uropean View (2017) 16:335 E https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0468-0

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Weeding out fake news: an approach to social media regulation Konrad Niklewicz 

© The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Social media are becoming the dominant source of information for significant parts of our societies. This paper focuses on those aspects of social media that negatively affect the public debate, such as the spreading of fake news and the creation of ‘echo chambers’ of like-minded users who become isolated from alternative opinions. The paper proposes that social media platforms should be considered media companies and that they should be regulated by modified versions of existing press laws, adapted to suit the new technology. The creation of a ‘notice and correct’ procedure, as it is tentatively called, would provide an effective tool to stop lies from spreading, allowing affected parties, public or private, to protect their rights. Open Access  This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Konrad Niklewicz is the managing director of the Civic Institute and was a Martens Centre Visiting Fellow in 2017.

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