Policy briefing; Values for Digital Responsibility: Agency, Intention and Stewardship

Digital technologies are developing exponentially, bringing big economic and social benefits but also significant challenges. Policymakers cannot stay ahead of the problems, leading to a crisis of public trust and confidence which could provoke unhelpful ‘regulation by outrage’. Tech companies must therefore act and be seen to act. The Internet Commission seeks to help with this process. 

Working with technology companies, policymakers, researchers, and NGOs the Internet Commission has mapped the unintended negative consequences of digital development. Problems range from personal abuse and addiction to social exclusion and the undermining of democracy. They can harm individuals directly and also coalesce to damage public trust and confidence in digital environments. Policymakers are planning more regulation and advertisers are concerned about risk to their brands and reputation.

Accountability = transparency + values 

Recognising the need to act, Internet firms are deploying increasingly sophisticated processes to manage content and conduct on their platforms. For many years policymakers and researchers have sought to understand these processes better [1].

Some seek reassurance that everything is being done to prevent harm whilst upholding rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Others aim to benchmark and build best practices [2]. 

A better understanding of content and conduct on their platforms is now required by wide-ranging societal and economic interests: shareholders, fund managers, brands, industry in general, policymakers and citizens are ever-more invested in the long-term success of digitalisation [3]. 

Digitalisation is a huge social, cultural and economic process in which all these stakeholders are invested. Some of the biggest Internet companies now publish transparency reports on the subject [4]. But they set their own questions and evaluate their own answers. 

With help from practitioners and experts the Internet Commission is developing detailed questions about how content and conduct are managed. They focus on processes for reporting, moderation, and governance, and the resources applied in these areas [5]. It aims to ask these questions with a better world in mind. Establishing a credible and reliable basis for its work is the agenda of the Internet Commission’s Dialogue on Digital Responsibility.

Accelerating a positive digitalisation

The United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda is based on a vision of a better world. Consideration of digital technologies in this context is normally focussed on the vital role that they will play in enabling delivery of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals [6]. 

By contrast, this dialogue is more concerned with how the United Nations’ vision can inform a more values-driven digitalisation. For this reason, the Internet Commission’s dialogue considered the UN vision with a particular focus on people, prosperity and peace [7].

First ideas were taken from the work of the Atomium European Institute [8], CAN [9], Telefónica [10], the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change [11] and the World Wide Web Foundation [12}.

Sources:

[1] For example Prof. Sonia Livingstone at London School of Economics, John Carr of CHIS, Victoria Nash and Mark Bunting at Oxford internet Institute.

[2] Santa Clara Law conference on Content Moderation & Removal at Scale: http://bit.ly/2FSH8Au.

[3] Transformation of society and economy through the adoption of digital technologies, see Autio, Erkko. (2017) Digitalisation, ecosystems, entrepreneurship and policy.

[4] http://transparency.facebook.c... and https://transparencyreport.goo....

[5] Current draft is at http://bit.ly/2TyBiab.

[6] For example “Digital technology for the sustainable development goals”: http://bit.ly/2UqNie7

[7] Three of the five aspects of the UN 2030 vision: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. See http://bit.ly/2B7N0SQ.

[8] Atomium European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy – “AI4People - An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations”: http://bit.ly/2K6a1Z5

[9] Conscious Advertising Network manifestos: http://bit.ly/2E6AfKK

[10] Telefónica – “A Manifesto for a New Digital Deal”: http://bit.ly/2yw9ev8

[11] Tony Blair Institute for Global Change – “A New Deal for Big Tech: NextGeneration Regulation Fit for the Internet Age”: http://bit.ly/2Pw0wbu

[12] World Wide Web Foundation – “Contract for the Web”: http://bit.ly/2K9sm7S