“America must regulate social media”: AIMES Lab director, John Wihbey writes for Time

Our lab director, John P. Wihbey, in a recent piece for Time Magazine, published on October 20th, pointed out the “liability” that the U.S.’s inertia in regulating social media has become, and leaned on history to suggest a way forward.

Wihbey wrote: “The big policy idea we need is something both First Amendment-preserving and motivating to platforms: a “response principle” for social media regulation. This would mean platforms would be required to take reasonable measures to limit harms to the public. However, no specific censorship rules drive automatic results. Such a duty of care would create an iterative, adaptive system adequate to match the chaotic, ever-changing babel of the online world. Part of what should be scrutinized on an ongoing basis could be the way that data is exploited by the platforms, as well as the product design of their technologies.“