Social media lobbying must be scrutinised as rigorously as government

Common Weal is greatly reassured that steps are finally being taken to act on the overwhelming evidence of harm being caused to children and teenagers by social media. The UK's proposed ban looks, on the face of it, to be strong and comprehensive. We continue to argue that more has to be done, but in the immediate future, campaigners must make sure these proposals are not watered down.

It is therefore worth being aware of the sorts of technique which will be used by lobbyists to try and weaken and dismantle these proposals. Social media companies are not going to take this lying down and they have enormous resources and sophisticated influencing capabilities with which they will fight back.

The first and most important point to make about this is that they will seek to do as much of the hard lobbying in private as is possible. They know they face strong public support for a ban and will try and operate their backlash in a space which itself is least likely to provoke its own backlash.

But they will run public influence campaigns as well and we can see that these have already started. The patterns of how this campaign will be run are already known from many similar campaigns, on everything from restrictions on the sale of cigarettes to the campaign against Scotland's minimum unit pricing for alcohol.

The two elements around which this campaign will most likely be run are the nature of the argument constructed and the characteristic of the messengers used to spread the arguments.

We are already seeing the elements of the argument being set out, and it is based on what are known as 'logical fallacies', argument structures which appear to make logical sense at first glance but which on closer inspection clearly do not. The primary form of logical fallacy being used just now is 'lesser evilism'.

This argument states that unless we accept and support a smaller instance of 'evil', the inevitable result will be that people will turn to instances of greater evil. Accepting smaller evil is the price that must be paid for avoiding great evil. If we do not allow children on TikTok they will end up on the dark web.

Of course this is a logical fallacy because it is clearly perfectly possible to regulate or outlaw various activities without it resulting in people moving straight to more extreme activities. The experience of TikTok and the dark web are not comparable. It is not clear that teenagers will find the ability to launder money or hire assassins as compelling as following Taylor Swift on her socials. Banning the sale of cigarettes to primary school children did not send them straight to their local heroin dealer.

And it is worth noting that 'lesser evilism' is precisely the opposite of another argument lobbyists use – 'slippery slope'. That posits that if you allow one small bad thing to happen, it becomes inevitable that more and bigger bad things of the same sort will happen. Clearly these arguments can't both be true. That is why they are 'fallacies'.

Another logical fallacy deployed is 'Argument from Consequence'. This creates argument structures which make consequences either so desirable or undesirable that they become a reason in and of themselves to believe the premise. 'Children could be dragged into prostitution if Instagram is banned therefore banning instagram is too risky'.

These arguments work by sounding plausible while being emotionally triggering. The means to respond is to avoid the emotion and challenge the premise. Is the Dark Web really an analogous experience to social media? Are they equally accessible? Is this really likely at all? And what else would be justified on the basis of 'or they'll go to the dark web'? Supply of drugs?

But the most important thing to watch for in this campaign is the messengers. Corporations learned a long time ago that they are not sympathetic message carriers. In the US in particular, big pharmaceutical companies are not popular with the public so when they want to lobbying for a new drug to be licensed or made available at high prices, they would use patient groups as the messenger.

We can therefore expect to see apparently grassroots campaigns against the ban emerging from sympathetic groups – parents, teenagers, minority groups which will claim special need for social media, some academics and think tanks who will warn about unintended consequences and so on. It is for the media to vet these groups rigorously to make sure any funding or logistical support does not create a conflict of interests.

But above all, while they may be sympathetic groups, they are nonetheless political campaigners and must be challenged on the basis of the evidence. They must be treated as participants and pressed on the overwhelming data on child mental health, sexualisation, self-harm, isolation and loneliness, inappropriate material and commercial exploitation of children.

The government will rightly be probed in detail on all of these open questions. Those opposing the ban must on all occasions be held to the same standards of scrutiny.