Centre for Political Thought: Henry Tudor Memorial Address 2019

When the relation between “Facebook” and “democracy” is discussed, the question usually is: what impact does Facebook – as it exists today – have on democratic processes? In this paper, we ask a different question: what would it mean to turn Facebook into a democracy, i.e. to govern it democratically? Given that social media platforms are here to stay, and have enormous power, it is worth exploring whether they could be governed democratically by their users. In the first part of the paper, we take inspiration from the recent debate about workplace democracy and apply them to social media platforms. We argue that, in principle, it would be desirable that users can hold those who have power over them democratically accountable. However, such a proposal immediately raises questions of feasibility. Therefore, in the following section we integrate philosophical and technical considerations, focusing on the problem of voter individuation and on mechanisms for securing the integrity of the voting process. We then consider the challenge of expert knowledge, e.g. on different technical and financial options, which voters might need to make informed decisions, but which they usually lack. We conclude by considering whether Facebook could indeed be turned into a democracy, or whether other social media networks, with more democratic governance structures, could come to replace it.

Speaker: Lisa Herzog from the Technical University Munich