Viral Politics — Review of ‘Democracy Hacked’ (Fabian Review 2019)

An account of how digital technology has disrupted democracy around the world offers some hope for the future, writes Reema Patel

Martin Moore’s Democracy Hacked offers a compelling account of how data-driven big tech platforms have facilitated political surprises across the globe, including Modi’s surprise election in India, Orban’s victory in Hungary, and the Five Star Movement’s rapid ascent in Italy.These electoral successes foreshadowed the Vote Leave campaign, as well as Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.

In his case studies of these campaigns, Moore shows how a co-ordinated group of polarised, networked individuals were mobilised to spread misinformation and emotion-fuelled messages (‘memes’), often using bots programmed to respond to signals online on unfiltered peer networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram to powerful effect. Although Moore does not go so far as to claim that these techniques were solely responsible for the victories of Trump or Vote Leave, he does point out that they are symptomatic of how powerful minority groups, backed by large investments, have used data-driven AI (artificial intelligence) to destabilise existing democratic structures; relying on the mobilisation of radicalised groups by tapping into the anger of politically disaffected voters to achieve their full effect. As a consequence, this has unleashed a torrent of homophobic, misogynistic, racist and anti-semitic abuse simultaneously directed at the ‘other’ and the political elite.

Moore argues that an online climate has been created which is polarised, entrenched, anonymous and hidden. Political campaigns were aided by techniques allowing organisations such as Cambridge Analytica to deploy ‘dark ads‘ and A/B testing, a method of simultaneously using and comparing emotional reaction to different webpages, which makes content virtually unchallengeable by those who are not the recipients of those ads. Campaigns were able to spread messages deterring natural supporters of one side of the political divide from voting and to mobilise the disaffected by creating the effect of a ‘false consensus’ through the existence of online echo chambers. The more controversial content is, the more viral it is likely to be, offering a strategic communications advantage to overly simplistic political narratives. At one point Moore suggests that this in part explains the decline of centrist politics (although this claim is poorly evidenced).

None of these effects have emerged by design. Rather, Moore suggests they are born of a rapidly moving tech culture that considered itself a successor to the ‘counter culture’ which emerged in the heady optimism of the early days of the internet. However, since those days, tech companies have evolved from the model of ‘early pioneerism’ towards what Moore describes as ’surveillance capitalism’.Facebook, Google and other companies had worked out over time that their most valuable asset was personal data, and that detailed information about the individuals on their platforms made for the most powerful advertising medium in the world. Moore also points out the extent to which these techniques risk unquestioning adoption by ‘surveillance democracies’ — citing India’s controversial personal ID system Aadhaar and China’s adoption of its ‘social credit’ scoring system as examples of how nation states are increasingly coming to rely upon data-driven and AI technologies to ‘nudge’ their citizens.

In what feels like a hurried but important conclusion to his book, Moore highlights that another world using tech is possible; one which is more empowering and more deliberative. He cites digital democratic experiments such as Estonia’s ID system which affords greater transparency to the citizen than to the state, Taiwan’s crowdsourcing online platform that has allowed it to ensure Uber responds to its citizens’ values and Paris’ participatory budgeting process which has given its citizens the power to decide how to allocate 10bn euros a year. But these interventions remain on the margins and are limited in both scale and adoption. It is for progressives to work out how to create a better, more inclusive and more deliberative digital space. That work has only just begun.