Good advice: How online platforms can benefit from social media councils

The major social platforms have created private spheres of communication that they control through their terms of use and their algorithm-driven moderation practices. Their influence on social discourse and public opinion has grown significantly. Yet should these processes be guided primarily by in-house rules and private-sector objectives such as profit maximisation? The discussion is increasingly focusing on models that allow society’s interests and goals to play a greater role in how digital rules and practices are designed. Who, however, should speak for users and the general public, and in what capacity? 

Could social media councils (SMCs) prove effective in reducing power asymmetries? In other words, what role can bodies made up of experts and/or user representatives play here?