Integrity Institute Files Amicus Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Case of Gonzalez v. Google LLC
In support of neither party, the amicus brief explains major uses of algorithms in large tech platforms and urges the Court to decide narrowly based on technical specificity and nuance.
New York, NY – The Integrity Institute submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Gonzalez v. Google LLC, with AlgoTransparency as a co-signer. In a case that could have drastic impacts on how social media and other tech platforms design their algorithm-based recommenders in view of liability, it is of the utmost importance for the Court to carefully distinguish algorithms based upon the nature of the recommendations they make. Our amicus brief, in support of neither party, offers an independent explanation on the technology to ensure that the Court has an accurate understanding of how recommender systems (colloquially “algorithms”) operate.
The case of Gonzalez v. Google LLC concerns whether or not recommender systems are covered by liability exemptions under Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for Internet service providers. Backed by the Integrity Institute’s member expertise, our amicus brief elucidates how tech platforms design, implement, monitor, and mitigate their recommender systems based on different types of algorithms. Specifically, we explain to the Court that large tech platforms use recommendation algorithms differently based on contexts, such as content recommendation, moderation, or advertising, and that well-designed recommendation algorithms are integral to functional and enjoyable user experience on these platforms. Given the specificity of different recommendation algorithms, our amicus brief supports neither party and urges the Court to decide cases about recommendation algorithms on an individual, narrow basis. A summary sheet of the brief’s content is available here.
Integrity Institute Executive Director and co-founder Sahar Massachi said, “For years, integrity workers inside platforms have seen people on the outside misunderstand how these systems actually work. This isn’t their fault — the knowledge was locked up and siloed. Now, we are speaking with our own voice. Dozens of members — all professionals in the field – directly contributed ideas for, or vetted the text of, this brief.”
“We are decidedly neutral on the merits of who should win. That is not our role, and our members might disagree. Instead, we are united on how these platforms actually work. We stand ready to be trusted honest brokers, to anyone in society who wants to learn how the social internet can (and does not) help people, societies, and democracies thrive.”
The Integrity Institute is a think tank powered by a community of integrity professionals: tech workers with experience in integrity roles — roles dedicated to fixing harms to people and society within social internet platforms. The Institute cultivates a thriving community of more than 100 integrity professionals with experience on trust and safety, product, integrity, and quality teams across 26+ different platforms – including Facebook, YouTube, Google, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Quora, and Clubhouse. Institute members have observed, and often helped build, the architecture of the social internet, and this amicus brief offers their professional and technical expertise to the Court.
Full text of the amicus brief is available here. A summary of the brief’s content is available here. We thank All Rise Trial & Appellate for authoring this brief and Reset.tech for financially supporting this work.
###
Contact: hello@integrityinstitute.org