Rebecca's Thoughts

This post is originally from Regulating Social Media: it’s easy, right?

The dawn of social media can be in the growth and innovations of the 1970s and the creation of media compression algorithms. These algorithms allowed users to send messages, photos, audio, and in some cases stream videos to other users through email and other dial-up compatible software. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s this software was being reconfigured and updated to allow users to share more and adapt to new additions like JPEG images, and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

BBS is often considered as being the first widely used social media platform. The program centred around online bulletin boards that acted as forums where people could chat with one another and play games. Running off dial-up internet meant that forums were local and often small in size. Due to the localized nature, it is hard to say how many BBS were running and how many users each had. Internet speculation and BBS archive sights claim that there were about 17 million users worldwide and about 66,000 forums.¹

The success of BBS allowed for other forums and chat room-based systems to arise and see general success. Platforms like America Online (AOL) and SixDegrees.com became widely used and essentially marked 1997 as the beginning of modern social media. As the internet became more accessible more websites and chat rooms arose. The years 1999 through 2003 saw the creation of foundational sites like Myspace (2003), Skype (2003), LinkedIn (2002), Wikipedia (2001), MSN Messenger (1999), and LiveJournal (1999). Many of these social media websites saw great success riding off the dot.com bubble. Others found success in younger demographics and ad revenue. 

2004 marked the emergence of Facebook, as well as the acquisition of social media platforms by larger corporations.² In 2005 Myspace was acquired by News Corporation for 580 million USD. The same year Skype was bought out by eBay for 2.5 billion USD. 2006 saw Condé Nast Publications’ acquisition of Reddit for 10 million USD. This marked the beginning of social media consolidation and the rise of “big tech.”

“Big tech” refers to the largest and most dominant information technology companies. Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook, Apple form the “big four” (GAFA) companies, Microsoft is often grouped in to form the fifth member of the group (GAFAM) and is sometimes replaced by Netflix (FAANG).  In the Internet Health Report 2020, it was reported that of the top 18 most used social media platforms, Facebook-owned four of them.³ The top 18 also have media giants like YouTube (Google), Twitter, and the Chinese up-and-comer TikTok (ByteDance).⁴ All 18 of these companies have over 300 million monthly users, with Facebook at number one with just over 2.7 billion users.⁵ This means that the vast majority of people who use social media are using software developed by one of these companies. Additionally, these companies act as communication channels for about half of all internet users worldwide.⁶

The scale of social media is unparalleled to anything we have seen before, making it a permanent fixture in society today. A company like YouTube, whose parent company Google has been sued by the United States Department of Justice for breaking anti-trust monopoly regulations,⁷ has a colossal say in what people see and do on the internet. With about 2 billion monthly active users in 91 countries and 80 different languages, YouTube’s users consume over a billion hours of video content daily.⁸ This gets blown out of proportion when considering Facebook and its 2.1 billion daily users across all its platforms.⁹

1. Frank Robbins, “FidoNet History Timeline,” FidoNet History Timeline (The FidoNet Showcase Project (FNSP), November 26, 2001), https://elsmar.com/pdf_files/fidonet-info.txt.
2. “Web History Timeline.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Pew Research Center, March 11, 2014. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/03/11/world-wide-web-timeline/.
3. Solana Larsen, ed., “Internet Health Vitals: Facts and Figures – The Internet Health Report 2020,” Internet Health Report 2020 (Mozilla Foundation, January 2021), https://2020.internethealthreport.org/slideshow-internet-health/#5.
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Etlinger, Susan, and Centre for International Governance Innovation. Models for Platform Governance. Report. Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2019. 20-26. doi:10.2307/resrep26127.6.
7. “Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For Violating Antitrust Laws,” The United States Department of Justice, October 21, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-monopolist-google-violating-antitrust-laws.
8. Ibid
9. Ibid