Save Georgian Democracy — Disable the Facebook Accounts of Our Opposition Leaders
- Target:
- Meta
- Region:
- Georgia
Every day, ordinary Georgian citizens open Facebook, hoping for news about the country. Instead, they find the same cycle on endless repeat: Nanuka vs. Tina vs. the Alliance vs. Chergo vs. Misha vs. Gvaramia vs. October 4th vs. activists vs. NGOs vs. Nanuka again. It is a closed loop. It produces a great deal of heat and no light.
This activity consumes a considerable quantity of time, attention, and public goodwill. There is, at present, no publicly available evidence that it has produced any corresponding improvement in the governance of the country, the strength of the opposition, or the morale of the people it is nominally conducted on behalf of. Those people have, in any case, already given their verdict: poll after poll finds clear majorities of Georgians saying that no party represents them, and that their elected representatives do not take the views of people like them into account.
Meanwhile, the matters that decide how most Georgians actually live are discussed by almost no opposition leaders. Prices have climbed, year on year, and the weekly shop is heavier to carry home; by recent measures, one in ten Georgians cannot afford food, and one in four can afford food and little else. Wages have not kept pace. The young leave for work abroad, and the villages empty behind them. These questions do not trend. They generate no replies. A citizen following the principal accounts could be forgiven for not knowing they exist.
It should be said plainly that the present moment is serious, that the situation in the country is grave, and that good people are in prison. One might therefore object that this is no time to petition a social media company about who is posting what at whom. We hold the opposite. Precisely because the stakes are this high, the time spent inside the loop is time the country cannot afford to lose — and the case for turning outward, toward the citizens and toward a credible alternative, has never been stronger.
Because there is no demonstrated benefit to the current pattern, and because its costs are borne by the public rather than by its participants, it is reasonable to ask whether a pause is not long overdue.
We, the undersigned Georgian citizens, old enough to remember when politics concerned the country rather than the comment section, respectfully call on Meta Platforms to act decisively to protect Georgian democracy by introducing the following measures, in ascending order of seriousness, for the accounts of Georgia's leading political and civic figures:
1. Disable posting privileges — not the whole account, we're not monsters — until further notice. Give politicians time to get busy with the country's actual problems instead of feuding with one another.
2. Require, before any post, confirmation that the author has spoken within the preceding twenty-four hours to at least one Georgian holding no party affiliation and no verified account. We are assured such people exist, in large numbers; they have opinions of their own, most of which concern matters other than the goings-on in the Facebook casino.
3. Redirect each attempted post to a single paragraph on a question of public consequence — why prices keep climbing, say, or why the villages are emptying — to be read in full before publication may proceed. Anyone with time to subtweet Gvaramia has time to read one paragraph on the price of bread.
4. Issue a gentle reminder, in the spirit of public health, that if grown adults cannot regulate their own screen time and conduct themselves like the adults they nominally are, the platform may simply not be good for them. We are told that excessive social media use is bad for mental health. We are concerned. Truly.
Public Testimonies:
"Each of them is entirely certain the problem is one of the others. On this point, remarkably, they are united." — name withheld, tired
"My daughter and her kindergarten classmates show noticeably more maturity in conflict resolution." — a worried parent
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