(C) Journalist's Resource
This story was originally published by Journalist's Resource and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Towards Digital Platforms and Public Purpose: Final Report of the Democracy and Internet Governance Initiative [1]

[]

Date: 2023-07-06 13:35:54-04:00

The paper then underscores the necessity and value of comprehensive disclosure schemes in order to better understand the cause and effect of digital platforms and related products within the scope of a risk framework. Through the establishment of standards setting bodies dedicated to addressing itemized risks, we argue that this is the infrastructure necessary for sustainable regulation and self-governance that is dynamic and public purpose-oriented.

Throughout each section, we aim to underline the significance of stakeholder engagement in the governance process. Platforms themselves, civil society organizations, policymakers, researchers, and users all have important perspectives, experiences, and jurisdiction needed to effectively mitigate harms of digital platforms. Engaging all stakeholders in a collaborative manner will enhance the framework’s relevance, legitimacy, and practicality.

Ultimately, the risk-based approach and subsequent recommendations aim to contribute to a more informed and proactive approach to platform governance. By recognizing and addressing the risks associated with platforms—and confronting the pervasive information asymmetry problem, where technology companies withhold important data and information about user and community impact—we can work towards fostering a healthier, more accountable, and inclusive digital ecosystem that respects user rights, promotes responsible platform behavior, and safeguards the democratic principles that underpin our societies.

Introduction

MySpace, which launched exactly two decades ago in 2003, was the first online social network to reach a million monthly active users. The platform, a friends-driven social media network, achieved this milestone in 2004, barely a year after its founding. MySpace demonstrated to the world how we could expand social interaction through the world wide web, allowing for new ways to discover music and art, share ideas with a large group of friends (location agnostic), and express yourself through digital artifacts.

In 2005, News Corporation (now Fox Corporation), sensing the potential business upside of online social networks, purchased MySpace for $580 million USD. At that time, MySpace had 16 million monthly users–22 million in total–and was continuing to expand; its value at the time of the deal was approximately $327 million USD. News Corporation, led by chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, was interested in leveraging a social platform like MySpace as a distribution outlet for Fox studio content. During Murdoch’s ownership, the company expanded into the UK market, struck large deals with Google for advertising revenue, and attempted to build on its initial success while expanding Fox’s viewership.

MySpace, despite Murdoch’s investments, turned out to be a failure for News Corporation—and a failed venture overall. The company’s story, however, marks the beginning of an increasingly complex, and arguably convoluted, relationship between information and social networks. From Cambridge Analytica to the Arab Spring, social media has proven to be a useful tool for those interested in influencing real world events and the ways in which they are perceived. The MySpace story, though brief, shows the foreseeable risk born from the intermingling of digital platforms, information, and power. It also foreshadows something bigger: the potential of digital platforms to drastically change how we as humans interact with ourselves and the world.

Today, in 2023, MySpace is more or less out of the picture; Facebook is the largest platform in the world with over 2.98 billion monthly active users. A number of other competitors entered the market over the last twenty years: TikTok, YouTube (acquired by Alphabet), Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, WhatsApp (acquired by Facebook, now known as Meta), Instagram (acquired by Meta), and BeReal, to name a few.

The sheer power and wealth accumulated by these platforms is astonishing. Meta’s market cap today is around $734 billion USD ; Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, has a market cap of about $1.56 trillion USD. That is larger than the GDP of many nations.

As these platforms gained momentum and integrated in the daily lives of billions of people all over the world, it became clear the information ecosystem was undergoing drastic change. Now, we see that large outlets no longer control a majority of content created online; the business model of platform companies requires news outlets to reconsider how they can reach and engage with their audiences; the rise of social media has led to a decline in local news, and has pushed for consolidation of larger outlets because of diminishing financial prospects; less reputable content creators are able to capture the attention of millions of users, allowing for the increased spread of misleading and false information at unprecedented speeds.

But the change goes well beyond the information ecosystem. Platforms undoubtedly have a significant impact on virtually every aspect of our lives. The average user spends nearly two and a half hours per day on various social media applications. In 2021, during COVID, the average user spent over 1300 hours on apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Due to the addictive features of social media and related psychological effects, the rates of teen depression have significantly increased. Elder populations are subject to pervasive financial scams. And because of limited capabilities for attribution, foreign actors have tampered and interfered with democratic processes, most notably the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://shorensteincenter.org/towards-digital-platforms-and-public-purpose/

Published and (C) by Journalist's Resource
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/journalistsresource/