Utopian Roots and Hybrid Futures: The Ideology and Governance of Social Media Platforms

A few large social media platforms owned by multinational corporations have an outsized influence over important venues of global public debate. These platforms constitute a centralized layer on top of the distributed infrastructure of the internet which is controlled by the specific needs and ideologies of these corporations. A proposed alternative is the return to open, interoperable protocols. Yet, underlying both approaches is a joint ideology of the internet as an open “frontier” that emerged out of a U.S. Cold War/ countercultural context. Any discourse regarding the use by government officials, governance, or regulation of the internet in general, and social media in particular, must take this ideology into account. Policymakers and stakeholders must question in which ways it is compatible with core democratic principles, especially free speech and minority rights, and how a virtual public sphere can be constituted that emphasizes critical debate.