Monday, June 20, 2022

Cited in FTC Report to Congress on Combatting Online Harms

A new major Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress, Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation, offers an outstanding review of the state of thinking about this urgent topic that has been a focus of my work.

It was especially pleasing to see that it cited one of my essays in Tech Policy PressProgress Toward Re-Architecting Social Media to Serve Society, in a section of recommendations focused on "User Tools" that delegate more control over what we see on social media to be set by individual users -- and independent services that are chosen by users to serve them as their agents -- rather than unilaterally by the platforms. It also referred to the conference with leading thinkers on the pros and cons of such tools that I helped organize and moderate for Tech Policy Press.

I especially recommend reading the Introduction, the section on Platform AI Interventions (which also looks beyond simplistic and inadequate remedies of moderation-as-removal), and the one on User Tools.