Regulating engagement on incendiary networked content
Varun Adibhatla / New York City, NY
Highly Refined Attention Products and Networked Content Providers
Highly refined Attention Products (HRAPs) are a category of media designed to evoke a range of reactions across diverse groups of people. They can be created anywhere on the open internet and can range from amateur, to professional and even include state-funded actors across an equally diverse set of intentions and motivations. In most cases, HRAPs serve to entertain or inform and constitute the collective vocabulary of a thriving commons.
In other instances however, HRAPs are designed to alter well-established facts or incite violence. These are Incendiary & Highly Refined Attention Products (i-HRAPs).
Left unchecked, i-HRAPs can rapidly perpetuate and cause significant harm to the commons.
Networked Content Platforms (NCPs) are online spaces where users are mutually connected with each other. NCPs typically do not charge for use of their platform. Their revenue is generated by enabling commercial entities perpetuate HRAPs (aka advertisements) across content distribution networks, often created by the NCPs themselves. Most NCPs use algorithms to automatically segment and target specific audiences to generate engagement with paid HRAPs.
Ensuring the safe operation of current and future attention platforms while also guaranteeing privacy and free speech rights requires specific measures to identify and contain the perpetuation of i-HRAPs across NCPs.
Information SpeedBumps to contain leakage
Another NCP designed to rapidly perpetuate information is High frequency financial trading. This information ecosystem was made popular in a book written by Michael Lewis book titled Flash Boys. The book discusses the origins and creation of the IEX exchange that wasspecifically designed to protect investors from “information leakage” that limits access to free and fair markets.
“The IEX Speed Bump slows down messages coming into the exchange so that IEX can update prices before executing trades. The idea is that no market participant should be able to have a speed advantage over the exchange itself.”
Looking to Natural Gas utilities towards management of i-HRAPs
i-HRAPs once identified ought to be contained (not perpetuated) across the wider distribution network.
To perpetuate content is to engage with it.
Addressing engagement with incendiary content is what needs addressing rather than the content itself.
To establish precedent, It is useful to compare & contrast NCPs with regulated Natural Gas Utilities who are also in the business of transmitting and distributing Highly Refined Energy Products.
A Natural Gas Network Operator that lets leaks go unchecked pose:
- Safety Hazards as Natural Gas when ignited can explode
- Financial Hazard due to lost product
In recent years, the safety hazard of i-HRAPs has been widely established. However, i-HRAPs are not seen as a financial hazard to NCPs. This is predominantly because NCP revenue streams are based on distributing commercial-HRAPs (advertisements).
Therefore, there is little financial incentive for an NCP to identify and contain the perpetuation of i-HRAPs.
Current Regulatory framework
In response to catastrophic disasters across the US, Gas utilities are required by the federal government to routinely survey and manage their leaks. State, local and federal laws also require Gas Utilities to respond to public reports of gas leaks as emergencies.
Such regulation compels US Gas utilities, widely recognized as market monopolies, to invest Billions, often paid by increases in service rates to ensure safe network operations.
Despite this regulation and investments, catastrophic gas explosions continue to threaten our communities.
Similarly, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 requires that NCPs moderate content on their platform for egregious violations. Large NCPs often also rely on their users to flag egregious content violations so that the NCP can respond.
However, when NCP revenue is inherently tied to engagement with HRAPs, there is little incentive to regulate engagement.
Regulating individual pieces of content also risks infringing on free speech rights and over time can impose a one-size-fits-all values system onto expression in the open internet.
Furthermore, De-platforming users for content is akin to denying energy services to a person who struck their backyard gas line with their lawnmower.
Regulating the perpetuation of incendiary content
a) Consensus-based Identification of incendiary content
Identification of incendiary content ought to be performed by users’ peers and kins rather than external third parties who are far removed from a user’s engagement on the platform.
A participatory, peer-driven process of identifying i-HRAPs invites a qualitatively different engagement on the NCP. Such a process confers collective agency over a community’s content to constructively manage a perpetuation i-HRAPs
b) Containing perpetuation, once identified.
A category of “speed-bump” mechanisms can contain the perpetuation of incendiary content by slowing-down engagement that has been consensually identified by a user’s peer-network as “incendiary” while also acknowledging differences in how similar content is interpreted across different cultures and contexts
Example in Action
1. User A in USA posts “Kill All Men” meme on their network as an attempt at satire2. User A's immediate network enjoys the post. Few report it as incendiary.3. A's connection B, in Ethiopia, shares the content with their network. Many of B's "peers" find the content incendiary due to an ongoing genocide and report it.4. Due to multiple “peer-reports” of incendiary content on B’s share, a regulator algorithm is triggered leading to the following outcomes: 4a. B’s post is blurred with a warning message stating “this content has been found by B’s peers to be incendiary, any engagement or attempt to share will invite a temporary slowdown on your feeds and ability to operate on the platform"4b. “B” does not get de-platformed and the content is not taken down.4c. Other User’s may still engage with the content but at the risk of inviting temporary slowdowns on their engagement4d. B’s feed is slowed-down, their sharing and comment is temporarily throttled.5. During this time, “A”’s network continues to operate normally.
Varun is a self-described, former Wall-Street turned Public Interest Technologist who has worked on Pothole detection Tech., Underground utilities, and interrogates the other leaks, cracks, and holes that afflict in the public realm.
This piece is a work in progress that began as an online interrogation
