Who Decides What We Say on the Internet?

In the last couple of weeks, there have been some pretty big stories in the digital space. In late March, The Washington Post reported that Facebook’s parent company Meta hired PR firm Targeted Victory to spread less-than-true information about TikTok. Then following Elon Musk’s purchase of a large stake in Twitter, he proposed a bid to purchase the entire company after refusing a seat on their board of directors, saying that he wants to transform the company as a “private company,” and for it to become a “bastion of free speech.” As of this morning, it looks more likely that the sale will take place.

It’s time to recognize that we’re not seeing unfettered access to public opinion, but instead a curated selection of ideals that reflect the whim of mega-rich, mega-powerful people and their preferences. 

Let’s start with Facebook. Not unlike Charles Foster Kane, a character modeled after real world 20th century newspaper tycoon William Hearst, Meta has been paying people to generate sensationalized fake news about their strongest competitor TikTok in order to take them down a peg. In one email, a Targeted Victory staffer wrote: “Get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using.”

They claimed that TikTok, a Chinese owned platform, was deliberately harvesting data on American youth for unknown purposes. They also generated false trends, like “Slap a teacher day,” claiming that students all over America are planning to physically assault their teachers for clout online. They sought to target local media outlets looking for relevant news that were quick to bite on stories like this, stoking fears in communities all over the country. 

All this extensively bad press comes on the heels of a Facebook announcement that acknowledges they’ve lost users for the first time. There’s no doubt that the poor ethical practices of the last year, coupled with TikTok’s meteoric rise as the fastest growing app, has something to do with that. 

Facebook’s attempts to control the narrative aren’t new, though. In 2011, they came under fire when it was revealed that they were paying bloggers to plant negative stories about Google’s privacy policies. In 2018, the head of Facebook’s communications resigned after their partnership with the Definers, an opposition research firm was hired to dig up dirt on Facebook’s vocal critics, like billionaire George Soros. And then there’s all the misinformation tied to the 2016 election. 

All to say, Facebook hasn’t exactly been known to be the most honest platform around. Since the term “Fake News” was coined and entered our everyday lexicon, we’ve learned that Facebook is the worst offender of our gamut of social media platforms. Its algorithm that rewards clicks and a more gullible, global audience that’s willing to read just about anything that affirms its beliefs are prime grounds for conspiracy theories, decontextualized news and outright falsehoods to run rampant. 

So what of Twitter?

Elon Musk claims that Twitter doesn’t allow free speech, and that his idea to privatize the company, and possibly charge users for using it in the first place, will allow him to restore unfettered dialogue to this platform that he believes doesn’t allow it in the first place. 

That’s rather ironic, given Musk’s history of trying to pay off a teen whose social media account posts when Musk embarks on a private flight. Years before, Musk took pretty severe action against a whistleblower who rather innocuously leaked that their Nevada Gigafactory had millions of dollars in unused scrap material lying about the factory floor. The story wasn’t big, but Musk took that personally. Tesla eventually sued the whistleblower for 167 million dollars. More recently, Tesla has incurred two lawsuits by both California’s department of fair employment and housing and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging rampant and unchecked racism in its California factory. The same factory drew a class action lawsuit for its racist environment in 2017 in which a former employee won $130 million in a settlement against Tesla — both of which have been tried to be relatively swept under the rug by the company at large.

So what kind of “bastion of free speech” will a privatized, Musk-led Twitter hold in store? Seems like we’ll finally get that edit button. But really, who knows? He previously mentioned getting rid of advertising, but it’s unlikely that Twitter could survive on exclusively subscription fees. In reality, in his quest to undo what is wrong with the platform, he will likely create more problems. Even the new “free speech” platform — Parler and Trump’s Truth Social — have already implemented community guidelines that allow them to take content down. So what would become of accounts who “slander” Musk and his name, along with other key stakeholders? Will he use his privately owned company to squash them or is free speech truly, well, free to reign?

Twitter was initially taking steps to prevent a Musk takeover, but seems now ready to near a deal. Whether that deal is formalized still remains to be seen.

What this means, from Twitter to Facebook, is the simple fact that users on social media platforms aren’t in control — if they ever were. Instead, we’re all abstractly contributing to narratives that may, or may not, be credible and certainly bend to the whims of the individuals behind the platforms. Meta is (and has been for a while) using its money and influence to weaponize their own algorithm against their competitors and naysayers, and Twitter, if purchased and privatized, may have relaxed community guidelines allowing for more hate/violent speech at best, and at worst, could have its content moderated to fit the discourse of Musk’s choosing. If Hollywood is looking to make a reboot of the Citizen Kane Cinematic Universe (CKCU), I think we’ve got two wonderful muses to take inspiration from. 

As marketers and digital natives, we have to recognize that these spaces aren’t the egalitarian space for information that was promised to us, and that right now, the narratives that are pushed through to our newsfeeds deserve more consideration. Given the recent insights, it’s more than likely they have a motive or money, or both, behind them.