January 27, 2021
Regulate Social-Media Companies
The events of January 6 showed existing approaches to quell disinformation and incitements to violence on social media platforms have failed, badly. Even though the companies that run these platforms are displaying a new willingness to police them, up to and including banning the worst offenders, claims that U.S. tech companies can self-regulate and moderate dangerous content comprehensively should be regarded with extreme skepticism. So too, Twitter’s recent launch of Birdwatch, a crowd-sourcing forum to combat misinformation, is a welcome measure but at best a partial and imperfect solution to a far more systemic problem. Instead, it is time, at long last, to regulate.
It is time, at long last, to regulate.
These reforms must extend beyond stronger antitrust regulation and enforcement against Big Tech companies, which are worthwhile, but do little to restructure fundamentally how social media platforms operate. New rules must be introduced for the algorithms that decide what users see and for the data these companies collect for themselves, as well as data scraping by third parties.
Read the full article from Defense One.
More from CNAS
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
The Sovereignty Gap in U.S. AI StatecraftThis article was originally published in Lawfare. As the India AI Impact Summit kicks off this week, the Trump administration has embraced the language of “sovereign AI.” Thro...
By Pablo Chavez
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
America’s Key to Biotechnology Leadership? AI-Ready Biodata.This article was originally published in Just Security. From strengthening armor for U.S. warfighters to patching supply chain vulnerabilities, the convergence of AI and biote...
By Sam Howell & Michelle Holko
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
The Rise of the Answer MachinesThis article was originally published in Financial Times. Every spring, I take red-eyes from Austin, Texas, to Oxford, England, to teach a graduate seminar on AI and philosoph...
By Brendan McCord
-
Video
Technology & National Security
Selling H200s to China Erodes Main U.S. AdvantageA new report says China could buy twice as much AI computing power as it can produce domestically if Nvidia H200 chips are allowed there. Janet Egan from the Center for a New ...
By Janet Egan
