The latest statistics show that the majority of content on social media is posted by engagement-farming rage-bots. Facebook and X, in particular, and other platforms to a lesser extent, are a flood of misinformation, libel, scams, false advertising. These platforms are no longer serving any public purpose -- they exist only to make money for advertisers and to project false political narratives.

Accordingly, I propose the following changes to the law:

• Social Media Platform Accountability:
  • Social media platforms will no longer be automatically shielded from legal liability for their content. If a harmful or defamatory statement is published on their platform, they are 100% liable unless they definitely identify the responsible party and provide that information to law enforcement or a civil court, as needed to support civil or criminal action. A good-faith effort to comply will be considered a defense, but it really must be a good-faith effort -- if they make it easy to bypass identity verification, the issue is still on them.
  • All posts and responses will be tagged with the country of origin. Content posted via VPNs that falsify the geographical origin, will be detected and banned.
  • Social media companies must provide an easy-to-find and reliable mechanism for end users to report posts and ads as false, a scam, or defamatory. If the social media company is notified and they fail to take it down timely, they are legally liable for the content to an extent to be determined by a court, but if they can't identify the source of the information, their liability is 100%.
  • Social media companies share in legal liability for scams conducted on their platform, to the extent they cannot identify the actual perpetrator. There is no good-faith exemption in this case -- there's no reason whatsoever companies can't verify the identity of people who are paying them money to advertise.
  • Users must have an easy-to-find option to block all content flagged as AI-generated, in whole or in part. 
  • Accounts which post AI-generated content without flagging it as such, will be permanently banned, or else, again, the social media company is legally liable for that content.
• Definition of "news":
  • The term "news" (like "champagne") will be a protected designation with a specific legal meaning. In particular, an organization labeling its product as "news" must:
    • Employ journalists who write all their articles.
    • Not publish AI-generated content without labeling it as such and providing visitors an easy way to opt out of all such content.
    • Clearly identify as advertising any editorials or other articles they are paid to publish by outside sources.
    • Clearly identify conflicts of interest -- for instance, if an article is about a company with shared ownership with the news outlet.
    • Have an easy-to-find mechanism for people to report false content, lack of relevant context,  or deceptive language, which leads to that content being retracted as prominently as the original article, In particular, if the article is published online, the original article must prominently show the retraction, and the article metadata must also be modified so other platforms that may link to the article, will be able to tell that it's retracted.
    • If an error of fact has been reported to the organization and they fail to issue a retraction, the organization will have increased liability in civil court.
    • The use of the term "news" without meeting these criteria, will result in daily fines sufficient to serve as a deterrent, until the situation is corrected.
    • The FCC is instructed to vigorously enforce anti-trust and anti-monopoly law against media organizations, to ensure there's a diversity of voices in the news space.
• All of the above also applies to content published before this rule takes effect --e.g. people must be able to submit corrections to old content. This may necessitate taking down a lot of information temporarily until the source can be verified, but trust me -- at this point, absolutely nobody will miss it.