CONTENT MODERATION
Social media firms level to the promise of synthetic intelligence to average content material and supply security on their platforms, however AI just isn’t a silver bullet for managing human habits. Communities adapt shortly to AI moderation, augmenting banned phrases with purposeful misspellings and creating backup accounts to stop getting kicked off a platform.
Human content material moderation can be problematic, given social media firms’ enterprise fashions and practices. Since 2022, social media firms have carried out large layoffs that struck on the coronary heart of their belief and security operations and weakened content material moderation throughout the business.
Congress will want onerous knowledge from the social media firms – knowledge the businesses haven’t offered so far – to evaluate the suitable ratio of moderators to customers.
THE WAY FORWARD
In well being care, professionals have an obligation to warn in the event that they consider one thing harmful would possibly occur. When these uncomfortable truths floor in company analysis, little is completed to tell the general public of threats to security. Congress may mandate reporting when inside research reveal damaging outcomes.
Serving to teenagers at this time would require social media firms to spend money on human content material moderation and significant age verification. However even that isn’t prone to repair the issue. The problem is dealing with the fact that social media because it exists at this time thrives on having legions of younger customers spending important time in environments that put them in danger. These risks for younger customers are baked into the design of latest social media, which requires a lot clearer statutes about who polices social media and when intervention is required.
One of many motives for tech firms to not section their person base by age, which might higher shield kids, is how it will have an effect on promoting income. Congress has restricted instruments accessible to enact change, comparable to imposing legal guidelines about promoting transparency, together with “know your buyer” guidelines. Particularly as AI accelerates focused advertising and marketing, social media firms are going to proceed making it straightforward for advertisers to succeed in customers of any age. But when advertisers knew what quantity of adverts had been seen by kids, quite than adults, they might suppose twice about the place they place adverts sooner or later.
Regardless of a lot of high-profile hearings on the harms of social media, Congress has not but handed laws to guard kids or make social media platforms responsible for the content material printed on their platforms. However with so many younger individuals on-line post-pandemic, it’s as much as Congress to implement guardrails that in the end put privateness and neighborhood security on the heart of social media design.
Joan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Rising Media Research, Boston College. Sara Parker is Analysis Analyst on the Media Ecosystem Observatory, McGill College. This commentary first appeared in The Dialog.
