Why the state should not run social media

Throughout its history, the British left has been morbidly obsessed by the power of the media. Press tycoons were seen to pose a menace not just to Labour victory, but also to public safety and morals.

The solution, at least as far as the left has been concerned, always lies in some form of state-controlled media. The template even seems to already exist. In the early 1920s, myriad privately owned radio broadcasters suddenly emerged in the UK. Fearing chaos, British and American electrical companies merged these broadcasters into a monopoly, known as the British Broadcasting Company. In 1926, the company was dissolved and its assets were transferred to the crown-chartered British Broadcasting Corporation. From that point on, the BBC became an obsequious mouthpiece for the establishment.

But how to tackle the press barons? In 1947, Labour minister Herbert Morrison, Peter Mandelson’s grandfather, set up a Royal Commission on the Press to ‘inquire into the control, management and ownership of the newspaper and periodical press and the news agencies, including the financial structure and the monopolistic tendencies in control, and to make recommendations thereon’. More than 60 years later, following Lord Leveson’s inquiry into ‘the culture, practices and ethics of the press’, the state came within a whisker of achieving statutory control of the print media.

But bad ideas never go away. Today, Elon Musk plays the same role for the bien pensant left that the dangerous radio independents did for the traditional left in the 1920s, and the Beaverbrooks did in the era of mass-circulation newspapers. It’s just the focus is now on a different form of media – namely, social media.

At the weekend, former Guardian editor and current Prospect magazine editor Alan Rusbridger issued a rallying cry for an alternative to X. ‘A reliable, decent, honest, well-tended platform that can never be taken over by a billionaire man-child’ is how he described it. Clive Lewis, backbench Labour MP and former BBC news reporter, has even grander plans. He requested that our Ministry of Fun – the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – establish ‘a democratic, open-source, transparent, public, bottom-up, cooperative-based, social-media platform’.

Neither Rusbridger nor Lewis mentions how this might be funded, but then revenue isn’t really Rusbridger’s strong point – he left the Guardian in 2015 with a yearly loss of £45million. We can safely assume, however, that this new social-media platform would require the taxpayer to foot the bill. After all, the audience for such a niche product would be insufficient to support it, either through advertising or subscriptions.

The idea of a ‘people-owned’ (ie, state-funded) internet isn’t new – such calls predate even the arrival of social-media platforms. In fact, the rallying cry went up as soon as it was evident that the more libertarian American model of speech had prevailed online.

In 2002, Bill Thompson, who had briefly been head of new media at the Guardian before being elbowed aside by Ian Katz, demanded that Europe ‘take back the web’. Envisaging a ‘regulated network’ presided over by wise elders, he called for ‘an internet that is subject to political control instead of being an uncontrolled experiment in radical capitalism. It is time to reclaim the net from the Americans.’

The BBC was so impressed that its flagship current-affairs show, Newsnight, put him on against cyber-libertarian activist John Perry Barlow to duke it out over the question of a state-owned internet. It helped Thompson get a job at the BBC, where he continues today – alongside advisory roles at assorted NGOs. Nobody goes hungry in Britain today calling for greater state control or funding of the media and the internet.

Meanwhile, at Ofcom, great plans were being made in the 2000s. Former chief executive Ed Richards threw his weight behind an audacious land grab in 2007: a new ‘Public Service Publisher’, or PSP. Ofcom would become a commissioning body, handing out upwards of £300million for new media concepts that set new standards of cringe: for example, ‘citizens’ could meet ‘experts’ electronically, or engage in augmented-reality dramas via text message. Critics dubbed this a ‘Nathan Barley quango’ and even, memorably, ‘welfare for wankers’. MPs also savaged it, and the idea was dropped.

At roughly the same time, Thompson had been employed to create something similar to PSP: a nebulous make-work project called ‘The Space’, funded jointly by the BBC and Arts Council England. One of its core missions, we would learn, was ‘digital capacity building’ in the arts, but the website had persistent errors and drew only a tiny audience.

In 2018, the former vice-chair of the BBC Trust and now Bennett professor for public policy, Diane Coyle, made the boldest call yet. We needed a ‘public-service Facebook or Google’, she wrote in the Financial Times. Her plan received an even greater savaging than Ofcom’s PSP over a decade earlier. Memories were fresh of the BBC wasting over £100million on its utopian, in-house ‘digital brain’, the Digital Media Initiative. Even Coyle hasn’t revived the idea since.

One can see why the middle-class left is so dismayed by Elon Musk’s X. For a decade, the platform formerly known as Twitter reflected the worldview and attitudes of the political and media elites as dutifully as the BBC. Credentials in the form of a ‘blue tick’ were carefully rationed, and fractious voices were banned. It was a cosy setup, until Musk smashed it to pieces.

But a puzzle remains. Ofcom today has greatly expanded powers to determine what information we are able to access, and there’s every indication it will use them. Why would building a state-funded alternative – for that is what it would be once the ‘community owned’ camouflage is removed – be necessary?

Perhaps it is better understood sociologically. The early 21st century finds the British middle class navigating an uncertain post-globalisation world by seeking sinecures for its graduate-aged children. Some of these can be found in the ever-expanding regulatory apparatus of the state, in environmental or health initiatives. Further opportunities arise in technology-related fields – such as coding clubs or ‘AI ethics’. We shouldn’t be surprised to find media offering more. Each one, it’s hoped, may provide a pocket of comfort and prosperity – a safe haven from the market.

But for a public that’s increasingly taxed, regulated and berated, funding what really amounts to a middle-class welfare system is a tough ask.

Andrew Orlowski is a weekly columnist at the Telegraph. Visit his website here. Follow him on X: @AndrewOrlowski.