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Should Social Media Be Regulated

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Published: Sep 5, 2023

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Protecting user well-being, preserving free expression, addressing algorithmic bias, encouraging ethical practices, conclusion: navigating a complex landscape.

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Are We Entering a New Era of Social Media Regulation?

• Dipayan Ghosh

The attack on the Capitol could mark a point of no return.

The violence at the U.S. Capitol — and the ensuing actions taken by social media platforms — suggest that we may be at a turning point as far as how business leaders and government bodies approach social media regulation. But what exactly will this look like, and how will platforms balance supporting free speech with getting a handle on the rampant misinformation, conspiracy theories, and promotion of fringe, extremist content that contributed so significantly to last week’s riots? The author argues that the key is to understand that there are fundamental structural differences between traditional media and social media, and to adapt approaches to regulation accordingly. The author goes on to suggest several areas of both self-regulation and legislative reform that we’re likely to see in the coming months in response to both recent events and ongoing concerns with how social media companies operate.

After years of controversy over President Trump’s use of social media to share misleading content and inflame his millions of followers, social media giants Facebook and Twitter finally took a clear stand last week, banning Trump from their platforms — Facebook indefinitely, and Twitter permanently. Could this indicate a turning point in how social media companies handle potentially harmful content shared on their platforms? And could it herald a new era of social media reforms, through both government policies and self-regulation?

• Dipayan Ghosh is co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was a technology and economic policy advisor in the Obama White House, and formerly served as an advisor on privacy and public policy issues at Facebook. He is the author of Terms of Disservice (2020). Follow him on Twitter @ghoshd7.

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How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media

Creating incentives for social media companies to be responsible and trustworthy institutions, occasional papers.

An essay series tackling pressing issues at the intersection of speech, privacy, and technology

Introduction

To understand how to regulate social media, you have to understand why you want to regulate it. I will say something about specific regulatory proposals in the last part of this essay. But I want to spend most of my time discussing the why as much as the how.

Here is the central idea: Social media companies are key institutions in the 21st century digital public sphere. A public sphere doesn’t work properly without trusted and trustworthy institutions guided by professional and public-regarding norms. The goal of regulating social media is to create incentives for social media companies to be responsible and trustworthy institutions that will help foster a healthy and vibrant digital public sphere.

What is the public sphere? For purposes of this essay, we can say that the public sphere is the space in which people express opinions and exchange views that judge what is going on in society. Put another way, the public sphere is a set of social practices and institutions in which ideas and opinions circulate. The public sphere is obviously crucial to democracy. But most people’s opinions aren’t about government policy. They are about sports, culture, fashion, gossip, commerce, and so on.

A public sphere is more than just people sitting around talking. It is shaped and governed, and made functional or dysfunctional, rich or poor, by institutions . Most of the institutions that constitute the public sphere are private. They sit between the public and the government. There are lots of examples in the pre-digital world: print and broadcast media, book clubs, spaces for assembly and conversation, sports stadiums, theaters, schools, universities, churches, libraries, archives, museums, and so on.

A digital public sphere is a public sphere that is dominated by digital media and digital technologies. Digital media become the key institutions that either maintain or undermine the health of the public sphere.

Three Kinds of Digital Services

Before discussing how we should regulate social media, I want to distinguish social media from two other parts of the infrastructure of digital communication. 1 1. Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech Is a Triangle , 118 Colum. L. Rev. 2011, 2037–40 (2018). These are:

• Basic internet services, such as the Domain Name System (DNS), broadband companies, and caching services.
• Payment systems, such as MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.

For basic internet services the regulatory answer is pretty simple: Nondiscrimination. Let the bits flow freely and efficiently. Don't try to engage in content regulation at this level. Government should enforce non-discrimination as a matter of policy. Although the question is contested (for example, in the policy debates over network neutrality rules), I believe that enforcing nondiscrimination rules at this level of the internet presents no significant First Amendment problems.

We should treat payment systems, and caching and defense systems, like public accommodations, with this caveat: They can refuse to do business if a customer uses their business for illegal activities.

Governments and civil society groups often want to use basic internet services and payment systems to go after propagandists, conspiracy mongers, and racist speakers. I think this is a mistake. These businesses are not well designed for content moderation and their decisions will be arbitrary and ad hoc.

I believe that content regulation should occur higher up the stack, to borrow a familiar computer science metaphor.

Instead, these businesses should concern themselves only with the legality or illegality of transactions. Government should require nondiscrimination—otherwise the public and politicians will place irresistible pressure on basic internet services and payment systems to engage in content moderation, which is not their job.

Government requirements of nondiscrimination/public accommodation have this advantage: when civil society groups and politicians demand that these businesses engage in content moderation, or argue that businesses are complicit in the politics of the customers they serve, the businesses can respond that they have no choice because the law requires them not to discriminate against customers who are not engaged in illegal activity.

Instead, content moderation should occur in social media and search engines. In fact, for these services, content regulation is inevitable. Since it is inevitable, that’s where you should do it.

The Public Function of Social Media

Now let’s ask: what is social media's public function? What tasks should it perform in the digital public sphere?

This is a normative and interpretive question. So too is the related question of what it means for the public sphere to be well functioning, “healthy,” or “vibrant.” We must decide what makes the digital public sphere function well or badly. Because social media are so new, we have very little history to work with. So we have to make analogies to the longer history of media and democracy. But in doing so, we also have to reckon with the fact that earlier versions of the public sphere may not have functioned well.

I mentioned previously that the public sphere created by social media in the 21st century is a successor to the public sphere created by print and broadcast media in the 20th century. Twentieth-century media helped produce a particular kind of public sphere, different than today’s, because broadcast and print media played a different role than social media do today. These companies—or their contractual partners—produced most of the content that they published or broadcast. Twentieth-century print and broadcast media were not participatory media; the vast majority of people were audiences for the media rather than creators who had access to and used the media to communicate with others.

The 21st century model, by contrast, involves crowdsourcing and facilitating end user content. Social media host content made by large numbers of people, who are both creators and audiences for the content they produce.

If that’s so, what are social media's central functions in the public sphere? What is social media’s appropriate role? I argue that social media have three central functions:

First, social media facilitate public participation in art, politics, and culture.

Second, social media organize public conversation so people can easily find and communicate with each other.

Third, social media curate public opinion , not only through individualized results and feeds, but also through enforcing community standards and terms of service. Social media curate not only by taking down or rearranging content, but also by regulating the speed of propagation and the reach of content.

This last point bears elaboration. During the 20th century, newspapers and television also curated public discourse through the exercise of editorial judgment. They decided what content to commission in the first place and how to edit and convey the content they eventually produced. That meant that the content that circulated in these media was restricted and sanitized for mass audiences. One did not see pornography in The New York Times or advocacy of racial genocide on NBC because these companies had standards and professional norms about what they would publish or broadcast. These standards and norms, in turn, were backed up by legal requirements—for example, against defamation, obscenity, and indecency. Even so, 20th century media companies often limited speech far more than the law required.

Twentieth-century mass media set boundaries on permissible content, and created a certain kind of public conversation based on the expected interests and values of their audiences. Different players in different media and in different parts of society imposed different norms. Book publishers applied their own set of norms, motion picture companies had their own set of norms, the pornography industry (which encompassed both print and video) had its own norms, and so on. Generally speaking, daily newspapers and broadcast media applied norms of a hypothesized polite society judged appropriate for an imagined audience of average adults and their families. One could get access to more daring content elsewhere, for example in books and magazines, subject always to background legal constraints.

Social media also curate public discourse today. But instead of publishing their own content, they are publishing everyone else’s content. Like 20th century mass media, they apply a set of rules and standards about what kinds of content (and conversations) are permissible and impermissible on their sites. They impose a set of civility, safety, and behavioral norms for their imagined audience—different from 20th century newspapers, but nevertheless still quite constrained. Different social media enforce different norms. Like 20th century media, social media may limit speech far more than the law requires them to. Facebook, for example, limits nudity even when it is constitutionally protected. 2 2. See Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Facebook Community Standards, https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/adult_nudity_sexual_activity [ https://perma.cc/EFQ8-RGPW ] (last visited Mar. 10, 2020).

Generally speaking, the free speech principle allows the state to impose only a very limited set of civility, safety, and behavioral norms on public discourse, leaving intermediate institutions free to impose stricter norms in accord with their values. This works well if there are many intermediate institutions. The assumption is that in a diverse society with different cultures and subcultures, different communities will create and enforce their own norms, which may be stricter than the state’s. I believe that a diversity of different institutions with different norms is a desirable goal for the public sphere in the 21st century too. But I also believe that there is a problem—no matter which century we are talking about—when only one set of norms is enforced or allowed. If private actors are going to impose norms that are stricter than what governments can impose, it is important that there be many different private actors imposing these norms, reflecting different cultures and subcultures, and not just two or three big companies. I will return to this point later on.

Now let me connect the three functions I mentioned—facilitating public participation, organizing public conversation, and curating public opinion—to the goals of a healthy, well-functioning, public sphere. Why are these functions the key indicia of a well-functioning public sphere?

These functions are important because the public sphere is the institutional home of freedom of speech and it helps realize the values of freedom of expression. Free speech values help us understand whether the public sphere is functioning well or badly. If the institutional arrangements work well to facilitate these values, then we say that the public sphere is functioning well, and that it is healthy. But if institutional arrangements hinder these values, we should conclude that the public sphere is not functioning well.

Well, what are these values? There are at least three of them:

First, freedom of speech serves the values of political democracy. It enables democratic participation in the formation of public opinion. It helps to ensure (although it does not guarantee) that state power is responsive to the evolution of public opinion. And it helps to ensure (although it does not guarantee) that the public can become informed about issues of public concern. Thus the democratic political values are participation, responsiveness, and an informed public.

Second, freedom of speech helps to produce a democratic culture . A democratic culture is a culture in which individuals and groups can freely participate in culture and in the forms of cultural power that shape and affect them. 3 3. Jack M. Balkin, Cultural Democracy and the First Amendment, 110 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1053 (2016). Because cultural power is even more pervasive than state power, individuals need to have a way of participating in the construction and development of the cultures that constitute their identities and affect their lives. Freedom of speech allows widespread participation in the forms of meaning making that construct us as individuals. It gives people a chance to talk back to and shape the forms of cultural power that constitute them.

Third, freedom of speech helps promote (although once again, it does not guarantee) the growth and spread of knowledge . I use this formula instead of the familiar “marketplace of ideas” because the latter metaphor is misleading. The best way to develop and spread knowledge may not be through competition for acceptance in public opinion. Instead, in modern societies, the development and spread of knowledge depends on a host of disciplines, institutions, and public-regarding professions.

Social media perform their public functions well when they promote these three central values: political democracy, cultural democracy, and the growth and spread of knowledge. More generally, a healthy, well-functioning digital public sphere helps individuals and groups realize these three central values of free expression. A poorly functioning public sphere, by contrast, undermines political and cultural democracy, and hinders the growth and spread of knowledge.

Trusted and Trustworthy Intermediate Institutions

Here’s the next big idea: If you want to realize these values, you need more than a simple free speech guarantee like the American First Amendment. You need more than a legal norm that the state doesn't censor. You need more than the formal ability to speak free of government sanction. You need intermediate institutions that can create and foster a public sphere. Without those intermediate institutions, speech practices decay, and the public sphere fails.

A healthy system of free expression requires much more than non-censorship.

First, it requires knowledge institutions and knowledge professionals who produce and disseminate knowledge and opinion. Examples from the 20th century include newspapers and other media organizations, schools, universities, libraries, museums, and archives. Some of these may be run and/or subsidized by the state. But many of them will be privately owned and operated.

Second, you need lots of different institutions, and they can't all be owned or controlled by a small number of people. They have to provide what Justice Hugo Black once called “diverse and antagonistic sources” of information. 4 4. Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1, 20 (1945). This is a famous formula in First Amendment law. But this formula is not just about having lots of different voices that disagree with each other. Rather it’s about having lots of different institutions for knowledge production and dissemination.

Third, these institutions have to have professional norms that guide how they produce, organize, and distribute knowledge and opinion. 5 5. See Robert C. Post, Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State (2012) (arguing that professional and disciplinary norms for knowledge production are necessary to achieve the “democratic competence” necessary for democratic self-government).

Fourth, these intermediate institutions and professional groups can successfully do their job only when they are generally trustworthy and trusted. When intermediate knowledge producing institutions and professions are not trusted, the public sphere will begin to fall apart. Why will it begin to fall apart? Because no matter what your theory of free speech might be, realizing the values of free speech depends on the creation, curation, and dissemination of knowledge by intermediate institutions and professions that the public generally trusts. Without these trusted institutions and professions, the practices of free expression become a rhetorical war of all against all. Such a war undermines the values of political democracy, cultural democracy, and the growth and spread of knowledge that free expression is supposed to serve. Protection of the formal right to speak is necessary to a well-functioning public sphere. It is just not sufficient.

In a nutshell, that is the problem we are facing in the 21st century. We have moved into a new kind of public sphere—a digital public sphere—without the connective tissue of the kinds of institutions necessary to safeguard the underlying values of free speech. We lack trusted digital institutions guided by public-regarding professional norms. Even worse, the digital companies that currently exist have contributed to the decline of other trusted institutions and professions for the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

The irony is profound. Never has it been easier to speak, to broadcast to millions. Never has access to the means of communication been so inexpensive and so widely distributed. But without the connective tissue of trusted and trustworthy intermediate institutions guided by professional and public-regarding norms, the values that freedom of speech is designed to serve are increasingly at risk. Antagonistic sources of information do not serve the values of free expression when people don’t trust anyone and professional norms dissolve. InfoWars is an antagonistic source of information. Boy, is it antagonistic! But its goal is to destroy trust. Its goal is to get you to trust nobody. It reduces politics to tribalism and cultural participation to warfare. It reverses and undermines the spread and growth of knowledge.

Diverse Affordances, Value Systems, and Innovations

To achieve a healthy and vibrant public sphere, we also need many different kinds of social media with many different affordances, and many different ways to participate and make culture. Thus, it is important to have Facebook and YouTube and TikTok and Twitter, and many other kinds of social media applications as well. Moreover, these applications can't be owned or controlled by the same companies.

Diversity of affordances and control is important for three reasons. First, you don’t want one set of private norms governing public discourse. Ideally, different social media will set their own community standards and values, even if they overlap to some degree. Second, you want many players because you want continuous innovation. Third, you want many different kinds of social media because different affordances make culture richer and more democratic.

So in addition to "diverse and antagonistic sources of information" we should want "diverse affordances, value systems, and innovations." But, as I said before, “diverse and antagonistic” is not enough. Social media also need to become trusted mediating institutions guided by professional norms. They have to become trusted and trustworthy organizers and curators of public discourse. They aren’t now.

One might object: won’t network effects doom the goal of a world with many different kinds of social media? Won’t people gravitate to one social media application because everyone else they know is already using it?

The answer is no. Many people currently use many different social media applications, not a single one. They belong to several communities and their usage changes over time. There are several reasons for this.

First, social media have different affordances and people use social media for many different purposes. One can be a member of Facebook and still use YouTube or TikTok. If we encourage diversity of affordances, we will also encourage diversity of use.

Second, people may use different social media more or less frequently and move to new social media as they get older or as their tastes and needs change. Younger people may move to different social media than their parents and grandparents. We have already seen generational migration from MySpace to Facebook and from Facebook to Snapchat and TikTok.

Third, people may link content from one social media site to others; in a tweet, for example, they may link to a YouTube video or a Spotify playlist.

Social media have incentives to allow people to belong to multiple sites because they want people to switch to their application. Moreover, because they want to be useful (and perhaps even indispensable) to end users, they also have incentives to allow links to other parts of the internet, including other social media. Regulation can encourage this kind of openness, too. If we promote innovation among social media companies, with many different kinds of affordances, network effects will not prevent a larger number of players than we currently have.

The Limits of Economic Incentives

So far I’ve offered a set of ideals to aim at. I’ve told you what a healthy digital public sphere would look like. And I’ve told you what kinds of institutions we might need.

But it’s pretty obvious, when we turn to the real world, that social media are not living up to their appropriate roles in the digital public sphere.

Why? Well, social media are driven by market incentives. In fact, sometimes they are so big that they make their own markets. So economic incentives or profit motives are probably more accurate terms than market incentives. The largest social media are less subject to market discipline than other firms; and lack of competition is one important reason why social media don’t live up to their social function in the digital public sphere. Yet it is only one part of the problem.

Economic incentives may be necessary for a healthy public sphere, but they will not be sufficient. Here is why: Free expression and the production of knowledge goods produce both positive and negative externalities. That is, they produce benefits and harms that can’t be completely captured by ordinary market transactions. The result is that markets—even perfectly functioning competitive markets—will overproduce the harms of free expression and under-produce the goods of free expression. And this is true whether media goods are financed through advertising, subscription, or pay services.

Whatever your theory of free expression is, market competition won't produce the kind of culture and knowledge necessary for democratic self-government, democratic culture, or the growth and spread of knowledge. Markets will under-produce the kinds of speech and knowledge goods that support political and cultural democracy; they will under-produce the kinds of institutions that will reliably discover and spread knowledge. Conversely, market incentives will overproduce conspiracy theories and speech that undermines democratic institutions. When social media are dominated by a small number of powerful economic actors, their incentives are not much better.

Economic incentives are not the same thing as professional norms and they may come into conflict with and undermine professional norms.

And today, economic incentives for social media companies promote distrust, not trust. They undermine professional norms for the production of knowledge rather than support them.

Then add the fact that all of this takes place on the internet. The internet is just a big machine for destroying professional norms.

It's not surprising that social media have failed at the task I just set out for them. For one thing, they are still very new. Facebook is only a decade and a half old. Google is only 20 years old. They emerged as profit-making technology companies, and only later came to understand themselves as media companies. They were brought to this realization kicking and screaming all the way, through continuous and sustained public pressure.

And yet this is the direction they must travel. Social media companies have to become key institutions for fostering a healthy public sphere. They can't just serve economic incentives. They have to adopt public-regarding professional norms related to the important public function that they serve in the digital public sphere.

By analogy, think about journalism. It also serves a crucial role in the public sphere because it informs the public and sets agendas for public discussion. If the professional norms of journalism are weakened or destroyed and the practice of journalism becomes solely market driven, journalism will make the public sphere worse, not better. It will choose stories and treatments that increase polarization, tribalism, and social distrust, and it will generate or help spread propaganda and conspiracy theories.

In fact, social media has multiple roles to play in the digital public sphere.

First, social media companies are important players in many different kinds of regulation. Public-private cooperation is necessary for dealing with, among other things, terrorist recruitment, foreign interference in elections, campaign finance violations, and child pornography.

Second, huge digital communities create special problems of personal safety, threats, and abuse. Some countries present special problems of state propaganda and genocidal speech campaigns.

Third, the need for content moderation creates problems of scale. Content moderation that is simultaneously quick, accurate, and at scale is hard to achieve. Accuracy requires increasing the number of moderators (either through hiring or contracting out to other firms) at numbers far greater than most social media companies would like; it also requires treating content moderators much better that they are currently treated by their employers. 6 6. Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (2019); Casey Newton, The Trauma Floor: The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America, The Verge (Feb. 25, 2019), https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona In fact, social media companies often rely on complaints by end users, civil society organizations, and government actors to spot violations of their terms of service. Because moderation is costly to do well, social media companies have economic incentives to drag their heels.

Misaligned Incentives

Are there incentives for social media to become trustworthy institutions that protect and foster the digital public sphere? Sadly, not as they are currently constituted.

Social media companies have been slow to solve the problems they create. Social media companies have viewed themselves primarily as technology companies that make money through digital surveillance that enables advertising. Their goal is to get bigger and bigger, and to expand their user base so they can serve more ads and make more money.

The 20th century public sphere was also partly funded through advertising. But its problems were a bit different, because you didn't have modern methods of data collection and behavioral advertising. Also 20th century media had greater professional and economic incentives to be trustworthy, even if they were hardly perfect and tended to be too passive and apologetic.

Advertising (and therefore data collection and manipulation) are central to the problems that social media creates for the digital public sphere. There are three reasons for this.

First, the attention economy generates perverse effects. It encourages companies to highlight the kind of content that keeps viewers’ attention. This content is less likely to be informative or educational, and more likely to be false, demagogic, conspiratorial, and incendiary, and to appeal to emotions such as fear, envy, anger, hatred, and distrust.

Second, Facebook and Google serve both as advertising brokers and as the major market for ads. They are a digital advertising duopoly.

Third, Facebook and Google have dried up revenues for newsgathering organizations, who get an increasingly small amount of ad revenues, or have to take crumbs off the table from Facebook and Google. The internet has created news deserts for local news and increased incentives for consolidation of media organizations into a handful of large companies. Put another way, one side effect of market incentives has been undermining other public sphere institutions—in particular, journalism—and the advertising-based business models that have traditionally sustained journalism.

Economic incentives have driven Facebook and Google to grow ever larger and to buy up as many potential competitors as possible. But a well-functioning digital public sphere should have many social media companies, not just a few, because:

• you don't want a monoculture of content moderation;
• having lots of different players in different parts of the world partly eases problems of scale in moderation;
• many players make it harder for foreign governments to hijack elections;
• many players may be better for innovation; and
• many players are harder for governments to co-opt.

To all of these we should add a sixth reason tied to the dangers of surveillance capitalism. 7 7. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019). Facebook’s and Google’s control over digital advertising is made possible by their ability to collect and aggregate enormous amounts of end user data, more than any other company. The more data Facebook and Google are able to collect, the better their predictive algorithms, the more powerful their ability to nudge and influence end users, and the better their ability to corner the market on digital advertising. That is why it is profitable for Facebook and Google to buy up so many different kinds of companies and applications, each of which collects data in different ways. More data means more power.

If there are many different social media companies, none will have the same dominance and control over the collection and analysis of end user data. None will have the same power to manipulate and influence end users, and none will be able to corner the market for digital advertising. Having more players diffuses and decentralizes power over the collection and control of data, over digital advertising markets, and over end users, who are the objects of surveillance, influence, and manipulation.

Public Provisioning and Public Utilities

Many people have suggested public provisioning—state-run social media—as a solution to the problems of social media. Others have suggested turning social media companies into public utilities.

Let’s start with public provisioning. Certainly one way to provide public goods that the market will fail to provide adequately is to have government provide it. That’s what we do with state universities and what many countries do with public broadcasting.

But unlike state universities and public broadcasters like the BBC, you really don’t want governments to provide social media services:

First, if social media companies are treated as state actors and have to abide by existing free speech doctrines—at least in the United States—they will simply not be able to moderate effectively. Facebook’s and Twitter’s community standards, for example, have many content-based regulations that would be unconstitutional if imposed by government actors. Even if one eliminated some of these rules, the minimum requirements for effective online moderation would violate the First Amendment.

Second, content moderation does not give speakers final judicial determinations (with full Bill of Rights protections) of whether their speech is protected or unprotected. Therefore content moderation has many of the same problems as administrative prior restraints. The standard remedies for violating community standards and/or terms of service include removing an end user’s content and banning the end user from the community. Some of these remedies would probably violate American free speech doctrine, including the rule against prior restraints. If A defames B in a public park, for example, a court could not forbid A from ever speaking in the park again. 8 8. See Balkin, Free Speech Is a Triangle , supra note 1, at 2025–27.

Third, and relatedly, many people are concerned about the propagation of false and misleading political advertisements and political propaganda on social media. They want social media companies to take down this speech or prevent it from being used in targeted political messages and ads. But if that is your concern, the last thing you would want to do is make social media state actors, because state actors are severely constrained in how they can sanction political speech, even false political speech. And, once again, even when state actors may sanction political speech, they must first afford the speaker the full panoply of Bill of Rights protections and a final individualized judicial determination before they can act. These requirements are simply inconsistent with the speed and scale of social media content moderation.

Fourth, if you think that surveillance capitalism is bad, there are even more serious problems of government surveillance and data manipulation when governments run your social media company.

Fifth, and relatedly, governments running social media services would create enormous risks of facilitating government propaganda and the use of end user data to engage in targeted influence campaigns.

Sixth, and finally, governments may not be particularly good at innovation. And they will not be very good at facilitating a diverse set of affordances, values, and innovations.

Another approach is to turn social media and search engines into privately owned public utilities. 9 9. K. Sabeel Rahman, Regulating Informational Infrastructure: Internet Platforms as the New Public Utilities , 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 234 (2018).

It is not clear that social media fit the traditional model of public utilities very well. The classic examples of public utilities are companies that provide water, telephone services, and electrical power. The standard reasons for making a company a public utility are to control price, to secure universal access, and to assure the quality of continuous service. But with social media, the price is free, access is universal, and continuous service is almost always provided—in part because companies want as much of end users’ attentions as they can get. If the real goal of treating social media as public utilities is to prevent discrimination in content moderation, then one faces the same problems as state-run social media.

Probably the best justification for a public utility model is to fundamentally change the business model of social media companies. Once converted into public utilities, social media companies would give up advertising altogether and simply provide access and content moderation services in return for a fixed monthly subscription fee. (They might still be allowed to run ads, but the ads could not be targeted.) This arrangement would have to be combined with strict limits on collection, collation, and sale of end user data. That is because the mere fact that subscription services don’t serve you ads doesn’t mean that they respect your privacy or are not attempting to manipulate you; they might continue to collect end user data and sell it to other companies or use it for other purposes.

It may well be a good idea to have some subscription-based social media services in a larger mix of social companies that rely on advertising. These social media companies would be a sort of "public option" that people who want extra privacy protections could use as an alternative to free services. But the public utility model is not a general solution to the problems of the digital public sphere. Converting all large social media companies into public utilities does not solve the problems I mentioned above, because it does not provide diverse affordances, value systems, and innovations. Quite the contrary: converting social media companies into public utilities appears to concede that there will only be—and perhaps should only be—a relative handful of social media companies. The more important focus of regulation, therefore, should be on antitrust, privacy, and consumer protection regulation, as I explain below.

To Change Incentives, Change Business Models

I expect that most social media companies will continue to be privately owned and operated, and they will still rely on advertising models. If so, how is it possible to push privately owned social media companies to fulfill their proper social function?

We are slowly inching toward this approach. Social media companies already assert in their public relations materials that they have obligations to the public. They state that they understand that their businesses depend on public trust. They acknowledge that it is their goal to protect end user autonomy, enhance democracy, and facilitate free speech. They make similar claims in their terms of service and community standards. Whether social media companies actually live up to these claims is more complicated. That is because social media companies are not really willing to give up control of their “crown jewels”: business models based on data collection, behavioral advertising, and other aspects of surveillance capitalism.

Public pressure and media coverage of social media companies can push them, at the margins, to behave as more responsible curators of public discourse. (I should also say that people push social media to be irresponsible and arbitrary as well.) This sort of pressure is important because social media companies don’t want to lose their base of end users. But regulation is also necessary.

Facebook's Oversight Board for Content Decisions is yet another strategy to generate public trust by attempting to establish a kind of legitimacy in its content moderation decisions. Facebook hopes to use the model of a supreme court—complete with cases, judges and decisions—to establish that Facebook is a trustworthy, public-regarding institution.

I have no objection to the Board in theory. We should encourage every reform that gives social media companies incentives to act in a public-regarding fashion. As currently imagined, however, the Oversight Board won't be able to do very much. It will consider only a tiny fraction of the content moderated on Facebook in a given year. More importantly, it will have no jurisdiction over Facebook’s crown jewels: the company's system for brokering advertisements, its behavioral manipulation of end users, and its practices of data surveillance, collection, and use. For this reason, there is a very real danger that the Oversight Board will prove to be little more than a digital Potemkin Village—a prominent display of public-spiritedness that does nothing to address the larger, deeper problems with social media.

The logic of social media business models will tend to overcome any public statements of ideals, good will, and promises of good behavior. This has happened over and over again. Facebook’s history as a company has been a cycle of engaging in bad behavior, getting caught, apologizing profusely and promising to mend its ways, followed by the company engaging in slightly different bad behavior, offering new apologies and promises of reform, and so on. 10 10. See Zuboff, supra note 7, at 138–55 (describing the “Dispossession Cycle”). Facebook will keep misbehaving and it will keep apologizing, not because it is incompetent or clumsy, but because of a fundamental misalignment of incentives between its goals and the public’s needs, and because it has an inherent conflict of interest with its end users and, indeed, with democracy itself.

Social media companies will behave badly as long as their business models cause them to. Profit-making firms like Facebook will normally seek to externalize as many costs of their activities as possible onto others, so that the costs will be borne by society. Their business models don’t care about your democracy.

How do you make social media companies responsible participants in the digital public sphere? First, you must give them incentives to adopt professional and public-regarding norms. Second, you must make them internalize some of the costs they impose on the world around them.

There are no complete, perfect solutions. But we can make progress in incremental steps.

Before I discuss reform strategies, however, there is an important threshold question: Can the U.S. do this on its own? After all, anything we do in the U.S. will be affected by what other countries and the EU do. Today, the EU, China, and the U.S. collectively shape much of internet policy. They are the three Empires of the internet, and other countries mostly operate in their wake. Each Empire has different values and incentives, and each operates on the internet in a different way. I could write an entire essay just on these problems.

Models for Regulation

In the remainder of this essay, however, I will assume that the U.S. government—and the 50 state governments—can do something on their own. If so, what kinds of regulation should the U.S. consider?

First, don't rush to impose direct regulation on social media moderation practices. Requiring "neutrality" in content moderation is a non-starter. As I explained earlier, neutrality should apply lower down in the stack—to basic internet services—and to payment systems. One of the ironies of the current policy debate is that the very politicians who call for neutrality in content moderation have been most opposed to requiring neutrality where it is most needed—in basic internet services such as broadband.

Social media platforms must engage in content moderation. They may do it badly or well, but they will have to do it nevertheless. 11 11. Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media (2018). Accordingly, governments should respect social media’s role as curators and editors of public discourse. Respecting that role means that social media should have editorial rights, which are a subset of free speech rights.

The goal of regulation is not to achieve an illusory neutrality in social media content moderation. Rather the goal is to shape the organization and incentives of the industry to better achieve public ends.

First, the goal should be to increase the number of players, so there can be many different companies, communities, affordances, and editorial policies.

Second, the goal should be to give social media companies incentives to professionalize and take responsibility for the health of the public sphere.

We can regulate social media using three policy levers.

• Antitrust and competition law
• Privacy and consumer protection law
• Balancing intermediary liability with intermediary immunity.

Properly structured, none of these policy levers violate free speech values or the First Amendment.

Whatever we do, it is important to keep regulatory burdens manageable. If you make the regulatory burdens too great, you can create barriers to entry for new social media firms, which defeats the regulatory purpose of achieving a wide range of social media companies with different rules, affordances, and innovations.

Let me talk about antitrust, privacy, and intermediary liability in turn. The discussion that follows will be very broad brush and pitched at a high level of abstraction. I emphasize at the outset that you need all three of these policy levers to succeed. You can’t rely on just one. For example, if you don't use antitrust law and competition law, you will have to regulate more heavily in other ways.

Moreover, there are some kinds of problems that privacy law can’t fix and for which antitrust law is required; conversely, there are problems that antitrust law can’t fix that require privacy and consumer protection law. For example, even if you create many different Facebooks and Googles, each will still be practicing their own forms of surveillance capitalism. You will still need privacy and consumer protection regulations to keep these smaller companies from manipulating and/or abusing the trust of end users.

Antitrust and Competition Law

In competition policy, the goal is not simply separating existing social media services owned by a single company, for example, separating Facebook from Instagram and WhatsApp or YouTube from Google. Rather, there are three interlocking goals.

First, competition policy should aim at producing many smaller companies, with different applications, communities, and norms. You might think of this as a sort of social media federalism.

Second, competition policy should seek to prevent new startups from being bought up early. This helps innovation. It prevents large companies from buying up potential competitors and killing off innovations that are not consistent with their current business models.

Third, competition policy should seek to separate different functions that are currently housed in the same company. This goal of separation of functions is different from a focus on questions of company size and market share.

For example, Facebook and Google are not just social media companies, they are also advertising agencies. They are both Don Draper and NBC. They match companies who want to advertise with audiences they create, and then they serve ads to end users on their social media feeds and applications.

Hence, competition policy might seek to separate control over advertising brokering from the tasks of serving ads, delivering content, and moderating content. Each of these functions is currently housed in a single company, but some of these tasks could be performed by different companies, each in a separate market.

Conversely, we might want to relax antitrust rules to allow media organizations to collectively bargain with social media companies for advertising rates and advertising placements.

I use the term competition law in addition to antitrust law for a reason. In the United States, at least, antitrust law generally refers to the judicial elaboration of existing antitrust statutes. But in dealing with the problems that social media create for the public sphere, we should not limit ourselves simply to elaborating the current judge-made doctrines of antitrust law, which focus on consumer welfare. Even if we expand the focus of antitrust law to the exercise of economic power more generally, competition law has other purposes besides fostering economic competition, economic efficiency, and innovation. In telecommunications law, for example, media concentration rules have always been concerned with the goal of protecting democracy, and with the goal of producing an informed public with access to many different sources of culture and information. Existing judge-made doctrines of antitrust law might not be the best way to achieve these ends, because they are not centrally concerned with these ends. We might need new statutes and regulatory schemes that focus on the special problems that digital companies pose for democracy.

Privacy and Consumer Protection

I have written a great deal about how we might rethink privacy in the digital age and I won’t repeat all of my arguments here. My central argument is that we should use a fiduciary model to regulate digital companies, including both social media companies and basic internet services that collect end user data. A fiduciary model treats digital companies that collect and use data as information fiduciaries toward the people whose data they collect and use.

Information fiduciaries have three basic duties towards the people whose data they collect: a duty of care, a duty of confidentiality, and a duty of loyalty. The fiduciary model is not designed to directly alter content moderation practices, although it may have indirect effects on them. Rather, the goal of a fiduciary model is to change how digital companies, including social media companies, think about their end users and their obligations to their end users. Currently, end users are treated as a product or a commodity sold to advertisers. The point of the fiduciary model is to make companies stop viewing their end users as objects of manipulation—as a pair of eyeballs attached to a wallet, captured, pushed, and prodded for purposes of profit.

This has important consequences for how companies engage in surveillance capitalism. If we impose fiduciary obligations, even modest ones, business models will have to change, and companies will have to take into account the effects of their practices on the people who use their services.

The fiduciary model is designed to be flexible. It can be imposed by statute, through administrative regulation, or through judicial doctrines. Fiduciary obligations are one important element of digital privacy and consumer protection but they are not sufficient in and of themselves. Moreover, fiduciary obligations must work hand in hand with competition law, because each can achieve things that the other cannot.

Intermediary Liability

One of the central debates in internet law is whether and how much intermediary liability states should impose, and conversely, whether states should grant some form of intermediary immunity. In general, I believe that intermediary immunity is a good idea, and some (but not complete) intermediary immunity is actually required by the free speech principle.

Because the current broad scope of intermediary immunity is not required by the First Amendment or the free speech principle more generally, governments should use the offer of intermediary immunity as a lever to get social media companies to engage in public-regarding behavior. In particular, one should use intermediary immunity as a lever to get social media companies to accept fiduciary obligations toward their end users.

Governments might also condition intermediary immunity on accepting obligations of due process and transparency. Social media companies currently have insufficient incentives to invest in moderation services and to ensure that their moderators are treated properly. In some cases, governments might be able to regulate the provision of moderation services through employment and labor law (although there are a few free speech problems with media-specific regulations that I can’t get into here). But governments should also create incentives for platforms to invest in increasing the number of moderators they employ as well as providing more due process for end users. They should also require companies to hire independent inspectors or ombudsmen to audit the company’s moderation practices on a regular basis. 13 13. See Tarleton Gillespie, Platforms Are Not Intermediaries , 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 198, 214–16 (2018). In short, I don’t want to scrap intermediary immunity. I want to use it to create incentives for good behavior.

Although the general rule should be intermediary immunity, governments may partially withdraw intermediary immunity and establish distributor liability in certain situations. Distributor liability means that companies are immune from liability until they receive notice that content is unlawful. Then they have to take down the content within a particular period of time or else they are potentially vulnerable to liability (although they may have defenses under substantive law).

First, governments might employ distributor liability for certain kinds of privacy violations; the most obvious example is non-consensual pornography, sometimes called “revenge porn.”

Second, governments might establish distributor liability for paid advertisements. The basic problem of intermediary liability—and the reason why intermediary immunity is a good thing—is the problem of collateral censorship. Because companies can’t supervise everything that is being posted on their sites, once they face the prospect of intermediary liability they will take down too much content, because it is not their speech and they have insufficient incentives to protect it. This logic does not apply in the same way, however, for paid advertisements. Companies actively solicit paid advertisements—indeed, this is how social media companies make most of their money. As a result, even with distributor liability, companies still have incentives to continue to run ads. These incentives lessen (although they do not completely eliminate) the problems of collateral censorship. Note that the rule of distributor liability is still more generous than the rule of publisher liability that currently applies to print media advertisements.

This approach does not require us to distinguish between commercial advertisements and political advertisements. Nor does it require us to distinguish between issue ads and ads that mention a particular candidate. The on/off switch is simply whether the company accepts advertising. This rule leaves matters up to the company to decide how best to handle advertising, which is, after all, the core of its business. Twitter has recently announced that it will no longer accept political advertisements. 14 14. Political Content , Twitter, https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/prohibited-content-policies/political-content.html [ https://perma.cc/HRN2-Z4QA ] (last visited Mar. 10, 2020). Facebook’s policies are more complicated and currently in flux. Facebook does take down paid political ads that lie about polling times and places. But it will not take down other false political ads, even when Facebook knows that they are false. 15 15. Rob Leathern , Expanded Transparency and More Controls for Political Ads , Facebook Newsroom (Jan. 9, 2020), https://about.fb.com/news/2020/01/political-ads/ [ https://perma.cc/S8YE-BFUL ]; Q&A on Transparency for Electoral and Issue Ads , Facebook Newsroom (May 24, 2018), https://about.fb.com/news/2018/05/q-and-a-on-ads-transparency/ [ https://perma.cc/5LWC-CUBP ].

Facebook’s case is instructive for how to think about the problem. Facebook argues that it does not want to be the arbiter of public discourse. In fact, it already is the arbiter of public discourse worldwide; moreover, as I’ve argued above, its proper function as a social media company is to serve as a curator of public discourse. Facebook well understands this: it takes down lies about election dates and polling places; and it bans abusive and dehumanizing speech that would otherwise be protected under the First Amendment. It is true that policing political advertisements poses genuine problems of scale: Facebook would have to take down ads not only for federal elections in the U.S., but for every state and local government election, and for every election around the world. However, Facebook already invests in moderating a far larger class of non-advertising speech around the world. So it would have to show why moderating the far smaller class of advertisements—which are marked and inserted into end users’ feeds as advertisements—is significantly more difficult.

The real reasons why Facebook has decided not to take down false political ads are somewhat different, and they better explain Facebook’s incentives to host political ads. That is important because, as noted above, distributor liability is less troublesome from a free speech perspective when companies have independent incentives to protect certain speech and prevent it from being removed.

First, Facebook probably resists taking down false political advertisements because it makes money from these ads, perhaps more money than it lets on. It is, after all, an advertising company, and unless the law imposes costs for running advertisements, each advertisement adds to its bottom line. But political advertising is only a small fraction of its business, and so ad revenue is probably not the central motivating factor behind Facebook’s policies. A second and more important reason is that Facebook does not want to anger the politicians who place political ads, and who might be motivated to regulate or break up the company. Regulation or breakup might truly threaten Facebook’s revenues.

Third, Facebook is in the influence business. Serving political ads keeps Facebook connected to important politicians and political actors around the world and thereby increases the company’s power and political influence. That is one reason—although certainly not the only reason—why Facebook treats important political figures differently than ordinary individuals, and keeps up postings that would otherwise violate its community standards or terms of service if made by ordinary individuals. 16 16. See Thomas Kadri & Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan: Public Figures and Newsworthiness in Online Speech , 93 S. Cal. L. Rev. 37 (2020). Facebook believes that people want to know what these important figures think; but more importantly, it wants to be the conduit for people to hear what these important people have to say. It also wants to stay on the good side of powerful people who might someday threaten its business. Because Facebook has incentives to solicit, attract, and keep up political advertisements, including knowingly false political advertisements, imposing distributor liability for all advertisements will give Facebook better incentives than it currently has.

The thesis of this essay is that you shouldn’t regulate social media unless you understand why you want to regulate it.

We should regulate social media because we care about the digital public sphere. Social media have already constructed a digital public sphere in which they are the most important players. Our goal should be to make that digital public sphere vibrant and healthy, so that it furthers the goals of the free speech principle—political democracy, cultural democracy, and the growth and spread of knowledge. To achieve those ends, we need trustworthy intermediate institutions with the right kinds of norms. The goal of regulation should be to give social media companies incentives to take on their appropriate responsibilities in the digital public sphere.

Note: This essay was originally delivered as the keynote address of the Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Computer Science and Law, New York City, October 28, 2019.

Printable PDF

© 2020, Jack M. Balkin. 

Cite as:  Jack M. Balkin, How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media , 20-07 Knight First Amend. Inst. (Mar. 25, 2020), https://knightcolumbia.org/content/how-to-regulate-and-not-regulate-social-media [ https://perma.cc/TE5Q-E7XV ].

1 Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech Is a Triangle , 118 Colum. L. Rev. 2011, 2037–40 (2018).

2 See Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Facebook Community Standards, https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/adult_nudity_sexual_activity [ https://perma.cc/EFQ8-RGPW ] (last visited Mar. 10, 2020).

3 Jack M. Balkin, Cultural Democracy and the First Amendment, 110 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1053 (2016).

4 Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1, 20 (1945).

5 See Robert C. Post, Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom: A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State (2012) (arguing that professional and disciplinary norms for knowledge production are necessary to achieve the “democratic competence” necessary for democratic self-government).

6 Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (2019); Casey Newton, The Trauma Floor: The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America, The Verge (Feb. 25, 2019), https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona

7 Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019).

8 See Balkin, Free Speech Is a Triangle , supra note 1, at 2025–27.

9 K. Sabeel Rahman, Regulating Informational Infrastructure: Internet Platforms as the New Public Utilities , 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 234 (2018).

10 See Zuboff, supra note 7, at 138–55 (describing the “Dispossession Cycle”).

11 Tarleton Gillespie, Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media (2018).

12 See Jack M. Balkin , Information Fiduciaries and the First Amendment , 49 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1183, 1209 (2016); Jack M. Balkin, The Three Laws of Robotics in the Age of Big 78 Ohio St. L.J. 1217, 1228 (2018); Balkin, Free Speech is a Triangle , supra note 1; Jack M. Balkin, The First Amendment in the Second Gilded Age , 66 Buffalo L. Rev. 979 (2018); Jack M. Balkin, Fixing Social Media’s Grand Bargain (Hoover Working Group on National Security, Technology, and Law, Aegis Series Paper No. 1814, October 16, 2018), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3266942 [ https://perma.cc/SC32-HLTA ].

13 See Tarleton Gillespie, Platforms Are Not Intermediaries , 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 198, 214–16 (2018).

14 Political Content , Twitter, https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/prohibited-content-policies/political-content.html [ https://perma.cc/HRN2-Z4QA ] (last visited Mar. 10, 2020).

15 Rob Leathern , Expanded Transparency and More Controls for Political Ads , Facebook Newsroom (Jan. 9, 2020), https://about.fb.com/news/2020/01/political-ads/ [ https://perma.cc/S8YE-BFUL ]; Q&A on Transparency for Electoral and Issue Ads , Facebook Newsroom (May 24, 2018), https://about.fb.com/news/2018/05/q-and-a-on-ads-transparency/ [ https://perma.cc/5LWC-CUBP ].

16 See Thomas Kadri & Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan: Public Figures and Newsworthiness in Online Speech , 93 S. Cal. L. Rev. 37 (2020).

Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

Filed Under

• Social Media Regulation
• Technology Companies

Regulating social media (it’s really about controlling the internet)

This is the edited text of a keynote speech given at the 2nd #ICANN-APAC- TWNIC Engagement Forum, a conference held in Tapei and virtually April 15, 2021. A video of the keynote can be viewed here .

Social media

Social media and the internet expand our capacity for communication and social interaction. They allow people to mobilize, express opinions, exchange cultural artifacts and share information at unprecedented scale. They support transactions and payment systems. One of the largest specimens, YouTube, has 2.3 billion users and a presence in over 100 countries. Its video content covers 80 languages. 500 hours of video are uploaded to it every minute. Facebook has 2.80 billion active users and 1.84 billion of them visit the site daily.

Some of the regulatory concerns about social media appear to be matters of economic policy. Network effects, economies of scale, and a business model based on advertising all contribute to the concentration of user populations into large platforms. People love to refer to the platforms as monopolies but, this just isn’t correct. They are big, but they straddle multiple overlapping markets where none of them are anywhere close to being the sole and exclusive supplier. Although there are tremendous advantages to scope and scale in these markets, there is a surprisingly large number of social media platforms. As the rise of Tiktok in the US demonstrates, new ones can come into being and achieve critical mass rapidly. The example of Tiktok also demonstrates the importance of foreign companies, global capital and global market access in fostering competition and innovation.

At the present time there is a powerful backlash against social media. Despite the economic issues mentioned, most of this backlash is driven by issues related to the content on social media. This worries me because I think it is also a backlash against the way information technology and global connectivity have eliminated traditional gatekeepers and controls over communication. In other words, it’s in some ways a backlash against the Internet.

To begin to illustrate this, I will recount two familiar stories.

The Capitol Hill Riots

The first is the story of the Capitol Hill riots in the USA. Our former president refused to accept the fact that he lost the election. This wasn’t just any election. With high stakes and a polarized electorate, it sparked levels of voter turnout not seen for more than 50 years. Biden won with only 51.3% of the popular vote.

When Trump was declared the loser, he told his political supporters that the election had been stolen. Legally, that lie never got anywhere. The courts didn’t buy it. No elections officials supported it or acted on it, even in Republican-run states. But Trump kept saying it nevertheless, building up anger and resentment among his hard-core followers.

Trump’s doomed electoral challenge culminated in the events of January 6 th . For the preceding month, Trump backers had been promoting a rally in Washington on that date because that was the day Congress was to certify the election results. When it was clear that attempts to challenge the electoral count in Congress would fail, Trump went before the crowd and encouraged them to fight. Thousands marched to the capitol, and then about 300 of them violently broke into the building, interrupting the certification process.

In the wake of the attack, Trump and his acolytes were discredited. Trump himself was de-platformed. Facebook and Twitter removed thousands of accounts associated with Trump and the right. Yet still, in hearings on social media regulation weeks afterwards, members of the US Congress blamed Facebook, Twitter and Google for the riots. They pointed out repeatedly that the rioters had “used” Facebook pages and other social media to connect with each other. CNN, the NYT and many other progressive media outlets echoed this theme.

In short, Social media was put on trial for the riots, well before the actual rioters were.

Ahmaud Arbery

Now let me expose you to a different story. On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, a 25-year-old African American was jogging down a street in Brunswick, Georgia. He was unarmed. Brunswick is a small, mostly white town. Two men noticed him, assumed he was a criminal. They grabbed their guns and chased him in their pickup truck. When they caught up they tried to arrest him at gunpoint, and in the ensuing struggle, Arbery was shot three times, and died in the street.

For nearly six weeks, no one was arrested or prosecuted for this killing. Indeed, one of the men who did it used to work for the Brunswick police department and knew the local DA. Law enforcement authorities recused themselves and passed the buck. Nothing happened until May 5. That was when a video of the shooting was given to a local radio station, found its way on to YouTube and Twitter and went viral. Within hours, the case got the attention of the State Attorney General and the Governor. An investigation was started by the Georgia Bureau. The perpetrators were arrested. All three of the white men involved are now on trial for murder. Months later, Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law was changed.

The discrepancy

These two stories make for an interesting contrast. Social media was put on trial for the January 6 riots, but its role in the Arbery incident was not called out. There have been no Congressional investigations about how YouTube helped to expose injustice and produce legal reforms. There are no newspaper stories cheering open social media for exposing and helping to rectify a racist incident. No one praised social media for its role in the George Floyd case, either, even though it was Twitter and YouTube images of his final minutes that sparked nationwide BLM protests and the prosecution of the police officers. For that matter, no one made a big deal out of the role of free and open social media in Hong Kong’s democracy movement.

So there’s a discrepancy here. I am calling your attention to it for a reason. It exposes a distortion in the way internet and social media are being portrayed in the current public discourse in the West. Those distortions have important consequences for Internet governance.

The critique of social media

Why the discrepancy? I believe that social media is being attacked precisely because it is structurally the most democratic form of public communication that has ever existed. It made anyone a publisher, it allowed people holding the most diverse viewpoints to find each other and coalesce. it eliminated gatekeepers, it made political borders almost irrelevant, and even starts to overcome linguistic barriers. It made it possible for all kinds of people, good, bad and ugly, to attract a following and attempt to monetize it or leverage it. Building on the internet connectivity that came before, social media applications created more sophisticated forms of interaction, giving birth to a vast virtual society which is not entirely under the control of pre-existing power structures.

This scared a lot of people. We are now in a period of reaction. Since 2016 we have seen a partisan, ideologically biased attack on that new social capability. Surprisingly, people on the left are the ones who seem to be leading it. They believe that social media is responsible for the rightwing populism that Donald Trump exemplified. Although the assertion is uninformed, even ridiculous, they believe that social media “caused” Trump ; that it “caused” the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil , that it “caused” white nationalism and the Christchurch killer. That it “caused” genocide in Myanmar . Social media is destroying democracy , we are told. It is flooding the world with disinformation and hate speech and making us helpless pawns of foreign powers interfering with our elections . This is the narrative we are getting from the progressive left.

Don’t write me off as a cyber-utopian. I know that bad things happen in this vast virtual society. It is, after all, a human society. Its inhabitants bring with it all the forms of abuse, crime and conflict that existed before. Sometimes with new tools like ransomware, computational propaganda, identity theft, and disinformation campaigns. These are real problems, but their impact is often exaggerated. We can attack them without destroying the freedom and openness of the internet.

The negative narrative about social media is fueling a worldwide crackdown on the capabilities of internet-enabled communication . Many of these crackdowns are enacted by dictatorships. Countries such as China have always viewed social media as dangerous, something to be carefully controlled. The negative narrative about social media is making China feel vindicated. In Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, the alleged pathologies of social media have justified laws that are little more than censorship regimes. Even when state censorship is not involved, the companies that run the great platforms are getting the message, loud and clear: Your job is to actively manage the nation’s political discourse, and you shall do this in a way that actively suppresses any movements or ideas that the ruling party finds threatening.

And this is what convinces me that, whether they know it or not, the real target of the attack on social media is the general capacity to speak, mobilize and organize without traditional forms of hierarchical supervision. The target is freedom of expression and robust democratic competition itself.

Here’s an example. Just last week, YouTube removed a recording of a routine policy discussion about the efficacy of putting masks on children. The video was a panel health experts from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard. Google claimed the panel was misinformation. The company  said it removed the video “because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” Why isn’t it sufficient to let people see and judge for themselves?

Here’s another, even worse example. Tech reporters for the New York Times and the Guardian recently published articles targeting Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal . These are two-way messaging apps with end to end encryption. The reporters were complaining about them not because of the usual song and dance about advertisements or surveillance capitalism. No, the reporters were worried because these apps enabled private conversations to take place and thus could become “the next misinformation hotspots.” People might be expressing thoughts and opinions on these platforms that were socially unacceptable, and no one could stop them. Or they might be plotting insurrections. Indeed, these private conversations could take place not only in pairs, but among hundreds of people. Unsupervised discussions among large groups, with no possibility of content moderation by the corporation or the government. These reporters found that to be a scary thought.

These articles astounded me. Journalists, who used to be on the front lines of defending free expression and privacy, were now leading demands for more regulation of speech and more surveillance. And they seemed oblivious to the implications of this for autonomous civil society and democratic movements.

Theory of democracy

The foundation of democracy is the idea of popular sovereignty, that people can govern themselves. Freedom of expression is one of the pillars of self-governance. FoE is more than just an individual right to entertain your own thoughts and opinions; it is also a practical tool for collective self-governance. It is a means of keeping government accountable, and of keeping the public informed. You cannot properly exercise the right to vote or hold public officials accountable unless you are free to investigate what they do. You cannot discover the right public policy unless you can debate differing opinions about what is right and what the effects of those policies will be.

Separating the press and religion from the state is a logical corollary of liberal democracy. The state is a coercive monopoly, and while you need coercion to execute certain state functions, if the state can coerce thought and public opinion you don’t have a government accountable to the people, you have a people subordinate to the government.

How much of the criticism of human interactions on social media are just critiques of human freedom and democratic governance? In a democracy, some politicians are going to be demagogues. Many will lie. Some will be corrupt. Some members of the population will choose to support bad policies, and even advance destructive or discriminatory ideas. Liberal democrats believe that you can only solve those problems by protecting individual rights, freedom of association and democratic processes. An open and free media will expose corruption and the public will punish bad policies and bad politicians by voting them out of office. Of course sometimes the people are fooled and politicians and businesses get away with things. But if you don’t believe that public awareness of accountability can solve for this, you’re anti-democratic by definition.

Too many people who claim to be democrats are backing into the belief that any ideas they consider untrue or dangerous should be suppressed. But this attitude is inherently inimical to democratic governance, and to human potential. It is especially dangerous in a politically contentious environment. If whoever is in power can suppress any information deemed false or misleading, then competing political parties or movements can use these tools to silence their opponents. They merely need to label them purveyors of disinformation, or extremists, or conspiracy theorists. This is a much greater threat to democracy than disinformation or a few extremists on social media.

Democracy does not mean that every citizen is an angel or that only correct ideas and good social movements will form. It simply means that social conflicts over policy and governance will be resolved through peaceful, democratic means, and that certain fundamental rights will be respected in the process. Freedom of expression is an essential component – indeed, the most important element – of the public’s capacity to peacefully deliberate over what is in the public good, and what is true and what is false.

Will The Internet Fragment?

“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”

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Should social media platforms be regulated.

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Jonathan Wareham is professor at Esade 's Department of Operations, Innovation and Data Sciences.

Yes, they should be. The more difficult question is how to do this effectively while differentiating between their various forms . Concerns about the public regulation of social media platforms emerged after the 2016 presidential elections in the U.S. and the U.K. with the Brexit referendum, and have been further articulated by public critics such as Roger MacNamee, Renée DiResta, Dipayan Ghosh, U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, or even comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I will synthesize a number of their arguments and add my perspective.

Platforms are business models that create marketplaces to match different parties with complementary interests, relying on what economists call ‘indirect network effects.’ Dating sites, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, and operating systems such as Android and iOS are all different types of platforms. Social media platforms connect consumers with digital content creators and typically monetize their interactions through advertising revenue. Since platforms do not generally create their content, they contend that they are not responsible for what users produce and are thus exempt from the libel, defamation, and other laws and regulations that govern traditional media like newspapers and television. In other words, they are platforms for free speech and assume no responsibility for what their users communicate .

This claim is correct to the extent that they create little of their own content (this varies). It is incorrect, however, to claim that they do not exercise editorial control over the content. Traditional television and newspapers are what we call broadcast journalism, meaning that they provide the same content to a broad, general audience. Social media platforms, by contrast, are ‘narrowcasters.’ Given their ability to pinpoint who you are, their algorithms choose content exclusively for what they think you want to hear and see, making frequent, personalized editorial decisions based on your browsing behavior on their platforms, other websites (e.g. if you use Facebook or Google to login), and geolocation information taken from your cell phone.

Social media platforms are also what economists call ‘natural monopolies,’ though this does not mean that they are monopolies like utility companies providing universal services. Instead, all parties benefit from the increased aggregation of supply and demand, liquidity and lower search costs when activities are concentrated in a few, large platforms. For example, if you want to sell a piece of rare memorabilia, you are better off if all the potential buyers are on a single platform. A similar logic applies if you are buying, posting, or sharing content. As such, when platform businesses such as Facebook, Twitter or eBay first begin, fast growth is all-imperative in a winner-take-all competition. Explicit rules about what is or is not allowed on these platforms are implemented only when necessary, as they can constrain its expansion and are expensive to implement . Remember the early days of YouTube when they allowed users to post any type of music, TV show or film? Only after significant legal threats from the media industry did the online video streaming platform begin to impose restrictions on copyrighted material.

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A complicating factor is that platforms choose this content based upon maximizing user time (i.e. ‘stickiness’) on their site. There is an adage in the media world: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ This refers to the fact that sensationalist, violent, or other scandalous content provokes more emotions and simply sells more newspapers or advertising. Hence, there is an acknowledged tendency for social media to show emotionally explosive content that speaks to convictions concerning politics, religion, or other prickly topics. This leads users to share content within their networks in exchange for likes and additional shares as a currency of status and self-affirmation. Some have termed the hyper-personalization bias of the platform’s algorithms as ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers,’ and the fact that users are more likely to like and share the more polarizing topics has been called the ‘amplification effect.’

While it might be unfair to hold Facebook or Twitter fully responsible for the recent electoral results in the UK and the US, their effects on the rise of populism and fringe movements, as well as the divisive, tribalistic behavior we often see online, are a topic of serious concern for sociologists and political scientists. Diversity of opinion is certainly positive and has to be celebrated. But, when platforms like Facebook are not held responsible for the accuracy of the content they present, there is no incentive for them not to show you the most outrageous or fake. Excessive social polarization is undesirable as it erodes the democratic institutions that protect free speech and other basic rights. Without some basic consensus on the common objectives of social welfare, democracies weaken and become dysfunctional or corrupt . Just like a chemical company that has to abide by environmental regulations, the social cost associated with social media platforms should be controlled to mitigate its worse effects.  

The final concern about social media platforms is that, by collecting so much demographic and behavioral data from our online activities, they can create a very precise digital model of who we are with significant predictive accuracy. They then sell these profiles, our digital twins or avatars, to advertisers both in and outside their platforms. They do this with little explicit knowledge or consent from their users. Moreover, users have no rights over their meta-data. It is a competently asymmetric relationship; a Faustian bargain where, in exchange for carrying out searches, networking and taking advantage of geolocation services, we as users allow these platforms into the most intimate corners of lives with little understanding of how or which of our secrets they sell. This paradox will surely increase as the adoption of wearable technologies grows, and the boundaries between regulated healthcare and unregulated consumer sports sectors blur. Here, the need for public conversations about additional regulation will most certainly increase.

Most public regulation we know in the West emerged during the Great Depression, when poverty and social malaise spread like a virus and, as a result, new concepts of basic public health and social welfare emerged. Universal access to sanitation, clean water, electricity, telecommunications, education, and culture, lift everyone in society to a more prosperous life; if my neighbor is healthier, more sanitary, better educated, and economically secure, in all likelihood, so am I. The consequences of social media platforms that function on a quasi-monopolistic scale are just now beginning to be understood. They offer us many outstanding services that we could not imagine living without today. But, like many industries, there are undesirable consequences that work against the great social welfare. Serious conversations on how social media platforms should be regulated to minimize their social costs are critically needed .

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Economic View

The Economic Case for Regulating Social Media

The core business model of platforms like Facebook and Twitter poses a threat to society and requires retooling, an economist says.

By Robert H. Frank

Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter generate revenue by using detailed behavioral information to direct ads to individual users.

That sounds straightforward enough. But this bland description of their business model fails to convey even a hint of its profound threat to the nation’s political and social stability.

Rising concern about social media abuses has already prompted legislators in Congress to propose the breakup of some tech firms, along with other traditional antitrust measures. But the main hazard posed by these platforms is not aggressive pricing, abusive service or other ills often associated with monopoly. Instead, it is their contribution to the spread of misinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories.

Because the economic incentives of companies in digital markets differ so sharply from those of other businesses, traditional antitrust measures won’t curb those abuses.

Consider what basic economic theory tells us.

In the market for widgets beloved by economists (substitute your own imaginary item, if you like), producers expand output until the additional cost of the last widget produced is equal to what the last buyer is willing to pay for it. Stopping short of that level would leave cash on the table, since an additional widget could be sold at a price greater than its marginal cost. Exceeding that level would also be wasteful, since the last buyer would then value the purchase at less than its marginal cost.

The upshot is the economist’s celebrated efficiency criterion: Goods and services should be sold for the marginal cost of producing them.

But this criterion simply can’t be met by digital platforms, since the marginal cost of serving additional consumers is essentially zero. Because the initial costs of producing a platform’s content are substantial, and because any company’s first goal is to remain solvent, it cannot just give stuff away. Even so, when price exceeds marginal cost, competition relentlessly pressures rival publishers to cut prices — eventually all the way to zero. This, in a nutshell, is the publisher’s dilemma in the digital age.

It helps explain why published content has been migrating to digital aggregators like Facebook. These firms make money not by charging for access to content but by displaying it with finely targeted ads based on the specific types of things people have already chosen to view. If the conscious intent were to undermine social and political stability, this business model could hardly be a more effective weapon.

Merriam-Webster defines clickbait as “something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink, especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest.” The targeted-ad business model is clickbait on steroids.

The algorithms that choose individual-specific content are crafted to maximize the time people spend on a platform. As the developers concede, Facebook’s algorithms are addictive by design and exploit negative emotional triggers. Platform addiction drives earnings, and hate speech, lies and conspiracy theories reliably boost addiction.

Careful studies have shown that Facebook’s algorithms have increased political polarization significantly. Researchers have identified a small group of right-wing personalities — Dan Bongino prominent among them — whose influence on social media played an outsize role in promoting false beliefs about the 2020 presidential election. And witness testimony leaves little doubt that posts on a variety of social media platforms helped provoke the Jan. 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol.

Some people object to reining in social media on libertarian grounds. John Samples , vice president of the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, says, for example, that government has no business second-guessing people’s judgments about what to post or read on social media. That position would be easier to defend in a world where individual choices had no adverse impact on others. But negative spillover effects are in fact quite common.

When an accident blocks the southbound lanes of a freeway, for example, it also causes long delays in the northbound lanes, because many northbound drivers judge the scene worth the 10-second delay to slow down for a closer look. Yet the cumulative impact of those decisions may be several hours of additional delay for drivers behind them. If drivers could decide collectively, most would surely reject that trade-off. But drivers make such decisions individually, not collectively.

For parallel reasons, individual and collective incentives about what to post or read on social media often diverge sharply. There is simply no presumption that what spreads on these platforms best serves even the individual’s own narrow interests, much less those of society as a whole.

In short, the antitrust remedies under consideration in Congress and the courts won’t stem the abuses that flow from the targeted-ad business model. But a simpler step may hold greater promise: Platforms could be required to abandon that model in favor of one relying on subscriptions, whereby members gain access to content in return for a modest recurring fee.

For those willing to pay the fee, this model satisfies the economist’s efficiency criterion, since they can enjoy unlimited quantities of a platform’s offerings at a zero marginal charge. Major newspapers have done well under this model, which is also making inroads in book publishing. The subscription model greatly weakens the incentive to offer algorithmically driven addictive content provided by individuals, editorial boards or other sources.

But since platforms incur no additional costs when they make content available to new members, the subscription model isn’t fully efficient: Any positive fee would inevitably exclude at least some who would value access but not enough to pay the fee. More worrisome, those excluded would come disproportionately from low-income groups. Such objections might be addressed specifically — perhaps with a modest tax credit to offset subscription fees — or in a more general way, by making the social safety net more generous.

Adam Smith, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher widely considered the father of economics, is celebrated for his “ invisible hand ” theory, which describes conditions under which market incentives promote socially benign outcomes. Many of his most ardent admirers may view steps to constrain the behavior of social media platforms as regulatory overreach.

But Smith’s remarkable insight was actually more nuanced : Market forces often promote society’s welfare, but not always. Indeed, as he saw clearly, individual interests are often squarely at odds with collective aspirations, and in many such instances it is in society’s interest to intervene. The current information crisis is a case in point.

Proposals for regulating social media merit rigorous public scrutiny. But what recent events have demonstrated is that policymakers’ traditional hands-off posture is no longer defensible.

Robert H. Frank is an emeritus professor of economics at Cornell University. Follow him on Twitter: @econnaturalist

Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / Social Media / Should Social Media Be Regulated

Should Social Media Be Regulated

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Brief Overview of Persuasive Essay

A persuasive essay persuades the reader or audience to take a particular stance on an issue. It is used to present an opinion on any subject, and it typically takes the form of an academic essay. It includes evidence and facts supporting its arguments.

The writer must use facts and reliable sources to back up his or her claims.

It is also important that the essay should be well-structured. It should have clear arguments and a logical flow from one point to another.

Learn more about crafting perfect persuasive essays with the help of our detailed guide.

Persuasive Essay Examples About Social Media

Are you a student unsure how to write persuasive essays successfully? Well, never fear! 

We've got examples of some amazing persuasive essays about social media that will surely give you inspiration. Let’s take a look at a short persuasive essay example: 

Check these FREE downloadable samples of persuasive essays! 

Persuasive essay about social media on students

Persuasive essay about social media addiction

Persuasive Essay about Social Media Platforms are Danger to Our Privacy

Persuasive essay about social media beneficial or harmful

Persuasive essay about social media privacy

Persuasive essay on social media is bad for students

Examples of Argumentative Essay about Social Media

To help get your creative juices flowing, look at these example argumentative essays about social media below!

Argumentative essay about social media advantages and disadvantages

Argumentative essay about social media addiction

For more examples of persuasive essays, check out our blog on persuasive essay examples .

How Can You Write a Persuasive Essay About Social Media?      

A persuasive essay about social media can be an interesting and challenging task.

Understanding what makes a persuasive essay unique and how to craft arguments that effectively communicate your point of view is important. 

These are a few steps you should follow before writing an effective persuasive essay on social media.

Step 1: Decide Your Stance

First, you must decide on your stance regarding the issue at hand. Are you for or against the use of social media? Are you in support of social media?

After you decide your stance, move on to the research process.

Step 2: Conduct Due Research

Once you have established your position, you must research the topic and develop an argument that supports your stance. 

Make sure to include facts, statistics, and examples to back up your points.

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a structured persuasive essay outline before delving into detailed writing. This roadmap will help organize your thoughts, ensuring a logical flow of arguments. Outline your introduction, key points, counterarguments, and conclusion.

Step 4: Craft Your Introduction 

The introduction should provide context, state the thesis statement , and grab the reader's attention. It precedes deciding your stance and initiates the overall writing process.

Read this free PDF to learn more about crafting essays on social media!

Persuasive essay about social media introduction

Step 5: Write the Body

Organize your arguments logically in the body of the essay. Each paragraph should focus on a specific point, supported by research and addressing counterarguments. This follows the introduction and precedes maintaining a persuasive tone.

Step 6: Address All Counterarguments

It is important to anticipate potential counterarguments from those who oppose your stance. 

Take time to address these points directly and provide evidence for why your opinion is more valid.

Step 7: Maintain a Persuasive Tone

To maintain your audience's attention, it is important to write in a confident and persuasive tone throughout the essay. 

Use strong language that will make readers take notice of your words. 

Check out this video on persuasive writing tones and styles.

Step 8: Conclude Your Essay

Finally, end your essay with a memorable conclusion that will leave your audience with something to think about. 

With these important steps taken into account, you can create an effective persuasive essay about social media!

Step 9: Revise and Edit

After completing your initial draft, take time to revise and edit your essay. Ensure clarity, coherence, and the effective flow of arguments. This step follows the conclusion of your essay and precedes the final check for overall effectiveness.

Persuasive Essay About Social Media Writing Tips

Here are some additional writing tips to refine your persuasive essay on social media.

• Highlight Numbers: Use facts and numbers to show how important social media is.
• Tell Stories: Share real stories to help people connect with the impact of social media.
• Use Pictures: Add charts or pictures to make your essay more interesting and easy to understand.
• Answer Questions: Think about what people might disagree with and explain why your ideas are better.
• Talk About What's Right: Explain why it's important to use social media in a good and fair way.

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Social Media Persuasive Essay Topics

Take a look at these creative and enticing persuasive essay topics. Choose from one of them or get inspiration from these topics.

• Should social media platforms be held accountable for cyberbullying?
• Should age restrictions be stricter for social media access to protect younger users from its negative effects?
• Should social media companies be mandated to prioritize user privacy over targeted advertising?
• Should schools integrate mandatory education on the pitfalls of social media for students?
• Should governments regulate the amount of time users spend on social media to prevent addiction?
• Should social media influencers face stricter guidelines for promoting unrealistic body standards?
• Should there be more transparency about how algorithms on social media platforms amplify divisive content?
• Should employers be allowed to consider an applicant's social media profiles during the hiring process?
• Should there be penalties for social networking sites that propagate false information?
• Should there be a limit on the amount of personal data social media platforms can collect from users?

Check out some more interesting persuasive essay topics to get inspiration for your next essay.

Wrapping up, 

Learning how to write persuasive essays about social media matters in today's digital world is crucial whether you are a high school student or a college student. These examples guide us in exploring both the good and bad sides of social media's impact. 

We hope this persuasive blog on social media has given you a few new ideas to consider when persuading your audience.

But if you are struggling with your essay assignment do not hesitate to seek professional help. At CollegeEssay.org , our writing experts can help you get started on any type of essay. 

With our professional persuasive essay writing service , you can be confident that your paper will be written in utmost detail.

So don't wait any longer! Just ask us ' write my essay ' today and let us help you make the most of your writing experience!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some good persuasive essay topics.

Good persuasive essay topics can include topics related to social media, such as 

• whether or not it should be regulated more heavily,
• the impact of social media on society, 
• how social media has changed our daily lives.

How do you write an introduction for social media essay?

You should start by briefly explaining what the essay will cover and why it is important. 

You should also provide brief background information about the topic and what caused you to choose it for your essay.

What is a good title for a social media essay?

A good title for a social media essay could be "The Impact of Social Media on Society" or "Social Media: Regulation and Responsibility." 

These titles indicate the content that will be discussed in the essay while still being interesting and thought-provoking.

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• Social Media Essay

Essay on Social Media

Social media is the communal interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities. It has become the basic need and quality of human beings to be social. The spectacular developments in communications and innovative and astonishing entertainment have given access to information and the ability to provide a voice for people who would never have been heard. The current generation is fortunate enough to witness some of the most amazing technological developments ever in history. It has become the rage of this age. 

What are Some of the Most Widely used Social Media Platforms?

Simply put, let us understand the factors that have contributed to the popularity and widespread use of social media platforms in recent years. Many observers believe that the number of "active users" has something to do with the situation. This factor has a significant impact on the growth of the organization, its attractiveness, and its participation.

These applications serve as the building blocks for a large number of other applications as well. Currently, Facebook is the most popular social networking site on the planet, with more than 2.7 billion active monthly members worldwide. Each social media platform owned by the same company, including Facebook (the company's most popular forum), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, has more than 1 billion monthly active users.

In addition, as the number of people who use social media continues to grow, it becomes increasingly clear how important social media has become in today's society.

Monograph on Social Media Use - An Introduction

People always want to connect themselves with society in some or another way. In earlier days, the modes of communication were limited. People socialized with others in their tracks. Earlier, socializing was narrowed to visiting each other’s places, having big gatherings, meetings in clubs, parks, and other public areas.

Now the time has changed. People have minimized their social life because of hectic life and increase in geographical distance and economic concerns. With the arrival of technology, social networking websites and applications have heralded a revolution in the world. It has indeed brought people from all over the globe closer by creating, sharing, or exchanging information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. These social networking sites are based on web-based technologies and create highly interactive platforms. It has gained momentum globally because of its better features, access, frequency, immediacy, usability, and permanence. It has been recognized so widely, and its usage has increased so incredibly today that it has moved from desktop computers to laptops to mobile phones. The platform is undoubtedly easily obtainable and accessible.

Today, every person is addicted to social media, and that too at a glaring speed. Some important social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc., have provided us with the prospect to connect with people and foster better relationships with friends and acquaintances with whom we cannot meet personally and share the happenings of our lives. Some tools like YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc., have provided the platform to share pictures and videos with friends and relatives living in distant places.

B2B social, reviews, and travel sites in social media have made it easy and exciting for people to shop and discuss with friends and others about what they are buying. Some sites offer collective buying offers to give consumers a fun-filled shopping experience. 

Social Media and Its Significance

Every person's daily routine involves some kind of social media interaction. Anyone, anywhere, at any time, can connect with you through social media as long as you have access to the internet.

While everyone was confined to their homes, unable to speak with anybody other than family and friends, it is critical to communicate with friends and family during Covid-19 to avoid being isolated. The outbreak resulted in social media being an essential tool for individuals to make entertaining videos and engage in social media challenges and activities, which helped keep people busy during these challenging circumstances.

As a result of the quick rise and extension of digital marketing, social media has played an essential part in this expansion. It's also a fantastic resource for finding information on a wide variety of topics. People may learn a great deal and stay up to date with the newest news worldwide by utilizing this. But there is always a drawback to every good that comes with it, no matter how beneficial. As a consequence, the following are some of the most significant advantages and disadvantages of social media in today's fast-paced society.

Benefits of Social Media

Social media sites are erasing differences in age and class. It has assumed a different dimension altogether through interactive sharing. It has now become a medium of mass reach at a minimum cost. Today, one can benefit from social sharing to build a reputation and bring in career opportunities. 

They target a broad audience, making it a valuable and effective tool for society. 

 It reaches people even in remote areas, and the information is spread like fire. 

Distance is no more a limitation because of social media. You are constantly updated with the latest news and happenings in the society and environment through social media websites.

Sites and blogs like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more have become tools for people to connect across the globe. People can attend live talks or live sessions, or lectures happening anywhere in the world while staying at home. 

Teachers and professors can teach on different topics from remote places. 

You can now identify great possibilities for a job through multiple social media sites like LinkedIn, Google, Naukri, and job search. 

Social media enables companies to use these sites as a network to generate awareness about their product, promote their brand, and increase their sales. It saves the cost of marketing and advertising. 

These networking sites on social media provide a comprehensive platform for young aspiring artists to showcase their passion and skills.

Political leaders use the platform of social media for spreading social communication to mass. These days, the political candidates are also communicating with the voters through social media.

Nowadays, a person’s fame or popularity is determined by the number of links he has created with these social media sites. 

It is an excellent educational tool.

It has the potential to increase public awareness of a range of societal issues.

Due to the speed with which data is transmitted over the internet, consumers can stay current on the latest developments.

Social media can be used to disseminate information to the media.

Additionally, there are some social benefits, such as communicating with long-distance family and friends.

It has the potential to open up incredible career opportunities online.

We believe that social media has a lot of positive effects, but we also recognize that, like anything else, it has some negative ones. Keep reading to gather an idea on the same.

Disadvantages of Social Media

However, social media has caused addiction to users. Despite huge benefits, it has some unfavorable consequences.

Users of social media are becoming victims of fraudulent and online scams that seem to be genuine.

It opens up a possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch virus attacks.

The productivity of people is getting hampered due to extreme usage and indulgence in these social media sites.

Harmful and disrespectful comments and reviews from employees about the company hamper its image tremendously. 

Students, too, are exceedingly active on social media sites these days, limiting them from outdoor activities. 

Students indulge in disputes because of these social media, and sometimes school has to resolve the conflicts.

Some sites are used to express personal anger or dispute, due to which a lot of chaos and confusion is created.

Investigate whether it is possible to cheat on tests.

As a result, students' grades and performance have suffered.

Users are more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats such as hacking, data theft, spamming, and other similar crimes due to a lack of privacy.

Social media has both benefits and drawbacks. Using it productively can be a tool of immense help, but over usage can become a silent enemy. Thus, we as users have to learn to balance and not control ourselves by this technology.

FAQs on Social Media Essay

Q1. What do you Understand by Social Media?

Social media is the communal interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities.

Q2. How has Social Media benefited Society?

Social media has incredibly benefited society. It has erased the age and class barrier. Social media sites target a wide audience. People can connect with each other from any corner of the world. Distance is no more a limitation. Teachers and students are connecting through social media tools. People find jobs, shop and share reviews and discuss with others. It is a comprehensive platform for people to showcase their talents and passion.

Q3. What are the disadvantages of Social Media?

The disadvantages of social media are that youth is getting hooked to it inappropriately. People are falling into prey to fraudulent and illegal activities. Too much indulgence in social media is hampering the productivity of people. 

Q4. How has Social Media brought a Change in Human’s Lives?

In earlier days, humans did not have too many means of communication. This was the reason why they did not socialize much. Even if they did, their socialization was narrowed to meeting their own relatives or friends in a close circle. People could not explore much about what was happening around the globe. The job seekers were restricted to finding jobs through someone or a newspaper. Now, technology has brought a revolution in the lives of people. Distance is no more a constraint for communication. People can communicate with anyone from anywhere in the world. The entire information about what is happening across the globe is available at the touch of our fingertips. Job seekers have not only widened their horizon of finding jobs but also given interviews on social media platforms. Social media has made the lives of people much simpler, easier, and faster.

Q5. In what ways does social media influence our lives?

The emergence of social media has had a considerable influence on people's lives. Using social media in one's everyday life allows one to communicate, interact, and be sociable while also learning about current events, creating a variety of meals, educating oneself, traveling to any place, and taking advantage of many other perks.

Q6. Which social networking sites are the most well-known?

There are several social media platforms where you may utilize Youtube Messenger. These include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Whatsapp, and Pinterest.

Q7. Does social media have a role in our overall well-being?

Social media sites have the following roles in our overall well-being.

Social media addiction may cause physical and psychological harm to the person using it excessively, including eye strain, social disengagement, and disturbed sleep.

If you spend too much time fighting and disagreeing, this might harm your health in the long run.

In terms of emotional relationships, social media may be a great way to meet new people and keep in contact with individuals you already know. Building relationships with others is beneficial.

Social media is a veritable informational treasure trove when it comes to staying healthy. This has several benefits. Doubtful information might be just as damaging as not thoroughly investigating it.

Essay on Social Media for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on social media.

Social media is a tool that is becoming quite popular these days because of its user-friendly features. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more are giving people a chance to connect with each other across distances. In other words, the whole world is at our fingertips all thanks to social media. The youth is especially one of the most dominant users of social media. All this makes you wonder that something so powerful and with such a massive reach cannot be all good. Like how there are always two sides to a coin, the same goes for social media. Subsequently, different people have different opinions on this debatable topic. So, in this essay on Social Media, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Advantages of Social Media

When we look at the positive aspect of social media, we find numerous advantages. The most important being a great device for education . All the information one requires is just a click away. Students can educate themselves on various topics using social media.

Moreover, live lectures are now possible because of social media. You can attend a lecture happening in America while sitting in India.

Furthermore, as more and more people are distancing themselves from newspapers, they are depending on social media for news. You are always updated on the latest happenings of the world through it. A person becomes more socially aware of the issues of the world.

In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas.

Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free. You can get great opportunities for employment through social media too.

Another advantage definitely benefits companies who wish to promote their brands. Social media has become a hub for advertising and offers you great opportunities for connecting with the customer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Disadvantages of Social Media

Despite having such unique advantages, social media is considered to be one of the most harmful elements of society. If the use of social media is not monitored, it can lead to grave consequences.

Thus, the sharing on social media especially by children must be monitored at all times. Next up is the addition of social media which is quite common amongst the youth.

This addiction hampers with the academic performance of a student as they waste their time on social media instead of studying. Social media also creates communal rifts. Fake news is spread with the use of it, which poisons the mind of peace-loving citizens.

In short, surely social media has both advantages and disadvantages. But, it all depends on the user at the end. The youth must particularly create a balance between their academic performances, physical activities, and social media. Excess use of anything is harmful and the same thing applies to social media. Therefore, we must strive to live a satisfying life with the right balance.

FAQs on Social Media

Q.1 Is social media beneficial? If yes, then how?

A.1 Social media is quite beneficial. Social Media offers information, news, educational material, a platform for talented youth and brands.

Q.2 What is a disadvantage of Social Media?

A.2 Social media invades your privacy. It makes you addicted and causes health problems. It also results in cyberbullying and scams as well as communal hatred.

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81% of U.S. adults – versus 46% of teens – favor parental consent for minors to use social media

More than 40 states and the District of Columbia are suing Meta , the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, alleging its platforms purposefully use addictive features that harm children’s mental health.

Amid this news, U.S. adults and teens are more likely to support than oppose requiring parental consent for minors to create a social media account and requiring people to verify their age before using these platforms, according to a pair of new Pew Research Center surveys. But adults are far more supportive than teens of these measures, as well as limiting how much time minors can spend on social media.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand American adults’ and teens’ views on ways social media companies could limit minors’ use of their platforms. This analysis uses data from two separate surveys, allowing us to compare the views of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 with U.S. adults ages 18 and older.

For the analysis of teens, the Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents who were a part of its KnowledgePanel , a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey is weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income and other categories. This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

For the separate analysis of adults, the Center surveyed 8,842 U.S. adults from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, 2023. Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). This online survey panel is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race and ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the  questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

Here’s a closer look at the findings from the two new surveys – one of adults and one of teens – which we conducted in late September through October, before the states’ lawsuit against Meta.

Adults’ views on social media policies aimed at minors

Most U.S. adults (81%) say they support social media companies requiring parental consent for minors to create a social media account. About seven-in-ten favor requiring people to verify their age before using social media sites (71%) and setting limits on how much time minors can spend on these platforms (69%). Only about one-in-ten adults oppose each of these three measures.

Still, some adults are uncertain. For example, roughly one-in-five adults are unsure if companies should require age verification (18%) or set time limits for minors (17%).

Views among adults by age, party and parental status

Many social media companies do not allow those under 13 to use their sites. Still, there’s a growing movement to develop stricter age verification measures , such as requiring users to provide government-issued identification. Legislators have pushed for mandatory parental consent and time restrictions for those under 18, arguing this will help parents better monitor what their children do on social media.

Our survey finds there is strong bipartisan support for these types of policies. Clear majorities of Republicans and Democrats – including independents who lean to either party – support parental consent, time limits for minors and age verification.

Majorities of adults across age groups support social media companies introducing these measures. But young adults are less supportive than their older counterparts. For example, 67% of those ages 18 to 29 say social media sites should require parental consent for minors to create an account, but this share rises to 84% among those ages 30 and older.

Additionally, majorities of parents and those without children back each of these measures, though support is somewhat higher among parents.

Teens’ views on social media policies for minors

Building on the Center’s previous studies of youth and social media, we asked U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 about their views on these measures.

Teens are more likely to support than oppose social media companies requiring parental consent for minors to create an account (46% vs. 25%). There’s even more support for requiring people to verify their age before using these sites – 56% of teens favor this, while 16% oppose it.

But their views are more divided when it comes to setting limits on how long minors can use these sites. Similar shares of teens support and oppose this (34% vs. 36%).

For each of these policies, about three-in-ten teens report being unsure if this is something social media companies should do.

How adults’ and teens’ views on social media policies differ

Adults are considerably more supportive of all three measures we asked about than are teens.

While 81% of U.S. adults support social media companies requiring parental consent for minors to create an account, that share drops to 46% among U.S. teens.

Adults are also about twice as likely as teens to support setting limits on how much time minors can spend on social media sites (69% vs. 34%).

But majorities of adults and teens alike support requiring people to verify their age before using social media sites. But on this, too, adults are more supportive than teens (71% vs. 56%).

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Social Media
• Technology Policy Issues
• Teens & Tech

Monica Anderson is a director of research at Pew Research Center .

Michelle Faverio is a research analyst focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center .

Social Media Fact Sheet

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

The new social media etiquette: Post your politics, not your kids

From Facebook to TikTok, social media norms are always shifting. These tips can help you post properly.

There are no official rules for how to conduct yourself online.

In some ways, that’s great. You do you and deal with the consequences, if any arise.

But sometimes the internet’s anything-goes atmosphere can lead you into a mess you could have avoided. We can help. Here are nine maxims to live by as you post and chat online. Got social media etiquette rules (or wishes) of your own? Drop us a line .

Don’t overshare your kids

Give the children in your life the same agency you’d afford an adult.

The norms around sharing kid-related content online have shifted. We now know that once something is on the internet, it can be impossible to remove it, and that oversharing kids can be a form of exploitation or expose them to predators.

If you’re going to share videos, photos or personal stories, get consent each time, starting at a young age. Default to posting privately instead of publicly, and use ephemeral options that are less likely to follow them around forever such as Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours. If a child, teen or even young adult in your family asks you to remove content you’ve posted about them in the past, delete it without argument. Finally, if you do feel the need to post publicly, block or blur the child’s face so they have privacy.

Maintain a distinction between your child’s life and your own. They might look back with fondness at the slivers of their childhood you shared with your followers — or they could feel embarrassed or exploited. Some so-called child influencers are lobbying for stronger legal protection for minors whose families make money from social media. A New York Times investigation found that accounts showing young girls in bathing suits and leotards had large followings of adult men.

Only post what’s yours to share

Don’t post someone’s newborn baby, wedding photo or divorce news before they can. Private moments and conversations should stay private unless the other person is okay with you sharing — and yes, this includes texts and DMs. “May I post this?” is your new mantra, even if it’s your spouse, child or grandchild. When it comes to big life events, defer to the subject of your post. If you go to a wedding, ask the couple when and if they want photos posted online. If you take a picture where you look great and your friend less so, a quick “may I post?” goes a long way.

The same courtesy applies to strangers. A person existing in public doesn’t constitute permission to post them. Nobody wants to step out the door worrying someone they don’t know could blast their face to an online following. Sometimes when people behave badly, sharing some evidence can lead to consequences and accountability. That’s a tough situation, and it’s worth consulting someone you trust before you share a damning video or DM publicly.

Stay on topic in the comments

Public comments on social media posts are not the place to have a two-way conversation. Got a funny quip or compliment for the creator? Go for it. But don’t try to strike up a conversation, tell them to call you back or ask if they’re on Ozempic . Save it for a text, direct message or in-person interaction.

Post about your politics

We’re done with the “no politics at the dinner table” approach to social media. If people avoid every topic that could ruffle feathers — politics, religion, money, etc. — we consign social media to reflect only the easy, shallow parts of being human.

Let your friends and family know where you stand, not just on national politics, but on local and international issues as well. Do research and share your thoughts in a respectful manner. Welcome corrections and conflicting opinions. Over time, you’ll become better versed.

That said, remember that posting about a problem is not the same as doing something about it. Make sure your online opinions make their way to the real world, and put your time and money behind the causes you care about most.

Fact-check images and videos

If you do decide to share posts to back up your views, do it responsibly. Improvements to AI-generated images and video can make it tough to tell the real from the fake . Often, all it takes are a few seconds of critical thinking to figure out that the picture of a police dog clad in an American flag saving a baby from a rushing river isn’t bona fide.

There are a few tricks for spotting AI-generated content — a computerized sheen, too many fingers. Better questions, perhaps, are “Does this seem realistic?” or “Is this designed to provoke a strong reaction?”

If a photo or video seems too good, too cute or too horrible to be true, it could be fake or misinformation . Slow down, check the original source and seek out additional context.

Don’t overstep with influencers

Content creators choose to share their lives or work with the world, but they are not actually your friend (usually). They also aren’t receptacles for your emotions or opinions. These nouveau celebrities don’t owe you much of anything, so there’s no sense in getting mean or demanding. If a creator says or does something you dislike, you can respond respectfully, stop following or block them. Feel free to disagree with them about political or other issues if they choose to discuss them, but it’s rude to send comments or messages with unsolicited criticism or advice — say about parenting choices or that person’s appearance.

@justin_danger_nunley Can we have a talk? ♬ original sound - Justin Danger Nunley

Opt for deletion and ephemerality

Even as we get used to leaving traces of our lives online, an unflattering “digital footprint” can still cause problems. Colleges and employers check social media accounts for whatever they consider to be red flags. You can save yourself a headache by paring down the digital breadcrumbs you leave behind. Gen Z has already started moving in this direction, with some keeping their grids on Instagram completely blank .

On Facebook, you can manually delete posts or limit their audience. Instagram lets you hide posts without deleting them by choosing “archive.” You can also post to stories instead of the main feed, as stories disappear after a day. For X, you can sign up for a service such as TweetDelete , which automatically deletes posts after a certain period of time. Threads head Adam Mosseri has said the app may introduce a built-in auto-delete feature.

Read the room

The internet has made us more aware of tragedies at home and across the globe, and the suffering can seem endless. You don’t need to turn your profiles into news channels, but get a sense of the temperature before you post. A celebratory photo in the midst of a major disaster, especially one that’s affecting your friends, can leave a bad taste. Also consider what’s going on in your inner circle when sharing news, like announcing a pregnancy when someone you’re close to is dealing with infertility.

Match your post to the platform

LinkedIn is for career updates. Facebook is for posting in groups, selling used bookshelves or sharing major life updates. Instagram is for beautiful scenery and vibes. X is for stream-of-consciousness commentary and arguing. TikTok is for strangers. Make sure your posts fit the platform you’re on. (The emotional essays on LinkedIn are weird, sorry .)

If you’re tired of sharing updates with your whole audience — including your grandma and that one guy you dated when you were 19 — you may benefit from a smaller platform. Instagram lets you build a “Close Friends” list and share directly with those users. A Discord chatroom, Substack newsletter or “finsta” (anonymous Instagram account) may be a better home for your musings and confessions than a public channel.

Help Desk: Making tech work for you

Help Desk is a destination built for readers looking to better understand and take control of the technology used in everyday life.

Take control: Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter to get straight talk and advice on how to make your tech a force for good.

Tech tips to make your life easier: 10 tips and tricks to customize iOS 16 | 5 tips to make your gadget batteries last longer | How to get back control of a hacked social media account | How to avoid falling for and spreading misinformation online

Data and Privacy: A guide to every privacy setting you should change now . We have gone through the settings for the most popular (and problematic) services to give you recommendations. Google | Amazon | Facebook | Venmo | Apple | Android

Ask a question: Send the Help Desk your personal technology questions .

2 Minute Speech On Regulating The Use Of Social Media In English

Good morning to everyone in this room. I would like to thank the principal, the teachers, and my dear friends for allowing me to speak to you today about the regulation of the use of social media. A discussion over how social media platforms should be regulated is necessary due to their effects on human behavior and society.

There are ethical and privacy issues due to big digital corporations imposing unreasonable terms and conditions on Indian customers, and those under the age of 18 are most at risk for being victims of cybercrimes involving data breaches. 

Social media algorithms also support social division by isolating users from alternative viewpoints and creating “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles”. This is bad because it weakens the democratic structures that uphold fundamental rights like free expression.

Additionally, fake news, financial fraud, threats to national security, abuses of human rights, online abuse and defamation, denial of agency, and the loss of freedom of thought have all resulted as a result of this.

Controlling social media might be damaging to free speech, monopolies, competition, and the values of an open and accessible Internet. Moreover, it goes against the idea of self-regulation by allowing an inter ministerial committee of government employees to act as an appeals body for any self-regulatory activity.

Moreover, censorship might result from public control of content moderation, which would do much more “unimaginable harm to a democratic polity.” Thank you. 

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The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums

This essay about the intersection of state and federal powers in the context of the Commerce Clause, using the example of Illinois’s online sales tax legislation. It explores how the clause’s application to e-commerce taxation highlights the delicate balance between state autonomy and federal authority. The essay underscores the evolving challenges of regulating interstate commerce in the digital age and the need for nuanced interpretation to reconcile competing interests while ensuring the smooth functioning of the national economy.

How it works

In the intricate tapestry of American governance, few constitutional provisions wield as much influence as the Commerce Clause. Nestled within Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, this clause grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Yet, its practical application often proves to be a labyrinthine journey through legal interpretations and real-world implications. To unravel its complexities, let us embark on an exploration of a fascinating example that sheds light on the Commerce Clause’s role in contemporary governance.

Picture a bustling metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi River, where the rhythms of commerce pulse through its streets. Here, in the heartland of America, lies a pivotal battleground where state and federal powers collide: the regulation of online sales taxation. With the rise of e-commerce, states grapple with the challenge of collecting sales taxes from online retailers operating beyond their borders. Enter the Commerce Clause, a constitutional compass guiding policymakers through the thicket of conflicting interests.

The scenario unfolds as follows: the state of Illinois, facing budgetary pressures exacerbated by declining brick-and-mortar retail sales, enacts legislation requiring all online retailers with a certain threshold of sales within the state to collect and remit sales taxes. However, this bold move triggers a legal skirmish with e-commerce giants and their allies in Congress, who argue that Illinois’s law imposes an undue burden on interstate commerce.

At the heart of the dispute lies the tension between state sovereignty and federal supremacy enshrined in the Commerce Clause. While states assert their authority to regulate commerce within their borders, they must tread cautiously to avoid encroaching upon Congress’s exclusive jurisdiction over interstate commerce. Thus, the Illinois online sales tax saga becomes a crucible where competing constitutional principles clash.

In adjudicating this dispute, courts grapple with the complexities of modern commerce and the framers’ intent behind the Commerce Clause. While the clause was originally conceived to prevent states from erecting barriers to trade, its application to the digital economy presents novel challenges. How can states assert their taxing authority without impeding the free flow of goods and services across state lines?

The resolution of the Illinois online sales tax saga hinges on a delicate balancing act between state autonomy and federal authority. Courts must weigh the legitimate interests of states in generating revenue and leveling the playing field for local businesses against the need for a uniform national framework for e-commerce taxation. This requires a nuanced interpretation of the Commerce Clause that accommodates state initiatives while preserving the integrity of interstate commerce.

In rendering their verdict, the judiciary invokes the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, which prohibits states from unduly burdening interstate commerce. Yet, they recognize the need for flexibility in applying this doctrine to the digital economy, where traditional notions of jurisdiction are blurred. Thus, the Illinois online sales tax law is upheld, albeit with certain limitations to mitigate its impact on interstate commerce.

The outcome of the Illinois online sales tax saga serves as a testament to the resilience of the Commerce Clause in navigating the complexities of modern governance. As technology continues to reshape the economic landscape, the clause remains a vital tool for balancing competing interests and ensuring the smooth functioning of interstate commerce. By embracing innovation while upholding constitutional principles, policymakers can chart a course towards a more equitable and prosperous future for all Americans.

In conclusion, the Illinois online sales tax saga offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolving role of the Commerce Clause in the digital age. Through careful deliberation and judicious interpretation, courts navigate the murky waters of interstate commerce, safeguarding both state autonomy and federal authority. As we venture further into the digital frontier, the Commerce Clause will continue to serve as a guiding star, illuminating the path towards a more perfect union.

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The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums. (2024, May 28). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/

"The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums." PapersOwl.com , 28 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/ [Accessed: 29 May. 2024]

"The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums." PapersOwl.com, May 28, 2024. Accessed May 29, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/

"The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums," PapersOwl.com , 28-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/. [Accessed: 29-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Interstate Quandary: Navigating Commerce Clause Conundrums . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-interstate-quandary-navigating-commerce-clause-conundrums/ [Accessed: 29-May-2024]

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