{"id":19414,"date":"2020-06-26T07:19:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T07:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/privacy-not-a-blocker-for-meaningful-research-access-to-platform-data-says-report.html"},"modified":"2020-06-26T07:19:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T07:19:09","slug":"privacy-not-a-blocker-for-meaningful-research-access-to-platform-data-says-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/privacy-not-a-blocker-for-meaningful-research-access-to-platform-data-says-report.html","title":{"rendered":"Privacy not a blocker for \u2018meaningful\u2019 research access to platform data, says report"},"content":{"rendered":"

European lawmakers are eyeing binding transparency requirements<\/a> for Internet platforms in a Digital Services Act<\/a> (DSA) due to be drafted by the end of the year. But the question of how to create governance structures that provide regulators and researchers with meaningful access to data so platforms can be held accountable for the content they\u2019re amplifying is a complex one.<\/p>\n

Platforms\u2019 own efforts to open up their data troves to outside eyes have been chequered to say the least.\u00a0Back in 2018, Facebook announced the Social Science One initiative<\/a>, saying it would provide a select group of academics with access to about a petabyte\u2019s worth of sharing data and metadata. But it took almost two years before researchers got access to any data.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the most frustrating thing I\u2019ve been involved in, in my life,\u201d one of the involved researchers told Protocol<\/a> earlier this year, after spending some 20 months negotiating with Facebook over exactly what it would release.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s political Ad Archive API has similarly frustrated researchers<\/a>. \u201cFacebook makes it impossible to get a complete picture of all of the ads running on their platform (which is exactly the opposite of what they claim to be doing),\u201d said Mozilla last year<\/a>, accusing the tech giant of transparency-washing.<\/p>\n

Facebook, meanwhile, points to European data protection regulations and privacy requirements attached to its business following interventions by the US\u2019 FTC to justify painstaking progress around data access. <\/span>But critics argue this is just a cynical shield against transparency and accountability. <\/span>Plus of course n<\/span>one of these regulations stopped Facebook grabbing people\u2019s data in the first place<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In January<\/a>, Europe\u2019s lead data protection regulator penned a preliminary opinion on data protection and research which warned against such shielding.<\/p>\n

\u201cData protection obligations should not be misappropriated as a means for powerful players to escape transparency and accountability,\u201d wrote EDPS Wojciech Wiewior\u00f3wski. \u201cResearchers operating within ethical governance frameworks should therefore be able to access necessary API and other data, with a valid legal basis and subject to the principle of proportionality and appropriate safeguards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor is Facebook the sole offender here, of course. Google brands itself a \u2018privacy champion\u2019 on account of how tight a grip it keeps on access to user data, heavily mediating data it releases<\/a> in areas where it claims \u2018transparency\u2019. While, for years, Twitter routinely disparaged third party studies which sought to understand how content flows across its platform \u2014 saying its API didn\u2019t provide full access to all platform data and metadata so the research couldn\u2019t show the full picture. Another convenient shield to eschew accountability.<\/p>\n

More recently the company has made some encouraging noises<\/a> to researchers, updating its dev policy<\/a> to clarify rules, and offering up a COVID-related dataset <\/a>\u2014 though the included tweets remains self selected. So Twitter\u2019s mediating hand remains on the research tiller.<\/p>\n

A new report<\/a> by AlgorithmWatch seeks to grapple with the knotty problem of platforms evading accountability by mediating data access \u2014 suggesting some concrete steps to deliver transparency and bolster research, including by taking inspiration from how access to medical data is mediated, among other discussed governance structures.<\/p>\n

The goal: \u201cMeaningful\u201d research access to platform data. (Or as the report title puts it: Operationalizing Research Access in Platform Governance: What to Learn from Other Industries?<\/i>)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have strict transparency rules to enable accountability and the public good in so many other sectors (food, transportation, consumer goods, finance, etc). We definitely need it for online platforms \u2014 especially in COVID-19 times, where we\u2019re even more dependent on them for work, education, social interaction, news and media consumption,\u201d co-author Jef Ausloos tells TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

The report, which the authors are aiming at European Commission lawmakers as they ponder how to shape an effective platform governance framework, proposes mandatory data sharing frameworks with an independent EU-institution acting as an intermediary between disclosing corporations and data recipients.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time an online regulator has been mooted, of course \u2014 but the entity being suggested here is more tightly configured in terms of purpose than some of the other Internet overseers\u00a0being proposed in Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch an institution would maintain relevant access infrastructures including virtual secure operating environments, public databases, websites and forums. It would also play an important role in verifying and pre-processing corporate data in order to ensure it is suitable for disclosure,\u201d they write<\/a> in a report summary.<\/p>\n

Discussing the approach further, Ausloos argues it\u2019s important to move away from \u201cbinary thinking\u201d to break the current \u2018data access\u2019 trust deadlock. \u201cRather than this binary thinking of disclosure vs opaqueness\/obfuscation, we need a more nuanced and layered approach with varying degrees of data access\/transparency,\u201d he says. \u201cSuch a layered approach can hinge on types of actors requesting data, and their purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

A market research purpose might only get access to very high level data, he suggests. Whereas medical research by academic institutions could be given more granular access \u2014 subject, of course, to strict requirements (such as a research plan, ethical board review approval and so on).<\/p>\n

\u201cAn independent institution intermediating might be vital in order to facilitate this and generate the necessary trust. We think it is vital that that regulator\u2019s mandate is detached from specific policy agendas,\u201d says Ausloos. \u201cIt should be focused on being a transparency\/disclosure facilitator \u2014 creating the necessary technical and legal environment for data exchange. This can then be used by media\/competition\/data protection\/etc authorities for their potential enforcement actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ausloos says many discussions on setting up an independent regulator for online platforms have proposed too many mandates or competencies \u2014 making it impossible to achieve political consensus. Whereas a leaner entity with a narrow transparency\/disclosure remit should be able to cut through noisy objections, is the theory.<\/p>\n

The infamous example of Cambridge Analytica does certainly loom large over the \u2018data for research\u2019 space \u2014 aka, the disgraced data company which paid a Cambridge University academic to use an app to harvest and process Facebook user data for political ad targeting.\u00a0And Facebook has thought nothing of turning this massive platform data misuse scandal into a stick<\/a> to beat back regulatory proposals aiming to crack open its data troves.<\/p>\n

But Cambridge Analytica was a direct consequence of a lack of transparency, accountability and platform oversight. It was also, of course, a massive ethical failure \u2014 given that consent for political targeting was not sought from people whose data was acquired. So it doesn\u2019t seem a good argument against regulating access to platform data. On the contrary.<\/p>\n

With such \u2018blunt instrument\u2019 tech talking points being lobbied into the governance debate by self-interested platform giants, the AlgorithmWatch report brings both welcome nuance and solid suggestions on how to create effective governance structures for modern data giants.<\/p>\n

On the layered access point, the report suggests the most granular access to platform data would be the most highly controlled, along the lines of a medical data model. \u201cGranular access can also only be enabled within a closed virtual environment, controlled by an independent body \u2014 as is currently done by Findata [Finland\u2019s medical data institution],\u201d notes Ausloos.<\/p>\n

Another governance structure discussed in the report \u2014 as a case study from which to draw learnings on how to incentivize transparency and thereby enable accountability \u2014 is the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR). This regulates pollutant emissions reporting across the EU, and results in emissions data being freely available to the public via a dedicated web-platform and as a standalone dataset.<\/p>\n

\u201cCredibility is achieved by assuring that the reported data is authentic, transparent and reliable and comparable, because of consistent reporting. Operators are advised to use the best available reporting techniques to achieve these standards of completeness, consistency and credibility,\u201d the report says on the E-PRTR.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough this form of transparency, the E-PRTR aims to impose accountability on operators of industrial facilities in Europe towards to the public, NGOs, scientists, politicians, governments and supervisory authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While EU lawmakers have signalled an intent<\/a> to place legally binding transparency requirements on platforms \u2014 at least in some less contentious areas, such as illegal hate speech, as a means of obtaining accountability on some specific content problems \u2014 they have simultaneously set out a sweeping plan to fire up Europe\u2019s digital economy by boosting the reuse of (non-personal) data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leveraging industrial data to support RD and innovation is a key plank of the Commission\u2019s tech-fuelled policy priorities for the next five+ years, as part of an ambitious digital transformation agenda.<\/p>\n

This suggests that any regional move to open up platform data is likely to go beyond accountability \u2014 given EU lawmakers are pushing for the broader goal of creating a foundational digital support structure to enable research through data reuse. So if privacy-respecting data sharing frameworks can be baked in, a platform governance structure that\u2019s designed to enable regulated data exchange almost by default starts to look very possible within the European context.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnabling accountability is important, which we tackle in the pollution case study; but enabling research is at least as important,\u201d argues Ausloos, who does postdoc research at the University of Amsterdam\u2019s Institute for Information Law. \u201cEspecially considering these platforms constitute the infrastructure of modern society, we need data disclosure to understand society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about what transparency measures should look like for the DSA <\/a> we don\u2019t need to reinvent the wheel,\u201d adds Mackenzie Nelson, project lead for AlgorithmWatch\u2019s Governing Platforms Project<\/a>, in a statement. \u201cThe report provides concrete recommendations for how the Commission can design frameworks that safeguard user privacy while still enabling critical research access to dominant platforms\u2019 data.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read the full report here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/ZRL0aLh2Kk8\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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