Get ready everybody. Nigeria is about to kickstart a war against social media, fake news, and hate speech. That was what Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed divulged to the nation two weeks ago. At a press conference on Tuesday, 29 October 2019, Mohammed said the government has resolved to control social media in Nigeria because they have become uncontrollable with the potential to set the country on fire. What Mohammed failed to mention in his press conference was the mechanism through which the government hoped to regulate social media. How exactly would the government achieve that objective?
At the conference, Mohammed also said: “No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration. That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we banish both.”
Social media are seen as the main vehicles through which fake news and hate speech are distributed. Why would the government focus on social media and overlook other blameworthy disseminators of fake news and hate speech such as mainstream and online media? There is the perception that fake news and hate speech are more widely distributed through social media. Perhaps that was the government’s justification for aiming to regulate social media. But can the government do it? Does the government have the capacity, the technology, the resources, and personnel with the skills to regulate social media? Should the control of social media be the government’s key concern at this time of harsh economic conditions?
Many people would argue the government should not misuse scarce financial resources needed to fight poverty. Fighting social media and fake news is diversionary. It is a war the government is guaranteed to lose. Aiming to curtail social media in a country in which a large population of citizens cannot afford decent meals is misplacement of priority. There are more urgent national problems that deserve the consideration of the government.
It is important to stress that social media, fake news, and hate speech affect various continents, regions, states, ethnic groups, cultures, communities, and institutions. In other words, they are no more dangerous to the development of Nigeria than they are to other countries. The impacts are worldwide.
A final report by the UK House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on disinformation and ‘fake news’ (House of Commons, 2019) concluded that: “In a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices. While the Internet has brought many freedoms across the world and an unprecedented ability to communicate, it also carries the insidious ability to distort, to mislead and to produce hatred and instability. It functions on a scale and at a speed that is unprecedented in human history… We must use technology, instead, to free our minds and use regulation to restore democratic accountability. We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines.”
Sometimes poor journalism is labelled as the product of social media. This gives the deceptive impression that all social media engage in lousy forms of journalism or are designed to mislead news consumers. Owing to the negative uses to which some social media are put and the distorted nature of most of the contents, there is growing expectation in the public that social media must be regulated or checked to save humanity from possible consequences such as global conflict, regional warfare, as well as inter-religious wars.
It is somewhat surprising that the government has accorded priority attention to fighting fake news and hate speech over the more essential requirement to provide for the basic needs of citizens. In doing that, the government has taken the first wrong step based on the wrong view that once social media are regulated or restricted, fake news and hate speech would disappear. That won’t happen.
The first challenge that confronts the government in its fight against fake news and hate speech is how to identify the specific social media that circulate such vices, or how to categorise those that should be restricted. This is a tricky task. Unless the government can track the source of origin of every piece of false news in this electronic age in which it is easy for people to disguise their identity, the government might as well be on a mission impossible.
While it is important to halt the circulation of fake news and hate speech, many impoverished citizens do not see that as a major concern. Controlling social media will not lift the socioeconomic conditions of the poor. It will not improve their general health or the decrepit state of roads across the country. It will not provide three decent meals to families that are struggling to provide food to their children. Indeed, controlling social media should be the least concern of any responsible government that is committed to improving the living conditions of citizens.
Some developed countries have not bothered to do what our own government is doing simply because it raises questions about the government’s right to constrain the people’s freedom to send, receive, and share information without restrictions. Much more important, it raises questions about what should be the priority focus of any government. Should the government aim to reduce poverty or chase shadows by controlling social media?
Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated categorically that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression – and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any medium and regardless of frontiers” (cited in Hachten, 1996, p. 159). One argument in support of Article 19 is that people would lose their capacity to make informed decisions about their welfare, security, and everyday needs if they were denied access to news and information.
The fight for freedom of expression did not start this year or this century. Eighteenth century advocates of libertarianism such as John Milton argued for a marketplace of ideas in which information and ideas should flow freely. He was pivotal to the development of the concepts of “the free market place of ideas” and the “self-righting process”. In pursuit of his philosophical position, Milton wrote: “Let all with something to say be free to express themselves. The true and sound will survive; the false and unsound will be vanquished. Government should keep out of the battle and not weigh the odds in favour of one side or the other.”
Another libertarian philosopher John Stuart Mill advanced a similar view. According to Mill, human actions should aim to create, maintain, and increase the “greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”. He said one way for society to ensure that its members contributed most to achieving the greatest happiness would be “by giving them the right to think and act for themselves”.
Although these views were canvassed more than two centuries ago, they have remained timely because they raise issues that are important to 21st century public discourse, particularly the right of our government to curtail individual rights and freedoms.