With Trump’s inauguration on the 20th of January, political philosophy seems a good focus for this week. Many noted how the front was filled with not the cabinet, but a variety of CEOs including META’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Founder Jeff Bezos, CEO of Tiktok Shou Chew and CEO of Tesla Elon Musk. These services are used by practically everyone in the Western world, and so the strengthening of ties between them and the Trump administration is a step towards the US President having more influence over the lives of a multitude of citizens. Many fear the impacts of such an unchecked power as the last 10 years have highlighted just how strong of an effect social media has on political views and the way we think – given that the average US teen spends 4.8 hours on social media every day, the content we engage with will of course alter our views on social and political causes. The rise in echo chambers lately has added to the unchallenged dominance of certain narratives which many users are exposed to. This article will discuss some of the more recent changes which will massively impact the way the future electorate think.
The drama surrounding TikTok has filled headlines lately: the app went dark on Saturday nights for US users allegedly over fears that data was vulnerable and the app could be used for espionage. However, less than 24 hours later, the app was back online, with American users receiving a pop-up when they opened the app thanking President Trump for its return. Political commentators noted that Trump was one of the first politicians to get the ball rolling on the TikTok ban back in 2020 – the reason which he gave for his change in tune being that, ‘I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok had something to do with that.’ The use of social media as a political tool is far from new, but is perhaps growing to be more powerful than many other forms of media – since videos are in the forms of digestible and often relatable content, often giving users a sense of choice over their political choices rather than making them feel talked down to as with other forms of political messaging. This is perhaps why Bots have been such a large debate in politics recently – users who are undecided witnessing floods of comments or posts supporting a certain candidate is bound to have an impact given the appeal to our basic sense of wanting to feel part of the group. The creation of echo chambers have added to this – these occur when users find themselves in environments in which they only encounter beliefs similar to theirs, risking radicalisation as they come across no counterpoints to challenge these. Therefore, social media is a vital tool for politicians to amass loyal and unquestioning followers, and so it is no surprise that Trump is currently in favour of the app. The fact that every US user will have seen the pop-up will only help grow his power over undecided or politically apathetic users, who may not care about other social medias but are thankful to the man who they believe fought for them to continue scrolling.
Another big change has come in on META, in which Zuckerberg is getting rid of independent fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with community notes, in which anyone can comment on the accuracy. In a statement explaining the change, Zuckerberg argued that third parties were, ‘too politically biased’ and it was, ‘time to get back to our roots around free expression.’ However, questions could be raised about whether, if third party checkers attempting to be neutral are too biased, what that would leave community members who will have often been exposed to echo chambers and aren’t guaranteed to have access to the facts or any qualifications to determine levels of accuracy. At least third-party checkers are designed to be politically neutral; this is certainly not the case with random social media users. It is much more likely that this was a political move on Zuckerberg’s part to buddy-up with Trump. Community notes are in the style of fact checking on X, which is owned by Musk who is notoriously very close to Trump. The timing of this being announced just before the inauguration is also highly convenient, with Trump having praised the decision right after. The move represents another step towards oligarchy – the US media being controlled by a handful of politically selected individuals who are able to use their influence to shape the beliefs of the public. The effects of this move will be long-felt and there is no sign of when or how it can be stopped so far. The US is facing a genuine decline in freedom of expression as their platforms become more and more political tools.