The depressing role of technology in the Trump years must be fixed

A new administration is settling into the White House, and one priority must be a consideration of technology, as an industry sector, as policy, as a potent tool, for the better, but also, as we have seen in the past for years, for the worse.

If, given all that is happening in the world, technology seems a lesser policy issue in the US (and everywhere) just now, then think in broader terms about what has happened during the previous administration.

Think of the role of social media, of communications apps, of the expanding capabilities of surveillance technologies in the US (and elsewhere) domestically and externally.

Think, pro and con, of the White House influence of selected tech company leaders. Consider the expanding role of live-streaming violent assaults and protests, even murder, and the personal-glorification broadcasting capabilities we now carry in our pockets, thanks to social media and internet-connected smartphones.

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Think of disinformation campaigns, counter-campaigns, the sophistication of deep-fake video, the promulgation of conspiracy theories and the attempts to address those. Think of the often shallow, often disturbing showcase political hearings with technology’s biggest, best-known, most powerful corporate executives, founders and chief executives.

Remember back to the Obama years, to the first term when social media political campaigning, micro-fundraising and audience targeting came to prominent public attention, predominantly seen as a positive, exciting development and proof that politicians could engage with and motivate new audiences and broader potential constituencies.

And recall the online activism of the Arab Spring, enabled by apps, social media, video documentation and internet connections, watched and welcomed across the world as the promising voice of the people.

But as first Edward Snowden and then the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal showed us – in revelations that spanned Obama and Trump administrations – there was a darker, at first nearly invisible flip side. These applications and platforms, conjoined to the endless mass collection of data by big tech, social media platforms and even small organisations and applications, could be used for more – much, much more – than the relatively benign activities and applications initially associated with them.

An alarming legacy

Looking back, the technology legacy of the Trump years is alarming and depressing. Much of the world learned, painfully, that technologies and techniques that once seemed to herald a a new dawning for democracy and openness all across the world were equally available for spreading falsehoods, undermining democracy, promoting and glorifying racism, hatred and violence.

On the other hand, neither side here seemed to have paid much attention to the wider implications of using those technologies. If those who once saw them as wonderful pro-democracy tools failed to visualise how they also could be used to undermine democracy, so too did the far right hordes who invaded the Capitol fail to realise that selfies, live streams, and video and message posts to forums created a plethora of own-goal criminal evidence – not to forget that mobiles are also, essentially, personal tracking devices.

If we all had paid more attention and considered their warnings, we might have been better prepared for what has happened

In the wake of the riots, Trump and many others had their personal social media megaphones stripped from them by various platforms, and some far-right communications apps, such as Parler, were (literally) deplatformed, removed from app stores and hosting sites.

This was a critical, if as yet undefined, moment for democracy, for speech, for technology, for politics and for the people. Whether this will be seen as a good decision or bad – a silencing of speech, a handing of such decisions to private companies, or a needed intervention to halt dangerous disinformation and violence – will and must be a crucial discussion for us all over the years of the incoming US administration.

This is so not least because it must make us all look beyond what we are only so belatedly noticing has been happening in North America and in Europe. For years, activists and human rights defenders around the world have seen the dire and dangerous consequences of these technologies and platforms, the lack of moderation or intervention by those who control them and the impact on collective publics and individual lives.

We were told

They have raised these issues with politicians at home and internationally, and with the companies. They told us. Over and over, they told us. We mostly ignored them. We cannot do so any longer.

Their experiences around the uses and abuses of communications technologies and platforms, their knowledge of the nuanced complexities of free speech and censorship, must be listened to and better understood.

If we all had paid more attention and considered their warnings, we might have been better prepared for what has happened.

Most of the companies and platforms at the centre of all this tumult are based in the US, so the Biden administration will have the world’s most defining role in determining what happens next. None of the debates or decisions will be simple or easy, but the US cannot ignore its global responsibility to grasp this nettle.