Blog Posts: Filtered

The Supreme Court is about to review a constitutional challenge to two unprecedented and very complicated laws regulating social media. The laws were enacted by Texas and Florida in order to counter “censorship” and alleged anti-conservative bias of major Internet platforms like Facebook or YouTube. Both laws have “must-carry” rules that restrict platforms’ ability to moderate content under their preferred editorial policies, and “transparency” rules including requirements for platforms to notify users when their posts have been moderated. Read more about FAQs about the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court, Part 1

Beliefs and expectations about what data platforms have at their fingertips vary wildly. That is about to matter a great deal, once new rules in the EU allowing researchers to access data held by platforms come into effect. Relationships between researchers, platforms, and regulators are likely to be very bumpy — and important research is likely to be delayed — until expectations become more aligned.  Read more about Some Practical Postulates About Platform Data

This week I participated in an unusually collegial and productive Senate hearing about approaches to platform transparency, presided over by Senator Coons. My detailed written testimony, including appendices listing other resources and attempting to identify platforms potentially covered by proposed laws, is here. It captures a lot of detailed questions and concerns that I have been thinking about for a while, but not had time to write about anywhere else, including about surveillance issues. Read more about My Senate Testimony About Platform Transparency

This post is about what I consider one of the hardest questions, particularly under laws that create special data-access regimes for researchers. What data are platforms supposed to share, and what personal information will it disclose about Internet users? This question pits privacy goals against data-access and research goals. A strongly pro-privacy answer will curtail research into questions of great public importance. A strongly pro-research answer will limit users’ privacy rights. In between lie a lot of difficult calls and complex trade-offs. Read more about User Privacy vs. Platform Transparency: The Conflicts Are Real and We Need to Talk About Them