Can Governments Wrestle Power Back From Big Tech?
Worldwide, regulators are dealing with ‘the battle of our time’
On September 10, 2015, a small crowd gathered outside a refugee reception center in Berlin. In front of a pink-brick building, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, leaned into a huddle of media microphones and began to talk about an historic refugee policy that would welcome nearly one million asylum seekers in that year alone.
Anas Modamani was not the only refugee to take a selfie with Merkel that day, but his was the only photo to become a target for trolls on social media. The image of Merkel smiling in her pale blue blazer, and Modamani posing in a khaki jacket, was attached to fake news stories that exploded across Facebook. He was branded one of the suicide bombers in the 2016 Brussels bombings, and then labeled a perpetrator in the Berlin Christmas market attack. Social media turned him into a terrorist, but Facebook refused to take down the photo because it did not violate community standards.
It was just after Christmas when Modamani called lawyer Chan-jo Jun for help. For Jun, this was a rare case, not because Modamani was a victim of fake news — there were plenty out there — but because he was willing to speak publicly about how Facebook’s policies had affected his life. “In Germany, if you…
