This morning the Senate Intelligence Committee will hear from @Jack and @SherylSandberg about their companies’ responses to foreign influence operations on social media platforms. Here’s what’s on my mind:
Today’s hearing is not about “gotcha” questions or scoring political points. Our goal is to begin to tackle the challenges posed by foreign adversaries and other bad actors who are abusing these platforms to undermine our democracy and harm American consumers.
I’ve put out a series of ideas to start this long-overdue national conversation about privacy, data and social media, and I’m hoping to hear some constructive thoughts from these tech leaders this morning. For example:
Don’t your users have a right to know when they are interacting with bots on your platform?
Isn’t there a public interest in ensuring more anonymized data is available to researchers and academics to help identify potential problems and misuse?
Why are your terms of service so difficult to find and nearly impossible to read, much less understand?
Why shouldn’t we adopt ideas like data portability, data minimization, or first party consent?
After witnessing numerous episodes of misuse, what further accountability should there be with respect to the flawed advertising model that you utilize?
I’ve put these and other ideas into a white paper that I’ve circulated to get this discussion going. You can read the whole thing here:
axios.com/mark-warner-go…
axios.com/mark-warner-go…
And you can tune in to today’s hearing starting at 9:30 AM: intelligence.senate.gov
