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While social networking platforms remain integral across the global democracies for media convergence, public opinion, and freedom of expression without the states inference, censorship, and reprisals, over the recent yearsit has contributed to polarization, populism, biased facts, divisive political rhetorics, and manipulation, threatening the very fabric of democracy. Leading social media platforms, particularly Facebook operated by the parent company Meta owned by the tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg, and microblogging site Twitter now operated under the newly Indian origin CEO Parag Agrawal not only have turned the biggest source of hate propelling and disinformation but have also failed to regulate the biased against facts flow of information.

A2020 media manipulation survey from the University of Oxford institute on Friday, Dec. 17found evidence in each of the 81 countries surveyed. Organizedsocial media manipulation campaigns online was up 15% in one year across at least70 countries in 2019, a report compiled bythe Oxford Internet Institute (OII) suggests, adding that governments, public relations firms, and political parties produce a large scale of misinformation, particularly with respect to thepolitical communication.OII team warns that the level of politicalmanipulation across Facebook and Twitter has risen tenfoldwith governments and political parties spending millions on private sector cyber troops' that manipulate the citizens' opinion spending $10 million on an average towardssocial media political advertisements.

Our report shows misinformation has become more professionalised and is now produced on an industrial scale. Now, more than ever, the public needs to be able to rely on trustworthy information about government policy and activity,"Philip Howard, director of the institute and the reports co-author said in the report.

During the 2020 Presidential elections, social media platforms Twitter and Facebook instated an unprecedented ban on the former US leader Donald Trump for his unsubstantiated claims about the election fraud that led to the violent insurrection in the United States Capitol. In an apparent display of breach of the democratic procedure, the mob attempted to halt the certification of the democratically elected President of the United States, Joe Biden.

Under public pressure, Twitter and Facebook then indefinitely banned the former US Presidents official social media accounts citing the political context of emergency and national security, which the latter argued was a gory violation of his human rights and freedom of speech. Geneva Press clubalso discussed at length the impact of such a move on democracy as such measures taken by the social media giants is the impediment to freedom of expression.

We have made a lot of mistakes in running the company, and Facebook must work harder at ensuring the tools it creates are used in 'good and healthy'ways." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Over the past several years, Facebook and Twitter have also been accused of resorting tonew tactics of foreign influenceto manipulate voters via a network of fakeandautomated accounts. In 2010, personal data belonging to millions ofFacebookusers was acquired by the British consulting firmCambridge Analytica without the knowledge or consent of the users forpolitical advertising via an app "This Is Your Digital Life. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal involved 87 million Facebook profiles harvested through the platform for analytical assistance for the 2016 US presidential campaigns ofTed CruzandDonald Trump.

We didnt take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and Im sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and Im responsible for what happens here."Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social media platform Facebook after the data leak scandal.

Political parties such as the Republicans and Democrats have been criticized for inflating their popularity by creating hashtags and trends linked to their political parties, thus maliciously influencing the democratic voting systems. The worlds most polarizing political figures also employ social media platforms for pushing their agenda via artificial bots and fake accounts. According to the Special Counsel Robert MuellersReport, the Russian conspirators meddled in the 2020 US elections, hampering the democratic process by spreading discord, lies, and disinformation to at least 100 million voters on social media platforms.

Russian government and firmslinked to Kremlin used a "sweeping and systematic" effort to undermine Americans' confidence in their democracy, the Mueller report reveals citing the federal investigators. Former director of the FBI, and law enforcement officers from the Trump administration, who was named as a special counsel to investigate Russian collusion said during his testimony before a pair of House committeesthat Russian operatives hacked their way into local voter registration systems without actually tampering with vote tallies but by launching a mass political campaign to sway the American citizens opinions of politicians and the US political system using the trolls and hacking into accounts.

FBI Director Christopher Wray also confirmed the undermining of the American democracy with the Senate Judiciary Committee, stressing that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 to help elect Trump via an online political campaign. A Facebook representative also testified at the US Congress, stating that at least 470 Russian-controlled accounts collectively made 80,000 political posts between January 2015 and August 2017 to influence the voting of over 126 million people, as per Facebooks estimates.

Twitter similarly in 2018published an update that there were 3,814 accountsonline operated by the Russian government outfitInternet Research Agency(IRA) that attempted to influence political opinion by tweeting 175,000 times, reaching 1.4 million Americans. The threat to democracy from social media is largely due to the unregulated content, ineffective design and enforcement of fair policies, and lack of authenticity of the millions of existing accounts

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Is social media threatening democracies across the world through misinformation? - Republic World