More social media regulation expected in 2023, members of Congress say
Soš¼cial media giants can look ź©µforward to more government regulation in the new year.
TikTok and other tech companies were in the crosshairs of Congress last year, and according to Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), that’s expected to continue in 2023.
Gallagher compared TikTok to ādigital fentanylā on NBCās āMeet the Pressā on Sunday, addingš¦ that he views the app as dangerous.
āItās highly addictive and desź¦”tructive,ā he said. āWeāre seeing troubling data about the corrosive impact of constant socšial media use, particularly on young men and women here in America.ā
Last month, Congress passed a bipartisan bill banning the use of TikTok on government devices amid concerns that data obtained by the popular social media app may fall into thš»e hands of the Chinese Communist Party.Ā
TikTok, whichš attracts more than 1 billion views a month, šhas repeatedly said its US user data is not 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 people are unaware of how far behind the US is when it comes to social media regulation.
āThis is like weāre back in 1965, we donāt have seatbelt lš”aws yet,ā 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 first š ·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 effects of its 2018 algorithm changes, weaknesses in the response to human trafficking and drug cartels andĀ vaccine misinformation, among other things.
Lat year, Congress failed to pass the most aggressive bills targeting tech, including antitrust legislation to weaken Google and Apple’s app store profitability and loosen their restrictions on developers, as well as recent sweeping measures that would protect kids online.
While Congress made some progress last year toward a , there still is mš¼uch 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 legislation, the tech lobby is so powerful that bills with āstrong, bipartisan supportā can fall apart āwithin 24 hours.ā
āWe are laggšing behind,ā she said. āIt is tź¦æime for 2023, let it be our resolution, that we finally pass one of these bills.ā