Ethan Rubenstein
March 9, 2021
Twenty-six years after the end of the Civil War, a convention commemorating ex-Confederate Missourians witnessed the birth of the now-famous quote, ‘History is written by the victors.’ In attendance was George Graham Vest, a former state senator for the Confederacy who maintained its credo until his death. Addressing an audience whose sympathies aligned with the defeated Confederacy, Vest declared the following:
“In all revolutions the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians, for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side.”[1]
While his reason for coming to this conclusion is now popularly regarded as abhorrent, the principle itself holds true. It is not incredulous to imagine a scenario in which the Confederacy was successful in seceding from the United States, with its historians characterizing the Union as authoritarian in a fashion not too dissimilar to how the American Revolution is viewed today. Thanks to technology, one can now access a wide range of sources that tell of terrible acts Union soldiers committed but are obscured by the long shadow that the crimes of the Confederacy casts. But sources contradicting the predominant narrative, however, tend to remain unrecognized, effectively having no impact on the popular understanding of the events. Examples like this exist throughout history, all telling the same story: history is written by the victors.
The rhetoric of the quote is true—that the winning side writes history—but it also operates in a more literal sense. Writers often led the charge in shaping history, as they provided informative records in a lasting format that later generations built on. Because much of history is understood from writing, who the writers were is significant; biases, both intentional and unintentional, exist in all written accounts. The biases of historical writers, particularly in the distant past, are exacerbated because of who was able to read and write. Literacy rates for much of history were low, and those that wrote formally could usually afford schooling and had some social standing. Inherent biases related to class sometimes resulted in a neglect of the perspective of the common man, thus only capturing one snapshot of history instead of a more complete picture. Rather than the historical consensus being driven by the people, it was generally conceived by influential institutions and individuals who did not represent the population.
Incongruence between how the public remembers events and how those events are recorded can be found in numerous places. One notable example is that of the Armenian genocide that began in 1915. Today, it is generally accepted in America that the Ottoman government ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I. The Turkish government, however, has denied culpability and often asserted that any crime was committed; instead, the state asserts that Armenians were merely relocated, and some were killed because they rebelled. To canonize this version of history, the state established a firm stance on the events, punishing dissenters and aggressively opposing the recognition of the genocide both at home and abroad.[2] Most Turks now accept this historical revisionism, some in earnest, and some out of fear of ostracization. What remains an important conclusion from this example is how pressure from the influential institutions of a nation can mold how the public views the past. While dozens of countries have condemned the massacre, Turkey continues to hold a position that is beneficial to the nation’s founding mythos and which boosts the legitimacy of the government among the Turkish people.
Like in Turkey, as well as in places like China, where the regime bans and censors many books, films, and popular websites including social media, the power structures of states across the world have and continue to act as authors of history in efforts to reach strategic goals. This has nearly always been the case because the institutions of power have always had the tools to do so. But the modern age, the so-called ‘Age of Information’, poses a chance at upending this situation.
In the past, news primarily spread via print and through the grapevine. Oftentimes, knowledge of major events never even reached local communities because of a lack of infrastructure. With this, news was relatively easy to contain, and it was also relatively easy to control the narrative. It wasn’t until the invention of the telegraph, and more recently the radio and television, that news expanded to a national and even global scale. The transmission of information using such technologies were still limited by cost to the wealthier, or influential individuals and institutions, but they allowed for the transmission of news – essentially history in the making – to the public. Still, information was being broadcasted from the top-down, meaning that it was at risk of biased framing, editorializing, and omission of specifics to create a certain perception.
For example, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Incident was widely covered by print, radio, and television media as being an attack on American troops which resulted in increased public support for involvement in Vietnam. It was later learned, though, that the details of that incident were skewed to create the appearance of an attack. Nevertheless, the story of an assault on American troops filled the media. Centralized news and intelligence created a version of history, the response to which set in motion events that cost the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers.
As evident with this example, the interpretation of history is important partially because it serves the justification for state actions including wars and legislation. And, because the institutions of power often have ulterior motives to characterize history in a certain fashion, it is natural for the masses to seek an alternative source of history and current affairs. For millennia, no effective alternative existed. There was only the public square, where an individual’s influence was only as loud as their voice and was limited by geography. Now, mass-communication technology provides the first real large-scale opportunity for the historical consensus (that is, the lasting perception of current events) to be made in parallel with the consensus of traditional institutions.
When social media giant Twitter first launched, it prided itself in its policy of free speech. It quickly became popular as a forum to discuss a variety of topics, particularly current events, at a scale larger than any previous website and free from oversight. Users across the world utilized Twitter’s protection of speech and widespread accessibility to stage protests against stringent regimes, such as in the 2009 Iranian Green Movement.[3] Rather than use traditional methods of relaying information and organizing, Iranian protesters found more success and safety online. The advent of social media granted grassroots movements like this a tremendous opportunity to broadcast their perspective, from the eyes of the people, alongside the calculated narrative crafted by news media and government.
However, the very nature of free speech platforms makes it susceptible to actors that seek to mold the public opinion to align with the institutional opinion. Propaganda efforts, state-sponsored or otherwise, have significant influence on the discourse that occurs on social media. To combat this, many platforms have established strict guidelines and policies, such as Facebook and Twitter banning political ads and removing content deemed as manipulative. In doing so, though, the platforms act as censors, gatekeeping the content, the gate ever closing with each update to the terms of service. Sites like Twitter recently began purging accounts and tweets claiming election fraud in the 2020 general election, a belief held by roughly half of the country, under the banner of promoting safety. Shadow bans and purposefully engineered content display algorithms are also approaches that social networks employ to influence users. Furthermore, the largest social media networks deny that they practice shadow banning, the effort to block engagement with content that meets certain parameters. While an instance of shadow banning can only be concretely proven by evidence originating from inside the companies, there are ways to tell if a hashtag, phrase, or account is shadow banned. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto conducted a study of WeChat, the largest chat application in China and the fourth largest in the world, discovering that messages sent by accounts registered in China and that contained certain keywords were filtered in group chats, unbeknownst to the sender.[4] Shadow bans similar to that of WeChat occur on most major networks like Twitter and Instagram, impeding the spread of particular messages. In effect, the social media platforms have become the curators of information like the institutions of influence that came before. If the goal is to get the people’s raw perspective, then this situation is untenable.
As previously outlined, social media is a tool for the masses – it lets people across space communicate nearly instantly, at a scale never seen before in human history. But the companies managing these platforms have made it their prerogative to vet content and remove any that objects to their view on history and current events, views often correlate with that of traditional institutions of power. And because of the great impact that the perception of current events has on politics and culture, the chance that the concept of social media gives for the people’s unfiltered voice to be heard clearly and eminently is of utmost importance. In order to give all people equal access to influence the popular opinion, the separation of social media and social media companies must occur.
A notable solution that does not entirely disassociate social networks from their ownership while making progressive steps toward equitable standing is reform of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA). In short, the addendum makes online service providers not liable for any third-party content posted using their service. Political figures including President Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz have favored a reform or even abolition of this protection, claiming unfair moderation standards. Revoking Section 230, however, would be disastrous for the internet as a whole. Holding companies responsible for the user-published content on their websites would cost those companies an extraordinary amount of money in legal costs, to an extent that websites would refuse to host third-party speech. An internet without Section 230 would resemble a collection of television channels, wherein select information is broadcasted rather than exchanged. Website owners would distribute hand-picked information such as news, but users would have no ability to comment on that information or share their own. Furthermore, the protections offered by CDA 230 are somewhat unique to the United States. Amendment or repeal of the section could very possibly result in the many U.S.-based tech firms relocating to other countries, devastating the American economy. The notion of changing or removing Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act does not solve the problem of free speech on social networks.
Only one realistic solution truly exists: a mass movement from current social networks to their decentralized counterparts. The current iteration of the internet is highly centralized; most people rely on a handful of companies for anything done online, from sending emails to browsing social media. Decentralized social networks rely on independently run servers that anyone can set up, bypassing the need for corporate services. They are also peer-to-peer, meaning that the user’s device sends and receives information to other users, instead of requesting it from a central server. Along with the resistance to censorship, these federated networks typically provide more data privacy than social media companies that require personal information to create an account and are obligated to collect user data in many countries. This is especially salient in regions of the world with hefty consequences for dissent against authority.
An example of a decentralized social network can be found in Mastodon, an open-source project with functionality similar to Twitter. The owners of each server determine the guidelines for posting on their instance, but there is no entity above them directing policy. And one instance cannot affect the rules for posting on another instance. But each instance can communicate with every other instance on Mastodon, and even websites outside of the platform. Mastodon runs on a communication protocol named ActivityPub, used by several other federated networks such as PeerTube, an alternative to YouTube. Applications that support ActivityPub comprise the Fediverse, the servers of which can and send files, text, and media to each other. For example, a user on Mastodon can follow a PeerTube user and have that user’s videos displayed on their feed. The decentralized nature of these servers allows for the spread of information across all platforms, unimpeded by uniform moderation standards and local social media blackouts that have occurred in dozens of countries.[5]
While decentralization could promote free speech on the internet, a widespread transition would prove incredibly difficult. It would require the billions of users on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and many other social media sites to create a new account, leaving their old posts, friends, and familiar feed behind. Aside from the reality that change is uncomfortable, a large-scale movement to federated networks will likely never happen because of how entrenched the social media companies are in the economy and politics. Corporations like Facebook spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress, and arguably have more influence than traditional institutions including news media. If decentralized social networks threatened to replace current social media, it is likely that the companies in Silicon Valley would work to dismantle them via legal avenues, such as how Apple has lobbied against the right to repair their products, and in the public perception through advertising. Regardless, decentralized networks hold the greatest chance of restoring free speech to social media in the long term and must be pursued.
Today, we stand at a crossroads. Never before in human history has the individual been afforded such an opportunity to influence the public sphere and subsequently history. That opportunity, though, is narrowing with every community guideline addition and revision. A solution to this exists in the form of federated social networks, but that solution looks less feasible after each passing day, as social media companies become more powerful. It is ultimately up to the public and whether they value their ability to speak freely online, or the convenience of Facebook. Clearly, the internet and social media are not going anywhere, and will only have more prominence in the future. We must therefore carefully consider the choices we make today, as their consequences will echo for years to come.
[1] Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.), 27 Aug. 1891. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84029386/1891-08-27/ed-1/seq-1/.
[2] Mindock, Clark. “Trump refuses to back recognition of Armenian genocide after Erdogan threat,” The Independent (New York, NY), Dec. 17, 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-armenian-genocide-erdogan-turkey-native-americans-a9250281.html.
[3] Nasr, Octavia. “Tear gas and Twitter: Iranians take their protests online,” CNN (Atlanta, GA), Jun. 15, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/14/iran.protests.twitter/index.html.
[4] Crete-Nishihata, Masashi et al. “One app, two systems,” The Citizen Lab. Nov. 30, 2016. https://citizenlab.ca/2016/11/wechat-china-censorship-one-app-two-systems/.
[5] Fischer, Sara, & Lawler, Dave. “Internet blackouts skyrocket amid global political unrest,” Axios. Feb. 2, 2021. https://www.axios.com/internet-blackouts-myanmar-global-unrest-c2b310d7-d9c4-42f7-9d17-f712527da3ea.html.
Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Screenshot_of_suspended_account_realDonaldTrump_on_Twitter_2020-01-09.png.
Policy & Political Review 
