Social Media Harm Abatement: Mechanisms for Transparent Public Health Assessment

2025-03-13

AI Summary

Social media platforms face increasing cross-jurisdictional litigation alleging systemic social and psychological harms, yet traditional product liability litigation remains narrowly focused on monetary compensation. Method: This paper pioneers the adaptation of the product safety paradigm to digital platform governance, proposing a non-compensatory harm mitigation framework anchored in public health assessment. Integrating legal procedural feasibility, algorithmic transparency requirements, and technical operational constraints, the framework employs an interdisciplinary design—spanning legal modeling, public health metrics, data minimization principles, and audit-friendly interface specifications—to rigorously define the triadic trade-off among privacy protection boundaries, oversight intensity, and intervention efficacy. Contribution/Results: The framework delivers an implementable mechanism blueprint for litigation or settlement contexts and establishes an original, RegTech-compatible paradigm for regulatory intervention in platform governance.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Mitigating online harms, including harassment, spam, and fake reviews
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economics and fairness of platforms and recommendation systems
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

Social media platforms have been accused of causing a range of harms, resulting in dozens of lawsuits across jurisdictions. These lawsuits are situated within the context of a long history of American product safety litigation, suggesting opportunities for remediation outside of financial compensation. Anticipating that at least some of these cases may be successful and/or lead to settlements, this article outlines an implementable mechanism for an abatement and/or settlement plan capable of mitigating abuse. The paper describes the requirements of such a mechanism, implications for privacy and oversight, and tradeoffs that such a procedure would entail. The mechanism is framed to operate at the intersection of legal procedure, standards for transparent public health assessment, and the practical requirements of modern technology products.

Problem

• Addressing social media harms through legal and public health mechanisms
• Proposing a transparent abatement plan for mitigating platform abuse
• Balancing privacy, oversight, and technology requirements in settlements

Innovation

• Legal procedure integration for harm reduction
• Transparent public health assessment standards
• Modern tech product practical requirements