Ross: Social media companies must be responsible for content they broadcast
May 13, 2024, 3:35 PM
New Apple iPhone 15 models are displayed in the Apple store at The Grove in Los Angeles on the phone's worldwide release day on September 22, 2023. (Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images)
(Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images)
I thought The Seattle Times editorial board put it well on Sunday when they wrote “It’s hard to believe there is any debate at this point around students using their cellphones in school.”
It is hard to believe. I remember the slam books that circulated when I was in school – notebooks with the names of targeted classmates, surreptitiously passed around to attract snarky comments.
Teachers confiscated them despite the First Amendment – because they were a distraction, and because it’s not healthy for a kid to be ripped apart in public. And back then, we were only looking at an audience of maybe a few dozen.
Today, there’s no limit.
And there needs to be a limit.
Current federal law holds social media companies immune from prosecution for today’s equivalent of the slam book.
That’s because the law pretends social media is like the phone company. But it’s not. A phone call takes place in private between people who agree to the conversation.
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Social media companies broadcast content
But a message posted where anyone can see it? That’s not a phone call, that’s a broadcast. And it should be treated just like a broadcast is. That’s why we’re on an audio delay. I’ve been on the air here for 46 years – no one is more trustworthy than I am. OK, maybe Colleen. Yet, we’re still on a delay because the company is held responsible for everything we broadcast.
I suppose we should be insulted, but you know what? We manage live with it.
And the time has come for social media companies to accept the same responsibility for the stuff that they allow to be broadcast.
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There’s a lot of evidence that unsupervised platforms have helped create an epidemic of depression and classroom distraction among children. A business model like that can’t hide behind the first amendment any more than a gun smuggler can hide behind the second.
Just as your freedom to travel doesn’t mean it’s OK for the mechanic to forget to screw the bolts on.
Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
