Thread by @vivekdotca

Being on the ground here in Ottawa and watching the occupation unfold, I’m stunned by how multiple public policy failures around regulating tech have come together to contribute to this mess. These include:

1. Longstanding failures by incumbent platforms to police and protect their platforms. Cybersecurity failures at Facebook have allowed bona fide accounts to be hijacked to spread disinformation.

https://twitter.com/bystevereilly/status/1491168971152044033

Meanwhile, Twitter is overrun with bots (as it always is). How haven’t these basic problems been resolved six years after the 2016 election debacle?

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1490779442469347336

2. Weaponization of new platforms: while we’ve all been focused on social media content policy debates, malicious actors have exploited gaps in other kinds of platforms (like crowdfunding ones) and weaponized them for their aims.

These platforms clearly haven’t invested enough in trust and safety, nor do they have adequate infrastructure to monitor activity. The bigger point, however, is that creating platforms that allow large groups of people to interact ALWAYS has unintended consequences.

So maybe we should break down some of the silos between various platform governance conversations (social platforms, gig economy platforms, etc.) and consider the impacts of the platform business model on society as a whole.

3. Networked propaganda comes north: with wall-to-wall Fox News & Breitbart coverage of Ottawa, we’re seeing the phenom @yochaibenkler et al identified in the 2016 US election coming to Canada. oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/o…

Right wing media has globalized, and social media is amplifying their messages worldwide—beyond the reach of Canadian broadcasting regulators who have previously barred licenses to excessively ideological media—albeit for content-neutral reasons. thestar.com/news/canada/20…

4.Crypto: there’s evidence that the occupiers are using various crypto technologies (bitcoin, NFTs) to raise money outside the financial system. insightintel.substack.com/p/insight-inte…

What do we do about this? Should public policy permit anonymous financial transactions? The world cracked down on banking privacy starting in the 1990s to fight financial crimes and corruption. What should our policy be on crypto?

5. Capture of the Canadian state. Instead of legislating to deal with these emerging threats, Canadian policymakers are obsessed with passing laws to disgorge rents from Netflix, Facebook, and their ilk to help finance incumbent Canadian media. globalnews.ca/news/8592505/o…

In the face of a clear and present danger to Canadian democracy, is this the best use of scarce political oxygen? Or should we be confronting the bigger threats that tech transformation poses?