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Opinion

Post-truth blues

01 Aug 2024 5 minute read
A police car burns as officers are deployed on the streets of Hartlepool following a violent protest. Photo Owen Humphreys/PA Wire

Ben Wildsmith

When Andrew ‘Real Ting’ Davies gets his gilet in a twist about true facts reported in the press, sometimes on this website, he is occasionally misguided enough to seek redress through the authorities that exist to ensure our output is truthful.

When, however, he is seeking to mislead the nation about payments to care-leavers, he makes sure to do it on Twitter/X.

The reason for this, of course, is that no commensurate bodies exist to regulate output on social media platforms and, thus far, their billionaire owners have succeeded in convincing the UK government that they are not publishers.

The consequences of this state of affairs have been all too evident this week as the UK has struggled to make sense of the awful events in Southport.

When the broadcast media remained silent about the identity of the person arrested for the atrocity I, like many others, was tempted to see what might have leaked out on social media.

Asylum seeker

Reports that the perpetrator was a Syrian Muslim who had recently arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker were widespread on X within an hour of the attacks becoming known.

The supposed source for the information looked like a cropped photograph of a print news story. That detail bears some analysis, I think, as it points towards the enormity of a crisis in credibility that is threatening the coherence of society.

Why, with no byline or named newspaper in the picture, would a supposed print source have so much persuasive power that the originator of the lie would go to the trouble of fabricating one?

Part of the answer is, as described, the remaining regulatory framework around legitimate news outlets.

With no author or brand visible, however, I suggest that the semiotics of old-fashioned print offer a more worrying attraction to those who seek to mislead. Print newspapers are a relic of the past, a time when people imagine that they could access reliable information.

If the olden days say it’s true, then it must be.

Prejudices

If the olden days also happen to be confirming prejudices we already hold, then a heady mixture of nostalgia and confirmation bias can override critical thinking altogether.

Nostalgia, as we know, ain’t what it used to be. Facebook pages and groups have attracted huge audiences by encouraging it amongst their consumers. ‘Who remembers when you’d go out at six in the morning, play all day and your mother wouldn’t expect you back until it got dark?’ seems a trite question.

Ask it on Facebook and see the huge response it provokes. As quasi-communities grow around thin remembrances of the past, they become saleable commodities, and with the addition of AI-generated pictures, the reality of the past can be manipulated into something sinister.

All year I’ve been puzzling over bizarre collages of thatched-cottage Britain, complete with overhead spitfires and suspiciously cheerful white people.

These images have darkened over the months to feature frightened looking white children shadowed by cartoons of surly, dark adults with beards.

This week, I’ve seen multiple variations on this theme featuring knives being shared by acquaintances I would have assumed to know better.

When challenged, the people sharing this filth indignantly deny any suggestion of racism. I know them, they say. I know they aren’t racist. It’s me who is deluded, I haven’t woken up to the new reality.

The process has all the hallmarks of cult membership, and, for me, it’s been highly distressing to see people I’ve known for decades be caught in its jaws.

The official response to the violence we’ve seen around the UK this week is decidedly 20th century.

Thugs

Downplaying the ‘tiny minority’ of thugs who actually show up to riot ignores the wider problem at play. Huge swathes of the population are being deluded into false, hateful beliefs and, in a democracy, even one as rigged as ours, that holds the seeds of our destruction.

A common call this week has been to proscribe the English Defence League as a terrorist organisation.

The problem here is that the EDL no longer exists. Organisations like that used to need membership lists to disseminate information. Now, ‘Tommy Robinson’ can tweet from anywhere in the world and anybody remotely interested in his ideas will get the message immediately.

We need to be passing laws fit for the century we live in, and we need to do it immediately. Social media sites should be legally accountable for the veracity of their content and politicians who amplify falsehoods must be sanctioned without fear or favour.

A society that cannot set the parameters of debate will lose all sense of itself. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.


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Ieuan Evans
Ieuan Evans
4 months ago

Whenever he opens his mouth, I ignore what he says.

Padi Phillips
Padi Phillips
4 months ago

The falsehood that social media sites aren’t publishers needs to be smashed. They are exactly that, and just as publishers of book, newspapers and other media are subject to laws that penalise and sanction incitement, so must the digital social media platforms. As I stated in a recent comment on another post, these social media sites need to face fines in the billions, which they can easily afford once or twice but not as something continuous. And it does need to be in the billions, as only then would it work as a sufficient deterrent. The very real threat of… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
4 months ago
Reply to  Padi Phillips

The falsehood that social media sites aren’t publishers needs to be smashed. They are exactly that, and just as publishers of book, newspapers and other media are subject to laws that penalise and sanction incitement, so must the digital social media platforms.’

I agree entirely. But given the twin realities that (a) most of these sites are hosted in the USA and (b) that the very first amendment to the US constitution almost fetishizes absolute freedom of speech, that may be difficult to achieve.

Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
4 months ago

Ben. It’s a tough call but possibly your best piece yet.

Jeff
Jeff
4 months ago

Mr Davies could have dealt with it (meat issue) on the QT as normal constituency work and awaited the results. He chose to try to make it a race issue (he may not see it that way but that is what it is, Mr Yaxley Lennon thought so). Twitter owner has turned Twitter into a cess pool, cut the safety and open the flood gates to hate. Russian bot farms must love the likes of ARTD. Problem is the UK getting such a person as Musk to comply without cutting access in the UK (Musk who endorses Trump so we… Read more »

Padi Phillips
Padi Phillips
4 months ago
Reply to  Jeff

Any entity operating in the UK needs to respect UK rules. It wouldn’t be that difficult to restrict easy access to Twitter/X and platforms can be fined, even if they are based overseas.Twitter is currently facing huge fines in the EU over breach of European legislation. If the E?U can reign in Twitter, and other social media platforms, the UK can do it too. The only thing missing is the political will.

Jeff
Jeff
4 months ago
Reply to  Padi Phillips

Musk and Facebook have shown what they will do when confronted by governments. It takes a massive fine and determined politicos and then they still continue, I fully expect musk to refuse anything and will be ignoring or fighting the EU fines, he is off the edge of the map now and doesn’t care (see the people he has let back on the platform and safety cuts). Time will tell, I don’t hold out for the Uk gov grasping this one.

Susan Garvin
Susan Garvin
4 months ago

Thanks for the quick journey into discovering the quote about Those whom the gods destroy etc! Very learned and very illuminating (seriously) . It is so obvious where responsibilities lie that we can, perhaps, only assume that there are those who shirk responsibility in the name of shiversome thrills? “We need to be passing laws fit for the century we live in, and we need to do it immediately. Social media sites should be legally accountable for the veracity of their content and politicians who amplify falsehoods must be sanctioned without fear or favour.” I cannot believe we even need… Read more »

Jeff
Jeff
4 months ago

ARTD pushing more hate by publishing a letter on twitter concerning halal meat. Why does he need to publish it before there are answers. I am not sure why he does his political business this way but I can guess, is he after a certain person twitter likes that is wanted for court that fled the UK? ARTD is a political brawler not a political thinker, after all the hate recently we need politicians to tone it done, but “stop the boats” Davies cannot help himself. Welsh Cons, get a new leader. Existing one is dragging you down to the… Read more »

Doctor Trousers
4 months ago

ironically, the practice of not treating internet content hosts as legally liable publishers has thoroughly sound origins in a time long before facebook. the precident was set in the US, and the intent was actually to protect the little guy from the big corporations, by ensuring that anyone who hosted a forum or a newsgroup couldn’t be sued into oblivion because somebody said something libelous about a corporation. I think there is a solution that can maintain that protection while holding the social media giants to account, which is to make them liable as publishers if they alter, recommend, prioritise… Read more »

Brychan
Brychan
4 months ago

Spreading falsehoods pre-dates social media. It used to be the case that such lies and disinformation was spread using a megaphone on the street corner, but we didn’t ban the megaphone or prosecute the manufacturer. I think we’re missing the point, the absence of intelligence and integrity of politicians. It’s a failure not just within the far right but has also been evident in the ‘culture wars’ relating to transexuals and climate activists. The issue arises because ‘Main Stream Media’ is not trusted and do not engage with sections of the community. There are counties that have strict controls on… Read more »

Linda Jones
Linda Jones
4 months ago

Millions in the UK have no voice in politics, they have mo representation in government so their concerns and problems are gaslighted on the whole. Stifled by the media, the press and politicians. Any questions on the issue of immigration for example is immediately silenced, written off as racist or islamophobic etc. Little wonder so many are vulnerable to exploitation by hard line groups. The current riots in my opinion are a symptom of the failure of ‘democracy’ of UK politicians and the UK media/press to reflect and deal with real life for the many. BBC Wales news is one… Read more »

CapM
CapM
4 months ago
Reply to  Linda Jones

“Millions in the UK have no voice in politics,”

If they’re over eighteen then they do have a voice.
We’ve just had a general election where nearly 20.000,000 of those with “no voice” couldn’t be @rsed to even put in the effort to spoil their ballot papers to send a message .
Never mind take the opportunity to do anything constructive like demand Proportional Representation on their ballots.

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