Impose rules on social media firms from the outside

Opinion

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This article was published 02/11/2024 (339 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The battle to make social media giants accountable for what their platforms host goes on.

Two Canadian families have joined a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Country Superior Court earlier this month. Among them is the family of Amanda Todd, a British Columbia teenager who died by suicide in 2012 at the age of 15, after a prolonged period of online bullying and extortion.

The 11 families are arguing that children suffer physically and mentally as a result of what they encounter on social media. The suit names Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Snapchat, Bytedance (TikTok’s owner), Discord and Google (YouTube).

It has been evident for years that prolonged social media exposure has a deleterious effect on children and adults alike, but young people seem to be affected in ways specifically dangerous to their own long-term happiness and well-being. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said social media was “an important contributor” to a mental-health crisis among young people.

Small wonder why. Social media allows for constant communication with anyone in the world who is also using a given platform, which means children and teens using social media cannot expect a reprieve from, say, a bully who wants to harass them long after school is done for the day.

On top of that, there is a never-ending deluge of disinformation, unhealthy beauty standards, performative positivity by influencers and a host of other niche online behaviours that have the effect of making one feel inadequate about oneself — to say nothing of the endless spew of hatred and prejudice that has been part of the internet since it first went live to the public.

It remains to be seen if the families will be successful in their suit, but all signs point to not much ultimately changing. The leadership of social media platforms, be it Facebook or TikTok, has been put under the microscope before, including at hearings before the U.S. Congress, but things continue apace, with the usual argument being there are protocols in place for removing and censoring problematic content, or protecting youth from seeing it.

And yet, the problem doesn’t seem to be going away.

The reality is, it’s unlikely there could possibly be enough moderators to keep a lid on the sheer volume of bad content being pumped out via social media, be it vicious political rhetoric, racist content, sexual-abuse imagery or just terrible health and wellness advice. It is a defensible position for social media giants to say, “We do our best, but there’s only so much we can do.”

But it is also defensible for the rest of us to say: “This is your shop; we’re patronizing your shop, so keep the bad stuff out.”

Around and around it goes. Hauling up CEOs to browbeat them about poor moderation has been tried, and it’s failed. In cases such as Elon Musk’s X platform, its owner is plainspoken about his desire not to clamp down on disinformation or content that is just plain appalling.

Legislation, such as the federal Liberals’ proposed Online Harms Act, which lays out some initiatives to protect youth and punish online abuses, may be the only practical solution.

Other countries, such as Germany and Australia, have laws in place now that demand accountability from social media companies, financially penalizing them for violations.

The governments of the world, surely, have better things to do than becoming social media moderators. But sadly, the risks posed to youth online are real and must be addressed, and no one else seems to be interested in doing it.