Carolina’s paper ( https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10603/9549) is well worth reading, if you are interested in regulation of social media.

The “third space theory” is not new, but this is a clear and concise application of it, with a focus on SM as “corpo-civic” space. https://twitter.com/bloggeronpole/status/1351554437257560064

The notion of “spaces” when talking about social media is a curious one.

A field is a space.

A mall is a space.

A social media service, like a website, is code running on computers. People don’t congregate in any space, they just connect to those servers.

Regulation, and legislation, often happens by analogy: X is like Y, and so X should be regulated the same as Y.

If we adopt the language of “spaces”, we equate a someone’s ability to connect over the Internet to someone else’s computer with, say, a privatised street or shop.

I don’t think it’s controversial to start with a notion that we each get to control who gets to connect to, and interact with, our computers.

Non-consensual access is exceptional if lawful (eg warranted TEI), and an offence (computer misuse) if unlawful.

The language of “corpo-civic space” is essentially a viewpoint that some companies’ computers, and the programs they’ve written to run on them, should be subjugated to third party control.

Of course, that kind of interference isn’t new - anti-trust and smb, for example - but I wonder if the language of “spaces” misrepresents the actual target / property at issue?