Spain joins nations imposing limits on social media

It’s the sound of another shoe dropping. There are likely to be many, many more.

Australia was the first, bringing in legislation to ban anyone under 16 from using social media, and requiring social media companies to exclude anyone under that age.

Denmark has banned access to social media for people under the age of 15 (13, with parental permission). France has also required age verification for social media sites, setting the age at 15 as well — and French authorities reportedly raided the French offices of Elon Musk’s X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into spreading child pornography.

Now, Spain has gone a step further.

Also on Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced plans for sweeping new laws to combat social media abuses — including a plan to make social media executives and companies legally responsible for the content posted on their sites, and making the manipulation of social media algorithms a crime.

“Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored, and crime is endured, where disinformation is worth more than truth, and half of users suffer hate speech,” Sanchez said in a speech at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “A failed state in which algorithms distort the public conversation and our data and image are defied and sold.”

Sanchez added: “Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone: a space of addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, and violence. We will no longer accept that. We will protect them from the digital wild west.”

Here, in Sanchez’s own words, are the steps the Spanish government is taking — and taking quickly.

“Starting next week, my government will implement the following actions. First, we will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for many infringements taking place on their sites.

“This means that CEOs of these techno platforms will face criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content.

“Second, we will turn algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content into a new criminal offence. This information doesn’t appear by itself. It is created, promoted, and spread by certain actors. First, we will go after them as well as after the platforms whose algorithms amplify their disinformation for profit. No more hiding behind code. No more pretending that technology is neutral.

“Third, we will implement a hate and polarization footprint, a system to track, quantify, and expose how digital platforms fuel, division, and amplify hate. For too long, hate has been treated as invisible and untraceable. But we will change that, developing a tool that will provide the basis for undertaking future penalties. Because spreading hate must come at a cost. First, a legal cost, of course, a financial cost, and a moral cost that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.

“Fourth, Spain will ban access to social media for minors under the age of 16. Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems, not just check boxes, but real barriers that work.”

It’s more than about time.

For years, internet sites have been able to publish false information with impunity, able to bypass the legal responsibility that every other publisher has to carry while simultaneously wrapping themselves in bogus claims of furthering free speech.

The bile and venom that has been their algorithmic stock in trade — rage gets more engagement than pleasant conversation, and engagement sells ads — is warping society, and endangering our children’s safety and mental health.

Make social media companies legally responsible for the garbage they happily and profitably spread, and the spreading will end in a hurry.