Characterised by its youth, genius, and more than a hint of arrogance, Silicon Valley has long been seen as a regulation-free wild west, where companies set their own rules and innovate faster than old, dusty governments can legislate against them. Yet, as 2021 begins, awareness of the central role that social media, and Big Tech more broadly, play in our politics and daily lives has never been greater. Facebook and Twitter’s near-synchronised move to kick Donald Trump from their platforms after he used his accounts to spread patent untruths about the US election, as well as Apple and Amazon’s blanket blackout on the services of the controversial app Parler, have brought increased attention. So much attention, in fact, that actual, substantive change might be right around the corner. But, before we get to all that, let me take you back, long ago, to 2016.

The 6^th  of March 2016, to be precise. Fresh from a big win in the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “How do you fight millions of dollars of fraudulent commercials pushing for crooked politicians? I will be using Facebook & Twitter. Watch!”

And watch we did. Over the next 4 years and 10 months, his incessant Twitter activity might have first entertained us- in an appropriately Oxford ‘I can’t believe someone could be so stupid’ kind of way- but quickly scared us. In time, the grim portent of this tweet was realised: Facebook and Twitter were Donald Trump’s tools, at his disposal to spread lies, fuel tensions, and moan about CNN. For that reason, I am glad, like most, that Donald Trump has been booted from these platforms (poor CNN!).

Yet, if you’ll indulge the English student in me for a moment, the grammar of Trump’s tweet masks a reality as concerning as any of the former President’s online outbursts. In a classic Trumpian move, he takes for himself the active voice in the sentence “I will be using”, when in fact the inverse is just as true. Twitter and Facebook have been using Trump from the beginning, and in an imperious display of power, as easy as flicking a switch, they have muzzled the leader of the free world. Now that it is no longer economically expedient to let Trump ramble and rave on their platforms, they have disposed of him. How can it be right that this decision is left up to private companies with a whole raft of vested interests?

Of course, Trump shouldn’t be allowed to incite violence or warp reality on the internet without consequence. He should have been removed long before the fatal assault on the US Capitol, when he was guilty of spreading potentially fatal lies about the dangers posed by coronavirus and propagating white supremacy. But the decision of what those consequences look like must not be concentrated in the hands of a handful of Silicon Valley moguls.

Often, the power of mainstream social media platforms feels absolute. They are unbound by any international regulatory framework, and thus can brazenly abandon any pretence of global consistency, mercurially shifting from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Equally, domestic loopholes, such as Section 230 in the US—a clause that relieves internet companies of any responsibility for the content published on their sites—make it even harder to pin social media malpractice to specific legislation. Despite lofty statements of altruistic intent and litanies of ‘we believe that [insert any vacuous and/or anodyne principal]’ declarations, these companies are ruled overwhelmingly by self-interest. 

That might be alright when they decide it is in their interests to silence a figure as dangerous as Trump. It keeps them onside with the incoming Democrat-controlled US government and staves of further intrusive regulations; it makes business-sense. But when revenues of close to $1 billion are pitted against journalistic freedom and the ability to hold an autocratic regime to account, as in Vietnam last year where Facebook agreed to the government’s behest that they restrict the accounts of political dissidents and journalists, principals don’t seem quite so attractive.

Big tech companies are intent on setting their own rules, which they do not mind breaking. Facebook’s newly revealed Oversight Board promises “to promote free expression by making principled, independent decisions regarding content on Facebook and Instagram”, reviewing whether decisions by monitoring within Facebook are “in accordance with Facebook’s stated values and policies”. The problem is that, thanks to examples such as Facebook’s conduct in Vietnam, the impact of words such as “principled” and “values” has been diluted. If these “values” matter so little to Facebook then they are no rubric by which social media content should be judged.

The jury on the Oversight Board is still out, as it is with Twitter’s new ‘Birdwatch’ feature, a wikipedia-like approach to moderation that hopes community consensus can be used to weed out misinformation. The impressive figures on the Board, including our own Alan Rusbridger, give confidence, but the fear is that they will do little more than lend credibility to a body charged with keeping the gates of social media, a role it cannot and should not be expected to fill. More worrying still is that the self-professed independence of the Board is ambiguous. The Real Facebook Oversight Board, a shadow group founded by journalists to scrutinise Facebook’s self-regulating, found its website taken down as a result of a notice from the company and their funders ‘harangued’ by Facebook. If Facebook were happy with independent overseers, why would they intimidate such a group? What these developments do demonstrate, however, is a growing recognition in Silicon Valley board rooms that passivity on internet regulation is no longer an option, yet drawing a line on what exactly counts as ‘hate speech’ or ‘dehumanizing language’ has not become any clearer. It is still difficult to imagine Facebook or Twitter intervening to censor figures like J. K Rowling, widely accused of transphobia, or Darren Grimes, the far-right influencer who dresses his latent xenophobia in the garb of a free speech warrior.

In a world where users are commodities and their eyeballs are for sale, as Netflix’s The Social Dilemma so plainly describes, the pretence that social media companies place people over profit must be abandoned. It is widely known that the content users see is manipulated and their data commodified. Yet, due to the ubiquity of social media in modern life, for many people these platforms are indispensable. We are in a gilded cage, trapped in an algorithmically-contrived net crafted to keep us hooked rather than informed, giving us more and more of the content we want even when it might not be good for us. As the Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated, social media platforms have the power to shape our political views; in effect selling off our vote to the highest bidder. How free is that?

So, would a social media that eschews engagement-driven algorithms and promises to protect freedom of speech at all costs be a better alternative? Thankfully, Parler exists to inform us that the answer is no. Founded on these principles, the site was, when operational, a haven for the alt-right. It finds support from such esteemed commentators as Glenn Greenwald, known for publishing the files leaked by Edward Snowden, who paints the site as a free and truly liberal counterpoint to censorious Silicon Valley. However, through his support, Greenwald embodies the very “dude-bro” sentiment that rather pompously declares that this whole freedom of speech malarkey can be solved easily with a reference to Voltaire, who famously informed an adversary “I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (without realising that there is quite famously no such attributable quote to the Frenchman). Speech does not occur in a vacuum and, as Trump demonstrated in the lead up to events at the Capitol, it can have horrifying real-world effects.

One valuable lesson that can be taken from the Parler affair is its demise. The decision of Google, Apple, and Amazon to banish the site from its platforms was another reminder of the frightening extent of Big Tech’s monopolistic power. Progressive commentators and politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should not be celebrating the Parler blackout, they should be uncomfortable with the manner of the silencing of Trump. The concentration of power amongst a smaller and smaller group of people is anathema to the values of the left.

Instead, attention should now be focused on the development of truly independent and powerful bodies, backed up by legislation, to hold Big Tech to account. The growing clamour for antitrust action, as well as the example set by Australia in standing up to Google’s threat of pulling its services from the country, show that the omnipotence of these companies can be threatened. Social media companies’ performative manoeuvres should not be allowed to disguise their flaws. We must wrest back control of the internet so that incidents such as the silencing of Donald Trump can be enjoyed, not mired in suspicion. 

CW: Racism

There is a long history behind Brazil’s presentation as some kind of “post-racial” society: from its depiction as a land free from racism, both explicitly and implicitly, in classic texts such as Nella Larsen’s Passing and films such as Black Orpheus, along with the representation of Brazil in the media in the build up to the 2016 Olympics. It is very easy for many across the world to see Brazil—a nation that, despite a similar colonial history to countries such as the USA, has actively encouraged race-mixing—as a place where race and all of its associations would not be so limiting. This is incorrect. Race in Brazil is an incredibly complex topic with an equally complicated history and, just because race is not treated as a binary like it is elsewhere, this does not mean that Brazil is free from its own issues regarding race and discrimination.

Brazil, after having imported the largest number of enslaved Africans of any slaveholding nation, was the last American country to abolish slavery in 1888. While of course any colonised nation’s racial history starts long before the 19^th century, what makes Brazil stand out here is its reaction to the emancipation of slaves. Rather than adopting segregation style policies, like the US, or some form of apartheid as was the case in South Africa, Brazil actively encouraged racial mixing. Brazil, entering the 20^th century, came to define their society as a democracia racial (a racial democracy) – a place in which Indigenous, White European, and Black African populations could mix and interact in relative harmony. Yet, such mixing does not mean that Brazil and the upper echelons of Brazilian society were immediately accepting of Black people, nor of blackness as a concept. Rather, it reflects an attempt to “whiten” the population.

After slavery was abolished, ruling classes offered free land and other benefits to White Europeans, encouraging the immigration of over 4 million people in an effort to whiten a majority-Black population through both increasing the number of white people in Brazil overall, and also miscegenation. One 1914 pamphlet, made to attract more White Europeans, said this in more explicit terms: “The Brazilian people, more than any other, needs the influence of advanced peoples in building a race […] when the percentage represented by the African race is beginning to decline and most disappear into the whirlpool of the white race.” Today, this process of “embranquecimento” or “whitening” is often seen as a form of genocide, an effort to specifically erase blackness from the general population. Brazil is not alone in this, with the concept of mixing with White people to “mejorar la raza” (improve the race), being seen as a common ideology throughout South America.

While many, including the Vice President, Hamilton Mairão, may claim that “racism doesn’t exist in Brazil,” that is simply not the case. The painful impact of slavery and the policies which followed will echo throughout the decades and the centuries, touching the lives of all Brazilians in one way or another. Over 75% of murder victims in Brazil are Black. 75% of those killed by the police are Black. White Brazilians earn nearly twice as much as their Black counterparts. The top 1% of Brazil’s economy is 80% is White, while three-quarters of the bottom 10% are Black or Mixed race. Racism and discrimination have real impacts and hurt real people.

Attitudes towards racial identity in Brazil are more fluid, and so it is often harder to define discrimination in Brazil using our own standards. Race is a social construct, and Brazil makes this incredibly apparent as their attitudes towards defining race are so different from our own. Over a quarter of the 168,000 candidates registering themselves for federal elections in 2020 changed their race from 2016:

–   Nearly 17,000 people who called themselves White in 2016 are now Mixed

–   Around 6000 who said they were Mixed are now Black

–   More than 14,000 who once said they were Mixed are now White

–   Nearly 900 went from White to Black

–   Nearly 600 went from Black to White

While some, admittedly, said that they only changed race because of bureaucratic errors that were made when they initially registered in 2016, others felt that their concept of their race and their identity had shifted in those four years, and they wanted that to be reflected in their registration. Aside from highlighting the fluidity of race as a concept, this only further highlights how vastly Brazil differs from other nations.  Yet, despite this difference, racism and discrimination remain present, suggesting that race doesn’t need to be binary for people to face discrimination.

Before the abolition of slavery, many slaves escaped to create their own communities called “quilombos,” and that tradition continues to this day. While 3500 rural quilombos exist, many Black people in urban areas such as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro are beginning to form their own quilombos as havens and community hubs where art and music can be shared in a space of mutual understanding. 

While it is often easy to romanticise these spaces of blackness, but it is always worth remembering quilombos are not enough, Black Brazilians deserve real change and real acceptance; they deserve a government that acknowledges their struggles; a government that doesn’t actively oppress them, nor legitimise their oppression through dehumanising them. A government that doesn’t think it is appropriate to evaluate race by measuring nose width and skull shape.

Many feel frustrated that, within the education system, black history is often reduced to slavery alone, as if the Black Brazilian experience is defined by a history of passivity. These quilombos offer an opportunity for Black Brazilians to learn more from one another, reclaim their history and sense of identity, and somewhat escape, for at least a short while, the limitations perpetuated by the systemic racism which pervades their society. The experience of racism is exhausting. Yet even the quilombos cannot fully shield them from the racism that pervades every level of Brazilian society. Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian President, once compared Black Brazilians who live in quilombos to cattle, even going so far as to say they “don’t even serve to procreate”. Such bigoted rhetoric from a political figure of high standing aids in normalising racist behaviour among the wider population, with many seeing Bolsonaro’s racially provocative comments as being playful rather than dangerous and offensive.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Black and Mixed people are underrepresented in Brazilian congress. While around 56% of Brazilians identify as Black or Mixed, this same group make up only 18% of members of congress, possibly contributing to Afro-Brazilians’ growing feeling of alienation from their government. Bolsonaro tends to appeal to those who are wealthy and White, whose concerns often relate to fear of violence and loss of tradition. Thus, his increasingly aggressive stances, not only against Black Brazilians but also against gay people and other minority groups, often garner large support despite (perhaps even because of) the negative impact of his rhetoric. Bolsonaro has thus firmly established himself as a president who is not there to listen to the needs or interests of his Black or Indigenous populace, but rather a president who sees Black people as inhuman and a potential threat. Having a racist in such a powerful position has many real life implications. The number of Black people killed by police in Brazil in 2019 is almost 6 times that of the US, and his pro-police brutality policies have led many activists to say the Brazilian government has adopted a “política da morte” (policy of death) against the Afro-Brazilian population.

Through doing research for this, I found many (often American) op-eds and articles which acted as if Brazilians who identify as Mixed or even White are somehow confused, as if they are not aware of their inherent otherness from the European “norm”. While, oftentimes, these articles do not expressly state this, it is often the way in which they present their facts: while Time may state that 56% of Brazilians identify as Black, the latest official census data reveals that 43.1% identify as Mixed while only 7.6% identify as Black.  This then suggests that Time does not view the distinction made in the census between Black and Mixed as relevant because, to them, they are the same thing and, thus, do not require distinction. I find this evaluation to be highly patronising.

Race, as I have already mentioned, is a social construct, therefore, all ideas of race will be shaped by the society in which they are formed. As a Mixed-race woman myself, I like to call myself Mixed because I like to acknowledge the different aspects of my identity, and would feel that my cultural background would be erased if I were to follow what these articles imply is correct. Equally, if someone else with my background would prefer to call themselves Black, there is nothing wrong with that. We should have the right to define our own identities. Furthermore, the focus on what defines blackness in Brazil distracts us from the real issue: racism. Why critique how people identify and imply that they are wrong for not following your cultural traditions of racial binaries, when discrimination still remains so rampant and is a far more urgent issue? It is patronising to imply that the way in which many Brazilians talk about race is wrong, just because it falls outside of the norms of the anglosphere, and Brazilians, Black, White, Mixed, or however else they choose to identify, deserve so much more than that.