Session
Regulation, competition and innovation: How could regulatory and self-regulatory frameworks help foster more competitive Internet-related markets, a larger diversity of business models, and more innovation? How to enable equitable access to data, marketplaces or infrastructures for fostering competition and innovation on the Internet?
Content moderation and human rights compliance: How to ensure that government regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation approaches to content moderation are compliant with human rights frameworks, are transparent and accountable, and enable a safe, united and inclusive Internet?
Debate - Classroom - 60 Min
One of the key policy questions that this IGF edition aims to explore is how regulatory and self-regulatory frameworks could help foster more competitive Internet-related markets, a larger diversity of business models, and more innovation. With this session, we would like to provide an answer to this question with regards to a specific issue, that is content curation, and a specific market, that is social media markets. In particular, we would like to discuss if and how pro-competitive regulatory solutions could help solve various challenges (hate speech, disinformation, reduction in exposure diversity etc.) related to content curation as currently provided on those markets. Indeed, we are convinced that those challenges can be properly addressed only if, together with pushing for international human rights standards in the provision of the service, we also work on pro-competition regulatory tools that could help counterweight the power social media platforms retain over the flow of information in society. We would therefore like to have a conversation about what those regulatory solutions could be, and what impact they could have on social media markets from both an economic and a social perspective, for all users involved (including media outlets and other content producers). This discussion, we imagine, would lead to touch upon topics such as concentration v decentralisation, interoperability, sustainability of various business models. The starting point, which is also the background paper for this Town Hall, is ARTICLE 19's proposal to mandate the unbundling of hosting and content curation activities, together with the obligation, for social media platforms, to provide fair and non-discriminatory access to third-party players. This obligation could open the market for content curation to new players, and the competition among them could deliver more choices and better-quality services to users. In the session, we will discuss the pros and cons of this proposal, and then turn to other suggestions/proposals the panellists might have on the topic. The variety of panellists’ background and expertise, and the fact that they pertain to different stakeholder groups, will enrich the debate with different perspectives, and enlighten the likely concrete consequences that each proposal could have on a specific stakeholder group.
We plan to design the session as follows. The on-site moderator will present the unbundling proposal and kick-off the discussions. Each panellist will be called to react to the proposal with a 2-3 minutes intervention. We will alternate online and on-site interventions. Following this first round, we plan a second round of quick interventions, again 2-3 minutes each, where panellists will put forward their alternative proposals. Again, we will alternate online and on-site interventions. When the two rounds are concluded, we will have an open debate, and the on-site and online moderators will give alternate space to on-site and online participants.
With both online and offline speakers, we will also have an online moderator and an offline moderator who will work in strict coordination. We will make sure that interventions online and offline efficiently alternate and this with regards to both the presentations and the Q&A session.
ARTICLE 19
Kathleen Boyle, ARTICLE 19, Civil Society, Western European and Other Groups Martha A. Tudón, ARTICLE 19, Civil Society, Latin America and Caribbean Group Maria Luisa Stasi, ARTICLE 19, Civil Society, Western European and Other Groups
Cory Doctorow, EFF, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group
Marcel Kolaja, European Parliament, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Agustina Del Campo, CELE, Academia, Latin American and Caribbean Group.
Vittorio Bertola, Open-Xchange, Academia, Western European and Other Groups
Martha Tudón
Kathleen boyle
Maria Luisa Stasi
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
9.b
9.c
Targets: Social media platforms have grown in strength and influence over the past years. It is important that their practices and business models be addressed in talks surrounding the SDG targets as they have become an essential source of information and communication. The exercise of freedom of expression and other fundamental human rights are now tied to the use of these platforms. This proposal seeks to discuss the idea that reducing gatekeepers' influence through unbundling will enhance accessibility and promote diversity in a sector that lacks competition. Unbundling could help create greater opportunities for newcomers to the social media market, increasing competition and innovation in the sector. Users will ultimately have more choice, creating a better environment for innovation.
Report
What to do then? We have a clear proposal: break the bundle. Open the space for other content curation providers to step in. Empower users to make their choice, a real choice.
We know very little about how content curation systems work, which criteria/parameters they’re set to follow. What we know is that they do not aim at guaranteeing an adequate degree of exposure diversity, or at other public goals which are essential for our democracies.
ARTICLE 19 calls on all relevant stakeholders to review the unbundling proposal and engage for the development and implementation of the policy.
Increasingly, research and the courageous contribution of whistle-blowers has shown that content curation algorithms play a role, potentially a key role, in a number of phenomena that harm users, at individual and at collective level.
Research, although unfortunately limited due to huge asymmetry of information, lack of transparency and adequate access to data (…) shows that content curation systems play a substantial role in the proliferation of hate speech, disinformation, polarisation of discourse and other current major challenges regarding the flow of information in society. They do so because they influence (to use a mild term) users’ information diet: they select, prioritise, promote and/or demote what we access to, share etc.
At current, content curation services are part of a bundle: users that join a large social media platform get the hosting and the curation of content at once. All offered and managed by the platform, which often argues that this is a way to offer the best ‘user experience’. The truth is that the bundle is an efficient business strategy, which makes a lot of economic sense for large platforms. The user is locked-in, there is no competition. Plus, the content curation is the service, in this bundle, that is easier to monetise: control on what users’ see means bargaining power in the negotiations with advertisers.
On the other hand, the bundle has a very negative impact on users’ rights. First, they have no choice, no alternative but to have their news feed (or similar) provided by the platform they want to join. They have no say on the criteria this platform uses to select which content to prioritise/demote, nor on which data about them the platform collects, how it processes/uses them etc.). Users are in a take it or leave it situation, where leave has also an impact on their right to freedom of expression, as we’re talking about services that constitute an important component of our communication infrastructure.
Another major problem is that this situation allows a very limited number of social media platforms to dictate the info diet of an enormous part of the population. We know very little about how content curation systems work, which criteria/parameters they’re set to follow. What we know is that they do not aim at guaranteeing adequate degree of exposure diversity, or at other public goals which are essential for our democracies.
What to do then? We have a clear proposal: break the bundle. Open the space for other content curation providers to step in. Empower users to make their choice, a real choice.
Here the essential components of the discussion:
- As large platforms won’t have the incentives to unbundle these services, we call on independent regulatory authorities to make it mandatory, and to make sure it is implemented effectively.
- The unbundling of services should be shaped as a form of functional separation. In other words, our proposal does not mean that a large platform needs to dismiss its assets. The large platform that provides the hosting should remain able to offer content curation, too, so that users can freely choose which company provides them with this service. To guarantee a real choice, the option to select the large platform has to be presented to user as an opt-in.
- To be implemented, the unbundling implies adequate level of interoperability between the large platforms and third-party content curation providers. It also implies that large platforms provide access in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.
The discussion was able to contribute to solving a number of challenges we currently have with content curation, by tackling one of the major roots of these challenges: the excessive concentration of power in the hands of very few players.
Among the major benefits, we list:
- A variety of players will compete, providing innovation, better quality services and differentiating the service they offer (for example, they would use different criteria for the content selection, or guarantee different degrees of privacy protection);
- Users will have choice. They will be able to select the service that better fits their needs and switch any time a better product comes into the market or any time they are unsatisfied.
- The remedy will set the conditions for a decentralised and diversified environment to flourish. This new environment will dilute the power over the flow of information in society, and over the users’ information diet and help to establish and maintain a communication infrastructure more in line with our democratic values.