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By Daphne Keller on July 16, 2020 at 6:02 pm
By Riana Pfefferkorn on July 6, 2020 at 11:45 am
On July 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a full-committee hearing at which it made significant changes to the pending EARN IT Act bill, S.3398, about which I’ve written extensively on the CIS blog. Read more about The EARN IT Act Threatens Our Online Freedoms. New Amendments Don’t Fix It.
By Riana Pfefferkorn on June 24, 2020 at 4:50 pm
On Tuesday, June 23, Senators Graham (R-SC), Cotton (R-AR), and Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill that is a full-frontal nuclear assault on encryption in the United States. You can find the bill text here. Read more about There’s Now an Even Worse Anti-Encryption Bill Than EARN IT. That Doesn’t Make the EARN IT Bill OK.
By Daphne Keller on June 1, 2020 at 1:21 pm
In a previous post, I described the growing calls for what I called a “systemic duty of care” (SDOC) in platform regulation. I suggested that SDOC requirements would create difficult questions in ordinary intermediary liability litigation. By encouraging or requiring platforms to review user content or exercise more control over it, SDOC laws would change courts’ reasoning in cases about YouTube’s liability for a defamatory video, for example. Read more about Broad Consequences of a Systemic Duty of Care for Platforms
By Daphne Keller on May 28, 2020 at 2:28 pm
Policymakers in Europe and around the world are currently pursuing two reasonable-sounding goals for platform regulation. First, they want platforms to abide by a “duty of care,” going beyond today’s notice-and-takedown based legal models to more proactively weed out illegal content posted by users. Second, they want to preserve existing immunities, with platforms generally not facing liability for content they aren’t aware of. Read more about Systemic Duties of Care and Intermediary Liability
By Chuck Cosson on May 25, 2020 at 3:39 pm
For further insights on managing misinformation, we should look to the ways in which humans form identity through imitation, purge enmity through scapegoating, and often lack the inability to internally generate a clear sense of preferences or make choices that align with them.
One of the mechanisms worth analyzing is the human tendency to assign trajectories to immediate observations and, similarly, to be attracted to "trend stories" wagering predictions. This tendency contributes to misinformation problems as it assigns undue weight to both the ability of the predictor and the probability the prediction will come to pass.
I prefer to think, though, that rightness demands we protect the right of humans to so choose, even if it means they reject truth for fantasy. And even if free choice is inhabited with a bit of illusion, one created by subconscious beliefs that control our thinking, and thus our actions, without our immediate awareness.
Generating shared perspectives is an important component of this response. Misinformation flourishes in environments where shared perspectives are weak. Art can help illustrate, in ways that argument and evidence cannot, shared qualities of experience and perspective. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Tools, Trends, Technology
By Albert Gidari on May 22, 2020 at 12:00 am
This blogpost was first published by me on May 22, 2020, as a series of Tweets on manual contact tracing and privacy risks. Many privacy advocates initally opposed using technology like bluetooth exposure notification applications to fight the spread of COVID-19, arguing instead that manual contact tracing works better; that it is "tried & true" and has none of the privacy concerns that applications raise. Read more about Manual Contact Tracing Has Privacy Issues
By Riana Pfefferkorn on May 11, 2020 at 4:16 pm
By Riana Pfefferkorn on May 8, 2020 at 11:41 am
Yesterday, a group of Democratic congressmembers, headed by online speech and privacy champion Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), unveiled their answer to the disastrous EARN IT Act bill that I’ve been raising alarms Read more about An EARN IT Alternative That Might Actually Help Children
By Riana Pfefferkorn on April 30, 2020 at 11:07 am
In our democratic system of government, the legislature passes laws, the executive branch enforces them, and the courts interpret them when disputes arise about their meaning. Read more about You Have the Right to Know What the Law Is
