Social media platforms govern the information environment of democratic societies. The governance of that governance is the most urgent democratic accountability challenge of the platform era.
The Governance of Information Governance
Social media platforms govern the information environment of democratic societies through the content moderation decisions, the algorithmic amplification choices, and the community standards enforcement that determine what information reaches what audiences at what scale. These governance functions have direct consequences for democratic processes: the electoral misinformation that platforms do or do not moderate, the political advertising that platforms do or do not accept, and the voices that platforms do or do not amplify are among the most consequential governance choices in the current democratic environment. The platforms that exercise these governance functions are private companies with no democratic mandate for the governance role they exercise and no democratic accountability for the governance decisions they make.
The regulatory frameworks that govern platform content moderation are designed primarily around the liability protection that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides — the protection that allows platforms to moderate content without becoming liable for the content they host. The regulatory framework does not require platforms to moderate in any specific way, to apply their community standards consistently, or to provide the users whose content is moderated with the due process and appeal mechanisms that their governance role would seem to require. The result is platform governance without platform governance accountability — private governance of public information at democratic scale without the democratic accountability that governance at that scale should require.
Platform governance is democratic governance in the information domain. The platforms that decide what political speech reaches what audiences, what electoral misinformation is removed and what is amplified, and whose voices are heard and whose are suppressed are making governance decisions with democratic consequences. The absence of democratic accountability for those decisions is the accountability gap that the current platform governance architecture represents.
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