Social Media

Social Media Standards

We see more and more inciteful postings appearing on various social media sites.  These include of course recruitment to terrorism – the big one.  Social media sites state they are continually trying to reduce such postings, but they are completely on their own recognizance on how to do it and what to do.  Thus, little is achieved.  They don’t know what to do and simply do not wish to spend the resources to do anything.

What is currently missing is a set of standards for what should not be posted.  Such standards for what cannot be transmitted on broadcast television do exist, and while they are mild they have worked for decades. 

Ask anyone, I do not favor more regulations, but it is time the government should create an independent agency to first study this problem and then develop standards and guidelines.  Representatives of the the industry, elected officials, and media experts should be involved. However, unless and until there are standards, the social media industry founders in darkness.  This leads to inaction – the current state of affairs.

Some suggestions might include:

a.     No pornography

b.     No images of mutilation, murder, war crimes, assassination.

c.     No  language that incites or encourages violence.

I believe much of this can be automatically and rapidly determined with current deep learning and big data techniques.  Of course, inventive schemes will be developed to contravene these restrictions, but software developers will have guidelines and targets with which to modify and improve their software.  The process will take some years, but it must start today.