Politicians bent on using the internet as tool for social manipulation: George Will

On March 25, a California jury found that two major Silicon Valley companies — Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) and Google — were responsible for the mental health problems a woman said she suffered because of excessive social media use. The plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages — $3 million compensatory damages and $3 million punitive damages — with Meta having to pay 70 percent of that $6 million (which comes out to $4.2 million for Meta and $1.8 million for Google).

Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will delivers a scathing response to that verdict in his April 3 column. The verdict, Will argues, has major political implications and serves as a reminder that both the left and the right are "determine" to use the internet as a vehicle for "social control."

"The most sinister idea in modern politics has received a California jury's endorsement, and much applause," the Never Trump conservative writes. "It contradicts democracy's foundational belief in individual agency. This concept presupposes that individuals can, in common parlance, 'make up their minds.' They can assemble and edit their beliefs and convictions. When this idea is diluted, government expands its ambition to curate the public's consciousness…. The California jury weighed the claims of a now 20-year-old woman who began using YouTube at age six and Instagram when nine."

Will continues, "She says her many emotional and social problems were caused not by her troubled family life, but by those platforms…. The jury agreed with her claims. It said, confusingly, that Meta and Google were negligent and deliberate in designing algorithms and other devices that make the platforms' content 'addictive.'"

The California verdict, Will stresses, points to an "infantilizing premise" that "leads to paternalism, then to domestic authoritarianism." And Will, who is a blistering critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but often criticizes Democrats as well, believes that both the left and the right are "infantilizing" Americans.

"Nowadays, some college students are unashamed about, even proud of, their brittleness," Will laments. "They demand 'safe spaces' to protect them from being 'triggered' by the 'trauma' of 'microaggressions.' Note how linguistic inflation is a gateway to the coveted status of victim…..If human beings are soft wax, passively shaped by the promptings of the culture in which they are situated, then controlling the culture becomes an imperative and encompassing political project…. It is prudent to assume that the government, under whichever party, will remain determined to curate the internet for the purpose of social control."

Will adds, "Bandying accusations of 'addiction' and other hypothetical 'harms,' it will build upon what the California jury did."

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