Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. What brings me to sit before you today is a tale of regret. I look south at the political and democratic disaster playing out in my own country with great distress and great humility. I was among those young, idealistic, tech-savvy staffers who went to join

Information & Ethics committee  This reminds me of the argument that the answer to gun violence is more guns on the streets. It has a certain logic to it that you could control misbehaving algorithms with the policing algorithms, but to me the real root of the issue is not having more technology to try to patch

Information & Ethics committee  It is a substantial challenge, but we had the same debate with the rise of television when we went from three or four broadcast channels to 200 channels—that the wash of information would make it impossible to differentiate credibility and quality. Over time, people developed new

Information & Ethics committee  If I could, maybe I'll jump in on that point. I think transparency is the clearest set of recommendations that we have, and a number of ideas have been floated. I published a paper yesterday that I could draw your attention to. It's called “Digital Deceit II”. It is the secon

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  That database already exists if you're an American Facebook user.

Information & Ethics committee  I was going there next; you beat me to it. When Facebook, Google, and Twitter announced they were going to do ad transparency databases, they said you're going to see all the ads that are run during a political cycle and you're going to have data about every single one of them:

Information & Ethics committee  I've wrestled with this question myself. I think you can differentiate them. I think there is a logic to differentiation to suggest that we have a standard for political advertising that is different from selling soap or bicycles, just as we do in broadcast ads. It becomes more

Information & Ethics committee  To me, the problem is both. I'll answer—

Information & Ethics committee  Chair, I have something I want to say on this.

Information & Ethics committee  I apologize.

Information & Ethics committee  I want to point to two interesting provisions in Europe's General Data Protection Regulation. We are not sure yet how they are going to be adjudicated and applied in the market. One of those provisions says the user should have more control over the consent they give to differen

Information & Ethics committee  To me, the takeaway from the Cambridge Analytica episode is not that Cambridge Analytica had some special sauce of psychographic manipulation; it's that they were basically using the same tools of microtargeting that Facebook makes available to everybody. They overstated that dra

Information & Ethics committee  I think transparency is only one piece of the puzzle. I'm a big believer in the decentralization of the communications system. It's a good thing that we have more voices, more journalists, more reporting. The fact that it is no longer a viable business is a big problem, and we n