THE Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to journalists Maria Ressa and Dimitry Muratiov on Friday “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Ressa has opposed Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte. She has faced hate campaigns and death threats, multiplied online. She attributes the decline of democratic values around the world to choices made miles away, at Facebook’s California headquarters. 

The social media giant is one of the world’s leading publishers of misinformation and hate. In response, Ressa – together with other civil rights leaders – launched the independent Real Facebook Oversight Board.

Facebook has been used to incite violence against minority groups across the globe.

Worryingly, Facebook whistle-blower Francis Haugen Haugen asserts, “I have no doubt that the events we are seeing around the world in Myanmar and Ethiopia, those are the opening chapters.” 

The dangers that communities, and indeed whole nations, face from Facebook have their roots in the personal sphere. They are consequences of the absence of protections at the level of individuals, particularly for the most vulnerable, including children.

Those who spend hours each day on Facebook or Instagram are residents not just of Scotland but also of the global digital world.  Here, laws that protect us in the physical world are inadequate.

For instance, protection that stems from the human rights principles are largely tied to citizenship. Without citizenship, human dignity is vulnerable and without digital citizens’ rights there are few modes of defence for our digital identities. 

Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, has global reach and yields international influence. Its $1trillion market capitalisation exceeds the annual GDP of Saudia Arabia or Switzerland. Facebook is more than a company – it is a superpower. 

Political systems that don’t embrace the rule of law usually stem from strongman arrangements. Here, power lies with a person who controls resources, who can share them or take them away, however they see fit. Neither rules nor facts matter, affairs are controlled by the interests of the ruling class. 

Underlying Facebook’s business model is a mathematical formulation of behavioural modification. Our private beliefs and desires are analysed and mirrored back to us, with the intention to change our online behaviour for Facebook’s needs, specifically to increase revenue when auctioning human attention to advertisers. 

While our behaviour is tuned towards the most profitable outcomes, our self-worth is undermined. We are seduced by an alternate reality that leads us to ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions that follow from relentless prioritisation of growth. On a societal level, the clandestine removal of autonomy prevents critical thinking and moral judgement. Both, preconditions of a democratic society. 

To manipulate users, the platform provides a few voices with disproportionate audiences which they could never reach without Facebook.  As a result, a system of mass propaganda has been created. It can be dialled up or down according to the judgement of the platform’s leadership.

Following criticism of its role in UK and US elections in 2016, Facebook chose not to change its amplification mechanism.

Instead it sacrificed freedom of speech. It build an unprecedented system for global censorship. The rules are chosen unilaterally. They are opaque, change arbitrarily, and are applied unequally. They benefit the powerful and silence marginalised groups.  

Ressa’s prize reminds us that what happens digitally has consequences in the physical world.

Importantly, it is not AI systems that behave dangerously.

As we count the human cost of Facebook’s operations, human accountability must be reestablished. At the same time, human dignity must be protected in the digital world by strengthening – not undermining – human rights legislation nationally and through international collaboration. 

Gabriele Schweikert is principal investigator computational biology at  Dundee University