Before You Regulate Social Media, Understand It. Then Think Again

By Vincent R. Pozon

The Line Congress Shouldn't Cross

Before you use legislation as a bludgeon against fake news and grandstand in the process, may we remind you: social media is the pulpit of the powerless. Tread carefully.

We need you to gain an understanding of the landscape, how social media is important for many, and why, should you touch it, you must do so very, very gingerly.

The Social Media Post is the Letter to the Editor – but on Steroids

In another time, people read the newspaper. If anyone became sufficiently agitated by an issue, he would write a letter to the editor.

Well, today, he has found the megaphone that is social media.

This new medium empowers and emboldens. He can offer his opinions to anyone in the world—and he can do so with oomph.

He is read and reacted to in seconds. His words can intrigue, raise hackles, engender debate.

The Good, the Drunk, and the Disinhibited in the Landscape of Debate

People walk the streets of social media, peddling their opinions and druthers, interacting with denizens of this “Second Life” world. They enter gated communities (groups), and engage with other passionate people.

They provoke, cajole, seek and often succeed in injecting ideas into the public discourse.

These Are the Good Guys on Social Media

You and me, ordinary people on the internet. Normally, we keep our threads proper and polite; we scold, unfriend, block the ill-mannered.

We obey the netiquette, which means we do not get into arguments on someone else's post. We enlighten the world with our own opinions in our own posts.

Yes, there are people who change their names or open new profiles. Previously disallowed, it is now encouraged by Meta.

Sometimes the Good Guys Get Drunk

In psychology, there is an apt term for what happens to some people on social media platforms: disinhibition.

According to Jordan Grafman, et al., “disinhibition is a lack of restraint manifested in several ways, affecting motor, instinctual, emotional, cognitive, and perceptual aspects with signs and symptoms, e.g., impulsivity, disregard for others and social norms, aggressive outbursts, misconduct and oppositional behaviours."

While in the real world, we avoid fights; on social media, there are no restraints. The disinhibited is the ordinary guy who gets drunk on that power. He wakes up to check on his posts, ready to do battle with anyone who leaves caustic comments.

They will fight—and metaphorically die—for their beliefs, churches and, yes, candidates. They leave vitriol and viciousness on other people's walls.

If there is a learning, it is that many normally polite members of civil society seem to have difficulty accepting that there are people who do not agree with them.

Many hide behind noms de guerre. Others show their love objects, pose with guns and tattoos.

There are days when you feel everybody has bile instead of blood running through their veins. They are ugly—their conduct, their words. But they’re just drunk.

And they are not the problem.

What to Do with the Drunken?

Develop a reflex for your fingers, one that unfollows, unfriends or blocks—without thinking and without glancing at the names—even if they are close friends or relatives. Report them if they have gone too far. Help lower the fever of this world.

Social Media Warriors: The Necessary Insiders

And then there are the social media warriors, and that is no euphemism. They are there to protect, to be present in threads where their clients – commercial or political – are mentioned. They monitor, and if necessary, they will respond to comments with the agreed narratives.

Clients include countries: "The digital resistance (of Ukraine) ranges from soft-power tasks such as attempting to influence public opinion in Russia via social media, and raising funds for the war effort."

Why Social Media Warriors Matter

I like to tell the story of Roseanne Barr.

Roseanne Barr tweeted at 2:00 in the morning. The comedian referred to Valerie Jarrett, the African-American former adviser to Barack Obama, as an offspring of “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.”

She woke up to a full-blown crisis. She was lambasted on all forms of media. Her staff and crew were horrified. Advertisers threatened.

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” the ABC entertainment president, Channing Dungey, said in an official statement.

ABC cancelled the show before the end of the day.

Again, this is the new world. The newspaper isn’t “put to bed” anymore.

Having social media warriors is like insurance, like a fire extinguisher, like a first aid kit. Do not touch them. Business needs them.

Then There are the Mercenaries

Mercenaries bring to the battlefield mercenary morals.

If you engage with them, they invariably use two tactics: argumentum ad hominem—“bobo mo kasi”—and howaboutism—“eh bakit, si ganito?”

Their mastery of the language is dysfunctional. There is little care in crossing Ts or dotting Is or even in cutting up sentences. Periods and commas are not in their toolbox.

Because the agenda is money, there is hardly any effort at decorum or presenting themselves as real people.

You won’t catch them unprotected, of course. They are securely behind VPN walls.

Their profiles show avatars or flowers or pets, the names are clearly fake; there are no family photos, or discussions among family members. All posts are political. No post is set to “friends only.” These days, many mercenaries lock their profiles.

What do mercenaries want? That their posts be shared, tagged, discussed, reacted to, picked up by legacy media—and that they succeed in diminishing the credibility of the posts of their targets.

Oh, they will be vicious: I have been messaged, and threatened.

When the Tri-Comm Enters the Room: The Dangers of Overreach

Congressional regulation often comes cloaked in concern, but risks eroding speech.

When the folks in Congress try to legislate away the fake news peddlers, they affect you and me—and the platforms themselves.

Social media is the ultimate soapbox, podium of the ordinary man. While he is usually powerless against government, there is an arming that happens as he steps onto it. His Facebook or IG or TikTok post is his prayer.

While on it, he can take officials to task, force otherwise deaf heavens to listen and respond. On it, he feels he can affect and infect people; he believes he must try to right wrongs. While on the podium, he is Public, and government officials Public Servants.

Maaari pong mag-ingay. Maaari pong mangangalampag. At dapat naman.

Zona Libre

We pray social media remains a safe place where he can espouse, accuse, champion, rally, protest—without bridle and censor. A place where he is free to make demands of government, without fear, without the Luddites of Congress looking over his shoulder.

Bridle his indignation, check his words—and you hurt his spirit. Leave him without a voice—and you force him to consider the use of his arms instead.

Social media is messy. That’s the price of openness. The good cannot speak without the risk of the bad doing so too. This is not a bug; it is the nature of the tool.

If you must err, err on the side of excess, not less.

Careful, Careful, Congress

To defend social media is not to defend every word spoken on it, but to defend the right to speak at all.

Recently, China allegedly contracted a marketing firm to shape public opinion in the Philippines through coordinated messaging, which they have denied. But even if the claim were true, what would it amount to? A foreign government making its case through communications channels? That is standard practice in an interconnected world: commerce, persuasion, diplomacy—the same instruments every country, including ours, employs abroad.

This is not to defend China's cause; it is to dismantle the dangerous premise that every attempt at persuasion is an act of malignancy. Nuance perishes by inches; Congressional panic tends to reach for the nearest set of handcuffs.

If One Seeks an Example of True Malice...

“At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines... It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign.”

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

“In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.”

Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, remarked

“I don’t think it’s defensible. I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that.”

What the United States did was not merely reckless; it endangered lives on a national scale.

By comparison, if China asked a local agency for help in disseminating its position—while that position may be difficult to accept and defend—it is hardly anywhere near as harmful. If the documents are real, it was not even covert: the Chinese embassy signed the contract.

The real peril is not that bad ideas flourish online, but that the government might one day decide to outlaw them.

In Closing

Right now, we have yet to learn how to tell programming from the ads—how to tell posts of regular people from mercenary campaigns. But this is commerce and conversation, human interaction being waged in democratic space. And we can opt in, like, follow—or block, unfriend, unlike, choose what not to read.

And report and call out the libelous and the malicious.

There are existing laws—severe—that cover libel.

A regulatory body for social media might seem reasonable—but ask yourselves: how successful has regulation been over legacy media?

This is the plea: do not let your dislike of fake news make you deaf to the value of the medium.

You cannot shake your head and kick up a fuss about public opinion being influenced by what you, today, as a member of a class with which you identify, consider fake news. Congress should not decide what is fake news for anybody. We will just have to learn to be more discerning.

Facetious aside (Raymond Reddington of The Blacklist):
“So black and white. It’s not.”

Sobering coda (Ed Lingao, respected journalist):
“Congress will give (social media) a code of ethics?”

Vincent R. Pozon

After a year of college, Koyang entered advertising, and there he stayed for half a century, in various agencies, multinational and local. He is known for aberrant strategic successes (e.g., Clusivol’s ‘Bawal Magkasakit’, Promil’s ‘The Gifted Child’, RiteMED’s ‘May RiteMED ba nito?', VP Binay's 'Ganito Kami sa Makati', JV Ejercito's 'The Good One'). He is chairman of Estima, an ad agency dedicated to helping local industrialists, causes and candidates. He is co-founder and counselor for advertising, public relations, and crisis management of Caucus, Inc., a multi-discipline consultancy firm. He can be reached through vpozon@me.com.