Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa said, “Tech bros such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are “the largest dictators." 

She won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 for her defence of media freedom.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in Powys, Ressa said Zuckerberg and Musk have “proven that we all, regardless of culture, language, or geography, have far more in common than we have differences because we’re all being manipulated the same way”.

Social media platforms have the ability to “change the way we feel”, she said, which in turn “changes the way we see the world and changes the way we act”.

Ressa said conversations about identity politics online have caused similar instances of polarisation across the world. These debates encourage “the kinds of questions that we think are our free will” – but they are not, Ressa said.

“In the Philippines, it was rich versus poor. In the United States, it’s race,” she said. “Black Lives Matter … was bombarded on both sides by Russian propaganda. And the goal was not to make people believe one thing. The goal was to burst this wide open to create chaos.”

The way tech companies are “inciting polarisation, inciting fear and anger and hatred” changes us “at a personal level, a societal level”, she said.

She suggested two ways to lessen the control tech companies have over us. Firstly, she said, the US should get rid of section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, “which is what gives these companies impunity”. The section protects internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by their users.

“And the other one is, if you have kids, don’t let them on [social media] until they’re old enough,” she said, because it is “mildly addictive”.

While she thinks attempts to ban Chinese-owned TikTok in the US and Italy are “great”, it “isn’t just TikTok” we should be worried about, but all social media – and the internet as a whole.

Bd pratidin English/Lutful Hoque