Manasa Venkataraman

Manasa is a Research Associate at the Takshashila Institution. She is a graduate of Government Law College, Mumbai and transitioned to public policy after working as a corporate lawyer in Mumbai. She works on issues at the intersection of technology, law and policy, with a specific focus on privacy and data protection.

What Came First – The Tech or the Reg?

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John Frank Weaver, in a 2014 blog post on Slate, argues that it is best to bring in laws to regulate future technology. His reasoning is that when technology begins to unravel, it does so at an exponential speed, making it almost impossible to regulate once this event happens. Instead, Weaver proposes that regulations should already be in place before a new technology is developed, so that it always stays ahead and wary of these speedy developments.

Precautionary as this approach might be, it is more likely to wreak a whole lot of havoc instead. It is undesirable to pass laws before the subject matter to which it would apply even comes into existence. In doing so, we might end up doing more harm than good, creating more obstacles than enabling the prevailing ones being solved organically.

Regulating technology minutely from the get go is inefficient and ineffective. Firstly, it is very difficult to say exactly which direction tech is going to proceed in. We do not know where the next big innovation, next “disruption” is going to come from. By creating a regulation well before it is time to do so, we might end up passing a law which either becomes redundant in the face of unexpected technology or worse, ends up creating a mess of an ecosystem which would have flourished otherwise.

Also, laws are enduring and it takes a lot more time and effort to undo them later. So, it would make sense to regulate things at the margin – beginning with technology that is already existing today, or an innovation on the horizon which poses concerns that are easy to imagine and to solve. For instance, it is easier to regulate a technology concern such as data protection in digital advertising than, say, artificial superintelligence.

The “regulating at the margins” approach is more desirable also because it is bound to contain useful stipulations. It also allows companies, regulators and individuals to adapt themselves to the new legal framework and to rectify their concerns quicker and more effectively.

This has the added benefit of being an innovation-friendly environment – stepping in when needed, but otherwise giving technology a defined, safe space through which it can progress.

 

 

The Kennedy-Klobuchar Bill – Updates from a Post-Zuckerberg Congress

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(This post is part 1/n of what’s happening in the US Congress post the Zuckerberg testimony.)

If (like me) you spent hours watching Zuckerberg testify before the US Congress, then you’d remember how several legislators promised Facebook they would be tabling bills to regulate social media.

Well, it’s just over two weeks after Zuck’s testimony, and the first such bill is already tabled before the Senate. Sponsored by Democrat Senator Klobuchar and Republican Senator Kennedy, the Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Bill, 2018 centers around important principles of user consent and compulsory breach notification.

The bill stresses on drafting the terms and conditions in simple English so that users know exactly what data the website wants to collect, store and process. It also puts the ball back in the user’s court by allowing her to delete her social media data once she becomes aware of a breach.

Well-intentioned as it is, it looks like the Kennedy-Klobuchar bill retains a “Take It or Leave It” binary. It proposes solid user protection and rights, but most of them are squarely based on the power of the data collector to provide only two polar options to the user – to opt-in to its terms, or to opt-out of the platform completely.

If you’ve been so bored that you’ve read your favourite app’s terms and conditions, you will know that several of them today are a binary.

These are called “Take it or Leave It” clauses – so, if a user does not agree to a particular clause her only option is often to not sign up on the platform at all. While this provides simple, easy to understand options to the user, it is also a problem because it may make the user accept terms she is unhappy with. This is why, one of the suggestions data privacy advocates make is that companies collecting data devise smarter, non-binary ways in which the user is assured while still making their platform available to users.

Simplifying these terms and conditions, while still allowing the user multiple options other than to “Take It or Leave It”, as well as being a fast moving service provider at the same time is bound to incredibly tough for the social media company. The good news is, there are some effective ways to do that. However, as the Kennedy-Klobuchar bill rests on the correctness of this approach, its impact is automatically limited.

That said, the Kennedy-Klobuchar bill is an otherwise significant proposal. It looks out for the user by making the data collectors responsible for communicating terms and conditions in a simple manner.

The nerd in me is super excited to do a clause-by-clause breakdown of the bill, but until then, here are some neat summaries of what it talks about:

Senate privacy bill gives Facebook what it asked for.

Senators introduce bipartisan internet privacy bill.

Cute Cats Are Good for Online Activism

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Ever wondered how social media has helped activism in your country? Ethan Zuckerman, an American scholar and activist, coined the “Cute Cat Theory“. This helps make sense of why online movements succeed, especially once they are banished from the web by unhappy governments.

According to this theory, social media is the best stage for activists to rally the masses for a political cause – exactly because the people who visit these websites are there to browse mindless content and not to rage against the system. Digital activists can use these platforms to have easy access to generate mass awareness, and also not be targeted by the government for posting unwelcome content.

And so, although a majority of us who visit Facebook do so to stay connected with our friends or to browse cute cat videos, digital activism is likely to get more traction on these platforms than anywhere else on the web.

Story time!

In the early 2000s, dissatisfaction in Tunisia against its President (Ben Ali) had escalated to a boiling point. Various activist groups started chronicling the shortcomings of the Ali government online. This was also a way of rebelling against the highly authoritarian Tunisian government, which would often censor the internet and online speech. In 2009, when certain dissidents called “Astrubal” posted a video concerning the President on Dailymotion, the government took down the site almost immediately. As knee-jerk reactions go, this is classic – the Tunisian government responded defensively to an action as soon as it could so that any hint of dissent is curbed.

However, this plan backfired because of – you guessed it – the Cute Cat Theory.

Although Astrubal’s footage had received only a few thousand views before the site went under, the abrupt, arbitrary unavailability of Dailymotion to the other millions of residents of Tunisia only ended up creating more publicity for this footage and ultimately, sufficient traction to end Tunisia’s regime under Ali.

The Cute Cat Theory shows that it is actually detrimental for a government to ban entire websites to curb dissent – especially social media. What’s better, because of this entire Dailymotion ban debacle, the number of people protesting against the Ben Ali regime on the streets shot up rapidly. If anything, the attempt to shut the digital vigilantes up ended up backfiring badly for the government.