Social Media Companies’ Conduct During Political Unrest

• The insurrection in Nepal, which ousted the K.P. Sharma ‘Oli’ government, raised concerns about the conduct of social media companies.

• The companies whose services sparked protests offered little more than boilerplate statements about respecting digital rights and calls for dialogue.

• This pattern is not unique to Nepal, as platforms are multinational corporations whose interests are commercial, not civic.

• When confronted with authoritarian restrictions, they attempt to split the difference, issuing statements while avoiding meaningful confrontation.

• The reluctance to act is partly due to jurisdiction, as companies operate at the pleasure of host states and may face legal or personal jeopardy if they openly encourage citizens to defy local law.

• There’s an equally pressing moral stake: when governments impose sweeping shutdowns or demand opaque surveillance, they are not enforcing neutral regulations but attacking the basic infrastructure of civic life.

• International norms recognize access to digital spaces as a right rather than a privilege.

• Companies have the capacity to provide workarounds in the form of decentralised infrastructure, redundancy across services, and active support for circumvention tools, yet rarely deploy them for fear of provoking government retaliation.

• Most Big Social platforms are designed as centralized services in which requests are routed through data centres under company control, making them vulnerable to blunt government orders.

• Companies can make a technical and political choice by switching to a decentralised architecture that will make it difficult to enforce bans.

Big Social’s Influence on Political and Technological Landscapes

• Big Social firms, like Telecom and Financial companies, exhibit selective restraint in response to government orders.

• They market themselves as defenders of voice and participation, contrasting with telecom companies that often shut down networks immediately.

• Financial companies like PayPal and Visa have shown more willingness to take explicit political stands, such as curtailing services in Russia after the Ukraine invasion.

• Many Big Social firms own multiple platforms, allowing them to fail-over messages or route traffic through less visible protocols.

• SM bans often lead to less state control, leading to the use of circumvention tools like VPNs and proxies.

• Platforms could integrate these tools directly or subsidise their use in affected regions.

• The under-deployment of these tools is also about profit, disrupting the business model of targeted advertising and centralised control.

• Some Big Social firms command annual revenues larger than the GDP of the states that restrict them, indicating their influence on political decisions.

Social Media Political Unrest is important topic for Civil service exam (WBCS).

🚨Daily Current Affairs MCQ pdf download- Google Drive Link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PN6A2mDkCngLsGR115zhZ_vTV8W7AKN8?usp=drive_link

✅Telegram channel link: https://t.me/TheSoumyaSir

✅Attempt the daily current affairs test in our free section of app (android and ios) : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.iron.rrnvu

✅ Interview related telegram group https://t.me/IASWBCSInterview 🔥 Book free consultation with WBCS Gr A Officer: https://bit.ly/Free-Appointment-with-Soumya-Sir-Other-WBCS-A-Officer

✅ Courses https://www.wbcsmadeeasy.in/courses/

✅ Attempt previous years questions : Link: https://bit.ly/wbcs-pyq-wbcsmadeeasy

✅ Take subject wise Chapterwise mock test : https://bit.ly/wbcs-prelims-all-subjects-chapter-wise-test

✅ Bio – https://bit.ly/m/wbcs-made-easy

✅ App download – Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.iron.rrnvu&pcampaignid=web_share (iOS available too)

WBCS MADE EASY www.wbcsmadeeasy.in

8274048710/8585843673

Jawahar IAS www.jawaharias.in 7439954855