The Gatekeepers

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?Jamie Bartlett traces the story of how and why social media have become the new information gatekeepers, and what the decisions they make mean for all of us.

For years something strange has been happening online, but most of us have no idea what’s really going on. Ethnic conflict in Myanmar. A chemistry professor is killed in Ethiopia. A teenager dies in her bedroom in London. A mob storms the Capitol in Washington DC.And that’s the moment that catches Jamie Bartlett’s eye. A few days after the riot, on January 9th 2021, the outgoing leader of the United States is suspended on social media. First Twitter, (renamed X), and then Facebook. A President silenced. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain. For the first time millions of us can see the power of technology companies. They can delete you. They can amplify you. They can change your life. Social media has conquered the world. Jamie Bartlett follows the roots of this story back to San Francisco : the home of Big Tech, where he meets one of the early pioneers of social media who tells him about a strange hand bound book, passed around hippy communes in the summer of love, and how it turned the world upside down. Archive Credits: Wolf of Wall Street, Paramount Pictures; Telecommunications Bill sign in, C-Span 1996; Bloomberg's TicTic 2019; Fox News 2020 Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Music: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Researchers: Rachael Fulton, Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Juliet Conway Executive Producer: Peter McManus Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke. A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4New 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

From the rubble of the dot com crash, an ambitious young Harvard student with a passion for hacking and love of Roman emperors, sets up an exciting new website. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is an instant hit on college campuses. Soon it attracts the attention of Silicon Valley’s most successful - but controversial - venture capitalist, Peter Thiel. The company starts to scale up. But there’s one problem - how is it going to make money? Contributors: Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe; journalist Owen Thomas; Eric Jackson, author of The Paypal Wars; Jeff Hammerbacher; Anil Dash, tech entrepreneur. Producer: Caitlin Smith Researchers: Rachael Fulton, Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Juliet Conway Executive Producer: Peter McManus Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Music: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Commissioning editor: Dan Clarke A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4Archive: Bloomberg Quicktake, October 2019; C-Span, Telecommunications Bill signing, Feb 1996; Hoover Institute, Decemeber 2009; Startup Academy, March 2018; Makers, December 2012.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

The tech pioneers were right: all this connectivity and sharing is creating a new age of freedom and democracy. A global consciousness. Arab Spring, Barack Obama – both fuelled by social media - make the possibilities feel limitless.But, just as the dream to connect everyone is being realised - at the height of technological optimism - everything starts to fall apart.Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Designer: Eloise Whitmore Mix: Gav Murchie Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Executive Producer: Peter McManus + Heather Kane-Darling Research: Rachael Fulton, Elizabeth Ann Duffy and Juliet Conway Commissioned by Dan ClarkeArchive: C-NET Jan 2007; The Obama White House Archive, April 2011; C-Span, December 2008; C-Span 1996.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

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 ClarkeArchive: 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