One of Britain's chief spies has accused the U.S. social media giants of allowing their platforms to become the favoured command and control centres for terrorists and criminals. Far from being neutral, passive and apolitical conduits of data, they have become host to violent extremists and child abusers and facilitators for criminals and terrorists.
The accuser is Robert Hannigan, the boss of GCHQ, the U.K. government agency that engages in electronic eavesdropping, similar to America's NSA. He reminds us that the enemy is media savvy and highly sophisticated, pointing to the use made by Islamic State recruits of Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to broadcast the organization's violent propaganda, carefully edited to keep clear of censors.
But the purpose of the spy chief's broadside, published in the Financial Times, is really an urgent plea for the co-operation by the U.S. tech giants which he believes are offering the bad guys ever more sophisticated encryption technology. His argument is that it is time for the Silicon Valley guys to stop pretending that they are high-minded guardians of privacy and to begin to take responsibility for the abuse of their networks.
Of course, this will be seen by gun-toting libertarians, nerdy teenage hackers and among the grey fraternity of child pornographers and sociopaths, as yet another attempt by the state to encroach on freedom. But the spymaster is asking the question which the libertarians willfully refuse to answer. What degree of responsibility is owed by the Internet platform owners in return for their licence to operate in a free society?
There is no longer any doubt that social media sites have become minefields of libel and abusive behaviour. When they emerged a decade ago, organizations such as Facebook and Twitter determinedly adopted an ostrich posture – refusing to acknowledge any editorial role. Despite the name, social media companies are not media but electronic platforms. They have no more responsibility than a telephone company has for the content of conversation, they say. It is astonishing that this disingenuous assertion continues to go unchallenged when the evidence mounts daily that the tech giants are indirectly making money from broadcasting activities that range from the unsavoury to the illegal.
Belatedly, the U.S. tech companies have begun to respond to the abuse of their platforms, but there is little active surveillance; merely the removal of material following specific complaints. Their reluctance is hardly surprising; these organizations are still developing their ad revenue streams and any big expansion of overhead threatens the operating margin. The last thing they want is huge, heavily-staffed departments devoted to monitoring the legality and morality of content. Any sign of a significant buildup of bureaucratic costs unrelated to business development would kill their stock prices.
So be it, and welcome to the real world, the one inhabited by traditional consumer-facing business in the world of bricks, not bytes. For those who sell soft drinks or cars or T-shirts rather than space in the ether, there is no choice but to take responsibility for every aspect of your business. From the working conditions of the seamstress who sews the garment in a factory in Bangladesh to the imagery used in the magazine advertisements. Woe betide any fashion company that fails to vet and audit its supply chain and brand imagery. And don't even mention the financial risk and civil liability facing a company that allows a harmful product into the marketplace.
Still, the Internet platforms and social media continue to deny their responsibility while profiting from the furore that erupts when they broadcast some gruesome outrage. But, as Mr. Hannigan notes, for all their cutting-edge technology, the tech company bosses are behind the curve.
He writes: "most ordinary users of the Internet are ahead of them: they have strong views on the ethics of companies, whether on taxation, child protection or privacy; they do not want the media platforms they use with their friends and families to facilitate murder or child abuse. They know the Internet grew out of the values of Western democracy, not vice versa."
When your mantra is "Don't be evil," the slogan adopted by the Google founders, you acknowledge that your business operates according to certain norms, standards of behaviour that your customers expect you to observe. It is utterly naive for the tech company bosses to think that pandering to some juvenile obsession with secrecy is a business model that can succeed in a sophisticated Western society. The Silicon Valley guys need to grow up.
Carl Mortished