Who Really Sets the Rules?

Key Takeaways from Our Webinar on Democracy, Regulation, and Global Power: Recap of Aidan O’Brien’s Presentation

In early May, INACH hosted its Webinar “Who Sets the Rules Online? Democracy, Regulation and Global Power.” Aidan O’Brien, a researcher and analyst at the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), spoke on the intersection between hate speech and disinformation, how new technological trends are amplifying this issue, and what is being done about it.

Using Ireland as a case study, O’Brien explained how mainstream American right-wing conspiracy theories are being slightly modified to align with Irish themes, and then adopted at a high rate. These conspiracy theories often lead to violence against minority groups and politicians, even when they are demonstrably false. This illustrates how what O’Brien calls the “three horsemen of the infopocalypse: disinformation, hate, and extremism,” co-occur and lead to real world violence.

However, the spreading of hateful misinformation and ensuing acts of extremist violence are not always done for ideological reasons; sometimes their incentives are purely financial. As social media platforms financially reward views as part of the attention economy, malicious actors are incentivized to earn views regardless of how they get them. This includes the making of disinformative and hateful content that insults minority groups and individuals to better capture people’s attention, and in turn, make a profit. Social media algorithms also play a role in this. By prioritizing content that draws engagement, whether that be outrage against the poster or dogpiling religious minorities in comment sections, platforms perversely encourage this hateful content. People will go so far as to demean the religion they devoutly follow for engagement bait, and by using AI, this process is only accelerated.

O’Brien goes on to argue that while some preliminary findings indicate social media platforms have not been following the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas related to child safety, addictive design features, and X’s blue checkmark, there has not been enough direct focus from the European Commission on investigating disinformation and hate speech. O’Brien concluded by calling for two main improvements for the sector: more sustainable, long-term funding for counter-disinformation and counter-hate speech infrastructure, as well as stricter enforcement of the DSA from governments to hold social media platforms accountable.

Written By: Fox Oliver

Curious about what the other presenters at the Webinar had to say? Scroll through our blog archives to read our recaps of Zenith Khan and Aishik Saha’s presentations.