Director, Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University and Associate Professor in the School of Media & Public Affairs | Co-founder/Executive Committee, Coalition for Independent Technology Research | Advisory Board, European Digital Media Observatory
I study media & politics, online harms, platform transparency and accountability.
Usual disclaimer about these views being mine.
Not the odds, but the stakes.
That's my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need in journalists covering the 2024 campaign. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.
This report from the Washington Post is getting there. Have a read of it and tell me if you see what I mean. https://wapo.st/41yXOmI [Gift link, no paywall]
🚨🚨 Has Congress been caught completely off-guard by generative AI? Not entirely. Anna Lenhart, IDDP's Knight Policy Fellow, has crowdsourced a list of relevant federal legislative proposals that should be helpful to anyone thinking about the policy agenda on this topic.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pzBEG3tV_T6p-FvC50FAnMMH_Yx9QTzfgx7ngc3kzv8/edit
After lots of delays, Twitter's announcement about its new API pricing is as bad as we expected. Just how bad? The Coalition for Independent Technology Research breaks it down in this open letter:
New in WIRED: A public health model of tech governance would detect & remediate tech harms while also supporting societal well-being & preventing future crises.
Yet public health, like the tech industry, has systematically failed marginalized communities in ways that are not accidents. How can tech governance do better from the start?
https://www.wired.com/story/tech-governance-public-health/amp
For Tech Policy Press, Emma Lurie conducted a comparative analysis of researcher APIs for TikTok, Twitter, Meta, and YouTube. This comparison demonstrates where platforms are out-of-step with peers and where changes may need to be made to industry norms:
https://techpolicy.press/comparing-platform-research-api-requirements/
Op ed in Tech Policy Press!
Colloquially —
1. “Algorithms” is a bad term.
2. understanding the a/b testing metrics ranking systems are goaled on is the skeleton key to understanding what they’re doing
3. My org has to be neutral on 230 since my members disagree
4. ”transparency” sounds toothless but the right kind can be hugely important!
This does not mean there will be immediate action against Twitter. The DSA is still in roll-out mode. But with continued public attention to Twitter's transparency issues, we can expect Twitter will be top of mind when enforcement procedures can begin.
ICYMI: Twitter officially qualifies as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) in the EU, meaning it is subject to the most stringent requirements of the Digital Services Act.
That includes Article 40 on data access for vetted researchers.
https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/amars-in-the-eu.html
Musk's decision to charge for Twitter API access jeopardizes the study of influence campaigns and platform manipulation, researchers say, even as Twitter told the EU it's a leader in researcher access: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/tech/musk-twitter-transparency-researchers/index.html
"Twitter essentially has gone, in a blink of an eye, from being an industry leader in transparency to the bottom of the barrel," GWU's @rebekahtromble told me. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/tech/musk-twitter-transparency-researchers/index.html
Got to write an article with the wonderful @brittparis and sarah myers west! Its out in Media & Society & called ‘Radical infrastructure: Building beyond the failures of past imaginaries for networked communication'. https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/IZ5WY6IIRE83ZBMVDFVU/full
In a speech earlier today, EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, made it clear that Twitter's announcement that it would restrict access to its API runs counter to its commitments under the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/07/elon-musk-twitter-disinformation-josep-borrell/
@dangillmor Want to bring down Twitter? DSA fines will help with that.
@dangillmor What a demeaning response. No one's begging Musk. We're pointing out that this policy has serious consequences that the company appears to have overlooked. Will the campaign change Musk's mind? No. But policymakers need public campaigns like this to help justify their own action (DSA in the EU, PATA in the US, etc.). There's a bigger picture here.
@fgilardi we made it all the way to February! 😅 😭
That same form will allow you to request or volunteer to provide mutual aid. You don't need to sign the letter or be a Coalition member to receive support.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfd31H3gWA_vv1tjfecxB9OKViOgQVuayF3vOQv6SNPvYqLuw/viewform
To add your/your organization's name to the letter, you can use the following:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfd31H3gWA_vv1tjfecxB9OKViOgQVuayF3vOQv6SNPvYqLuw/viewform
Twitter's announcement that it would restrict access to its API (w/o any details but going into effect in less than a week) threatens to cut off thousands of vital public-interest research, reporting, and civil society projects around the world.
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research has published an open letter and is organizing mutual aid for impacted researchers:
https://independenttechresearch.org/letter-twitter-api-access-threatens-public-interest-research/
Papers for the ICA preconference for which I suffered considerable FOMO--What Comes After Disinformation Studies?--are now collected and published. h/t @rebekahtromble
https://citap.pubpub.org/pub/oijfl3sv/release/1
@jeffjarvis a lot of us in the disinfo research space are worried about a number of the trends/impulses that have been driving the field. UNC's CITAP recently published a series of articles that touch on many of the concerns: https://citap.pubpub.org/pub/oijfl3sv/release/1.
I don't think disinfo studies is dead by any means, but it needs reshaping in significant ways.
