Abstract

Social media algorithms mediate vast portions of contemporary social, political, and economic life. This paper offers a socio-legal enquiry into how algorithmic systems operated by platforms and shaped by capitalist imperatives affect individuals, communities, and democratic institutions. It examines both proximate effects (attention economies, mental health, political polarization, labour precarity) and deeper causal dynamics (surveillance capitalism, corporate governance of information flows, public–private regulatory capture). Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from law, sociology, political economy, and technology studies, the paper argues that algorithmic harms are not merely technical failures but the predictable outcomes of business models oriented to monetizing attention and data. The legal response—ranging from privacy regulation to competition law—has been fragmented and often inadequate. The paper concludes with socio-legal recommendations: reorienting accountability regimes, strengthening democratic oversight of platform governance, adopting rights-based constraints on profiling and automated decision-making, and creating structural remedies to counterbalance capitalist concentration.

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