12 Alb. Govt. L. Rev. (2019)
Molly Magnis
While it may not be surprising to hear that social media has changed the way humans communicate with each other, the fact that social media is being used to negatively affect and undermine U.S. democracy may be less obvious. As this paper will discuss, popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google have confirmed that millions of site users were exposed to Russian-controlled accounts whose purpose was to spread disinformation about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election in an effort to either influence the outcome of the election, or discredit our democracy and divide American citizens. Additionally, terrorist groups such as ISIS have used social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and KIK to connect with teens and young adults in Western countries in an effort to recruit them and spread ISIS propaganda. Efforts to combat these challenges, however, have caused numerous conflicts with U.S. laws and Constitutional rights, including the incredible protections afforded to free speech in the U.S.; the leniency that has been given to social media companies in laws such as the “small items” exception to the Federal Election Campaign Act and the Communications Decency Act Section 230(c)(1); court decisions in cases such as Fields v. Twitter, Inc., 881 F.3d 739 (9th Cir. 2018), Gonzalez v. Google, Inc., 282 F. Supp. 3d 1150 (N.D. Cal. 2017), and Cohen v. Facebook, Inc., 252 F. Supp. 3d 140 (E.D.N.Y. 2017); and the rejection of legislation such as H.R. 3654 Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act of 2015, S. 2517 Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act of 2016, and H.R. 4820 Combatting Terrorist Recruitment Act of 2016. This paper will explore how both Russian and ISIS national security threats affect U.S. democracy, and the steps that social media companies and the U.S. legislature have taken to combat such foreign threats.