Rightwing Twitter alternative Parler has become an important test case of the impact on free expression of service denials by private sector intermediaries. Parler’s status as a refuge for ultra-rightwing voices should not get in the way of an objective, long term appraisal of how social media content moderation and...
The Trump riots have stimulated a wide-ranging public debate about the meaning of free expression in the age of social media. A quick survey of the various sides and positions leads to a simple conclusion: in a political world, control of speech is not about basic rights or impersonal rules...
We focus on India and Europe, where frameworks for the regulation of non-personal data are emerging. We add a bit of SolarWinds followup, and peek at ICANN hiding in the corner Governance of Non-Personal Data Although most data governance efforts in recent years have been focused on the collection, storage,...
On January 6, 2021, President Trump and his far-right allies in the Republican Party tried to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral college votes. It culminated in thousands of demonstrators violently forcing their way into the nation’s Capitol to disrupt the certification process. The protests that led to...
During the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), IGP organized a panel discussion on The interaction of platform content moderation & geopolitics. The panel focused on how inconsistency in content moderation can reinforce existing power disparities, and make platform content moderation policies into a proxy battle among conflicting interest groups. The...
The past week saw a hurricane of activity around content moderation by platforms in the U.S. The Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department, and a Supreme Court justice made it clear that they want to pull the plug on Section 230 of the Communications Act, the part of the law...
Just over a year after the U.S. government placed restrictions on China's Huawei, the ongoing economic rivalry between the two countries has found a new target. For weeks the Trump administration has hinted that it is considering banning TikTok, the short video app over national security concerns. With over 2...
This has been a grim week for the Internet. While nothing in the following article will be news to anyone who follows Internet governance, it is worthwhile to look at these events together, as part of a pattern: China imposed a repressive National Security Law on Hong Kong India forced...
Few social scientists have advanced studies at the intersection of information technology and security as much as Thomas Rid. His 2011 book, Cyber War Will Not Take Place, analyzed cyber conflict from a critical point of view, shattering the myth that actual wars would be fought and won through cyber...
A week and a half ago Facebook released its final charter for the Oversight Board it intends to create to tackle its content moderation problems. The charter spells out exactly how it would work, who would be on it and what its responsibilities are. CNET has a good basic description...
“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.”
