A History of Transparency Regulations: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Shaping Social Media Regulation and Self-Governance

Abstract

Widespread calls for social media transparency have resulted in the passage of landmark regulations across the globe to hold social media platforms accountable and improve online safety. In response, countries have enacted acts, such as the Online Safety Act by the United Kingdom (2023) and the Digital Services Act by the European Union (2023). While regulation was hailed as a much-needed governance lever to enforce accountability mechanisms on monopolistic social platforms, there remain significant challenges to navigate regarding its long-term influence and efficacy. One of the challenges through this process has been the development of equitable standards and a shared understanding of platform mechanisms, for which there has been significant consultation between the public, platforms, policymakers, and nongovernmental organizations. While regulating social platforms is a novel example, the prevalence of consumer harms in an opaque, unregulated ecosystem has occurred in various prior instances in the fields of healthcare, finance, and aviation in the United States. In each of these fields, the harms perpetrated by the inefficiencies of the system resulted in calls for regulation and transparency at a similar or greater magnitude as that of social media. We draw parallels between the harms generated and corresponding safety regulations across different industries, with the goal of highlighting the challenges navigated by past regulatory efforts to introduce transparency into each of these complex ecosystems. Our work provides one of the first comparative analyses of a set of flagship regulations in adjacent fields that can inform the development of upcoming regulations aimed at improving transparency efforts by digital platforms.