Supporting Democracy through Content-Neutral Social Media Policies

Abstract

The internet and social media carry vast amounts of new information every second. To make these flows manageable, platforms engage in content moderation, using algorithms and humans to decide which content to recommend and which to remove. These decisions have profound effects on our elections, democratic debate, and human well-being. The U.S. government cannot directly regulate these decisions due to the scale of the content and the First Amendment. Rather than focusing exclusively on whether or what content gets moderated, policy-makers should focus on ensuring that incentives and processes create an information infrastructure that can support a robust democracy. These policies are most likely to be content-neutral. Three content-neutral mechanisms are promising targets for policy: process, transparency, and de-amplification.