Platforms

US Attorney General William Barr blasted big tech, raising the specter that Silicon Valley might soon be held accountable for a wide array of dangerous, harmful content that critics say has flourished on their sites and services. At an event that laid bare tech’s broad troubles — including the spread of terrorism, illicit drug sales and child sexual exploitation online — AG Barr said it may be time for the government to seek sweeping changes to a key portion of federal law, known as Section 230, that long has spared tech companies from liability for content posted by their users.

A report issued by the United Kingdom’s competition authority (CMA) provides interim findings that both Google and Facebook have a virtual lock on key elements of and inputs to the digital advertising market.

The UK's Ofcom will be put in charge of regulating the internet, the government has announced, with a new range of powers intended to protect users from “harmful and illegal content” online. The regulations are broadly focused on two new sets of requirements. One, around illegal content, will see platforms hit with new targets to ensure that such content is removed quickly, ideally prevented from being posted in the first place, with a particular focus on terrorist and child sexual abuse content.

The Federal Trade Commission said it would probe past mergers by Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, seeking to study the ways that tech giants gobbled up their rivals — and if their acquisitions may have skirted federal antitrust laws. The new effort by the FTC will require all five companies to provide information about the smaller players they've purchased over the past 10 years, including documents for deals that may not have been large enough to warrant deep, closer inspection by government watchdogs at the time.

The challenge for those of us charged with regulatory authority over certain technologies is to explain, educate, and, to some degree, manage expectations. Added to that is the obligation to enable the proper environment for innovation, and only take regulatory action when absolutely necessary, and only to the extent that doing so produces greater benefits relative to costs. In other words, our concern about any potential downside cannot be an automatic bar to further innovation, lest we expect to return to the days of dwelling in caves without fire.

The internet was supposed to be the great gift to democracy because everyone would be free to express themselves without the interference of editors or other filters. Instead, the business model of the internet—collecting and manipulating personal information to sell targeting services—has created the tool for attacking the democratic imperative to seek Unum. Our foreign adversaries have proven especially talented in exploiting this capability.

Housing scholars stress the importance of the information environment in shaping housing search behavior and outcomes. Rental listings have increasingly moved online over the past two decades and, in turn, online platforms like Craigslist are now central to the search process. Do these technology platforms serve as information equalizers or do they reflect traditional information inequalities that correlate with neighborhood sociodemographics?

Democratic presidential candidate Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pledged that her campaign would not share falsehoods or promote fraudulent accounts on social media, part of a new plan to battle back disinformation and hold Facebook, Google and Twitter “responsible” for its spread.