Business

UK riots show how social media can fuel real-life harm. It’s only getting worse

2 Mins read

The widespread anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom of the past week, and the false viral claims that fueled them, may be the clearest, most direct example yet of the way unchecked misinformation on social media can produce violence and harm in the real world.

Even after authorities identified a UK national as the suspect behind a series of deadly stabbings targeting children, false claims about the attacker’s name and origins continued to stoke anti-immigrant fervor and propel far-right demonstrations.

The fake claims have circulated widely, particularly on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, extremism researchers said. And police have openly blamed that misinformation for the violence that has wracked the country in recent days, with rioters throwing bricks at mosques, setting cars on fire and chanting anti-Islamic slogans while clashing with officers in riot gear.

The events of the past week are hardly the only example of the link between online misinformation and politically motivated violence: From the Rohingya genocide to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, false and misleading claims have consistently been at the center of high-profile incidences of political unrest and violence.

It is a pattern that keeps repeating despite years of calls by governments and civil society groups for social media platforms to rein in inflammatory, hateful posts, as well as pledges by companies themselves to do more.

A recent retreat from content moderation by some major platforms, however, suggests that the problem of violence fueled by misinformation may well get worse before it gets better.

For nearly a decade, governments and civil rights groups have increasingly argued that online platforms have created enormous societal costs.

Critics of social media have repeatedly accused the industry of putting corporate profits before users’ mental health, or opening the door to foreign meddling, without doing enough to shield the world from those risks.

An economist might call these negative externalities – like pollution, they are byproducts of a profit-seeking business that, left unaddressed, everyone else must either learn to live with or mitigate, usually at great collective expense. The consequences tend to play out over long timeframes and with large-scale, systemic effects.

This week, it is hard to avoid wondering whether politically motivated violence based on nothing more than bad-faith, evidence-free speculation has become a permanent fixture among social media’s various externalities, and if we are being asked to make peace with it as a condition of living in a digitally connected world.

Many social media companies have invested heavily in content moderation over the years. But the industry’s recent track record hints at a bet – or perhaps a hope – that just maybe, the public will tolerate a bit more pollution.

There are some signs of pushback. In the European Union, officials are looking to hold social media companies accountable for spreading misinformation under the new Digital Services Act. In the UK, the Online Safety Act could take effect as soon as this year and among other things requires social media platforms to remove illegal content.

The United States has lagged on platform regulation, partly due to congressional dysfunction and partly because of legal and constitutional differences that grant online platforms more freedom to manage their own websites.

Still, lawmakers made some moves last month when the US Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act, which aims to combat mental health harms for teens linked to social media.

It may be tempting to dismiss social media’s role in the UK riots as merely a reflection of latent political trends or the result of activism that would have happened on other platforms anyway.

But that distracts from the calculation that some platforms appear to have made: At least some of the time, some amount of misinformation-fueled violence is a reasonable cost for society to pay.

Read the full article here

Related posts
Business

US launches probe into Chinese semiconductor industry

2 Mins read
Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world…
Business

Germany set to investigate warnings over Magdeburg attacker

3 Mins read
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The German…
Business

Saudi Arabia warned Germany about man held over Magdeburg attack

3 Mins read
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Saudi authorities…
Get The Latest News

Subscribe to get the top fintech and
finance news and updates.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *