Transparency is essential for effective social media regulation | Brookings

Governments around the world are imposing transparency requirements in the hopes that they will improve content moderation practices on social media platforms.

Peter Bergen argues transparency is a necessary first step in creating a regulatory structure for social media companies.

Bergen: Regulators are absolutely key in implementing transparency reporting duties.

It requires social media companies to provide qualified researchers with access to internal company data that researchers need to conduct independent evaluations.

The digital regulator in conjunction with research agencies such as the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health would have to vet the researchers and the research projects.

The regulator must at a minimum assure that companies do not seek to frustrate the goals of access transparency by not providing timely or accurate data.

There are good policy reasons to be careful about mandating speech controls, authors say.

Still, there might be additional regulatory measures short of speech controls that would be helpful, they say.

Authors: We know what the problems of social media content moderation are: hate speech, disinformation, amplification of terrorist material, and material that harms minors.