Limiting Anonymity on Social Media to Restore Civility | Opinion
Mark Zuckerberg’s Move to End Data Verification: A Threat to Civil Society
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement to discontinue data verification on Meta (comprising Facebook and Instagram) is a declaration of war on civility, not because of its actual impact—misinformation already ran rampant—but because it signifies yet another demonstration that both Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have created states beyond national jurisdictions, international organizations, and human rights. These states are even detached from empathy towards their peers.
This decision further facilitates the inundation of deceit on social media platforms, thereby devaluing truths as it becomes increasingly impossible for millions of users to discern fact from fiction. The abundance of falsehoods undermines the very foundation of truth itself.
The deliberate deterioration of values by these powerful billionaires, now allied with Donald Trump, poses a grave threat to the fabric of society. These values include respect for justice and verified historical or scientific facts. The social media platforms run by Musk and Zuckerberg refuse to collaborate with national courts to stop crime, citing extraterritoriality and acting like the "invisible man."
On October 24, 2023, 41 U.S. prosecutors, both Republicans and Democrats, filed a lawsuit against Meta for developing products designed to lure children and deliberately turning them into addicts. This risked their mental health.
New York Attorney General Letitia James was unequivocal: "Children and adolescents are suffering more than ever with mental health issues, and social media companies are to blame." California Attorney General Rob Bonta added: "Meta has been harming our children and adolescents by cultivating their addictions to boost corporate profits."
On January 30, 2024, during a U.S. Senate investigation into social media consequences, Republican Lindsey Graham confronted Facebook’s CEO directly: “Mr. Zuckerberg: you and these companies may not have intended this, but your hands are stained with blood. You produce products that are killing people.” The hearing took place amidst audience members whose children had been victims of abuse and suicide. Some parents displayed pictures of their children, but Zuckerberg seemed unaffected, offering only a cold apology.
Graham continued: “When cigarettes killed people, we did something about it. Maybe not enough. What about this? Is there no action? Can’t they be questioned?”
Facebook admitted in 2023 that during the second quarter of that year, its moderators had removed 7.2 million videos containing child abuse, 6.4 million showing self-harm or suicide, and 17.5 million for hate speech. On Instagram, they removed 6.2 million violent video clips. These statistics are incomplete because they don’t account for how long those contents had been on the platforms and what portion they represent relative to the total atrocities they failed to address with their limited resources (periodicals estimated 20,000 moderators in 2018 but 15,000 in 2023).
These moderators work in 50 languages and, according to their own testimonies, earn about $28,800 annually while viewing some of humanity’s most terrifying images. Two thousand of them are employed by subcontractors in Barcelona and review about 450 extreme content videos daily[2]. Their typical shifts include observing cruel baby killings, terrorist beheadings, student suicides with pleas left behind, how a young woman is led into a door by four men and then violated while naked; also helpless puppies being maltreated before eventually stripping off their innocent nudity[3].
After their shifts end, the moderators struggle to maintain normalcy in public spaces but not everyone succeeds. About 400 supervisors based in Barcelona had been out sick due to psychological trauma by the time those figures were published[3]. It’s clear their efforts are a drop in the ocean when faced with the sheer volume of content from over 3 billion users who often use anonymity features to hide their identities.
This anonymity enables a vast spectrum of hate and racism. Without it, would there be such an abundance of malicious activities? Would delinquents enjoy this level of impunity? Currently, Spanish courts resolve less than 1% of reported cybercrimes, with extortions based on sexually explicit videos tripling between 2018 and 2023 from 1,691 to 4,460 according to Spain’s Attorney General’s office[3].
Anonymity facilitates these issues by undermining respect and civility in communications, fostering calumny and defamation, racism, threats, false accusations, scams, impersonations, invasion of privacy including minors disguising themselves as adults to access porn sites or casinos while pedophiles disguise themselves as children to prosecute their tricks, recruit terrorists disseminate non-consensual sexually explicit videos and harass minors especially women.
The influence of anonymous attacks on increasing suicides among youths (which rose by 32% between 2019 and 2021) and failures in education along with depression and loss of self-esteem among many young people is still unknown. An anonymous attack means shooting someone from behind unbeknownst to them, which perfectly encapsulates their plight.
To address this crisis, it is crucial to reduce the power of Zuckerberg’s Meta and other such platforms. This should involve regulating anonymity democratically at an international or European level while protecting activists in totalitarian states. Without this regulation ensuring accountability for posted content, it will remain impossible to prevent these atrocities.
A viable proposal like that advocated by lawyer Borja Adsuara—creating an identity bank linking usernames with real names custodied by notaries or registrars—could help identify users quickly whenever needed by a court. This would make it easier to track down perpetrators of crimes online.
While this might seem an unachievable goal, propositions like Adsuara’s should be considered as initial steps towards a cleaner, more responsible internet where civility is restored and truth prevails.