What I’d Do If I Had ‘Complete Control’ Over the Internet
No one should—but here are some common sense policies for the monetized liars who think I’m a censor
LAST WEEK, far-right influencer Mike Cernovich tweeted that I was nearly “given complete control over the internet” in my former role in the Biden Administration.
If you don’t know Cernovich, he’s a manosphere personality who rose to prominence during the #Gamergate harassment campaign and later cashed in on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The Southern Poverty Law Center writes that he “made his career on trolling the liberal establishment by accusing people of pedophilia or child sex trafficking. Armed with a law degree, Cernovich claims to defend ‘free speech,’ in particular the freedom to harass women and make misogynistic, violent comments.”
(That tracks; after he tweeted about me, X.com morphed into a Throwback Thursday of four-year-old lies about me, along with requisite harassment and threats. A prominent conspiracy theorist publicly called for my swatting for purported ongoing crimes.)
Now, Cernovich is cashing in on the MAHA movement, at least according to his Instagram bio: “Filmmaker, investor, and e-commerce co-founder of global brands. Currently launching a protein bar.”
Super nice guy. Obviously a paragon for trustworthy information.
To be clear: I never came close to having any sort of control over the internet. (You can learn about the boring truth of what my job in government was here.) I didn’t want that control. No one should have it. And any job that included any power to adjudicate speech is one I would have publicly condemned, in line with my career of anti-censorship research and advocacy.
But since Mike Cernovich is fantasizing about me, I thought it might be fun to do a little fantasizing of my own.
Here are five common sense policies I would pursue if I had “complete control” of the internet. I think the monetized liars might be surprised.
Give Americans the right to file appeals against social media company platform moderation decisions. Did you know that social media users in Europe can file appeals when they believe social media companies have taken down their content erroneously? Since this rule came into force, “30% of 165 million content moderation decisions that users appealed through the platforms’ internal mechanisms have been reversed.” Europeans have more online rights than Americans, despite what the monetized liars may say.
Get researchers access to platform data. Europe also has enshrined access to platform data for researchers and journalists in its internet regulation. This allows civil society to hold platforms and governments to account. Allegations of censorship or “complete control” of the internet, for instance, could be scrutinized through this data. Without it, conversations about what’s happening online amount to a very tiresome he-said-she-said. Who are we protecting if we are blocking measures like this? It’s certainly not citizens.
Dismantle the infrastructure behind deepfake nudification. Many countries—including the United States, in the context of the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which became law this year—are imposing penalties on those who create, share, or enable the sharing of deepfake non-consensual intimate imagery. (Earlier this year, the Senate also passed the DEFIANCE Act, which would create a civil right of action for victims of deepfake abuse; it is awaiting action in the House.)
But what about the infrastructure that allows the images to be created in the first place—the servers that host websites dedicated to deepfake websites and nudifying apps? The app stores that serve them to users? The payment processors that facilitate the subscriptions or the exchange of money for the creation of a deepfake? If every part of the deepfake infrastructure were forced to implement Know Your Customer procedures the way banks are forced to vet potential clients for signs of terrorism and money laundering, the problem would not be the worldwide scourge it is today.
Make platform-level AI opt-in—not opt-out—the default. Some folks don’t want to read an AI-generated knowledge panel. They would rather avoid an AI-generated AI detector (looking at you, Substack). They would prefer their emails and documents stay their own, not hoovered up by an app’s AI model for training purposes. Rather than forcing users to figure out how to opt out of opaque systems, platforms should make them opt in by default, seeking our informed consent for both using our data in training and turning on AI features on platforms.
Incentivize on-platform information literacy education. I’ve been harping on this for years. The multi-billion dollar platforms that are poisoning our information ecosystem should educate users about the manipulative features of their platforms. They have ubiquitous access to millions of people. They encourage people to register to vote and cast a ballot, but they don’t educate them about why and how information impacting their vote made its way to them, because it impacts their bottom line. What would it look like if platforms ran compelling public service announcements about AI-generated scams and fraud? The basics of algorithmic amplification?
Those are the first five things that popped into my head. Notice how none of these involve anything even remotely related to the removal of political speech! A power-hungry would-be censor would be focused on that, and we don’t have to speculate what it might look like. We have hundreds of examples from the current administration that The American Sunlight Project has been cataloguing for the past year and a half over at TrumpCensorship.com.
Just sayin’. 🧭
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