Social Media and Business

Kompas

Agus Sudibyo

The reduction of social media simply as a means of social interaction makes the public tend to ignore the responsibility of social media companies (platforms) as business entities. If there are hoaxes that are worrying the community, the issue is localized simply as a problem between the makers, the victims, and the readers of the hoaxes.

Social media companies that facilitate the spread of hoaxes seem to have gained impunity. They are not required to take responsibility. In fact, increasingly controversial the hoaxes are, increasingly popular will be for the social media platforms that spread them. This popularity then correlates with the increase in the value of the shares of the companies that own the platform along with the potential for advertising revenue. An increasing number of users of social media and rising number of data on the behavior of internet users are mined for the needs of developing artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The impunity of the social media companies has prominently appeared in the controversy about the hoax wave, which disturbed the public after the announcement of the results of the 2019 presidential election. Public discussion only questioned who made the hoaxes, who was the target, how the community reacted, and what were the actions taken by the government and the police. How is the position of the social media companies that helped spread the hoaxes which greatly troubled the public? All of them have escaped from public discussion.

A gap is clearly seen in the handling of hoaxes in Indonesia and in Europe or Australia. In their perspective, the burden of responsibility for the spread of hoaxes through social media is mainly not only on the hoax makers, but also on social media companies. The companies are the ones which create and develop social media platforms. The social media platforms are the ones that facilitate the spread of hoaxes and reap the benefits of the magnitude of public attention on the hoaxes. So, the focus on the handling of hoaxes should not only on the hoax makers, but especially on companies that own the social media platforms.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

A pedestrian looks at antihoax campaign murals under the Rawa Buntu overpass in Serpong, South Tangerang, on Monday (11/3/2019).

Why missing the attention?

Why does the responsibility of social media companies escape the attention in Indonesia? Because we generally do not take social media into account as economic-oriented business entities. The word “social” in "social media" creates hegemony in such a way on the public awareness. We are too late to realize that what we are facing is not only social entities that facilitate the community free of charge to interact socially in new ways, but also business entities whose main motives are instrumentalization and commodification. Social media users are actually "instruments" for platform companies to mine as much behavioral data as possible while becoming digital advertisement targets that in practice are so far beyond the privacy of social media users.

In this connection, running media literacy is not only the responsibility of the government, but also the responsibility of social media companies.

It is in this context that there are rising demands that social media companies be more legally responsible lately. How and to what extent must the responsibility be formulated? First, as proposed by The Cairncross Review (2019), social media companies are responsible for educating their users to identify the origin, quality, and level of trust about the information in social media. The community need to be taught how to select, assess, and consider content being spread through social media platforms. In this connection, running media literacy is not only the responsibility of the government, but also the responsibility of social media companies.

Those who benefit the most from community dependence on social media should play a more tangible role in avoiding the adverse effects of social media. Another consideration is the fact that social media companies are the ones that best understand how social media platforms work and interact with users. They also know the need to build user endurance to face hoaxes and disinformation.

Second, several parties suggested that social media companies must control the content distributed through the platforms they manage. They must edit content that harms the public or violates the laws. However, this preventive measure, according to The Cairncross Review, gives less consideration on the differences in the position of social media companies as content distributors and social media users as content creators.

Technically it is difficult to imagine that social media platforms must check millions of content created by its users every day. Providing strong control to social media companies to manage the content is also considered a risky choice. Social media companies can strictly censor content that spreads through their platforms to avoid sanctions, as happened in the implementation of The Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in Germany.

This negligence in taking curative steps gives birth to severe penalties.

Third, if preventive measures are difficult to do, the social media companies are responsible as soon as possible to remove content that is harmful to the community or violates the laws. This is what is regulated in Germany with NetzDG and in Australia with the Sharing of Aboriginal Violent Material Bill 2019. In the two laws, social media companies are required to develop a hoax distribution detection system on their respective platforms proactively or on the basis of public complaints. Once the content is detected, the platform companies must immediately respond to it which leads to the removal of content. This negligence in taking curative steps gives birth to severe penalties.

Deadline

NetzDG gives a time limit of 24 hours or seven days -- for complex cases -- to social media companies operating in Germany and having users of more than 2 million people to investigate and delete illegal content on their platforms after receiving complaints. If this provision is not met, the German Government applies a fine of around Rp 805 billion to social media companies. Concerns appear about the adverse effects of this responsibility scheme. Social media companies are feared to be strictly censoring content created by its users. As mentioned, this is to avoid penalties imposed by the laws. Another problem deals with not quite clear definition of hoax, malicious content, or harmful content underlying the deletion of content. Is criticizing the government classified as a hoax?

There appears the potential for violations of the principle of freedom of opinion or expression here. Moreover, there has not been an adequate mechanism for appealing the decision to remove content by social media companies for the above-mentioned reasons. It is feared that due to fear of fines, social media companies do censorship in a random way?

Clarity of the definition and parameters regarding social media content, that violates the law or harms the public interest and the availability of an appeal mechanism for the decision to remove content by social media companies or the government, needs to be emphasized if Indonesia wants to adopt

NetzDG from Germany. Another important thing is to avoid centralizing content management to the government or social media companies.

In this context, it is necessary to consider the establishment of public representative institutions as regulators for the management of social media content. The regulation of social media as a new public space is not left to the industry or government, but to public representative institutions that are able to maintain distance from the tendency to control and dominate, which has the potential to come from the direction of the industry or government.

The public representative institution functions: (1) to oversee the performance of social media platforms in controlling social media content; (2) to formulate definitions and parameters of social media content that violates the law or harms the public interest by adhering to the principle of freedom of opinion and expression; (3) to develop standards for monitoring and controlling social media content; (4) to ensure that the elimination of social media content is carried out carefully, based on clear parameters and transparent mechanism; (5) to bridge the interests of social media companies, government and society; (6) to formulate an appeal mechanism for the elimination of social media content; (7) to decide on sanctions for social media companies for disseminating content that violates the law or harms the public interest.

Agus Sudibyo, Head of New Media Research Center ATVI Jakarta