Federal agencies could play more crucial roles in countering dangerous online deception targeting Americans across Facebook and other social media platforms, lawmakers heard Wednesday.
At the House Energy and Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing “Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age,” experts detailed sobering cases of online deception that are impacting masses—and also offered creative approaches to how agencies could help prevent it going forward.
“You can’t just bring some new agency around and regulate all of the virtual world,” the Center for Humane Technology’s Executive Director Tristan Harris said. “Why don’t we take the existing infrastructure, the existing agencies who already have purview ... and have a digital update that expands their jurisdiction to just ask, ‘well, how do we protect the tech platforms in the same areas of jurisdiction?’”
Harris studied at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab with Instagram founders and said he therefore understands the culture of some people who build social media products and the ways that the services are at times designed “intentionally for mass deception.” In their testimonies, he and other expert panelists highlighted how the largely unregulated social media platforms are being used to connect billions, while also inadvertently causing detrimental effects or being weaponized to mislead many of those same users. Harris, for example, highlighted stark research around the implications for teens who use the platform. He explained that after nearly two decades in decline, “‘high depressive’” symptoms for 13-to 18-year-old teenage girls rose 170% between 2010 and 2017—and the increase was linked directly to their social media use.
Research Director Joan Donovan, who leads the Technology and Social Change Project ..
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