We Filed A Brief At The Supreme Court. Also: Podcasts!
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It’s finally live. Right now, if you go on the Supreme Court website, you can see a formal, fancy amicus brief from us at the Integrity Institute (with a cosigning assist from AlgoTransparency). It’s for a high-profile case (Gonzalez v Google), and we — maybe counterintuitively — don’t take a stand on who should win.
Why did we go through all the trouble? Because we think we have a valuable service to play: educating the court (and the world) on how platforms (like Youtube) function on the inside. We provide the expertise of how things work so that the court can make a better decision on the legal side.
For years, we 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.
Frankly I re-read it twice today already. It’s really good. And, honestly, feels so much more real now that’s it’s out in the world.
Pretty cool, huh?
Why didn’t we back a side in this case? That is not our role, and honestly our members probably disagree. Instead, we are united on how these platforms actually work. We stand ready to be honest brokers, to anyone in society who wants to learn how the social internet can (and does not) help people, societies, and democracies thrive.
Thanks to All Rise Trial & Appellate, the lawyers who authored the brief, and Reset.tech for financially supporting the work.
Speaking of member powered…
Remember our member-powered podcast? Observe the glory of two more episodes.
Episode Two: Global Threat Analysis with Zara Perumal.
In this second episode, Integrity Institute members Alice Hunsberger and Zara Perumal talk about mis- and disinformation: how to recognize it and how to contextualize it, both individually and at scale.
We also talk about global risk analysis, the history of the social internet and what’s coming next, and the differences in styles and sophistication levels of disinformation agents and scammers.
And Episode Three: Founding Episode with Sahar Massachi & Jeff Allen
In this third episode, Integrity Institute member Alice Hunsberger talks with Institute cofounders Sahar Massachi and Jeff Allen about the issues around integrity in tech and why the Integrity Institute was founded, how to define integrity work, and why integrity teams are the true long-term growth teams of tech companies.
We have a bit of a deep dive into hate speech and talk about several reasons why it’s important to remove it, and the dreaded death spiral that can happen when platforms don’t invest in integrity properly.
More episodes are coming! And the next episode will be a big one, I think.
The future
As always, there’s a lot more down the pike. I think you’ll hear from us quite soon. More episodes, more original research, maybe an overview and/or retrospective of where we are and how far we’ve come. Stay tuned.
Thanks for all you do,
Sahar Massachi, executive director and cofounder