United States of Social Media: the new era of imperialism
I removed instagram from my phone, but will that be enough to escape the alliance between Trump and the tech industry?
Two weeks ago I removed the Instagram app from my phone. I expected cold sweat and a feverish impulse to consult the website version, but nothing. My phone became a ghost limb I pick up to feel something it no longer procures, I think I feel better for it. The move was prompted by Mark Zuckerberg bending and kneeling to Donald Trump - thus joining the far-right media apparatus, and his promise to remove the fact-checking as well as multiple diversity policies in place at Meta. I had done the same with Twitter after it was bought by Elon Musk.1
I’ve had enough of giving my attention to billionaires with bad intentions and rotten morale. Their political agenda tied to the far-right and ill-will of authoritarians, I know the platforms I once inhabited are gone, replaced by the propagandist arm of imperialism.
prologue
A lot of words are circulating to describe the alliance between Donald Trump and the tech industry. Oligarchy, the governance of a small amount of people - or broligarchy to include the masculine aspect of it. Kakistocracy, a government of the less competent. Kleptocracy, a government by the corrupt and thieves. Domestically, they make sense. I do have a lot to say about the US democracy and its weaknesses or how corruption is made legal via donation, but it is for another article. For us abroad, seeing the boss of twitter, meta and tiktok attending the investiture of Donald Trump has another meaning, it signals a new era of imperialism.
imperialism: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.
American imperialism is the power to back coup after coup in South America, Asia, and the Middle East. It uses “democracy and liberalism” to morally justify wars and invasions. It undermines sovereignty via its economic influence. American imperialism is also how I, a French-speaking Belgian, grew up watching dubbed American TV shows and movies, using American platforms to communicate, drinking and eating American food, listening to American music, etc.
This latter aspect is what we may call soft power, or power channelled through culture, ideology, and institutions.
The term ‘soft power’ was coined in 1990 by Joseph S. Nye, an American political scientist, in a Foreign Policy article. He described the shift from ‘hard’ military power that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, “the factors of technology, education, and economic growth are becoming more significant in international power, while geography, population, and raw materials are becoming somewhat less important.” Power, he wrote, is the ability to change the behaviour of states; if the culture and ideology are attractive, other countries will be willing to follow.
In The Ethics of Dissent, the Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Marthoz starts with this sentence: “Among the great powers, America is the only one to constantly claim morality and virtue.” The 2010 book paints a picture of the disjunction between the values championed by the US and its Realpolitik: how does the nation's soft leadership persist when its domestic policies, such as segregation or the death penalty, break the very same values it is promoting and enforcing overseas?
Soft power may have lost its relevance over the years, but it has gained a new tool with social media. Mark Zuckerberg may have passed for a liberal for years but let’s not forget why facebook was made: to rate girls based on their looks. The premise is sexist, not freedom of speech as he now claims, he was just adjusting his “values” to gain power and money. Social media platforms are a nest for unchecked hatred against minorities, and now that they have access to the Oval Office we can only expect those to spread like mould.
interlude
Notes on hegemony: The Italian politician and Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony as the supremacy of the ruling class in a capitalist system. Through intellectual, cultural, moral and political superiority, the ruling class established its dominance by disseminating its ideas, which are assimilated and widely accepted by society without violence or coercion. In a democracy, peaceful assimilation is critical to legitimise the power at home, and abroad.
Thanks to modern technology the dissemination of the ruling class's ideas can be done with such efficacy we wouldn’t even notice. In a world where a handful of men own social networks and control the algorithms spreading what we consume, how can we be assured they won’t use them to spread their ideas?
According to the 2024 Ofcom report “News Consumption in the UK”, 52% of adults in the UK use social media as a news source.
If algorithms dictate what we consume and algorithms are decided by people in bed with the far-right, then how can we trust any of it? You may be able to follow the news network you trust, the people you know or whose influence you accept, but ultimately we have no control over what we see or hear. Comment sections are so filled with hatred I don’t want to interact with it, it also makes me distrust real people - how do I know who they are online? Do they threaten women journalists of rape? Do they hate trans people or spread Musk’s lies? After all, Elon Musk has rigged the Twitter algorithm in his favour, nothing will stop Mark “Loser” Zuckerberg from doing the same.
For those of us in the West, the threats inherent to American imperialism have never been clearer. Suddenly we found ourselves at the other end of the gun, the same gun we helped build and aimed at other nations. Imperialism is no longer just Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, or Silicon Valley tech but the insidious algorithms dictating what we consume. Not only that but according to The Guardian, JD Vance, the US Vice President, threatened “If European governments try to regulate Musk’s media in ways that don’t reflect American values, the US might reconsider its security guarantees.” Translation: you will be forced-fed our bigoted values. The pendulum from soft to hard power in full action.
Tomorrow your brother, best friend or husband could take the red pill after the algorithm fed them increasingly misogynist content; it starts with gym advice, maybe some Joe Rogan (“for his sports’ take”) and escalates real quick to Andrew Tate. Maybe it is your mum or girlfriend, suddenly turning TERF or promoting a return to traditional family values after the algorithm fed them tradwife content. Then it escalates.
The thing is, the algorithm is at the mercy of a handful of people and when that handful includes an authoritarian US president and his tech billionaires minions2, social media turn into propaganda weapons.
epilogue
They know they have us captive on their apps, they know we have nowhere else to go. What, you’re going to go outside, in the real world? Where? With what money? You may use other apps but we can buy them anyway, we have the power to get them banned, we have the power to bend them too. Maybe we will end up using VPN (connected where?) to overcome any bans like they already do in countries that have been led by authoritarians and dictators for decades, countries from the other side of the gun.3
Is the last stage of social media enshittification4 blatant far-right propaganda coated in capitalism? There is a certain powerlessness of being a user, is there anything we can possibly do to force the owners to improve their apps and the content? Do we actually want to improve social media or has the ultra-connected era ended? In the last week, I have seen countless mentions of leaving social media on Notes. NBC News reported a user "exodus” following Meta policy change and Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to please Trump, the article noted a sharp increase in searches on how to remove Meta-related apps.
My most popular article on here was titled “Escaping the Internet” and the amount of other articles on the topic I have seen speaks volumes. I believe we are ready to recapture the real world, there’s nothing left for us on the internet, we may as well try to save what we can while we can.
/ in parallel /
L’éthique de la dissidence: Morale et politique étrangere aux Etats-Unis, Jean Paul Marthoz
The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery, The Guardian
Elon Musk and the new world order: the hijacking of the global conversation, The Guardian
A new era of lies: Mark Zuckerberg has just ushered in an extinction-level event for truth on social media, The Guardian
Ditching of Facebook factcheckers a ‘major step back’ for public discourse, critics say, The Guardian
The tech bros have front-row seats at Trump’s inauguration, but what they want goes way beyond that, The Guardian
Influence of super rich on Donald Trump threatens democracy, say Patriotic Millionaires, The Guardian
Elon Musk is boosting the AfD. But why is Germany’s mainstream helping him?, The Guardian
Ok, for twitter I also deactivated my account while I still have a facebook and instagram accounts but no longer use them, I never installed TikTok. And I cancelled my Amazon prime after it was announced Jeff Bezos gave $1M for Trump investiture, which I should have done a LONG time ago and was frankly ashamed to still have.
Free translation from French. If you read French I definitely recommend it (only 89 pages!).
I am critical of the US and the West but I am not delusional about other countries. Anyone looking towards Russia, China, Iran (the usual suspects) for answers will not find what they are hoping for.
Defined as: “the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”