CNTI’s Summary

Digital platforms have become central to how people around the world find and share news and information. Currently, each platform operates under its own rules and conventions, including what content is shown and prioritized by algorithmic infrastructures and internal company policies. Establishing legal and organizational policy to promote algorithmic transparency is one critical step toward a structure that allows for more accountability for often-opaque digital platform practices related to content selection and moderation processes. Various stakeholders – including policymakers, researchers, journalists and the public – also often have different purposes and uses for transparency, which need to be thought through to be sure it serves those needs while protecting against the risks of political or commercial manipulation. These considerations also carry through to who is designated to regulate transparency requirements.

The Issue

The internet is enmeshed in virtually every aspect of modern life. Most often, the public’s online experiences flow through digital platforms, which serve as intermediaries between the content being delivered and the individuals consuming it. That provides convenience but also raises serious concerns. A central one is how much control digital platforms have, or should have, over what people see, especially when it comes to news and information, and how transparent digital platforms’ decision-making processes, typically conducted through the use of algorithms, needs to be.

Each digital platform, and its algorithmic infrastructure, operates under its own rules and conventions to determine which content is and is not allowed as well as what content is prioritized on the platform. Algorithmic choices have far-reaching implications ranging from determining user experiences by selecting one news story over another to facilitating hate speech, disinformation and violence. 

Policymakers, journalists, social media researchers, civil society organizations, private corporations and members of the public are raising awareness of and questions about what are often-opaque digital platform practices related to content selection and moderation processes. The global news industry in particular – which relies to a significant degree on digital intermediaries to reach audiences – has articulated the need for a better understanding of how algorithms rank, boost, restrict and recommend content (including, but not limited to, news) and target consumers. Without a better understanding of how these algorithms are currently built, it is difficult for publishers to work within their constraints to reach audiences or to play any role in determining how algorithms should be built to promote an informed public.

Thus, in addition to ensuring that algorithms are designed to identify fact-based, independent journalism (a topic CNTI addresses in a separate issue primer), it is critical to enhance transparency in and accountability for how digital platform algorithms function.

The key challenge is that regulating or mandating transparency is more complex than it appears, with many elements that need to be thought through. What forms of transparency are necessary and most likely to be effective for protecting and promoting access to high-quality, diverse and independent news? What does transparency mean to policymakers, journalists, researchers and the public? How can we enable algorithmic transparency in ways that protect against political and commercial manipulation or abuse and ensure user privacy? What are its limitations? What systems or entities should be beholden to these levels of transparency? And who should be empowered to set these rules? 

Addressing the questions introduced in this primer is a critical first step toward developing approaches to algorithmic accountability that support an independent, competitive press and an informed society. Policymakers and other stakeholders can benefit from a more nuanced understanding of what transparency can, and cannot, accomplish as well as what new risks could be introduced. Policymakers must be forward-thinking about how and where algorithms may be used in the future, what data could be exposed and who could ultimately gain access to it as a result of increased transparency.

What Makes It Complex

State of Research

Over the past decade, questions surrounding digital platform governance have moved to the forefront of political, legal and academic debates. Recently, a breadth of interdisciplinary research has focused on social media platforms and messaging apps central to global journalistic work as well as on the broader range of software companies and sharing or gig economy apps central to contemporary online commerce. 

Much of this research fits into two categories: governance of social media and governance by social media. Research focused specifically on digital platform algorithmic transparency represents one small segment of work in this field. 

To date, this research has been far more theoretical than empirical, largely due to a lack of data (as we note in greater detail below) and the slow-moving nature of legislative policy, but it still sheds light on the varying forms of transparency different stakeholders expect. For instance, public transparency via disclosures looks different from, and accomplishes different aims than, research transparency via data access. 

Research findings have also noted the limitations of algorithmic transparency alone as a means of establishing digital platform accountability as well as the challenges various legislative efforts face in addressing algorithmic transparency, ranging from potential free expression violations to individual privacy infringements. These limitations have led some experts to call for forms of digital platform accountability beyond algorithmic transparency. 

Collectively, this work also reveals how little has changed, both via research and policy, in almost a decade of calls for algorithmic accountability.

Looking forward, there is much that we do not yet know about digital platforms’ algorithmic infrastructures. Research in this area is critical to inform current debates about internet governance. Experts have called for independent researchers and civil society to be granted more access to the inner workings of digital platform technology companies, the algorithms they develop and the trace data they collect – particularly as digital platforms steadily move away from more open models of free data sharing through their APIs. Of course, what access to give to whom is itself part of the debate about transparency. Still, access, when it has the appropriate safeguards, can help to better inform policy-making and contribute to democratic processes as a form of checks and balances on government and corporate power.

State of Legislation

Content moderation is the element of transparency that has, to date, received the most policy attention. A wide range of policy initiatives around the world have begun, albeit slowly, to regulate content moderation processes and/or government takedown requests on digital platforms, which introduce opportunities and risks. We address some of these in a separate issue primer. 

Legislative policy around addressing algorithmic transparency and accountability more broadly is still nascent. While some technology companies have taken steps internally to improve organizational transparency, governments are beginning to consider policy initiatives that require specific forms of platform accountability, with a focus on (1) supporting research access to data, (2) protecting user data privacy and (3) disclosing certain content moderation practices. 

Some experts have cautioned against the risk that poorly designed transparency laws could become a mechanism for state intervention in and control over platforms’ editorial policies. In contexts like the U.S. with strong constitutional protections of free expression, it is unclear whether the government can mandate transparency. 

The establishment of international ethical frameworks for platform accountability is complicated by the fact that most institutional structures for oversight, such as review boards or ethics committees, vary greatly by country. Nonetheless, policymakers, particularly in Europe and the U.S., have called for international cooperation when it comes to facilitating transparency and access to cross-platform research. Experts have also called for multi-stakeholder and (supra-)national legislative efforts to govern digital spaces.

Even if not intentional, policymakers need to consider that a legislative framework in any one country has the potential to influence regulation globally. For example, a rule-of-law-based approach, while effective in stable democracies, could later serve as a blueprint for suppression elsewhere.

Notable Legislation

European Union

The Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force in November 2022. Among other obligations, the act requires platforms to take further steps to address the quality of content online, including evaluating and reducing risks and offering or adapting content moderation tools. Concerns about the act include how platforms will identify risks, how regulators will monitor these standards and whether individual countries will follow through with the regulations.

Read more here.

United States

The reintroduced Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (along with the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act) includes provisions for researcher access to platform data, public access to advertising libraries and disclosures on viral content. The reintroduced Internet PACT Act would require platforms to explain content moderation practices. The Biden administration may seek a deal with EU regulators to harmonize researcher access with Digital Services Act provisions.

Read more here.

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