The Case For Social Media To Be Closely Regulated Is Clear

Context: There exists a stronger case for new thinking and stringent regulation of social media.

Major concerns in social media regulatory regime

• Lack of consistency in editorial moderations: The kind of editorial moderation which these internet giants are increasingly resorting to opens room for subjective and iffy calls.
  • For e.g. Twitter’s recent deletion of a post by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari warning rebels about a forceful state response.
  • Buhari’s tweet was interpreted by some as a genocide threat against an ethnic group, but others viewed it as the President trying to enforce the writ of the state over a lawless territory.
• Under pressure from governments and local authorities: In many countries, Facebook and Twitter deal with constant threats of expulsion if they do not obey local governmental requirements to remove incendiary content.
• Blatant misuse of the platforms: To instigate ethnic riots or terror attacks through rumour-mongering, inflammatory, or fake comments and videos.
  • China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats and media mouthpieces, which threaten all-out war against foreign adversaries and camouflage the ugly truth about genocide in Tibet and Xin- jiang, have a free run to do propaganda on Facebook and Twitter.
• Political Interference:
  • Though the veracity of the claims and counter-claims by the two parties in the recent “manipulated media” case about the authenticity of an alleged ‘toolkit’ for political propaganda had not yet been determined, Twitter’s staff jumped the gun and labelled the tweets as fake.
  • This power to defy or go overboard the sovereign states is based on the fact that their ownership is narrowly concentrated (no accountability), and they are over-globalized.
  • The amount of consumer information these transnational corporations have accumulated is truly staggering, ‘Big Data’ megaliths are now monopolies and practically indispensable.

Way Forward:

• Need for a multi-lateral regime: Piecemeal tightening of regulations at the national level is insufficient because the same types of disputes and contentious trends in social media are cropping up worldwide.
  • A broad-based international governing mechanism is needed to ensure consistency in content-related decisions and to handle appeals on ‘de-platforming and post deletion.