META Meta Platforms Inc

By Michelle Ma 

Capitol Hill has put Silicon Valley under the microscope.

With U.S. intelligence agencies continuing to raise concerns about foreign meddling in U.S. elections through online social platforms, technology executives have been called to account. In September, Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testified at a Senate hearing on what their companies were doing in response to foreign trolls and bots ahead of the November midterm elections. Regulators and consumer-advocacy groups have also raised concerns about the responsibility of large tech companies like Google Inc. to protect the vast amounts of user data they hold.

To assess the impact technology is having on our political systems, as well as what responsibilities private companies have to their users and the greater public, The Wall Street Journal turned to Nuala O'Connor, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology and the former chief privacy officer in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Beth Simone Noveck, director of the Governance Lab and professor in technology, culture and society at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering. Prof. Noveck previously served as the U.S. deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration.

Edited excerpts follow.

A golden age?

WSJ: What do you think is the biggest threat that technology poses to our democracy today? What do you view as its greatest contribution?

MS. O'CONNOR: Its greatest contribution is also its greatest threat. The greatest thing the internet has done is to allow for the elevation of the individual voice: the dissident, the stay-at-home mom, whichever person who wasn't formerly heard in the public square. Yet because everything is now on the same playing field, hate speech is on the same level in your daily life. As industrial companies had a duty of care to clean up and to not harm the environment, what is the duty of care that internet companies have to not pollute the informational or social environments of the communities they're serving?

PROF. NOVECK: The greatest contribution of technology is simplifying, streamlining and automating the delivery of services to people. The other contribution is turning our preferences into new laws and new articulations of public will. There are lots of ways we're seeing that beginning to happen, primarily outside of the U.S. In Taiwan, for example, they've crafted 26 pieces of legislation in the last few years on things like telemedicine or the regulation of Uber that they've done with 200,000 members of the public participating in those conversations.

One threat that comes with technology is the failure to use it in the first place. The second is badly designed tech, or poorly designed processes that create frustration for users.

WSJ: Do you believe social networks are ultimately helping democracy or interfering with the democratic process?

MS. O'CONNOR: There has been harm done. Long term, I believe in the ability of companies and the government to work together, if they share a common goal to protect institutions and democracy. The challenge will be to move quickly enough to combat real threats that are out there.

PROF. NOVECK: Having much better access to information on the whole is a plus for democracy. I think it's actually going to be a golden age for active citizenship and engaged democracy. And as difficult as some of the challenges that we have faced politically are, we're getting people engaged, excited and talking to one another.

WSJ: When it comes to hacks, user privacy and data exposures, how much responsibility should tech companies take, and should governments get involved?

MS. O'CONNOR: We've always believed that companies that were trafficking or collecting data have a duty of care to keep your data secure and to use it only for the purposes essential to the transaction. We're supporting bills on Capitol Hill and actually helping draft things around data portability, data deletion and fundamental respect for your ongoing rights in your own data.

PROF. NOVECK: Everybody has a responsibility in this space, including individuals to do things like change passwords and be critical users of media in evaluating what we read. But this isn't a one-sector solution. We should have those mechanisms, including the reporting solutions, convening solutions and places for companies to share perceived threats, and then solutions to these problems.

WSJ: What can social-media companies do better to ensure that democracy isn't compromised? To what extent should the government be involved to ensure that the private sector doesn't interfere with the democratic process?

MS. O'CONNOR: Simple top-level things like seeing where the IP addresses are coming from and where the attack's actors are coming from. I think there is a growing awareness that is clearly too late for 2016, but hopefully not too late for 2020.

PROF. NOVECK: It is the responsibility of tech companies to monitor. We increasingly have the tools, thanks to big data and the ability to create predictive analytic tools, that will tell us, "This is clearly a red flag because this is all coming from the same place." We also need to modernize our election infrastructure, especially how our courts handle these issues after the fact, and the speed, response and availability to bring challenges to, investigate and audit what happens in elections. The legal system has to be prepared just as much as Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and all these large-scale tech platforms.

Censorship

WSJ: Where do you draw the line between hate speech and censorship? Do you think it's the responsibility of tech companies to regulate how their users interact on their platforms?

MS. O'CONNOR: I'm still deeply concerned about state-mandated company censorship, because we don't elect executives of private-sector companies the way we do our government. So there isn't accountability for their decisions. If you think there's a risk that you're going to be fined by a government, I think the tilt would be toward more takedowns, potentially incorrect takedowns or over-censorship of marginalized groups such as people of color, immigrants and non-English speakers. We've already seen an overcorrection in some places. On the other hand, I think there are some really thoughtful smaller platforms. The gaming platform Twitch, for example, is self-monitoring in a collaborative way to create a positive environment policed by the community itself.

PROF. NOVECK: When I worked in the White House back in 2009, one of the first things that we did was to create a WordPress blog with comments on the White House website. We were able to adapt WordPress plugins to allow the users themselves to move off-topic, offensive or spam to a different place. We took inspiration from a lot of private companies like Reddit and Slashdot that have used community self-moderation for a long time, to avoid being in the position of being deemed responsible for the content on the site.

WSJ: Are policy makers educated enough about how technology works? If not, what do they not understand?

MS. O'CONNOR: Government entities of all kinds lag behind the private sector. That's because we've got this vibrant tech sector in places like Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas, with really exciting and innovative job opportunities, but not a core stream of tech-focused jobs in agencies on Capitol Hill. I'm curious if we shouldn't have more technologists serving in our judiciary. Courts are making decisions on really consequential issues of technology and data, yet you have sitting on the bench [people who are] just recently adopting smartphones and things.

PROF. NOVECK: There's obviously catch-up that all of us have to play with regard to the adoption of new technology. Government in particular has very definite challenges in this regard. The government has existing legacy systems with not-infinite time or budget to be able to transition them to the latest cloud-based software or service. You also don't have a large number of people in the front office of the policy shop tied to thinking about how technology is serving political priorities.

WSJ: What can be learned from Facebook Inc.'s mishandling of user data via data firm Cambridge Analytica?

MS. O'CONNOR: We need greater control and scrutiny over secondary uses of data that you give to one company for a particular purpose. We also need greater control over any third-party data sharing. Secondary uses and third-party transfers to me are the very big bucket of things that people are deeply concerned about, especially when it comes to biometric and immutable or intimate data. Immutable are things that are attached to my body or my voice. And intimate are things that many people would consider embarrassing if revealed outside of their family or their private relationships with certain companies.

PROF. NOVECK: We have a desperate need for a political class that understands these technologies or creates processes for engaging with more people who understand these technologies. You can't expect a politician to know everything on every topic. It isn't just tech; it's farming or space or health care. We expect our politicians to be jacks of all trade, and we know that they are masters of none.

Ms. Ma is an editor for The Wall Street Journal in New York. Email her at michelle.ma@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 11, 2018 08:58 ET (13:58 GMT)

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