Regulating Social Media to Promote Reasoned Debate

The world’s great public squares have moved indoors. What were once conversations in cafés, arguments in lecture halls or spirited discussions in the foyers of theatres now take place through flickering screens, carried across borders by invisible channels of code. This new forum has vast virtues. It enables the shy to speak, the unheard to be heard, and the distant to find companionship. Yet it has also become a place in which insults echo more loudly than argument, where falsehoods travel faster than thought, and where provocation is rewarded with the strange modern currency of attention. Hence states, academics and diplomats have begun to ask whether there might be international methods to restore reasoned debate, without extinguishing the liberty that the internet was intended to magnify.

Imagining such methods requires stepping beyond our present quarrels and considering what a more temperate online world might look like. In that imagined future, one might picture a mosaic of countries cooperating as though they were custodians of a shared global library. Each nation would retain sovereignty over her domestic digital sphere, but they would recognise that the larger information environment is a form of commons. No country benefits from a polluted ocean, and no society is strengthened by seas of misinformation.

One possible method might be the creation of an International Charter for Digital Civility. Such a Charter would not possess the force of hard law, but might instead operate as a treaty of shared expectations. Signatory states would agree to encourage transparency in algorithmic design, so that the mechanisms which determine the visibility of a post are no longer hidden in corporate vaults. Algorithms are not neutral; they have tendencies akin to the instincts of creatures. Some are drawn to the sensational and others to the divisive. An international framework could require major platforms to publish annual reports explaining the logic of their systems, the values they optimise, and the safeguards imposed to limit the amplification of deliberate falsehoods.

A second imaginative method might involve the creation of a Digital Ombudsman for each region of the world, loosely inspired by the offices that some northern European nations have championed for centuries. These Ombudsmen would not possess power to fine or censor, but would instead act as respected arbiters of fairness. They could investigate patterns of malicious behaviour, report abusive coordination between bot networks, and recommend collective responses. Their reports, written in careful prose and placed in the public domain, might serve as anchors of trust amid the storm of competing claims. It is harder for misinformation to thrive when its wider environment contains widely respected institutions that explain, patiently and methodically, what is actually happening online.

A more imaginative method still would involve a global commitment to digital education. Instead of attempting to police every post, states might unite to develop a shared curriculum of online reasoning, the sort of quiet intellectual discipline that Stoic philosophers might have applauded. Within this curriculum, children and adults alike would learn how to evaluate sources, recognise manipulative rhetoric and pause before reacting. One might imagine a common digital badge, issued by an international authority, that certifies a person’s completion of certain modules. Over time, reasoned debate might become fashionable again, associated with a mark of civic virtue.

Technology itself could be reshaped to encourage calmer discussion. One can imagine an international standard requiring major platforms to introduce optional “contemplation intervals”. A user who wishes to respond to a provocative post might be gently encouraged to wait for a short period before sending his or her reply. This would be similar to the way cooling off periods exist in consumer law or gun regulation, not to deny liberty but to protect the person from her own momentary impulse. If nations agreed to promote such features collectively, major platforms would be less tempted to discard them for fear of losing market share.

Another interesting idea might involve the creation of an international repository of verified factual material, maintained not by governments but by consortia of universities and academies. Instead of attempting to label every contested post, platforms could automatically link disputed claims to this shared repository. Readers could choose whether to engage with the material, yet the link would sit there quietly, offering illumination to any who sought it. In time, such a system might recreate something akin to the footnotes of old scholarly books, reminding the public that assertions require foundations.

International cooperation would not prevent states from protecting free expression within their own borders. Each nation could articulate her own standards, preserving her traditions of liberty and dissent. Yet the shared frameworks would encourage a form of gentle alignment. They would help to insulate the public sphere from cross-border manipulation, paid provocateurs and state-sponsored campaigns of digital abuse. No country would be obliged to sacrifice her own cultural habits of debate; rather, she would be invited to join a common endeavour to ensure that the global conversation remains both vigorous and truthful.

None of these methods is a perfect solution. Even the wisest scheme might be distorted by political interests or forgotten in the bustle of daily life. Yet the value of imagining such structures lies in the recognition that the world need not remain as it is. Social media platforms were created quickly, without the gradual development of norms that once governed older forms of debate. The task of our generation is to cultivate those norms retrospectively, with delicacy and international cooperation.

If nations can agree upon the regulation of the seas, the treatment of prisoners of war or the protection of cultural treasures, there is no reason why they cannot also agree upon certain principles for the global information realm. The challenge will be to preserve the liberty that the internet originally promised, while creating an environment in which reason and civility are rewarded rather than drowned out by the noise of the unreflective. The future shape of global discourse will depend upon whether we are willing to imagine these possibilities now, before the opportunity for reform slips quietly away.