At first I thought it was AI. My wife wondered if it was AI. It looked and felt like it; the content seemed so carefully structured. Zuckerberg’s video on January 7th was welcomed by those who felt their rights have been infringed, while others scratched their heads or didn’t care. Personally, I found it terrifying.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression. We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes”
The message by itself seemed innocuous, but it was immediately cheered or jeered according to political preferences. Why? Because in spite of being framed with free speech as the issue, the substance of the message was nothing but a very telling laundry list of what (who) would be censored less and what (who) would be censored more. The appeal to very specific agendas could have been right off any far-Right website.* And it was CLEVER. His choice of expressions and omissions expertly veiled implications yet dog whistled to those who are eager to shift public narratives in their direction. To untrained ears, it seemed harmless and even sincere, if not a bit bizarre.
Some of us knew it was coming and could connect the dots. How? History is not a collection of things that just happens. It’s causes and effects, evolving fads and sentiments, reactions and counter-reactions, cyclical progressions, and ever-shifting agendas. And of course, it’s about propaganda and control. When we understand the history and evolution of control as connected to the history and evolution of communication and the public sphere, we can see what is happening RIGHT NOW is a pivotal point in history. So let’s rightfully start the story before the story.
The advent of social media is the first time in human history where most of us have a voice and can have discourse with almost anyone, anytime, anywhere, on any subject. We can express opinions, which even before this time was mostly reiterating what we heard elsewhere. But now we can hear it from anywhere, and propagate (share) it like a virus, with non-expert and non-factual voices easily shouting down experts and journalists. It brought us a “freedom” we never had before, but had no precedence or understanding of how to use responsibly. Yelling fire in an online theater seems fine, and the power of this medium — often more full of cats than fury — is underestimated. Facebook was the shiny new weapon in Obama’s first presidential campaign arsenal. Message boards were the platform by which the Church of Scientology was protested worldwide, crushing their stranglehold over journalists and critics. Iranian protests during the Jasmine Revolution were organized on Twitter, and even the Libyan dictator lost his head shortly after blocking the public from their Internet access.
In America, the average person didn’t do more than grumble at the idea of our government having a “kill switch” for the Internet — if they followed that news at all. Yet we undeniably use it as a public commons like an always-open town square, coffee shop, family and friend reunion, and town hall meeting all rolled into one. We don’t see it as a replacement for traditional journalism, but Elon Musk does. He openly proclaims that legacy media and journalism is dead. On November 6th, 2024, he declared the New Media Order.
“You are the media now.”
The king is dead. Long live the king. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The landscape of news, information, and rhetoric is completely different from previous generations. This ought to usher in a new era of freedom of speech, press, and by extension, truth. But scratch that last one off. As the web brought us a False Egalitarianism of Ideas, social media has made truth itself “democratic”. In the Orville episode “Majority Rule” (similar to the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”), a news anchor reports an industrial waste problem, but then reports that it must not be true because 74% of the population voted it was an incorrect assessment. This is not fiction to us. It’s human nature to have fact-irrelevant beliefs and make fact-irrelevant decisions. But a truly post-truth society started in 2015 with the mantra of “fake news”, then “alternative facts” sent down by the highest office, and culminating in the vilification of experts during a pandemic.
We are now entering the age of digital populism, and these are its fruits. But let’s be clear — it wasn’t caused by social media. In fact, social media companies were under pressure to stave off misinformation and its effects, in part to reduce platform companies’ liability for user content. They did a horrible job, automating the process instead of hiring an army of service agents. The algorithm seemed to victimize some and give others a free pass. It was akin to haphazard censorship with no human at the helm. Everyone (regardless of their politics) cried fowl under the conspiracy theory that their posts and those of people like them were being personally targeted for their ideology. Fear-mongers played on this. Conspiracists played on this. Online media was flooded with nonsense that cost thousands of unnecessary deaths and almost a civil war in America. And it may be true that (those considering themselves) Conservatives found content “hidden” or tagged with fact checks more than others because statistically they were the ones parroting the most false and misleading information, much of it later found to originate from Russian bots. It got so bad, the President of the United States was suspended and then banned from Twitter, just to have those who couldn’t see the harm he was causing cry foul even louder. Looking back, it may have saved the nation, at least for that time being.
Facebook avoided wholesale censorship by marking some content as possibly misleading or untrue, particularly with regards to misinformation about COVID-19, vaccines, and Stop the Steal claims that nonetheless resulted in historic and tragic violence. The populist response? Fact checkers must be ignored and adding MORE speech by presenting conflicting views was somehow “censorship”. (This harkens to other “liberties” being not defined by what one can do, but by what can do with impunity and without consequences. The rest of us call that “license”.)
Algorithms, when left to their own devices (pardon the expression), can have unintended inherent biases, usually subtle societal ones. But they don’t outright lie or target people unless you make them do so. In 2020, it was determined that Donald Trump was the primary disseminator of false information on Twitter. This is consistent with determinations by teams of journalists that he had told tens of thousands of lies in a few short years. But it’s not just him. In a twist of irony in November 2020, X’s AI told one user “Elon Musk has been identified as one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X since he acquired the platform”. One must wonder if that digital whistleblower was sent to a “recodification camp”. And we should consider the possibility that was the reason he acquired it — not to protect everyone’s voice, but bring back hateful, libelous voices that cause real harm, including that of the previously-banned president. Musk himself relishes dangerous and prejudicial conspiracies. In another instance, AI was having trouble differentiating between content from the Republican Party and White Supremacists. I can only say here that subjectively, one person’s bias is another person’s honesty. In recent years, GOP rhetoric has transgressed lines not previously crossed by either party and perhaps doth protests too much.
As with traditional news, vast Right-leaning media notwithstanding, existing AI is being accused by some of being inherently “Liberal” and therefore “Conservative” AIs must be established as an alternative for Right-leaning people. Bubble, anyone? As one acquaintance of mine says we have too many “Liberal fact checkers”, people seem unclear of the concept. It’s only a matter of time before we need two versions of the Periodic Table. The human nature problem is that individuals only see things that affect them, so it is natural that they feel and acknowledge when they have the appearance of being censored while ignoring the similar instances that do affect those with opposing views. As I had to say to another acquaintance, just because it rains five days in a row and it’s reported doesn’t make the weatherman “pro-rain”. And when reality isn’t on your side, it is easier and more natural to stomp your foot than change your mind. Am I being unfair? I can only say that I have Liberal friends who have had content removed or flagged (justified and unjustified) and while many Conservative friends were not hit at all, some regularly were, and it was no surprise why — not due merely to some “political incorrectness”.
Psychology and backstory established, this brings us up to date …
In principle, it doesn’t matter if the problem is worse on one side or the other. It’s not even really about that. But the fact is that one party has been taken over by people currently establishing the country’s first state-run media. Musk spent an enormous amount of money to ensure Trump was elected, even with bragging about handing him swing states. (Investigations are now underway to determine Musk’s influence in numerous European elections.) In MAGA, he became overnight the stage-sharing celebrity, and even before the administration changes hands is speaking and acting as an unelected, unhired de facto American bureaucrat and diplomat. And now enters Zuckerberg, donating a fortune to the inauguration ceremony (as if it will be spent there), followed by this video announcement to fall in line with Musk’s mandates for X. It vows to ‘open up’ speech regarding existing targets of hate speech, particularly immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, dialogue that has not truly been curbed anyway. Meanwhile lip service is given regarding “hate speech”, a likely exception (or the true intention) being a euphemistic use — where in current Republican terms means specifically anything that can be labeled antisemitic due to criticizing or not unquestionably supporting Israel. This was virtually never allowed in traditional media and will become forboden again.
So where is the propaganda or control? Orwell wrote without the notion of the Internet or social media. He understood the nature of man, of power, and of propaganda. But he didn’t see the modern world we actually have coming and how we got there. America has never had state-controlled media, and I don’t think in any obvious form anyone would accept it. Even before a broadening of choices through cable television, government had to overtly censor information and it was usually obvious and known. Regardless of a small number of companies governing most channels, almost no politician or policy can go without the challenge of criticism or dissenting voices, ESPECIALLY with the crowdsourced citizen journalism we see online. Sure, there have been limitations in underlying assumptions that in turn limit HOW we frame issues. And we are at the mercy of advertising dollars flowing from ratings and audience numbers, where we ourselves choose junk media over real news. And of course, we also demand not to have basic assumptions challenged — anything that knocks too hard upon our patriotic fragility. That is the main reason foreign news reports things ours does not.
Traditional censorship will not do the trick. The medium requires other methods, and technology provides them. Algorithms don’t even have to censor, or “fact-check”, or expose people to opposing views. It requires the opposite of such things, hence the threat we all but recognize. It requires that the APPEARANCE of general consensus (“Community Notes”) be shifted to whatever views those behind the platform wish to push. All that must be done is to control levels of exposure between users. Us humans will follow the crowd more than we realize. It determines what is not just socially acceptable to do and say, but what to think. So the concepts of algorithms used to read the crowds can be reversed and make the crowds read them. In such a general, amorphous way, what becomes majority and minority opinion is no longer predictable but GUIDABLE simply by convincing people it is so.
Musk is a genius with vision, though perhaps more of a Lex Luthor than Tony Stark. He knows he has that power, and clearly has worked to obtain it. Zuckerberg must know it, too, though he comes off more as having one of his children hostage and being given a script to follow or else. He’s jumping on the bandwagon to either profit or be steamrolled by the richest man and the most powerful one at his side. The Three Muskovites are pretending to save us from a “technocracy” that did not exist by implementing one right before our screens. They are playing 3-D chess while the rest of us are hoarding our checkers.
This should have scared us sooner. The richest man is the world, someone who controls one of the most important media-communication commons in history, was declared a governmental right hand man to the incoming president. Musk is being given full reign as head of “DOGE” to oversee all aspects of government as a “department” under Trump but without the accountability of an official federal agency. And if that isn’t enough of a dystopic narrative that will not end well, Musk says he plans to make one robot for every person on Earth, after years of telling us not to trust AI and the robots will come for us. It reads like he’s living out his own global domination fantasies, and yet it’s not entirely impossible he may succeed. We are well past a satire singularity at this point. Perhaps that’s why the Muskovites are publicly open about what they are doing — because it’s a deception so big it’s unimaginable, and perhaps too late.
“We aren’t just the media here now. We are also the government.”
Donald Trump Jr.’s words from December 19, 2024, could be interpreted as the ultimate empowerment of We the People. We know almost half of America is applauding that, or at least will not question it. But some of us perceive the foundation, the gameplan, and execution of a fundamentally new 21st Century oligarchy. We fear — and not without good reason — that “we” the media and “we” the government are at best whoever falls compliantly into the algorithm set by a technocratic few by which the United States government and all its power will be beholden.
*In the context of this article, it just as well could have been reversed, appealing to far-Left agendas, with a far-Left government, and would be just as bad. The point being made here is that curating content in any form should not be so blatantly biased or partisan, especially when directly wedding the powers behind an administration with those who have ultimate influence and control over discourse in the public commons.