The headline act
Anyone following the news over recent months will have found it hard to ignore the seemingly constant presence of Elon Musk. Not happy with limiting himself to running X and Tesla, he can now frequently be found speaking for Trump at any number of his massive rallies. What’s really interesting here is you have the alignment of a businessman who bought a platform that banned Trump with Trump himself.
X has fought hard public battles against the previous Twitter brand, mainly in an attempt to turn itself into a self-styled global town square. The interesting thing here is that the platform has become something of an open forum, but one with the ability to correct itself. Community notes can be added to any post, allowing people from all over the world to fact check one another and combat disinformation in a way that is decentralized. This is at odds with the previous culture of having a team of in-house fact checkers to monitor all of the posted content.
The presence of Musk, and the talk of him heading a new government efficiency department, are big news for the direction of the Trump administration. While only time will tell whether or not Musk gets to fulfill his vision for X, it is clear that he will operate in a deregulated landscape overseen by a President who is all about saying what you believe in. We predict the result will be a highly open, but sometimes contentious, social platform in which previous mass censorship hopefully becomes a thing of the past.
The young pretender
Scroll through any podcast chart and you will see the Joe Rogan Experience right near the top. Who is one of his most recent guests? Mark Zuckerberg. Since Zuckerberg started to train in MMA many have predicted that he is leaning more towards the right in terms of the American political spectrum. While these types of comments are often made with a wry smile or a nod and a wink, you only have to look at one of his most recent Facebook appointees.
Adding UFC supremo and ardent Trump supporter Dana White to his advisory board can only be seen as a clear indication of Zuckerberg’s political stance at this time. Listen to his recent podcast appearance and you will hear all about his thoughts on the pressure to censor COVID posts that was brought by the Biden administration. Add in the fact that Trump personally invited Zuckerberg to his inauguration and you get a sense that Facebook is about to open up and veer more towards the right.
One of the earliest indications of this has been the announcement that the platform will soon do away with fact checkers and copy X’s community notes approach. Putting the control of how a platform corrects itself back into the hands of the users is a classic small government, rightwing approach. The fact that the world’s biggest social network is planning to do it is a strong indicator that cancelling and deplatforming may become distant memories.
The elephant in the room
TikTok began life as a niche video sharing platform before quickly mutating into an attention-grabbing behemoth with well over a billion global users. Talk of it being directly controlled by the Chinese leadership has driven things to the point where Biden banned the app on his last full day in office. Trump has removed that ban and has talked openly about wanting to do a deal to buy part or all of the company so that it moves into American hands.
Whether China chooses to do this — and who ultimately owns the app, for that matter — are questions that are beyond the scope of this article. Instead, we want to turn our attention to what American ownership could mean for the way you use the app. It could potentially become open-source, have a more transparent ranking system, and adopt a community notes form of self-correction. All of these changes would make the platform more conducive to free speech, but in a way that doesn’t cross the line and move us into territory where anyone can say anything and get away with it.
Final thoughts
The issue of free speech online has been building for some time, and you only have to look at the differences of opinion surrounding the global COVID response to see the impact for yourself. Many people now talk of a ‘post-truth’ era in which anything you disagree with you can highlight as a hoax or a fraud. Does the website Temple of Games offer fair odds? Is Amazon using Echo technology to spy on you? Will your Facebook photos be used to train AI without your knowledge? Asking these types of questions is not only important, but it’s also essential if we are to truly understand the digital world that many of us are citizens of.
Taking a step back from these questions, we can expect the Trump administration to focus very much on the business and free speech side of things. They want to see jobs brought back into America and innovation to continually drive growth and economic prosperity. It will certainly be interesting to take a look at how the fine details play out in the weeks and months ahead.
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