The easy availability of information on the Internet may lead to the commoditization of content. However, if content is free or low cost, it may be difficult for those who produce it (like journalists) to earn a living. Economists and other scholars examine this tension and suggest various solutions.
"On balance there’s still space for media expression in the Philippines, but of course the feeling of media professionals is that they would be more careful in terms of crossing the line with Duterte, so to speak." — Eduardo Araral, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore
"It’s important for social media sites that have massive reach to make and enforce policies concerning manipulated content, rather than abdicating all responsibility." — Jonathan L. Zittrain, Professor of Law, Harvard University
This article discusses how difficult it is to put a stop to violent online content such as the live-streaming of New Zealand’s mosque shootings. University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron is quoted.
Facebook and YouTube were designed to share pictures of babies, puppies and other wholesome things, "but they were expanded at such a scale and built with no safeguards such that they were easy to hijack by the worst elements of humanity." — Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
"When you look at the ways that WhatsApp has been abused and hijacked in India and Brazil, it’s clear that it’s a powerful engine for spreading dangerous propaganda. It’s also clear that there’s not much Facebook can do about that, because all the messages are encrypted. Facebook can’t measure the problem or filter for the problem." — Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
"By turning the focus away from Facebook to "the internet" you try to fool us into conflating the two. The fact is that the structure and function of Facebook is antithetic to the ideology of the internet. The internet is open, configurable, distributed, and based on open code. Facebook is nothing of the sort." — Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
"These two principles – that Facebook is benevolent and that privacy is quaint and inefficient – drive everything Facebook does. They go a long way to explain why Facebook continued to give precious user data to a set of “trusted” partners years after the company claimed it had ended such a program." — Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
"The actions of platforms such as Facebook in regulating advertising do seem to have had an effect on the volume of fake news. However, our paper also emphasizes that in just focusing on ads and fake news, we are missing the bigger picture, which is the organic spread of misinformation by users themselves." — Catherine Tucker, Professor of Marketing, MIT
"Social media — far from being the seductive Trojan horse — is a release valve, allowing youth to reclaim meaningful sociality as a tool for managing the pressures and limitations around them." — danah boyd, Founder of Data & Society and Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research
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Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman shares an op-ed piece he recently wrote that discusses Section 230 and the legislative efforts to modify or repeal it.
January 21, 2021
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Featured Article
Some economic models omit intermediaries, entrepreneurs, and other key factors in dynamic markets. The study of platforms like eBay and Etsy leads to the development of more realistic economic models.
January 21, 2019
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