ABSTRACT
Social media as a cultural phenomenon of modern life has often been valorized as a benign vehicle for interpersonal communication and interchange. Facebook is conceptualized as a virtual community, and Twitter as a virtual town square. What this characterization overlooks is the extraordinary, unprecedented power that corporate entities like Facebook, Google, and Twitter wield. This chapter describes, piecemeal regulatory schemes on a national level are doomed to irrelevance given the ability of these mega-corporations to absorb fines for the harm caused on their platforms. Law is unlikely on its own to have the power to take the steps needed to “unfriend” Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google. Nor is legal regulation likely to successfully keep purveyors of fake news and proponents of violent extremism from attempting to undermine democratic institutions and sow deep and dangerous divisions within democratic societies.
