Twenty five years ago the IT industry was a different place. IT companies large and small collaborated on developing and introducing standards that enabled interoperability, communications, security protocols and more to become standards that all players in the market could rely upon. Most of the standards are still in place and continue to be developed today enabling the mechanisms underlying communications and trade to operate efficiently, reliably and smoothly.

But the IT industry doesn’t stand still. Over the past two plus decades layer upon layer of higher functionality has been added at an extraordinary rate. Much of these layers are euphemistically labelled social media. Enabling individuals and enterprises to communicate in words, images, videos with friends or other parties. Most of this higher order functionality lacks even basic governance.
This week we have seen a murder being live streamed on Facebook, which was watched some 1.6 million times. Evidently it took Facebook 3 hours to take the video down, by which time of course the video had been copied and circulated countless times. In Sweden evidently three men were arrested after live streaming the sexual assault of a woman to a private Facebook group. Live streaming of suicides are also becoming common.

While these examples are extreme, we are all aware of the bullying and misogynistic behaviours on Twitter (X) and the real risks that many women in particular run if they are in the public domain.
Clearly law making has moved at snail’s pace in this area. While the social media companies have (supposedly) invested in monitoring undesirable behaviors, in practice it is completely impossible for the companies to govern what is happening in real time by human inspection.

Other domains such as automotive, electronics, airlines and food production are tightly regulated for safety and transparency. If a car or aircraft manufacturer produces a model that is inherently unsafe, it will not be approved for use. However the IT industry is deluging its customers with capability that is manifestly unsafe, while making vast profits.

Law makers are now starting slowly to catch up. Last year the EU reached agreement on online safety rules (Digital Services Act) that are starting to be rolled out. The EU rules requires tech companies to police illegal content on their platforms and to pay a fee to regulators monitoring their compliance. The rules prohibit targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race and political opinions.

While the new law could have big implications for tech giants including Facebook (Meta), Google and Twitter (X), with significant penalties that even these large companies might be concerned with, in reality it will be very hard to regulate behavior that, like the live streamed murders or rapes, happen in real time. Similarly the regulators will always be working after the fact.

I suggest the tech companies should adopt the pattern that was and is practiced in more prosaic areas of IT, by themselves establishing an independent governance enterprise that is adequately funded to use latest practices that requires all, yes all social media posts to be preapproved by an automated AI hub such that unacceptable behavior is identified and managed. It would make sense that the regulators work closely with the shared governance organisation, to ensure that there is a level playing field between all the operating companies.

We can all see social media is hurtling down a very slippery slope. Many (most?) parents are desperately unhappy with the impact it has on their children. Ordinary individuals are frequently put in uncomfortable situations on line, and sometimes online behavior transitions to face to face threats. I suspect we are all concerned that foreign powers are attempting to alter election results in subtle and not so subtle ways. The impact on society has been profound and needs to be reversed. Real time governance would potentially prevent real damage being done, but also allow illegal activity to be identified and appropriate action to be taken by the authorities. I anticipate civil liberties campaigners would be energised and affronted by such control, but with the backing of law based governance they would have little option to acquiesce. It’s time the Wild West got a Sheriff.