Social Media and Online Legalities

Other Laws

Outside of social media companies themselves, several states, since 2012, have installed laws that prevent employers, colleges, and universities from requesting login info to their employees and students' social media accounts. Currently, there are 26 states that apply this rule to employers and 16 for educational institutions. While these laws do not pertain to social media sites collecting and selling information, they address another important legal matter of privacy that can, arguably, have more of an adverse effect on social media users (login requests by authority figures) (4).

Exceptions

A very notable exception to what seems like a lack of legal concern over social media is 18 U.S.C. § 875, a law that fines or imprisons social media messages indicating a threat or libel. This law has faced criticism for its ability to make convictions over "subjective intent" out of concern that seemingly harmless and non-serious proposals and text over social media can be punishable offenses. Even so, this legal concern seems to care about safety most and it does not pertain much to social media privacy (3).

For the most part, social media privacy has never been very strictly enforced. In the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, the future holds stricter federal intervention in social media privacy.

For more details on Facebook's recent privacy scandal, see The Facebook Scandal.