Digital Content

The researchers behind the blockbuster reports detailing a sweeping online influence campaign by Russia during and after the 2016 election offer what to expect ahead. Bharath Ganesh of Oxford University said trolls are likely to move into the background and “embed” themselves among activist groups critical of US institutions in order to amplify their voices.

This paper explores the connection between corporate social responsibility and social media safety. By examining the legal framework governing social platforms in the United States and case studies of online harms, we explore whether current US laws and company content moderation policies are effective in eliminating content (revenge porn and acts of terrorism) that is universally agreed to be harmful. Finally, the paper makes a number of suggestions for improvements in policy.

Disruptions and threats to an individual’s digital security have profound impacts on that individual’s willingness to use technology—a particularly big problem when you consider just how much technology permeates people’s everyday lives.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has called an upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearing with Google CEO Sundar Pichai an important “step to restoring public trust in Google & all the companies that shape the Internet.” But the prospect of Republican lawmakers using the appearance to air allegations of bias against tech companies is giving Democratic leaders pause.

In the face of that toxic content’s intractability and the futility of the tech giants’ attempts to deal with it, it’s become a mainstream belief in Washington, DC–and a growing realization in Silicon Valley–that it’s no longer a question of whether to, but how to, regulate companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook to hold them accountable for the content on their platforms. One of the most likely ways for Congress to do that would be to revise Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Bots spreading misinformation are using more sophisticated techniques, like going after specific human influencers and targeting misleading information within the first few seconds of it being posted, according to new studies.

More than 30 Google employees have joined a petition protesting the company’s plans to build a search engine that complies with China’s online censorship regime. An employee-led backlash against the project has been churning for months at the company, but Nov 27’s petition marks the first time workers at Google have used their names in a public document objecting to the plans. The existence of the project, code-named Dragonfly, was confirmed by chief executive Sundar Pichai in Oct.