This week, I finished watching the Congressional Hearing that I talked about last week. I’ve been finding that it’s been difficult for me to see what resources are right for me since there’s so much to impact on this topic. There are so many different layers to uncover when it comes to unpacking all of the things discussed in The Social Dilemma. I’ve jumped from trying to understand the current UX design of social media platforms (features such as infinite scroll, likes, etc) to looking into the complexities of machine learning and AI. I talked with Ault last week about the idea of creating a “contract” that dictates what the algorithm can/can’t do but there’s a whole dilemma of questions such as:
- How would you write in the contract in a computational language the algorithm would understand?
- Who would be in charge of creating the contract? Is it determined by the government? Would a user write it up?
- How would an algorithm run with these contracts?
In the hearing, a congressman had proposed some sort of switch in which users could choose between a feed that is generated through an algorithm versus a feed that was not. The panel of experts had advised against this type of regulation since users would then need to understand the gains and drawbacks between choosing one or the other. They ultimately said that users would most likely choose the algorithm anyway because it’s more efficient in giving them relevant content vs just unregulated content that isn’t tailored to their interests. Dr. Wolfram had said this system could become even more complex as users may have a bunch of different switches for location services, access to contacts, email subscriptions, etc to the point where they would become overwhelmed and confused about how each decision could impact their overall experience on the app.
In this hearing, the congressmen had referred to Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, the KIDS Act, and the Child and Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA Act).
The Communication Decency Act of 1996
In Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act (CDA), the law states the following:
“No provider or use of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”
Section 230 of CDA
This act is saying that any platform that is being used to re-publish/share other parties’ thoughts will not be held legally accountable for what they say or do. This law essentially protests free internet speech.
“This legal and policy framework has allowed for YouTube and Vimeo users to upload their own videos, Amazon and Yelp to offer countless user reviews, craigslist to host classified ads, and Facebook and Twitter to offer social networking to hundreds of millions of Internet users.”
The Electric Frontier Foundation
If these Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) were held accountable and were being restricted under the law based on the information their users’ posted about, then there would be no way for these companies to host any user content at all since they would be too busy trying to protect themselves under the law.
You can read more about the importance of the CDA here: https://www.eff.org/files/cda230.jpg
The Kids Internet Design and Safety Act or KIDS ACT
This is a proposed law introduced by Senator Edward J. Markey (MA, Democrat) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT, Democrat). You can read the detailed proposed legislation here: https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/KIDS%20Act%202020.pdf
To breakdown the important aspects of this document, they have proposed that the following features for children must be against the law:
- Auto play setting
- Push alerts (notifications)
- “Displaying the quantity of positive engagement or feedback that a covered user [an individual under the age of 16] has received from other users”
- “Any feature that provides covered user with badges or other visual award symbols based on levels of engagement with platform”
For #3, I have no idea what feature they are referring to. It is a bit confusing and an example would be helpful. And for #4, I noted that this kind of restriction could hurt the gaming industry. You can arguably say games have these tokens in order to motivate the user to keep playing, but I guess in the realm of social media there’s no end to the game, meaning you don’t win. My wonder is, what’s the distinction in these laws? Do they apply for all apps? Will these laws hurt industries? Where’s the line between willing entertainment and over-engagement?
The Children and Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA Act)
This act was proposed by Senator Jamie Ruskin (MD, Democrat) and Ted Budd (NC, Republican). You can refer to the bill here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1367/text
To summarize though, I’m going to directly quote the parts I believe to be most important and relevant:
“The Director of National Institutes of Health…shall conduct and support research and related activities concerning the health and developmental effects of media on infants, children, and adolescents which may include the positive and negative effects of exposure to and use of media, such as social media, application, websites, television, motion pictures, artificial intelligence, mobile device, computer, video games, virtual and augmented reality, and other media formats as they become available.”
“…Such research shall include consideration of core areas of child and adolescent health and development including the following:
(1) COGNITIVE- the role and impact of media use and exposure in the development of children and adolescents within such cognitive areas as language development, executive functioning, attention, creative problem solving skills, visual and spatial skills, literacy, critical thinking, and other learning abilities, and the impact of early technology use on developmental trajectories.
(2) PHYSICAL- The role and impact of media use and exposure on children’s and adolescent’s physical development and health behaviors, including diet, exercise, sleeping and eating routines, and other areas of physical development.
(3) SOCIO-EMOTIONAL- The role and impact of media use and exposure on children’s and adolescents’ social-emotional competencies, including self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, relationship skills, empathy, distress tolerance, perception of social cues, awareness of one’s relationship with the media, and decision making, as well as outcomes such as privacy, violence, bullying, depression, anxiety, addiction, obsessive behavior, and suicidal ideation. “
Essentially, this act is putting into place research that will be conduct to try and better understand the effects of technology on children’s cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional development.
With all the legislation I mentioned here, I bring this up in order to better understand what’s currently being done in the government to regulate the Internet in general. I think this information is important as it helps me understand where we’re at currently so that way I can tailor my project to tackle the related problem: a lack of awareness of how AI actually works. I realize now that the web-app that I develop should appeal to both adults and kids so they can better self-regulate their own usages on social media apps.
One thing that I saw all of these experts say is that you can’t not be on social media; it’s the one way to stay in touch with the world and what’s going on. But what you can do is educate yourself on the harms of being on it too much and can try and target those temptations people may have. I think having this awareness can overall promote better well-being and mental health.
Next, I need to investigate some of the resources Ault had provided for me last week and also maybe begin mocking up questions to survey for people in terms of how much they really know about AI.