of which were unusually and successfully “pre-bunked” by the Biden Administration.35 Some social media researchers and academics argue that the only way to gain an understanding of the impact of certain design decisions and alleged harms of the social media technology companies is for the U.S. government to require social media companies to provide more data to researchers. Data access for researchers has several issues36 primarily due to the type of data social media companies collect. Unlike requiring tobacco companies (and others) to give the government access to information about their products, social media technology companies and their products are made up of very personalized data. Without privacy provisions in place and a robust and universal standard for what constitutes a researcher, such proposed requirements could present major privacy and surveillance concerns. This is not to say that the government cannot demonstrate a compelling public interest in greater disclosure and transparency requirements for social media technology companies, or in potentially taxing the larger social media technology companies for the negative externalities they create, but this approach, as one former Hill staffer commented, “is like the FDA allowing researchers to do studies, not on the tobacco that impacts children, but on the children themselves.”37
Shift Toward Technology Architectures and Design Some practitioners and scholars, including computer science pioneers Jaron Lanier and Grace Hopper, for decades stressed the importance of understanding and scrutinizing the designs and architectures of systems that provide digital information and data to consumers.38 By 2021 the 35
“As Russia threatens Ukraine, the U.S. ‘pre-bunks’ Russian propaganda,” NPR, February 8, 2022 https:// www.npr.org/2022/02/08/1079213726/as-russia-threatens-ukraine-the-u-s-pre-bunks-russianpropaganda
36
Bogan, Leisel.“Congress and Researcher Access to Social Media Data .” Perspectives on Public Purpose, February 4, 2022, https://www.belfercenter.org/index.php/publication/congress-and-researcher-accesssocial-media-data.
37
Author interview with Congressional staff, 2022.
38
See Lanier, Jaron, “Digital Maoism: the Hazards of the New Online Collectivism,” Edge Magazine, May 29, 2006. https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maoism-the-hazards-of-the-new-onlinecollectivism and Grace Hopper’s MIT Lincoln Laboratory lecture on The Future of Computing, April 25, 1985. https://youtu.be/ZR0ujwlvbkQ
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School
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