Social Media Platforms: Competitions, Compromises, and Potential Solutions.

Graphic by Today Testing (For derivative), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Tensions have continued to rise as lawmakers continually fail to find an agreeable direction to take on platform regulation. This has ranged from a general concern with the spread of disinformation via social media platforms to calls for the repeal of section 230 by Republicans like Ted Cruz. Nevertheless, there is a consensus in public opinion that there are some serious problems in how social media platforms operate. For better or worse, there does not appear to be a clear consensus as to reasons why there is a problem and what steps should be taken. In a previous article, I highlighted how an emphasis on Corporate Social Responsibility could lead to fruitful changes. Unfortunately, much of that case was dependent on a competitive field of social networks being possible. In this article, I will examine how social media is compromised by a lack of competition and potential solutions to watch for in future anti-trust cases.

Social Media as a Public Good

The justification for further regulation of platforms comes with the consideration of social media platforms as a public good. It is difficult to discount this in as complicated a time as the pandemic. With families and friends so distantly spread, we become increasingly dependent on online mediums for staying connected with loved ones. While a phone call or video conference help bridge this gap, the communal like environment that is achievable with social media platforms remains the cornerstone for human connection in our increasingly online world.

Social media as a public good is usually expressed in the form of the town square analogy. The town square analogy aims to liken online spaces to the way a town square would function. This is accurate in the sense of how public opinion is expressed and markets go about their business similarly. To this degree, we may consider it in some sense a public good. There are, however, critical differences that deserve attention. One of these differences is the sheer size of public spaces in an online setting. What is public is not merely locally public per se but virally public available to any span of the millions if not billions of users that occupy online settings.

What has changed is not so much the general function, but the magnitude by which these activities take place. Along with an increasingly complex network of relations, there are new and substantive forms of information sharing and directing that levees the user more at the mercy of the algorithm than the nuanced flow of conversation.

This is not to say that there ought not to be any form of regulation of social media platforms with how they go about their forms of moderation, only that there should be a significant degree of caution when treading these waters.

How can a Corporation own a user’s data?

There has been a lot of discussion as to data protection in Facebook’s statements to congress. This is understandable given the data breach scandal that plagued Facebook’s security reputation. A question here that is too infrequently asked is in what way do we own that data? It is, in fact, the user’s data but to what level ought users own their data independently of the media platform? Our connections and interests are vital to our user profile and necessary for Facebook algorithms to function as they do. But should Facebook own these connections?

If you want to simply jump ship and join another platform, currently you have to start building those connections from scratch. This impedes much of the potential motivations to jump platforms as it appears at some level that one is abandoning a community as opposed to the efficient norms of a platform.

Facebook now holds a considerable portion of the social media market, notably buying out Instagram and Whatsapp in 2012 and 2014 respectfully. Currently, Facebook is facing an antitrust lawsuit over the monopolization of the market. Thus far, the case defense appears to be building up around the need for them to protect user data through end-to-end data encryption. End-to-end data encryption would basically rule out accessibility by any third-party platforms. Would this be secure? Yes, but indirectly this would monopolize the user base primarily because it would be very difficult to jump platforms with this degree of closure within their system. Facebook seems to treat this as a necessity to secure user privacy.

As this article suggests, there is justification for breaking up big tech for the sake of competition. The civil antitrust case against AT&T in 1974 led to users being able to keep their telecommunications identity if they choose to jump to a different provider. It would seem prudent to apply the same logic to social media platforms for the sake of competition.

Imagine owning your network connections independent of your social media platforms. It would be like keeping your number and leaving your provider. You could simply jump ship if you are unhappy with how content is being moderated. This, of course, would not address the concerns about the best way to go about content moderation but it would at least set up a market that would situate the demands of the user base in a more competitive relationship to platform designers.

Practically, I do not have the capacity to articulate exactly how this would play about so take with a grain of salt. Potentially, with the rise of new verification requirements, such a system could come to fruition. Something that identifies a user independently of Corporate data ownership.

Say Goodbye to Anonymity

With this, though, we should expect the anonymity of social media to also fall away soon. There is a certain safety in remaining anonymous in online settings but this is partly because bad actors make instrumental use of this luxury either through media bots and scams. This also has no easy fix and has been the center point of much of Facebook’s efforts for improving user experience and protection notably taking down 4.5 billion fake accounts in the first 9 months of 2020.

I think this would be a good and prudent change. If we desire online communities to be more human, it is easy to understand how anonymity potentially stands in the way of that sort of integrity. To what degree is mass misinformation spread primarily through anonymity? It would certainly still exist but we can at least cut out various forms of misinformation by making it more difficult for bad actors to pursue malicious activity under the curtain of anonymity. These answers can be known if some platforms implement more rigorous account verification processes.

Make Competition, not Echo Chambers

One justified concern is continued intensification of echo chambers. As we saw with Parler, users flocked to the platform for more or less political reasons. This should make perfect sense as to how a platform moderates is in essence a model of governance and the preferences for how one would prefer their platform to be moderated is political. A decentralization of moderation may be a good thing, though, forcing an equilibrium based on user preference.

Various new platforms will have their faults but this should not be a reason to keep those platforms from being established. As each new ‘town square’ begins to form we can see its problems independently from just some singular platform. Twitter problems are not Facebook problems are not Parler problems, they are all just under a very similar theme.

Bills like section 230 were designed to allow for this sort of diversification not directly inhibit it. If Republicans want to repeal section 230 and continue to emphasize their interest in protecting free-market principles there needs to be some form of legislation offered that would do so. Entrepreneurs need section 230 to protect them from a legal onslaught. That being said, I am not a lawyer.

Conclusion

There are legitimate public goods to preserve in the context of social media platforms. Legislation allowing for competing platforms may be conducive to this public good in general.  As I have summarized, steps towards diversification will allow for more data as to what does and does not work in moderation. We will have the ability to identify what key aspects of different models of moderation compose an online community-oriented towards human flourishing. There are a lot of complicated problems concerning big tech and opening the door to more variety may allow for more human over technocratic solutions.