The first thing we must do to tame social media is to examine the basic compact, usually implied but not openly stated, between individual social media users, and the companies that provide the platforms. That basic agreement is that the companies allow people, provided by the company at little or no cost, the ability for the individuals to learn information, interact with other people, and simply to share in the social and cultural life of the world. To gain these benefits the individual user implicitly agrees to allow their personal data to be used by the companies.
So far so good. Over the years, however, the social media giants have decided to modify this basic agreement, and have allowed their platforms to become abusive and, increasingly, they engage in both subtle and overt forms of censorship. This can be a serious problem.
Consider the case of someone running a business using a Facebook site that is then suspended from Facebook for posting something that offends someone else. Whether the offense was intentional or not is of no matter to the social media company, so in short order business owner is suspended from Facebook, the business suffers as a result, and it might even be driven to bankruptcy.
Or take the case of someone like James Woods who uses social media to promote a cultural/ political point of view. In the course of a random X(twitter) war, he posts something that offends some hitherto unknown core value of the twitter “community” and loses his platform and voice in public affairs for the time of suspension.
Both these kinds of cases and multitudes of minor variations on the same themes (such as shadow banning) cry out for some form of legislative relief. However, we must tread carefully here because the quick and easy response of empowering the government to regulate content on the internet is a cure that would be worse than the disease. The Supreme Court would be wise to rule against such laws, like the Texas and Florida laws that they have accepted on appeal. Instead, we should wisely use government to establish a framework that provides civil empowerment to individuals in relation to the social media giants and doesn’t entail the government controlling any of the content online.
Legislation along these lines would require the social media companies to prominently display links to their community standards and or terms of service, and would also require statements regarding their political/ cultural profiles and biases. Such statements must be in clear and concise language. Then any users could examine those standards and stances before joining, and decide if that platform was for them. The law could also require that any changes to the company’s standards, terms, or profile be posted to all users before going into effect, so users would always know where they stand and aren’t subject to surprise ambush. Additionally, any suspension of service must, along with the notice that service has been suspended, provide clear definitions of which community standards are being referred to, and how exactly the post violated them.
Then, if a social media company violates their own standards by, for example, claiming to be politically neutral and yet it is found that they suspended someone from full use of their site because of political bias, even though the individual did not violate any stated guidelines, the company can be held liable for breach of contract and sued for damages in civil court. If, in their profile statement they admitted to a political bias they couldn’t be sued for holding to it, but if they claimed neutrality and then exhibited bias, they could be sued. An additional caveat to the law is that the algorithms these social media companies use to direct content, shares, likes, etc would have to be rendered legally transparent, and open to at least judicial, if not public, review. This would deal with secret shadow banning of individuals. That way, the individual user could get what they agreed to, a free and fair forum for exchanging ideas.
So if a social media company basically defrauds me about how I can use their services, I can sue them? “Good” some might say, but “So what? Big media would still control our data, taking our expressions of community and family, compiling them, and selling them to other corporations so as to exploit us.” True, we, or at least our personal data, might still be at the mercy of big media with us having not much choice in the matter. That is where another part of the law to empower us against big media comes in.
There would be a three fold aspect to this part of the law. First of all, it would require the social media companies to have a “withdraw from platform” button, easily accessed with just one click from the user’s homepage. If you have ever tried to quit from Facebook, you might know how daunting that task can be, and that is simply not right. We shouldn’t allow corporations to treat citizens like mice walking into a trap.
So leaving Facebook, or X, or snapchat or whatever should be easy, just one click on a prominent link on the home page, a pull down menu, and “withdraw from platform” a clickable choice from there. There could be some few dialogue boxes from that point, password required so that only the person who owns the account can withdraw and that kind of thing.
The next part of the proposed law would be where we, the people would gain some serious leverage in our relationship with big social media. The second aspect of the law relating to withdrawing from a platform is that when you decide to leave one of them, all your data goes with you, never to be used by that company again (unless you go back to them in the future). When you leave, your contacts, links, history and everything is erased from their memory. In this way, the companies would have a lot to lose by losing users, thus the users would gain a lot of leverage in the relationship. This would be fairly easy to enforce too. Simply note when someone withdraws, and then a week or so later get that social media company to provide a data list that the recently withdrawn person had been on. Say, housewives in Denver. If that persons name appears on the new data readout, the social media company should be massively fined for once again, breach of contract.
The third aspect of this second part of the proposed law is that when you leave one of the social media platforms you are allowed to take your data (contacts, links, history, artwork, webpages, etc) with you, and to download it to some other platform if you so desire. In other words, the government can mandate that such data be made portable. This would provide for portability of our data, allowing us users to keep our work and efforts, some from over the course of many years, for our own benefit. Ensuring in this way that we individuals wouldn’t effectively get punished when we move our social media presence to another platform. This would once again empower the individual in relation to the social media giants.
Both these kinds of cases and multitudes of minor variations on the same themes (such as shadow banning) cry out for some form of legislative relief. However, we must tread carefully here because the quick and easy response of empowering the government to regulate content on the internet is a cure that would be worse than the disease. The Supreme Court would be wise to rule against such laws, like the Texas and Florida laws that they have accepted on appeal. Instead, we should wisely use government to establish a framework that provides civil empowerment to individuals in relation to the social media giants and doesn’t entail the government controlling any of the content online.
Legislation along these lines would require the social media companies to prominently display links to their community standards and or terms of service, and would also require statements regarding their political/ cultural profiles and biases. Such statements must be in clear and concise language. Then any users could examine those standards and stances before joining, and decide if that platform was for them. The law could also require that any changes to the company’s standards, terms, or profile be posted to all users before going into effect, so users would always know where they stand and aren’t subject to surprise ambush. Additionally, any suspension of service must, along with the notice that service has been suspended, provide clear definitions of which community standards are being referred to, and how exactly the post violated them.
Then, if a social media company violates their own standards by, for example, claiming to be politically neutral and yet it is found that they suspended someone from full use of their site because of political bias, even though the individual did not violate any stated guidelines, the company can be held liable for breach of contract and sued for damages in civil court. If, in their profile statement they admitted to a political bias they couldn’t be sued for holding to it, but if they claimed neutrality and then exhibited bias, they could be sued. An additional caveat to the law is that the algorithms these social media companies use to direct content, shares, likes, etc would have to be rendered legally transparent, and open to at least judicial, if not public, review. This would deal with secret shadow banning of individuals. That way, the individual user could get what they agreed to, a free and fair forum for exchanging ideas.
So if a social media company basically defrauds me about how I can use their services, I can sue them? “Good” some might say, but “So what? Big media would still control our data, taking our expressions of community and family, compiling them, and selling them to other corporations so as to exploit us.” True, we, or at least our personal data, might still be at the mercy of big media with us having not much choice in the matter. That is where another part of the law to empower us against big media comes in.
There would be a three fold aspect to this part of the law. First of all, it would require the social media companies to have a “withdraw from platform” button, easily accessed with just one click from the user’s homepage. If you have ever tried to quit from Facebook, you might know how daunting that task can be, and that is simply not right. We shouldn’t allow corporations to treat citizens like mice walking into a trap.
So leaving Facebook, or X, or snapchat or whatever should be easy, just one click on a prominent link on the home page, a pull down menu, and “withdraw from platform” a clickable choice from there. There could be some few dialogue boxes from that point, password required so that only the person who owns the account can withdraw and that kind of thing.
The next part of the proposed law would be where we, the people would gain some serious leverage in our relationship with big social media. The second aspect of the law relating to withdrawing from a platform is that when you decide to leave one of them, all your data goes with you, never to be used by that company again (unless you go back to them in the future). When you leave, your contacts, links, history and everything is erased from their memory. In this way, the companies would have a lot to lose by losing users, thus the users would gain a lot of leverage in the relationship. This would be fairly easy to enforce too. Simply note when someone withdraws, and then a week or so later get that social media company to provide a data list that the recently withdrawn person had been on. Say, housewives in Denver. If that persons name appears on the new data readout, the social media company should be massively fined for once again, breach of contract.
The third aspect of this second part of the proposed law is that when you leave one of the social media platforms you are allowed to take your data (contacts, links, history, artwork, webpages, etc) with you, and to download it to some other platform if you so desire. In other words, the government can mandate that such data be made portable. This would provide for portability of our data, allowing us users to keep our work and efforts, some from over the course of many years, for our own benefit. Ensuring in this way that we individuals wouldn’t effectively get punished when we move our social media presence to another platform. This would once again empower the individual in relation to the social media giants.
The governments, both state and especially national, have clear authority to enact these kinds of laws. Given the unequal power relationship that big social media companies have to individual users, there is an obvious need for the government to step in and protect the individuals against the ravages and abuses of big social media. Or to be more precise, the government can properly and safely use its legitimate powers to ensure individuals have their own powers to do the job of keeping these companies in line.
The government can accomplish this good by enacting just a few laws. First of all require that all terms of service, are clear, concise, and reciprocal. Yes, the companies can suspend or cancel accounts that violate them, but individuals can sue the company for violating them as well. Second, the law should require that all algorithms be rendered transparent and understandable in plain language, so that individuals can decide for themselves if they are willing to go along with any restrictions that have been placed on their point of view. Third, the law can and should mandate that people can easily resign from any social media platform, and take all their data (and their work) with them when they go.
Laws like these will almost certainly pass any judicial scrutiny, since they in no way violate any constitutional stricture (they actually fit into, unlike many laws which have falsely been claimed to, the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce). The companies would not have their content controlled and would still enjoy their exemptions from libel and slander laws. The big change would come once the people have these powers at their fingertips. We, the people would then be able to whip those companies into proper working order in a very short time.
