Fakeness in Political Popularity

It is well known that social media is a cesspool of fakeness. Two recent German examples provide insights into the plethora of questions that arise when fakeness affects political communication. In these examples politicians were exposed as, or at the least suspected of, misrepresenting their popularity on social media through fake messages or followers. Hubert Aiwanger (Freie Wähler), was supposedly caught commenting on himself, using what is thought to be a fake account. Adding insult to this comical injury, he attempted to rectify himself, but ended up making matters worse. A few days later, Lasse Rebbin (a member of the Jungsozialisten in der SPD) posted a thread on Bernd Althusmann’s (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands – CDU) followers on Instagram, showing a sharp spike of (fake) accounts. Rebbin concludes that it is likely that the CDU buys followers for its less popular politicians.

Politics in a democratic society have long been a glorified popularity contest, which we can all hope the most capable person wins. As long as there has been democracy, people have been pondering precisely how to win: by promising golden futures, by finding a common enemy, by proving to be the best alternative. Social media platforms have taken a crucial role in this process. The potential to reach millions of citizens through algorithmic amplification is unprecedented, resulting in platforms being considered the new democratic fora of our time (Balkin, 2017; Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, US Supreme Court 1997). Charming an audience into electoral approval creates an incentive to use the infrastructure social media platforms provide to boost one’s popularity, even in ways the infrastructure was not intended to be used.

This contribution delves into the practice of creating fake political popularity on social media platforms. As is visible from the above-mentioned examples, politicians have an incentive to artificially boost their online popularity through fakeness. On a fundamental level, a false sense of popularity may affect our election outcomes: strategic voting is a common strategy, and choosing a popular candidate over a preferred candidate is not unheard of (Stephenson et al. 2018). In what follows, we analyze fakeness from the perspective of the political speaker and explore the legal limits of fakeness under three existing and upcoming EU law regimes (commercial practices, political advertising, and intermediary liability). In doing so, we contribute to existing debates around political speech and advertising on social media by focusing on the role of platform architecture in facilitating fakeness. The architectural features platforms use – which can be observed as affordances – can manipulate messages and as such function as dark patterns.