The key event in this chain has been some evidence of Russia manipulating social media, targeting ads on multiple platforms to rally sentiment in favour of and then deliver an election wherein Republican Donald Trump was elected as US president. Of course, the case has been made that similar techniques were used in other countries also to sway electoral momentum in favour of particular parties. In Pakistan, the ruling PTI, in particular, prides itself in having effectively used digital platforms to mobilise the youth and delivering a victory in the 2018 elections. Experts, however, are cautious about those claims have given the limited, urban-centric penetration of internet in the country.
“We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally,” wrote Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, adding that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Social media companies exist and work in a paradigm of inequality of access to information which they then leverage for profits. Facebook decided that the supposed moral high ground is not for its platforms, which combined have access to roughly half of the world’s population. Twitter, by comparison, less than a tenth. But the trouble with all social media platforms is that given their size and reliance on algorithms, regardless of their stance, they are not immune to being gamed by its users. This is why Dorsey’s statement and stance ring hollow. Perhaps they should look at ensuring that all of their users are treated equally.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 3rd, 2019.
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