The Gatekeepers

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The founders of social media conquered the world... and they're not finished yet.

As Facebook turns 20, Jamie Bartlett uncovers how social media allowed a new digital elite and their platforms to conquer the planet and control what we see.

Jamie Bartlett traces the story of how and why social media companies have become the new information gatekeepers, and what the decisions they make mean for all of us.
 
It's 20 years since Facebook launched and the social media we know today - but it all started with a crazy idea to realise a hippie dream of building a "global consciousness". The plan was to build a connected world, where everyone could access everyone and everything all the time; to overthrow the old gatekeepers and set information free.

But social media didn't turn out that way. Instead of setting information free - a new digital elite conquered the world and turned themselves into the most powerful people on the planet.
 
Now, they get to decide what billions of us see every day. They can amplify you. They can delete you. Their platforms can be used to coordinate social movements and insurrections. A content moderator thousands of miles away can change your life. What does this mean for democracy - and our shared reality?
 
It starts in the summer of love, with a home-made book that taught the counter-culture how to build a new civilisation - and accidentally led to the creation of the first social media platform. But a momentous decision in the mid-2000s would turn social media into giant advertising companies - with dramatic ramifications for everyone. To understand how we arrived here, Jamie tracks down the author of a 1996 law which laid the groundwork for web 2.0; interviews the Twitter employees responsible for banning Donald Trump who explain the reality of 'content moderation'; and speaks to Facebook's most infamous whistle-blower in a dusty room in Oxford. He goes in search of people whose lives have been transformed by the decisions taken by these new gatekeepers: a father whose daughter's death was caused by social media, a Nobel prize winning journalist from the Philippines who decided to stand up to a dictator and the son of an Ethiopian professor determined to avenge his father's murder. Far from being over, Jamie discovers that the battle over who controls the world's information has only just begun.

BBC Radio 4 LW

The Gatekeepers: 4. Flood the Zone

4. Flood the Zone

BBC Radio 4 - The Gatekeepers, 4. Flood the Zone

2016 is a big election year. But something is going very wrong online.

In the run up to the 2016 elections, journalists in America and Philippines try to raise the alarm: something strange is going on online. Social media is under attack.

2016 is a big election year. But something is going very wrong online. Journalists in America and the Philippines start to notice something strange going on online.  

In Manila, Maria Ressa - the editor of online news site, Rappler - discovers a sock puppet network of social media accounts, all pushing for the election of a strong leader. Someone like Rodrigo Duterte. Maria is suspicious. She makes an urgent call to Facebook.

In Veles, in Macedonia, a young man called 'Marco' starts writing fake articles and posting them online. Very soon they're being read by millions of people around the globe and he's making huge sums of money. 

The online ecosystem is under attack. 

Producer: Caitlin Smith
Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore
Composer: Jeremy Warmsley
Exec: Peter McManus 
Researcher: Juliet Conway and Elizabeth Ann Duffy 
Commissioned by Dan Clarke

Archive: BBC News, AP Archive, Bloomberg Television, CNN 

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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