Social Media Governance Project

The founding observation for our project is that social media platforms are one of the main channels through which AI systems influence people’s lives, and therefore influence countries and cultures. In 2022, the number of social media users worldwide was 4.59 billion (Statista, 2023a); the number is projected to be around 4.89 billion at the current moment, or 59% of the world’s population. The average user spent over two and a half hours per day on social media in 2022, a figure which has been rising since 2012 (Statista, 2023b) and is projected to rise further. Crucially, the experience of a social media user, on any given platform, is heavily influenced by AI systems that run on that platform.