Fake News and Real Views

MAKING THE INTERNET SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY by Francis Fukuyama

Second Term Tutorial Assignment
Storming the Capitol
– January 6th 2021
• Twitter shut down Donald
Trump’s account cutting him
off from his followers.
• The storming of the capitol
was largely participated in by
Trump supporters who
received his message via
social media platforms
 • Fake News and Misinformation
Threats to Democracy
• Weaponizing Words
The Actual Threat
• “What policy needs to target instead is the dominant platforms’
power to either amplify or silence certain voices in the political
sphere.”
• The real problem centers around the platforms’ ability to either
amplify or silence certain messages, and to do so at a scale that can
alter major political outcomes.
Remedies?
• “Middleware Companies.”
• What is Middleware?
• Would breaking up these
companies actually reduce
their power?
More Remedies!
• Government Regulation
• The EU has attempted this approach – But here is the flaw “the United States today is far too
polarized to be able to authorize the FCC or any other government body to determine what is “fair and
balanced””

• Data Profitability
• “The idea is that individual users own their data and should be able to move it to alternate platforms”
• “it runs into immediate difficulties involving both property rights and technical feasibility”
 Fukuyama says that reducing the size of
platform power is vital for the survival of
democracy within the United States.

How do we “Public policy needs to be deployed to

control social reduce that power, which otherwise might
media in well one day come under the control of
Democracy? owners who do want to deliberately
manipulate elections.”
Conclusion