US tech giants may find their future shaped by Europe
US tech giants may find their future shaped by Europe
By DANICA KIRKA October 17, 2017
LONDON (AP) — Silicon Valley is a uniquely American
creation, the product of an entrepreneurial spirit and no-holds-barred
capitalism that now drives many aspects of modern life.
But the likes of Facebook, Google and Apple are
increasingly facing an uncomfortable truth: it is Europe’s culture of tougher
oversight of companies, not America’s laissez-faire attitude, which could soon
rule their industry as governments seek to combat fake news and prevent
extremists from using the internet to fan the flames of hatred.
While the U.S. has largely relied on market forces to
regulate content in a country where free speech is revered, European officials
have shown they are willing to act. Germany recently passed a law imposing
fines of up to 50 million euros ($59 million) on websites that don’t remove
hate speech within 24 hours. British Prime Minister Theresa May wants companies
to take down extremist material within two hours. And across the EU, Google has
for years been obliged to remove search results if there is a legitimate
complaint about the content’s veracity or relevance.
“I anticipate the EU will be where many of these issues
get played out,” said Sarah T. Roberts, a professor of information studies at
UCLA who has studied efforts to monitor and vet internet content. Objectionable
content “is the biggest problem going forward. It’s no longer acceptable for
the firms to say that they can’t do anything about it.”
How closely to manage the massive amounts of content on
the internet has become a pressing question in the U.S. since it was revealed
that Russian agencies took out thousands of ads on social media during the
presidential campaign, reaching some 10 million people on Facebook alone.
That comes on top of the existing concerns about
preventing extremist attacks. This month, three men were arrested after
allegedly using smartphone messaging apps to plot attacks on the New York City
subway and Times Square from their homes in Canada, Pakistan and the
Philippines. The plot was thwarted by an undercover officer, not technology.
In some ways it goes to a question of identity. Social
media companies see themselves not as publishers but as platforms for other
people to share information, and have traditionally been cautious about taking
down material.
But the pressure is on to act. Facebook, Google, Twitter
and YouTube in June created the Global Internet Forum to Combat Terrorism,
which says it is committed to developing new content detection technology,
helping smaller companies combat extremism and promoting “counter-speech,”
content meant to blunt the impact of extremist material.
Proponents of counter-speech argue that rather than
trying to take down every Islamic State group post, internet companies and
governments should do more to promote content that actively refutes extremist
propaganda. This approach will unmask the extremist message of hate and
violence in the “marketplace of ideas,” they argue, though critics see it as
just another form of propaganda.
Facebook has recently published details of its
counterterrorism strategy for the first time. These include using artificial
intelligence to prevent extremist images and videos from being uploaded and
algorithms to find and disable accounts linked to pages known to support
extremist movements. The company also plans to increase the staff dedicated to
reviewing complaints of objectionable material by more than 60 percent to some
8,000 worldwide.
“We want Facebook to be a hostile place for terrorists,”
Monika Bickert, director of global policy management, and Brian Fishman,
counterterrorism policy manager, said in a statement. “The challenge for online
communities is the same as it is for real world communities - to get better at
spotting the early signals before it’s too late.”
But Roberts argues the companies have been slow to react
and are trying to play catch up.
The fact is the technology needed to detect and remove
dangerous posts hasn’t kept up with the threat, experts say. Removing such
material still requires judgment, and artificial intelligence is not yet good
enough to determine the difference, for example, between an article about the
so-called Islamic State and posts from the group itself.
In other words, taking down much of this material still
needs human input, said Frank Pasquale, an expert in information law and
changing technology at the University of Maryland. Acknowledging that is
difficult for companies that were built by pushing the boundaries of
technology.
“They don’t like to admit how primitive their
technologies are; it defeats their whole narrative that they can save the
world,” Pasquale said. “You kill off the golden goose if you cast doubt over
the power of their algorithms.”
Employing enough people to fill in where the algorithms
leave off would be a massive task given the volume of material posted on social
media sites every day. Just imagine trying to moderate every puppy photo or
birthday greeting, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media
and Citizenship at the University of Virginia.
He believes that moderating content is ultimately
impossible because you can’t create a system that works for everyone from Saudi
Arabia to Sweden.
“The problem is the very idea of the social media system
— it is ungovernable,” he said. “Facebook is designed as if we are nice to each
other. And we’re not.”
The U.S. government response has been more focused on
policing than regulation, with security services authorized to sweep up huge
amounts of electronic data to help them identify violent extremists and thwart
attacks. Beyond that, authorities have mostly relied on the market to drive
change amid fears that heavy-handed regulation could interfere with the First
Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to speak out and exchange information.
European courts have had no such qualms, balancing
freedom of expression against the right to privacy and community cohesion.
For example, the European Court of Justice in 2014 ruled
that people have the “right to be forgotten,” permitting them to demand removal
of personal data from search results when they can prove there’s no compelling
reason for it to remain. As far back as 2000, a French court ordered Yahoo to
prevent French internet users from buying Nazi memorabilia on its sites.
The European Union’s executive has been most active in
matters of antitrust. This year it leveled a huge 2.4 billion euro ($2.8
billion) fine on Google and ordered it to change the way it does business, for
example how it shows search results.
“There’s a real cultural divide,” said Edward Tenner,
author of the upcoming book “The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do.”
″European governments have been more committed to incorporating the ideas of
social justice and the Americans have been much more on the libertarian side.”
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