Social media news is about to get more dangerous
According to a recent report from The Washington Post, the Biden administration has stopped warning social media companies about possible foreign meddling on their platforms, which means the government is starting to treat those platforms like what they are: publishers. It’s a logical move, but one that accelerates national security threats.
Foreign misinformation is a serious problem and a real threat to democracy. According to a 2018 bipartisan Senate report, Russia flooded every major social media platform with disinformation during the 2016 election season, and may have swayed the outcome. To state the obvious: American elections should be decided by informed American voters, not misinformed voters or Russian bots.
By stepping back from efforts to cooperate with these platforms, the government isn’t saying the project isn’t important, it’s saying regulating speech is not its job. And, it must be acknowledged, it’s responding to a crush of lawsuits by Republicans claiming government censorship of conservative views. That campaign has extended beyond the federal national security apparatus to public health agencies and even universities. Counterproductively, it has also encompassed government policies censoring some social media companies, showing that those efforts aren’t really about free and open debate so much as they are about promoting one party’s viewpoint.
Regardless of motive, the lawsuits have worked. This summer, a federal judge ruled the executive branch can’t meet with tech platforms about removing falsehoods from their sites. That decision, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, included exemptions for national security threats, especially election interference. But now even that has apparently stopped.
There are other concerns here, as well. The feds have long worked with social media companies to combat criminal activity, including child sexual abuse and terrorism. It’s not clear whether the recent changes will affect those efforts.
The upshot of all this is easy to predict. The tasks of fact-checking and vetting the sources of information will fall to the platforms themselves, and we have little confidence they’ll do it well. Content published on social media platforms is about to become even less trustworthy and more perilous than before.
The regulatory system for internet platforms, governed by the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 and popularly referred to as Section 230, has never been sustainable. It allows social media companies to operate without responsibility or accountability. But publishers must answer for what they publish, whether they do it with professional journalists or amateur influencers.
Social media news is about to get more dangerous. Hopefully, that’s the first step toward it becoming more accountable.
— The Dallas Morning News