American-based social media companies have become active players in digital war, both by accident of design and a subsequent failure to address the threat due to concerns over profits. Discussions about the negative role of social media in society generally address the myriad problems wrought by social media, including electoral manipulation, foreign disinformation, trolling, and deepfakes, as unfortunate side effects of a democratizing technology. This article argues that the design of social media fosters information warfare. With its current composition and lack of regulation, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are active agents of disinformation, their destructive force in society outweighing their contributions to democracy. While this is not by deliberate design, the twin forces of capitalism and a lack of regulation of the world’s largest social media platforms have led to a situation in which social media are a key component of information war around the globe. This means that scholarly discussions should shift away from questions of ethics or actions (or lack thereof) on the part of social media companies to a frank focus on the security risk posed to democracy by social media.
The easy weaponization of social media: why profit has trumped security for U.S. companies