We are not ready for what happens next on social media.
Meta, X, others have all reduced their trust and safety staff and capabilities in recent months.
How will they deal with Hamas live-streaming executions. With the horrors yet to be unleashed by terrorists?
A wave of repulsive content will be celebrated by the loudest voices, amplified further by algorithms, while the rest of us mourn.
It will fracture societies.
There are vast geopolitical implications.
This is the result of a collective global failure to deal with the greed of companies that don’t care about society as long as they are accruing wealth for themselves.
I hope regulators and advertisers are watching. You are the last line of defence for democracy, for all of us.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/ Really important report by @CommissionCE today explores how hate creates space for the “moral case for violence” while stopping short of the threshold for criminal prosecution. independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…
2/ Sara Khan, the Lead Commissioner (and formerly CEO of Inspire), deserves a lot of credit for taking on all forms of hate in this report and recognising how hate and intolerance on any side breeds further hate on all sides and can legitimate extremism and violence.
3/ UK anti-hate infrastructure has at times been unfairly labelled as inherently racist and anti-Muslim, because it grew considerably in response to Islamist terrorism. I'm proud that people like Sara, from the Muslim community, lead the fight for tolerance and against hate.
1/ This week saw a perfect, utterly depressing example of the brittle, angry, accusatory style of social media discourse bleeding into our offline world, in this instance, the chamber of the House of Commons.
2/ The reason social media is so important in politics is because it purports to approximate the vox populi. But it doesn’t. The notifications that flash up on MP’s screens are from folks engaged and motivated enough to get in touch.
3/ So they’re either laudatory – which are of course lovely to receive. Or horrible – which are not. This serves to normalise a sense among political and media classes that the nation is irrevocably polarised and split.