The importance of social media regulation

Data harvesting is, and continues to be, a serious problem across social media platforms, and left to run unchecked is sure to slowly and brutally rip apart the fabric of our society. Every day, your data — our data — is being used to massively increase the distance between us all, dividing our country into individual echo chambers. Nobody is safe when disinformation is blatantly allowed to be pushed. In May of 2021, Sen. John Kennedy and Sen. Amy Klobuchar proposed the Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Act of 2021.

This bill would serve to add transparency to data collection and protect users from undesirable harvesting. More specifically, this bill would give consumers the ability to opt-out of tracking and data collection, require companies to show what information they already have, and in general provide users wider access and control over their data.

It is vital that in the coming years consumers are made aware of their data, and that we push to support bills like Klobuchar and Kennedy’s. While alone not a single one of us has the ability to change and create laws, I urge each and every one of you to push for Sen. Murray and Sen. Cantwell to propel this bill forward on behalf of Washington state. We deserve our right to privacy, and nobody should be allowed to divide us.

Astor Pedersen

Spokane