Americans' vision for social media

From March 6 to 9, 2023, YouGov conducted a questionnaire survey of 1,000 American adult citizens to understand their ideal social media platforms and their views on the settings of various platforms.

The survey shows that in Americans' conception of social media, content is pushed in chronological order; users can browse personalized recommended content in their exclusive channels; text and pictures have advantages over audio and video; privacy settings are very important; identity authentication and manual review help ensure a safe network environment; platforms make profits through advertising and e-commerce

To understand Americans' vision of social media, YouGov asked respondents to rate their ideal social media, with ratings covering nine dimensions: presentation of content, user verification, notable user verification, privacy settings, content moderation, monetization, content discovery, user engagement, and type of content. The ratings range from "very good" to "very poor." The following are the ideal social media platforms in the eyes of Americans:

· The platform presents content in chronological order and in the order in which the posts were published, with the latest posts being presented at the top of the screen.

The platform verifies the identity of the user, and the user can choose to use a real name or a pseudonym.

Human reviewers are responsible for verifying accounts of well-known people, organizations, and businesses that meet certain criteria.

A user's profile is either always private (visible only to selected users) or private by default (visible to all users if desired).

Human reviewers will identify and remove content that violates the platform’s terms of service, and users can also report such violations.

In terms of profitability, the platform mainly relies on advertising and e-commerce to generate revenue, rather than through subscriptions or selling user data.

· Users have a dedicated page to discover new content. This page follows the logic of personalized recommendations, provides trending content, and users can participate in topics through hashtags.

· Users can comment, give feedback and share content, join groups, and send private messages to other users.

Content presentation

While most social media platforms push content through algorithmic mechanisms by default, lawmakers and activists have recently suggested that platforms should be required to give users the option to view content chronologically—in the order in which posts were published. Which method do Americans prefer? The survey showed that respondents prefer chronological order, with 76% of respondents believing that platforms present posts in chronological order "very well" or "somewhat well."