Piskorski: A Nation Virtually Forged

Thousands of volumes have been written about the function of social media and contemporary forms of communication. It is impossible to dispute the fact that subsequent generations – including our fellow countrymen – will be increasingly shaped by these fresh media.

That is simply social platforms, which will shortly be the only origin of their information, cognition about the world, but besides the rationale of certain values, replacing conventional institutions with household and school in the hard and demanding process of socialization. We can complain about this trial. We can someway effort to slow down this tendency. But that doesn't mean that we're able to halt it completely.

That is why it is so crucial who controls this means of socialization and the center of shaping attitudes and minds. present the situation seems very simple: the vast majority of social media utilized in Poland is owned by corporations from across the ocean. In any places, Chinese capital (and more popular TikTok) is besides timid. On the margins, it is dynamically increasing in many another countries Telegram, founded by Russian Paul Durov, but based in Dubai (United arabian Emirates). All applicable entities are private entities. any of them have an unreadable ownership structure. Although Chinese corporations are subject to the informal control of the Beijing authorities, and in ByteDance owned by TokToka, the State Treasury of the People's Republic of China had a 1 percent stake, no of these social media can be described as being controlled by the structures of public power.

As private companies, they are not subject to any real control by public authorities within the dominant neoliberal paradigm. "Holy" property law means that each owner of the most crucial social media can conduct his own policy. This is not only about commercial relations or the collection and processing of data of millions of users (at least any careful attempts have been made in the European Union) but besides about the general policy on the admissibility or inadmissibility of published content, in fact corporate censorship. Thus it turns out that the top influence over subsequent generations of young people, the power to form minds, attitudes, fashion and spread certain values, we give private owners the most popular communication and information exchange tools. Our children are raised by Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin or anonymous investment funds controlling individual giants in our industry. Their views will form the way billions of people in the planet perceive the world, including millions in Poland.

The attempts to measurement individual countries and even their blocks (EU) with the corporate machinery of powerful IT players have not been peculiarly effective. possibly in this unequal conflict the structure of political power is doomed to failure. It is so worth considering the thought of setting up public (state-controlled and state-funded) social media. Their basic rule should be the deficiency of political censorship, a complete ban on practices associated with alleged cancel culture or deplatform. If we recognise democracy at national level as an crucial value and the rational management of public debates as a condition for making informed decisions concerning the full community, the only way out will be to make a truly public average in place of an increasingly archaic, impotent, serenity and losing audience. Billions allocated to the maintenance of the propaganda apparatus based on Woronica Street in Warsaw can be utilized to invest in the state's platform of deliberalisation and free communication. Free – from both corporate censorship and state censorship. Deliberalisation, or reasonable discussion on public matters, is simply a condition for a strong, spirit-filled nation to be formed. Global corporations of tools for specified discussion cannot deliver – their sole goal is profit and so the creation of decently formatted consumers. The task of the State is diametrically different: creating the conditions for the improvement of a civic, conscious community. The laborious forging of a reasoning nation in an increasingly crucial virtual space can only take place in independent social networks, unprofitable or organization propaganda. Let's think about it.

Mateusz Piskorski

Think Poland, No. 51-52 (17-24.12.2023)