Social media companies need to take action against users who violate community guidelines and listen to those who feel unsafe because of these violations. It's time for these platforms to prioritize user safety over popularity ratings. Every day, social media companies receive numerous reports about accounts such as content being posted, account impersonation, bullying, harassment, hate, nudity, fraud, spam, just to name a few.

These platforms seem more interested in protecting the big creators to keep users in line than ensuring a safe environment for all. These platforms also do not seem to want to invest in providing the necessary infrastructure within their developed applications to handle the volume of reports coming in.

This is not the first time that social media has come under scrutiny for not properly enforcing the community guidelines that are supposed to support users in order to create a safe, secure environment for all. In fact, the lack of enforcement of these policies negatively exposes each and every user to potential harm and danger, leading to an increase and improvement in mental health that is already under-resourced to maintain and keep up with demand.

The number of teen and adult suicides resulting from online bullying has increased, and social media companies continue to fail to make the necessary changes and invest in the infrastructure needed to protect users to prevent this from continuing to happen. When these platforms are notified of bullying and other violations, they should delete the accounts that break the rules and report them to the authorities, as most violations are also criminal offences.

I myself have recently experienced being bullied on social media by major creators. When I tried to report this to the social media giants, they dismissed my concerns and claimed that what I experienced was not bullying, even though it is clearly against the community guidelines that you agree to when you sign up to these social media platforms. As previously mentioned, these platforms seem more interested in protecting large creators and accounts that violate the guidelines to keep users in line than ensuring a safe environment for all.

Social media companies should have a duty of care to protect their users. Unfortunately, they don’t care about their users, they only care about how much money they can make from their platform. We need social media companies to take action and make social media a safe, positive place for all.