We Need Platform Transparency
Hi friends --
You may have noticed that some big tech platforms are getting less transparent and accountable to the public.
Both Facebook and Twitter have shut down tools they used to provide to allow researchers and journalists to examine their content. And both platforms are cracking down on what they call "unauthorized" access to data from their platforms.
In my latest New York Times Opinion piece, titled "The Gatekeepers of Knowledge Don't Want us to See What They Know," I argue that the public needs to pry open the gates and see the decisions the tech platforms are making.
We have a unique opportunity to act right now, as the European Union is rolling out key provisions of an ambitious package of rules, the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Those laws require tech platforms to be responsive to the public in myriad ways, including requiring large tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter to provide researchers with access to real-time data from their platforms.
But there is a crucial element that has yet to be decided by the European Union: whether journalists will get access to any of that data.
Myself and dozens of other journalists, including Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa of the news outlet Rappler in the Philippines, have filed comments with the EU arguing that journalists need access to platform data.
In the U.S. there is also proposed legislation in Congress, the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, that would require social media companies to share more data with researchers and provide immunity to journalists collecting data in the public interest with reasonable privacy protections.
But as it currently stands, journalists -- and the public they serve -- don't have what they need to chronicle how despots, trolls, spies, marketers and hate mobs are weaponizing tech platforms or being enabled by them.
I hope that changes.
Thanks for reading.
Julia