Senate Committee Hears Testimony on Regulating Facebook

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via AP, Pool

Congress heard the testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen today in what many see as a crucial step in regulating social media. Haugen corroborated claims that the social media platform perpetuates negative and misinformed posts to increase their profit margins. Facebook is one of the most prolific social media platforms and is no stranger to the infamous attention it is receiving at the moment. Especially following an election cycle where the "fake news" moniker gained a lot of traction on this specific platform, this committee hearing is not suggesting widespread regulation but small changes that they believe can yield big impacts in slowing or eliminating the spread of misinformation that Facebook has become synonymous with. 

There are two possible arguments to be made in why regulation in the social media and tech industry is slow and difficult to come by. 1) As I have pointed out in previous posts on this blog, at what point does this become a first amendment and constitutional issue? Regulation of private companies is by no means unconstitutional, however companies that deal explicitly in private citizen's speech? This is where lines can get blurred and should this go farther, I am sure will be brought up. And 2) as Sen. Klobuchar pointed out, special interests and lobbyists in Washington have little desire for further regulation of this industry and will certainly put their money where their mouths are to ensure restrictive legislature is difficult to pass. 

Facebook whistleblower testifies: Five highlights

Comments

  1. MorganOctober 6, 2021 at 1:04 PM

    I wanted to write on this subject as well, but you beat me to it lol. I really like how you wrote about this topic, you wrote about it differently than I would, which makes me think. I also like how you provided two possible arguments for the slow and difficult regulation in social media and tech. Facebook has been under a lot of heat lately, but I don't think the solution is more regulation, I'm honestly not sure what the solution is...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sam F.October 9, 2021 at 7:08 AM

    Regulating Facebook is not what the shareholders want. The shareholders want to continue to divide the American people, as this helps them stay in power. Facebook is known for spreading misinformation and fake news, and this hurts our democracy. Special interest lobbyists are paid to work against regulations of corporations and social media companies. These lobbyists ultimately write a lot of the legislation that is voted on by Congress.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jordan MayNovember 5, 2021 at 8:54 AM

    I think it's interesting to see how they handle this issue. I don't know if more regulation will actually help the problem or not. Theres always going to be someone out there spreading misinformation, individuals not necessarily public pages. I do think more regulation and precautions could help stop pages and groups from posting misinformation but then there's individual persons who will always share their opinions (even though those opinions might be based on non-factual information). Then the issue of free speech gets brought to question...so I'm not entirely sure what they can do to help the issue. I think we as Americans need to just be more informed on how to spot misinformation and to research things for ourselves from credible sources.

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