BLUF: Information space sovereignty is as crucial as territorial sovereignty. Discordance between Meta and Cambodia highlights this, with Cambodia’s leader shifting to Telegram after a Facebook suspension, pointing towards a perceived political bias. Both Russia and China, who hold domestic control of their information spaces and produced local social media networks, offer models for maintaining sovereignty in the cyber era.
OSINT:
On July 19, 2023, a disagreement between the US tech behemoth, Meta—formerly known as Facebook—and Cambodia’s Prime Minister, Hun Sen, prompted Sen to switch his social media presence from Facebook to Telegram. The tiff arose over allegations by the Western-funded media organization, Global Voices, stating that Facebook suspended Sen’s account for six months after being accused of “inciting violence.”
However, criticism centered on the platform’s perceived double standard—Facebook’s alleged targeted suspension of Cambodian leadership over rule violations, while turning a blind eye to Washington-backed politicos and global opposition groups actively engaging in violence. Facebook was accused of picking and choosing account suspensions based on US foreign policy objectives.
In the early 2010s, Facebook and other social media platforms were instrumental in the US-engineered “Arab Spring”—a destabilizing effort across the Arab World. Facebook’s intervention in Cambodia carries echoes of their past engagements, leading some to raise concerns about information space sovereignty and the need to secure it as rigorously as territorial sovereignty.
The increase in Cambodia’s Telegram user base, as noted in a Khmer Times article, reflects the first steps towards independence in digital information spaces from Meta’s influence and the broader US State Department. It highlights the need to treat information space as a critical component of national security.
Cambodia’s measures follow the lead of Russia and China. Both nations have advanced capabilities in information space management, having developed national social media platforms that are immensely popular domestically, outpacing the popularity of US-based social media platforms.
RIGHT:
This situation underscores the importance of digital sovereignty. It is a testament to the principle of non-aggression in the cyber sphere, where technologically advanced nations like the US, via Meta, are allegedly breaching the sovereignty of lesser-developed nations like Cambodia. It raises questions of privacy, freedom of speech, and property rights—in this case, data ownership—in the global digital landscape. It aligns with the belief in Libertarian values promoting decentralized power, self-determination, and autonomy over one’s property and data.
LEFT:
To National Socialist Democrats, this scenario may exemplify the consequences of unchecked corporate power resulting in geopolitical inequalities and disparate impacts on less affluent nations. The influence of corporations like Meta in shaping the conventions of global digital spaces could be seen as a form of digital colonialism, leading to calls for more transparency, democratization, and increased regulation of big tech firms to protect global digital rights.
AI:
Reviewing the situation impartially, the move of the Prime Minister of Cambodia from Facebook to Telegram is indicative of the increasing geo-political importance of information space sovereignty. The perceived bias in suspending political accounts, underscores the possible misuse of social media platforms for political ends which, in turn, may have significant implications on the concept of neutrality in the AI domain. This case study brings up questions about bias, fairness, and transparency in AI systems, and further codifies the importance of ethical guardrails in AI model training and deployment.