The Case for Supporting Social Media Data Access

In the hierarchy of digital policymaking priorities, it’s artificial intelligence, not platform governance, that is now the cause célèbre.

From the United States’ public aim to dominate the era of AI to the rise of so-called AI slop created by apps such as OpenAI’s Sora, the emerging technology has seemingly become the sole priority across governments, tech companies, philanthropic organizations and civil society groups.

This fixation on AI is a mistake.

It’s a mistake because it relegates equally pressing areas of digital rulemaking — especially those related to social media’s impact on the wider world — down the pecking order at a time when these global platforms have a greater say on people’s online, and increasingly offline, habits than ever before.

Current regulatory efforts, primarily in Europe, to rein in potential abuses linked to platforms controlled by Meta, Alphabet and TikTok have so far been more bark than bite. Social media giants remain black boxes to outsiders seeking to shine a light on how the companies’ content algorithms determine what people see in their daily feeds.