Policy

Cybersecurity for Democracy’s key policy goals focus on educating policymakers and regulators, using our scientific research into online systems, on how accountability can work in the tech industry. This would include more wide-ranging transparency legislation, modernizing Section 230, and the “right to research,” all of which we believe are fundamental components to aligning incentives for a more accountable social media landscape.

Our policy priorities include:

Digital platform transparency: a timeline

Full version.

JANUARY 2022. Knight Institute publishes “A Safe Harbor for Platform Research,” a policy proposal that establishes legal protections for researchers and journalists that study Facebook and other platforms.

DECEMBER 2021. C4D and partners release “A Standard for Universal Ad Transparency,” published by First Amendment Institute, which describes in detail how this policy proposal would work.

DECEMBER 2021. C4D and Belgium’s KU Leuven expose Facebook’s poor performance in identifying political ads in “An Audit of Facebook’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement.”

SEPTEMBER 2021. C4D’s Laura Edelson calls for universal ad transparency in her testimony before the U.S. House Science Committee and UK Parliament.

AUGUST 2021. FTC sends a letter to Facebook, stating that its claims that C4D’s research violates its consent decree are inaccurate.

AUGUST 2021. C4D publishes New York Times op ed about losing Facebook data access.

AUGUST 2021. Facebook makes good on the cease & desist by suspending C4D researchers’ accounts, which sets off a firestorm of media coverage around the globe.

OCTOBER 2020. Facebook responds by sending a cease & desist letter to C4D that calls for disabling Ad Observer, citing violations of its terms of service.

SEPTEMBER 2020. C4D launches Ad Observatory, a platform that analyzes data from Ad Observer, Facebook Ad Library, and other sources, and shares trends with the public.

JULY 2020. C4D launches Ad Observer, which allows Facebook users to safely share data with C4D about the ads they see.

MAY 2018. Facebook launches Ad Library, which offers access to limited data about political ads that run on the platform.

Platform Transparency

Universal digital advertising transparency: Update advertising rules to apply to the digital age. Require platforms to provide universal digital advertising transparency.
Algorithmic transparency: Call for platforms to provide transparency around their algorithmic processes and reasoning.
High engagement content: Require transparency around "reasonably public," high engagement content that is widely disseminated by feed algorithms.

Reform Liability Immunity for Tech Companies

Modernize Section 230 to more clearly define what constitutes “third party speech” and allow for clearer demarcation from platform behavior (such as algorithmic amplification, targeting of narrow user segments, paid/targeted content and auto-generation of content) that may be beyond Section 230 scope.
Provide empirical evidence to support how these various platform tools work and how liability might be applied. We bring our understanding of how these systems actually work to help policymakers craft rules that benefit the public.

Supporting Social Media Research

Researchers should have the ability to study products offered to the general public and inform the public about their findings, including social media algorithms, without fear of legal threats if their findings are unfavorable to the platforms they study. Research safe harbors, with rigorous requirements for data protections for users, may be useful tools to do this.
Designing and promoting transparency formats for public data that enable research while protecting user privacy to speed up research on social media algorithms and harm to users.