The Trump Presidency is playing out like a gripping new series. Viewers are guaranteed calculating, self-aggrandising characters and a political ecosystem fraught with endless tension. Episodes are frequent, divisive and integrity-free, administered in 140 characters, or less, and driven by ego. Millions tune in. It's celebrated in Russia; it's banned in China. Every episode delivers a cliff-hanger.
Trump is entertainment politics at its finest. And social media is propelling each episode to the lounge room of our mobile devices, unfiltered and unverified. The need for context and transparency has never been greater.
But, unlike reruns of The West Wing, the Trump show has real-life consequences.
Look no further than Trump's tweet following George Floyd's death at the hands of police: "when the looting starts, the shooting starts". It is a statement first credited to Miami's Police Chief during the 1967 Miami Riots, and has become synonymous with near-sanctioned police brutality. At best, Trump's tweet lacked empathy at a time when the call for justice reached its precipice. When people needed to feel heard. At worst, it gave the green light to racist based violence. Unsurprisingly, the tweet was controversial.
Footage of Floyd's death went viral, as did Trump's tweet. Together, they sparked an online social uprising.
#BlackoutTuesday was posted more than 23 million times on Instagram and #BlackLivesMatter reached 43 million Twitter mentions by early June.
Public outrage put pressure on politicians, and led to tangible outcomes only weeks later. In Minneapolis, the police force disbanded, and in New York, police funds rerouted to social causes. Floyd's death allowed a conversation that needed to happen, but it was the global, collective response that will forever mark this juncture as a turning point in history.
A response propelled by the internet.
When social media burst onto the digital scene in the mid-2000s, activists suddenly had a new platform on which to gather, communicate, strategise and disseminate information.
In 2011, digital activism hit its inflection point, arriving in mainstream focus through the Arab Spring uprising. During the movement, youth across the Arab world used social media to communicate, unite and protest against authoritarian systems.
Change was most successful in countries where citizens had broad access to social media, like Egypt and Tunisia, where fair elections were won; it was less successful in countries where media was subject to state control.
Since then, we've seen the Hong Kong protests and campaigns like #MeToo harness social media to deliver transparency to global citizens. The aim: to ignite positive and revolutionary change.
But the very same online tool that has driven social and political progress has itself fallen victim to misuse, exploited for deception and control.
On the cusp of the 2016 US election, political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica analysed data from over 87 million Facebook users without consent, creating a "psychological warfare tool" intended to identify the traits of voters, target these voters with specific ad content, and impact how they voted.
This strategy arguably won Donald Trump the election. It also highlighted a regulation shortfall for ethical data governance and responsibility, leading to investigations of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in congress, and to the reconsideration of US data protection policies.
Manipulation of election results is just the tip of an iceberg; unethical social data analysis can lead to sustained inequality (read about this here) and loss of political agency.
Later this year, the Chinese government plans to roll out a social credit system giving citizens a 'trust' score. This score will be derived from numerous sources, including location data, social media connections, and purchase histories.
The CCP claims the project is designed to reduce fraud and corruption. But it could have devastating effects on social and political equality. Individuals with unfavourable histories and connections will find themselves discredited, and a rank-based class system inadvertently introduced. High-scoring members of the community may begin to shun low-scoring citizens to avoid association, solidifying hierarchies and introducing psychological and social barriers to equality and political agency.
Cambridge Analytica's election fiasco, and the potential pitfalls of the Chinese social credit system, have revealed the underbelly of the internet wonder. Our social data can put us at risk. But, if social media platforms were transparent – if they were embedded with technologies that told us how our social data interacted with political supply chains – we may, in fact, be able to reduce this vulnerability.
Think about it. If social media platforms gave users visibility of data collected, the destination of that data, and the purpose of its collection, whenever politically associated, users would have greater awareness of potential exploitation, and consequently, greater political agency.
If users could drill down to the origin of a source, they may be able to discern fake news from real news, and better judge the reliability of political inferences. The same can be said for political advertisements - knowing that they are sponsored, and who by, would undoubtedly reduce the power politicians have to manipulate outcomes through 'psychological warfare'.
It should be a fundamental right for social media users to have this kind of visibility; something we wouldn't need if our social data was not so easily exploited.
Enter, the blockchain.
The blockchain is a record keeping technology where each log becomes permanent, unalterable and traceable. It is also a distributed ledger, which means the blockchain is not centrally governed or controlled. This makes it a reliable and trustworthy custodian of information, as it can’t be controlled by a government or a central group of people. Importantly, these inherent qualities of trust and reliability make it a ripe technology for digital politics.
If implemented on social media platforms, the blockchain could deliver elements of accountability and transparency to our political supply chains. The blockchain could trace the origin of any content and track the destination of our data. It could show us reviews of sources and help us discern their reliability. We could use it as a digital voting station, and empower more young people to vote by augmenting accessibility, with a simple notification reminder; then track and attribute that vote through the blockchain - decoupling the social media platform from storing data on voter choice. Transparency at this level would empower digital politics with a fresh layer of accessibility and integrity, immediately applicable to our systems.
In the last fortnight we saw a group called 'America's Frontline Doctors' spread misinformation on hydroxychloroquine through a video on social media. The drug was initially endorsed by Trump as a COVID-19 cure, boosting its sales over 1000%, before being established by the FDA as ineffective and potentially dangerous.
Dressed in lab coats to establish trust, group members tout the drug as a viable cure, discrediting the FDA in the process.
The conspiracy video was reposted by Trump and Donald Trump Jr., legitimising the group and amplifying it's reach to over 20 million viewers, before being removed by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
It’s unknown what effect the viral video has had on Americans, desperate for a solution to the silent killer. But, if users had been able to track the origin of the post through the blockchain, and seen reviews and commentary highlighting its unreliability, potential damage may have been drastically reduced.
Misinformation spread quickly does not just put lives at risk. With a smartphone already in the hands of over 2.5bn global citizens, and the use of social media only increasing, there has never been a more appropriate moment to consider preparing for a future where politics is digital.
Of course, there will be challenges embedding this kind of technology into our vast social media ecosystem. But my hope is that armed with this knowledge, we can start building a future where political systems are transparent and effective; where political supply chains are reliable. A future where citizens have agency and enough knowledge to ask the right questions. Where data isn’t the conduit for deception, but, instead, a tool for transparency.