Countries and Regions that are taking proactive steps to combat polarization on social media

     Political polarization on social media is not a local thing, it is global in outreach with many different countries becoming more polarized because of the platforms. On the other side, there are nations and governments trying to limit the spread of the power of the social media giants. The steps to reduce polarization online is to develop legislation built on protecting the privacy of users and the limiting the power of social media platforms in any way. Let's discuss countries taking the right approach to internet freedom and how it relates to limiting polarization. Polarization relates to internet freedom because of the fact that restricting the options for social media companies to utilize (abuse) your personal data ties into it. Algorithms rely on personal data to gather what to show to a user which in turn often is shown to recommend more ideology-based things you are likely going to support, leaving a void in open discussion with out-groups. Social media companies exploit this system by reinforcing biases as I so mention a lot. Limiting personal data use by social media platforms relates to laws of privacy rights in many countries so governments should feel obliged to enact legislation in regard to the digital environment. 

    One place that is ahead of the majority of governments is the European Union in recognizing the dangers of social media. They have some of, if not the best data privacy protection for users in the world. Other non-EU nations like Iceland, South Korea, and Japan have well designed data protection laws putting them in the upper echelon of nations combating social media. According to the Freedom House Index in which they conduct surveys and analyses, such as ranking the most democratic nations, also does one on Degree of Internet Freedom. On a scale of 1-100, Freedom Press Index selects the countries ranks Iceland the highest rated (95), with Estonia (93), and Costa Rica (88) in third. The only other country with a grade of higher than 80 is Canada (87) as the only other one, the U.S is not far behind at (76). The ranking shows that the more democratic developed country is, the more likely higher the score of internet freedom. As expected, authoritarian governments such as Myanmar, North Korea, China, and Russia have among the lowest internet freedom in the world. Internet freedom helps show how democratic a country really is by looking at their internet laws. Looking at what the top countries ranked in internet freedom do is essential to help understand where problems arise. Such as polarization being due to algorithms of showing often controversial political news you might like.

Source

“Countries.” n.d. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-net/scores?sort=asc&order=Country.

‌