Decency is the answer
The CEOs of five major tech companies just went down in flames so badly before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, over social media’s impact on children, that they might have a future as Ivy League college presidents. But how do we fix the problem?
Clearly their platforms are cunningly designed to lure people in and trap them. Indeed I struggle to get off “X” long enough to write this column. And they’re especially dangerous for young people who lack the maturity to, say, consent to a sex change and didn’t grow up reading books that gave contrary brain training. But remember, the internet wasn’t imposed on us at gunpoint.
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Indeed, the cross-partisan roasting of these wealthy, reckless nerds is remarkable partly because of the long-standing cross-partisan giddy enthusiasm for the “world wide web” generally and social media in particular. And they have virtues; one reason I risk distraction is continually going online to grab column-related information fast.
Drive to the library and hope they have a relevant book? No thanks. But let’s revisit the broad enthusiasm across the usual political, social and ideological lines, especially puzzlingly in this polarized era, and see if it helps explain how we got into this mess.
One positive thing was pride in American high-tech prowess, with Facebook, Google etc. the modern equivalent of Ford, GM and American Motors around the Second World War. But from there it gets worse.
Both left and right think they’re rebels against “the Establishment” and the “web” promised to bypass traditional gatekeepers of information and respectability. The right loved its entrepreneurial dynamism free of red tape, the left its lack of convention free of scarlet letters. And in an era of “authenticity” it fell seductively on the libertarian-libertine axis where nobody has to exercise, or submit to, any restraint at all.
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Sort of Gordon Gecko meets Dr. Frank N. Furter. Thus a huge amount of what’s out there, is searched for, and is paid for is porn. Ugly, degrading porn. Turns out “Do what thou wilt” is dreadful advice given Original Sin. (And here I warn any parents of teen boys that unless you’re totally on their surfing habits they’re watching smut degrading to them and menacing to girls.)
Most journalists readily assume the answer is more government regulation, as if a sensible reading of history suggested the state was typically wiser and more virtuous than its citizens. A typical BBC piece ended “Congress has only passed one children’s safety law in the last decade. But this hearing stood out compared to others — because of the families in the room.”
A strange appeal in a society that scorns the traditional family, plunges into a demographic death spiral then cries crocodile tears about how someone else left kids confused, depressed and vulnerable to creepiness online. But if we somehow summon real decency, what can we do?
Possibly nothing. As the New York Times observed (h/t Norman Spector) “Meta’s executives have testified 33 times since 2017 over issues such as election interference by foreign agents, antitrust and social media’s role in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol — but no federal law has been passed to hold the tech companies to account.” And I’m not some Red Tory “conservative” who thinks the antidote to too much government meddling is more of it, done by people like me who will make you virtuous in a stuffy not licentious way. But here the legislative rather than social problem is straightforward.
In their fit of libertarian-libertine passion for a free-for-all of clicks for the giants, spin-off tech thingy for countries and personal fulfilment, governments and especially the American one got the legislative framework totally wrong. And yes, I did tell you so.
On Jan. 12, 2021, after various social media banned Donald Trump, I wrote “governments forbid spreading libel and sedition, and rightly so. Uh, unless you’re a social media giant, in which case Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act shelters you from the obligations placed on everyone else.”
Of course we must want to restrain ourselves. And heed Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium is the message”; young people who get their information, ideas and identity online will mostly be unfocused and unhappy even without the worst current excesses. People frequently call the bans on vulgarity and conspiracy theories on websites I run “censorship.” But censorship is the state using force to prevent those wishing to express an opinion from connecting with those wishing to hear it. So if you insist on saying rude words in public, don’t come crying to me about Mark Zuckerberg destroying youth.
If not, let’s make the social media giants publishers legally, as in fact, and let the lawsuits begin. Or the decency.
National Post
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