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he shift from product- and service-based to platform-based business creates a new set of platform governance implications — especially when these businesses rely upon shared infrastructure from a small, powerful group of technology providers (Figure 1).

The industries in which AI is deployed, and the primary use cases it serves, will naturally determine the types and degrees of risk, from health and physical safety to discrimination and human-rights violations. Just as disinformation and hate speech are known risks of social media platforms, fatal accidents are a known risk of automobiles and heavy machinery, whether they are operated by people or by machines. Bias and discrimination are potential risks of any automated system, but they are amplified and pronounced in technologies that learn, whether autonomously or by training, from existing data.

Business Model-Specific Implications

The explicit reference to human rights in its charter acknowledges that companies have a role in protecting and enforcing human rights.

This is consistent with efforts by the United Nations and other advocacy efforts to create standards on how businesses should be held accountable for human rights abuses. In light of Facebook’s entanglement in misinformation, scandals and election falsehoods, as well as genocide and incitement of violence, it seems particularly pertinent for the company.

To date, we have assigned such decision-making powers to states, many of which are accountable to their citizens. Facebook, on the other hand, is unaccountable to citizens in nations around the world, and a single individual (Mark Zuckerberg) holds majority decision-making power at the company.

86% of which was identified by our technology before it was reported to Facebook.

For hate speech, our technology still doesn’t work that well and so it needs to be checked by our review teams. We removed 2.5 million pieces of hate speech in Q1 2018 — 38% of which was flagged by our technology.

addition, in many areas — whether it’s spam, porn or fake accounts — we’re up against sophisticated adversaries who continually change tactics to circumvent our controls,

Procedural accountability” was a focus of discussion at the March 2018 workshop on platform responsibility convened by LSE’s Truth, Trust and Technology Commission. The idea is that firms should be held to account for the effectiveness of their internal processes in tackling the negative social impact of their services.

o be credible and trusted, information disclosed by online firms will need to be independently verified.

Piloting a Transparency Reporting Framework

In a six-month period from October 2017 to March 20178, 21m sexually explicit pictures, 3.5m graphically violent posts and 2.5m forms of hate speech were removed from its site. These figures help reveal some striking points.

As expected, the data indicates that the problem is getting worse.

For instance, between January and March it was estimated that for every 10,000 messages online, between 22 and 27 contained graphic violence, up from 16 to 19 in the previous three months.

Can technology resolve these issues? As regards technical solutions, there are already examples of these, such as YouTube’s Content ID, an automated piece of software that scans material uploaded to the site for IP infringement by comparing it against a database of registered IPs. The next challenge may be how these types of systems can be harnessed by online platform providers to address extreme and hate crime content. Again the dilemma for policy- and law-makers may be the extent to which they are prepared to cede control over content to technology companies, which will become judge, jury and executioner. 

who should bear the cost of monitoring and removal.

o block access to websites where infringing content has been hosted. In Cartier International AG & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2016] EWCA civ 658 the Court of Appeal concluded that it is entirely reasonable to expect ISPs to pay the costs associated with implementing mechanisms to block access to sites where infringing content has been made available

Could it be, another wondered, that the flurry of apocalyptic angst reflected the extent to which the Californian Ideology (which held that cyberspace was beyond the reach of the state) had seeped into the souls of even well-intentioned critics?

In reality, the problem we have is not the internet so much as those corporations that ride on it and allow some unacceptable activities to flourish on their platforms

This is what ethicists call “obligation responsibility” and in this country we call a duty of care. I

It’s a place where, in stark contrast to the perks lavished on Facebook employees, team leaders micromanage content moderators’ every bathroom and prayer break; where employees, desperate for a dopamine rush amid the misery, have been found having sex inside stairwells and a room reserved for lactating mothers; where people develop severe anxiety while still in training, and continue to struggle with trauma symptoms long after they leave; and where the counseling that Cognizant offers them ends the moment they quit — or are simply let go.

The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. One auditor walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust. Another former employee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: “I no longer believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack.”

The use of contract labor also has a practical benefit for Facebook: it is radically cheaper. The median Facebook employee earns $240,000 annually in salary, bonuses, and stock options. A content moderator working for Cognizant in Arizona, on the other hand, will earn just $28,800 per year. The arrangement helps Facebook maintain a high profit margin. In its most recent quarter, the company earned $6.9 billion in profits, on $16.9 billion in revenue. And while Zuckerberg had warned investors that Facebook’s investment in security would reduce the company’s profitability, profits were up 61 percent over the previous year.

Beijing Higher People’s Court [北京市高级人民法院], Zhong Qin Wen v. Baidu [中青文v.百度], 2014 Gao Min Zhong Zi No. 2045, [（2014）高民终字第2045号], 2014

On appeal, Beijing Higher People’s Court upheld the previous decision.  This case sets a duty for Internet hosting providers to protect popular works

Article 15 prevents Member States from imposing on internet intermediaries, with respect to activities covered by Articles 12-14, a general obligation to monitor the information which they transmit or store or a general obligation to actively seek out facts or circumstances indicating illegal activities. This is important, as general monitoring of millions of sites and web pages would, in practical terms, be impossible and would result in disproportionate burdens on intermediaries and higher costs of access to basic services for users. [73] However, Article 15 does not prevent public authorities in the Member States from imposing a monitoring obliga tion in a specific, clearly defined individual case.[73] In this context, it is important to note that the reports and studies on the effectiveness of blocking and filtering applications appear to indicate that there is not yet any technology which could not be circumvented and provide full effectiveness in blocking or filtering illegal and harmful information whilst at the same time avoiding blocking entirely legal information resulting in violations of freedom of speech.