Council for Responsible Social Media

The challenge. Social media promised to build a more interconnected, informed world. But now the harms the platforms are causing are exceeding the promise of greater improved conversation and global connectedness, and American democracy is at stake. In the same way that tobacco companies designed purposefully addictive products, marketed those products aggressively to teens and adults, and suppressed research about their product, today’s social media companies are obscuring the truth and preventing change. Tech companies outspend reformers in Washington. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 11 major tech, social media, and AI companies spent $20 million on lobbying and hired more than 300 lobbyists.

What Issue One did. In late 2022, we launched the Council for Responsible Social Media, the broadest bipartisan group working for healthier, safer social media. Its 60+ members bring credibility that no single advocacy group has. The Council:

• Published the Empty Promises Tracker, which documents safety pledges tech companies made and then broke.
• Helped strike down a proposed 10-year ban on state AI laws in 2025.
• Convened a bipartisan Section 230 task force of legal experts and former policymakers in 2026, and organized a congressional roundtable on reform.

The result. Tech accountability is now a bipartisan issue on Capitol Hill, with Council members working alongside Republican and Democratic senators.

Why it matters. The Council’s credibility is the groundwork for our Information for America Act. These harms are widespread: degraded mental health, especially for our children, growing political polarization, fragile democracies disrupted by propaganda, conspiracy theories going mainstream, and increased distrust of foundational institutions. How is this happening? The simple answer is that the Big Tech companies are operating with no serious accountability or oversight, and they are putting profits above the societal harms to our kids, for our communities, and to U.S. national security. We will hold them accountable.