Thinkbox
There are valuable lessons to learn from the way broadcasters first handled the controversial figure, writes Dino Myers-Lamptey. For the health of the entire media market, everyone should pay attention to them.
Andrew Tate's journey to global infamy is a sorry tale, and as both a parent and media professional one that has particularly grabbed my attention. It certainly tells us a lot about the nature of collective responsibility within the media, and how we must be more vigilant and robust in our response to such problems.
To recount the story, the self-proclaimed misogynist - who is currently facing human trafficking and rape allegations - initially gained fame after appearing on Big Brother in 2016. However, Tate was booted off the TV show after less than a week when a video emerged of him slapping his ex-girlfriend and beating her with a belt.
Although better background checks should have been in place before Tate ever entered the long-running reality show, sound editorial judgement ultimately prevailed. For me, this demonstrates both the power of television to create fame, but also how the mechanics of responsibility work within the medium, and the tangible effects they have.
Yet this is a tale of contrasting halves. After leaving the show, and being shunned by broadcast media, Tate's status as an “ultra-masculine influencer” was able to flourish on social media, this time with TV’s human gatekeepers largely swapped for social media’s eyeball-hungry algorithms.
It took a campaign by multiple organisations to eventually deplatform Tate, during which time his toxic brand was given enough oxygen to become endemic, and the view count for his videos able to reach the billions. Later, on the whim of one of Elon Musk’s chaotic policy changes, he’d be reinstated by Twitter where today he has 6.5 million followers.
Why we should pay more attention
Tate leveraged a unique attribute of social media, the filter bubble effect, which can create echo chambers that reinforce and amplify certain views. This allowed Tate to reach a targeted audience and spread increasingly controversial messages until they were normalised.
And as the money rolled in, in part supported by ad revenue from brands which would be aghast at being associated with such extreme views, Tate eventually graduated from being just an influencer to the arguably more dangerous and imitable ‘guru’ - which by its nature required ever more extreme views to maintain.
The mass market fame that TV briefly gave Tate might have waned, but the hyper-targeted fame social media provided was snowballing out of control.
“Whether it's wellness influencers, Bitcoin evangelists or the self-styled 'anti woke' warriors, today's internet gurus have enormous power to shape our shared culture, whether we know their names or not,” says broadcaster and journalist Helen Lewis in her BBC Radio 4 series investigating the phenomenon.
Indeed, the powerful effect Tate has had proves exactly why we should pay much more attention to trust and responsibility in our media, and to the economic levers that fund it.
A discrepancy in approaches
Although I described Tate’s story as a tale of contrasting halves, our contemporary media landscape is not so binary; different media do not operate in rigid silos, rather they form an evolving and dynamic ecosystem, and people and brands navigate it as such.
In the case of Tate it would be too simplistic and easy to say social media is ‘bad’, TV is ‘good’. They are both brilliant channels that work differently and have unique strengths and weaknesses. It’s why we use them together to deliver our campaigns.
However, there is a discrepancy in how each approaches problems like Tate. Here, social media - or indeed any maturing media or platform - should learn from TV.
With editorial and regulatory control, television has been able to spend decades creating a trusted and vetted environment. It should be seen as a benchmark and the basis for a common course of behaviour.
In a forest, mature ‘mother’ trees support younger saplings, even of different species, because doing so ensures a forest’s overall longevity and health. There’s a lesson in there for the media ecosystem too.
Undoing the damage
Practically speaking, anyone with a stake in the game should learn from how broadcasters first handled Tate and offer better oversight and take faster-acting control and responsibility. Whether that’s a media buyer taking greater care about where marketing investments end up, or a platform owner ensuring better safeguarding processes are in place, we all have a role to play.
The UK's Online Safety Bill is a proposed law that would require social media platforms to take steps to remove harmful content, including content that is illegal or that could cause harm to children. The bill is still in the early stages of development, but it has the potential to address some of the problems posed by individuals like Andrew Tate.
It’s a shame it will take legislation to try and stamp out what our industry could have mitigated through better self-regulation, more values-led behaviours and a broader understanding about the levers - economic and algorithmic - that help harmful content rise to the top.
We all learn from our mistakes, but if we have the right guidance we’re less likely to make them in the first place.
No media is perfect, but some have attributes that simply work better than others. By actively seeking out and sharing the best practices that define such qualities, we can hope to create a healthier and more accountable environment overall, ensuring that individuals like Andrew Tate do not gain the influence we all so sorely wish he’d been denied.
Dino Myers-Lamptey is founder of The Barber Shop, Co-Chair of The Conscious Advertising Network, Brixton Finishing School NED, and a member of Effie UK Council.