Thread by @daphnehk

This announcement from @jack about decentralized content moderation and ranking is exciting! 1/

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106

@jack I say that as someone who can’t remember the last time she felt excited by tech news. (I always despised the ginned up excitement over product launches in the years when most of the press uncritically loved tech, before the norm shifted to uncritical loathing.) 2/

@jack It’s exciting because it follows an approach that certain nerds have chattered about for quite a while, but which I always thought wasn’t realistic anymore. That’s why I called it “Magic APIs” when I wrote about it here: cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2019/05/p… 3/

@jack @mmasnick wrote about a comparable idea in far more detail here knightcolumbia.org/content/protoc… 4/

@jack @mmasnick The idea as I see it is that when a platform gets big enough for people to start muttering things like “utility” or “central facility,” to use something like telecom unbundling to open up competitor access to the trove of information the platform holds. 5/

@jack @mmasnick Competitors offer their own flavor of content rules and ranking, consumers can choose among those or choose the flavor offered by the original platform. Voila, no more single, enormously powerful information gatekeeper! 6/

@jack @mmasnick I always figured the biggest reason this wouldn’t really work is data protection law. A lot of key data needed to run these services is private – either privately shared content (think FB) or back-end behavioral data about users that makes things like targeting more effective. 7/

@jack @mmasnick As I see it, getting consent doesn’t fix this unless consent is so easy to give that we risk another Cambridge Analytica. I may want SketchyStartupCo to handle all my social media feeds, but unless my friends follow suit, my feeds won’t have the content I want. 8/

@jack @mmasnick But it gives me a nerdy thrill that Twitter is trying it. It’s an elegant counter to Mark Z’s current message that a closed, centrally controlled, giant system, with tens of thousands of moderators and massive content removal AI is the only way to keep us safe. 8/

@jack @mmasnick I keep thinking of these Mark Z'berg remarks in particular, suggesting we need FB to be huge so it can keep spending more on content moderation than Twitter's whole revenue. I worry that lawmakers prioritizing control will find this message persuasive. theverge.com/2019/10/1/2089… 9/

@jack @mmasnick I am very interested to see where this goes, and to hear what people like @BeterOpDeFiets, @noUpside, @alexstamos, @alexfeerst, @Klonick @trevolafoam (the first person I remember talking to about this, years and years ago!) have to say. FIN/

@jack @mmasnick @BeterOpDeFiets @noUpside @alexstamos @alexfeerst @Klonick @trevolafoam And @amac!! How did I leave you off this list?? Maybe I just got confused with all the Alexes on it already.

@jack @mmasnick I keep thinking of these Mark Z'berg remarks in particular, suggesting we need FB to be huge so it can keep spending more on content moderation than Twitter's whole revenue. I worry that lawmakers prioritizing control will find this message persuasive. theverge.com/2019/10/1/2089… 9/

@jack @mmasnick I am very interested to see where this goes, and to hear what people like @BeterOpDeFiets, @amac, @noUpside, @alexstamos, @alexfeerst, @Klonick, @trevolafoam (the first person I remember talking to about this, years and years ago!) have to say. FIN/