— 5 min read — Policy makers are undergoing a crash course in technology – learning to ‘speak Geek’. This is going to have a significant, and positive, impact on discussions about internet regulation.
2 Commentsregulate.tech Posts
— 17 min read — Summary :- I look at where partisan bias might happen with the use of social media. I use examples to describe the mechanisms that may cause partisan effects. I propose that we conduct analyses of the Likely Partisan Effects of interventions by both platforms and governments.
Leave a Comment— 14 min read — Summary :- an assessment of the factors that shape platform responses to misinformation. I look at the response to Covid-19 and move on to describe a model for the factors influencing the way platforms intervene more generally. Partisan political impacts are an especially complex consideration.
Leave a Comment— 10 min read — Summary :- we should try to understand and respond to the motives for people feeling supportive of the 5G Covid-19 conspiracy theory. A debate about the issues presented on the face of the conspiracy may address the what but the why that is much more important.
Leave a Comment— 8 min read — Summary :- the rules and tools for logically routing traffic across the internet are largely run outside of direct government control. Public funding helped support the development of the internet protocols with the work being done by academics and industry. The relationship between the administration of the Domain Name System (DNS) and governments is interesting and has been controversial at times.
Leave a Comment— 2 min read — Short post explaining how the blog is structured.
Leave a Comment— 16 min read — Summary :- the physical infrastructure that supports networked services is highly regulated. It uses technical standards which are set by a variety of non-governmental bodies. But the deployment of equipment and offering of access services at scale usually depends on securing licenses from governments. The conditions attached to those licenses are core to what it means to regulate Physical layer. There has been particular interest in the concept of ‘net neutrality’ in the internet community.
Leave a Comment— 12 min read — Summary :- I use an analogy comparing online spaces with islands to structure a discussion of jurisdictional questions. I describe the key considerations for both entities running internet spaces and governments when thinking about jurisdiction.
Leave a Comment— 12 min read — Summary :- There are some important qualities inherent in the tech landscape that make it different from most other sectors and present policy makers with novel challenges. I describe these as scope, scale and speed. There are ways to regulate the sector if we work with the challenges rather than wishing them away. This requires national regulation to be cognisant of what is happening in other countries, for it to be realistic for large numbers of entities of very different sizes and with vast user communities, and for it to be capable of update more quickly than the cycle of traditional primary legislation.
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