YouSaid · the spoken record

Marietje Schaake

lines on the record: 33
first: 2021-02-26
most recent: 2021-02-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That are commercial walls that will push them out just because the alternatives are seen as too competing with the business models.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Initiatives, people building better technology, public interest tech, it's a huge area of inspiration. But for these alternative models to gain ground, there needs to be some regulatory requirements. For example, Corey Doctorow speaks about this notion of adversarial interoperability, meaning that the platforms need to accept competing companies to interoperate with their technologies and not to be allowed to push them out. This sort of question about the role of gatekeepers again, there will have to be some provisions in place for that kind of competition in the public interest, that kind of alternative being built to have a chance. Because otherwise these people, and we hear this over and over again, who are trying to build more public interest tech are going to run into walls.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, I believe that people have opportunities to make choices about which products they want to use to push their elected representatives to do more to protect democratic agency. But principally, I don't think we can expect individual citizens to stand up sufficiently in light of the armies of lawyers, armies of engineers, armies of designers that make it so much easier to simply click yes accept to all instead of making an educated decision about the consequences of those settings. And clearly even the most tech savvy, well-educated, properly informed people will struggle to really appreciate what kinds of consequences are attached to those decisions. Similarly, I see super hopeful civic”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that the push and the competition and really the threats coming both from privatizing the digital layer of our lives in terms of governance and leaving it to authoritarian states combined is really of such crucial order that democracies will choose to work together.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cooperation between democracies to develop a governance model that clarifies those different elements we talked about and creates a level playing field between democracies to facilitate the flow of data with the proper data protections to make sure that, for example, human rights criteria when it comes to the use of technology are spelled out clearly to make sure that supply chains are secure or that there is proper checks for national security standards or cybersecurity standards and so on and so forth. The integrity of electoral processes, another very important anchor that democracies share. That is what I hope can be achieved. But if you look at the European example and how much national governments cling to their own space to make decisions, I don't think it'll be easy, but it's imaginary.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the Australia Facebook case really shows that the question is how big the state is and whether the states are able to work together. So one problem that I think we see when we zoom in on democratic states, and I really wish it the distinction between the role of governments was more often clarified to mean an authoritarian or a democratic government, just because the legitimacy is so fundamentally different. But in the debate, it's convenient often for the tech companies to talk about, oh, heaven forbid that government would intervene. Whereas there's a big difference between the Chinese government making a move or let's say the British government making a move. Anyway, what I think is needed to have a meaningful answer to on the one hand the privatization of power through tech companies, whether they're big or small. On the other hand, the sort of techno-authoritarianism is better.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot that needs to be specifically regulated for. There are other kinds of technologies that tend to very directly encroach on the role of the state. There digital arms that touch upon the sovereignty, financial sovereignty, but also questions around the monopoly on the use of force. Very core concepts to the role of a state where I expect at least clarifications on what is considered an acceptable market development and what is not. So there's a catching up process that has certainly begun, but that is not finished by a long stretch.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, pushing on society. And so I think that that imbalance is urgent, but I also think that the companies will use trade secrets, as I mentioned, and other kinds of legal shields that they enjoy now. Section 230 being another one for the moment, to really push back against liability, responsibility, accountability. So I foresee big battles there. The question will be, can sort of new floors be built on existing frameworks, antitrust, data protection, national security concerns? Or are there gaps between those existing policy frameworks that need to be filled? And if so, which are they? And I would imagine that in the space of AI, for example, where there's so much combining of data, you know, developing on top of data,”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I do believe that this question of how much transparency and access to information will be a huge battlefield, because I think the discretion that the companies have to collect data, to repurpose it, to discern and learn for their own business model at the expense of public knowledge, at the expense of awareness about people's privacy violations, at the expense of a collective understanding of how things work. For example, this disinformation question. It could well be. I mean, I don't think so because I think many incidents have shown the problems here. But to say for sure without the kind of independent research that we need is Hard. And so, you know, there's a lot of power resting within these technological or digital businesses that we simply cannot understand.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, have national security competence resting with member states, meaning 27 different readings of when national security may be at stake, when a company, for example, a network provider or 5G equipment provider, enters into the market and the question whether this poses a risk. Now, this kind of fragmentation is unsustainable in light of the intersection of geopolitics and technology as we see it emerging, where it's really hard to separate out economic interests, national security interests, and human rights interests, just to mention another, I think, vital angle. But the policy divisions don't always match the new integrated reality of the technologies, and this is something the EU has to really, really work on.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certain principles and values need to be preserved no matter which technological disruption, and that should be protection of the public interest, protection and resiliency of democracy, and a process that mirrors the rule of law. I would say that that is what the EU is trying to do, and it has a lot of obstacles there. Clearly, there's not enough growth in the digital field coming from the EU itself. There's a lot of fragmentation, not only between policy areas, but also between member states, which is a problem, sometimes incompetences. So when you think about all the pressure about 5G and Huawei, one of the problems for the EU to respond was that you have on the one hand this promise of a single market, meaning a level playing field for companies to operate on the basis of the same rules throughout the European Union.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I actually wish that the EU would speak more in terms of that vision instead of announcing each piece of a regulatory puzzle individually, just because it confuses people and it feeds those who want to claim that another day, another regulation from Brussels. I think the vision roughly is that”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Matter whether dairy farmers or car producers or insurers or search engines are violating. And the authorities that have to probe are highly skilled, but also have strong mandates to probe. In other words, it's impossible for a party under investigation to just slam the door and say access denied. And that sort of mechanism where the principle is fairly simple and clear and where the enforcement is very empowered and resourced is the kind of mechanism that I think we need to apply to non-discrimination, data protection, access to information, et cetera, et cetera.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the question is really where do you want to start in understanding what next steps are needed from a regulatory point of view? And I often see the question, which technology should be regulated for? But I actually think we need to start with the principles that we want to safeguard and empower the regulators, empower the needed authorities to apply those principles to assess whether they're respected in practice. And that's where the mechanisms that are used for antitrust enforcement are really interesting because antitrust rules are fairly simple. They need some updating to consider how digital economies work, but essentially you cannot be a monopolist, you cannot form a cartel, you cannot make price agreements or discriminate on the basis of price at the expense of the consumer. That's roughly the framework of antitrust rules, and it doesn't...”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope so Because I think the self-regulatory phase has just been utterly disappointing. And it is really time to make sure that The foundations of our open societies, the core anchors of our democracies are not disrupted. I mean, the excitement about disrupting certain markets, I think, has been misguided when you look at what it's done to the media, for example, and what the side effects have been of market disruptions to polarization, the growth and fostering of online extremism spilling into the streets, because clearly the online world and the offline world are not divorced. They're actually one and the same. So it's important to look at how much power and agency we actually want to give to business models that may be very good at selling ads, but that are very bad at safeguarding for protecting minorities or”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it will generally come voluntarily, and even if incidentally there may be some voluntary efforts, you know, you always have to regulate not for the best case, but for the worst case. So you cannot rely on any kind of goodwill or nice promises or good intentions on the part of engineers or business leaders. You have to make sure that a rule applies equally, that there's a level playing field for those who are willing or unwilling. I mean, we also don't, for example, collect taxes from those who are willing to hand it over. We want to make sure that everybody complies because normally the voluntary compliance is simply not sufficient.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To actually be able to understand what is going on. It's too easy to say, nobody understands this except for us. The big question is how come? And often we see big tech hiding behind trade secrets, keeping information as discretionary as possible, doing self-reporting on all kinds of interventions. And I really think it just is unsustainable to keep going on that way.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes a regulator with a specific mandate should be able to probe further than, let's say, the average citizen. And for some understanding of what certain information means, let's say the workings of algorithms against certain standards, you also need the kind of expertise to understand. I mean, if they would sort of, for example, put some kind of software code on the front page of the New York Times, nobody would quite understand. So I think the real question is who needs which kind of access to information to make sure that there's an ability to assess whether the law is respected, to allow for the mandated institutions, regulators, oversight bodies to actually look where they need to look, but also for the general public, journalists, civil society representatives, citizens, parliamentarians, watchdogs of all sorts.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think it's a chicken or an egg discussion because I hear so often from people representing the platforms and politicians don't understand how the internet, and they often mean their own service works. But the reality is that there is a huge lack of transparency being offered into how their platforms actually work. I mean, not only to politicians or regulators, for that matter, but also to academics. I mean, I work at Stanford University. It's at the heart of Silicon Valley. So I do think that making sure that there's meaningful access to information with which I'm trying to say the right people have access to the right kind of information.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think they all go together. I mean, if you have, for example, data protection standards and then an app pops up that doesn't meet those standards. Surely you have to make sure that those standards are enforced wherever they may be at stake. But it has to cut both ways. So it should be sort of positive obligation on the part of the people who develop the apps, the companies who develop the apps, but also an obligation on the part of the gatekeepers so that they would not claim to for example prevent harms but in fact sustain their own monopolistic position. I think it's all about which rule is there to enforce against which harms. And sometimes they're blurred conveniently by those who have the power to actually leverage it in their own benefit.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely. And this brings us to a sort of component of the regulatory discussion that in Europe is actually quite prominently featured, which is, you know, the question of gatekeepers and market power that certain actors may have, even if we may not consider them platforms or big tech necessarily. So that would be hosting services, app stores, as you mentioned. A whole host of services To say we, the democratic bodies of the EU, are going to spell out more about what we think liability and responsibility imply for content moderation on the one hand, but also for market power. So basically, if you have a gatekeeper role in the ecosystem, that should bring responsibilities, for example, against abusing that gatekeeper role for a monopolistic or anti-competitive tenancies.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where the focus should be. I don't think the discussion about is it a good or a bad thing that Donald Trump no longer has a Twitter account is really the core of the issue. I think the core of the issue is when does commercially governed and commercially amplified information begin to harm the public interest and how do we balance back for public values, democratic interests and rule of law type processes in this space?”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The challenges to public order, public safety. And, you know, that's a choice that I wish these complicated choices between where the freedom of expression ends, where public safety is at stake, public health is at stake, would not all be in the hands of companies. I think it's an outcome that should have been prevented much earlier. But in the absence of laws that are very clear, I cannot blame companies from using the freedom that they have to decide which rules apply in their club. And their clubs happen to be huge. Think about Facebook, think about YouTube, which gets away with a lot in this debate. And think about Twitter that has been more proactive in drawing moral lines. And they've also been open when they thought they didn't do it as well as they should have. So this is an evolving field in the absence of democratic clarity. And I think that's”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, although I would say it's a little bit different in the sense that in the case of Donald Trump, he still had the platform, so to say, or the position to speak from that he had as president of the United States through the White House account, through the plenty of media platforms that would amplify what he had to say in an official press conference and whatnot. I think the difference here was what he sought to communicate to his constituents in attacks on the democratic process, for example, questioning the legitimacy of the elections against the reading of all official authorities and the context that Twitter identified where they saw people following his lead with the words that he was using, and they did not want to sort of facilitate”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do not think it's a good idea that boardrooms decide on where the limits of free speech lie. But given that this is still a choice that companies can make, you do have to wonder why they do not make more principled decisions against bullying, attacks on women, attacks on politicians, attacks on the free press, attacks on public health. There is so much vitriol going around on social media platforms that I think they're probably shying away tons of other users that are just, you know, there are no voice in this debate because they've kind of given up a long time ago.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time that it became so clear to them how much agency these companies really have over parts of the debate, the political debate, the sowing of divisions, the spreading of hatred, and it all, of course, cumulated in this attack on the U.S. capital, which was a game changer for the platforms, similar to how COVID was a game changer for the platforms, because suddenly this was about disinformation leading to life and death. This was about speech leading to threats to public safety. I think a different set of concepts than the narrow lens of free speech that had been so dominant in the United States. Liabilities on the part of companies.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if it was, but I think what we saw happening there when Twitter initially started and then other platforms followed in banning Donald Trump the individual from using their services after obviously facilitating the development of his big online platforms, his megaphone online for years, a couple of things became visible. One, how much power these companies really have? I mean, I believe it's equally powerful to say, you're welcome. The red carpet is out for you. And it's similarly powerful to then say, sir, we're moving your megaphone away from you. You may find a platform elsewhere. But for a lot of people, it was the first...”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I heard arguments that the Australian law would basically destroy the open Internet, I was just thinking, I mean, I think we have more blame to go around about when the open Internet no longer was open and the role that big corporations that are selling ads like Facebook played in that. So there are so many arguments that should really be sort of challenged if you actually want to get to the core of what's going on. But I think Real question here is How can we make sure that democracy leads in how we understand some of these back and forth between big companies? And what is the price being paid by citizens and journalists alike?”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I mean, it's a very similar fight that we see in a number of societies. I was watching that sort of set of arguments playing out when I was in the European Parliament as a member dealing with the copyright directive in Europe, where very similar. You heard the arguments from the publishers who would normally invoke protecting press freedom, for example, very worthy goal. But if you look at how journalists, freelancers are treated, I think people know well that they are often paid very, very little, sent into harm's way without much of protection, thinking about photographers earning hardly anything for photographs, even if they're taken in war zones. And the publishers also oftentimes seeking to optimize their profits more than anything else.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A number of countries where the platform is active, there have been significant harms, whether we're talking about election-related violence or laws that have brought about huge problems for Facebook users, you know, lack of freedom after expression on the platform, where we heard so little from Facebook, so little protest, certainly no abandoning of certain services in light of these risks for users. So I think What the Australia case makes very clear is that the bottom line, its business model, is actually what matters. The talk about freedom of expression, connecting the world, you know, feeling as a responsible digital citizen or whatnot kind of talk we may have heard should really be considered lipstick on a pig.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Model or their own lack of transparency, as may have been the reason, or is this a failed experiment that has led to a lot of backlash? I mean, the world over people have been, you know, upset about this very blunt way of making an opinion known on the part of Facebook. So I think we'll have to see what the actual fallout is, what stood out to me. Look at the arguments we've heard from Facebook over the past decade, it was always Building a community and protecting free speech and connecting the world while in”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Own thoughts about, for example, the influence of Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, which is another titan in this fight. But I do think that once democratically elected and democratically accountable lawmakers propose a law, and then to see a tech giant in this case, Facebook, but also Google really use very provocative, heavy-handed lobbying tactics like threatening to leave the country as Google did in the case of its search engine. And then on Facebook's part to overnight disable the ability to link to Australian news sources and from Australian news sources worldwide on the platform, you really do have to wonder, is this the first step of more leveraging of the integration of the platform in so many public spheres to really protect their own business?”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And welcome to this intelligent squared podcast with me, Carmilla. I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Marita Sharka, international director of policy of Stanford Cyber Policy Centre. She was a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands between 2009 and 19 and writes regularly in the Financial Times about the impact of big tech on democracy and civil liberties. Welcome. Thank you so much. Yes, good to see you. Good to see you as well. So Ruta, let's jump in. with the most recent and one of the highest profile face-offs in the whole world of tech regulation, Facebook versus Australia. What's your reading of all of this? I mean, is this different to the kind of previous confrontations we've seen between big tech and states? I would say so because, first of all, Australia is a democracy, and there's been a lot of debate about the merits of the law, and I have my own.”
2021-02-26 · Intelligence Squared · Facebook, Free Speech and the Fight for Digital Democracy, With Marietje Schaake and Carl Miller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source