[Plura-list] How to design a tech regulation

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/20/scalesplaining/

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TONIGHT (June 20), I'll be live onstage in Los Angeles for a recording of the Go Fact Yourself podcast:
https://laist.com/events/go-fact-yourself-live-with-aida-rodriguez

On Friday (June 21), I'm doing an online reading for the Locus Awards at 16hPT.

On Saturday (June 22), I'll be in Oakland, CA for a panel and a keynote at the Locus Awards:

https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/

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Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388

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Today's links

* How to design a tech regulation: A modest proposal for a transatlantic self-equilibriating system.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2004, 2014, 2019

* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

* Recent appearances: Where I've been.

* Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Colophon: All the rest.

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🫙 How to design a tech regulation

It's not your imagination: tech really *is* underregulated. There are plenty of avoidable harms that tech visits upon the world, and while some of these harms are mere negligence, others are self-serving, creating shareholder value *and* widespread public destruction.

Making good tech policy is hard, but not because "tech moves too fast for regulation to keep up with," nor because "lawmakers are clueless about tech." There are plenty of fast-moving areas that lawmakers manage to stay abreast of (think of the rapid, global adoption of masking and social distancing rules in mid-2020). Likewise we generally manage to make good policy in areas that require highly specific technical knowledge (that's why it's noteworthy and awful when, say, people sicken from badly treated tapwater, even though water safety, toxicology and microbiology are highly technical areas outside the background of most elected officials).

That doesn't mean that technical rigor is irrelevant to making good policy. Well-run "expert agencies" include skilled practitioners on their payrolls - think here of large technical staff at the FTC, or the UK Competition and Markets Authority's best-in-the-world Digital Markets Unit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

The job of government experts isn't just to research the correct answers. Even more important is experts' role in evaluating conflicting claims from interested parties. When administrative agencies make new rules, they have to collect public comments and counter-comments. The best agencies also hold hearings, and the very best go on "listening tours" where they invite the broad public to weigh in (the FTC has done an awful lot of these during Lina Khan's tenure, to its benefit, and it shows):

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2022/04/ftc-justice-department-listening-forum-firsthand-effects-mergers-acquisitions-health-care

But when an industry dwindles to a handful of companies, the resulting cartel finds it easy to converge on a single talking point and to maintain strict message discipline. This means that the evidentiary record is starved for disconfirming evidence that would give the agencies contrasting perspectives and context for making good policy.

Tech industry shills have a favorite tactic: whenever there's *any* proposal that would erode the industry's profits, self-serving experts shout that the rule is technically *impossible* and deride the proposer as "clueless."

This tactic works so well because the proposers sometimes *are* clueless. Take Europe's on-again/off-again "chat control" proposal to mandate spyware on every digital device that will screen everything you upload for child sex abuse material (CSAM, better known as "child pornography"). This proposal is profoundly dangerous, as it will weaken end-to-end encryption, the key to all secure and private digital communication:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/18/encryption-is-deeply-threatening-to-power-meredith-whittaker-of-messaging-app-signal

It's also an impossible-to-administer mess that incorrectly assumes that killing working encryption in the two mobile app stores run by the mobile duopoly will actually prevent bad actors from accessing private tools:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

When technologists *correctly* point out the lack of rigor and catastrophic spillover effects from this kind of crackpot proposal, lawmakers stick their fingers in their ears and shout "NERD HARDER!"

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/12/nerd-harder-fbi-director-reiterates-faith-based-belief-in-working-crypto-that-he-can-break/

But this is only half the story. The other half is what happens when tech industry shills want to kill *good* policy proposals, which is *the exact same thing* that advocates say about *bad* ones. When lawmakers demand that tech companies respect our privacy rights - for example, by splitting social media or search off from commercial surveillance, the same people shout that this, too, is *technologically impossible*.

That's a lie, though. Facebook started out as the anti-surveillance alternative to Myspace. We know it's possible to operate Facebook without surveillance, because Facebook used to operate without surveillance:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Likewise, Brin and Page's original Pagerank paper, which described Google's architecture, insisted that search was *incompatible* with surveillance advertising, and Google established itself as a non-spying search tool:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Even weirder is what happens when there's a proposal to limit a tech company's power to invoke the government's powers to shut down competitors. Take Ethan Zuckerman's lawsuit to strip Facebook of the legal power to sue people who automate their browsers to uncheck the millions of boxes that Facebook requires you to click by hand in order to unfollow everyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/#cda-230-c-2-b

Facebook's apologists have lost their *minds* over this, insisting that no one can possibly understand the potential harms of taking away Facebook's legal right to decide how your browser works. They take the position that only Facebook can understand when it's safe and proportional to use Facebook in ways the company didn't explicitly design for, and that they should be able to ask the government to fine or even imprison people who fail to defer to Facebook's decisions about how its users configure their computers.

This is an incredibly convenient position, since it arrogates to Facebook the right to order the rest of us to use our computers in the ways that are most beneficial to its shareholders. But Facebook's apologists insist that they are not motivated by parochial concerns over the value of their stock portfolios; rather, they have objective, technical concerns, that *no one except them* is qualified to understand or comment on.

There's a great name for this: "scalesplaining." As in "well, *actually* the platforms are doing an amazing job, but you can't possibly understand that because you don't work for them." It's weird enough when scalesplaining is used to condemn sensible regulation of the platforms; it's even weirder when it's weaponized to defend a system of regulatory protection for the platforms against would-be competitors.

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no libertarians in government-protected monopolies. Somehow, scalesplaining can be used to condemn governments as incapable of making any tech regulations *and* to insist that regulations that protect tech monopolies are just perfect and shouldn't ever be weakened. Truly, it's impossible to get someone to understand something when the value of their employee stock options depends on them not understanding it.

None of this is to say that every tech regulation is a good one. Governments often propose bad tech regulations (like chat control), or ones that are technologically impossible (like Article 17 of the EU's 2019 Digital Single Markets Directive, which requires tech companies to detect and block copyright infringements in their users' uploads).

But the fact that scalesplainers use the same argument to criticize both good and bad regulations makes the waters very muddy indeed. Policymakers are rightfully suspicious when they hear "that's not technically possible" because they hear that both for technically impossible proposals *and* for proposals that scalesplainers just don't like.

After decades of regulations aimed at making platforms behave better, we're finally moving into a new era, where we just make the platforms less important. That is, rather than simply ordering Facebook to block harassment and other bad conduct by its users, laws like the EU's Digital Markets Act will order Facebook and other VLOPs (Very Large Online Platforms, my favorite EU-ism *ever*) to operate gateways so that users can move to rival services and still communicate with the people who stay behind.

Think of this like number portability, but for digital platforms. Just as you can switch phone companies and keep your number and hear from all the people you spoke to on your old plan, the DMA will make it possible for you to change online services but still exchange messages and data with all the people you're already in touch with.

I love this idea, because it finally grapples with the question we should have been asking all along: *why do people stay on platforms where they face harassment and bullying?* The answer is simple: because the people - customers, family members, communities - we connect with on the platform are so important to us that we'll tolerate almost anything to avoid losing contact with them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

Platforms deliberately rig the game so that we take each other hostage, locking each other into their badly moderated cesspits by using the love we have for one another as a weapon against us. Interoperability - making platforms connect to each other - shatters those locks and frees the hostages:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

But there's another reason to love interoperability (making moderation less important) over rules that require platforms to stamp out bad behavior (making moderation better). Interop rules are *much* easier to *administer* than content moderation rules, and when it comes to regulation, *administratability* is everything.

The DMA isn't the EU's only new rule. They've also passed the Digital Services Act, which is a decidedly mixed bag. Among its provisions are a suite of rules requiring companies to monitor their users for harmful behavior and to intervene to block it. Whether or not you thing platforms *should* do this, there's a much more important question: how can we enforce this rule?

Enforcing a rule requiring platforms to prevent harassment is very "fact intensive." First, we have to agree on a definition of "harassment." Then we have to figure out whether something one user did to another satisfies that definition. Finally, we have to determine whether the platform took reasonable steps to detect and prevent the harassment.

Each step of this is a huge lift, especially that last one, since to a first approximation, everyone who understands a given VLOP's server infrastructure is a partisan, scalesplaining engineer on the VLOP's payroll. By the time we find out whether the company broke the rule, *years* will have gone by, and *millions* more users will be in line to get justice for themselves.

So allowing users to *leave* is a much more practical step than making it so that they've got no reason to *want* to leave. Figuring out whether a platform will continue to forward your messages to and from the people you left there is a *much* simpler technical matter than agreeing on what harassment is, whether something is harassment by that definition, and whether the company was negligent in permitting harassment.

But as much as I like the DMA's interop rule, I think it is badly incomplete. Given that the tech industry is so concentrated, it's going to be *very* hard for us to define standard interop interfaces that don't end up advantaging the tech companies. Standards bodies are *extremely* easy for big industry players to capture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

If tech giants refuse to offer access to their gateways to certain rivals because they seem "suspicious," it will be hard to tell whether the companies are just engaged in self-serving smears against a credible rival, or legitimately trying to protect their users from a predator trying to plug into their infrastructure. These fact-intensive questions are the enemy of speedy, responsive, effective policy administration.

But there's more than one way to attain interoperability. Interop doesn't have to come from mandates, interfaces designed and overseen by government agencies. There's a whole other form of interop that's far nimbler than mandates: *adversarial interoperability*:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

"Adversarial interoperability" is a catch-all term for all the guerrilla warfare tactics deployed in service to unilaterally changing a technology: reverse engineering, bots, scraping and so on. These tactics have a long and honorable history, but they have been slowly choked out of existence with a thicket of IP rights, like the IP rights that allow Facebook to shut down browser automation tools, which Ethan Zuckerman is suing to nullify:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Adversarial interop is very flexible. No matter what technological moves a company makes to interfere with interop, there's always a countermove the guerrilla fighter can make - tweak the scraper, decompile the new binary, change the bot's behavior. That's why tech companies use IP rights and courts, not firewall rules, to block adversarial interoperators.

At the same time, adversarial interop is unreliable. The solution that works today can break tomorrow if the company changes its back-end, and it will stay broken until the adversarian interoperator can respond.

But when companies are faced with the prospect of extended asymmetrical war against adversarial interop in the technological trenches, they often surrender. If companies can't sue adversarial interoperators out of existence, they often sue for peace instead. That's because high-tech guerrilla warfare presents unquantifiable risks and resource demands, and, as the scalesplainers never tire of telling us, this can create real operational problems for tech giants.

In other words, if Facebook can't shut down Ethan Zuckerman's browser automation tool in the courts, and if they're sincerely worried that a browser automation tool will uncheck its user interface buttons so quickly that it crashes the server, all it has to do is offer an official "unsubscribe all" button and no one will use Zuckerman's browser automation tool.

We don't have to choose between adversarial interop and interop mandates. The two are better together than they are apart. If companies building and operating DMA-compliant, mandatory gateways know that a failure to make them useful to rivals seeking to help users escape their authority is getting mired in endless hand-to-hand combat with trench-fighting adversarial interoperators, they'll have good reason to cooperate.

And if lawmakers charged with administering the DMA notice that companies are engaging in adversarial interop rather than using the official, reliable gateway they're overseeing, that's a good indicator that the official gateways aren't suitable.

It would be very on-brand for the EU to create the DMA and tell tech companies how they *must* operate, and for the USA to simply withdraw the state's protection from the Big Tech companies and let smaller companies try their luck at hacking new features into the big companies' servers without the government getting involved.

Indeed, we're seeing some of that today. Oregon just passed the first ever Right to Repair law banning "parts pairing" - basically a way of using IP law to make it illegal to reverse-engineer a device so you can fix it.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/28/oregon-governor-kotek-signs-strong-tech-right-to-repair-bill/

Taken together, the two approaches - mandates and reverse engineering - are stronger than either on their own. Mandates are sturdy and reliable, but slow-moving. Adversarial interop is flexible and nimble, but unreliable. Put 'em together and you get a two-part epoxy, strong *and* flexible.

Governments *can* regulate well, with well-funded expert agencies and smart, adminstratable remedies. It's for that reason that the administrative state is under such sustained attack from the GOP and right-wing Dems. The illegitimate Supreme Court is on the verge of gutting expert agencies' power:

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/05/us-supreme-court-may-soon-discard-or-modify-chevron-deference

It's never been more important to craft regulations that go beyond mere good intentions and take account of adminsitratability. The easier we can make our rules to enforce, the less our beleaguered agencies will need to do to protect us from corporate predators.


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🫙 Hey look at this

*  How to Clean Up Your Bluesky Feed https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/how-clean-your-bluesky-feed

* Street of Satisfaction https://soundcloud.com/dj-moule/street-of-satisfaction

* I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ (h/t Tom Loosemore)

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🫙 This day in history

#20yrsago Jason Kottke reads my DRM talk https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

#10yrsago Supreme Court invalidates software patent because it’s a software patent https://wiki.endsoftwarepatents.org/wiki/Alice_v._CLS_Bank_ruling_by_US_Supreme_Court_on_19_June_2014

#10yrsago FabLab: a free game that creates 3D printable toys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w61oqAx4gI

#10yrsago California’s cell-phone kill switch is a solution that’s worse than the problem https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/eff-opposes-californias-cell-phone-kill-switch-bill

#10yrsago Former FCC commissioner to Washington: “You should be ashamed of yourself” https://consumerist.com/2014/06/18/former-fcc-commissioner-we-should-be-ashamed-of-ourselves-for-state-of-broadband-in-the-u-s/

#10yrsago RIP, Daniel Keyes, author of “Flowers for Algernon” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/19/rip-daniel-keyes-author-of-flowers-for-algernon/

#10yrsago Best-paid CEOs perform the worst https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/

#10yrsago How Hachette made the rope that Amazon is hanging it with https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/how-amazon-holding-hachette-hostage

#10yrsago Public opinion of Congress reaches a new low https://news.gallup.com/poll/163052/americans-confidence-congress-falls-lowest-record.aspx

#10yrsago Congress passes anti-mass surveillance amendment with overwhelming support https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/eff-statement-massie-lofgren-amendment-passing-house

#10yrsago UK bans teaching Creationism as science in schools https://humanists.uk/2014/06/18/victory-government-bans-existing-future-academies-free-schools-teaching-creationism-science/

#10yrsago NSA helps foreign governments conduct mass surveillance at home https://web.archive.org/web/20140619092447/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/06/18/nsa-surveillance-secret-cable-partners-revealed-rampart-a/

#5yrsago Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations to Congress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCnQ3iRkys

#5yrsago Wonderful profile of Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist games critic who made an army of shitty manbabies very, very upset https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/6/19/18679678/anita-sarkeesian-feminist-frequency-interview-history-story

#5yrsago The “ghost networks” of mental health professionals that US health insurers rely on to deny care to their patients https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/17/ghost-networks-psychiatrists-hinder-patient-care/

#5yrsago UK government quietly cancels “age verification” system that would have compiled a database of every Briton’s sexual fantasies https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/20/uk-government-quietly-cancels-age-verification-system-that-would-have-compiled-a-database-of-every-britons-sexual-fantasies/

#5yrsago Paper-towel dispenser with a EULA prohibiting rival brands of paper https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/19/paper-towel-dispenser-with-a-eula-prohibiting-rival-brands-of-paper/

#5yrsago KPMG is in the middle of an unbelievably dirty cheating scandal that keeps on getting uglier https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-was-much-more-widespread-than-originally-thought-2019-06-18

#5yrsago To help the news business, subject Big Tech to antitrust — but don’t forget Big News’s antitrust problem https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/19/to-help-the-news-business-subject-big-tech-to-antitrust-but-dont-forget-big-newss-antitrust-problem/

#5yrsago Ajit Pai promised that killing Net Neutrality would spur investment and improve service: a year later, service and investment have declined https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/none-claimed-benefits-killing-net-neutrality-ever-arrived/

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🫙 Upcoming appearances

* Go Fact Yourself (Los Angeles), Jun 20
https://laist.com/events/go-fact-yourself-live-with-aida-rodriguez

* Locus Awards reading (virtual), Jun 21
https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/

* Locus Awards keynote (Oakland), Jun 22
https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/

* HOPE XV, Jul 14 (Queens, NY)
https://www.hope.net/talks.html

* Exile in Bookville, (Chicago), July 20
https://exileinbookville.com/events/39808

* American Association of Law Libraries keynote, (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/

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🫙 Recent appearances

* Living Your Principles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTfqxF5KyCc

* Reimagining the Internet
https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/102-cory-doctorow-enshittification/

* Circulating ideas
https://circulatingideas.com/2024/06/11/261-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow-summer-reading-spectacular/

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🫙 Latest books

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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🫙 Upcoming books

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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🫙 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Yesterday's progress: 774 words. Today's progress: 753 words (14523 words total).

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast:
  My 2004 Microsoft DRM Talk https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/>

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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