Big Tech – Page 2 – Media & Communications Policy

March 9, 2021July 7, 2021 By Stuart N. Brotman

Guardrails for Describing Fake News, Misinformation, and Disinformation

Perhaps the most distasteful national omelet we’ve been served during the past four years has been the one that has mixed together an unsavory combination of three ingredients: fake news, misinformation, and disinformation.

While many express growing concerns and look for ways to deal with them, that may be difficult – if not impossible – as long as we use these terms without any agreed-upon definitions that set useful boundaries and are easy to understand among the public at large. The alternative is to continue repeating the mantra “fake news-misinformation- disinformation” so often that it loses meaning, or using the terms interchangeably so that they become permanently blurred in our minds.

February 25, 2021July 7, 2021 By Stuart N. Brotman

Digital Privacy Laws Should Reflect Our Work-From-Home Pandemic Lives

With COVID-19 and economic recovery at the top of the policy agenda for the Biden Administration and the new Congress, it may take awhile until serious attention is devoted to enacting national digital privacy legislation. This continues to put states in a leadership position to craft their own approaches. Florida, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Washington are among the states that are in the process of developing their own bills for timely legislative approval.

And Virginia’s pending Consumer Data Protection Act is poised to be signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam, after receiving very strong bipartisan support in both the Virginia House and the state Senate.

February 8, 2021July 7, 2021 By Stuart N. Brotman

Greater Social Media Trust Is Needed To Fight COVID-19

The resumption of daily press briefings by the new White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, has brought back a welcomed routine of making the president’s chief spokesperson available for informational updates and responses to questions posed by various reporters in the press corps. Ms. Psaki typically holds these weekday sessions in the early afternoon and they can be viewed on a variety of websites.

With that scheduling constant now in place, it’s time for the Biden Administration to devise a separate social media schedule for COVID-19 updates to help minimize the tsunami of misinformation about testing, PPE availability, mandated mask orders, vaccine supply, and actual vaccinations. These updates should be based on actual data and science, not on rumors or speculation. And when sufficient information is not yet forthcoming, we should be told why it has not been released and when it may be made public.

January 25, 2021July 7, 2021 By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

Big Tech Must Self-Regulate To Protect Public Safety

In a single swipe, Twitter and Facebook have done what the U.S. government and the Constitution could not: delete the power of an irreverent president to rile and rally Americans to violent action.

Twitter announced Jan. 8 that it permanently suspended Trump’s account, while Facebook announced Jan. 7 it had suspended Trump’s account indefinitely.

December 10, 2020July 7, 2021 By Richard T. Kaplar

The Role of Targeted Advertising In Supporting First Amendment Principles

One can scarcely remember the time, only a few short decades ago, when life moved along without the array of personal digital devices that have come to define today’s culture. All of that changed, of course, with the advent of the Internet and the ability to access a burgeoning number of websites (which themselves were rapidly evolving).

Personal desktop computers, portable laptops, tablets, cell phones, and “smart phones” would fuel the tech revolution. Who could imagine that someday one’s phone, tablet, and computers would all be synchronized into a seamless whole. Or that millions of Americans would spend vast amounts of time engaging each other via something called “social media.”

August 20, 2020August 19, 2020 By Stuart N. Brotman

Privacy Policy Research Deserves a Much Wider Audience

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hosted its fifth annual PrivacyCon on July 21, 2020. This was the first time the one-day conference was fully remote, rather than in person at the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in Washington, D.C.

PrivacyCon should not be confused with Comic-Con, the annual pop culture extravaganza that began the following day with over 350 virtual panels extending over nearly a week. Perhaps the thousands who show up there each year in San Diego with colorful costumes will not miss a beat as they turn on their Zoom cameras to participate in a way never imagined when this year’s Comic-Con was organized.

August 13, 2020August 13, 2020 By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

Cancel Culture Is Techno Tyranny

Hyper partisan politics and our divided nation make it easier than ever to vilify anyone, any time, in any way. In the words of Michael Corleone, “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.”

Used figuratively here, of course, but that is what cancel culture has wrought in today’s society.

While cancellation may seek to stifle speech, it causes social and economic destruction as well. It projects permanence and public shame for its targets whether deserved or not. And it promotes a kind of techno tyranny against which we all should be vigilant.

April 17, 2020August 19, 2020 By Stuart N. Brotman

Deploying U.S. AI Leadership for COVID-19

Among the cutting-edge technologies being employed by public health experts to map various aspects of COVID-19 both at home and abroad, artificial intelligence (AI) faces a test under life-and-death circumstances. The ability of AI systems to undertake pattern detection and predict the spread of the pandemic and its treatments is promising. The benefit of machine learning includes its powerful ability to analyze historic data to find key variables. This task is dependent upon humans, however, specifically in the ability of data scientists who can work on creating data sets that supercomputers then can model. On a global basis, this will require pooling both technical and human resources.

Given the unprecedented nature of COVID-19, historic data inputted for AI analysis may be of limited value. Real-time data comparing growth curves in countries around the world, along with population and demographic information by neighborhood, may prove to be a better vein for producing actionable data anywhere and everywhere. Automated machine learning also may improve the efficiency of data scientists, enabling them to focus on new data generation while relying on computer-to-computer analysis of massive-scale number crunching.

February 27, 2020February 26, 2020 By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

Can Big Tech Be Reined In by Rules It Consistently Breaks?

Well informed observers of the tech industry have cautioned against two things: economic downturn and government regulation. Each had a palpable sense of the inevitable – not a matter of if, but when. As we enter 2020, the conditions for both are present, if not altogether ripe.

Dire predictions of a global recession have been hovering over the economy for several quarters. But low interest rates, strong consumer spending, and investor confidence have kept the economy buoyant. The new China trade deal and record-high NASDAQ belie economic woes.

If this election year turns out like others, the economy will hum along through the first two quarters, then decelerate as we head into November. If an economic slowdown were to occur, it would owe as much to politics as to recessionary pressure. And even that might recede if the president gets re-elected.