The use of social media has changed how political parties all over the world interact with voters. The positive aspect of this is that there is more direct contact between politicians and voters and political parties can adapt because of the responses they get. But there is a darker side to the policies of the social media giants and they have been accused of undermining democracy in the world and of allowing foreign actors to influence elections. Campaigns on Facebook are credited for getting Donald Trump into the White House and for the success of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. The verdict from a British parliamentary inquiry into fake news and disinformation is that Facebook behaves like a "digital gangster, and that it considers itself to be beyond the law. In South Africa, social media especially Twitter helped to spread the "White Monopoly Capital" campaign dreamt up Bell Pottinger. In the United Kingdom, where voters go to the polls on 12 December, Facebook has refused to ban political advertising even though platforms such as Twitter and TikTok have done so. In this article in the Wall Street Journal, Deepa Seetharaman writes about a former Facebook employee, James Barnes who was embedded in the Trump Presidential election campaign in 2016 but has since decided to work for the other side, the Democrats in 2020. His account is a stark revelation of how influential Facebook is during elections and would strengthen the appeals that the social media giants should be reigned in. Perhaps President Trump would support calls by European governments for the era of self-regulation for tech companies to come to an end; if he finds that a Facebook campaign is working against him. – Linda van Tilburg

How a Facebook employee helped Trump win – but switched sides for 2020

By Deepa Seetharaman

___STEADY_PAYWALL___