The Narrative: TikTok hearing; Chinese Drones; Stablecoins

March 31, 2023 The Tiktok hearing backfires As expected, Congress tried to turn its cross-examination of Tiktok CEO Shou Chew into a public stoning. Committee members (helped along by Meta lobbying) came in with their minds made up, refused to listen to anything he said, and repeatedly interrupted him. The...

The Narrative: Orwellian redefinitions; Refugees from the UK Online Safety Law; Indian Platform Reg; the PNIF Mandate

March 1, 2023 TikTok Ban would repeal free speech protections A House Committee is set to vote on their attempt to ban TikTok. The bill empowers the president to impose sanctions on any entity that operates a “connected software application” subject to the influence of China, but tries to skirt...

The Narrative: TikTok threat debunked; search disrupted; digital currency problematized

January 16, 2022 IGP paper on TikTok makes waves On January 9 IGP released a threat analysis of TikTok that debunked claims that the popular short video app is a national security threat. Until now, the “ban TikTok” debate has never been subjected to critical scrutiny, and no one has...

The Narrative: EU-US data flows; Twitter’s descent; Tiktok Extinction Event; AI-Attribution; e-Rupee

December 15, 2022 US-EU Data Privacy Framework Moves Forward The European Commission published a “draft adequacy decision,” about the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. In a largely unheralded but highly consequential decision, the US committed itself to privacy protections for European citizens in an October Executive Order from the Biden administration....

The Narrative: IGF, PIR, Ophelia, Digital Cold War, and FTX

UN IGF meets in Addis Ababa The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) convened this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, using a fully hybrid format. Avoiding Internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty are two of the most popular topics, along with a somewhat contradictory combination of calls for controlling & regulating AI...