Regulating disinformation on Twitter and Facebook

Abstract

The spread of disinformation in recent years has caused the international community concerns, particularly around its impact on electoral and public health outcomes. When one considers how disinformation can be contained, one often looks to new laws imposing more accountability on prominent social media platforms. While this narrative may be consistent with the fact that the problem of disinformation is exacerbated on social media platforms, it obscures the fact that individual users hold more power than is acknowledged and that shaping user norms should be accorded high priority in the fight against disinformation. In this article, I examine selected legislation implemented to regulate the spread of disinformation online. I also scrutinise two selected social media platforms–Twitter and Facebook–to anchor my discussion. In doing so, I consider what these platforms have done to self and co-regulate. Thereafter, I consider the limitations on regulation posed by certain behavioural norms of users. I argue that shaping user norms lie at the heart of the regulatory approaches discussed and is pivotal to regulating disinformation effectively.