Regulating Social Media


Recently, the Supreme Court expressed its concern wrt social media and called for guidelines to curb its misuse. While it’s easy to understand the concern, unfortunately there’s probably no solution to the problem.

It’s not just about India. Democracies world over make the same noises about social media, but pretty much every time one of them has framed laws on the topic, they’ve solved very little and end up creating a host of new problems. The cure turns out to be the worse than the disease.

But why should that be the case? Just because nobody’s framed the right laws doesn’t mean it can’t be done, right?

Hmmm… check out Ben Thompson’s podcast on the topic. He starts with the backdrop to social media. Historically, most markets check bad behavior via price. But with the Internet, it’s all free, the tool called “price” became inapplicable as a check.

Unlike older mediums, the Internet allows anyone to find like-minded people somewhere or the other. So even if the percentage of radicals/crazies is small, it begins to feel as if there are too many of them. Further, broadcasting one’s view takes little effort and is practically instantaneous. Those add to the problem.

In the aftermath of the Christchurch gun shooting being broadcast live on Facebook Live, Australia decided to frame laws. And boy, did they make a mess of things, say Thompson and his co-host. The new law says anyone who allows objectionable content to be circulated is liable to prison term. Set aside the problem of who defines what’s objectionable for a minute: did the law sound OK otherwise? Well, guess what, the law’s based on a total lack of understanding of how the Internet works!

Thompson explains. Consider all the actors involved in the circulation of any content on the Net: there’s the individual who created the content, there’s the site/app using which he sends it (YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook etc), then there’s the ISP who provides the communication infrastructure, and finally there’s the telecom company that owns the hardware infrastructure. Which of them should be liable, beyond the individual?

And do we really want companies to be snooping on what we type and share? Won’t that just be opening a can of privacy concern worms? And if such an ability is built, do you really believe governments won’t try and access it to spy on citizens?

So, as that famous saying goes, be careful what you wish for. It might come true…

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