THE FUTURE OF...Social Media and Disinformation WITH Rebekah Tromble, Director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, and Associate Professor, School of Media and Public Affairs, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.
Unfortunately, I do think disinformation and other harmful content will continue to proliferate on social media.
We are also likely to see the major social media companies—Google, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter—continue to dominate the field. These companies, especially Google and Facebook, hold monopolies in multiple areas and are able to either push out or buy out potential competitors, or to simply implement the popular features other companies create.
When it comes to content moderation, regulatory approaches are limited in the United States because of the First Amendment. That said, I do think we can expect some platform regulation in the United States in the next couple of years. At the very least, the topic is going to be taken up in Congress and by the Biden administration.