Daily Archives: March 27, 2022

SYDNEY, March 21 (Reuters) - Australia's media regulator will be able to force internet companies to share data about how they have handled misinformation and disinformation under new laws that will bolster government efforts to rein in Big Tech.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will also be able to enforce an internet industry code on uncooperative platforms, the government said on Monday, joining others around the world seeking to reduce the spread of harmful falsehoods online.

The planned laws are a response to an ACMA investigation that found four-fifths of Australian adults had experienced misinformation about COVID-19 and 76% thought online platforms should do more to cut the amount of false and misleading content online.

Register

The laws broadly align with efforts by Europe to curb damaging online content, which are due to take effect by the end of 2022, although the European Union has said it wants even tougher measures to stop disinformation given some of the output from Russian state-owned media during the invasion of Ukraine. read more

"Digital platforms must take responsibility for what is on their sites and take action when harmful or misleading content appears," Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in a statement.

Australians were most likely to see misinformation on larger services like Meta Platforms's Facebook (FB.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), the ACMA said.

False narratives typically started with "highly emotive and engaging posts within small online conspiracy groups" and were "amplified by international influencers, local public figures, and by coverage in the media", it added.

The authority also noted that disinformation, which involves intentionally spreading false information to influence politics or sow discord, was continuing to target Australians. Facebook had removed four disinformation campaigns in Australia from 2019 to 2020, it said.

It said conspiracy groups often urged people to join smaller platforms with looser moderation policies, like Telegram. If those platforms rejected industry-set content guidelines "they may present a higher risk to the Australian community", the ACMA said.

The crackdown adds another element to the ruling conservative government's assertion that it has taken a big stick approach to tech giants, as it faces an election that is due by May that most polls suggest it will lose.

Fletcher said the new powers for the regulator would be introduced to parliament in late 2022, meaning it would likely be up to the current opposition Labor party to shepherd them through if the government loses the election.

A spokesperson for Labor's shadow communications minister, Michelle Rowland, told Reuters the opposition supported the expanded powers but the government had taken too long to introduce them since they were recommended in 2019.

DIGI, an Australian industry body representing Facebook, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google, Twitter and video site TikTok, said it supported the recommendations and noted it had already set up a system to process complaints about misinformation.

Register

Reporting by Byron Kaye; editing by Jane Wardell, Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Continue reading here:

Australia to make Big Tech hand over misinformation data - Reuters

Lawmakers across the country are increasingly looking for ways to crack down on the likes of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and others, with claims that the platforms employ addictive social media algorithms and exploit children. Last week, legislators in California and Minnesota made strides on proposed legislation that would hold companies accountable for the toll their platforms take on young peoples mental health. The bills coincide with calls in Washington to implement meaningful oversight of Big Tech to help keep kids safe.

The California bill would let parents sue companies that dont take steps to avoid addicting children. The proposal is the first of its kind in the U.S. and the most aggressive state-level effort to rein in Big Tech over its use of algorithmic tools that draw on childrens personal data to generate recommendations and other techniques intended to increase their engagement. It would hold social platforms legally accountable for features that are designed to be addictive to children, such as like buttons and endless scroll. Violators could face civil penalties of up to $25,000 per child or damages that could include $1,000 or more per child in a class-action suit, according to the University of San Diego School of Law Childrens Advocacy Institute, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Still, if passed, this type of liability law likely wouldnt be very successful at reigning in Big Tech, says Abbey Stemler, an associate professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University who specializes in internet law, regulatory theory, and Big Tech data. This law isnt really saying anything, she tells TIME. Its too vague to actually be actionable.

Dubbed the Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act, the proposal was advanced in the California Assembly on March 15 by a bipartisan pair of lawmakers, Republican Jordan Cunningham of Paso Robles and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland, with support from the Childrens Advocacy Institute. Cunningham told the Los Angeles Times that some of these companies intentionally design their apps to keep children coming back for more. He asks: Who should pay the social cost of this? Should it be borne by the schools and the parents and the kids, or should it be borne in part by the companies that profited from creating these products?

Californias bill came on the same day that another state, Minnesota, made strides on another measure aimed at protecting young people from social media. A state committee voted to advance a proposed law that would prohibit social media platforms from using algorithms to recommend content to anyone under the age of 18. The states House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee will now vote on the measure on March 22. If passed, companies would be liable for damages and a civil penalty of $1,000 for each violation of the law. The bill would require anyone operating a social media platform with more than one million users to require that algorithm functions be turned off for accounts owned by anyone under the age of 18, the bill summary reads.

While these types of proposals are intended to force social platforms to bear some responsibility for the damages inflicted by their algorithms, Stemler says a more effective strategy would be to enact measures that address companies ability to access the data that fuels those algorithms in the first place.

The reason why algorithms work is because they suck in as much data as possible about what these young people are doing, she says. And once they have that data, they can use it. So instead of saying, Hey, dont create addictive systems, we really should be focused on [preventing platforms from] learning that data. The easiest way to do that is just to limit access to the data itself.

Another bill put forth by Cunningham and Wick in February, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, takes a similar angle. The proposal would restrict social platforms collection of childrens personal and location data.

Congress has also moved forward with federal legislation designed to help reduce the dangers that kids face online. In February, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, a bipartisan measure that provides kids and their parents with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations (platforms would be required to enable the strongest settings by default).

The push for these regulatory efforts is driven by continued fallout over leaked company documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Those documents showed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, downplayed its own research on the harmful effects of its platforms on young peopleissues that included eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, and more. This led to a series of Congressional hearings and growing calls for social medias biggest players to face accountability for how they keep young users scrolling through content for as long as possible.

Features that encourage endless scrolling are among the most harmful to young people, according to the companys own research. Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm, one report leaked by Haugen read.

The algorithmic recommendation systems used by popular video platforms like TikTok and YouTube have also drawn criticism. The New York Times reported in December that the inner workings of TikToks algorithm were leaked by a source who was disturbed by the apps push toward sad content that could induce self-harm.

As state and federal efforts grow, Stemler says its crucial that lawmakers get it rightand fast.

My concern for this generations mental health is serious, she says. There are deep problems coming from the pandemic and isolation tech has become the way that young people interact with the world.

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.

View post:

States Could Let Parents Sue Big Tech for Addicting Kids. Here's What That Really Means. - TIME

Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs.

Here's the latest picture on this expectation: Not happening.

That's the conclusion of some new studies, most recently by Mark Muro and Yang You of the Brookings Institution.

They found that although the pandemic brought about some changes in the trend toward the concentration of tech jobs in a handful of metropolitan areas, the largest established hubs as a group "slightly increased their share" of national high-tech employment from 2019 through 2020. (Emphasis theirs.)

Stories of discontented California entrepreneurs decamping for up and coming new hubs or even remote (but broadband-enabled) climes are common fodder in the news.

The Times last year published a sort of diary in which Geoffrey Woo, one such expatriate, wrote about his relocation to Miami to flee the crime and pandemic lockdown of San Francisco. He's still in Miami.

Yet "the big tech superstar cities aren't going anywhere," Muro told me. "There's a suggestion that we're on the brink of an entirely different geography. I don't think recent history or the nature of the technologies point in that direction."

Muro, in harmony with other experts in the geography of work, divides tech employment hubs into three groups.

There are the superstar metro areas: Silicon Valley and San Francisco; New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Seattle-Tacoma; Los Angeles; and Austin. Next come "rising stars": Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Orlando. Finally, everywhere else.

The superstars increased their share of total tech employment by 0.3% during the pandemic less than the increase of 1.4% they experienced in 2015-2019, but still positive. The rising stars as a group increased their share by 0.1%, down from 0.5% in the earlier period. Both gains came at the expense of other would-be hubs.

"The California metropolises really do retain their irreplaceable depth and strength," Muro says. "That's not to say there won't be some movement. Early in the period we saw some exiting, especially from the Bay Area, but it turned out that much of it was within California, rather than to Kansas."

This shouldn't be too surprising. The value of concentrated ecosystems in nurturing innovation has been document for decades. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford and colleagues pointed out in 2020, elite academic institutions attract highly skilled innovators and spin off their learning into new technologies and new industries; their presence tends to attract others like them.

That's how Boston and San Diego became biotech hubs and Silicon Valley and San Francisco centers of inventive approaches to computer hardware and software. There's a notable cross-pollination effect: Inventors who move to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field experience "a sizable increase in the number and quality of patents produced," according to UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti.

The allure of living and working in such a cluster outweighs the downsides of high living costs, taxes and congestion.

"High-tech clusters tend to be located in cities with high labor and real estate costs cities like San Francisco, Boston, or Seattle rather than in cities where costs are low," Moretti observes, possibly because for creative intellectuals, intellectual productivity outweighs those costs.

Tech companies have been moving some operations away from their traditional headquarter locations or expanding elsewhere, Moretti says, but that was happening long before COVID. "I'm skeptical that COVID-induced changes are driving an acceleration in an exodus of tech firms," he says.

Muro's research points to an evolutionary change in high-tech geography triggered by the pandemic, rather than "a wholesale decentralization of tech." There may be several reasons why a large-scale flight from the big hubs hasn't happened.

One is that most tech companies don't plan to abandon office work entirely but expect their workers to commute to work two or three days a week.

This hybrid system "allows employees to move further from their place of work, such as from a city center to a surrounding suburb," Bloom reckons. "But it does not allow an employee to move to another metro area entirely because they must still commute to work on some days."

Instead, Bloom found increased movement within metro areas, rather than between metros a trend he terms the "donut effect," signifying movement out of the central city and into suburbs or exurbs.

Bloom's data are drawn from U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records and Zillow's tracking of rent increases.

His findings cast doubt on the theory, put forth by urbanist Richard Florida and economist Adam Ozimek, that habits of remote work would give rise to "Zoom towns," communities such as Tulsa, Boulder, Colo., and Bozeman, Mont., remote from traditional business centers but inviting for workers who need only keep in touch with their bosses and colleagues digitally via the Zoom and Slack platforms.

While Postal Service statistics do show some movement from densely populated cities to distant locations, the trend is "small relative to the within-metro movement from city centers to their suburbs," Bloom wrote.

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work does seem to have opened entrepreneurs' eyes at least to the potential for doing away with centralized workforces.

In a recent survey of tech startup founders, the share of respondents saying they would prefer to start a firm with an entirely remote workforce from Day One rose to 42.1% in 2021 from only 6% in 2020. Among physical locations where the founders said prefer to launch their businesses, however, San Francisco still dominated, at 28.4%, with New York a distant second.

There have been some clues in recent years that the exodus of big business from California hasn't been all it's cracked up to be.

In 2020, the headline departures featured in reports of corporate relocations were three: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Brookings study, published this month, mentions three major tech firms: Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (Brookings cites a fourth Palantir, a money-losing software company headquartered in Denver, but as of year-end 2021 it employed fewer than 1,900 people in the U.S., some of whom work in California.)

Some of the assertions about a California exodus aim to make political, rather than economic or demographic, points. Consider an August 2021 paper by Lee Ohanian of the Hoover Institution and Joseph Vranich, who happens to be the CEO of a Texas business relocation firm.

Far from being a sober statistical survey of business moves, the paper is more of a screed comprising the usual conservative beefs about California, such as too much regulation. It also makes some surprising assertions: "California is notorious for imposing excessive real estate taxes," for example.

Actually, California's property taxes are the 36th-highest in the nation; Texas, Vranich's home state, ranks seventh, with an effective rate more than twice California's. Thanks to Proposition 13, California is notorious for, if anything, having low real estate taxes.

Ohanian and Vranich, asserting that corporate headquarters are leaving California in "unprecedented numbers," offer a database of 265 companies that did so from January 2018 through June 2021. The list includes such non-business businesses as the NFL Raiders, which moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020. The NFL, however, actually approved the relocation in 2017.

The authors don't give this supposed exodus its proper context, which is how many businesses have been created or moved into California in the same period. The answer, according to the Census Bureau, is 133,503. In the same time span, Texas added 90,916. (By the way, California still hosts three NFL teams, tied with Florida for the most of any state.)

Communities are eager to position themselves as remote tech hubs because of the sector's economic resilience. Unlike service industries such as leisure and tourism, most tech industries experienced barely a hiccup in their long-term growth trends during the pandemic.

Although employment in semiconductor and computer hardware manufacturing fell from January 2020 through June 2021, Brookings found that software publishing, data processing and information services such as Google and Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) suffered only brief employment losses early in 2020, but by mid-2021 had larger workforces than before the pandemic.

Would-be tech hubs can't depend on attracting digital workers naturally, Muro says; they have to work at making themselves seem attractive to a digital workforce. That means building up a technical infrastructure, including broadband access, developing a networking culture resembling Silicon Valley in its early days, and offering good schools and other crucial amenities.

The political environment is also an imponderable factor. Whether aggressively conservative politics in Texas and Florida, including hostility to the LGBTQ community and the contraction of women's reproductive health rights, will slow the influx of young and well-educated workers is hard to tell at the moment.

But the early signs should worry those states' leaders. Tech journalist Kara Swisher, who is gay, recently canceled a tech conference scheduled for next year in Miami to protest the state's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law.

The law prompted a workforce uproar at Walt Disney Co., one of Florida's biggest employers, over the company's silence about its enactment; California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly invited Disney to reverse its decision to move 2,000 jobs to Florida from California. (The company hasn't responded to the overture.)

It's doubtful when, if ever, 100% work-from-home jobs will amount to a large share of employment. Full-scale work-from-home only applies to about 6% of workers, Moretti says. That's triple the 2% level of the pre-pandemic era, but still an exception to the rule.

For all that, it's also true that some "rising star" metros may offer entrepreneurs and tech workers some qualities that established hubs have lost. That's what has kept Woo, who wrote about his decision to relocate, in Miami.

Woo, who runs two businesses in startup mode and a venture investing fund, says he hasn't found business reasons to regret moving from San Francisco. (The dearth of decent Asian food is the one drawback he mentioned.)

The tech community in San Francisco has become dominated by large established companies led by billionaires, those who have already made their fortunes, Woo told me. The tech community in Miami is more inviting to "people who haven't made it, who aren't billionaires.... San Francisco is in harvest mode rather than create mode it's harvesting the value of all the dynamism that has been created over the last 20 or 30 years."

As for Florida politics, "the most impactful policy for normal citizens is COVID policy," he says. "I've been used to not having to wear a mask or show vax cards for every little thing, and it's been great."

Conservative social policies, he says, might undergo change as the result of the inflow of a diverse workforce, rather than keeping people away. "As people come in, the policies of the jurisdiction will evolve to match what the constituents want."

There may be a cultural shift going on in what Moretti calls the "geography of jobs." But "it's still unclear how far it will go," he says. "It will take at least a few years to know."

Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

2022 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Go here to see the original:

Michael Hiltzik: That big tech exodus out of California turns out to be a bust - The Denver Gazette

Something both convoluted and disturbing happened on Twitter this week that illustrates why its not enough for lawmakers in Washington to haul Big Tech executives before congressional committees every now and then and give them a good talking to.

Congress actually has to do something about this. Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they dont like is harmful or abusive, would be a good place to start. If that doesnt happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.

Heres what happened. On Wednesday evening, around the time Twitterbegan censoring Federalist articlesby appending a warning they may be unsafe and their contents could be violent or misleading, I got a notice from Twitter support letting me know that someone had complained about a tweet of mine noting that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is a man.

As a result, my tweet would be banned, but only in Germany, where, according toTwitters explanationof what it calls, country withheld content, an authorized entity issued a valid legal demand to block my tweet.

I had written the tweet in response to news this week that Twitter locked the account of Charlie Kirk for saying Levine is a man. Banning Kirk made no sense, I wrote, because Levine is obviously a man a man who dresses like a woman, but a man nonetheless.

To be clear, Levine is a 64-year-old man who spent the first 54 years of his life presenting or living publicly as a man. He was married and fathered two children. In 2011, he decided to transition and began dressing and presenting as a woman, changing his name to Rachel Levine (previously, he went by Richard, his given name). He divorced his wife of 25 years in 2013.

Levine is and will always be a man. His story is a sad one, and far from mocking or berating him, conservatives should pray for him and hope that he gets the help he obviously needs.

But none of this is really about Levine. Its about Twitter. Twitter locked Kirks account after itlocked the account of The Babylon Beeearlier this week for postingan articleheadlined, The Babylon Bees Man of the Year is Rachel Levine, riffing onan actual USA Today piecenaming Levine as one of its 2022 women of the year, despite the fact that Levine is a man.

After Twitter locked out the Bee, which is a satirical publication, its Editor in Chief Kyle Mann tweeted, Maybe theyll let us back into our @TheBabylonBee Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs in a concentration camp, which prompted Twitter to lock Manns account for hatful conduct. Later, the Bees founder Adam Ford was locked out of Twitter for retweeting Mann.

While all this was going on, articles at The Federalist suddenly started getting blocked by Twitter. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the handful of articles that were blocked, but it started withan article by Libby Emmonspublished Wednesday morning entitled, Everybody Knows Rachel Levine Is Truly A Man, Including Rachel Levine.

When my colleague Tristan Justiceasked Twitter about it, a spokesperson told him, the URLs referenced were mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy this action has been reversed. Nothing to see here, it was all just a big mistake!

But we all know it wasnt. It was no more a mistake than my tweet getting flagged in Germany, of all places, or Kirk and Mann and Ford and the Bee all getting locked out of their accounts. This kind of behavior from social media companies has become all too common for anyone to believe that getting locked out of your account or getting an article taken down is ever a mistake, and certainly not when the tweet or article in question is asserting the plain truth that a man does not become a woman simply by growing his hair out and putting on a skirt. When youre account is locked overthat, its on purpose, and the point is to shut you up.

And its not just Twitter. This week, YouTuberemoved a bunch of videosfrom the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, including a speech by J.D. Vance and a panel discussion with Federalist CEO Sean Davis, Rachel Bovard, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. a panel discussion that happened to be aboutthe harms of Big Tech and how federal law protects them from liability.

Its obvious that these firms will eventually silence everyone who dissents from their woke ideology. Theyre not even trying to hide it anymore. If you say that Rachel Levine is a man, or that Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who just won an NCAA Division I national championship, is a man, they will come after you. It doesnt matter that Levine and Thomas are in fact men. Truth is no defense against censorship by Big Tech.

So until Congress under what would have to be a Republican majority, given Democrats enthusiasm for online censorship acts to put an end to this, it will continue. And the list of things you cant say will grow. Before long, you wont be able to say, for example, that abortion is the taking of a human life, that gay marriage is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, or that children should not be taught that America is systemically racist.

In such an environment, the only way to ensure the censors dont come after you is to follow the extraordinary example of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was asked by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday during the confirmation hearing to define the word woman. Jackson replied, infamously, Im not a biologist.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

Here is the original post:

If Congress Doesn't Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse - The Federalist

A Stigler Center discussion between Ling Chen (Johns Hopkins) and Matt Sheehan (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), moderated by Wall Street Journal journalist Lingling Wei, explores questions regarding the interplay between the tech sector and the state in present-day China and how the recent regulatory push might impact innovation.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Alibaba and Tencenttwo of Chinas largest tech firmsplan to lay off thousands of employees as both companies continue to grapple with regulatory pressures following the government crackdown that caused Chinese tech firms to lose hundreds of billions of their market value.

Chinas sweeping regulatory crackdown on the countrys tech sector, launched over a year ago, has upended an industry that until relatively recently was seen as virtually immune from governmentscrutiny. The crackdown has raised many questions regarding the relationship between Chinas government and the private sector and, despite signs of slowing, there are also signs it may not be going away just yet.

What is the current relationship between the Chinese tech industry and the state? And where is it headed? A recent Stigler Center panel, part of the Centers Chinas Political Economy: A New Era? webinar series, explores these questions and more. The panel featured a discussion betweenLing Chen, an assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The conversation was moderated by the Wall Street Journals Lingling Wei, co-author of the 2020 book Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War.

At the start of the panel, Sheehan provided a brief overview of how the relationship between the Chinese government and the tech sector evolved over the past decade. First, the Great Firewall set the parameters for competition. They basically blocked most of the big foreign information platformsGoogle, Facebook, Twitter, etc.and by doing that, they cleared space in the Chinese tech scene for homegrown giants and shaped how the tech industry grew.

The second big way the Chinese government helped shape its tech sector, Sheehan said, was how it set the parameters for online speech. By 2013, China built the tools and the bureaucratic mechanisms with which to control how information is shared online, which also served as a kind of a catalyst for the tech sector. Historically, Chinese tech is very private-sector driven; thats where a lot of the first activity happens, where a lot of the momentum starts, but the government could weigh in and be a big stimulant to the growth of an industry. I saw this firsthand in the way that the AI industry grew. In 2017, when the government came out with its big national AI plan, that was a big marker that stimulated so much more investment in the industry, so much more public sector adoption and company formation. But even then, he said, it wasnt like the government was always in the day-to-day operations of all the companies.

The relationship began changing two years ago, in late 2020, when regulators canceled Ant Groups IPO, Sheehan said. Since then, there has been a tidal wave of new regulations that are fundamentally changing the shape and the nature of those interactions.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between Chinas goal to become a world leader in AI and its regulatory push against the industry, Sheehan said that In the US, we often describe these things as in conflict with each otherthe Chinese government sees it differently.

Drawing on her research, Chen noted the differences between Chinas understanding of its tech sector and that of the US. In China, she said, the terms tech sector and high-tech sector sometimes get blended. Their understanding of Alibaba and DiDi and Tencent is different from the typical US way of understanding the tech sector.

In Chinas perspective, Chen added, online platforms are associated with bubbles because their success is not necessarily traced to hardcore technology. Rather, they are viewed as having a first-mover advantage and that may create monopolies and rents and can easily become the target of antimonopoly law and antitrust law. These online platforms are also sometimes linked to financial platforms, such as the Ant Group. The Ant Group, in the states view, is creating shadow-banking almostand thats part of the reason the state is going after it.

These online platforms also control sensitive data and user data. Even though they have operated for a couple of decades already, the regulators seem to be just waking up to realize how important it is to regulate these data and algorithms. But the state has a lot of experience or know-how about semiconductor chips, not necessarily enough experience about data management and regulation, Chen said.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between Chinas goal to become a world leader in AI and its regulatory push against the industry, Sheehan said that in the US, we often describe these things as in conflict with each otherthe Chinese government sees it differently. The fundamental bedrock of China being a productive leading power, in the Chinese Communist Partys mind, is maintaining Chinese Communist Party control. You cant let these companies run too far ahead if its going to create social problems, or financial and economic risk that undermines the partys control. Honestly, I think they looked at what happened in the US between 2015 and the present day, at the role of social media platforms in division, political influence, and stuff like that, and said, Not for us.

Asked about the impact of the new regulations on the tech sector on Chinese innovation, Chen emphasized the gradual change in the Chinese governments thinking regarding semiconductor manufacturing, from joint ventures with other countries toward the development of indigenous technologies. I dont think theres really a final answer as to whether China can succeed or notthe only thing I know is they seem to be doubling down on their effort.

You can watch the webinar here:

Learn more about our disclosure policyhere.

Read the original post:

Stigler Conversation: How the Chinese Government Thinks About Big Tech - ProMarket

As Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Google prepare for this year's midterm elections, liberals and conservatives alike are critical of the platforms' lack of transparency in regard to content moderation.

Since the 2020 election, conservatives have criticized major social media companies, saying their attempts to reduce misinformation have meant unfairly censoring content and banning users such as former President Donald Trump. At the same time, liberals have accused the platforms of allowing too much dangerous misinformation to spread.

Google announced Thursday its plan to help secure the midterm elections by outlining its policies on how to reduce election misinformation on Google Search and YouTube and explained how the company will equip campaigns and election workers with enhanced security tools.

Google said it plans to surface authoritative voices about the election based on certain news sources on its platforms while also trying to limit the spread of election misinformation, which it defines as content "that can cause real-world harm, like certain types of technically manipulated content, and content interfering with democratic processes.

Google also plans to help political campaigns enhance their security by providing them with free advanced protections from online attacks and cybersecurity threats and promised to provide more transparency when it comes to political advertising.

Other social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter are also expected to make similar announcements on their approach to election integrity in the coming months, with a focus on trusted news outlets, misinformation, and election security.

INTERNET FRAGMENTS AS RUSSIAN INVASION PUSHES PLATFORMS TO CHOOSE SIDES

Tech industry insiders say Google failed to shine a light on how it plans to deal with domestic actors who threaten elections and its rules around de-platforming users in the context of the election.

They didnt really get into the more controversial and tricky stuff regarding new and emerging threats to elections, who could be banned from the platform and why, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director. Id like to see more transparency in general, like understanding how they plan to use labeling around election results, like when Trump falsely claimed he won and things of that nature."

Conservatives say Google cant be trusted when it comes to election integrity, suppressing misinformation, and elevating authoritative voices.

Google should voluntarily disclose their algorithms in reference to searches related to the midterm elections no one knows how theyll handle such info and they have their own agenda, said Dan Gainor, a vice president at the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog that tracks censorship on Big Tech platforms.

Facebook or Google could try to push one group of people to vote and not others or boost one candidate in searches over another. We just have no idea, they dont believe in transparency," said Gainor.

In its announcement Thursday, Google said it would continue to crack down on content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of any past U.S. presidential election.

Conservatives often cite Twitter's and Facebooks decision to block a story by the New York Post about Hunter Biden as an example of unfair censorship.

Conservatives in the tech industry say pressuring social media giants to change their election-related policies and practices and to be more transparent could backfire on Republicans.

If politicians and the public push too hard, then Google and Facebook will just decide to ban ads altogether, which will hurt Republicans much more than Democrats because the Left can still lean on legacy media, said Carl Szabo, a vice president and general counsel at NetChoice, an advocacy group that represents companies including Facebook and Google.

But its worth being skeptical and vigilant of Google or Facebooks definitions of election misinformation, which is why people can go to upstarts like Truth Social or Rumble to get well-rounded information to make the best decision, said Szabo.

The news publishing industry, however, supports Googles decision to boost authoritative voices in the media landscape.

Election misinformation is best tackled by limiting micro ad-targeting and amplifying trusted media voices and brands that people have known for a long time and have credibility, said Jason Kint, the CEO of digital content trade association Digital Content Next, which represents a large number of prominent news publishers.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Authoritative is measured in different ways, but established brands like any local news outlet, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, these all have some authority with the public, said Kint.

More:

Liberals and conservatives bash Big Techs preparations for midterm elections - Washington Examiner

This article by Professor Elise Bant, from The University of Western Australia's Law School, Liam Hardin, from Melbourne University's Law School, and Professor Jeannie Marie Paterson, from Melbourne University's Law School, was originally published in Pursuit.

Australia, like many other countries, is engaged in an ongoing debate about the kinds of laws that are needed to respond to advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI). This on top of the oligarchic dominance of Big Tech - namely Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple.

Even now Australia has ongoing governmental inquiries into privacy law, Internet of Things and cyber security law, the regulation of digital platforms and Australias AI policy framework.

But working in the shadow of all of this law reform, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been engaged in an ongoing campaign to bring Big Tech into line with the rules of fair market conduct that apply to any other company doing business in Australia.

We can argue about how successful these efforts have been in the face of the wealth, reach and power of Big Tech. But the tenacity of the regulator is undeniable.

Moreover, its actions have repeatedly made use of the humble section 18 prohibition on misleading conduct thats been a core element of Australian Consumer Law since its inception in 1974. As a matter of legislative design, the section 18 prohibition on conduct in trade or commerce that misleads is remarkably simple.

But the open textured language of the section makes it highly adaptable in responding to novel legal issues as they arise.

The ACCC has repeatedly put the prohibition to good use in its battles with Big and not-so Big Tech, bringing actions for misleading conduct against Google, Apple, Health Engine, Viagogo, Trivago, Google (again and again) and Facebook/Meta.

In these cases, the ACCC has used the prohibition on misleading conduct previously used typically as a tool directed at misleading advertising or deceit in contract negotiations to protect consumer privacy.

The ACCC has successfully argued on a number of occasions that this prohibition was breached by the tech company in question departing from its own stated privacy policy.

In its most recent action, this time against Facebook parent Meta, the ACCC is pushing forward with a bold (at least in legal terms) new use of the prohibition. And its addressing a gap in the law that Google made use of many years before to escape liability for misleading advertising.

One of the first section 18 cases brought against a platform was Google v ACCC in 2013.

The case concerned Googles well-known search engine Google Search. Ads promoted by the search engine falsely represented that there was a commercial association or affiliation between the advertiser and its competitor.

Although the ads themselves were misleading, the High Court held that Google itself had not engaged in misleading conduct. This was because, in the view of the majority, Google was a mere conduit passing on the content of the advertisements without adopting or endorsing them.

This conduit argument had subsequently been used to insulate social media platforms from liability or responsibility for misleading information or scams on their sites. So for a time, it was thought that regulators like the ACCC couldnt do much to make Big Tech take responsibility for blatantly wrongful and, even dangerous, advertising appearing on their sites, including for outrageously false COVID cures.

The ACCCs new action against Meta is directed at scam cryptocurrency advertisements promoted on Facebook with reference to public figures and celebrities, without their consent.

The scam ads direct Facebook users to fake media articles, with made up quotes wrongly attributed to the featured public figure endorsing a cryptocurrency scheme. Users were then subject to high-pressure sales scams designed to persuade them to sign up and deposit funds into the fake schemes.

The ads are clearly false but is Meta/Facebook implicated?

This time the ACCC is taking a line of argument that directly targets the mere conduit defence against liability by platforms for misleading advertising. The case is that Meta was doing much more than passively or innocently passing on information prepared by fraudsters.

From its recent press release, the ACCC appears to have at least three possible arguments.

Firstly, Meta adopted or endorsed these ads by using its technology to target users who were most likely to be receptive to them.

Secondly, Meta aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in the misleading conduct because, even after being told about the false use of celebrity endorsements, it did nothing to remove or stop the ads.

And finally, Meta failed to live up to its own representations that it would keep users safe from scam ads.

The motivation here is the same as the Google case attempting to create responsibility and therefore liability for facilitating harmful advertising practices.

However, the ACCC has learnt from previous actions.

It has demanded transparency from Big Tech around its data handling and privacy policies. The ACCC is now pushing for greater accountability from Big Tech in response to the serious problem of online harms.

And the end game may be the erosion of the over-used defence were just a platform.

View post:

ACCC vs Big Tech: Round 10 and counting - University News: The University of Western Australia

Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Big Tech firms and intermediaries announced either partial or total stoppage of services for Russia and its citizens. This, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar believes, is a dangerous precedent, and brings back focus on the power that such platforms wield. Edited Excerpts from an interview with Aashish Aryan and Liz Mathew:

How do you view the events in Russia and Ukraine vis--vis the internet companies?

The recent events in Ukraine and Russia have again in a lot of ways drawn the attention to the power of platforms on the internet, the power of some governments to direct platforms on the internet to take decisions that are partisan and effectively what I call the weaponisation of the internet.

Two phenomena are very visible. One is the weaponisation of the internet, of which we were aware in some sense as we discussed user harm etc in the past. The second is what I call the phenomenon of the splinter-net. The internet is now increasingly being splintered driven by the power of some western countries.

The internet started as this Utopian space for people to connect and exchange ideas with each other. Therefore, the role of the state always was very minimal. And over time, the conversation around internet and companies on the internet was always about innovation, who is doing the next big thing, what is the next big idea on platforms etc. Therefore, regulation and laws never really came into the picture at all. Because it was never envisaged that internet could be for anything but public good.

Our understanding of internet has moved from saying that it is only for public good to also saying that it also has user harm. There are many aspects of criminality and user harm now. The jurisprudence and law must also evolve to address this. These platforms have become so big, the power of these platforms and therefore the power that they represent on the internet is so dominant, that in the event of a conflict between two sovereigns, these platforms are playing roles and therefore are being weaponised.

There have been no laws and rules that have prevented this or seen this coming and prevented this from happening. Now you have all the other things that have developed around internet. You have app stores that are duopolies, search engines that are monopolies, data and data economy is growing at a very fast rate. Obviously there are reciprocal issues of data privacy and protection. And also the startup innovation ecosystem that is growing very fast.

The basic principles of net neutrality, which is the openness of the internet that was the founding idea of early days, where we said that these telecom service providers cannot become the gatekeepers of the internet is now manifesting in the form that these big intermediaries are becoming gatekeepers of the internet. So the whole argument of net neutrality was in context of the telecom companies because they control the pipeline to the internet.

Now while the pipelines may be diversified and there is no control there, the platforms are now controlling access to the internet in many dangerous ways such as duopolies of app stores, monopolies of search engines, devices, ad tech. The underlying dynamics of the internet today on cybersecurity, dark internet and things that are going there in terms of identity theft, wallets being taken over, people being identified, all point to the need for us to have an overall data governance framework and have legislative principles established by a series of laws.

It is clear today that we need Aatmanirbhar internet which says that dont depend only on these platforms that have now demonstrated during the Russia-Ukraine war that they are not removed from state influence for all of the narrative they put out. They are absolutely subject to sovereign influence and it can make them weaponised against a country or for another country. We have to completely relook at our legislative and jurisprudential framework in that context.

There are draft laws with respect to data and cybersecurity pending? What does a re-look mean?

We must first create a national data governance framework, establish some principles of law, define the role of these intermediaries and what should be the nature of the relationship between the intermediaries and the user. We must define what should be the consumer rights. Are they more than the fundamental rights that they have? Do we need a magna carta of consumer rights on cyberspace so that every man, woman and child can consider the internet to be a safe, trusted and open space?

So the jurisprudential legal principles have to be built on that before we go on saying that we need to come up with this law or that. We will be belling the cat on one corner without addressing the overall piece. We have framed issued, such as ad tech. We have to de-risk our Indian internet and that de-risking urgency has, in a sense, been amplified by what we are seeing in Ukraine-Russia. It is validating our thinking, what we have been talking about in terms of a new digital law, the need for a data governance framework. We will create a framework, which will have the data protection law, the digital law and the cybersecurity statutes.

So we are now planning an architecturally-built cyberspace jurisprudence, rather than doing it piecemeal and a catch-up mode. Our approach now is exactly in keeping with the Aatmanirbhar Bharat principles and the success we have had in the fintech space and replicating it in other areas.

We are not averse to Big Tech. But we have to make sure that our rules and laws in India do not permit Big Tech platforms to be weaponised deliberately, wittingly, unwittingly, by any other force. For example, US-based platforms are not immune from US-government influence. A US platform will listen to the US government, just like a Russian platform will listen to the Russian government and a Ukrainian platform will listen to its government.

The weaponisation of the splinter-net impact of these platforms due to the sovereign influence on them has become visible during this conflict. We cannot allow our cyberspace and digital economy to ever be undermined by any body or any force outside our borders. That is the point of Aatmanirbhar internet.

Until such a governance framework is put into place, how will the government protect the cyberspace?

You cannot. With a law that is 20 years old, you cannot do it. You have to accept that. That is why the urgency to become an Aatmanirbhar cyberspace that you need an overarching framework, data protection law, cybersecurity policy, along with the basic ecosystem, toolkits and capabilities for cybersecurity.

Newsletter | Click to get the days best explainers in your inbox

Then the question of ease of doing business and clamping down on such weaponisation of the internet comes into the picture?

There is no clamping down. Nobody clamps down on such weaponisation. I use the phrase weaponisation to understand the implication if you do not create an Aatmanirbhar Bharat and cyberspace. That is a real issue today that all policymakers should be concerned about.

For example, today there is a discussion on cryptocurrency or bitcoin. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not wrong. The RBI is not wrong to say that if you allow bitcoin to be unregulated and you allow cyrptocurrencies of a foreign jurisdiction to be used here in India without the proper understanding of how those will be managed or how the exchange controls would be addressed, you will create havoc. If that is a normal chaos, that is still okay. But if it is a havoc that can be weaponised tomorrow by somebody, that is a real problem.

So what I am saying is that the weaponisation of the internet and the use of the internet where the biggest and most dominating platforms are of an external jurisdiction is an area of concern for public policymakers. Therefore, we have to ensure that the internet is diversified and is open, safe and trusted, as well accountable.

How do you achieve that? Through a series of new legislation, laws, rules and additional policy framework that addresses the issue of security, data governance as an overarching framework. I do not have an instant gratification response on what will we do tomorrow.

The fact is that the world of internet is today in chaos. Because governments across the world for a long time allowed them to pretend that they were innovators. All public policymakers must see internet as innovators and startups on one hand and as areas that require deep public policy interventions to ensure user safety, and non-weaponisation of internet.

As of today how prepared are we against such a weaponisation?

Our neighbours and state actors are actively using the internet against us. Kargil War was televised. Russia-Ukraine is now becoming a conflict where the internet is actively weaponised by both sides. I am not commenting on the Russia-Ukraine dispute. What I am saying is that when two nations have gone head-to-head in conflict, they have, in addition to using tanks, bombs, jets and drones, actively used the internet. And that weaponisation means that it can tomorrow be used by anybody against anybody, unless there are safeguards in terms of policy.

We have some experience as a nation where the internet has been used to foment trouble, whether it is state actor behind it or not. This today is a wake up call for us in the sense that as we move towards Web 3.0 and all these other kinds of dis-aggregated kind of internet which is further decentralised, we have to be clear that unlike in the past where laws lag innovation, here law should be in lock-step with innovation.

That is the only protection we can have. The domestic laws must make it very difficult for the intermediaries who are jurisdictionally present in India, to be weaponised against the interest of India and its citizens. That can only be done through laws. So it is not about picking up a phone and calling up some platform and telling them do not do this or that.

I say this as an entrepreneur who has seen internet evolve from the early days. For a large part of the travel of the internet, the internet and the innovation around the internet was kept outside the government purview totally by saying to the government that you do not understand what we are doing, so do not come and interfere.

All of these things that have happened are intrinsic part of internets nature and power. So Web 3.0 is even more powerful. So to prevent the weaponisation and splinter-net of the kind that we have seen today and to prevent big influence, monopolisation and cartelisation is an equal public policy imperative. For that we need policy to keep pace rather than play catch up.

Link:

Rajeev Chandrasekhar: Need to relook laws to de-risk Indian internet, make it difficult for Big Tech to be weaponised - The Indian Express