The Hague, 15 November 2024
On 15 November at the Humanity Hub, we, along with tech policy and accountability non-profit NGO, WHAT TO FIX gathered for our event Far-right influencers and the platforms that enable them. We were joined by The London Story executive director and Assistant Professor at University College Groningen, Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie, Jordy Nijenhuis, co-founder of Dutch NGO Dare to be Grey, and Drs. Ron van Wonderen senior researcher at the Verwey-Jonker Instituut.
The event served as both a report launch for our recent report In the Name of Cow: State of Haryana Dispatch and as a wider panel discussion about the international phenomenon hate speech and extreme content and influencers on social media. During the report presentation, Dr. Manuvie, spoke about how acts of violence and hate speech were live streamed to Facebook, where cow vigilante influencers could easily call for their supporters to join in on the violence. The research conducted for the report revealed clear messaging calling for attacks against Muslims or alleging some threat presented by Muslims to necessitate such violence.
Although contacted, since such content violates their community standards, Meta (the parent company to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) failed to act sufficiently. This is part of a consistent pattern of slow and insufficient engagement of social media platforms, even when content found on their platforms has deadly consequences. The choice to focus on India for such a report may come as a surprise to some. However, India is Meta’s largest market and the rapid uptake in digital technology in recent years has given India a massive online user base globally.
After the presentation of the report, the panel was opened up for a wider discussion about online polarisation, hate speech and extreme content on social media, and tech platform accountability. Starting with online polarisation, the panellists discussed that polarisation is a naturally occurring process that is not always undesirable, using the example of the level of social agitation that was required to spark some of the most important emancipation movements of past decades. However, a problem arises when varied sides struggle to communicate, this is amplified by social media as groups can retreat into spaces where those who don’t think like them are excluded and they are surrounded only by those who do.
Although social media has removed some of the barriers that existed when traditional media outlets were the gatekeepers of information and news, influencers are especially able to harness this new space. In terms of the skills that enable them to succeed in conveying certain messages, storytelling is especially powerful. We spoke about the situation in India and how influencers there who use hate speech take advantage of bravado, Hindu supremacy, strong sentiments around festivals, and historical cultural divisions.
Naturally, the discussion moved to one about the role of social media platforms. Our guests discussed how disinformation and polarisation are monetised. Even known disinformation offenders easily receive advert revenue as their content attracts enough clicks. Influencers and organisations have figured out that the more extreme the content, the more clicks they can attract, meaning even more funding from adverts and engagement. The Google ad model is an example of such an earning model.
Big Tech also employs algorithms to keep users’ attention as much as possible to sell more ads. Eliciting emotional responses is the perfect way to generate longer engagement, thus allowing extreme and lopsided content to thrive.
The panel ended with a discussion on what can be done about the troubling topics addressed during the event by ‘everyday people’ and civil society. While so-called ‘fringe content’ which is difficult to identify as extreme content may pose a unique issue, having trusted flaggers or a human content moderation team with knowledge of the (cultural, geographic, or other) context of content is integral.
Further, there were some hopes that the European Union’s new Digital Services Act would force platforms into implementing actionable change. There was little enthusiasm for the possibility that platforms themselves would change on their own, especially in massive markets like India where there is little political will from national politicians to change the status quo and where legislation still lags behind digital developments.
While there has been evidence to suggest that Big Tech platforms implement changes when they suffer bad press, particularly in large publications, the panel seemed to agree that pieces of legislation like the DSA will likely create the most change. It is also possible that countries outside of the EU benefit from the DSA via the ‘Brussels Effect,’ that is that businesses and other actors change their strategies and rules for all of their markets as a result of being made to bring them in compliance with EU regulations.
For their part, civil society should be vocal about these issues. Individuals could move to social networks that are more localised or that just respect the norms and values also important to them (thus leaving those that do not respect these norms and values).
After a final word from all speakers, the floor opened to questions from the audience. Through these questions, we explored themes like Indian legislation of the digital space, anonymity in digital spaces, and the DSA framework. Don’t want to miss another one of our events? Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on LinkedIn, or track us on X! See below for more resources: