Let’s dig deeper into some of the biggies. As you will see, the federal government and the social networks both have some heavy lifting to do.

 

To start, the federal government should do three things. First, the U.S. Congress should pass – and properly enforce – federal data privacy legislation. The legislation must include Purpose Limitation, the requirement that data collected for one purpose cannot be used for another.

 

It’s critical that we have a unified, national strategy regarding data protection as opposed to a patchwork approach across the states.  Although some states are trying to put regulations in place, it’s a difficult task given that the Internet spans all fifty. The hesitation to regulate is understandable but, in this case, we really don’t have a choice. The stakes are just too high. The good news is that, if we’re mindful, it’s entirely possible to strike an appropriate balance between guardrails and innovation, all while protecting self-expression and free speech.

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Second, Congress should pass legislation that modernizes campaign finance laws to account for online political advertising, expanding the regulation of TV and radio ads to internet ads. The legislation should also increase election advertising transparency by allowing the public to see who bought an online political ad, regardless of its origin.

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Third, Congress should repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  This is harsh but necessary.

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Section 230 says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This essentially says that social networks bear no responsibility for what their users say on their platforms.

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< Note: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, started poking holes in Section 230 in a big way in August 2024. In 2021, Nylah Anderson’s For You feed on TikTok featured a “blackout challenge” video, which demonstrated how to record self-asphyxiation and dared people to choke themselves. Nylah, who was 10 years old at the time, accidently hanged herself. After Nylah’s mother sued TikTok, the case eventually made its way to the Third Circuit, which sent the case back to a lower court for trial saying the TikTok’s For You algorithm “is not immunized by Section 230 because the algorithm is TikTok’s own expressive activity.” The court specifically made a distinction between algorithms and humans, however, noted a person searching for videos would still fall under Section 230 (remember, Nylah was not searching for this type of video; rather, TikTok suggested it to her). >

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This is a solid start. The idea that these social media enterprises are not publishers – that they only exist as naïve, innocent bystanders for nothing more than to provide a blank canvas for their highly responsible users to paint as they see fit – is absurd. Not only is Facebook a publisher, with over 3 billion monthly active users and content that is published in 112 languages, Facebook is the largest publisher of anything in the entire world.

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Section 230 has allowed social media firms to build hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of value largely unencumbered, shielding them from liability and enabling misinformation, hate speech, and other really bad behavior – and we need to put an end to it once and for all. Ironically, Congress’ original motivation to include the 230 provision was to give these companies cover to remove or restrict posts they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

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It would have worked out great if, given this air-tight, blanket protection, these companies would have just done the right thing and enacted policies, processes and procedures that protected Americans and American democracy. If they had just done that, repealing Section 230 wouldn’t even be necessary. But they didn’t, and that’s no one’s fault but their own.