<aside> đź’ˇ Key Takeaways:
<aside> đź“Ś Outline:
America is the cradle of the digital revolution and home to Silicon Valley. We are proud of the innovations from companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and their ability to touch the lives of almost all Americans today. However, over the years, their influences on our way of life, our economy, our civil discourse, and our democratic institutions have grown significantly.
Misinformation on social media exacerbates political polarization; privacy violations undermine trust in our democratic elections; we are increasingly addicted to social media platforms, threatening our mental wellness; large tech companies are buying small startups in an effort to monopolize; artificial intelligence violates basic social norms in criminal sentencing and hiring. It is increasingly clear to politicians and average citizens alike that digital platforms and technology companies are increasingly undermining our wellness, privacy, and trust in our democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, our government and policymakers are not ready to regulate big tech and understand the complexity of digital platforms. The key problem is a lack of expertise.
Our federal agencies that deal with issues related to regulating big tech and platforms are ill-suited to adapt to the fast-changing dynamics of the digital world because they were created in the past centuries and lack the expertise to effectively regulate the digital market.
Our lawmakers in DC, despite their best efforts, lack a nuanced understanding of the technology landscape. The recent joint senate hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg exposed the lack of basic understanding of technology by members of Congress. Mostly generalists, lawmakers should not be expected to be constantly up to date with all that is happening in the technology space, a task daunting to any individual given the pace at which innovation and changes happen today in tech.
Our proposal calls for the creation of the “Digital Platforms & Technology Agency (DPTA),” a new federal agency whose sole task is the oversight of big tech and digital platforms. Specifically, it will solve the lack of expertise problem by, and adopt an overall approach of:
Social media platforms are now an important source of news. Nearly a third of all Americans get news from Facebook regularly. Sadly, it’s also where fake news runs rampant. MIT researchers have shown that fake news often spreads faster than true information.
The consequences of widespread fake news can threaten election integrity, as in the case of the 2016 US Presidential Election, where fake news stories were shared tens of millions of times by supporters of both Clinton and Trump. Some researchers have even suggested that Donald Trump would not have been elected president were it not for the influence of fake news.
The spread of fake information on social media platforms can also exacerbate a public health crisis. During the early months of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, because of the poor understanding of the novel virus, inaccurate or misleading information about the disease spread rapidly on social media, potentially posing health risks to those who believed in it.
However, unlike traditional news publishers, social media is not legally liable for false content published by users. Currently, Section 230, enacted as part of the US Communications Decency Act, provides social media platforms immunity by not treating social media platforms as the publisher of any content users post and allows the platforms to moderate the content the users created. However, social media companies, now serving as an important source of news for millions, need to be held responsible for allowing fake news to spread rampantly.
Our plan aims to direct the newly created Digital Platforms & Technology Agency (DPTA) to investigate new ways to combat fake news on digital platforms. Specifically, it will: