Over the past two decades, the importance of social media in our lives has grown by leaps and bounds. These platforms have managed large volumes of personal information and have become the center for spreading and disseminating information. The ability to manage large volumes of personal data has allowed them to influence the masses. Therefore, regulation of the functioning of social media platforms has cropped up as a major challenge, especially in the last decade.

Without regulation, most social media platforms build their foundation on the commercial exploitation of user data, employing algorithms to steer and shape people’s choices. All this was possible due to them collecting enormous amounts of users’ data and processing it for various uses without their consent. Growing Social Media Privacy awareness and risks associated with leaked personally identifiable information have met that Governments have enacted several regulations in the last five years across the globe.

Social Media Privacy

Social media privacy is part and parcel obligation of the modern digital world. It primarily involves protecting the confidentiality of Personal and sensitive information of users collected stored, and processed by Social Media Platforms. Users voluntarily share part of this information with the platform, while trackers and cookies may collect another part.

Ensuring social media privacy cannot happen in a vacuum, and recently, various factors have heightened the risk of its violation. These include consolidation of Social Media platform giants, which provide no competition in the market as well as even larger user share and volume database for Single Corporate entities to manage. A monopolistic market severely restricts the growth of other players and puts entry barriers for other privacy-securing alternatives.

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