Let's introduce online accountability by charging for access to social media

Originally published in Conservative Home

Mainstream is so yesterday! For those of us who can remember just four channel buttons on the TV, social media has re-written the norms in which news is received and digested.

Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok have all become pseudo-news platforms, with a younger generation, increasingly overshadowing TV, radio and print. We are all 'journalists' now, sharing stories and adding comments to fill the infinite appetite for 24/7 news and never-ending stream of content.

The more outlandish a story, the more traction it gets and as a consequence, opinions and facts become blurred. Content is purposefully exaggerated, using clickbait headlines or misleading information so stories catch the eye and get shared to a wider audience.

To compound matters, new technologies make it simpler to manipulate videos and pictures to reflect a reality that does not actually exist. Anger and outrage are fundamental to virality.

How did we get here? The first wave of social-media platforms (Facebook, Myspace, Friendster) was launched around 2003, allowing friends to connect with friends but also strangers that share common interests.

Over the years Facebook became the social media platform of choice and remains so today, with over three billion subscribers. It was seen as a welcome advance to our democracy, helping strengthen bonds between and within communities, with the commercial bonus of helping businesses reach out to services worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg's objective was to rewrite the way people spread and consume information... with the power to share".

In 2009 he achieved just that when he introduced the 'like' button - an innovation quickly copied by Twitter, which then went a step further with its 're-tweet' function.

The age of mass instant digital endorsement had begun. The evolution of personal communication from the postal service followed by the telephone, then email and, finally, mobile texting turned into a revolution in which performing began to overshadow connecting. Server algorithms quickly followed, helping promote content best identified to generate further interactions.

It soon became clear that triggering anger and outrage generated the most traffic; 'going viral' could bring fame or indeed infamy if you were the receiving end of the vitriol. With the ability to shield one's identity, a digital battle ground was created, allowing an aggressive behaviour and generating new forms of harm, against high-risk individuals and communities.

The bully and the bigot, as well as the fraudster and the terrorist, found a relatively unregulated digital playground that gave them vast reach to whip up anger, spread scams, and even indoctrinate the vulnerable to extremist causes – all, thanks to fake profiles, without the fear of being judged for their actions, let alone being punished.

In summary, the incredible benefits social media have brought to our lives have advanced at such a pace that the societal drawbacks and dangers have largely been overlooked. Pause to think what bound together a (pre-digital) democratic society. Jonathan Haidt, the American social psychologist and author, offers three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared national stories and experiences. Social media has weakened all three. It's through social media that the Islamic State was able to raise international funds and recruit followers, and it was so called "networked incitement" that fuelled the January 6 insurrection in Washington DC.

If any good might come out from the worst riots in Britain since the war, it should be a reality check on where the advance of unconstrained social media is taking our country. This is not to dismiss the wider underlying issues that sit behind the riots. But the bigger was the elephant recognized, not least by the PM who suggested that the Southport attacker was a social media user who had already been put on an MI5 watch list.

This led to over 500 rioters outnumbering police as the raids struggling to keep up with the files on social media. Over two weeks we saw 450 arrests with police having to contend with the threats of significant public disorder provoking fear.

Accountability is key. I was always curious to read MPs offering critical views to newspapers anonymously (a former Minister said this, and 'senior backbencher said that'). If you have something to say, and you believe in it, why not stand by your words?

Yet too often MPs either lack the courage or know they'd get criticised for their official remarks, so hide behind anonymous briefings. This - it's said - is an easy option. How different political stories would look if all quotes were obliged to be on the record: less sensationalist and adversarial, but more honest. The same principle applies to social media. But there we are not dealing with good copy and gossip for newspapers but the immense power through anonymity to coarsen public opinion, promote hate, and incite hostile action.

Charging just £1 a year for the right to communicate on a social media platform immediately introduces blanket accountability through the users' bank details. Those under eighteen would require an adult guarantor.

One could still remain anonymous online. Children in open chat rooms often use nicknames for obvious reasons, and adults must be able to freely engage with Facebook support networks, for example, without the obligation to use their real name. Privacy is not lost.

But accountability is introduced. It would make anyone think twice about what they want to say, or indeed retweet. This will not fully correct the negatives of social media, but it would be a bold and welcome start.

Social media is now an indispensable part of our lives. But it's revolutionising the way we live and how we express ourselves, and influencing our culture, privacy, politics, and mental health.

The benefits are enormous, but the wider hazards, for too long ignored, must now be addressed.

Let's begin with accountability.