Governance of Technology & the Internet

“As dating apps continue to receive pressure from civil society, media and governments to address a range of safety concerns, technology…

“Sex tech has emerged as a site in which sexual pleasure,…

Juan Ortiz Freuler writes about the risks facing the global internet and information ecosystem. 

The University of Michigan’s School of Information teamed up with Harvard Law to provide information for marginalized communities after…

Susan Benesch writes about how Elon Musk buying Twitter may be dangerous. …

Janis Wong, who recently completed a research sprint hosted by the Berkman Klein Center, speaks with McKinsey’s Stephanie Spangler about…

Babatunde Okunoye explains why Nigeria's digital identity project has exceeded the country's cybersecurity infrastructure.

Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog have devised a series of recommendations to better Internet governance in "Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It."

Urs Gasser and Virgílio Almeida take a historical look at the evolution of Internet governance to help inform the future.

Aarathi Krishnan explores the ability of humanitarian governance systems to ensure an equitable future.

Babatunde Okunoye assesses the legacy of the ten-year-old campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act, and charts potential paths forward. "Drawing from the success…

Jessica Fjeld and other experts reflect on the apparent dangers of Facebook's Metaverse.

Patrick Murck discusses the potential for cryptocurrencies to help shift into an abundance mindset.

Jad Esber and a colleague explore reputation systems in web3.

Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias trace a trend in research that focuses on how society is transformed by data extraction for profit.

Nick Couldry writes that tighter regulations are needed to ensure that social media companies act in the public interest.

Jonathan Zittrain, evelyn douek, and John Palfrey share insights on the consequences of social media after a Facebook whistleblower dominated headlines last week. …

Julie Owono and Niousha Roshani share their ideas for addressing content governance issues online.

Jonathan Zittrain writes that the fervor for content moderation will bleed from social media into the Internet's building blocks, posing new threats to civil liberties.

Woodrow Hartzog has a conversation about the impact of President Biden's new executive order. 

Will Marks explains why NFTs are so appealing — and so confusing — to many internet users.

Micaela Mantegna comments on NFTs and the economy of the "Metaverse."

Samer Hassan shows how blockchain technology can create collaborative economies.

Jonathan Zittrain testifies before a Senate subcommittee about the Internet of Things.

Micaela Mantegna defines the ‘metaverse’ and explains how it could be the next phase of the internet.

evelyn douek shares the limitations of the Facebook Oversight Board's ruling on Donald Trump's account.

A Q&A with Francine Berman

Rebecca Tushnet says lockdown boredom may be contributing to the rise of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs

Elizabeth Renieris discusses vaccine passports with MIT Technology Review

Chinmayi Arun examines the Oversight Board’s decision in the context of the options before it.

Rebecca Tushnet discusses advertising law with The Markup

Danielle Citron says making social media sites act on content such as nonconsensual porn and violent conspiracies would make the internet more equal and free

evelyn douek says Facebook’s made-up court is filling an enormous legal void.

evelyn douek explains details of Facebook Oversight Board’s recent decision and what they reveal about Facebook’s rules, and the FOB’s role in reviewing them.

Elizabeth Renieris pens essay about Clubhouse

Samer Hassan provides an overview of P2P Models’ involvement in a recent EU report

Jonathan Zittrain discusses the future of NFTs with KQED.

Aarathi Krishnan reflects on her fellowships at BKC and the Carr Center

Preserving records of what user content is taken down—and why—could make platforms more accountable and transparent

evelyn douek comments on the Facebook Oversight Board

Kendra Albert weighs in on Supreme Court's fair-use decision

Members of BKC community share suggestions for building bluesky

2020-2021 affiliate discusses AI copyright and trademark law

Elizabeth Renieris joins WBUR

Elizabeth Renieris on the importance of Facebook barring news in Australia

Elizabeth Renieris spoke with AP following the announcement that Facebook blocked news in Australia.

Chinmayi Arun joins the Lawfare podcast to discuss India and the future of the Internet.

Chinmayi Arun and evelyn douek discuss Internet governance in The New York Times.

Zahra Stardust explains new Australian bill

Joan Donovan and Jonathan Zittrain weigh in on proposed Section 230 reforms

Will Marks discusses the “Great Deplatforming” in Just Security.

Moira Weigel and colleague describe collective action from within tech platforms.

evelyn douek puts the referral in context

The site’s business model is the problem, not just which apps it owns, argue Dipayan Ghosh and Nick Couldry

Overcoming the flaws of an internet controlled by a few major players will enable web services that are more democratic and fair, Samer Hassan says.

Nick Couldry and colleague argue data about intimate details of our lives should not be exploited by corporations

Nick Couldry and Dipayan Ghosh say a “digital realignment” is necessary

BKC affiliate joins Mathew Ingram in conversation

Jessy Kate Schingler discusses the critical issues that arise when we consider civilization in outer space

Danielle Citron spoke with The New York Times about Facebook’s hate speech policies.

New Report from Woodrow Hartzog & Evan Selinger

Dipayan Ghosh and Stephen Wicker reflect on Congress’ antitrust hearing

VentureBeat features research from BKC community members

A federal data privacy law is still important, argues Dipayan Ghosh

Studying or testing the security of any operational system potentially runs afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Elizabeth Renieris on the impact of GDPR on the global data protection landscape

Elizabeth Renieris discusses court decision with Digital Privacy News

Mutale Nkonde speaks with Vox about facial recognition technology

BKC’s Ethics & Governance of AI Initiative works with government officials, stakeholders

"There is no meaningful choice between compulsory digitization or exclusion."

The world wide web is on a crash course that could lead to permanent fragmentation, argues Juan Ortiz Freuler

Improving Risk Management, Building Strong Governance, Accelerating Education and Research

Elizabeth Renieris joins Our Data podcast

Woodrow Hartzog co-authors essay warning of dangers, offering suggestions for tech and COVID-19

A forthcoming article by Danielle Citron lends insight to this question

Are we ready to have a conversation about racial and social justice in relation to technology? Asks Nani Jansen Reventlow

Trump, Twitter, and the Public Interest

Though his executive order follows a line of misguided, bipartisan swings at the protections for online platforms, this one is distinctively terrible, John Bowers says.

evelyn douek cautions against expecting a platform like Twitter to completely solve the problems of political discourse.

Susan Benesch argues that when it comes to Trump's tweets, Twitter must explain clearly how or why a tweet violated its policy.

Civil rights protections are as necessary in virtual spaces as in physical ones, Danielle Citron says

Dipayan Ghosh says: YES.

As long as COVID-19 is a global concern, many aspects of daily life will be mediated by platform companies that see human interactions as content to be moderated, and as sources…

evelyn douek explains Facebook’s Oversight Board

BKC fellow Julie Owono is named to the Facebook Oversight Board, along with members of the broader BKC community, Nighat Dad and Ronaldo Lemos

It is time for a coordinated effort between government, law enforcement, and developers to create an Internet we can trust.

Reda says Article 17 doesn’t fit the U.S. context

Discussing Facebook’s Oversight Board

evelyn douek reviews a recent white paper from Facebook on online content moderation

As Amazon expands its reign over e-commerce and gets more aggressive about rooting out counterfeiting, it’s taking a more active role in judging intellectual property disputes

The video isn’t legally actionable and shouldn’t be taken down, said Jonathan Zittrain, but Facebook and Twitter should probably label the video

US academics and activists should be paying close attention

Jonathon Penney proposes a new comprehensive regulatory framework to hold social media platforms accountable

evelyn douek reviews David Kaye’s latest report

The benefits do not come close to outweighing the risks, writes Woodrow Hartzog

A discussion of norms in the governance of cyberspace.

Elizabeth Renieris says that might be the wrong question to ask

Facebook says its cryptocurrency will be managed by an independent group, but an analysis finds more than half of the members have links back to the social media giant.

Mutale Nkonde says a federal ban is unlikely

Lumen shows why Twitter took down a video posted by President Trump

An assessment of blockchain against the GDPR’s core principles

Local firms in India will be at a disadvantage if big tech companies are given plum roles, says Padmashree Gehl Sampath

“Ghost Work” reveals labor structures masked by technology

US legislators say they want to stop deepfakes at the source, so they introduced the DEEPFAKES Accountability Act.

Perhaps the best physical representation of the genius of the Internet—and in particular, “Internet Protocol”—is found in an hourglass.

Disparity between what people think data is worth, what industry pays for it poses challenge to tech equity talks

ICANN handed over the top level domain .amazon to Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com, pending a 30 day comment period

Reflections on applying extractives metaphors to data in an international development context

BKC Executive Director Urs Gasser serves on Angela Merkel’s German Digital Council

Elettra Bietti on User-Dignity and Capture in the Platform Economy

Millions of workers are doing on-demand work to keep the Internet running smoothly, and they are now fighting for similar rights that full-time employees won decades ago.

A first empirical assessment showing that concentration of patents does result in market concentration in certain sectors

Do predictive tools reflect and reinforce punitive practices that drive disparate outcomes? How do data regimes interact with the penal ideology to naturalize these practices?

The proposal aims to protect users on social media platforms from censorship if a site advertises itself as impartial. Critics say the bill is too restrictive.

Making smart speakers and technologies smarter, but what about privacy?

Charges against Assange and implications for journalism

Impacts of new tech in the workplace

Taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality

How the government, or regulators, can start thinking about privacy and the data economy

Australia asks social media platforms to take responsibility

Data should become an enabler of new models of cooperative growth

On the consequences of ‘new manufacturing’ for European industrial policymaking

An unsolicited picture shared over Apple's AirDrop leads to questions over how the technology is governed.

Providing aggregate data access to media professionals

A Twitter lawsuit and protected forms of speech

Feminist research and bridging conversations about consent

Facebook's stance on anti-vaccine misinformation, and what public health experts have to say about it.

Stopping to think about the ethics and unintended consequences of new technology.

Amazon and the spread of health misinformation.

Bringing into focus the impact that new technologies can have on socio-economic, civil and political rights

Assessing the integrity, safety, and security of the vote -- the most important element of a truly democratic government

Christine Borgman comments on the feasibility of California's "data dividends" proposal

When it comes to children’s school data we should ask who controls it, what is it worth and how will it impact their lives.

A research agenda for stakeholders to proactively collaborate and design AI technologies that work with users to improve their health and wellbeing

Facebook’s plans to stitch together its three main messaging services have put the social network back in the glare of regulators around the world

Berkman Klein Fellow Titi Akinsanmi discusses how policy for digital ID could develop in 2019 and what she hopes to see globally and on the African continent.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s oversight of the fast-growing cryptocurrency market is on hiatus as the government shutdown lingers.

Questions are emerging regarding the adequacy of our current economic policies and practices, the social contract between citizens, businesses and governments and the metrics used…

“We increasingly see every problem as a technology-related problem, so the solution is more technology”

AirBnB may be exempt from a local ordinance regulating local short-term rentals by way of the Communications Decency Act

Data protection standards alone aren’t enough to make social media companies accountable

Ruth Okediji, Smith professor of law, traces her enthusiasm for intellectual-property law to a childhood love of literature and storytelling.

A survey of existing legal remedies for attacks that have been demonstrated on machine learning systems, and suggests some potential areas of exploration for machine learning…

Professor Samer Hassan explores how blockchain has the potential to help sharing economy projects to overcome several challenges they face at infrastructure, governance and…

The few companies that control our digital public sphere—Facebook, Google, and Twitter—are all driven by the same fundamental business model, and it has only grown more pernicious…

A new bill would prevent tech companies from knowingly doing harm to their users.

This paper makes a case for comprehensive digital industrial policies that are differentiated and rooted in the broader reality of development and globalization in the fourth…

Hassan thinks of the blockchain within the context of how we use it to manage trust in large, decentralized communities.

There is no easy fix to the asymmetries existing between developing and developed countries.

Jonathan Zittrain says the chances that the Internet will be a engine for positivity are lower than they were ten years ago

Making Internet-connected devices more secure will require smarter regulations

A skeptic's guide to the market for AI technologies, especially for government and policymakers

Do big social media platforms have effective ad policies?

When machine learning systems fail because of adversarial manipulation, how should society expect the law to respond?

Online tech platforms should become “information fiduciaries”

The HLS Cyberlaw Clinic helped receive an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anti-circumvention provisions to allow libraries, archivists, museums, and other…

“What was once a disruptive, ‘easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission’, type of business, have institutionalized its interests in state law."

On transformation in the financial services landscape due to globalizing and evolving technologies

Teaching technologists to think critically about responsibility and ethics is one way to keep our lives from into turning into a Black Mirror episode

Domestic and international financial regulators, innovators, and experts examine financial tech topics

If our devices, information, and institutions are to remain secure, smart government regulation is inevitable

On the importance of thinking about both the human rights implications and the ethics of AI.

India is attempting to create a complex new framework for data protection that will require firms to physically host user data, but they might be moving too fast.

Our Cyberlaw Clinic has urged the Ninth Circuit court not to touch a lower court decision ending a corporate landlord's lawsuit accusing Airbnb of helping tenants break building…

New policies aim to protect the privacy and security of personal data. How can trust be strengthened in the digital economy?

Internet companies need "information fiduciaries" to ensure that the consumer's best interest is kept at heart.

Faculty Associate Primavera De Filippi joins a debate discussing Blockchain, what it is, and whether it is deserving of its current hype.

Keith Porcaro presents his work on data trusts, a legal tool for governing and protecting digital movements.

Chinmayi Arun discusses the challenges unchecked AI development could pose to civil liberties in Asia.