Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

Since his election in November Donald Trump has reiterated his intention to undertake mass deportations, dramatically reduce the size of government, and reverse long-standing government policies relating to health care, environmental protection, and many other issues. I have addressed some of these likely changes in a previous Forbes piece and will tackle them again in the months ahead. But at year-end, here are ten specific human rights challenges facing businesses more generally.

• Combatting Online Disinformation and Harmful Content

Political disinformation and other harmful content online continues to exacerbate polarization and undermine democratic discourse. And yet most of the major social media companies have retreated from their commitments to moderate such content. Since 2022, Elon Musk has dramatically degraded X’s capacity to address disinformation and other harmful content. As a senior advisor to Trump and the president-elect’s top individual donor, he has advanced the spurious claim that social media platforms have targeted conservative content for removal or reduced visibility. Several early nominees of the new administration including new FCC chairman Brendan Carr and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson have echoed this falsehood, with Carr calling the big social media firms the “censorship cartel.” The leading social media platforms need to challenge these assertions and do much more to moderate their sites to remove, reduce, or juxtapose online disinformation, extremism, and other harmful online content.

• Confronting Extremism on Gaming Sites

More than three billion people around the globe participate in online gaming sites, a $200 billion dollar a year industry. While these spaces provide valuable entertainment for many, they continue to be exploited by extremist actors looking to radicalize young, impressionable players. In some cases, extremist radicalization in online gaming and gaming-adjacent sites has led to real-world violence. In the last year, some major companies have taken important steps to identify and root out such vitriol, but many in the industry lag behind. This year, our Center at NYU Stern launched a multi-stakeholder working group to advance informed and constructive regulation of the industry, which includes companies, regulators, academic experts, and representatives of civil society. In the coming year, more leading companies in this industry should join this effort. They should also adopt cutting-edge technology to improve their detection of violent extremist content and communications.

Read the full Forbes article.
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Michael Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Professor of Business and Society and Director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.