Platforms and Governments - It’s Complicated
Platforms and Governments - It’s Complicated
A little insight into how tech companies and government officials engage
A happy Sunday afternoon to you from rainy Washington, DC. I’m feeling a little guilty that I’m only now getting to writing this week’s free newsletter. After three weeks of travel that had me going from Sweden to Jordan to LA to Georgia to NYC, I spent 10 hours yesterday catching up on some work that I had pushed off. I’m exhausted and thus allowed myself to have a lazy morning. I still feel guilty for being lazy, which is very type-A, workaholic American of me. 😂
Good thing I have this coffee cup to keep my priorities straight.
On Wednesday, I unpacked the Congressional hearing with the former Twitter executives that covered everything from how they handled the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop to how they made decisions about what content to remove or reduce the reach of to the role of government in pressuring companies on how they handle content on their platforms.
Today I thought I’d dig in a bit more about how companies engage with government actors, the existing tensions, and how they try to navigate various tradeoffs.
My experience is closely tied to my work at Facebook, though I have a pretty good understanding of how other companies are structured. That said, I’m making some generalizations below, and I’ll try to point out where there are differences, but know that there could be some nuances I’m missing.
First, let’s look at the different teams that might engage with government officials:
Public Policy - These folks regularly engage with lawmakers and their staff. In the United States, they have to report how much they spend on lobbying the Federal government and, I believe, in various states.
Content/Product Policy - These are the people who write the platform's policies - what’s allowed and not. They don’t regularly engage with government officials but, from time to time, might be involved in a meeting to help explain the platform rules. For instance, Monika Bikert - the head of this team at Meta - testified at a Senate hearing in April 2021.
Customer Support Staff - This was the team that I helped build at Facebook. We were the ones who worked with politicians and governments on how to best use the platform. We focused on helping them use the free tools, and another team helped them with ads. You can read more about Meta’s work in this space here.
Legal - The lawyers were the ones who worked directly with law enforcement and governments on requests for information or for the company to take specific actions. Meta, Google, Twitter, and many other platforms generate transparency reports to share how many of these requests they get and how many they fulfill. Meta publishes its operational guidelines for law enforcement officials seeking records here.
Threat Intel/Security - These teams are looking for threat actors on the platforms and protecting the platform from activities such as hacking. They sometimes roll up into a broader trust and safety organization or are a stand-alone team. This team would engage with the FBI or other government officials who might be sharing tips on problematic activity. Meta and other companies publish reports when they do these takedowns.
Next, let’s look at the org chart for these teams. This does depend by company because, at some, the public policy, content policy, customer support, and legal teams all report to the same person. At some, it’s just public policy, content policy, and customer support teams. Threat intel/security might be broken up amongst different teams too. While we could ask each company to publish their org charts, I don’t think that tells us much.
The biggest concern people have is the decision-making process within these companies and who makes the final call on the rules and when someone has violated them - especially high profile situations like Trump’s removal or suppression of the Biden laptop.
Some strongly feel that the people writing and enforcing the rules (the content policy team) should not report to the same person the public policy team reports to. They are concerned that political considerations will be considered when determining if content should be actioned.
That is a valid concern, but I don’t think you solve it by changing the org chart. At both Facebook and Twitter, these teams report to the same person. Gadde said in her opening statement that she “had many distinct teams reporting to me, including legal, trust & safety, public policy, corporate security, and compliance.” Eventually, these teams must report to a common person, whether a Vice President or the CEO.
I think that most companies have taken great care to ensure checks and balances in their decision-making processes. There should be oversight on those checks and balances, but I don’t think there is an ideal org chart. What I think is fair is asking those leaders how they take political considerations into account when making decisions. We can dream of a world where political considerations aren’t taken into account, but that’s not reality because, as we saw Wednesday - you might get dragged in front of Congress - or in some countries, thrown in jail - if governments don’t like your decisions.
That takes us to how these companies engage with government entities. The day-to-day is relatively routine and mundane. The public policy teams will meet with lawmakers to answer their questions on various issues. For instance, this week, the European Commission published the latest reports from the companies on how they are complying with the Code of Practice on Disinformation. The public policy teams likely would have led negotiations for that updated code.
The customer support teams answer questions from government entities about how products work or file bugs if something is broken. Or they might be doing cool partnerships with NASA to allow people to experience being on the moon via Oculus.
Legal teams are navigating law enforcement requests for information, and the threat intelligence teams might be getting tips about the problematic activity.
What happens when a government or political entity flags potentially problematic content to a platform? First, all platforms have various processes in place to evaluate the request. So, just because a government wants something taken down is not automatic. It’ll need to be evaluated to see if it violates the law or platform policies. Maybe they didn’t go through the proper steps to request data. Maybe the content doesn’t violate. Roth on Wednesday said Twitter separated the teams who would get the asks versus those who would evaluate it. Now, in tricky situations where the answer isn’t clear, it would likely get moved up higher in leadership for someone to make a call.
How much pressure governments put on companies to take action can also vary. It’s not great when the President of the United States says your platform is killing people. Getting grilled by Members of Congress who are threatening criminal action is not fun - and yeah, that’s going to be in the back of the mind of anyone making these calls. Some governments, like India and Turkey, have passed laws to compel companies to do what the government says. Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter was pushing back on the Indian government in court.
So, in the end, as you can see, it is complicated. I’ll keep saying over and over that we should be debating how companies make decisions and the role of government, but let’s make sure to have the facts of what is happening and not jump to conclusions to make a political point. Otherwise, as Rep. Jamie Raskin called it Wednesday, we’ll stay on this wild cyber goose chase.
PS: Bonus content from Wednesday. If you didn’t watch the hearing Wednesday, various Democrats had different approaches to what they were witnessing. My friend Krista particularly enjoyed Rep. Katie Porter’s rant and proudly sent me this picture that she requested be included in this newsletter.
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What I’m Reading
Tech Policy Press: Evaluating Cries of Censorship on Capitol Hill
The Lawfare Podcast: A Jan. 6 Committee Staffer on Social Media and the Insurrection
Modern Diplomacy: Defending Democracy Against a Rapidly Evolving Internet Landscape
The Daily Show: Chelsea Handler Discusses Being Childless by Choice - Long Story Short
Bloomberg: TikTok Reveals Russian Disinformation Network Targeting European Users
New York Times: Steve Bannon’s Podcast Is Top Misinformation Spreader, Study Says
New York Times: Free Speech vs. Disinformation Comes to a Head - The New York Times
New York Times: Why Are You Seeing So Many Bad Digital Ads Now?
European Commission: Signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation deliver their first baseline reports in the Transparency Centre
Jobs Board
Reddit: EU/UK Policy Lead
Atlantic Council: DFR Lab Digital Sherlocks Applications Open - Deadline February 15
Mozilla Foundation: Director of Campaigns
Ford Foundation: Program Associate
Epic Games: Policy Lead, Trust and Safety
Institute for Rebooting Social Media: Governance in Online Speech Leadership Series: Apply today! - Deadline February 24
Calendar
🚨 New! 🚨
March 2, 2023 - 2023 V-Dem Democracy Report Launch
Topics to keep an eye on:
YouTube Decision on Trump Reinstatement
Facebook 2020 election research
TV shows about Facebook - Doomsday Machine and second season of Super Pumped
February 16, 2023 - Platforms have to announce EU numbers to comply with DSA
February 21, 2023 - SCOTUS hears Gonzalez v Google
February 22, 2023 - SCOTUS hears Twitter v. Taamneh
February 23, 2023 - Nigeria Election
Feb 23, 2023 - Meta response to cross-check due
February 23 - 24: Designing Technology for Social Cohesion
February 2023 - Djibouti Election
February 2023 - Monaco Election
March 1, 2023 - All Tech is Human: Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit
March 2, 2023 - 2023 V-Dem Democracy Report Launch
March 5, 2023 - Estonia Election
March 10 - 19: SXSW (Here’s the panel I’ll be on!)
March 23, 2023: TikTok CEO Congressional Hearing
March 20 - 24, 2023: Mozilla Fest
March 29 - 30, 2023: Summit for Democracy
March 2023 - Antigua and Barbuda Election
March 2023 - Federated States of Micronesia Election
March 2023 - Guinea Bissau Election
March 2023 - Sierra Leone Election
April 30, 2023 - Benin Election
April 30, 2023 - Paraguay Election
April 2023 - Andorra Election
April 2023 - Finland Election
April 2023 - Montenegro Election
May 7, 2023 - Thailand Election
May 15-16: Copenhagen Democracy Summit
June 5-9: RightsCon
June 24 - June 30: Aspen Ideas Festival
June 25, 2023 - Guatemala Election
June 25, 2023 -Turkey Election
TBD June: DFR Lab 360/OS
July 2023 - Cambodia Election
July 2023 - Timor-Leste Election
July 2023 - Zimbabwe Election
August 6, 2023 - Greece Election
August 2023 - Eswatini Election
September 27-29, 2023: Athens Democracy Forum
TBD September: Atlantic Festival
TBD September: Unfinished Live
TBD September: Trust Con and Trust/Safety Conference (If they do them again)
September 2023 - Mauritania Election
October 8 - 12: Internet Governance Forum - Japan
October 10, 2023 - Liberia Election
October 12, 2023 - Pakistan Election
October 14, 2023 - New Zealand Election
October 22, 2023 - Switzerland Election
October 2023 - Argentina Election
October 2023 - Luxembourg Election
October 2023 - Oman Election
November 12, 2023 - Poland Election
November 20, 2023 - Marshall Islands Election
November 29, 2023 - Ukraine Election
November 2023 - Bhutan Election
November 2023 - Gabon Election
November 2023 - Rwanda Election
December 10, 2023 - Spain Election
December 2023 - Bangladesh Election
December 2023 - Democratic Republic of the Congo Election
December 2023 - Togo Election
TBD - Belarus Election
TBD - Cuba Election
TBD - Equatorial Guinea Election
TBD - Guinea Election
TBD - Madagascar Election
TBD - Maldives Election
TBD - Myanmar Election
TBD - Singapore Election
TBD - South Sudan Election - (Unlikely to happen)
TBD - Turkmenistan Election
TBD - Tuvalu
TBD - Haiti
July 15-18, 2024 - Republican National Convention