But, more to the point, the very rationale behind this bill makes no sense and is not based in reality.Ĭicilline's quote about the bill demonstrates just how ignorant he is of how all of this stuff actually works: Both Facebook and Twitter already let you set up a chronological feed if you want it. The point here is that lots of algorithm/ranking systems that work based on information not expressly provided by the user are actually doing important things that would be missed if they suddenly couldn't be done any more.Īnd, even if the bill were clarified in a bill-of-attainder fashion to make it clear it only applies to social media news feeds, it still won't do much good.
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Similarly, lots of media websites offer you a certain number of free articles before you hit their register or paywall - and again, that's based on information not expressly provided by the user - meaning that such a practice might be in trouble (which will be fun to watch when media orgs who use those kinds of paywall tricks but are cheering this on as an "anti-big-tech" measure discover what they're really supporting).
used to determine the order or manner that a set of information is provided to a user." At the very least, there are enough arguments either way that someone will sue over it. You could argue that a mobile-optimized page is not necessarily a "ranking" system, except the bill defines "algorithmic ranking system" as "a computational process. What's more, "inferences about the user's connected device" are explicitly excluded from being used even if they are based on data expressly provided by the user - so even allowing a user to set a preference for their device type, and serve optimized pages based on that preference, would appear to still count as an "opaque algorithm" under the bill's definitions. After all, that's an algorithmic system that uses information not expressly provided by the user in order to present information to you ranked in a different way (for example, moving ads to a different spot). For example, a straightforward reading of this bill would mean that no site can automatically determine you're visiting with a mobile device and format the page accordingly. The fact that it then immediately includes an exemption for "age-appropriate content filters" only hints at some of the problems with this bill - which starts with the fact that there are all sorts of reasons why algorithms recommending things to you based on more information than you provide directly might be kinda useful. The term "opaque algorithm" means an algorithmic ranking system that determines the order or manner that information is furnished to a user on a covered internet platform based, in whole or part, on user-specific data that was no expressly provided by the user to the platform for such purpose. It doesn't target all algorithms - and explicitly exempts search based on direct keywords, or algorithms that try to "protect the children." Instead, it has a weird attack on what it calls "opaque algorithms." The definition itself is a bit opaque: The bill is poorly drafted, poorly thought out, and exposes an incredible amount of ignorance about how any of this works. While some of the reporting on this suggests that the bill "targets" algorithms, it only does so in the stupidest, most ridiculous ways. The House version was introduced by Ken Buck, and co-sponsored by David Cicilline, Lori Trahan, and Burgess Owens. The Senate version was introduced by Senator John Thune, and co-sponsored by a bevy of anti-tech grandstanding Senators: Richard Blumenthal, Jerry Moran, Marsha Blackburn, Brian Schatz, and Mark Warner. Both bills are "bipartisan," which makes it worse, not better. The latest, just introduced is the House version of the Filter Bubble Transparency Act, which is the companion bill to the Senate bill of the same name.
It's kind of crazy how many regulatory proposals we see appear to be based on myths and moral panics.