Recommendations 6 Enhance federal consumer protection authority to oversee social media In a February 2022 white paper, our Center made the case for legislation authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to use its consumer protection authority to provide, for the first time, systematic oversight of social media companies. The watchwords of consumer protection enforcement are deterring “unfair or deceptive” practices. For generations, the FTC has stopped businesses in a wide array of industries from using false promises about products, intimidation, and phony offers of “free” service. The agency, which in recent decades has been starved for funds and staff, needs a Congressional directive empowering it to impose carefully circumscribed regulation of social media. The FTC would have to do so without dictating substantive content policies or decisions, which would violate the First Amendment’s ban on government interference with free speech. The two central elements of this proposal, which draws on ideas in several pending bills, are transparency and procedurally adequate content moderation.91 Congress should authorize the FTC to oversee mandatory disclosure of currently secret information about how the companies’ automated systems rank, recommend, and remove content: what criteria are programmed into the algorithms that on a daily basis decide whether billions of written communications and images “go viral” or are relegated to the bottom of user feeds? How do these artificial intelligence-driven systems interact with human content moderators? If companies do not voluntarily expand the range of data available to outside social scientists (see recommendations 1 and 2), the legislation would define this recalcitrance as an “unfair or deceptive” practice, forcing disclosure. The requirement of procedurally adequate moderation would oblige platforms to fulfill the promises they make to users in terms of service and community standards. The FTC would ensure that the standards are clear and internally consistent, that enforcement decisions are explained in a way that affected users can understand, and that users have ready access to an appeals process. The agency also would have authority to assess whether content moderation resources—budgets, personnel, and management attention—are commensurate with the daunting task. One question would be whether the common industry practice of outsourcing the vast majority of human review has undercut effectiveness and should be ended, with all moderators brought in-house. Additional questions include whether platforms employ sufficient people with the language skills and cultural awareness to allow for meaningful internal oversight of whether sites are being exploited by malign actors in the more than 150 countries where social media services are available. By limiting its attention to procedural issues—such as whether platforms follow through on promises they make about protecting users from harmful content—the FTC can avoid inhibiting the First Amendment rights enjoyed by both users and the platforms themselves. Far ahead of the U.S. on the regulatory front, the European Union was finalizing its Digital Services Act in the spring of 2022. Although fidelity to free speech principles is strong in most of the 27-nation union, the E.U. has more room to legislate in the absence of a stringent provision comparable to the First Amendment. Despite this difference, American lawmakers and regulators ought to look to the DSA for painstakingly crafted requirements on platform transparency, internal risk assessment, and independent auditing of these assessments.92 22 HOW YOUTUBE SPREADS HARMFUL CONTENT – AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT