Nancy Snow is the co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Propaganda and the co-author of the 8th edition of Propaganda and Persuasion. She teaches media and international relations at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.
In March 2019, Maria Ressa and I sat in a conference room at the headquarters of Facebook. We were part of a small group of academics, journalists, foundation and tech representatives sponsored by the company to brainstorm a response to the rise of misinformation and fake news.
We called our raison d'etre the Global Information Operations Forum. I fancied combining the economies of scale that only Facebook could offer with independent research on propaganda. I realized that this was an astroturfing effort by Facebook to polish its own image and reputation in light of growing charges of lack of accountability and oversight.
Facebook's head of cybersecurity security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, was our group convener who made it clear that this would not be a Facebook-directed forum. In his carefully crafted verbiage, Facebook could only do so much as a social media platform to counter harmful influence operations.
In code speak, that meant Facebook had limited accountability to civil society and certainly not the same level of public obligation or oversight as a media company. It all seemed Orwellian at the time since it was an open secret that Facebook was a both/and entity, technology platform convener and media content provider.
Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher, pictured in Washington in May 2019. © AP Far more thrilling than to be at Facebook was to be in the same room as the firebrand Filipino journalist Maria Ressa. She sounded the alarm about what was happening to journalism, news and the information sphere in her home country and elsewhere. Ressa had lived speaking the truth as a matter of life and death.
Her independent online news website Rappler was under constant monitoring from the Rodrigo Duterte regime with worries about the other three Ds, detention, defendant, or death in the mind of every journalist uploading a story that challenged the regime.
Ressa and her Rappler team had been spending years informing voters in the Philippines about the misinformation campaigns orchestrated by Rodrigo Duterte and his supporters against opponents from the time of his political rise in 2016.
Much of that harmful online propaganda was being spread like wildfire using Facebook as the match. Facebook had at one time been in Ressa's good graces since Rappler started out as a Facebook page and was elevated through a Facebook Free Basics initiative that offered free internet access to everyone who would download Facebook.
How Facebook drives billions of us to consume news and information is an under-told story. Its Free Basics initiative has enormous reach in poorer parts of the world, including parts of Asia and Africa. Many of us use Facebook as just one of many apps, but in the developing world, internet service is not as widespread or affordable.
Enter Facebook. It comes to the rescue of these Global South countries like the Philippines to offer free internet access in exchange for using the Facebook application as the launchpad.
Some users end up getting all of their news and information through Facebook, unaware that they even have internet service and access to other websites outside of Facebook. It is the digital version of turning on your television and seeing one broadcast news station, not realizing that you have the option to change the channel.
Stanford researcher Toussaint Nothias likens Facebook and its Free Basics to a commercial model version of a gateway drug. It connects people online, but also allows Facebook to hoover personal data and expand Facebook's user base in parts of the world where free and independent journalism are most at risk.
In so doing, its algorithms prioritize emotionally-laden stories and propagate extreme speech. If Facebook is the gateway to the internet for mobile users across the Global South and does not accept its gatekeeper responsibility for its content, then facts-driven journalism will remain under threat.
Ressa's elevation to Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a watershed moment for a trillion-dollar Big Tech company that spreads propaganda and operates as a political battleground as freely as it spreads pictures of your recent wedding or Fido's first birthday.
After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Ressa responded, "This shows that the Nobel Peace Prize committee realized that a world without facts means a world without truth and trust."
Just as she did with Duterte, Ressa is taking on a formidable opponent. We need to support and champion journalist Maria Ressa's challenge to hold Facebook accountable for its impact on society.
It is the world's largest distributor of news, information and propaganda with a base of over three billion users. Without our support, she has a three billion to one chance of being heard.