“Censorship” and Social Media A U.S. District Court has issued a landmark ruling that would block the federal government from encouraging or influencing the suppression of content by social media companies. Citing the First Amendment, the court issued a sweeping injunction that would stop agencies such as the White House,...
The 118th Congress is set on addressing the regulatory vacuum around digital assets. Its April 19 inaugural session on “payment stablecoins” was covered in part 1 of this series, which also explained what stablecoins are and their implications for the larger macroeconomic system. With the debt ceiling controversy behind us...
ICANN never ceases to pose fascinating issues in global governance. At ICANN 77, held in Washington DC June 12 – 16, a dramatic debate took place about ICANN’s proper scope of authority. Some interest groups (mainly Registries and GAC) want ICANN to be empowered to enforce compliance with Registry Voluntary...
On March 9th a battle between subcommittee members in the U.S. Congress ensued during the Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on the Twitter Files. The Twitter Files show that multiple government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and the...
"Digital" is often coupled with "transformation," and one area where its transformative powers are increasingly manifest is in finance and money. In this ongoing series, we will report on the US Congress's efforts to formulate digital assets policy. We use the term "digital assets" rather than digital money because it...
For the past two months, we've seen a sudden burst of panic about the social implications of Artificial Intelligence. One cannot help but note, with a mix of resignation and amusement, that the loudest noises are coming from computer scientists involved in AI. To some people, these sources lend an...
15 May, 2023 More Wrong Thinking on Generative AI Risks Civil society is in trouble if the musings of an anonymous philosopher on the LESSWRONG website, most likely by a national security official with access to a closed CISA meeting, reflects the current zeitgeist inside governments concerning generative AI. The...
1 May, 2023 Who’s a VLOP and who’s a VLOSER? Alibaba, Amazon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Wikipedia are among the entities that have been designated "Very Large Online Platforms'' (VLOPs) by the European Commission. Google search and Bing have been designated Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSErs). All will...
15 April, 2023 The AI Regulation Frenzy Technology panics now seem to go through fashion cycles. Last month it was Tiktok. The new trend in town is AI regulation. Would-be policy influencers are falling all over themselves to advance the idea that “We are hurtling forward in a way that...
There’s an assumption making the rounds that a privacy law is the real answer to the data governance problems posed by Tiktok and other social media. The logic is pretty simple: Banning TikTok won’t keep us safe. A privacy law will. This argument was articulated by Julia Angwin in a...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
