Gordon Brown has called for regulation to tackle the spread of racist and prejudiced content on social media as he warned of a "fraying of social bonds" and the decline of civic institutions. In a keynote speech on the closing day of the Edinburgh International Festival, the former prime minister said it was "outrageous" that social media giants profit from algorithms that "push the prejudice towards the even more prejudiced". It came as he took a swipe at the BBC over the money it puts into covering the Edinburgh Festival.
“Of course, there is still an issue about finance,” he told the audience at the Festival Theatre, after touching on the event’s history. “Because when I look at The Proms, and when I look at Glastonbury, and the money that the BBC puts into these two festivals, I say, ‘Look, the BBC is not the London and south-east BBC, it is the British Broadcasting Corporation.’” Mr Brown, whose talk focused on the theme of “the world as it is and the world as it can be”, said the world is in the midst of a “geopolitical earthquake”.
He said there are now multiple centres of power, while free trade is being replaced with protectionism. Meanwhile, countries around the world are seeing the rise of a “populist nationalism”. Mr Brown said society had also undergone a transformation, with more individualism and less emphasis on community.
“And this has been amplified by what has been happening in the last 10 or 20 years on social media,” he said..