The phrase’s history
It began as far back as the second century BCE when Polybius wrote that a stable government requires mutual supervision between institutions – a more political framing of the concept. In the 17th century, Montesquieu adopted and developed the idea in France to promote his theories of governmental checks and balances.
He posited the separation of powers, dividing the state into three distinct branches that could regulate one another: the legislative, executive, and judicial. Each would be held by different bodies ensuring that, as he put it, “power should be a check to power”.
For decades, at least in Western democracies, we have accepted that our governments and their systems of checks and balances were adequate — that they possessed enough power and regulatory might to hold our society together. But is that still the case today? Has the internet ripped this centuries-old framework apart?
I’d argue that it has.
This article has been bubbling away in the back of my mind for a while, but it finally burst forth after I heard an interview with Dame Melanie Dawes, the boss of Ofcom, on LBC. The station launched an ‘Online Safety Day’ three years ago and, to mark its anniversary, managed to snag an in-depth interview with one of the country’s most wide-ranging regulators.
I’ll circle back to that insane conversation in a moment, but first, it’s guessing-game time.
How many regulatory bodies do you think the UK currently employs to look after us? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?
The answer is 112.
There are 24 regulators dealing with our health service alone.
The sheer scale of these institutions is mind-boggling, and it hints at the wider issues we face across the country. Government contracts out small sections of its remit to these bodies to keep things running smoothly. And, to a point, that all worked, until relatively recently, when social media arrived and changed everything.
Ofcom
Before 2003, Ofcom didn’t exist. Instead, there were five bodies that oversaw media, TV and radio. But with the Office of Communications Act of 2002, Ofcom was brought to life to create a more centralised approach to the UK’s media landscape and to help manage the rapidly developing digital age. Television was beginning to overlap with the internet, and someone needed to manage the consequences.
It’s role as an enforcer of broadcasting rules has always been central to its purpose, and this was strengthened by the introduction of the Broadcasting Code, which set standards for television and radio across the UK. But as the years rolled on, Ofcom became responsible for more and more areas including broadband contracts, postal services, mobile phone networks, on-demand television and, eventually, streaming.
It was beginning to bulge at the seams with responsibility. And as the digital world started to overtake the analogue one, the task became increasingly difficult.
Today, Ofcom is responsible for:
- TV and radio broadcasting;
- telecommunications, including mobile, broadband, and landlines;
- postal services; and
- online platforms & safety.
A snappy little list of four things. Yet the sheer scale, and speed, required to regulate the online news and media world is mind-blowing. Once social media is thrown into the mix, I would argue that the task becomes almost impossible.
Recently, I wrote an article about media influence and how it is almost impossible to be completely free from it. In that article, I used a specific case involving the Telegraph: a fabricated story about people who, it turned out, did not exist.
The story was written to attack a government policy but was later found to be fictitious from beginning to end. It took the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) almost an entire year to issue a ruling on the fabricated story.
And when they did issue a formal ruling, the punishment was simply to publish a retraction and apology on the paper’s front page for 24 hours.
They did.
But it was buried six pages below the headlines.
The press, therefore, are effectively policing themselves.
Social media
When we bring social media into the equation, I’d argue that Ofcom has almost no chance at all. The insane speed at which our feeds update makes regulating them akin to pinning smoke to a wall. Platforms such as X and TikTok operate at such pace that you may never see the same post twice.
But the more sinister side of the former has reared its ugly head recently, and it is worth taking a closer look.
Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, allows users to create images from scratch or manipulate photographs uploaded to the interface in response to user prompts. This made headlines recently when users began to sexually manipulate images of women and post the results in their X feeds.
Understandably, this caused outrage and a real, palpable sense of fear among women, both online and offline. How was this permitted?
Aside from sending users scurrying away from the platform, the controversy raised serious questions. Eventually, the government and Ofcom stepped in, opening an investigation and demanding action from the platform.
At first, Musk appeared to dismiss the criticism and attempted to dodge the issue, as is his wont. Changes were eventually made, including restrictions on access to certain Grok features. A step, certainly. But not enough.
The fundamental problem remains: AI can be used to manipulate photographs of women without their consent. And that highlights the real limitations of our regulator. They may be able to force some changes, but the platforms retain enormous power and control.
Our governments, meanwhile, seem terrified of upsetting the tech-bro puppeteers.
Sheer volume
The other problem with social media is sheer volume.
I asked ChatGPT to estimate how many news articles are published every day in the UK. It produced a ballpark range of 25,000 to 50,000. The source I found dates from 2024, so the overall volume may well have increased since then.
That’s ‘regulated’ news, not social media.
ChatGPT’s ballpark estimate for social media was 5-10 billion posts every day worldwide.
According to a report by Westco Communications, 52% of adults get their news from social media with, staggeringly, Facebook being the dominant source.
And here lies the monumental struggle that Ofcom faces: how could it ever realistically be expected to monitor this amount of data and traffic?
It can’t.
As more and more people turn to social media as their preferred source of news, misinformation has more opportunities to spread, and, crucially, to be accepted as truth. “Fake news”, as Trump loves to call it.
The lack of scale with our regulatory system s exploited by bad actors, particularly in our political sphere. We increasingly see people, spreading deliberate disinformation designed to stir up anger, fear, and hatred. Audiences become entrenched in their views and place more faith on anonymous accounts on X than credible news organisations.
We’ve seen it time and time again.
After the Southport murders, false information spread rapidly online and contributed to the unrest that followed. More recently, after a violent incident on a train, accounts on X had already invented the narrative that it was an Islamist terror attack before verified information had emerged. It was not. People would not believe the reality of it, though.
To this day, some still believe that the Southport murders were perpetrated by a Muslim terrorist because Nigel Farage and Andrew Tate said that it was. The falsehood spread at the speed of social media.
One that was never acted upon by Ofcom.
GB ‘News’: the news channel that isn’t
GB ‘News’ often appears to operate less like an independent news broadcaster and more like a promotional platform for Reform UK. They employ the services of Lee Anderson, Matt Goodwin, Robert Jenrick and, of course, Nigel Farage, alongside a number of other current or former political figures.
This presents a particular challenge for the regulator. Broadcasting rules place restrictions on serving politicians presenting news programmes, but GB ‘News’ has repeatedly been able to circumvent this by saying that they’re not a news channel; not really. Despite the name and continual claims that they are the leading news channel in the UK.
But again, the speed and scale of this operation outfox Ofcom at every hurdle.
What chance does the regulator have of investigating a case that a politician has deliberately misled viewers on a news channel, when they have received many complaints before the ink has even dried on the title of their first investigation?
Occasionally, GB ‘News’ is found to have breached broadcasting rules. But the consequences can appear remarkably limited, for example, the issuing of a retraction in the dead of night or buried deep within their website. That simply isn’t good enough.
Gold Rush
Ofcom has my sympathies… to a point.
The organisation faces insurmountable challenges to keep the internet and broadcasters in check. But when I heard the interview I mentioned at the beginning of this article, my solidarity drained away rather quickly.
Dame Melanie Dawes told the radio station that Ofcom had issued penalties against only a small number of social media platforms for alleged infractions, while several more were under investigation (up to 52). Yet, only one company bothered to pay the fine issued – an obscure Italian pornographic website. The rest apparently ignored the penalties and continued regardless.
When pressed about this, Ofcom’s chief executive stated that they weren’t really worried about the fines.
That seemed counter instinctual, to say the least. Dawes went on to say that, despite issuing multiple fines that remained largely ignored, Ofcom’s actions were nevertheless having the desired effect.
What that effect actually was, remained unspecified.
While Ofcom’s boss remained cheery and optimistic, it doesn’t bode well for our online space.
Many liken social media to the Wild West or the Gold Rush, and I think this is an entirely fair comparison but with an important caveat. The Gold Rush was filled with unscrupulous, dangerous individuals mining for gold, often resorting to violence, outrage, and derision. Minority groups were targeted and attacked and there was uncontrolled and rapid expansion.
But there is one crucial difference: malicious bad actors, those who make money from fake news and distress, and those who seek to profit politically. The Gold Rush had one strong objective: to find that precious resource. Social media has all the bad bits of the that period but with the addition of state-backed and individual accounts that only want to sow chaos, create harm, and undermine the rule of law.
Comments? We want to hear them. Please write to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
