Social media won't regulate itself. How should we?

2019 is likely to see many debates on possible regulatory strategies for social media platforms. We offer several ideas to help shape those debates. First, it’s necessary to prohibit the data-intensive, micro-targeted advertising-dependent business model that is at the heart of the problem. Second, it’s vital that countries craft rules that are appropriate to their particular domestic social, legal, and political contexts. Third, and most provocatively, it’s time to consider non-commercial ownership of social media entities–including nonprofit or some form of public ownership.

[Natasha Tusikov is assistant professor, criminology, Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto. Blayne Haggart is associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.]