*By Laura Hazard Owen
There are many proposals to regulate social media. Let’s say you have a high, albeit normal, concern about platforms making things terrible, but you also start to tune out when you hear about a proposed legislation for social media. You, however, would like to support some sort of solution.
A debate I attended on June 6, 2022 helped me clarify the types of solutions that might be helpful to pursue. O panel“Dismantling the Misinformation”, was organized by the Harvard University School of Public Health (USA) and moderated by Brandy Zadrozny senior reporter at NBC News. (The panel was all women, congratulations to the organizers).
Zadrozny asked Renee Di Restaresearch manager at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory (USA), if she thinks it is possible to find regulatory solutions to slow the spread of disinformation and if she likes any bill these days.
During the event, Di Resta responded:
“[A desinformação] has national security implications… so there is a justification for the government to understand this particular aspect of the problem […].
Few of the bills I’ve seen would have a positive impact or even be constitutionally defensible because the government shouldn’t regulate content on social media platforms in my opinion. There are some legal hurdles associated with this. But what can he do?
I think the bill that interests me the most – fully publicized – was originally elaborate by a colleague of mine at Stanford Law School. It is the Platform Responsibility and Transparency Act [Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, em inglês].
The project asks for access to data for research. It says: the work we are doing as outside researchers is trying to understand not only the complexities of social media, but also the impact. Is there any impact there? What is the real damage?
It’s very difficult for us to answer that question with the access we have today because it’s so fragmented. [O acesso] it’s also really up to the platforms. We are really operating on the basis of the kind of goodwill [das plataformas].
There’s a lot more goodwill now than there was in 2017. But that kind of access to data is critical to having that ability to answer questions. This is where I believe platform accountability and transparency is the kind of regulation we need.
To answer the questions people have — ‘is my opinion being censored?’ ‘There are removals [de usuários] disproportionate and unfair?’ ‘Do recommendations radicalize people?’—to address these concerns, we need access. That’s where I feel the bill is critical.”
Nabiha Syed, CEO of The Markupa Yale Law School Scholar and media attorney, offered her advice on how to look at legislation that seeks to regulate social media:
“Now we have this very unsatisfactory duality, which is evolving. We have platforms, on the one hand, saying, ‘Our 1st Amendment rights mean no one can tell us what we do on our own platforms. We are exercising editorial rights, just like a newspaper.’
Platforms often make proposals claiming that they are like newspapers. Media outlets go out there and publish their own perspectives and the 1st Amendment allows them to do that subject to few limitations.
But that doesn’t feel right. A newspaper exposes its own perspective and is responsible for the consequences of that. Platforms don’t do the same thing. They are a home for other people’s perspectives, and because of legislative immunity through Section 230, they are not responsible. [pelo que é publicado].
So on the one hand you have this [ideia de que] platforms can do whatever they want. They have unrestricted 1st Amendment rights, like a newspaper editorial. But this is incomplete and gives social media an entirely wide space to do whatever they want. If you look at it from an extreme point of view, there isn’t much room for manifesting democratic values.
On the other hand, you have Texas social media lawone Florida lawone proposal in Michigan, which kind of takes this other view that they say because these platforms are so important, they’re like regular carriers, they’re like the phone. They are just an infrastructure for speech.
The government should not be able to regulate them [porque elas são] gateways for all information, so they can do anything. They should just be free for everyone… and that’s the other extreme.
When you’re reading the proposals, you should consider these 2 extremes. For me, the most important reality of this moment is that it’s not going to be either of the 2. That doesn’t make sense, right? Both are chaos in their own way.
So we have to create a new version going forward, a new balance, and that’s where I just want to emphasize what [Renée di Resta] mentioned about the platform search.
There is so much we don’t know. At The Markup, we’ve created a lot of tools to help you understand and collect information from big platforms like Facebook.
It’s not just that we don’t know. It’s just that when you try to find out, companies really will – not only can they, they’ll – go after you legally, saying you’re not allowed to enter private property. [da plataforma] and collect that kind of information. They actively arm themselves against any kind of research intervention.
The most important recommendations and proposals are saying that, in this duality, we have to decide which one we will choose. It’s a new area, right? It doesn’t fit in the area of newspapers or telephones or anything else. We have to know what it is.”
The other speakers were Dolores Albarracin Alexandra Heyman Nash professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Vineet Arora, dean of medical education at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine; and raven baxter, director of diversity initiatives in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. You can watch the panel here.
* Laura Hazard Owen is editor of the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The text was translated by Jessica Cardoso. Read the original text at English.
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