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  • MARTHA MINOW: I'm Martha Minow.

  • And it is with gratitude to the Berkman Klein team

  • and to Urs Gasser, particularly, that I

  • say, welcome to a discussion that I

  • promise will have answers--

  • at least suggestions-- as well as, oh my gosh!

  • What do we do?

  • So "fake news" is a phrase that, now, no one

  • is quite sure what it means.

  • But we're all worried about it.

  • And we will spend a little bit of time talking about,

  • what do we mean by it?

  • What has it come to mean?

  • But we're going to spend most of the time together talking

  • about, what are tools that are available or could be made

  • available to help people sort through the floods

  • of information and the democratization of access

  • to information that makes it very hard to know what's true

  • and what's not true.

  • And then, of course, there's not anything new at all

  • about propaganda and lies.

  • We've always had them.

  • Now we just have more access to them.

  • So one of my favorite cartoons shows

  • in the antique world of Xerox machines, someone

  • going to the Xerox machine and making a copy of something

  • and saying, send it to the world!

  • Now, at the time, that was a funny cartoon.

  • But now, with the internet and digital possibilities,

  • anybody can send anything, basically, to the world.

  • And I think that's the context that we're

  • going to be addressing.

  • I will say something briefly about each person

  • when I introduce them.

  • And I'm immediately turning to J. Nathan Matias, who

  • is very importantly involved in the Berkman Klein Center

  • for Internet and Society here.

  • And he's also involved in the MIT Center for Civic Media.

  • And he's a PhD candidate at MIT.

  • And he's going to kick us off.

  • What do we mean when we say fake news?

  • What do you mean?

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: So when people think about fake news,

  • we often look back to that moment

  • when Craig Silverman at BuzzFeed did this amazing report

  • about Macedonian teenagers who were creating fake articles

  • and earning thousands of dollars a month.

  • In fact, one of my favorite fake news headlines is, quote,

  • "After election, Obama passes executive order

  • banning all fake news outlets."

  • Which, of course, was itself fake news.

  • But the reality is much more complex.

  • It's much more common to see something

  • like a recent Breitbart article entitled

  • "California's recipe for voter fraud on a massive scale."

  • There's recent work by Yochai Benkler and the folks

  • at the Media Cloud team here at Harvard

  • that shows that often what we get

  • are powerful political entities creating information

  • that has, maybe, a kernel of truth,

  • but it's really disinformation.

  • They mix truths with familiar falsehoods and logics

  • of the paranoid to make something that is not

  • just believable but something that, maybe,

  • when you go to Google, because they're

  • the only people writing about it,

  • you might feel like you're fact checking it.

  • Because you see 10 other links from

  • similarly-connected organizations saying

  • the same thing, even though it's something closer

  • to disinformation.

  • It goes beyond what can actually be claimed.

  • Because in the case, for example, of California,

  • their motor voter laws are things

  • that are similar to what other states have already

  • implemented.

  • And there's not really been evidence

  • that those kinds of things lead to voter fraud.

  • So there's this problem where we have a wide variety

  • of disinformation.

  • And people are concerned about how that information spreads

  • on social media.

  • There are fears about filter bubbles.

  • There are fears about the use of algorithms,

  • whether it's Google Search or whether it's

  • Facebook's news feed, that might influence

  • how these things spread.

  • And in my research, I've done work

  • to help understand what we as citizens can do

  • and what the public can do to better understand

  • those algorithms and influence how they work for the better.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Great.

  • We're going to hear more about that soon.

  • So An Xiao Mina is an expert on memes.

  • And she's a writer who looks at global internet and network

  • creativity.

  • And here, as a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center,

  • she's studying language barriers in the technology stack,

  • because the interest in diverse communities

  • is a big development of her work.

  • She leads the product team at Meedan,

  • which is building digital tools for journalists

  • and translators.

  • And she co-founded Civic Beat, a research

  • collective focused on the creative side

  • of civic technology.

  • What do you mean by fake news?

  • AN XIAO MINA: So I think, when we

  • think about fake news, often--

  • this is my perspective as a product manager

  • working with journalists.

  • Often, in these communities, we always

  • use air-quotes, "fake news, fake news."

  • And in many ways, this is an implicit acknowledgement

  • that this phrase has come to mean so many things

  • to become almost meaningless.

  • It's an umbrella term for so many other words,

  • other phenomenon.

  • So the problem of fake news starts to seem intractable,

  • because it has such a diffuse meaning.

  • And I really appreciate Claire Wardle's breakdown

  • of fake news.

  • She looks at different types of fake news, anything from satire

  • and parody to misleading content to really manipulated content

  • and, then, fully-fabricated content,

  • and then also breaks down different motivations,

  • everything from parody to the goal of punking to actually

  • spreading propaganda.

  • And when we look at these different techniques,

  • when we really break down fake news,

  • we can start to think about different strategies

  • and different techniques for addressing

  • the wide variety of problems under this umbrella.

  • So I think there's a different range

  • of strategies for when an Onion article becomes cited as fact--

  • which is a frequent phenomenon, especially in global contexts

  • where a global newspaper, a newspaper outside of the US,

  • might misunderstand the context of The Onion

  • and then cite that as news--

  • versus our strategies for dealing

  • with state-sponsored propaganda botnets.

  • So as we break down these different motivations

  • and techniques, it also helps us think about breaking down

  • our strategies.

  • The other thing about their frameworks around fake news

  • is also the very word "fake news."

  • It orients us towards an orientation towards truth

  • and falsehood.

  • When often, the reason that things spread

  • is not about truth or falsehood but about affirmation.

  • We talk about the internet as an information superhighway.

  • It's one of the early metaphors for the internet.

  • In many ways, it's like an affirmation superhighway.

  • People are looking for validation of perspectives

  • and deeper cultural logic.

  • So I tend to agree with researcher Whitney Phillips.

  • Her framework around this is suggesting

  • that we think about it as folkloric news or folk news.

  • Because it orients us less towards truth and falsehood,

  • which is still important, but more towards motivations

  • for sharing and participation and how

  • that reinforces deeper cultural logics.

  • And I guess that's-- my third point here is,

  • as we think about solutions for this fake news problem,

  • it's also thinking about short-term and long-term

  • solutions.

  • In product management, we often think about,

  • what is the immediately addressable problem versus what

  • is the long-term issue here?

  • And this issue around cultural logics, I think,

  • is an important one that I think about frequently.

  • Because thinking about fake news as symptoms,

  • as mirrors for deeper thinking in society,

  • for ways that people orient themselves and their values,

  • helps to think about other civic institutions

  • that we may want to engage to address those deeper logics.

  • And I'll be interested in talking

  • more about that as well.

  • MARTHA MINOW: That's fantastic.

  • And when you say cultural logics,

  • identity is, of course, such an important factor about that.

  • AN XIAO MINA: Absolutely

  • MARTHA MINOW: An affiliation.

  • Larry Bartels has a recent book looking

  • at American politics, electoral politics,

  • over the last 70 years and finds that it is not policy,

  • it is not party that explains how people vote.

  • It's membership and identity.

  • And so I think we need to include that,

  • particularly when we think about civic media.

  • So Sandra Cortesi is our expert in youth and media.

  • And she coordinates the youth and media policy

  • research at Berkman Klein with UNICEF,

  • an important initiative.

  • I was recently struck when it turns out

  • the Common Sense Media has issued its recent study where

  • it finds that a lot of young people

  • do not know what's news, what's not news, what's

  • fake news, what's not news.

  • And yet, they really want to get news.

  • So let's hear from you.

  • SANDRA CORTESI: Thank you.

  • So I would like to particularly highlight two points that,

  • again, focus on young people.

  • When I say young people, I mean, usually, middle and high school

  • students here in the US.

  • And in that context, together with Urs Gasser

  • and other people on the youth and media team,

  • we have engaged in a large, qualitative study

  • talking to young people.

  • And so, two points in that context.

  • The first one is I think we should look at fake news

  • more in the context of not just what is true

  • and what is false, but more in the context of information

  • quality.

  • So we have done a large study on information quality,

  • very big report.

  • But acknowledging that information quality, first,

  • is highly subjective-- so what you value as high-quality

  • information-- highly subjective--

  • and that it's very contextual.

  • And also important, in that context,

  • is that we acknowledge that we should take into account

  • that all the different steps in this information process

  • are not just how one evaluates information

  • once you're confronted with it, but also how you search for it

  • and where you get it and also how you share, you create it,

  • you remix it, and so forth.

  • And the second point, in the context of young people,

  • again-- we heard it a little bit before-- but what news actually

  • means to young people is quite different,

  • actually, than what it means to adults.

  • Through those focus groups, we have

  • learned that young people often have a more social view

  • on what news means, also a little bit broader

  • perception of news.

  • And I think that's then also important when we think about,

  • what are the different quality criteria they

  • employ when looking at news?

  • I think that's key to keep in mind in this conversation.

  • MARTHA MINOW: So social view means that it's affiliation

  • with the news producer?

  • Or what does the social mean?

  • SANDRA CORTESI: Well, social also in the sense

  • of what is relevant to them in their context, for their needs,

  • their communities, and so forth.

  • But also looking more at what kind of information/news

  • they get from friends and people in their networks

  • online, for instance on social media and those things.

  • MARTHA MINOW: That's great.

  • That's great.

  • Thank you.

  • So Jonathan Zittrain would be here

  • all day if I said all the things that he does and he knows.

  • But as faculty director of Berkman Klein,

  • as vice dean for library resources,

  • as professor of computer science here and at the Kennedy School,

  • one of the many things that you've done

  • is you've actually been attentive to the issues

  • and the risks of filtering.

  • You've done that from the beginning.

  • And you've conducted the first large-scale studies

  • of internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia.

  • So as we think about fake news, how do you

  • relate that to these concerns?

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Great question.

  • And those studies of filtering, 15 years ago, now 20 years ago,

  • presumed that there was a source of consistent information

  • that, if not true, was respected and that people

  • around the world would want to get to it

  • and that regimes that didn't trust their populace

  • and maybe wanted to mislead them would

  • try to block the populace from getting to that good stuff.

  • And that model, I think, is greatly

  • scrambled now, in part, as regimes have learned--

  • I think it's Zeynep Tufekci who calls it

  • a sort of informational distributed denial of service

  • attack where if you could just pump enough stuff out there

  • it's really hard to figure out what the reliable stuff is

  • from the non-reliable stuff.

  • So when I think about defining fake news,

  • even there, I hope it's an oxymoron to use the phrase.

  • Because innate in the original concept of news

  • was that it would bear some relationship to reality.

  • I hope I'm setting the bar at the right level for news.

  • That's not actually saying it's true.

  • It just bears some relationship to reality,

  • both in having some truth value to it

  • and in being presented in some appropriate context.

  • It's really easy to create a mosaic

  • of completely true things that paints a totally false picture.

  • And traditionally, we have relied on or wanted to rely

  • on, ask of our news-generating organizations,

  • that they offered that relationship to reality in that

  • context when they exercised their privileged ability,

  • originally through the megaphone--

  • people with a photocopier couldn't replicate it--

  • and with their funding and with their privileged access

  • to speak truth to us.

  • And there was a time, 20 years ago,

  • at the time we were also doing the censorship work,

  • when I think there was a lot of celebration

  • in the neoliberal mode of new sources of information.

  • Citizen journalism was a phrase.

  • I think it has since receded, maybe because it's

  • now just part of the fabric.

  • And I remember, actually, a conference about 10 years ago

  • where somebody who was skeptical was

  • like, citizen journalist, huh?

  • Well, next time I need an operation,

  • I guess I'll go to a citizen surgeon

  • and see how that works out.

  • And I was trying to figure out, why wouldn't I

  • want a citizen journalism?

  • But I'm celebrating citizen journalism-- citizen surgeon

  • on the other side.

  • And I do think they're distinguishable.

  • But I would not, in dismissing what maybe

  • previously was thought of as a monopoly of sources--

  • "mainstream media," often spoken of in a disparaging way.

  • There was a sense of a craft and profession to journalism,

  • including ethics.

  • I spent a memorable summer in high school

  • at the National High School Institute at Northwestern.

  • They had something called the Cherub program.

  • And you could pick your topic.

  • And one of them was at Medill, the school of journalism.

  • And they really tried to inculcate

  • us recalcitrant 10th graders into what it really

  • means to be a journalist.

  • And there's a lot that has to do with the ethics and the trust

  • placed upon journalists.

  • And whether or not it makes sense

  • to have only a handful of reporting organizations

  • or whether that's even possible now

  • seems to me less the question than how much we should value

  • retaining a sense of those ethics and that balance,

  • aspire to it, even in the breach.

  • And that just briefly gets to the fake part of fake news.

  • I would define fake, also with a fairly generous standard,

  • as being that which is willfully false.

  • Take aside that which is careless,

  • negligent, got it wrong, gee, I'm sorry.

  • But rather look at the profusion of stuff

  • that the person saying it or repeating it

  • does not believe it to be true or is

  • absolutely indifferent as to whether it is true or false.

  • And to look at our ecosystem now,

  • we can see reasons of statecraft and ideology

  • to want to propagate false things,

  • because the ends justify the means.

  • And I have a better goal at stake, perhaps.

  • And under the idea of, just, it makes me money.

  • The microeconomics of this space should not be underestimated.

  • And it's something that Nate made reference to

  • in his opening remarks, that it can just

  • be extremely profitable to pump out

  • things that are knowingly false and to see

  • them achieve a foothold.

  • And that's part of the problem I think

  • we need to take on if our goal is to have a news

  • ecosystem that bears some relationship to reality

  • and comes from a source that has some sense of ethics

  • or responsibility.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Thank you.

  • Well, we're going to turn now to tools.

  • And we've heard people identify the material economic reasons

  • for the problems that we're now encountering

  • and the democratization of access and generation

  • of information, but also on the demand side.

  • That the demand is not necessarily for truth

  • and not necessarily for verified facts, but maybe

  • for affiliation, for membership, or--

  • dare I say it?-- rubber necking.

  • Can you believe this?

  • Right?

  • So Facebook has done an internal study

  • to find out, looking at their algorithms, what

  • gets escalated to the top.

  • And it turns out, the vast majority

  • of what we would label fake news that gets escalated to the top

  • was never opened.

  • So it's just the tagline.

  • It's just the headline.

  • So that seems to me, I want to call that

  • the rubber-necking idea.

  • Can you believe this?

  • And we don't even know whether the people forwarding it agree

  • or don't agree or it's affiliative.

  • Look, see, I was right.

  • Or can you imagine that people are saying this?

  • So as we think about tools, who wants to go first?

  • Nate, do you want to go first?

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: Sure, I'm happy to kick it off.

  • So I appreciate you mentioning these--

  • we might think of them as feedback loops.

  • They could be social feedback loops,

  • where people connect more to people who they affiliate

  • with through misinformation.

  • And that leads them to spread it.

  • So there's a social feedback loop.

  • There are also these algorithmic feedback loops

  • that we might worry about, where then

  • these things become popular.

  • They then become popular by merit of being popular.

  • And the algorithms amplify them further.

  • The first thing I want to say about that,

  • though, is that we need to be able to put

  • the role of social technologies in context.

  • If you look at the percentage of people who actually rely

  • on social media as their primary source of news,

  • it's actually quite small.

  • Pew did a study where they found that, while 7% of Trump voters

  • and 8% of Clinton voters got their primary news

  • from Facebook, 40% of Trump voters

  • got their primary news from Fox News and television, and 18%

  • of Clinton voters from CNN.

  • So there's still a question about the role

  • that these platforms play compared to television, radio,

  • and other media.

  • But companies are doing something about it.

  • We have Google and Facebook both working

  • with fact-checking organizations,

  • trying to find ways to notify people that something

  • may be unreliable, that it's been

  • fact-checked by a third party.

  • And most recently, Facebook has started

  • testing a system that lets people

  • know if the thing they're about to share has been fact-checked

  • and what the response has been from one

  • of their fact-checking partners.

  • I just recently finished a study where

  • I worked with online communities, actual internet

  • users, rather than a platform, to test

  • the effect of their own fact-checking efforts.

  • Because even as companies try to introduce design

  • changes to improve things, they're

  • not usually very transparent about the effects

  • of those systems.

  • It's very rare for them to publish peer-reviewed research

  • on how those design changes turn out.

  • And something they sometimes get backlash for as well.

  • And so what I've been doing in my PhD

  • has been to support internet users to organize independently

  • to test their collective efforts on platforms and on issues

  • like unreliable news.

  • So I worked with a 15-million-subscriber community

  • on the platform Reddit, who discuss world news.

  • And they had similar problems.

  • People were submitting unreliable news

  • to their community.

  • And rather than outright remove this,

  • they wanted to foster discourse.

  • They automatically posted messages

  • encouraging their community to fact-check that information.

  • And we were able to see that not only did that encouragement

  • increase the rate at which people were chipping

  • in to fact-check things but, also, we

  • were able to see that simply encouraging people

  • to fact-check caused articles to be less promoted

  • by Reddit's algorithms.

  • That if you looked at the popularity

  • ranking of those articles over time, simply encouraging people

  • to fact-check an unreliable news article

  • demoted that article by four items, on average,

  • in the top 100 over time.

  • So it's a great example of how you can actually

  • test the widespread effects of these fact-checking efforts

  • and how you may not even need to rely on platforms to do that.

  • MARTHA MINOW: It's also about nudges, right?

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: Exactly.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yes.

  • So An, tools--

  • AN XIAO MINA: Yes.

  • I can talk a little bit about Check,

  • which is the platform we've been building at Meedan, that's

  • been used in a variety of contexts, both global

  • and, recently, in Western contexts,

  • that are looking at misinformation ecosystems.

  • And it's a tool that provides journalists

  • a very structured way to gather, for instance, a digital media

  • object, say, a tweet, that seems to have disputed content

  • and then to show, in very clear steps, what

  • steps they took to research that tweet,

  • the content of that tweet--

  • is it original?

  • Who's behind it?

  • What's the motivation for that person?--

  • and then cite the sources for those findings.

  • And this is kind of a shift in how journalists often

  • work, where their notes are often behind the scenes.

  • And so one of the principles of Check is to show the work

  • and show the process behind it.

  • This has a few effects.

  • One is for other journalists.

  • Check is being rolled out in France right now

  • with 34 news rooms and the First Draft News Network

  • in a product called CrossCheck, which

  • is helping those newsrooms collaborate together to look

  • at misinformation ecosystems.

  • And newsrooms frequently do not collaborate.

  • And the reason that this tool can help with collaboration

  • is because of its transparency.

  • The notion of CrossCheck allows for newsrooms to say,

  • OK, I can cross-check that, that, and that,

  • because I can see the steps that this other newsroom has taken.

  • And so, we're hoping, with this tool,

  • that this helps strengthen some of the news ecosystem

  • in certain contexts, where newsrooms typically do not

  • work together, and to encourage collaboration

  • through these kind of open workflows.

  • And through structured workflows as well, to ensure consistency.

  • Within the platform itself, there's

  • a variety of different questions,

  • those core questions that every story

  • needs to have answered, before it actually can become a story,

  • and to ensure that that is consistently done.

  • Because especially working in a busy newsroom environment where

  • there's breaking news all the time,

  • it can be easy to forget key steps.

  • And so the platform tries to systematize that

  • for people working together.

  • The reason for this is there's that immediate-term use.

  • But there's also some long-term thinking here as well,

  • because the tool is also being used in Hong Kong.

  • There's a chief executive election

  • coming up this weekend.

  • And the University of Hong Kong is

  • using the tool in their classrooms, in their J schools

  • with both journalists and non-journalists

  • and journalist students and non-journalism students.

  • And the goal there, in addition to all the other principals

  • I described, is not just to help with journalism

  • but also to help build better journalists.

  • This notion of creating ethics and trust around journalism

  • is to train journalists in the process,

  • in these new processes of research that are required

  • in the digital environment.

  • And so that process is going on right now

  • where we're still looking at the results.

  • But I was speaking with Professor Ann Kruger

  • out at the University of Hong Kong.

  • And she's been noting that, through the process of having

  • to go through all these steps and these checks,

  • people start to develop these habits of mind around what

  • they're sharing and then how they

  • are articulating what they're sharing

  • online with their community.

  • Even if it's fake, they might be debunking it or offering

  • rationales for why they're sharing it

  • that offers greater context to help with these misinformation

  • networks.

  • And then the longer-term goal with the platform

  • is then, also, collecting data.

  • All of the information is collected within Check.

  • People are adding metadata around this, tags,

  • and information about where the source is, what are

  • the motivations behind this?

  • Ultimately, because many of these techniques

  • are so new and different within a networked environment,

  • our hope is that this also provides

  • a set of data for longer-term research as well.

  • MARTHA MINOW: And transparency.

  • That's great.

  • Sandra, tools.

  • SANDRA CORTESI: Yes, tools.

  • So we heard that a little bit about social tools

  • and technical tools.

  • But as we are youth media or I work on youth issues,

  • education is one of the tools in this toolbox.

  • And there, I think, three points could be relevant.

  • One is, how do we actually conceptualize something

  • like news literacy or information literacy

  • or digital citizenship?

  • And how do we co-design projects,

  • together with young people, so they actually

  • are relevant to them, they work for them,

  • and that the programs bring together

  • the adult perspective as well as the youth perspective?

  • The second one that is important when

  • we think about learning and education more broadly

  • is, where do young people actually learn?

  • So it's not just in the formal context.

  • But we also have to include informal contexts.

  • So after-school learning-- how is that happening?

  • And how can you connect the informal with the formal one?

  • And the third one that I think is relevant in the youth

  • context is to also consider what are, actually,

  • the limits or limitations of media

  • literacy or digital literacy?

  • Because if we think that fake news is also an ecosystem

  • challenge, then it might be difficult, at some point--

  • so again, not just then the only tool in the toolbox--

  • to put so much emphasis on the individual,

  • if it's an ecosystem challenge.

  • And particularly, again in my context,

  • on the individuals that are young people-- so minors,

  • which are often considered vulnerable populations.

  • So why do we emphasize so much on their own abilities

  • to make sense of all this?

  • MARTHA MINOW: One of the forms of literacy education

  • that I've been intrigued by is involving youth

  • in creating news, so that they understand the steps

  • and then, maybe, can participate in some

  • of the social processes.

  • JZ, tools.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Tools.

  • Well, you opened this round of questions

  • with the observation or the qualification

  • about if news is what people are in the market for.

  • And there's some curiosity about contemporary social media

  • that we don't know what we're in the market for.

  • We're just on Twitter and, like, let's see what comes up next!

  • And it's a very weird form of one-armed bandit, where

  • it's like, news!

  • Excitement!

  • Dog.

  • And--

  • MARTHA MINOW: Cat, usually.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah, right.

  • More cats, please.

  • And in that environment, you could see,

  • people could be online for all sorts

  • of totally justifiable or understandable reasons.

  • And if you're there for entertainment,

  • being reminded, as you're about to share something,

  • that, like, now, let's be careful.

  • The truth value of--

  • it's like, enough already.

  • I want to share the dog.

  • And it calls to mind, in the United States,

  • in the World Series or the Super Bowl,

  • we wouldn't be like, why do we have

  • to go through this strange contest of physical strength

  • and skill to figure out, possibly injuriously,

  • which is the better team?

  • Can't we have the Patriots and the Broncos

  • just sit down and negotiate?

  • Like, let's just figure out some way of splitting the pie.

  • And as good as our negotiation program

  • is here at HLS, even that might be beyond them.

  • The contest is the point.

  • And I think, for a lot of people online,

  • some people are like, I am trying to learn something.

  • And somebody else is like, I'm trying to crush you,

  • because you're on the other team.

  • It's a mismatch of expectation that

  • is not going to end well for at least one of the parties.

  • So already, we're--

  • I think-- thinking about people who are online

  • for information gathering.

  • Or even if they're there for entertainment,

  • they may come away thinking they have accidentally learned

  • something that is not true.

  • And that could be, socially, a problem.

  • So tools-- it's interesting to hear of wholesale tools,

  • tools that could be used within newsrooms as they

  • are on deadline, trying to throw things together.

  • I've also been thinking about retail tools What

  • are tools that could make the experience of typical media

  • consumption and social media usage

  • more amenable to learning?

  • If that's what you're there to be doing.

  • And for that, I think there's a couple of things.

  • Your point about there's a lot of headlines that are never

  • opened means that it's really easy, for instance,

  • to see a story from the Denver Guardian that turns out

  • to be false, about an FBI agent that

  • died under suspicious circumstances

  • and had the goods on Hillary.

  • And wholly apart from the facts of the story,

  • whether you want to contest them,

  • there's the fact that the Denver Guardian doesn't exist.

  • Like, it is not a newspaper.

  • OK, at least let's agree, there is no Denver Guardian.

  • If you were in Denver, no one would be guarding you.

  • And you could see wholesale tools that would at least have,

  • without reference to the content, something

  • about the source, the way that, on eBay, for the longest time,

  • somebody selling something on eBay who just joined

  • had shades next to the eBay account.

  • Which for years, I thought just meant they were really cool.

  • Like, when do I earn my shades?

  • It's like, no.

  • You've lost your chance.

  • You had to be new.

  • But it's supposed to mean they're a little shady.

  • Weird that eBay did that.

  • Before buying a plasma screen from a shady person,

  • you might want to not do it.

  • So that's the kind of thing you could see,

  • a tool being content neutral but looking at the shape of things.

  • Which inevitably, for those who want to spread untruths

  • or lies, then they'll have to game it.

  • But at least put them to the effort of gaming it.

  • Some of the other tools I think would be interesting.

  • Nate already mentioned the interstitial,

  • the fact that Facebook might throw up a thing that's

  • like, I don't know about this.

  • Continue?

  • Like, yes.

  • There's a famous quote that journalism

  • is the first draft of history.

  • It's inevitably going to get a lot of stuff wrong,

  • even before you get into the willful part.

  • And I think it's really too high a burden to think

  • of Facebook or other distributors, intermediaries,

  • somehow being able to fact-check in real-time.

  • People ought to have a chance to say, gosh!

  • This makes me really upset, what I just read and shared.

  • And I feel intensely about it.

  • It would be neat to know, a week later, two weeks later,

  • if it turned out that thing wasn't true,

  • after the smoke has cleared.

  • And often, when the second draft of history is around,

  • things are a lot clearer.

  • So allowing easy tools to learn more about what you heard--

  • I think of it in tort terms.

  • We have product recalls.

  • It's like, this seemed like a perfectly good lawnmower

  • with no screen on it when we sold it to you.

  • But on second thought, we think maybe it should have a mesh.

  • So we're recalling it.

  • Maybe we should have a concept of a voluntary knowledge

  • recall.

  • Which is not Orwellian-- you must forget this,

  • but rather, here's some new stuff

  • we learned since you first heard about this.

  • Which, in turn, could have people

  • learn to be a little more appropriately skeptical, as one

  • after another of the stories that all of us

  • have sometimes done--

  • I can't believe that!

  • Really?

  • Geez, that's terrible!

  • You learn the facts later.

  • And you feel a little differently about it.

  • And I also think, let's look to the future.

  • It's not going to be Facebook and Twitter forever.

  • We are inviting into our homes and our other environments,

  • including our headpieces, the concierge services like Google

  • Home and Siri and Alexa.

  • And we're treating them as oracular sources

  • of activities and news.

  • Here is somebody asking the Google Home--

  • which is like the 2001 monolith, in small version, on your desk,

  • ready to tell you anything.

  • Here's somebody asking if Republicans are fascists.

  • [AUDIO PLAYBACK]

  • - Are Republicans fascists?

  • - According to Debate.org, yes, Republicans equals Nazis.

  • Yes.

  • [END PLAYBACK]

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Now, all right,

  • I'm going to go out on a limb.

  • I think that's fake news.

  • And here's, in the same level tones of authority

  • that we've learned from the original Star Trek--

  • just-- it's the implacable march of fact.

  • And it would be quite helpful, if it's

  • going to do that, for these objects maybe

  • to glow a certain color if they don't think they know

  • what they're talking about.

  • They could still give the answer.

  • But it could be like, this isn't as vetted.

  • So that next time, too, when you say, my stomach feels funny.

  • I might have appendicitis.

  • What causes appendicitis?

  • You don't have it be like-- because of organic web

  • search hiccuping-- it's an imbalance of the four

  • bodily humors.

  • And you need an immediate leeching.

  • If you're going to say it, at least say, I think.

  • And there might be ways to signal that.

  • MARTHA MINOW: [LAUGHS]

  • I asked you all to identify further questions

  • that you have.

  • And we can talk about that.

  • But it's also my moment to invite all of you

  • here, what questions do you have?

  • And what tools do you have to offer?

  • So before we turn to everyone, let me just identify quickly--

  • libraries, Jonathan, you identified as one.

  • You wonder about the role of libraries.

  • And I think that would be a great thing to talk about.

  • And An, you said, also, other physical spaces,

  • like museums and schools.

  • And Sandra, you wondered about US versus global.

  • And I think that's a hugely important subject.

  • And in a variation on that question

  • and what An said before, I'm learning that, in countries

  • that have more censorship, having a global network

  • may be important for getting the information, even about

  • a country, by being in touch with people outside the country

  • and so forth.

  • And Nate, you talked about Karl Popper and social engineering.

  • Can you say some more about that?

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: Sure.

  • So many of the things that we've talked about here as tools

  • are interventions that we hope will

  • influence the behavior of, potentially,

  • millions of people.

  • And there are forms of research that we

  • have at our fingertips for doing A/B tests

  • and studying what those outcomes are.

  • And they're important forms of research.

  • But at the same time, we're at this moment

  • where we're confronting what it means to use that research

  • power responsibly.

  • As we hope for platforms to change things,

  • as we expect the Google Home device to say, I'm not sure,

  • it's responsible to follow up, to see,

  • does that actually make a difference?

  • But it's also responsible to ask,

  • who has the power to ask that question?

  • And how can we ensure that that kind

  • of large-scale social engineering

  • is carried out in a responsible way?

  • MARTHA MINOW: That's great.

  • And I do worry about the infinite regress

  • of the person who is shady, putting shades by the entries

  • by others that aren't shady, and so forth and so on.

  • So OK, now your turn.

  • And in the spirit of what we've just

  • been talking about, please, not only identify yourself

  • and your source code, but also whether what you are saying

  • is an opinion or is a fact or something like that.

  • So please-- and wait for the microphone.

  • And just say who you are.

  • RON NEWMAN: Hi.

  • My name is Ron Newman.

  • And I'm somebody who has dabbled in journalism occasionally

  • and helps run a community blog in my neighborhood.

  • And this is a question.

  • Say you have a reputation management system that says,

  • oh!

  • The Denver Guardian doesn't exist.

  • Therefore, you shouldn't believe it.

  • How is it going to tell the difference between that

  • and the hypothetical Denver Times-Herald,

  • which nobody in Denver has also heard of,

  • because it just started last week,

  • and it's just getting under way, and this

  • is its first big news story?

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Maybe, since I brought up the Denver

  • Guardian, that was for me.

  • It's also in federal evidence law,

  • reminiscent of the Daubert case, where

  • judges are asked to assess the truth of something

  • before they decide whether a jury is allowed to see it,

  • for which one of the objections that

  • led to that particular formulation was like,

  • what about Galileo?

  • Everybody else disagreed with him.

  • But darn it!

  • He was right.

  • And I think there are, for any system,

  • going to be false negatives, false positives.

  • It's why you'd want to approach it with complete humility.

  • I appreciate Martha's warning about,

  • do we really want to put one of the handful of gatekeepers--

  • the point about Pew and sources notwithstanding--

  • in the seat of deciding what's true and what's false?

  • The thing is, we do need some defense against a very

  • well-resourced and implacable set of lies

  • from some state actors and other sources.

  • We ought to have humility about any tools we build.

  • But I don't think it should mean we shouldn't do anything.

  • Because there is still going to be a shaping and structuring.

  • Whether you've heard from that Denver paper

  • is going to already be structured.

  • So I would at least say, put the shades next to it.

  • It's the first week of the paper.

  • But maybe it's its big scoop.

  • It could be!

  • Feel free to read the article.

  • But have that grain of truth.

  • And then wait to see if the grudging and failing New York

  • Times is like, I should have had that story.

  • But I guess I'm now going to have

  • to-- must credit Denver Daily Telegram, because they

  • broke it.

  • And then you'll hear it from the Times as well.

  • And you'll hear it from Fox News.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yes--

  • AN XIAO MINA: Also just to add--

  • oh, sorry.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Oh, go ahead.

  • AN XIAO MINA: Sorry.

  • Just to add to that, I think, also,

  • a certain transparency around the logics of the system

  • can also help.

  • I think, the shade icon--

  • part of what works is if you trust that eBay has

  • a logic for that shade icon.

  • And the logic seems to be that it's a completely new account.

  • So making a clear logic for the design language

  • that we are communicating about XYZ source,

  • so that people can dig in, say, OK.

  • What is the logic behind this?

  • Why did this happen?

  • What are the reasons for this?

  • And makes a clear distinction between a site that

  • has knowingly produced false information for years

  • versus a site that it just came up, just popped up a week ago.

  • And therefore, we think you just might

  • want to double-check this.

  • So I think, showing that can help along this path as well.

  • MARTHA MINOW: So the great thing is that there

  • can be more information.

  • And as you said before, it can be over time as well.

  • So you can click on that icon and get some background.

  • Why is that here?

  • And then somebody can adjust it over time

  • and have more feedback.

  • Please.

  • BENJAMIN: Hi, I'm Benjamin.

  • I'm from the Kennedy School.

  • So I have a question for An.

  • You mentioned a lot of transparency.

  • And I'm wondering-- good journalism, seems to me,

  • exists with some level of opacity, right?

  • You trust an unnamed source.

  • And you trust the journalists to have this ethics around it

  • that JZ talked about.

  • So I'm wondering, how do you balance

  • this need for extreme transparency with the idea

  • that the media is the fourth estate because there's

  • a privileged space for it, because you trust journalists.

  • And does that actually dilute some of the prestige

  • that we accord to journalists?

  • AN XIAO MINA: Yeah, absolutely.

  • And I think there's a broader conversation here,

  • of course, that about declining trust in media institutions.

  • And when we talk about transparency,

  • there's transparency of all the notes, of all the sources.

  • I think a lot of journalists are concerned

  • about maintaining some kind of privileges, especially

  • with their sources, especially sensitive sources or sources

  • from underprivileged communities.

  • But there's also a transparency around process and checks.

  • And so, I think, when we talk about transparency,

  • we have to talk about both of these things.

  • That sometimes, there's a reason a journalist

  • has to protect a source.

  • But frequently, when someone says,

  • an anonymous source said XYZ, they

  • don't indicate why that source has to be

  • anonymous for XYZ reasons.

  • And so showing a transparency of process--

  • here's a decision making process we

  • went through to decide whether or not to declare

  • the name of this source--

  • can hopefully help build trust.

  • Because a lot of the process of this kind

  • of sausage-making behind a story is often hidden.

  • Because there's this assumption that people might understand

  • what that looks like.

  • But often, the general public doesn't really

  • get to see the going-on behind the newsroom.

  • And so I think that's one way to break down transparency.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Let me put the library question.

  • What role could libraries play?

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well, libraries, at the moment,

  • seem to be one of the handful of institutions in the United

  • States still retaining a lot of trust and good feeling

  • from a huge swath of the population.

  • It's hard to think of any other major institution that

  • comes close.

  • Now, you might say, that's a bunch of capital.

  • Let's not spend it down by getting

  • into the fake news wars.

  • And there's some sensibility to that.

  • But I actually think that, to the extent

  • that libraries represent a profession and a set of values

  • that overlap greatly with the ideals

  • of professional journalism, whether or not

  • they're met in day-to-day practice, the idea

  • of a librarian, whose job it is to help you find what you're

  • looking for without judging your own question,

  • guarding fiercely the privacy of your having asked that

  • question-- because curiosity is to be treasured

  • and the pursuit of knowledge should not be something

  • that you feel shame about and that could be made public.

  • Very different from a typical search

  • engine which, too often, has replaced the reference desk,

  • may not be embracing as much.

  • And I could see ways in which librarians

  • are ready to offer human effort, not

  • looking for the technological shortcut all the time.

  • And that could complement the technological shortcuts

  • that Google and Facebook and others

  • are racing to introduce, to help us gradate that which we see.

  • So my vision would be, you see something online.

  • And there's a button you can press that says,

  • I'm really curious about this.

  • And I'd like to know more about it.

  • And if a threshold-- enough people

  • who aren't habitual button pushers press the button about

  • that--

  • it appears in the inbox of one of the librarians

  • around the world who volunteered to have a look at it

  • and, maybe, even to have a discussion

  • group with some other librarians to actually get

  • to the bottom of it.

  • It's a distributed Snopes.

  • And Snopes has its own fans and detractors now.

  • They're in it.

  • They are part of the news story.

  • But having a distributed set of folks

  • who stand behind their own research, who

  • are citing to sources rather than speaking ex

  • cathedra or out of their own purported substantive

  • expertise-- their expertise is meta.

  • It's about finding the source, weighing it.

  • What a great opportunity to involve the treasure

  • that is our world's professional librarians in this process.

  • Get them interacting with people who are curious.

  • And it's the kind of thing I would hope, say, Sandra would

  • discover that kids would be interested in participating

  • in as well.

  • I think it's a totally reasonable

  • eighth or ninth grade assignment to spend

  • a day in the trenches of validating stuff

  • and share it with your teacher and your class.

  • What a great thing to do with our kids.

  • SANDRA CORTESI: And additionally, what I

  • think is great about libraries is that they bring communities

  • together.

  • So it's not just the space you would

  • go if you want to have a trusted piece of information

  • or a trusted librarian.

  • It's actually where people come together

  • and debate and discuss.

  • So I think that's equally important about libraries.

  • Particularly in Colombia, where I grew up,

  • there are many great examples of libraries playing

  • a key role in fostering dialogue among people

  • with different views.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Great.

  • It's kind of a neutral place.

  • PAUL LIPPE: Hi, I'm Paul Lippe.

  • This is a question for Jonathan in his role as a taxonomist.

  • So it seems to me that, potentially,

  • the scale of this problem is not that big.

  • So if you just did an 80-20 of how many stories

  • a day represent 80% of all stories read,

  • what do you think the number of stories is?

  • And is there a classification system

  • that exists to define and control the text of the stories

  • so you could say, this is X story?

  • Because if you have those, then you

  • can probably come up with some kind of system

  • that's not controlled by the walled gardens.

  • But the walled gardens kind of, implicitly, have--

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah.

  • PAUL LIPPE: --a taxonomy of those stories.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well, I can certainly

  • see where you're trying to go with that

  • and how carefully you're trying to thread the needle of giving

  • what are our de facto gatekeepers--

  • and increasingly so-- like Facebook, some role to play,

  • without giving them such arbitrary discretion

  • that they are kingmakers of fact.

  • It points out how helpful it would be to be able to collect

  • fulsome data about the spread of memes--

  • it's the kind of things we're hearing about from Media Cloud,

  • our project here--

  • being able to watch how stuff happens.

  • So it might fit your instinct of a power law, where

  • 20% of the fake news in the world

  • is what's hitting 80% of the people.

  • And there might even be ways to track it.

  • Kind of like, in the stock market--

  • you apply the brakes when the bottom seems to be falling out.

  • Without waiting for people to click the button to say,

  • I'm curious, you could say, gosh.

  • This thing is taking off like wildfire.

  • Send the librarians after it to catch up!

  • And if that's the case-- what is the Mark Twain quote?

  • Lies are halfway around the block by the time

  • the truth is finished putting on its shoes.

  • This is helping the truth put on its shoes a little bit

  • or, at least, again, offering the context, if people

  • are hungry to have it.

  • And there too, again, I think about,

  • like, in 1984, the two minutes hate, that

  • was part of the instrument of that state to get people up

  • and riled about something for two minutes.

  • And then, on to the next thing.

  • And there's something that may appeal to us about it,

  • not to our better instincts perhaps.

  • But there has to be a hunger among people

  • to want a little bit extra beat of the rest of the story that

  • makes the original story less interesting, less

  • shareable, less exciting.

  • MARTHA MINOW: It does seem that working out this demand side

  • is absolutely critical.

  • And we may be hardwired to be intrigued by and fearful about

  • and excited about things that are horrifying

  • and not so hardwired to be interested in good news

  • or complexity or something like that.

  • And so, how to cultivate a desire

  • that may be counter to our biology seems pretty important.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Paul, do you--

  • you had a--

  • PAUL LIPPE: I'm-- I'm--

  • MARTHA MINOW: You don't have your mic anymore though.

  • PAUL LIPPE: That's OK.

  • I'm not--

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yeah, it's not OK.

  • So hold on a minute.

  • Thank you.

  • PAUL LIPPE: I'm not super sanguine

  • about the cognitive problem of what people are hungry for.

  • But it does seem to me, if the world is mostly,

  • on any given day, 200 stories that are broadly not fake

  • and 20 that are fake, and that's the total population--

  • if the problem is of that scale, the nature of the solution

  • may be easier than it feels like.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: It might be.

  • But again, this is not a snapshot.

  • This is a moving picture.

  • And for instance, among my desires

  • for the ecosystem of information,

  • I actually want to see fewer gatekeepers

  • or a broader range of them.

  • And for a Facebook, I want to take Mark Zuckerberg

  • at his word that they're a technology and platform

  • company, not a content and media company, and say, great.

  • Why then only have "the Facebook feed"

  • tailored to you in a secret way with no transparency?

  • --as An points out.

  • But rather, let anybody develop a recipe for a feed.

  • And then I can choose to have my feed driven by the National

  • Rifle Association and Ralph Nader, which

  • would be an interesting feed.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • But if that aspiration is met, it

  • may mean a longer tail of stuff.

  • And suddenly, it's harder to find those top 20 stories.

  • In fact, there's a greater dispersal of stuff.

  • But with the snapshot of today, you might be right.

  • It may be easier than we think.

  • MARTHA MINOW: We're getting, I think,

  • a question about, how much do we know?

  • And there's a real need for more research--

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yes.

  • MARTHA MINOW: --to even know what the scale is and, also,

  • what it would take to make it possible for people

  • to express what they want.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yes.

  • MARTHA MINOW: That maybe more people want to be

  • able to customize their feed.

  • And if that were clear and Facebook

  • hasn't asked that question, then that

  • would be relevant to Facebook and others.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yes.

  • MARTHA MINOW: An, do you want to say something?

  • AN XIAO MINA: Yeah, I think, just

  • to build on this notion of looking at the feed,

  • it's also to remember that a lot of what we call fake news

  • spreads on non-feed-based platforms, including

  • private platforms and email and then, also,

  • just through in-person networks.

  • And so our research methodologies

  • also need to adapt for this.

  • The ability to search the API for WhatsApp

  • is not possible, because there is no WhatsApp API.

  • And yet, WhatsApp is a critical platform

  • for a lot of rumors and misinformation

  • in a context like India.

  • And then, you have KakaoTalk, a private network in Korea.

  • And then you have WeChat in China.

  • And so the methodologies need to adapt.

  • and, also, our comfort with knowing that it's

  • unknowable, because of how these things spread

  • on private networks as well.

  • And so our focus on the feed is important.

  • But at the same time, understanding the other ways

  • that these things spread is also very critical.

  • MARTHA MINOW: The History Department here, now,

  • is encouraging people to do work on the history of rumors.

  • There's something we can learn historically too.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: I heard that too.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Hahaha!

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • Way in the back.

  • PETER METROS: So let's for a moment--

  • MARTHA MINOW: Say who you are, please.

  • PETER METROS: I'm Peter Metros.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Thank you.

  • PETER METROS: I want to grant the benefit of the doubt

  • to technology.

  • Let's say we have a perfect technology that can perfectly

  • identify fake news.

  • Why would anybody actually use it?

  • You have people in the general population who

  • go to entertainment media, be that television or Facebook,

  • basically to be entertained.

  • They seek out places that re-affirm them.

  • News sources incentivize journalists to put out articles

  • as quickly as possible.

  • Saying I was wrong--

  • The New York Times publishes an article.

  • If a week later, a person gets informed,

  • you read something wrong in the New York Times, that actually

  • undermines its credibility.

  • MARTHA MINOW: So just come to the point.

  • What's the question?

  • PETER METROS: How do you actually get tools like these

  • to be adopted?

  • Why would people use them, given market dynamics?

  • MARTHA MINOW: Thank you.

  • Thoughts?

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Well, that sounds

  • like the demand-side question again.

  • And there, it does get back to, what are people

  • doing when they're online?

  • And I think it's often a sort of vague

  • hanging out a lot of the time.

  • There are elements of gamification to it.

  • If Twitter tells you how many followers you have,

  • people pursue more followers.

  • If it's a blue check, people want the blue check.

  • And when we think about the tools for dialogue--

  • which remains, to me, surprisingly quite crude

  • across multiple platforms.

  • And to use Facebook again as an example,

  • it's, how many likes or shares did you get?

  • But it would be interesting.

  • If there were a button that said,

  • I want you to know I disagree with what you said.

  • But I'm really glad you said it.

  • Like, respect but not agreement.

  • I think we could figure--

  • I don't know what the icon would be.

  • Like, I'm confused?

  • But you're not confused.

  • You're just having a subtle thought.

  • It's that you like that it was said

  • but you don't agree with it.

  • MARTHA MINOW: I defend to the death your right to say it.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Right, the Voltaire button.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yes.

  • So it's a Voltaire button.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And if that button existed,

  • people would actually start to post

  • stuff that accrued Voltaires.

  • And that would be pretty cool.

  • And you could see people then wanting to reach people

  • beyond those who agree with them,

  • and having some crude measurement of success at that.

  • And you then might find that that demand

  • creates a certain supply.

  • I think it's quite protean.

  • And this does not seem to me to be like Orwellian mind control.

  • It's like, there already are the buttons that are there.

  • You have to have buttons.

  • It's worth thinking about, what are

  • the buttons going to look like?

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: So can I add something to that?

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yes, please.

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: I think there's a temptation to enter

  • into this almost, like--

  • I don't know if any of you know the classic Atari video

  • game Missile Command.

  • MARTHA MINOW: Yes.

  • J. NATHAN MATIAS: Where there are these aliens coming down.

  • And you're panicked.

  • And you're shooting all these missiles

  • to stop the alien invasion.

  • And I think there's a tendency sometimes

  • to treat complex social issues as if they're

  • spam or other well-defined technical problems with a very

  • specific, high-impact, technical answer.

  • And Jonathan, when you were speaking earlier

  • and you talked about libraries, you

  • were drawing attention to the deeper currents at play.

  • There's been declining trust in institutions.

  • The news industry itself has had challenges staying funded.

  • And on top of that, there are a variety

  • of actors who are investing resources

  • into making that mistrust grow even further.

  • I think about a study that was just published yesterday

  • that asks the question, are trolls

  • to blame for the problems that we've been seeing?

  • And Biella Coleman and Whitney Phillips and others

  • wrote this masterful article pointing out

  • that, whatever trolling culture may be doing at a given time,

  • there are these wider social trends that we

  • need to be thinking about.

  • Even as we think about the Voltaire button,

  • how do we actually support the social institutions,

  • like libraries, that we need to build that trust over time?

  • And certainly, platforms will play a role in that.

  • But they won't be the only answer.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And share the joy of the dialogue,

  • the discovery, the correction, the re-discovery--

  • I think, to many academics-- it's kind of core to academia--

  • to be found out that you were wrong about something

  • is a great day.

  • You're just like, that's so interesting!

  • I thought X. It turns out, not X.

  • Now, if you were not that careful in saying X,

  • it might also be a little embarrassing.

  • But if you'd dotted your Is and crossed your Ts

  • and you still got it wrong, it should be, how interesting!

  • And to be able to share that joy with people early and often

  • and have that be part of the fun of being online--

  • not for everybody, not all the time.

  • But there's surely more of that, rather

  • than aiming towards an oracular fact-generating machine.

  • Now, it's true.

  • There are times when, if you ask Google Home, like, for pi,

  • it will tell you the value of pi until you

  • tell it to stop talking.

  • And you probably don't want it to be like, OK.

  • Get out a piece of paper and draw a circle.

  • You're like, no, no.

  • I don't want to derive pi.

  • Just tell me what pi--

  • MARTHA MINOW: I actually just wanted a slice.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: A slice of pie--

  • that's true.

  • That could be as well, which would

  • be a terrible misunderstanding by Google Home.

  • But many more of the topics that we are concerned about

  • and that factor into for whom we would vote, how we would think,

  • how we look at our neighbors, those

  • are things that really are great candidates

  • for the dialogic dwelling upon, rather than

  • just the oracular answer.

  • Is this good or bad?

  • MARTHA MINOW: Urs Gasser.

  • URS GASSER: Thank you so much.

  • Great panel.

  • A quick observation-- it's so interesting

  • talking about the different tools we have in the toolbox.

  • We call it technology.

  • We talked about social norms approaches.

  • We talked about the importance of market forces.

  • And yet, in the background, is law, right?

  • The forced modality of regulation.

  • And we didn't talk about it at all.

  • JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah, it's right behind us.

  • URS GASSER: Exactly.

  • So the question might be-- even to the moderator, if I may--

  • does law play a role in all of this?

  • And not only in the restrictive version, in the constraining

  • version, as we recently see in Germany with the Network

  • Enforcement Act, requesting social media

  • platforms to take down content that is clearly illegal--

  • actually, interesting merger between hate

  • speech and fake news there--

  • within 24 hours.

  • But maybe, also, enabling law that clearly

  • shapes where we stand today--

  • these are legal decisions that these platforms have enabled.

  • So is there a role of law to play,

  • as the forced mode of regulation in the Lessig framework?

  • MARTHA MINOW: So this is the beginning of our next event,

  • I'm sure.

  • And I'm sure that it's just important for us

  • to shine a light on how law is underneath all

  • of these structures.

  • And what's permitted, what's enabled, what's encouraged,

  • what's reinforced--

  • there's a legal framework for the social engineering.

  • There's a legal framework for the cultural and civic

  • institutions.

  • And so I think it would be a very worthwhile exercise

  • to spotlight, to highlight, what law

  • is enabling, what it's preventing,

  • and what it could do to promote the development of more

  • tools along the many dimensions that we've talked about here.

  • Please join me in thanking this wonderful panel.

  • [APPLAUSE]

MARTHA MINOW: I'm Martha Minow.

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