It looks like the government in the United States is already moving to regulate Facebook and its associated properties in light of a recent whistleblower testimony that outlined some alleged practices by the company.
And now we have legislators from California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois forwarding a bill that would rein in Zuckerberg and company according to some of the recommendations given by whistleblower Francis Haugen in her testimony.
As The Verge reports, the bill would basically target “algorithms” that make it profitable to promote questionable content. To do this, it would strip Facebook’s news feed feature of protections granted it by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This section protects services like Facebook from a lawsuit because of content that its users or third parties post.
The change seems to be aimed at either altering how social media recommends content or doing away with directed posts altogether. Some of the questionable content that has come under fire include content related to bullying, self-harm, and anorexia as well as social issues such as disinformation campaigns of various types.
To be fair, Facebook and its related services like Instagram are in the middle of an internal reform campaign that we have covered in multiple posts right here. Also, it’s not just the United States that is looking into how to regulate social media, but other places like the European Union as well.
We’ve witnessed a slew of changes on Instagram in particular. The public also convinced Facebook to drop its planned app targeted at kids.
Yet, concerns like copyright infringement and the like on Instagram, issues near and dear to our hearts as well, are still not really being addressed effectively.
What do you think will happen with regards to government regulation of Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms? Let us know in the comments below.
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1 Comment
It’s clear that FB will blame regulation when users accuse FB of censorship. The terrible thing is that they’ve had a free hand to moderate people’s comments and views based on FBs own Internal reviews. Such a shame. FB showed so much promise. Now it is just another propaganda tool in the hands of elites and ruling class. Such an antisocial platformshould be some shutdown. Plus to avoid future FB esque developments, Democracy needs to legislate in close to reaL time.