I think it's really important that we get these bills passed. Senator Ed Markey lives in my hometown, so I'm happy to be aligned in that way.
What's concerning about transparency and algorithms isn't just that they can dump a bunch of code and you can parse it for years, but really that we set up a transparency and auditing agency whose role is to look at these algorithms and take in changes to the algorithm, ask questions and query these large companies about what is being served.
We also need panel data, which means that we need data that is not about users but more about the links and the kind of information that is circulating online. This would be a way to audit algorithms in terms of what kind of news the algorithms are making popular.
Again, it goes back to this finding from MIT many years ago about how lies travel online, which is that novel and outrageous content moves further and faster online, not just because of what the content is but because of the way algorithms mediate our experience with the information we're seeking.
Google ranking matters if you want to understand a certain issue. We need to know how those things work, and how it decides something very banal like whether, when I type in “salsa” on Google, it's going to give me recipes or dance classes. We need to know why it's making these decisions and how.
When it comes to people—and our names are all we have—it's really important that we have a way of auditing how our own names and identities are shaped online.