Against Internet Authoritarianism

The hypocrite-in-chief tweets "This England team deserve to be lauded as heroes, not racially abused on social media. Those responsible for this appalling abuse should be ashamed of themselves." You could be forgiven for thinking the racist taunting and trolling of the England team simply dropped out of the sky. In reality, Boris Johnson and his government greenlit this abuse once players started taking the knee. Tory MPs aplenty have trotted out the same line in the TV studios, in the media, and on their socials: solidarity against racism is illegitimate, protesting against it at home and abroad is "divisive", and Black Lives Matter is a thuggish, Marxist movement that wants to rewrite history and destroy Britishness. The Tories might have affected a liberal, tolerant, anti-racist pose, but preferred to stoke their usual, doomed culture war nonsense instead. Individuals made the choice to leave racists comments, but they do so in a climate encouraged from the very top.

Unfortunately, whenever there is an outbreak of racism on social media it is immediately met with an authoritarian response. It's understandable. Open expressions of racism in the flesh involves significant social costs if one is not sheltered by position and privilege, and so attempted enforcement of these costs online are to be expected. These mores are ostensibly policed by the (hit and miss) complaints procedures platforms have, which those with long memories will recall were forced on social media firms after some resistance - they do like to pretend they're merely content carriers and not creators, after all. The problem is their inadequacy is well known. One account is banned, but another can quickly get spun up and the battle rejoined. Therefore, some have taken to imposing sanctions of their own. If a racist is stupid enough to say racist things from a clearly identifiable account, screen grabs and emails duly clutter up their employer's socials and inbox. I certainly don't care if some bigot loses their job for being a bigot, but we - the left - need to have a think about this. Call me old fashioned, but as a rule we shouldn't be calling on bosses to police the content of what their employees post online. Yes, it's a way of ensuring racism has its costs, but it suggests employers have a responsibility for the private activities outside of hours of their workers, a normative expectation anyone with a trade union bone in their body should be uncomfortable with. True, there isn't much one can do directly to shut racists and fascists down online, but let's not pretend mess reporting people to their boss, even if they are foul, is an act of militant anti-fascism.

Still, there is sympathy in the wider country for controls on the unruly, extremist spaces on social media. Speaking in the Commons earlier, Priti Patel - no wide-eyed innocent when it comes to stirring the pot - said the government will bring the Online Safety Bill forward. Ostensibly a charter against scammers, terrorists, and paedophile networks it carries provisions that will protect "democratically important" viewpoints. I.e. Protecting whatever bullshit the Tories and their MPs decide to disseminate platforms might otherwise censor or flag. It also expects social media firms to take action against "misinformation", whatever that is. For its part, Labour has decided being seen tougher than the Tories is where the opportunities lie. Wrong, consistently wrong.

Ever since politicians discovered that social media cannot be tamed and its refuseal to afford the reverence they think is due, a wing of mainstream politics have champed at the bit for some sort of regulation. It doesn't surprise me state-backed efforts at privileging the words and thoughts of the establishment are packaged with anti-nonce measures and curbs at suicide glorification. Who could disagree with these laws? Nor that Labour's faltering leadership are smashing the authoritarian button. A smidgen of an understanding is all it takes to know there will never be a system for stamping out racist communications. The removal of anonymity won't make a difference either, as anyone who has spent some time hanging out on Tory MPs' Facebook pages will tell you. What it would do is open users up to a host of dangers - having interests and lifestyles exposed to families that could put them at risk, political activities employers would be all too happy to curb, and naturally those overseas staking their lives organising against repressive regimes - many of whom are good friends to the UK government. If changing anonymity on social media has no effect on you, congratulations on being able to enjoy that privilege.

To be accurate, the government are not committed to curbing anonymous use, which leaves an opening for authoritarian Labour. But instead the bill does consider new laws for criminalising online behaviours, defined as those "likely to cause harm." Compliance with the law gives platforms an incentive to de-anonymise their users to avoid falling foul of the the legislation themselves, but the dividend is even more targeted, personalised advertising. The stick comes with a juicy carrot. Where does this leave the left? With the urgent need to think through relations of power and authority in the digital age. We must resist the drift to constituting ourselves as an apparatus of voluntary surveillance, one that ends up policing platforms for the benefit of employers, bourgeois politicians, and the state. As always, the convincing alternative, the only alternative is the patient work of building our counterweights and working to make our ideas the popular, spontaneous common sense.

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