Here’s a question for Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump. Do you believe the social media industry needs more regulation? And I want to know how they will achieve this, given the constitutional protection of free speech.
The power of that question is currently on display with the ever-increasing impact of social media on politics, specifically this year’s election and even this debate.
Presidential debates are now interactive events, with huge audiences engaged on social media, such as TikTok, X and Instagram.
That’s where the debates are scored minute by minute with grandma, the kids, movie stars and social media personalities competing to post the perfect put-down of Trump and memorable mocking of Harris.
These days, the social media chatter about the two candidates is bigger than anything said on stage by the political rivals. It is also bigger than the judgment of people watching on television. In fact, nowadays, television pundits and morning headlines tend to take their cue from social media.
I first noticed this phenomenon in 2012 at the first presidential debate at the University of Denver. I was surrounded by primetime television hosts and other political commentators. Most of them paid little attention to the debate.
Their eyes were locked on websites, scrolling through the schoolyard comments coming over social media, most noticeably from right-wing echo chambers.
Fast-forward to this year’s campaign. Social media platforms now dominate American political campaigns, often exceeding the declining audience for television news.
So, that leads to my question for the candidates: Do they favor more regulation of social media platforms?
Last week, Brazil, the country with the fifth-largest number of internet users in the world, banned Elon Musk’s X platform. The Brazilian Court pointed to the platform’s failure to crack down on right-wing misinformation after it had been warned.
Also, last week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment alleging a conspiracy by Russian intelligence operatives to pump over $10 million into YouTube and prominent American right-wing internet media platforms to interfere in elections.
In July, the Justice Department accused an editor at Russian state-owned RT of spreading disinformation by having artificial intelligence pose as U.S. residents on more than 1,000 fake social media accounts. These accounts were part of Russia’s longstanding effort to divide Americans by race and religion, and to generate support for their favored candidate, Trump.
Olivia Troye, a former national security adviser to Republican Vice President Mike Pence, recently said: “Russia’s interference in our elections is an alarming threat to the heart of our democracy.”
Let’s also remember that a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia had indeed conducted a major misinformation campaign on social media in 2016 designed to boost Trump and harm his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump once favored a ban on the platform TikTok. He changed his tune after he met with Jeff Yass, apparently to discuss education reform. Yass is one of the biggest investors in TikTok’s parent company and a donor to right-wing activist groups.
Trump has also threatened Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with prison if he is elected in a bold attempt to get Zuckerberg to keep all pro-Trump screeds, threats and lies on Facebook.
Zuckerberg responded to the Trump intimidation by announcing that the Biden administration had “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to monitor COVID-19 content. That admission won right-wing friends for Zuckerberg because it suggests the government is guilty of censoring conservative content.
Harris, meanwhile, has had previous campaigns bankrolled by tech millionaires and billionaires from California, her home state.
She has enthusiastically used social media by embracing social media memes like pop star Charli XCX’s Brat Summer.
Congress passed a TikTok ban earlier this year and is close to passing the Kids Online Safety Act, which would set guidelines to protect children from harmful material on social media platforms. It would require platforms, among other things, to disable features addictive to minors.
Already in 2024, eight states have passed laws or enacted measures to curb phone use among students during school hours. In June 2024, Pew Research found that 72 percent of high school teachers said they consider cell phones a “major problem in the classroom.” In a piece for EdWeek.org, one teacher wrote that cell phones are causing “obsessive and dependent behavior” in his students that harms their performance.
I have long believed and argued that “if American democracy is to survive,” the bullying, pornography and lies on social media “need to be brought to heel.”
“The free market has not been able to curb the industry’s abuses and excesses,” I wrote in 2018. Congress has a role to play in stopping this poisoning minds and “destroying democracy for profit.”
I still believe that. These companies have made billions at the expense of our democracy and the well-being of our children.
Former President Barack Obama used his powerful voice to call out social media at the Democratic convention: “We live in a time of such confusion and rancor,” he said because we are consumed with social media that puts a premium on “the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves…And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other.”
Amen, Mr. President.
Now what do Harris and Trump have to say?
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.