How not to regulate social networks

Added to this is the fact that, to all intents and purposes, users have no effective opportunities of legal remedy against the networks. First of all – and this has already happened in the case of Twitter – the platforms will, in their defence, point to their general terms and conditions, which give them a very free hand indeed in dealing with users’ content.  This means that users would have to convince the courts that the conditions are ineffective. The chances of success that such a line of argument would have are entirely uncertain. But even if it were successful – by the time the dispute is resolved, hardly anyone is likely to be interested in the user’s content anymore. After all, the communicative value of a post has an extremely low half-life period.