Frank's Musings

The EU requires platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to monitor the content of posts on their websites and at least to flag those that are politically incendiary, hateful, or otherwise intentionally and maliciously disinformative. The parallel in how print, electronic and other licensed media are regulated is that guidelines have been adopted that qualify the content they publish even though it may be attributed to outside sources, e.g. OpEds and letters to the editor,

The easy access to those platforms that the Internet affords makes social media vulnerable to manipulation by determined influencers.  Demagogues, sexual  predators, bigots, and other malefactors are allowed to take advantage of the enormous audience that social media platforms enjoy because of society’s fostering of the World Wide Web. Therefore, it is appropriate for countries to authorize their regulatory arms to protect the welfare of the community by setting and enforcing adherence to standards of communications behavior.

Of course, this is a slippery slope. The regulators themselves will have effectively to be kept in conformance with the common culture, which, naturally, is not universal.  Therefore, uniform enforcement of international web access standards will not be possible without damaging the Web’s freedom of access worldwide.  A likely method successfully to protect the world from corrupt influencers on the Web will be investment in vigilant counter-intelligence measures funded by concerned private and public agencies.  The U.S. Congress may usefully expand the mandate of the January 6 investigation committee to cover this subject, as well.