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Models for Platform Governance Models for Platform Governance A CIGI Essay Series 1 Contents Introduction: Why Platform Governance? 3 TAYLOR OWEN The Social Media Council: Bringing Human Rights Standards to Content Moderation on Social Media PIERRE FRANÇOIS DOCQUIR 9 Navigating the Tech Stack: When, Where and How Should We Moderate Content? 15 JOAN DONOVAN What’s So Difficult about Social Media Platform Governance? SUSAN ETLINGER 20 Digital Platforms Require a Global Governance Framework 27 ROBERT FAY Global Standards for Digital Cooperation 33 MICHEL GIRARD Regulating Them Softly 39 ROBERT GORWA Syncing Antitrust and Regulatory Policies to Boost Competition in the Digital Market 44 GENE KIMMELMAN Does Facebook’s Oversight Board Finally Solve the Problem of Online Speech? 51 KATE KLONICK The Fiduciary Supply Chain 55 SEAN MCDONALD Platform Governance of Political Speech 63 NANJALA NYABOLA Protecting Information Consumers 69 JONATHON W. PENNEY Moving “Upstream” on Global Platform Governance 77 KARINE PERSET, JEREMY WEST, DAVID WINICKOFF AND ANDREW WYCKOFF Public Investments for Global News VICTOR PICKARD 85 Rights and Responsibilities of Internet Intermediaries in Europe: The Need for Policy Coordination 91 DAMIAN TAMBINI Social Media Councils 97 HEIDI TWOREK 2 Contents Credits Director, Global Economy ROBERT FAY Senior Fellow TAYLOR OWEN Publisher CAROL BONNETT Managing Editor ALLISON LEONARD Publications Editor LYNN SCHELLENBERG Graphic Designer SAMI CHOUHDARY Illustrations by SIMÓN PRADES Watch the series video at cigionline.org/platforms Copyright © 2019 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Board of Directors. Inquiries may be directed to [email protected] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution — Non-commercial — No Derivatives License. To view this license, visit (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). For re-use or distribution, please include this copyright notice. Printed in Canada on paper containing 30% post-consumer fibre and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®. Centre for International Governance Innovation and CIGI are registered trademarks. 67 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 6C2 www.cigionline.org Taylor Owen Introduction: Why Platform Governance? ver the past three years, the debate about the role of digital technology in our society, our economy and our democracies has gone through a remarkable transformation. O Following two decades of techno-optimism, whereby digital technology generally, and social media specifically, was viewed as broadly aligned with democratic good and so left to be governed in a laissez-faire environment, we are now in the midst of what could be called a “techlash.” The recent catalyst for this turn was the 2016 US presidential election — a moment that saw the election of Donald J. Trump with the aid of a Russian government adept at leveraging the digital infrastructure to manipulate the American electorate. But the root cause for this turn runs far deeper. It is the result of a notably laissez-faire policy approach that has allowed our public sphere to be privatized, embedding in our digital ecosystem the incentive structures of markets while allowing the social, economic and democratic costs of an unfettered system to be externalized, and therefore borne by the public. Ultimately, the platform Web is made up of privately owned public spaces, largely governed by the commercial incentives of private actors, rather than the collective good of the broader society. Platforms are more like shopping malls than town squares — public to an extent, but ultimately managed according to private interests. Once nimble start-ups, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon now serve billions of users around the world and increasingly perform core functions in our society. For many users, particularly those in emerging economies, these companies are the primary filtering point for information on the internet (Cuthbertson 2017). The private gains are clear to see — Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the most profitable companies in history. But in spite of myriad benefits offered by platforms, the costs are clear as well. 3 The social costs of the platform economy are policy and governance of artificial intelligence manifesting themselves in the increasingly (AI) all sit in this space. What’s more, they toxic nature of the digital public sphere, are often governed by different precedents, the amplification of misinformation and regulated by siloed departmental responsibility, disinformation, the declining reliability of and lack coordinated policy capacity. This information, heightened polarization and confusion has contributed to a policy inertia the broad mental health repercussions of and increased the likelihood that governments technologies designed around addictive fall back on self-regulatory options. models. And so democratic governments around the The economic costs are grounded in the world have begun to search for a new strategy market distortion created by increased to govern the digital public sphere. Looking monopolistic behaviour. The vast scale of the for an overarching framework, many are digital platform economy not only affords converging on what might be called a platform near-unassailable competitive advantages, governance agenda. but also invites abuses of monopoly power in The value of a platform governance approach ways that raise barriers to market entry (Wu is that first, it provides a framework through 2018). Moreover, the ubiquity of the platform which to connect a wide range of social, companies in the consumer marketplace economic and democratic harms; second, creates special vulnerabilities because of it brings together siloed public policy areas the amount of control they wield over data, and issues into a comprehensive governance advertising and the curation of information. agenda; and third, it provides a framework for countries to learn from and coordinate with each other in order to exert sufficient market The policy response is pressure. But what might a platform governance agenda look like? There are three dimensions to riddled with challenges. consider in answering this question — policy coordination, scale of appropriate response and degree of regulatory risk. First, there are no single-issue solutions to the The costs to our democracy are grounded not challenges of technology and society. In order only in the decline of reliable information to address the breadth of policy areas in this needed for citizens to be informed actors in space, we need a combination of content, data the democratic process and the undermining and competition policies that are implemented of public democratic institutions, but in threats in coordination across government and to the integrity of the electoral system itself. between governments. This will demand a coordinated “whole-of-government” effort to As we collectively learn more about the nature bring together a wide range of policies. The of these problems, in all their complexity challenges we confront are systemic, built and nuance, this moment will demand a into the architecture of digital media markets, coordinated and comprehensive response from therefore public policy response must be governments, civil society and the private holistic and avoid reactions that solve for one sector. Yet, while there is growing recognition aspect of the problem while ignoring the rest. of the problem, there remains significant ambiguity and uncertainty about the nature Second, within the platform governance and scale of the appropriate response. agenda there is a need for multiple scales of responses for different policy issues: national The policy response is riddled with challenges. implantation; international coordination; and Since the digital economy touches so many international collaboration. As this essay series aspects of our lives and our economies, the suggests, there is an urgent need for global issues that fall under this policy rubric are platform governance, as no single state can necessarily broad. In countries around the shift the structure of the platform economy world, data privacy, competition policy, hate alone. Platforms are global organizations, speech enforcement, digital literacy, media which, in the absence of enforced national 4 Introduction: Why Platform Governance? rules, will default to their own terms of service be suspended entirely. Data privacy regimes and business practices. At the same time, could be updated to provide far greater rights because of the scale of the operation of these to individuals and greater oversight and companies and the power they have accrued regulatory power to punish abuses. Tax policy as a result, as well as the complexity of the could be modernized to better reflect the new governance challenges they present, it is consumption of digital goods and to crack very difficult for any individual country to go down on tax-base erosion and profit shifting. it alone on regulation. However, this need for Modernized competition policy could be used global governance is complicated by a parallel to restrict and roll back acquisitions and to need for subsidiarity in policy responses. On separate platform ownership from application some issues, such as speech regulation, policy or product development. Civic media could be must be nationally implemented. In these cases, supported
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