For Brookings Institution’s TechTank, I wrote an overview of and takeaways from the Facebook Oversight Board. I was fortunate to be part of one of its expert meetings in August 2019, and I focused most of my comments while there on the private governance aspect of the process. In this piece I recreate the journey…
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Link: Brookings – Four lessons for U.S. legislators from the EU Digital Services Act
For Brookings Institution’s TechTank, Bruna Santos and I wrote an overview of the EU Digital Services Act proposal, and the lessons US (and other) policy makers can learn from it, in terms of intermediary liability. This is the third in our series of articles on intermediary liability legislation, after an in-depth look at the legislative reform proposals…
Press: BusinessInsider – As Facebook prepares to outsource tough content decisions to its new ‘Supreme Court,’ experts warn it still operates within a dictatorship and can’t legislate a better government
I was quoted in this BusinessInsider article about the Oversight Board, as it ramps up its capacity to hear cases, even though its power is limited.
Link: Brookings – The push for content moderation legislation around the world
For Brookings Institution’s TechTank, I wrote with Bruna Santos, an in-depth look at the legislative reform proposals around the world (specifically US, EU and Brazil) on intermediary liability. This is a follow-up article to our previous breakdown of the legislative context globally.
Link: HIIG – Don’t break-up Facebook, make it more transparent
For the Humboldt Institute’s Digital Society blog, I authored a piece calling for meaningful transparency regulations as more important than any other antitrust action. There is also a partly German version.
Link: Brookings – How a compliance mindset undermines antitrust reform proposals
For Brookings Institution’s TechStream, I wrote with Dr. Anne L. Washington, a conceptual piece in which we talk about how the narrow and compliance-focused perspective that Big Tech companies take on dealing with “Ethics” is very likely to permeate any antitrust action taken by the government, given current proposals.
Link: Techdirt Greenhouse – Content Moderation and Human Nature
For Techdirt’s Tech Policy Greenhouse, I wrote a longer, more conceptual piece about the disconnect between what communication technology platforms can do and what we’re asking them to do, and a longer argument about humanity and our nature woven throughout.
Webinar: Internet in the Time of Crisis
On August 14th, I was invited to talk about how the Internet worked during prolonged crisis, in a webinar put together by the Internet Law and Policy Foundry and ISOC-DC. Joining an all-star cast of lawyers, technical experts and academics, we talked about everything from infrastructure to social media platforms. A recording of the webinar…
Press: The Hill – “Republicans, DOJ propose scaling back social media liability protections”
I was quoted in this article in The Hill, talking about the dual proposals from Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and from the Department of Justice, on content moderation. As you can probably tell, I (along with anybody that’s spent more than 2 hours in this area of tech policy) am not a fan of either.
Link: Brookings – Online content moderation lessons from outside the US
I wrote, along with Bruna Santos, from Brazil’s Coding Rights, a piece for Brookings Institution’s TechTank, highlighting the diverse ways in which other countries (outside the US) handled legislation on content moderation.