Why Social Media Platform Owners Must Protect Every Users Rights
Social media has become a go-to platform for interaction, engagement and information sharing. Social media platform owners like Elon Musk boasted that social media platforms are now better than traditional media in gathering and generating information as well as in promoting accountability. This is not the main thrust of this piece. This piece's main message is to understand social media's impact on public engagement. Social media is a tool that can either inform or deform us. It can distort our thinking, increase our anxiety or give us a warped sense of reality. It can also help us amplify our voices and be heard in a competitive, chaotic, and colourless world.
In recent times there has been heightened awareness about the effect of the misuse of social media ranging from the prevalence of cyberbullying, the proliferation of fake news, and the effect of anonymity on responsible engagement. This continues to advance across all democracies and other forms of government.
The increase in anonymous “bot” accounts has shown a lapse inherent in social media as it has also become increasingly difficult to track, identify and prosecute those who use social media to perpetuate evil.
In trying to outperform each other, some social media platforms are reducing the amount of information needed or required to have credible representation and access to the platform. Because of the impact of groupthink and deindividuation social media if not regulated can lead to the instigation of untold catastrophes of immense proportion. There are vast reports on the negative impact of uprisings caused or fueled by social media outrages.
How do we deal with these issues of regulation? For one, to deal with regulation, these platforms must focus on safety, security, and proper identification before joining their platforms. Elon Musk almost backed out of a potential deal with Twitter, a microblogging platform owing to their inability to ascertain the percentage of anonymous and computer-generated users otherwise known as bot accounts on their platform. Litigations and probably a second thought have eventually worked in his favour. The recent presidential election conducted by the United States of America is a case study of how social media can create false realities and impressions. Let’s move away from this. Most social media platforms’ values are based on the number of users and the traffic they command making them advertisers’ haven for promotional and influencer marketing. These in most cases have led to requests for information that might be easy to generate or clone.
Social media platforms must be socially responsible and ensure that cases of violations are treated promptly, and fake news is debunked by platform owners and not only the users themselves. There must be disincentives for the promotion of fake news on social media platforms and owners must not allow users to promote hate or incite violence as these have immense capabilities to create havoc at scale. For those who thrive in promoting fake news, engage in defamation, and blackmail their identities must be expunged and released to law enforcement agencies when required and in severe cases, platform owners must initiate the process of reporting for possible prosecution by law enforcement agencies of the individuals or the group of individuals.
The media is a powerful tool for information propagation and such information must be seen to be a fair, true, and factual representation of what it tends to portray. Social media providers must be held accountable for whatever is done on their platforms. Free speech should not imply the freedom to denigrate, defame and spread false information that can incite people, create unrest in the polity, and in severe cases seek to be used to topple governments that have been elected by people who in most cases do not have a voice on these social media platforms. They need to get their rights protected. We all need to ensure that we protect the rights of everyone, most importantly, those who do not have the luxury of using social media platforms to promote such. This is the least that we require for a free world that is just, fair, and true to all.
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