Social media giants can stay up for more government regulation in the brand new 12 months.
TikTok and other tech corporations were within the crosshairs of Congress last 12 months, and in keeping with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), that’s expected to proceed in 2023.
Gallagher compared TikTok to “digital fentanyl” on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, adding that he views the app as dangerous.
“It’s highly addictive and destructive,” he said. “We’re seeing troubling data in regards to the corrosive impact of constant social media use, particularly on young men and girls here in America.”
Last month, Congress passed a bipartisan bill banning using TikTok on government devices amid concerns that data obtained by the favored social media app may fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok, which attracts greater than 1 billion views a month, has repeatedly said its US user data shouldn’t be based in China, though those assurances have done little to quell concerns.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who was also on “Meet the Press,” said she thinks most individuals are unaware of how far behind the US is with regards to social media regulation.
“That is like we’re back in 1965, we don’t have seatbelt laws yet,” she said, adding that social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube operate using similar algorithms, and that regulators should push for more transparency about how they work as a primary step.
In 2021, Haugen leaked a trove of internal Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities & Exchange Commission and Congress. It led to the Journal publishing a multi-part series that examined Facebook’s exemptions for high-profile users, impacts on youth, the consequences of its 2018 algorithm changes, weaknesses within the response to human trafficking and drug cartels and vaccine misinformation, amongst other things.
Lat 12 months, Congress did not pass essentially the most aggressive bills targeting tech, including antitrust laws to weaken Google and Apple’s app store profitability and loosen their restrictions on developers, in addition to recent sweeping measures that will protect kids online.
While Congress made some progress last 12 months toward a compromise bill on national privacy standards, there still is way work to be done when it concerns how consumer data is protected.
Klobuchar told “Meet the Press” that while bipartisan support exists to pass such laws, the tech lobby is so powerful that bills with “strong, bipartisan support” can disintegrate “inside 24 hours.”
“We’re lagging behind,” she said. “It’s time for 2023, let it’s our resolution, that we finally pass certainly one of these bills.”