to escalate into a civil war, That has officially ended but over 400,000 lost their lives and millions have fled the country as widespread violence continues. What has Facebook done about it? Absolutely nothing.

We have created a beast that is out of control. We are seeing it's damaging effect on generations of children who are living their lives at an earlier and earlier age on smartphones. Even one of the network operators EE has come out recommending to parents that they should not give young children a smartphone but simply a brick phone that can only make and receive phone calls. Some parents no doubt will follow this wise advice but the majority will find it very difficult because of the peer pressure that has been created. If one little child knows that their friends are all on smartphones then they will feel very isolated if they cannot be as well.
There is so much misinformation on social media and other platforms but increasingly the problem is that naive people, particularly young people, believe that everything they read on the Internet is true when in fact a great deal is not. I have said before on these pages that I have never even seen a page of Facebook.  I was an early adopter of LinkedIn but now I can't be bothered with it as I get so many messages from people I've never heard of wanting to apparently link with me for reasons that are just beyond my understanding.  I was also quite interested when Twitter started and signed up for it only to find that within a few minutes I had 35 messages which indicated to me that the whole thing was a scam and it still is. It was through false messages on these platforms that after the dreadful murders of young children in Southport it was claimed on social media that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker who had only recently come to this country by boat. Thousands of people, mainly young men, believed this nonsense and encouraged by the rabble-rousers went out on the streets and caused significant violence, even throwing bricks at the police. This was only brought under control through increasingly heavy sentences passed by judges on some of those who were arrested. The police made it clear that the person they were charging with the Southport murders was actually of Rwandan origin, born here in this country and he was almost certainly Christian rather than a Muslim.

What can be done? There have been attempts to put together draught legislation seeking to limit this but it is such a difficult area since the normal conventions that have applied to free speech for centuries are now being challenged by the users of social media. In most countries speech is never completely free, even in the United States where it is protected under the constitution. It is understood by serious people that freedom of speech cannot be absolute. Indeed various forms of speech are already criminal such as incitement to violence, making blackmail threats or demanding money with menaces. These are forms of words that constitute crimes. Traditional publications like newspapers, magazines, pamphlets etc are required in law that any published material must bear the actual name of the author and organisation that drafted it. The printer who produced it must be identified by name and address.
Supporters of social media claim that any individual can be traced. This is blatantly untrue as it is possible to create any number of false identities. This can be implemented abroad, perhaps even by robots. It is the existence of social media that is the threat not the fact that some people abuse it.

My only answer to the question of what can be done is that the social media companies must be forced by law to police their own publications just as any conventional publisher has to do. Laws need to be passed in all free countries requiring these actions or fine these companies not the sort of sum that could be seen as legitimate business expense but rather such large fines that could be seen as a threat to their existence. They clearly have huge resources and money. What they lack is will, so they must be forced to take action or have their business survival threatened.

The money raised by these fines could then be used to try and correct some of the terrible things that have happened in countries like South Sudan and Myanmar. It should not be used to simply go into conventional treasury coffers and help us pay for an unaffordable NHS. What it could also be used for is to help children in school learn social behaviour that used to be the norm and because of the ubiquitous smartphone and the ever-present social media has become horribly distorted. For me there is no choice here. When I wrote that blog in 2017 I could already see the problems but they have got worse not better and are continually getting worse not better and they are affecting more and more aspects of our traditional society.  Social media is not social, it is anti-social.

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