Social networks must be democratized

For the part of society, social networks have become hyperreality: a reality more real than life on the street. Without a framework understanding of how Facebook, for example, works, there is no fundamental difference between swiping a finger across a screen and walking through a square. People argue and entertain themselves on social networks, some talk to themselves, others appeal to fellow citizens. Whoever advocates the motto that we have the parliament we deserve should also agree that social networks are a faithful reflection of ourselves. The majority of Facebook users are the same people we meet at offices, in the waiting room at the doctor’s, or on the train. The only difference is that Mark Zuckerberg has handed out megaphones to everyone.

Such a notion is, of course, naive. Content on social networks is mediated to us: and where there is a mediator, there is also their interest and risk of manipulation. Social networks have long ceased to be – and probably never were – just neutral technologies for connecting with other people, like a telephone. To maintain the appearance of relevance, Facebook and Instagram must partly work with material from reality. However, they process it in a way that results in virtualized reality. And the more “representations” that, outside social networks, represent nothing at all (invented events, generated images or videos), the more the virtualized reality of social networks becomes virtual reality. The difference between them lies in the distance from how and with what we live outside screens.

Elites online

Nowadays, almost everyone is aware that social networks are not just simple digital mirrors of our “analog” lives. However, our approach to these platforms does not reflect this. This has a particularly serious impact on opinion makers with significant public influence, such as journalists or politicians. The more specialists in national mentality diagnose us based on social networks, the more they reinforce, even in “better Slovakia,” a view of society and politics that, through specific actions and decisions (such as resigning from dealing with “post-peasants”), ultimately benefits those whom they wanted to warn us against. And when it comes to top-level politics, algorithms, and thus the interests of technological big capital, they are represented more and more thoroughly than citizens – that is, the interests of the public and the working majority.

In such a situation, it is easy to get the impression that the current state of the world is mainly due to social networks. No matter how much these platforms support destructive tendencies in society – whether it’s social atomization, undermining institutional conflict resolution in favor of power, or increasing inequalities – they are not their source. If we consider the development in the direction I just described as undesirable, we need to think and act much more decisively than suggested by Samo Marec in his latest book Social Networks Must Be Destroyed.

Politics among kittens

The very first sentence from the cover flap can now be considered an axiom, that is, a statement that does not need to be proven: “Social networks harm us, spoil our relationships, disintegrate society, and deform politics.” The literature on this topic is already overwhelming in Slovak: Manfred Spitzer in Digital Dementia explains how, as a consequence of excessive use of social networks, our cognitive abilities decline; Maik Fielitz and Holger Marcks in Digital Fascism reveal social media as a driver of right-wing extremism. And finally, Sarah Wynn-Williams in Ruthless People shows that Meta’s platforms did not become bad on their own. On the contrary, they are the result of deliberate decisions made in an environment that no longer even pretends to consider the weaker – and we are all weaker before technological big capital.

In Slovak, for example, the book Truth and Lies on Facebook by Vladimír Šnídl deals with this framework. If you prefer fiction, I recommend the novel On the Shore Sings the Crowd by Michal Franka about the influence of social networks on the lives of specific people.

In the list of titles directly or indirectly criticizing social networks, I did not include any books in Czech or English – not to mention articles, podcasts, videos, or films. Simply put, you do not have to be a user of Facebook or Instagram to understand that social networks in their current form – as Marec emphasizes – are a problem. Everyone is dissatisfied, perhaps with the exception of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Liberals argue that the content circulating on social networks is insufficiently regulated, while the far right feels censored. If you visit TikTok for kittens, politics annoy you there. And if you wanted to use YouTube solely as an information source, you cannot avoid intrusive entertainment sketches. While we all know enthusiastic debaters who get upset about how “the others” can be so stupid, we ourselves do not understand how those who try to argue against bots, trolls, and the fiction of the world behind the screen can be so stupid.

We know the phenomenology of social networks. And I can count on one hand the people in Slovakia who have no idea about social networks but would like to experience what it’s like to be on Facebook without creating an account. This group of readers is precisely the target of the first four fifths of Marec’s book. The mental, social, and political problems caused by social networks, as well as their effects, no longer need to be described – they need to be deeply understood and thoroughly addressed. In this sense, the first two hundred pages of the book, with the subtitle “How algorithms harm us and our world...” serve as an introduction to the only thing worth discussing: “...how to change it.”

We haven’t seen this before

Marec considers solutions on two levels: what we can do as individuals and what we can do as a society. Since the more interesting aspect is the political dimension of the book rather than “lifestyle” recommendations, let’s focus on Marec’s proposals for regulating social networks. What do they sound like? “Deanonymization, moderation, changing algorithms, and publishing source code. Transparent rules, their transparent application, and enforceability, transparent decision-making processes, and transparent control mechanisms. Transparency, transparency, transparency. And responsibility.” All these measures could genuinely contribute to making social networks at least somewhat more civilized environments. Let’s examine two of them that provoke debate or require further elaboration: moderation and changing algorithms.

Social networks – at least those in the portfolio of Meta – have had rules for moderating, that is, removing “inappropriate content,” for a long time. The problem is that Meta itself practically does not enforce these rules – as Marec points out, moderation on Facebook is under-resourced, moderator decisions are unpredictable, and there is no effective appeals system in case of disagreement with content removal or account bans. The liberal emphasis on compliance with rules by users and platform operators is justified. However, from a leftist perspective, the problem is how these rules are created and who sets them – “community rules” have nothing to do with the community here. On the contrary, the platform operator decides on this code of conduct, and the public has no direct influence on it.

You might ask: And why should that be a problem? In a private enterprise, the owner sets the rules. If you do not like them, you can go elsewhere. But this analogy does not hold. General social networks, that is, global networks without a specific content focus, such as Facebook or Instagram, are not just one service among many that can be easily replaced if you no longer like it. Social networks should be understood more like the telegraph and telephone, or radio and television in their early days: as communication tools that are qualitatively completely different from everything we have had so far. The telegraph and telephone surpassed previous communication technologies with their speed, radio and television with their reach and content type they could transmit. And although other communication channels existed in parallel, they were not functionally equivalent to these new technologies. It made no sense to say: if you do not like the telephone, send a letter; if you are unhappy with television, read newspapers. Individually, we can decide “not to be on the pulse of the day,” but it does not change the fact that the latest technologies change society and indirectly affect the lives of those who do not use them.

A village fairy tale

Social networks have become a groundbreaking “technology” due to their combination of participativity and reach. The telegraph and telephone interactively connected people, radio and television are mass communication tools. Social networks combine both: theoretically, today an ordinary Facebook user can reach more people than the largest newspapers or TV and radio stations in the world. This is an unprecedented situation in history. If the world, thanks to social networks, is also a “global village”, it also means that its largest square, where all shops and services are located, where almost all acquaintances gather, and where most political, social, and cultural events take place, is owned by a handful of opportunistic billionaires. On the old main square, it works like this: we can gather and talk about whatever we want – the mayor or police could only prohibit us if we broke the law. Then there are a few taverns where the word is given and taken by the manager, but everyone knows which pub will hear which opinions, where they are welcome, and where not, and possibly under which roof they can rhetorically appeal to the hospitality community. However, most people recently moved from these spaces elsewhere. Investors from Silicon Valley built the largest and most modern square in the “global village,” where anyone can do and say whatever they want. There were supposedly rules there too, but no one knew them well, and no one cared about them, as they were almost never enforced. Gradually, several major conflicts arose, so the owners of this private square – who, as “philanthropists,” made it available for free public use – issued a few exemplary sanctions for violations of community rules. But almost everyone was dissatisfied: some found the sanctions symbolic, others too draconian.

In this situation, the local council might manage to force the owners of the square to consistently enforce the rules they set. At the same time, these Californian benefactors might say: “Alright then, if you do it this way, we’ll do it this way.” The community rules would also include a ban on extremist activities. The liberal majority in the local council would initially rejoice that the square is finally beginning to civilize. But gradually, the local Diogenes would stop appearing there, a small publisher of political philosophy would no longer be allowed on the book market, and a long-standing labor demonstration, which used to be relatively frequent, would cease. But who would miss these radicals? They suffered no harm – they can retreat to their own taverns or protest in a side alley where almost no one goes.

A person with moderate thinking, a noble heart, and decent behavior (but only towards those who deserve it – like three liberal rods that adorn the lapel of a good person’s jacket as a symbol of piety before wealth and private property) – such a person cannot experience something like that. What power would even desire to harm such a meek soul? And yet, from the summer program on the square, more and more points are disappearing: pride marches, feminist festivals, and the empty space left after the petition stand for a new climate law. The owners of the square will receive a few complaints, but what can be done – that’s the way it is now. They had already profited more than half of the local citizens from renting advertising spaces and selling data on people’s movements and behavior in the square – but the potential of the square is even greater. In the new summer program, there is a live recording of Fiki Sulík’s podcast, a pre-election rally of the Republic, and a festival shooting range where you can try out the latest models of American assault rifles.

Since these changes happened gradually, most villagers did not even notice – after all, they mainly go to the square for friends and shopping. The protests of the dissatisfied are in vain: determining the program’s dramaturgy and community rules is the inviolable right of the private owner of the space. And when local dissenters, in the depopulated old square, in taverns and side alleys – since they were expelled from the new square – diligently collected enough petition signatures to limit the arbitrariness of American urban visionaries, who, as “philanthropists,” made the square available for free public use, they organized a pot of goulash in the town center, arranged an MMA fight, and immediately collected three times as many signatures to keep everything as it was and to have the municipality sell them additional surrounding plots to expand their square.

Simply put, as long as social networks are understood as a standard market product or service, the rules for their use or provision are set by entrepreneurs. Just as an ideologically conservative advertising agency could legally refuse an order for billboards with rainbow messages under certain circumstances, private social networks can decide, for ideological reasons, to limit the reach of your posts or block your account. Therefore, if we call for better moderation of social networks, we must also specify who and how should decide on the rules of these platforms.

Benefit of unity

If I claim that the rules of general social networks cannot be left to the arbitrariness of owners, it is because of their size and influence. Facebook, with over three billion users, is no longer just one of many social networks – it has become a public communication infrastructure that must have a completely different legal and political status than a regular market commodity or service.

A social network, thanks to the network effect, is a natural monopoly. The network effect means that the value of a communication (and informational) network is greater the more places or users it connects. When fixed telephone lines were introduced, they were more or less useless for ordinary people – they had nowhere to call. But the more households equipped with this connection, the more attractive it was to get a phone too. Similarly, railways are more attractive the more destinations they offer. Social networks operate on the same principle: the more people, institutions, and companies use them, the higher their value – and it grows not linearly, but exponentially. This is why no competition to Facebook or Instagram – let’s mention Bluesky, Ello, or Mastodon – has ever managed even to approach their dominant market position, despite attempts with no ads, better data protection, or more user-friendly interfaces. Try convincing friends to switch to a messaging app they have never used before, and you’ll get a perfect idea of how the market for communication platforms functions.

Network industries are usually monopolistic. It is rare in a country to have two independent highway or railway networks, and municipalities usually do not have multiple separate water or sewage systems. The reasons are not only high entry costs for potential entrants and the unprofitability of building duplicate infrastructure, but primarily because a unified network provides much higher utility. In relation to digital monopolies, there is sometimes talk of breaking them up by antitrust authorities. In the past century, even large corporations like Standard Oil or AT&T were split in the United States. The problem with such an approach, for example in the case of Facebook, is not only that market re-consolidation could occur over time (let’s not forget Meta’s aggressive acquisition policy, which bought Instagram to eliminate potential competition), but mainly that breaking social networks into national frameworks would essentially eliminate their unique utility, which lies precisely in the global network of users.

Sudden political realism

If social networks, due to their size and unique functionality, have a decisive influence on society and its future development, we must consider them a public communication infrastructure. And since they have outgrown market regulation, they must be regulated politically. This applies not only to rules for using social networks but also to their algorithms. Marec proposes that posts should be displayed chronologically and only from people and pages actively followed. Why not?

But the most interesting part comes at the very end of the book, where it states: “If instead of the consequence, we want to address the cause, the solution has an economic character: advertising on social networks should either be completely banned or heavily taxed so that it is not profitable. (...) If we want to truly address the problem of social networks and focus on the cause rather than the consequences, the solution would look exactly like this.” And while Marec hits the nail on the head with this, he himself does not believe such a thing can be politically implemented. But why does he perceive a categorical difference between the relatively realistic possibility of forcing social networks to change their algorithms and the highly unlikely possibility of banning advertising on these platforms? Both are interventions in their business model. Meta’s enormous profits largely depend on those algorithms, which Marec suggests should be changed because they motivate people to generate more data on Facebook or Instagram and expose users to more advertising.

Service to two masters

It is characteristic that the solutions Marec proposes do not go beyond the framework of minimizing harm – similar to regulation of gambling or the tobacco industry. The problem of social networks, however, cannot be considered solved as long as the wealth of their owners, who, according to the author, “do not burden themselves with democracy and do not hide it,” remains untouched. It is no coincidence that nine out of the ten largest social media platforms are owned by just six billionaires.

In this context, Marec writes: “It is an unprecedented concentration of wealth, but that would be more or less the same, because anyone who desires it very much can be even infinitely rich. But it is also an unprecedented concentration of power and, above all – and I want to emphasize this three times and add four exclamation marks – sources of information. To understand that this is a huge problem and a great danger, we do not need to quote Orwell. I really have nothing against differing opinions or individual wealth, but from the perspective of ordinary people’s lives, these are catastrophic news.”

Great, that’s almost the vocabulary of political economy. Something here does not add up. The author considers the concentration of power and resources a problem, recognizes the direct link between economic and political capital, and sides with democracy, which, in his view, means “that even people who are neither rich nor powerful should have a say, that is, the majority of us (...) – you have money and power, but there are many of us.” Yet, he condescendingly states that “those who desire it very much, let them be even infinitely rich,” and has no objection to “individual wealth.” These two positions are fundamentally incompatible. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt 6:24).

The 2023 report by Oxfam Resisting the Rule of the Rich explains that the growth of individual wealth at the expense of society is directly related to the rise of authoritarian political tendencies. Countries with the greatest economic inequalities face up to seven times higher risk of democratic disintegration than egalitarian countries – and billionaires have up to four thousand times (!) higher chance of entering political office than ordinary people. If you are wealthy, you can acquire disproportionate political influence through direct means (political donations, founding a party, or personal candidacy) or indirect means (corruption, lobbying, or media support). If we do not want to use the foreign word plutocracy, let’s call it dollar democracy, which is much better captured by the fact that “one dollar, one vote” rather than the formal principle of “one person, one vote.” Liberals are extremely keen to avoid being accused of resenting success, but they also subscribe to the ethos of social responsibility, so they take the stance that “let the wolf gorge itself, and the sheep remain whole.” That sounds magnanimous and far from all extremes. But anyone who, in a situation where a dozen billionaires own more wealth than the poorer half of humanity, claims to support democracy and the public interest and at the same time has nothing against “individual wealth,” must either suffer from cognitive dissonance or babble whatever comes to mind. In a political paraphrase of the Holy Scripture, one cannot serve capitalism and democracy: if you support one, you fight the other; if you cling to one, you despise the other.

Better digital services for everyone

So far, the discussion has only been about regulation, but access to social networks can also take a positive form: a public service alternative to commercial platforms. James Muldoon presents an idea of what it could look like and how it could work in an essay and a related book. Since the key feature of social networks is their globality, any higher-quality non-commercial version with similar or even greater user numbers could only emerge through international cooperation. Muldoon proposes establishing the Organization of Global Digital Services (OGDS), which would operate as an independent international institution or as a component of the United Nations, similar to the International Telecommunication Union. (Whether it still makes sense to supplement or reform the UN, or to establish a new one, is a matter for another time.)

This organization would provide non-commercial digital services – an internet search engine, communication platforms, and so on – in the public interest and would be subject to democratic governance and transparent oversight. Each member country would nominate three delegates to its general assembly with equal voting rights – one government nominee, one civil society nominee, and one randomly selected representative of the public. The general assembly would decide on the strategic direction of the organization, elect its executive board, and appoint technical experts. OGDS would be financed from taxes levied on commercial social networks. The funds would be used to develop a more sustainable and meaningful alternative, which, unlike current social networks, could truly bring people closer together, support civic participation in social life and public affairs, and provide users with quality content, thereby “unlocking” the emancipatory and progressive potential of this technology.

Modern problems require unmodern solutions

The ultimate, but fully legal, solution to social network problems – assuming regulation cannot be implemented or a public service alternative cannot be built – is to socialize them in the public interest. Of course, this would only be possible through the US government and with the financial participation of the international community (but that is far from Marec’s framework). If we understand social networks as a public communication infrastructure, this would not be an unprecedented step. In 1870, the United Kingdom nationalized the telegraph network built by private companies; in 1912, the telephone network was expropriated – and neither of these revolutionary communication technologies at the time had the negative psychological, social, and political consequences that social networks bring. In 1927, the BBC was nationalized – then the British Broadcasting Company, now the British Broadcasting Corporation – which, despite recurring problems, remains a global benchmark for public service media to this day.

Similarly, in the strategic interest of the state, transportation infrastructure, including railways, was expropriated in the past – for example, in France (1878), Germany (1879), Italy (1905), or Japan (1906). And anyone who does not believe such a radical step can be taken against technological big capital might be interested to know that Sweden, in the 1970s, nationalized the entire pharmaceutical network, and the state held a monopoly on drug sales until 2009. An attentive reader will notice that none of these examples come from communist regimes or even from the immediate post-World War II period, when there was an unprecedented wave of nationalizations of entire strategic sectors worldwide. And before I am accused of Bolshevism, I remind you that discussions about socializing Facebook have been taking place in serious global media by academics from reputable universities for over fifteen years.

The tap controls the flow of money

Many problems of social networks remain untouched in Marec’s book and my text – a separate attention would deserve the invasion of artificial intelligence on these platforms and the business with user data. I understand the argument that it is “just” an overview book that does not promise anything fundamentally new and certainly not a comprehensive treatment of the topic. Still, it raises doubts – it does not include any radical perspectives, offers no concrete guidance on how to politically implement necessary regulations, and at the same time, in the name of political “realism,” does not dare to explore solutions to causes rather than consequences, even though the author hints at this approach on the last pages of his book.

Marec should be credited for recently daring to publicly formulate bold ideas – certainly at least for the salvation of democracy – that we might not have to call Slovak people deolats or fools. But without irony: in his recent writings, he shows the ability for self-reflection and critique even within his own ranks, which is rare in all media and political camps. I also appreciate that in the book Social Networks Must Be Destroyed, he considers – unlike many of his colleagues – less in terms of morality and more in terms of political economy. It is very refreshing to read a liberal author who uses the words power and interests more often than good and evil.

Every constructive attempt to solve the problems of our time – as opposed to cynical demoralizing glosses – is welcome at least as a signal of the direction in which thinking is developing in different parts of society. Under certain conditions, Marec’s proposals for taming social networks could also be embraced by the left. From its perspective, however, they are more about user improvements than a fundamental change in the course of social network development. The author himself admits at the end that he does not really aim at the core, and perhaps it would suffice, “if we focused on the most glaring problems. Let’s call it trimming the edges. [...] Just that alone would lead to a radical improvement of the situation, and no, it’s not a perfect solution, but we will probably agree that even an imperfect solution is better than none.”

Of course, the politics of “all or nothing” is nonsense. At the same time, I do not understand why we should already be satisfied with merely dampening the symptoms of our difficulties instead of attacking their root causes. An imperfect solution can be an honest result of failure, but it should not be an a priori assumption that “this is enough.” The story of social networks is, after all, a story of the common denominator of all our main social problems, which is the concentration of power. Marec, in his own words, in his book, does not formulate “an argument against capitalism as such, but against its unregulated form.” But that is the fundamental problem. No matter how social networks are, as long as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to enrich their wealth, with every additional dollar they and other billionaires get closer to buying back their algorithms in politics and never letting them be taken away again.