[REDUX] ER 1: On the Echo Palace and FreshDirect
Looking back at the first-ever ER as the US faces down another election.
Long-time readers of the Ethical Reckoner (i.e., my family) may remember that I started this in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol—almost four years ago(!). In the run-up to Tuesday’s election, I wanted to revisit the first-ever ER from January 9, 2021. It’s printed below in full (with minor reformatting and British spelling corrected), but I wanted to take a moment to look back at my predictions and reflect on what’s happened since.
ER 1 focuses a lot on online disinformation, and platforms undoubtedly took action to address mis- and disinformation in the aftermath of January 6. They created and strengthened election integrity/trust and safety units, but then X disbanded its when Elon Musk bought it, and other platforms have also shifted resources away from those teams. They also eventually reinstated his social media accounts (except maybe Pinterest), and Meta dropped basically all restrictions on them. While the threatened AI-generated disinformation apocalypse hasn’t materialized (although there’s plenty of AI “slop” about),1 human-made misinformation about voting irregularities are already spreading, echoing the run-up to January 6.
In ER 1, I presented four possible scenarios, and two of them came true. Trump did start his own platform, Truth Social, but then also essentially ended up with Twitter as his own personal platform after Musk bought it and went “dark, gothic MAGA.” Trump has been using his podiums, online and physical, to claim that the election is rigged and establish a basis for election challenges. And it’s frustrating that platforms aren’t addressing this. Equally frustrating, though, is the fact that our political apparatus wasn’t able to prevent the far right from laying the groundwork for challenging the result of the election, which may cause the election to drag on for days or even weeks.
If you need me on election day, I’ll be on a plane. If you need me in the days after, I’ll be crossing my fingers and hoping that soon, we’ll be able to figure out the social, technical, and political quagmires that have gotten us in this situation and emerge all the better for it.
I may be crossing my fingers for a long time.
Now, please enjoy the very first edition of the Ethical Reckoner.
A lot has already been written on disinformation’s role in provoking the storming of the US Capitol. It’s clear that this insurrection was fuelled by online disinformation that, for the first time, found a prominent spokesperson in Donald Trump. I’m not going to talk more about the disinformation, but I do want to talk about the ecosystem that facilitated this attack and how it’s rapidly changing (literally even as I write this).
“Echo chambers” have been talked about for years, and are blamed for much of America’s vitriolic partisan divide, but the events of this week show that we’re beyond echo chambers. The dialogue around right-wing extremism centred around hate speech in the wake of the 2017 violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and there was a flurry of website deplatforming and user bannings that prettified mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit before everyone moved on—out of sight, out of mind. Now, disinformation around the 2020 US election is spreading primarily on the far-right sites that sprang up in the wake of the 2017 sanitization campaigns. These sites were explicitly designed and marketed to have less oversight, so it’s festering where most people can’t see, like mould inside walls. It’s still being spread by many of the same players—Trump’s far-right MAGA army. While Trump had to at least pretend to distance himself from white supremacy, his wholehearted embrace of election disinformation has given his followers a legitimacy and fuel that they haven’t seen before. Disinformation is present on every social media platform, but a particular blend of hate and disinformation is fostered on far-right sites, and it’s incredible dangerous.
The default platform tactic of banning groups or taking down individual posts that violate their regulations is essentially playing Whack-A-Mole. In 2019, Johnson et al predicted that this strategy would lead to global “dark pools” where hate and disinformation can foment unabated.
This prediction came true.
The Capitol insurrection was planned in plain sight on sites like Parler, Gab, and TheDonald and its associated discord server, which were founded after Reddit banned r/The_Donald. The sanitization of popular media sites has undoubtedly made those sites more palatable for the everyday user—and thus more profitable for the companies that own them. Unfortunately, it just shunted hate and disinformation onto sites with less oversight and fewer opportunities for engagement with alternative views. This goes beyond an echo chamber. Echo chambers on sites like Facebook abut each other; you can often hear what’s going on in the next room.
This is an echo palace.
Johnson et al dub this ecosystem a “network of networks,” clusters of networks connected by “highways.” The palace is hall after hall of rooms full of people intermingling, talking about “Q drops” and “blackpills” and the “Trumpire” like the worst cocktail party ever. People are strolling down the halls, going from room to room to talk about different things, spreading ideas through the palace. Sometimes, when an infrastructure company decides it won’t provide utilities to sites, someone cuts off the electricity to one of the palace’s rooms (like CloudFlare dropping 8chan). The people inside will either reconnect the electricity with another provider or head down the hall to another room and the game of Whack-A-Mole continues. But the palace is big, and there’s plenty of spare room for people to migrate to.
The palace is big and busy, but the thing is, the palace is in the woods. It’s hard to find unless you try2—and what sane3 person would try?
So the far right is left mostly to their own devices, feeding on support from Trump that everyone sees on more public platforms like Twitter, but doesn’t realise is the lifeblood of the remote echo palace. In the age of COVID, it’s the palace’s FreshDirect delivery, the meat and potatoes that keep them going. The inhabitants don’t have to venture out, and it’s a dangerous place out there; the epidemic of polarisation is raging.
The echo palace was built by media platforms trying to sanitise their own sites. It’s mostly been left to its own devices, with that FreshDirect delivery coming often enough to keep its occupants excited and buzzing around the palace. Recently, though, those deliveries have been full of Red Bull and Four Loco. Trump has been explicitly urging his followers to protest the election results—“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” As the New York Times wrote, he “all but circled the date.”
After the insurrection that vandalized the US Capitol and saw five people die, Twitter suspended Trump’s personal account, @realDonaldTrump, for 12 hours for promoting violence. Facebook and Instagram did the same, but supplies remain plentiful in the palace.
Now, though, platforms are canceling the HelloFresh subscription. Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts “indefinitely,” but at least until after Inauguration Day. Earlier yesterday evening, Twitter took even more direct action and permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account. Trump tweeted from the president’s official government account, @POTUS, complaining that Twitter is “all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely” and calling for everyone to “STAY TUNED!”. Twitter removed those tweets almost immediately.
Without his favourite social media platforms, without his favourite mechanisms to feed the MAGA army, I see four possible scenarios.
Trump moves in and runs the palace kitchen.
In this scenario, Trump starts an account on Parler/Gab/another right-wing site, and mostly interacts with his own fans.
Trump starts a restaurant.
Though I’ve never heard anything good about a restaurant at a Trump property, Trump starts his own platform. People gawk, but only his devoted followers engage with it regularly.
The palace burns down.
The entire right-wing extremist media ecosystem is removed from the Internet after infrastructure platforms stage a deplatforming campaign.
Everyone moves out of the palace and goes grocery shopping like everyone else.
The inhabitants stop drinking the Trump Kool-aid and start getting their news from reliable sources and engaging in constructive dialogue. Rainbows and unicorns prance across the land.
What do I think is most likely? Based on his now-removed tweets where Trump says he has been “negotiating with various other sites” and is looking at “building out our own platform in the near future,” it’s clear he’s going to attempt Scenario 1. If hanging out on Parler with his fans stokes his ego enough, he may not carry out his Scenario 2 threats and start his own platform. The risk of either of these is that, with the food in-house, the MAGA army ventures out even less. Some may say that them becoming more insular is good because fewer people will stumble across them, but that’s been the trend for years, and as they become more insular, pressure builds until the bottle cork pops off and—well, look what’s happened.
There’s a slim possibility of Scenario 3. Google suspended Parler from the Google Play store, and Apple threatened to do the same unless it submits a “moderation improvement plan.” Of course, Parler is still a website, and other right-wing sites remain up, so this is merely locking a handful of rooms. Unless a coordinated campaign is undertaken to evacuate the palace and destroy every room simultaneously, there will be places for the occupants to retreat to. And, to avoid an immediate rebuilding from the ashes, the firefighters have to give everyone shiny reflective blankets and tea and usher them to safe places where they can recover.
In an ideal world, this would foster Scenario 4, which unfortunately seems like the least likely scenario. In order for everyone to just go to the grocery store/reliable news outlets, in this convoluted extended metaphor, the COVID/political polarisation pandemic would have to abate so we can all interact with each other. This will require not the tactics of information warfare currently being wielded (necessarily, since we’re in a crisis) by platforms, but something more diplomatic. The question, though, is whether this is possible. Does the USPS deliver to the echo palace? (Based on how long my Christmas cookies took to get to relatives, I’m not confident.) More importantly, though, is the left willing to write those letters? Is the right willing to receive them? Will the Biden administration send an envoy, acknowledge what’s underlying the far right’s grievances4 and try and bring them back to reality? Will they let an envoy into the palace, or will they barricade the doors?
As much as I relish the idea of a Twitter without Trump, I fear that if banning him results in a retreat to Parler or other lesser-known right-wing sites, right-wing extremism will continue to foster out of sight of the majority of people. While it can clearly be monitored by researchers and other interested parties, having it totally out of sight will only foster the extreme division in society. If that happens, now not only is the far-right “insane,” they’re also weird hermits. Dismissing them further only adds fuel to their fire, and allowing it to burn unchecked—even if far away—is dangerous. The everyday denizens of the Internet need to know some of the ugliness that’s currently a huge part of our political system; sweeping it under the rug and pretending it doesn’t exist, then being shocked when it enters the mainstream during elections isn’t going to make it go away. So, I think he should stay locked out for the remainder of his term, then given his accounts back, but muzzled. Trump loves an audience, and giving him one but limiting the damage he can do with it—perhaps by flagging all his posts, or not promoting any of them whatsoever—may be the best path forward, as it promotes awareness and also allows a coordinated opposition to engage and try to dispel his vitriol, building a sort of herd immunity to disinformation that will allow for dialogue again. At the same time, we can’t let the echo palace get any bigger. Infrastructure companies should commit to removing as many platforms as possible and not hosting any new ones. Perhaps this way, we can gradually shrink the palace and, everyone having been suitable vaccinated against the polarisation epidemic, finally mingle all together again.
Glossary:
FreshDirect—one of the biggest grocery delivery services in the US
Disinformation—deliberately or maliciously false information intended to mislead
Deplatforming—the boycotting or shutting down of a site, or the denial of a platform to an individual
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Some wander through the woods and find its clearing, and others go looking for it after encountering one of its inhabitants in the outside world, but it is much harder to find than when far-right hate and disinformation was openly spread on mainstream social media sites.
Of course, this discourse of the sanity of the left versus the insanity and irrationality of the far-right eliminates the possibility of understanding the very real disenfranchisement and rage felt by many on the far-right. In order to understand it, the left needs to stop dismissing it.
I’m not saying that these grievances are legitimate, but that dismissing them out of hand without conversation is dangerous and feeds their rage.
Thumbnail generated by DALLE-3 via ChatGPT with the request “Generate an abstract painting that's an abstract representation of "the echo palace" in a cool color palette”.