Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by P.W. Singer

This was just as well. In 2016, researchers were stunned to discover that 59 percent of all links posted on social media had never been clicked on by the person who shared them. Simply sharing crazy, salacious stories became a form of political activism. As with the dopamine-fueled cycle of “shares” and “likes,” it also had a druglike effect on internet partisans. Each new “hit” of real (or fake) news broadcast on social media might be just enough to help their chosen candidate win. There was also a sort of raw entertainment to it—a no-holds-barred battle in which actual positions on policy no longer mattered. This, too, was infectious. Now taking their lead from what was trending online, traditional media outlets followed suit. Across the board, just one-tenth of professional media coverage focused on the 2016 presidential candidates’ actual policy positions. From the start of the year to the last week before the vote, the nightly news broadcasts of the “big three” networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) devoted a total of just thirty-two minutes to examining the actual

For Silicon Valley at large, it was a sign that “terms of service” could no longer be a simple check box to placate jumpy investors. These user agreements had to become a new kind of law, penned by private corporations instead of governments, to administer communities of unprecedented scale. To be effective, these terms would have to be regularly monitored and updated, pulling engineers ever closer to the task of “regulating” free speech. To do otherwise—to leave hundreds of millions of users to say or do whatever they pleased—risked the government jumping in and passing ever more stringent legislation. In other words, to allow truly free speech would be financially ruinous.