Social Media as Fragile State : Vulnerabilities, Pressures, and Human Rights

Like nation-states, the social media states of the Internet demonstrate fragility relating to governance, operations, and services. The rule of law can be fragile where technologies are created at a pace faster than legal constructs can be established. The global communication and information infrastructure has been seeded and populated by people communicating and devising new rules of conduct online. Law and policy have been playing catch-up in areas such as international law, right to privacy, protection of children, data security, and more. The rapid changes in technologies requires law and policy to advance beyond oversight of local, closed systems to transnational and ‘a-national’ company-states, ones with a nominal locale but present in multiple locales via the internet.

Assessing the fragility of the social media states using indicators can provide a view of long-term prospects for the platform, a focus for technical and social design, and a focus for social rules, policies, and procedures to stabilize these fragile social states.