At Columbia J-school this evening for a conversation on "Private Platforms, Public Discourse". Hosted by the Knight 1st Amendment Institute, the conversation is about law, journalism, tech and whether there are regulatory or anti-trust methods to govern social media platforms.
Cindy Cohn of @EFF remembers an earlier internet where everyone having a printing press seemed liberatory, and wonders how we got to a moment where platforms are celebrating how widely they censor. We are less customers of these platforms, she says, "than hostages."
@EFF We don't have enough players in the existing digital public sphere, explains @jackbalkin. Need more types of social media with more rules and norms, a more innovative public sphere. "We could have many more social media systems doing many more things."
@EFF @jackbalkin Beyond a need for more diversity, the rise of social media platforms has dried up other key public spheres, including journalism. Google and FB have a functional duopoly over advertising, explains @jackbalkin - crowds out the possibility of other key actors.
@EFF @jackbalkin Facebook and Google are essentially surveillance organizations, explains @jackbalkin. To be an effective surveillance org., they need as much different data as possible - hence, Google buys Fitbit. Collecting, collating and predicting based on data is the heart of this bizmodel.
@EFF @jackbalkin If you want to use antitrust to tackle Google and Facebook, says @jackbalkin, you can't just separate the businesses - you have to prevent them from aggregating and collating data.
@EFF @jackbalkin Lina Khan (@linamkhan) focuses on the asymmetries of these platform markets - if there's a dispute between a company and Google, Google can retaliate by destroying your visibility. Market power can distort any market, especially dissemination and publishing of news.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan Concentration of digital ad market, primarily through acquisitions, creates another asymmetry. Google knows what people read across the internet; publishers only know behavior on their own website, explains @linamkhan Clear conflicts of interests in these situations.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan The dominant platforms have entirely re-engineered how news is made, explains @emilybell. The rewards for made-up content are identical (if not higher) for expensive, carefully reported content. Less visible but important reporting "is in jail in social media" in attention terms.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Algorithmic distribution makes it impossible for anyone to know why they're encountering a particular piece of news, or where it's coming from, at any time, explains @emilybell. Not a conscious choice to set up the system this way, but easily weaponized.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Increasingly money equals speech - and if the market is entirely unregulated, bad money will drive out the good (and bad speech drowns out good) - @emilybell
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Facebook's curated news tab is an attempt to clean up these problems post-2016. But this means FB is setting standards for what will be seen, what should be seen... and this is entirely opaque and not subject to review - @emilybell
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Google and FB undermined the public sphere... and now they're hosting the conversations, funding the players who are going to discuss how we reform this sphere. - @emilybell
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Cindy Cohn of @EFF talks about how odd it is to move from fighting to ensure everyone can speak online, to now worrying about hate speech and harassment. She suggests a key step is moving to smaller spaces that have a better chance of governing their own communities.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell We might celebrate Twitter banning political ads, Cindy sez, but corporations still run issue ads, celebrities share their perspectives and don't lose their accounts... we need a move to due process to ensure our work on hate speech doesn't silence voices.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell An advantage of more, smaller players, explains @jackbalkin, is that it's harder to coopt them all. FB is afraid of being broken up, so it's trying to recruit friends in DC, from both sides. Might also slow down viral spread of information.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell On the downside, more players makes it harder for the government to coordinate with them in terms of security issues, sez @jackbalkin. The bizmodel - which favors sensationalism, hijacking attention - may be more important to fix.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell Cindy Cohn echoes this: "By fostering more platforms, I hope we can foster more business models." Pushing for more competition might create space for the DuckDuckGo's of the world "who are making a fine small biz around contextual advertising".
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell "The ad model is probably over for most free media," sez @emilybell. She references @nytimes, who predicts their digital ad revenue falling next quarter by 10-20%. If the Times is facing that, expect to see everyone else get hit even harder.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes From the perspective of journalism, it's probably not enough just to solve the business model problem - we need to consider the needs for quality information through public support models as well, explains @emilybell
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Lina Khan (@linamkhan) talks about horizontal and vertical concentration. Google has vertically concentrated the ad market. But there's horizontal concentration - when FB announces video is the future, news orgs fired reporters to start making videos. That's unhealthy.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Scale is not a problem, offers @linamkhan - the abuse of power by those large scale organizations is the problem. If you regulate those companies and prevent abuse of power, there may be ways to benefit from scale.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Emily Bell (@emilybell) wonders whether the sorts of concentrations needed to do surveillant advertising "pushes journalism over an ethical line" into a bizmodel they shouldn't be participating in.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Anti-monopoly is about checking abuse of concentrated power. Antitrust is only one way to do it, explains @linamkhan. But we can also consider ideas like infrastructure/common carrier to ensure that network monopolies don't abuse their power.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Interoperability and interconnection is another set of remedies used to limit the power of ATT, sez @linamkhan. And you could also explicitly prohibit certain types of bizmodels. Or put into place affirmative obligations, making infrastructures available to competitors.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes .@jackbalkin doesn't see common carriage applying to social media companies - it's more appropriate for content distribution networks and other underlying wiring. Once you add in moderation, you're no longer in a common carrier paradigm.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes As for prohibiting bad practices: you might prohibit behavioral, instead of contextual advertising. But there will be 1st amendment problems when you target the intervention at advertising itself, sez @jackbalkin. (He allows he needs to think more about this.)
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes Cindy from @EFF brings in @doctorow's idea of adversarial interoperability - the idea that people can interoperate without permission. We need to tackle barriers to this sort of interoperability, including CFAA.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Additionally, DMCA 1201 prohibits circumvention of tech measures that can prevent interoperability. Terms of Service can prevent interop too. And Oracle is trying to bring copyright of APIs into the mix. All are critical to fight to ensure interop explains Cindy @EFF Cohn
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Changing the law doesn't change the culture, sez @emilybell - we need to get beyond seeing these public spaces as private, commercial spaces. We need to get back to thinking about public goods and public exchange, not just markets and commercialization.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Asked about breaking up companies, @linamkhan thinks of the reasons for breakup as well as the mechanisms to do so. We have concentration limits about how many markets you can be in - horizontal breakups. Or you can separate vertically - banking and commerce, for instance.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Antitrust is probably not the easiest path to breakup, sez @linamkhan. Regulatory mechanisms are more likely to have teeth. But some of this means unpacking services - Google search is three things - crawling, indexing and presenting results. Some need to be centralized.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow "It's incredible that we're starting the 2020 campaign and we know so little about what actually happened in the 2016 campaign" sez @emilybell. It's so damned hard to get the info we need to understand this history that we know far less than we should.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Legitimate concerns about Cambridge Analytica - the impact of which was overstated - has let FB constrain academic access to their data, offers Cindy @EFF. It's hard to demand all their data and beat them up for sharing data... (@emilybell differs...)
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Publishers can't even get data on how their content is shared on FB, sez @emilybell - it's turned us into a situation where we need to "stand in line for dollops of data" about our own behavior.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Why should we oppose breaking up big tech? Cindy Cohn @EFF notes that giving government more power over speech isn't generally a great idea. It's much wiser to lobby for adversarial interop than to increase government speech controls, including something like a fairness doctrine.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow We need separation of functions, consumer protection and privacy, sez @jackbalkin. If you don't do them all simultaneously, it's harder to achieve the goals. Use multiple tools, including intermediary liability/immunity.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Applying public sphere levers to Google don't work - it's a surveillance company, not a public sphere company. That's why consumer projection and privacy become key levers, sez @jackbalkin
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Don't assume change is impossible, offers @jackbalkin. We're in a second gilded age. The last gilded age was followed by the progressive era.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow Finally, to implement these remedies, we need to think hard about the 1st amendment and its implications. We can't assume that 1st amendment bromides are the right ways to understand these problems - @jackbalkin
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow "Law structures markets... and the structure of these markets is entirely a function of law" - @linamkhan. This isn't about the "heavy hand" of law - it's about democratizing markets for information and news that serve the public.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow You can't just think about reforming the platforms, explains @emilybell - you have to think about what institutions we need socially and how we fund them. The model of rapid startup and failure is lousy for building these sorts of institutions.
@EFF @jackbalkin @linamkhan @emilybell @nytimes @doctorow And that's it for tonight - no liveblogging of the cocktail party. I'll be back online tomorrow for the panel discussions... :-)
