Trump’s social media suspensions are too little too late – the problem is a business model thriving on deception

As a newspaper editor I used to take responsibility for decisions about what content we did and didn’t publish, and I didn’t just do it based on what generated the most adverts – the social media companies need to be forced to start doing the same.

It’s unsurprising that the social media networks are among the last to abandon Donald Trump, rather than the first. But this is not just a case of “better late than never”. Trump was not just a bad apple – he was a beneficiary of a business model which has a dysfunctional relationship with the truth, and which will continue to cause problems whatever happens with Trump himself.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms rely on advertising. They have that in common with the traditional print newspapers and magazines whose advertising revenues they’ve taken. However, in traditional media, Chinese walls kept the commercial imperative to generate advertising revenue and editorial decisions about what content to provide the readers separate.

No self-respecting newspaper or magazine or news and commentary website editor makes decisions about what stories to give their readers in print or online with the interests of advertisers at the front of their minds. The key distinction between the social media platforms, and reputable news and commentary titles and websites is not that the social media operators  are mere “conduits” or “channels” as they like to claim. Both social media companies and news organisations make decisions all the time about what content their readers and viewers do and don’t get to see. But whereas their editors make this decision based on journalistic standards and principles, including truthfulness, social media uses algorithms with a view to keeping the viewer on the site as long as possible so that they see the maximum number of adverts.

This means that whatever Facebook, Twitter, You Tube tell you about not liking false and extreme content and conspiracy theories on their sites, the reality is that they’re making stacks of money from them. As the North Macedonian teenagers discovered who ended up running a network of pro-Trump fake news websites during the 2016 US election, making extreme, false claims is a really good way to go viral on Facebook. The individual websites those enterprising Macedonian teenagers were running may have been shut down – but the inherent desire for content which is false and extreme remains.

Of course, it’s easier to write compelling, entertaining “news stories” if you’re not constrained by them having to be true. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Facebook’s funding for fact-checking services like Full Fact, or their programme of support for professional journalists on how to use Facebook more effectively. But it’s going to have more of PR than real world impact as long as Facebook’s core business model remains unchecked. It’s like offering coaching and new boots to a football team at the same time as expecting them to play up a steep slope, and into the wind.

Social media has been designed to prey on sad aspects of human psychology, bringing out the worst in people, because by doing so they keep people on the platform and are able to show them more adverts. Destructive arguments and conspiracy theories often keep people engaged longer than nuanced, constructive, fact-filled debates. It’s simply misleading to claim they’re neutral, harmless platforms that have unwittingly been exploited by dark forces. Facebook’s own research shows that in 64% of cases where someone joins an extremist Facebook group, it’s because Facebook’s algorithms recommended it to them.

Ruthless focus on maximising advertising revenue also explains the platforms’ continued resistance to meaningful action to tackle anonymous abuse or the use of fake accounts to promote false agendas or to dupe consumers with scams. From the point of view of advertising revenue – every account inflates the number of “eyeballs” which can be sold to advertisers. Whether the paying advertiser is actually reaching someone called Chris from London, or if “Chris from London” is actually one of a network of fake accounts run by Sergei from St Petersburg, is by the by.

This means that when we’re thinking about the rights and wrongs of banning a figure like Trump from social media, we have to remember that what he enjoyed for many years  was not just “freedom of expression” – it was freedom of amplification. He reached such a big audience on social media not in spite of the mendacity or divisiveness of his content, but because of it, and because such content generates lucrative advertising revenue and was therefore tolerated.

It also means, though, that banning Trump won’t solve the main problem. At present, social media stacks the odds in favour of liars, extremists and fantasists because their content generates advertising revenue. Fake accounts and trolls are welcome, because their presence is counted as more “eyeballs” who can be advertised to. Until we recognise this and move away from the fallacy that the social media companies are mere “platforms” that have no responsibility for what content gets seen and start to regulate them like we would any other industry, we’ll get more shouting, abusing, exhorting Trumps, and more disturbing scenes like those we saw at the Capitol last week.

The author is a former editor of The Independent and a member of the advisory board of Clean Up the Internet.