How Can Social Media Platforms Become Better?
Everyone is now complaining about unethical practices of social media platforms crossing all red lines. While the root solution remains the birth of new platforms with different business models, this will take years... So, can they be forced to make a fundamental change?
The first step here is to define our demands in a clear way that is understandable and agreeable by everyone, without getting lost in technical details. It is essential here to be realistic if we want to succeed in pushing these platforms to change their behavior. After all, they are commercial entities operating on a flawed business model that they cannot abandon now, even if they wanted to. Their existence depends on making profits, and they cannot do what would lead them to bankruptcy. Therefore, as you keep reading, keep in mind that I am not discussing here the ideal situation that is supposed to be. Rather, I am pointing to push them to curb excessive greed and adopt the minimum morally acceptable level of practices, and make the minimum required change as soon as possible until suitable alternatives become available in the future.
The following points outline the key changes needed…
Respecting Users
Platforms must start respecting their users by ending the exploitation of their dominant position to impose compliance and forcing unfair/unacceptable policies. Users should have a way to reject certain policies, with a neutral body handling bans and disputes smoothly and quickly. Given how vital these platforms are to many, this should not be used as a gun pointed at their heads to coerce them into compliance with rejected policies. Also, the Community Standards, which define what is prohibited, must be described in precise definitions, instead of vague and elastic expressions that platforms interpret according to their interests whenever they want.
Respecting and Protecting Users’ Privacy
Platforms must start respecting their users’ privacy and immediately stop all forms of tracking them outside the platform or application. Tracking activities inside the platform for targeting ads is already annoying enough, and is tolerated as a price for using the platform considering the flawed business model on which these platforms are operating. On the other hand, external tracking/spying is a severe violation of users’ rights, which cannot be justified with the imposed non-informed consent, as users are usually unaware of the real consequences. This practice must be stopped permanently and considered an unjustifiable crime. Any data that had been collected this way must be destroyed.
Additionally, platforms must stop sharing their users’ data with third parties without a court order, and this certainly includes those disguised as security or identity verification companies, while in fact they are nothing more than a front for the intelligence services of a state accused of involvement in massacres, genocide, and systematic human rights violations.
Respecting Freedom of Speech
Platforms must respect freedom of speech, stop acting as thought police, avoid imposing their agendas, and remain neutral on issues lacking global consensus. While acts like child harassment and explicit violence are globally condemned, censorship of certain topics and views about the aggression on Gaza, Covid-19, and the ongoing restrictions on conservative views are among many glaring examples of how the platforms are crossing all red lines in suppressing freedom of speech and imposing their own agendas on their users. They must be forced to stop this immediately. Practices such as shadow-banning and restricting the content of specific individuals or specific topics must end, as these practices undermine free speech. Any form of consent of such practices by us means giving them the right to decide what we are allowed to say and know!
Less Greedy Content Management
Without going into technical details, algorithm-based content management is a technical necessity that cannot be avoided, but greed and misuse of algorithms has created issues like the phenomenon called personal bubbles and the prioritizing of trivial content over valuable posts. Later, the platforms exploited the whole thing in a worse way and moved overnight to a greedier business model that puts both the advertiser and the user almost in the same basket and unfairly limits posts reach. Currently, some posts do not even reach 0.001 of the number of followers! Although part of this is due to natural reasons that platforms have nothing to do with, the largest part is intentional for profit. A fair reach rate for posts of minimum 30% of the number of followers must be ensured.
Also, the algorithms should be open source, and the correlation between interactions and/or topics on one side, and the rate of reach on the other should be reduced significantly.
Additionally, there must be a clear separation between followed and suggested posts, with priority for content from followed accounts. Interest-based ads are understandable, but manipulating all content for profit is deceptive, misleading, and falsifying of awareness, and it is a true crime.
Protecting the Mental Health of Users
Social media platforms have a long history of harmful practices to their users’ mental health, such as using psychological tricks that cause addiction, anxiety, stress, and depression, and may sometimes push them to commit suicide. In an ideal world, these practices should be ended immediately. However, due to their deep integration, as the platforms have gone too far in implementing these tricks to a point where a large portion of their market value is practically linked to their success in implementing them, a gradual phase-out and abandoning these practices over a specific and relatively short period is a must. This should be done according to a clear and announced plan that must be adhered to.
Now that we have clearly defined what these platforms should do, the difficult question comes: How can we force them to comply with our demands? But that will be a topic for another day.
