Overview of Project

Since summer 2023, organizers from Cambridge Local First, Tech Policy Press, and Integrity Institute have been collaborating on data-building initiatives around major policy (legislation, investigations, and litigation including antitrust, consumer protection, and tech/data regulation) happening at the US federal and state level. We recognize that different civil society organizations are building disparate trackers, and we see a great opportunity to explore ideas and models to collaborate on infrastructure and data gathering in an effort to enhance the field’s efforts.

This project is a continued work in progress with opportunities to contribute over the next few months.

Legislative Tracker and Related Information

As a result of our data aggregation efforts, the Technology Policy Tracker aims to provide a comprehensive view of major technology policy and legislation across the “US Federal”, “US State”, and “International” contexts, in addition to broader “Public Conversation." It achieves this by collating proposals and legislation from other existing databases and other sources. 

This user manual is a guide intended for those who seek to navigate and update the Technology Policy Tracker.

This presentation highlights the research findings on 2023 policy trends in the US, including visualizing legislative activity at the US federal and state levels. We find that child safety and AI received the most federal legislative attention in 2023, and that privacy and online safety received the most state legislative attention in 2023. Discussions on surveillance, competition, and disinformation all took a back seat to the increased focus on child safety, AI, privacy, and cybersecurity. You can view a presentation of our findings here, starting at minute 8:27. 

If you have questions or would like to get involved, please email Theodora (Theo) Skeadas, at theodora@cambridgelocalfirst.org.

Contributors

Theodora (Theo) Skeadas is the CEO of Tech Policy Consulting, where she advises organizations on responsible AI, regulation, elections, information integrity, and online harms issues. She also works part-time as the Executive Director of Cambridge Local First. Previously, at Twitter, she managed the Trust and Safety Council, a research hub within the Public Policy team, and a trusted flaggers program for human rights defenders, and she supported Twitter's global elections, transparency, and crisis response efforts.

Arushi Saxena serves as the Head of GTM and Policy at DynamoFL, a seed-stage Y Combinator (W22) privacy & Generative AI startup. Previously, she led Product Marketing & GTM for Twitter's Trust & Safety team, with a specific focus on Information Integrity and Elections-related features. Prior to Twitter, Arushi was an Assembly Research Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a Privacy Product Management Consultant for Consumer Reports Innovation Lab.

David Evan Harris is Chancellor’s Public Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Continuing Lecturer at the Haas School of Business. From 2018 to 2023, he worked at Facebook and then Meta on teams confronting some of the most challenging issues facing the company—civic integrity, misinformation and responsible AI.

We also thank students Rehan Mirza, Maya Vishwanath, Zhixiao Yip, Christy Zheng, Hawraz Jamal, and Mohammed Al-Tal for their significant contributions to this effort.