Big Tech puts democracy on the brink of collapse, now is the key time for national action

As discussed in this report, many of social media’s harms stem from the design of these platforms — algorithmically engineered feeds and endless scroll features designed to addict users, recommendation models that send users down extremist rabbit holes, dark patterns intended to point you toward certain features. Recalibrating these features will alter the content that users see automatically on their feed and how they engage with this content, but these changes don’t prevent any user from searching for or posting content, and therefore doesn’t limit any user’s freedom of expression. Ensuring safety and privacy by design is both the most impactful and the most politically feasible path forward for social media reform. Additionally, Big Tech companies should implement, or be required to implement, the strongest possible safety and privacy changes by default. Too often, the social media platforms respond to criticism by creating a new “tool,” that can be used to protect your privacy, limit your exposure to harmful content, or mitigate an addictive feature of the website. But these tools are often hard to find, difficult to implement, and require a threshold of tech expertise. When this happens, the implicit message remains the same: It is always someone else’s job to prevent a user of social media from becoming addicted to or harmed by their addictive and harmful products — a parent, an educator, a user themself, rather than the social media company. Defaulting to the strongest possible safety and privacy settings would change this calculus. We have to move toward a system where users must opt out, rather than opt in, of the strongest safety and privacy settings. This approach still gives users the freedom to modify or curate their experiences on social media, but it also ensures that the onus is not on users to pull themselves out of an addictive or harmful spiral created by Big Tech. When it comes to protecting minors, features like targeted advertisements, endless scrolling, and curated feeds should be off by default. And when it comes to privacy, social media platforms must limit data collection, processing, and transfers to what is strictly necessary to provide the service requested by users, and that settings like geo-tracking and public sharing of content are turned off automatically. Lastly, it is crucial that policymakers take a holistic view of social media reform. Because Congress has not passed any major tech reform laws in nearly three decades, it is tempting to see new legislation as a one-shot proposition. But this approach pits important reform priorities against each other. Ensuring a safer and healthier version of social media will require a series of reforms — comprehensive privacy protections for all Americans, additional safeguards for minors, and a transparency regime to ensure greater oversight of these platforms. These priorities aren’t mutually exclusive or in opposition. They work in tandem, forming three pillars that will lift up a better online ecosystem for our kids, our communities, and our democracy. We cannot wait any longer. The social media crisis is here, and it is only getting worse. For our children, for our communities, and for our democracy, we need a national solution now. The Council for Responsible Social Media is committed to ensuring a safe and healthy online ecosystem. We hope Congress will join us in this fight.