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In other cases, human moderators have had their decisions overturned. The Oversight Board also upheld Facebook’s decision to remove a dehumanizing ethnic slur against Azerbaijanis in the context of an active conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh disputed region.

However, the Oversight Board deals with only a small fraction of possible cases.

rivate organizations are currently the only consistent governors of data and social media.

But Facebook and other social media companies do not have to engage in a transparent, publicly accountable process to make their decisions. However, Facebook claims that in its decision-making, it upholds the human right of freedom of expression. However, freedom of expression does not mean the same thing to everyone

Facebook’s dominance in social media, however, is notable not because it’s a private company. Mass communication has been privatized, at least in the U.S., for a long time. Rather, Facebook’s insertion into the regulation of freedom of expression and its claim to support human rights is notable because these have traditionally been the territory of governments. While far from perfect, democracies provide citizens and other groups influence over the enforcement of human rights.

Facebook and other social media companies, however, have no such accountability to the public. Ensuring human rights needs to go beyond volunteerism by private companies. Perhaps with the Australia versus Facebook showdown, governments finally have an impetus to pay attention to the effects of technology companies on fundamental human rights.

he regulator, on the other hand, has a more detached role, when compared to older types of media regulation, in which they mainly assess whether mechanisms established by the provider comply with the law

This approach gives rise to concerns that we are just outsourcing regulation to private companies.

Indeed, the delegation of the exercise of regulatory powers to a private entity could be very damaging to freedom of speech and media.

So, I think the legal groundwork for protection but also the fair treatment of users is in the directive. Now it depends on the member states to implement it in such a way that this potential will be fulfilled (and the European Commission has a big role in this process).

The implications of cloud platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others differ again. A business built on a technology platform with a track record of well-developed data and model governance, audit capability, responsible product development practices and a culture and track record of transparency will likely reduce some risks related to biased data and model transparency, while encouraging (and even enforcing) adoption of those same practices and norms throughout its ecosystem.

policies that govern their internal practices for responsible technology development; guidance, tools and educational resources for their customers’ responsible use of their technologies; and policies (enforced in terms of service) that govern the acceptable use of not only their platforms but also specific technologies, such as face recognition or gait detection.

This is a time-sensitive issue

Audit is another area that, while promising, is also fraught with potential conflict. Companies such as O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing, founded by the author of Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, provide algorithmic audit and other services intended to help companies better understand and remediate data and model issues related to discriminatory outcomes. Unlike, for example, audits of financial statements, algorithmic audit services are as yet entirely voluntary, lack oversight by any type of governing board, and do not carry disclosure requirements or penalties. As a result, no matter how thorough the analysis or comprehensive the results, these types of services are vulnerable to manipulation or exploitation by their customers for “ethics-washing” purposes.

, we must broaden our understanding of platforms beyond social media sites to other types of business platforms, examine those risks in context, and approach governance in a way that accounts not only for the technologies themselves, but also for the disparate impacts among industries and business models.

At the same time, overreliance on a small, well-funded, global group of technology vendors to set the agenda for responsible and ethical use of AI may create a novel set of risks.

arge technology companies — for a range of reasons — are trying to fill the policy void, creating the potential for a kind of demilitarized zone for AI, one in which neither established laws nor corporate policy hold sway.

corporate responsibility

Since the mid-1990s, internet companies have been absolved from liability – by Section 230 of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act and to some extent by the EU’s e-commerce directive – for the damage that their platforms do.

Sooner or later, democracies will have to bring these outfits under control and the only question is how best to do it. The white paper suggests one possible way forward.

essentially a responsibility for unintended consequences of the way you have set up and run your business.

The white paper says that the government will establish a new statutory duty of care on relevant companies “to take reasonable steps to keep their users safe and tackle illegal and harmful activity on their services”.

for example assessing and responding to the risk associated with emerging harms or technology

Stirring stuff, eh? It has certainly taken much of the tech industry aback, especially those for whom the idea of government regulation has always been anathema and who regard this fancy new “duty of care’ as a legal fantasy dreamed up in an undergraduate seminar.

To which the best riposte is perhaps the old Chinese proverb that the longest journey begins with a single step. This white paper is it.