Require widely used information services to assess and publish the social impact of major changes before making them
Steps to make it happen
- The law picks out apps and websites with a very large number of users, based on how many people use them.
- Before making a big change, the company studies how the change will affect society.
- The company must always check three things: how opinions spread, how personal information is handled, and who can no longer use the service.
- Experts who have no ties to the company check that its methods and answers are sound.
- The company publishes the results as a short summary that anyone can read.
- If many people would be hurt, the company fixes the change or rolls it out slowly over time.
- After the change, people study what really happened and compare it with the earlier predictions.
- Thinking about the effects on society before a big change becomes the normal thing to do.
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The proposal in detail
The rule covers information services that have a large effect on daily life and public opinion, such as social media, search, video, payment and messaging apps, once their users in a region pass a set share of the population. Small businesses and brand-new services are left out so that new companies can still enter the market. An assessment is needed for changes that affect many users: a major change to how recommendations work, a new type of personal information being collected, a change to prices or to how identity is verified, or an end to support for old devices or certain languages. The assessment must always check three things: the effect on how opinions and information spread, the effect on how personal information is handled, and the effect on people who would find the service harder to use, such as older people, people with disabilities, and people in areas with weak connections. The company carries out the assessment, but a reviewer independent of the company checks its methods and conclusions, and a summary is published in a form anyone can read. If serious harm is expected, the reviewer can ask for the change to be delayed or revised. Trade secrets and fine details that could be misused can be seen only by researchers who have passed a screening. Urgent fixes that close a security hole can be assessed afterward, but the reason must still be recorded. The standards for assessment should not differ from country to country. They should be built on a shared international yardstick, with each region adding its own circumstances.
BenefitsProblems are noticed before they spread, so society can talk about them
The biggest advantage is that dangers can be found before a change is made, instead of being scrambled over after they happen. Once a flow of false information has spread, personal data has leaked, or people have been left behind because they can no longer use a service, it is very hard to undo the harm later. Because the three viewpoints of public opinion, personal information, and people who lose access are checked together, the assessment also reduces cases where fixing one problem creates another. For example, a company might tighten identity checks to fight false information and end up shutting out people who have no ID. Publishing a summary of the assessment helps users, researchers, and the press understand what a change means and gives them a chance to speak up. For companies too, the risk of criticism and lawsuits later is lower, and it becomes clearer how much care is enough. If the rules are also built on a shared international yardstick, companies spend less effort answering a different regulation in each country, and users in every country are more likely to receive the same level of care.
DrawbacksIt may slow technological progress and invite interference with speech
The people who oppose this worry most about harm to freedom of business and to technological progress. Information services get better through small improvements made every day, and if every change requires an assessment and a review, improvement may slow down, and even changes that would help users may be delayed. Assessments cost money and take staff, so big companies that can afford them gain an advantage, and control by a small number of companies could actually grow stronger. There is also a danger that, under the name of assessing effects on public opinion, the rules could become a tool for a government to pressure companies into limiting the spread of opinions it finds inconvenient. Even if the reviewer is called independent, how it is chosen could mean it cannot stay neutral. On top of that, it is hard to predict accurately in advance what a change will do to society, so there is a worry that assessments become empty paperwork, or that they are used as an excuse for problems nobody could have foreseen.
Learn the background
Today, for many people, information services are the foundation of daily life: they are how we get the news, stay in touch with others, shop, and handle official procedures. So when one company slightly changes how its recommendations work, changes how it verifies identity, or stops supporting old devices, it can change overnight how a huge number of people around the world receive information, how their personal data is handled, and even whether they can use the service at all. Yet at present, most of these changes are decided without the public being told, problems are noticed only after they happen, and they are dealt with through criticism, lawsuits, and regulation that comes after the fact. Social media and public opinion, privacy, and the digital divide are usually discussed as separate problems, but they share a root. Decisions with a big effect on society are being made without anyone checking the effects in advance. Drugs and large construction projects are assessed beforehand, but changes to information services, which can reach just as many people, have almost no such system.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes