In a Harvard Business Review article, Professor Annabelle Gawer argues that Big Tech social media platforms should self-regulate now.
As tech companies face impending government regulation in reaction to their dissemination of socially harmful content, Surrey Business School’s Professor Annabelle Gawer, Professor in Digital Economy and Director of the Centre of Digital Economy (CoDE), believes they must self-regulate immediately.
In a timely article swiftly following the storming of the U.S. Capitol that was fomented on social media platforms, and in the context of fake news and rumours of rigged elections, ‘Social Media Companies Should Self-Regulate. Now.’ offers lessons from history on how other industries have effectively managed to self-regulate.
For many decades, companies in the business of producing movies, video games, and television shows and commercials all have faced issues around the appropriateness of “content” in a way that resembles today’s social media platforms. To keep regulators at bay, the movie and video games industries resorted to a self-imposed and self-monitored rating system, still in operation today.
‘Social Media Companies Should Self-Regulate. Now’ was co-authored with Professor Michael Cusumano (MIT Sloan School of Management) and Professor David Yoffie (Harvard Business School). Read the full article here.
