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• whatever the companies do is fine as long as they are transparent about it
• Transparency initiatives, the critics say, just distract from the hard work of developing and implementing more effective methods of control.
• These critiques of transparency make two points. The first is that transparency requirements written into law wouldn’t ensure much useful disclosure. The second is that substantially increased disclosures wouldn’t do much to mitigate the information disorder on social media.
• The answer to the first criticism, that a legal requirement for disclosure will not produce useful disclosures, is to insist on the importance of a regulator. Disclosure requirements alone are not self-enforcing. A dedicated regulatory agency must define and implement them through rulemaking and must have full enforcement powers, including the abil...
• The response to the second criticism, that transparency by itself won’t do much to stem the tide of disinformation and hate speech, is that without transparency, no other regulatory measures will be effective. Whatever else governments might need to do to control social media misbehavior in content moderation, they have to mandate openness, which r...

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