Why Social Media Platforms Should Adopt a 'Militant Democracy' Framework

0:00Your film is now ready to be shown. Good morning. I'm Justin Hendrix, Editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish news, analysis, and perspectives on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. What should social media platforms do when the state itself becomes threat to democracy? In a new paper published in the journal Information, Communication, and Society, two researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill borrow from militant democracy. A framework scholars developed in the 1930s as fascists took advantage of democratic freedoms to take power. They offer a framework to wed platform policies to democratic principles. With midterm elections just weeks away in the United States and elections playing out in Brazil and beyond, I caught up with them about what the framework suggests and what trust and safety executives can do even in a context with the interest of platform owners or fuse with those of autocratic leaders.

1:00I'm Lorca Neal, I'm a PhD candidate at the Hussman School of Journalism Media and a graduate research assistant at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life. Both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Daniel Crease, the Edgar Thomas Kato Distinguished Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, also one of the co-founders and co-PI's of the UNC Center for Information Technology and Public Life. And Daniel, welcome back to the podcast, Lorca, and welcome here for the first time. I'm glad to talk to the two of you. I got in touch after I saw, I believe Daniel posting to Blue Sky about a new paper called Militant Platform Democracy, a framework for democracy worthy platform policies. And Daniel, I'm not sure how many times you've been on this podcast, but it's certainly been more than once. And I feel like this more or less has been the topic of our discussion from day one. So always excited to effectively get an update on your thinking and where things have got to and what you've added to the record here with Lorca.

2:05But I think I might just start for the sake of the listener on this phrase, Militant Platform Democracy, where does it come from, this idea of militant democracy as a concept. How would you explain it for the listener that might not be familiar? Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us. I think I say yes every time you ask because your work is top notch, Justin. And I'll also say, I mean, it's kind of sad that we have to continue having the same set of conversations. In fact, I think things have gotten progressively worse, unfortunately, with the things that we care, that we care most about. So Militant Democracy refers to a framework that scholars most notably Carl Lohnstein developed in the late 1930s. As they watched, dashes take power through democratic elections in countries across Europe. And basically the idea was simple. It was that democracies do not have to see and just sit by as anti-democratic actors take power and then subsequently dismantle the rights and freedoms of democracy itself.

3:20So the general idea and with incredible clarity, I mean, in the 1930s, is that basically fascism, which was the concern of the time, was using liberal freedoms itself in order to subsequently dismantle liberal freedoms like speech, press, assembly, parliaments, etc. So what Militant Democrats and the framework of Militant Democracy basically calls for is to simply say, we shouldn't let those people take power in the first place. And if that means curtailing some of their basic democratic rights, then that is what we should do. And it's taken different forms. Mostly it's been designed in the context of state power, so constitutional design. But things like banning certain political parties, for instance, would fall into that category or restricting rights of assemblies or let's say fascist symbols, etc. depending on the country. But the idea is you don't let people weaponize those very freedoms because once they take office, then they'll take away and they'll strip those freedoms away from other people.

4:28You start this paper off of this idea that what's needed right now is democratic clarity. And maybe that's slightly where you feel folks arrive back in the 30s, 40s, so long ago, when they're facing down the barrel of fascism, it was a moment of clarity. Is that sort of what you mean there that we need a similar kind of clarity about the moment that we're in? Given what we know about factslighting governments, democratic governments around the world, it's no longer okay for those of us who study things like platforms, regulation, etc. to just carry on as if everything is normal. We need to figure out what's at stake, what's happening, and what can we do about it? And I think a lot of the challenge is that the academic fields that we're in at least, and I think to a lesser extent, but professional conversations in the field of trust and safety, sort of take shape from sort of assuming that we're in stable consolidated Western democracies.

5:28And therefore, propose a set of things like state regulation of platforms that during normal times are really great ideas, right? Because in essence, we want to use platform power and use the power of governments to reigning the commercial excesses of social media, tech platforms, etc. But the fundamental thing that Lorkin and I are thinking through is, well, what happens when that state has already been captured, or is in the process of being captured. And then anti-democratic political leaders like Donald Trump can wield the state against civil society and against free media and against free platforms themselves. Why would we go on talking about increased state regulation when basically all that's doing is giving Trump more power? And I think that's our biggest concern is that any context of regulation or any context of governance is the better word here. We have to think through the context within which it's taking shape. But in backsliding democracies, it doesn't make any sense at all to be talking about state regulation of free media.

6:32Because in essence, you're just giving the car keys to the drunk. Our goal with this piece is to provide a starting point for conversations that break out of this mold of focusing on state regulation of government regulation and thinking more critically about what do we do with platforms in terms of their content moderation policies and state regulation. And state regulation policies in states, like Daniel said, that are either undergoing democratic backsliding or have already backslid into with authoritarianism and any kind of state level regulation is likely going to make things worse and increase the power of the autocrat that's taken power. And the other part of this that's important to note is that we feel it's democracies under threat now that the alarm bells are ringing now that it's important that we start having these conversations now about what we do trying to either hold the line or push back the autocratic and anti-democratic forces that are massing more and more power in countries like the United States and across Europe and South America.

7:33We feel this is part of our responsibility as researchers as academics, and people who just generally care about democracy to put forward an argument that people don't have to necessarily agree with where by no means acting like this is the golden plan or the only plans that can be put in place here. We are simply putting a red line of the sand and saying here is what based on our research based on our expertise, what democracy were the platform principles would look like and hopefully giving a ballast to the thousands of good trust and safety people who do work at these platforms, who toil kind of underneath the more market driven less democratic maybe incentivized leaders of these corporations is to give them something that they can do. We can go to their bosses with a go to their kind of superiors with as a way to try and kind of effect change from the inside out. I think the phrase you use in the paper is morally bankrupt leaders if I'm correct.

8:33So you know not craving to I think we say craving as well at some point let's make sure we get craving in there I do you're not pulling your punches but let me just ask for the sake of kind of getting it in people's heads clearly. I feel like we come back on this podcast a lot to Jack Balkan's triangle you know kind of the state you know platforms the public civil society the sort of balance of power between these these entities these institutions make the case for what role you think platforms have in this moment when it comes to defending democracy or being I suppose it at worst neutral in the battle over outcomes with relation to the public. Democracy and authoritarianism yeah I think there's a couple of different things we talk about here in terms of the either responsibilities of platforms to be pro democratic and also the reasons why they should be whether they like it or not platforms are integral to political processes and elections and other kinds of forms of government around the world.

9:37We kind of conceptualize them as communicative institutions of civil society so whether it's campaigning whether it's reporting whether it's advertising like platforms are embedded within our political systems and processes so to absolve them of being in some ways responsible or at least to be more pro democratic absolves them too much of their influence. And there's also the fact of the very democratic values around free speech and the accumulation of power and wealth in a free market society that made them the giant corporations and gave them these influence that have today are the values that these anti democratic leaders so often to story in terms of free expression free assembly free press. So when they are not taking action against anti democratic political leaders in allowing their technologies to be used by these folks to undermine these values they're essentially acting as agents of the state at that point so what we're kind of calling on here is that platforms have a kind of responsibility given how ingrained they are in political processes but also a financial and reputational advantage of supporting democratic causes to be more pro democratic and how they prioritize these values.

10:54And so the collective democratic rights of their users over the single expressive rights of political elites. This paper kind of gets into some of the other phenomena we've witnessed of course you spend an enormous amount of time thinking about January 6th there's a moment and why it's so important. Here you also address instances where these issues rise up in Brazil in India I don't know it feels like we're just kind of collecting more and more evidence other more and more phenomena as we go along. It's sort of play this out but I don't know is there anything else that you point to Daniel or Lorcan just in terms of the phenomena that we've witnessed over the last couple of years that kind of point in this direction. So what we know from a pretty massive now compared to this political science literature is that what we're seeing in the context of democracy is backsliding around the world is a process of executive aggrandizement which is just a fancy way of saying. Someone gets elected to office and then they gradually expand their powers and undermine accountability over what they have the power to do right so the US is is a really great case in fact it's a pretty dramatic one in terms of the speed and the rapidity with which Trump is undermined accountability over his power but this can take many forms right so can happen through capturing state institutions it can happen from then.

12:21Using those state institutions in order to create an uneven electoral playing field or to target opposition media or opposition funding comes with attacks on media right we saw pretty vivid case playing out in front of us like banning media outlets whose coverage Trump doesn't necessarily like right. The important thing in this I think is it starts there it starts with a political leader a political movement and often a captured political party right that sort of works wins an election and then works to undermine aspects of the democratic state itself platforms play a role in that in facilitating that power taking place but they're not creating democratic backsliding itself. It's mostly because they are a vehicle through which anti democratic leaders take power and then once they're in power they use those same platforms in order to brow beat bully the opposition harass election officials whatever that might be that will then help them again undermine basic checks or accountability over their power.

13:29Now what we are arguing fundamentally in this paper is to say if platforms are being used in this way if they are vehicles or anti democratic leaders to take office and then if they are vehicles through which executive and grandisement happens they should have the normative democratic clarity to say no we will not be used in that way because we have a set of democratic commitments. What does that mean that means having a clear set of principles that guide things like content moderation who has the rights and responsibilities to use their platforms which content they take up which content they leave down that they can make these decisions proactively from a democratic standpoint one to prevent anti democratic actors from taking power in the first place and two once they take power to then stop enabling them and giving them a platform to do things like harass the opposition. Target political enemies whatever that might whatever that might be so dear basic question who decides we think platform should decide for themselves because they are communicative institutions of civil society because they should have a set of democratic commitments because that's in their business interest it's also in their democratic interests and because they themselves have espoused these principles like freedom of expression like you know acting to protect things like electoral democracy David's

14:53is at least stated this through their platforms and through their policies before so would require their clarity and here's the ironic things since you brought up January 6 right what we argue and I think what what is the context of the various committees that produce the reports platforms knew exactly how their platforms were being weaponized they knew exactly what they could have done in order to stop January 6 from happening but they didn't do it they didn't do it because they were worried about you know who might be taking power afterwards right there was a complex mix of motivations but it's precisely because they weren't clear about what their commitments and your values are and they didn't listen to their own employees that they didn't take action soon enough Trump should have been de platform far before January 6th happened the election lies that were circulated in order to undermine the election should have been prevented from being on every major platform. There shouldn't have been covert encoded calls to political violence on January 6th that should have been prevented in advance it should have remained a very niche phenomenon from a discredited and illegitimate politician after he lost the election.

16:05Are we in the case though now where it seems clear that the platform owners are politically aligned with Trump and actually quite happy to see the executive you know take on more power I mean we got this kind of added dimension now where even more than perhaps in January of 2021 these platforms are all defense contractors you know they're all allied with the American state on some level and seem invested right now in Trumpian politics. Well here's a thing right not to be too nihilistic but what are you going to do about it you're going to propose state regulation like what I mean in the US right you can't write you can't do that either because again the state is aligned with the platforms here that's the biggest thing we fear we fear state power the most right so the only thing we're kind of left to do is to say look you have these democratic responsibilities you need to have that clarity and then we could push civil society in from below to try to create a pro democratic movement. But proposing state regulation the platforms right now is basically just handing Trump the tools to further erode democratic freedoms we're pretty open to peace that you know we're not naive about whether these principles are going to be enacted tomorrow by the platforms that's not our goal here our goal here was to kind of set out a set of standards and principles that could be used down the road hopefully or by other platforms that do have more robust commitments to pro democratic policies and we're going to be able to do that.

17:34And supporting and protecting democracy because we also know that there was a time that platforms at least on the surface cared more about democracy when they banned Trump of course by January 6 granted too late but also when they put extra guardrails on his accounts when they're much more active and filtering election disinformation and putting tags on things all that has largely been rolled back since the kind of 2020 2021 kind of high point of contemplation. So we kind of make this argument in the favor that platforms have done this before and have shown a willingness before to at least have some commitment to democracy and some commitment to free and fair elections. So there's no reason why we can't expect that same commitment and we argue a much broader deeper commitment from them now even if it's not going to take effect tomorrow. So it strikes me we're two months out from the midterm elections there is the possibility of civil unrest or more state violence potentially even tied to election day itself we'll see you know this idea that there'll be federal troops and or you know FBI agents others dispatched that polling places we've heard various promises from the administration about this strikes me that the platforms could find themselves in

18:54a real dilemma if in fact you know we're we're not looking at the type of violence we saw on January 6th which was you know violence by individuals in many ways against the state but rather violence by the state against individuals that's intended to you know interfere somehow in the election process. This is not a question so much as a prompt I don't know like how you put this paper in I don't know I assume many months ago things have changed. Good situation has changed and evolved since then I don't know what are the kind of imaginaries that you're entertaining at the moment. If there's any sort of underlying theme of the paper it's that you platforms have to proceed from an analysis of power. Right and I mean I guess one of the things is we want to just take off the table is like actually it's not a dilemma right like this is a state alleging that an election is going to be stolen without any evidence whatsoever this is a state that is captured by president and a political party that has an interest in making that argument and then engaging in intimidation and violence in order to.

20:11To create an unequal electoral playing field this is a state that has investigated opposition members protesters etc in an attempt to silence and intimidate and bully in order to weaken the power of the opposition in order to contest elections there's no dilemma there what platforms do platform should be platforming the opposition platform should be working over time to make sure. That they're protecting opposition voices as alternative to the state and giving them the highest level of protection and taking down partisans that are aligned with state power including agents of state power themselves from using platforms in order to create that unequal election playing field. Oh and by the way and this is something that's interesting is like we actually have a body of Facebook oversight board rulings that had exactly made this distinction in other countries before where they have said that pro democracy activists that are using platforms in order to hold the state accountable deserve a different set of speech protections than those seeking to silence them because they're aligned with state power so it's actually precedent here as well that platforms can be.

21:31They can make this distinction they also then have to override their immediate business interests and put the thumb on the scales for democracy here in the United States. We're also trying to push back somewhat on the like binary that seems to happen a lot whether we're talking about the media other academics you know political commentators and thinking about pro democracy and anti democracy anti democratic forces they are not two sides of the same coin that deserve the exact same rights as the other one side is. They are committed to a pluralistic multiracial democracy will people have rights freedoms and basic kind of proceed of happiness in life the other side is the opposite of that they are basically ruled by folks who want to enact strategies and unequal social systems based on the color of somebody skin the face that they practice where they're from and ultimately kind of enact regime. They are the ones of pain and suffering so to view them consistently as two sides of the same coin also risks kind of legitimizing the anti democratic forces alongside what should be more protected and more uplifted by folks like ourselves is the like the pro democracy and platforms like they like they have in the past.

22:52Another thing that I kind of gravitate towards in this paper is the idea that platforms should be taking intervention based on the situation on the ground in particular nations and you kind of say well you know things look different in a backsliding democracy versus a electoral autocracy versus a you know obviously authoritarian state. You know the US at the moment it feels like it's it's in a kind of tricky spot it's in a kind of transitional point you know if you look at some of these democracy indexes like be them no longer grant the US the sort of status of liberal democracy they think of us more as an electoral democracy obviously on a steep slide at the moment it seems like and I think I'm talking to you. While there are headlines swirling around about you know Trump picking out established media organizations from the White House press pool and launching you know what to anyone who's paying attention looks precisely like the type of authoritarian state media alternative.

23:59That one might see in you know various other countries around the world what's your sense of how platforms should view the United States right now what they're kind of operating. Mechanic should be for thinking about the status of US democracy is it in a place where it could be salvageable or do we have to kind of trade on the idea that it's in a kind of difficult to arrest decline kind of like what I said earlier I think there's no. We have the empirical evidence from folks like V. Dem for political scientists were folks in our field that show that. The US is undergoing democratic backsliding now democracy is under threat now the V. Dem. Graphs are great in the sense that you can see that the level of democratic backsliding during Trump's second term is actually happening at a quicker rate than countries like Turkey or India or El Salvador or Brazil when they were going through democratic backsliding.

24:59So in many cases situation the US at this current moment and it continues along this trajectory and speed is going to be worse than how those countries ended up when they backslid into more authoritarian types of government. So I think there's like a there's a reason to think of platforms being the kind of key nexus here in that they exist outside of the state you know we don't make any argument that they are somehow state power or have the ability to enact fake sponsored violence or use the military or police force. So they have this freedom that agents of the state don't have to go above and beyond what state regulation could even provide in terms of protecting democratic freedom to democratic rights because they're not their private companies they're not found by the political forces of the government regulations that other regulatory bodies would be. And so that's how we kind of ground our like core democratic concerns in terms of like what are the principles that platform should focus on when they're creating these policies or thinking about how they be more pro democratic.

25:59It's like first and foremost is the right free and fair elections. Because elections are the cornerstone democracy. It's how democracy happens without free and fair elections. You know where we exactly starting from. And then of course the second one is the promotion of democratic norms and can't drink threats and violence. The January 6th in the US in January 8th in Brazil make very clear how technology can be used as a vehicle for political violence and political threats and cause people to act differently. That's the kind of key nexus of a threat that makes it specifically powerful for people to act differently in terms of at the very least who they're voting for or the very least that they're going to protest or not is very key to how they hold on the power. And then finally the last kind of democratic concern as we call it is accounting for these power differences in context across different democracies. And this is where basically accounting for differences of social groups but also differences in where these threats that democracy are happening are so important.

27:01So the threats that are currently happening in India are going to look very different than what's happening in the US which is going to look very differently than trying to moderate bouquet and I'll Salvador. We try to support predemicratic movements in Poland. There's not going to be a one scale or a one there's not going to be a one size fits all scalable approach to this for platforms. This is going to be a kind of context dependent highly specialized effort that requires a lot of nuance and experts you know what they're talking about in these countries and in these contexts. I mean to put it a little more colloquially. Like I think to your question Justin like this piece was written from a perspective of hope clarity and agency right hope that we can reverse this this tide. I mean I think we we know from the literature like everything is always potentially salvageable. There's no one and state right where things are just consolidated until the end of time. In fact part of our presumptions that there was only one path to democracy.

28:04I think kind of led us to a moment of walking away from our clarity that like democracy is a contingent achievement right so so this is very much this idea that like we have hope for a better world. We have hope for that world of a pluralistic multiracial multiethnic democracy premised on a set of freedoms that you know civil rights activists have been fighting for in the United States for a very very long time. Clarity is exactly was you know we need to be just very clear out about what's going on and we need to be very clear out about our commitment and what we're ultimately going to draw line in the sand for. And I think one thing we know from the democratic backsliding literature is what Nancy Burmio calls is that oftentimes these processes are characterized by a vaccine ambiguity it's really hard to know through any one set of actions well where's where's that line where we're not democratic where's it been crossed. It's really tough for citizens to sort of say you know in the in the you know chaos of every single day that brings new news that like at some point we've had a no return or at some point this is truly worrying etc but you know even though it's vexing and it's ambiguous like that shouldn't take us away from being able to say with party that add all these things up where's the trajectory where's the bigger picture where are we heading right so that ambiguity should not be paralysis.

29:26And then finally and I think this is something that lurking and I believe deeply in it's the agency to do something about it right we didn't write this because we thought platforms are so far gone they're never going to do anything again we wrote this to sort of remind them that like we're actually all in this together we all have a set of stakes in this right civil society journalist democratic activists both both political parties that had an interest in playing this democratic game in in perpetuity in the future where someone can look at it and look at it. And then in the future where someone can lose an election and then get off the mat and then go fight the next one like we all have a stake in that right so if we didn't have that agency I think we would say look you know it's it's over it's lost there's nothing to do except you know to go hide live in the shadows or moved Canada right whatever that might be but I think if you look at other examples like hungry and pulling that are deeply inspirational South Korea like countries have sort of walked back Brazil from exactly these threats and then I think that's not going to be a lot of things. And then we're going down the long hard road of how do we correct those flawed institutions that got into that place in the first place how do we build back stronger how are we resilient and then how do we consolidate democracy that is what the agency sort of requires where we go from here.

30:41Well in many ways you could read this paper also as a you know communication to trust and safety workers you know how they should think about this you know we've already kind of brought up this problem of the being often a misalignment between what trust and safety workers might believe or want inside their organization and what their ultimate boss who may or may not be accountable to anyone may believe or want. But if there are trust and safety workers thinking about elections thinking about these issues that might listen to this or might pick up your paper would be the one take away you'd want them to have what would you want them to think coming out of it I think it's it's exactly the clarity argument right like what what do we what's going on and then what should we do about it if we have this commitment to to democratic life. And I think again the overwhelming evidence is is clear that the United States is in a moment of democratic backsliding that we're in a moment of global democratic recession.

31:42As the most recent V.D.M. 2026 report called it so given that this is happening the question is what can the people working in these companies do to arrest that that that sliding away from democracy what can they do to promote democratic. Democratic institutions and norms and and publics and what can we all do right and I think it's really about that clarity and then the agency that they can actually take and we know and I think this is a great point like what we've been working with platforms for over a decade and you're so many good people who care about democratic outcomes. Who've been making arguments about what they should do differently if they actually centered their democratic commitments and oftentimes that falls on the deaf ears of their bosses right or or gets lost because there's trade offs between revenue or you know other sets of concerns but like that fight is still worth having and we also just to validate like we we see you right like when we acknowledge and we see the importance of your work.

32:46Even if your bosses don't always see that and I think that's a that's a great story of January 6th of like you know the heroes who sort of work within those companies to say. We need clarity about what's happening and we need to do something to stop it and who fought until the very very end right and like that was a noble fight that also resulted in I think preventing future violence from happening because eventually what was playing out on television screens and the violence the capital became too. Much to bear and then that coupled with the internal pressure to do something about it ultimately led them to make the right decision when they de platform Trump after January 6 right what would have happened if we had the same movement within a Republican party to de platform Trump from Republican party politics so that he couldn't take office again and then lead the United States further down this road of that sliding we needed more heroes in a Republican party to step up and to center their democratic commitments and to take their action is that. Their action is democratic gatekeepers and that's what we're calling and hoping that platform step up and you know well Daniel Lord can I hope folks out there are listening reading your work and we'll take action as a result of your suggestions here that I thank you for joining me thanks just you.

34:14That's it for this episode I hope you send your feedback you can write to me at Justin at tech policy dot press thanks to my guests thanks to my co founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening.