Thread by @issielapowsky

Sen. Coons begins hearing on algorithms by saying he and Sasse don't have a specific legislative agenda: "Ranking member Sasse and I plan to use this hearing as an opportunity to learn."

Sasse also strikes a conciliatory tone. "It's too easy in DC for us to take any complicated issue and reduce it immediately to heroes and villains and whatever the regulatory or legislative pre-determined tool was to then slam it down on the newly to be defined problem."

Seems clear Coons and Sasse are trying to position this as the "serious" hearing, discouraging the usual partisan finger-pointing.

People, we're potentially looking at two legit and informative tech hearings in a row. Could it be? Reserving judgment.

Do not try this at home.

https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1387047701917802508?s=20

Bickert says keeping people on Facebook with polarizing content, but ultimately losing them because of the ugliness of that content would be "self defeating." "It is not in our interest, financially or reputationally, to push people towards increasingly extreme content."

Veitch of YouTube says limiting recs of borderline content led to a "70% drop in watch time of such content from non-subscribed recommendations in the US that year."

From non-subscribed recommendations in the US is a heckuva qualifier.

Tristan Harris now talking about rabbit holes and echo chambers. "So long as that is the promise with personalization, we are each going to be steered into a different rabbit hole of reality."

He calls this a "psychological deranging process."

Harvard's @BostonJoan makes an important point at the outset: "Whatever policy ends up coming from the US will undoubtedly become the default settings for the rest of the world."

Donovan describes what drives people into rabbit holes online, riffing on YouTube's "four Rs" scheme: Repetition, redundancy, responsiveness, reinforcement

Coons is asking why social media companies don't use "virality circuit breakers" to ensure content that's "blowing up" gets a review by a human being.

Donovan says: "It has to be part of the business process ...to seek out content that is...out of skew."

Bickert said virality is already "a signal" as to whether Facebook should proactively review a piece of content, then pivots to talking about the fact-checking process.

Coons asks why Facebook wouldn't have these virality circuit breakers at work all of the time. Bickert said Facebook uses them in circumstances where there's "extreme and finite, in terms of date, risk, such as an election in a country that's going through civil unrest."

Coons asks whether engineers get pay incentives for time spent on a platform. Basically all the witnesses are saying no, they look at responsible growth, health of the platform, etc. etc.

But...

Tristan Harris contradicts Bickert. "I think there was a brief experimentation at Facebook with non-engagement based performance incentives for social impact, but that those have largely gone away."

Says metrics like sessions, 7-day active users, growth are still focus.

Sasse asks Bickert what Harris is missing. Bickert cites FB's transition to elevating "meaningful social interactions" in 2018. Says, "It led to people spending 10s of millions of fewer hours on Facebook every day."

"People are pretty good at short-term rage, and the product capitalizes on that doesn’t it?" Sasse says.

I think this is the right way to frame it. A lot of what we're talking about today are human instincts which are rewarded by social media.

"I'm a liberal arts, lawyer, not nearly as tech savvy as I should be for this hearing." Durbin says.

Lucky for him, there are no actual engineers from the companies testifying today anyway.

It strikes me as problematic that Tristan Harris is getting most of the questions here, considering he hasn't worked at any of these companies in the last 5 years, during which they've been doing most of the work on extremism and content moderation.

But the other witnesses won't say things like "attention vampires."

This is the piece Hirono is asking Bickert about. Bickert said she wasn't familiar. technologyreview.com/2021/04/09/102…

Klobuchar, who led a useful antitrust hearing with Apple and Google last week, is now asking how market power "exacerbates problems of disinformation, extremist content and bias."

Relatedly: Does *anyone* talk faster than Tristan Harris? My fingers don't move that fast, man.

Harris answers Klobuchar's question by saying that, say, WhatsApp couldn't choose to spend billions more on content moderation because they're under FB's wing.

But, the opposite is also true: would smaller companies have the resources to invest as much as FB is today?

Klobuchar asks whether FB is supportive of the Cantwell privacy bill. Bickert won't say.

Klobuchar asks whether FB supports giving people access to data "including what data is used in social media company algorithms."

Bickert ducks that, talking about the access FB does offer

Kennedy is weirdly playing hardball with Tristan Harris and Joan Donovan for not saying yes or no as to whether they'd vote for bill that revokes 230 protection for platforms that optimize engagement?

Then he won't let Joan speak when she tries to elaborate.

Ossoff starts with a very unrelated question about whether Facebook will "embark on further acquisitions of competitor services."

Bickert gives a very unrelated answer about transparency.

Ossoff is asking antitrust questions like he wandered into the wrong Zoom room.

It is a rookie move for Senators to ask FB a question about "selling data." Even if you think it's a dunk because Facebook sells ads built on data, you're just giving the witness an offramp from the question, which they always take.

Bickert to Ossoff: "We don't sell user data."

I said I was reserving judgment, but I've seen enough: we did not, in fact, get two useful tech hearings in a row.

https://twitter.com/issielapowsky/status/1387047091243917312?s=20

Eureka, a good question from Coons: "If a video ends up getting taken down by YouTube for violating its content policies...could YouTube commit today to providing more transparency about your recommendation algorithm and its impacts."

Veitch calls it "interesting," but ducks.

Coons asks all the company witnesses whether their companies require employees to sign NDAs. Bickert says (!) she doesn't know.

You cannot walk in the doors at Facebook without being asked to sign an NDA.

Coons ends with this: "I think we have to approach these challenging and complex issues with both humility and urgency, the stakes demand nothing less."

And, adjourned. Not sure I learned much.