Jonathan Zittrain

It’s almost quaint to think that just five years ago, Mark Zuckerberg cheerfully took credit for major pro-democracy movements during Facebook’s IPO launch...Today, the company has to reckon with its role in passively enabling human-rights abuses. While concerns about propaganda and misinformation on the platform reached a fever pitch in places like the United States in the past year, its presence in Myanmar has become the subject of global attention...As Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society put it, “[Facebook] abdicating feels weird because quite often (and this is sometimes reflected in the law) if you’re in a position to do something, to alleviate a great harm—and you’re profiting, you’re not a bystander, you’re implicated or involved—we tend to think you have a responsibility to do something.”

Trump raised alarm bells in his published response to the news that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The tweet published to Trump’s account clearly implied that he already knew that Flynn had deceived the Feds when he fired him back in February: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” That unleashed a frenzy of speculation about whether Trump had just admitted to obstructing justice, since it seems he must have known that Flynn had committed a felony when he was pressuring then-FBI director James Comey to ease up on the Flynn case...But then came word that maybe Trump didn’t write the tweet after all. The Washington Post reported that “Trump’s lawyer John Dowd drafted the president’s tweet, according to two people familiar with the twitter message.”...Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain noted, “I’ve seen lawyers write each. It’s not like, you know, ‘hung’ and ‘hanged.’” Indeed, both “pleaded” and “pled” are both considered acceptable by American usage guides—though, in many newsrooms, “pled” is considered a rookie mistake, which helps explain why some journalists seized on it.

Two friends started a greeting card company on the internet. It was cheap to launch and it instantly reached millions. Then one day without warning, Facebook changed the way it did business. This is a story about survival in the age of Facebook, when a privately held algorithm can turn a beloved product into a hobby with no monetary value...What happened next, as the cards thrived and then suddenly withered on Facebook, illustrates the mercurial power of a new near-monopoly, with implications for all sorts of publishers and businesses, said Jonathan Zittrain, director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “Facebook has grown at a pace and had an impact that it’s really hard to say anybody planned,” he said. “It isn’t just a mere commercial platform. It’s a place that people are turning to to get their sense of what’s going on in the world."

Over just two days this week, the Trump administration has both sued AT&T Inc. to block its planned takeover of Time Warner Inc. and proposed allowing internet-service providers—like AT&T—to form closer alliances with content companies, like Time Warner. ...Because the FTC doesn’t have the authority to create and enforce broad rules, it isn’t in a position to police fast and slow lanes that may harm competition, said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and computer science at Harvard University and a former chairman of the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee.

An open letter to the Massachusetts Legislature from Chelsea Barabas, Christopher Bavitz, Ryan Budish, Karthik Dinakar, Cynthia Dwork, Urs Gasser, Kira Hessekiel, Joichi Ito, Ronald L. Rivest, Madars Virza, and Jonathan Zittrain. Dear Members of the Massachusetts Legislature: We write to you in our individual capacities¹ regarding the proposed introduction of actuarial risk assessment (“RA”) tools in the Commonwealth’s criminal justice system. As you are no doubt aware, Senate Bill 2185² — passed by the Massachusetts Senate on October 27, 2017 — mandates implementation of RA tools in the pretrial stage of criminal proceedings...As researchers with a strong interest in algorithms and fairness, we recognize that RA tools may have a place in the criminal justice system. In some cases, and by some measures, use of RA tools may promote outcomes better than the status quo. That said, we are concerned that the Senate Bill’s implementation of RA tools is cursory and does not fully address the complex and nuanced issues implicated by actuarial risk assessments.

An op-ed by Jonathan Zittrain. Twenty years after it was first litigated in earnest, the U.S. Communications Decency Act’s §230 remains both obscure and vital. Section 230 nearly entirely eliminated the liability of Internet content platforms under state common law for bad acts, such as defamation, occasioned by their users. The platforms were free to structure their moderation and editing of comments as they pleased, without a traditional newspaper’s framework in which to undertake editing was to bear responsibility for what was published. If the New York Times included a letter to the editor that defamed someone, the Times would be vulnerable to a lawsuit (to be sure, so would the letter’s author, whose wallet size would likely make for a less tempting target). Not so for online content portals that welcome comments from anywhere—including the online version of the New York Times.

Executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google pledged to Congress this week to do more to prevent the fakery that has polluted their sites. “We understand that the people you represent expect authentic experiences when they come to our platform,” Colin Stretch, the general counsel of Facebook, told the Senate Intelligence Committee...Jonathan L. Zittrain, who studies the internet and society at Harvard, said the companies are reluctant to aggressively purge bogus users and deceptive content because of their business model, which is built on signing up more and more people. “These platforms are oriented to maximize user growth and retention,” Mr. Zittrain said. “That means not throwing up even tiny hurdles along the sign-up runway, and not closing accounts without significant cause. I suspect they figure there are enough accounts that are the subject of complaints to review without looking for more to assess.”

In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after. Things we thought we understood—narratives, data, software, news events—have had to be reinterpreted in light of Donald Trump’s surprising win as well as the continuing questions about the role that misinformation and disinformation played in his election...In June 2014, Harvard Law scholar Jonathan Zittrain wrote an essay in New Republic called, “Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out,” in which he called attention to the possibility of Facebook selectively depressing voter turnout. (He also suggested that Facebook be seen as an “information fiduciary,” charged with certain special roles and responsibilities because it controls so much personal data.)

What if the algorithm is racist? As computers shift from being helpmates that tackle the drudgery of dense calculations and data handling to smart machines informing decisions, their potential for bias is increasingly an area of concern...Christopher Griffin, research director of the Law School’s Access to Justice Lab, described pretrial detention systems that calculate a person’s risk of flight or committing another crime — particularly a violent crime — in making bail recommendations...Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law and faculty chair of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which sponsored the event, said the danger of these systems is that the output of even a well-designed algorithm becomes biased when biased data is used as an input.

Should sophisticated computer models help judges predict which defendants are safe enough to release before trial? Or should judges rely on their own wisdom, discretion, and experience to make those decisions?...Jonathan L. Zittrain, a Harvard law professor, pointed out that computerized risk scores assigned to criminal defendants could be based on data that is biased because it comes from a criminal justice system in which people of color are disproportionately stopped and arrested...But Christopher L. Griffin, Jr., research director at Harvard Law’s Access to Justice Lab, said predictive models could be helpful in guiding judges by adding to the range of data available to them when they decide whether to jail or release defendants before trial. “We like to think of these tools as not necessarily de-biasing mechanisms, but information-enhancing ones that increase the signal-to-noise ratio,” he said.

Russian operatives set up an array of misleading Web sites and social media pages to identify American voters susceptible to propaganda, then used a powerful Facebook tool to repeatedly send them messages designed to influence their political behavior, say people familiar with the investigation into foreign meddling in the U.S. election...The revelations come at a moment when investigators are widening their probe into how Russian operatives used Facebook, Twitter, Google and other technology platforms to widen fissures in the United States and spread disinformation during election season...“There’s been some thought that the Internet was a goose laying golden eggs, but now there’s a sense that all the eggs are not golden,” said Jonathan Zittrain, faculty director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Donald Trump has maintained for seven months that he cannot release his tax returns because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, making him the first major-party nominee for president since Gerald Ford to withhold such records from the public...“The courts could say, if the public thinks the tax returns are so important, let it demand that the candidate authorize the IRS to release them on pain of losing votes,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a privacy expert and professor at Harvard Law School.

Facebook lives and dies by its algorithms. They decide the order of posts in your News Feed, the ads you see when you open the app, and which which news topics are trending. Algorithms make its vast platform possible, and Facebook can often seem to trust them completely—or at least thoughtlessly. On Thursday, a pitfall of that approach became clear. ProPublica revealed that people who buy ads on Facebook can choose to target them at self-described anti-Semites...To Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law at Harvard University, that story suggests the entire way that tech companies currently sell ads online might need an overhaul. “For categories with tiny audiences, with titles drawn from data that Facebook users themselves enter—such as education and interests—it may amount to a tree falling in a forest that no one hears,” he said.

Billions of internet-connected things like smart light bulbs are expected to pop up in our homes and businesses in the coming years. And a group of senators wants to help make them more secure. The bipartisan group introduced a bill on Tuesday to address some concerns regarding the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). It would require any companies that provide the federal government with internet-enabled devices to meet basic security requirements...Also included in the bill is a provision that some security researchers should be able to look for vulnerabilities in smart devices without the threat of a lawsuit. Currently, researchers are hamstrung by certain laws. "It's an important step in vindicating the principal that one of the best ways to understand the vulnerabilities of something is to be able to tinker with it," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law professor.

U.S. lawmakers unveiled a bill this week that, if passed, would set basic security standards for connected devices from wearables to environmental sensors purchased by federal agencies. The bill, called the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017, would require devices to have software that can be patched and passwords that can be altered before being sold to the U.S. government...While the legislation will provide companies with a set of guidelines, it does little to directly regulate security, said Jonathan Zittrain, a founder of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. But it could motivate companies eyeing sales to the government, which has a $95 billion technology war chest under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for next year. “This bill deftly uses the power of the Federal procurement market, rather than direct regulation, to encourage Internet-aware device makers to employ some basic security measures in their products,” Zittrain said in a statement.

...Now, a small group of scientists and thinkers believes there could be an alternative, a way to save the president—and the rest of us—from him- or herself. As soon as technology advances far enough, they think we should put a computer in charge of the country...Jonathan Zittrain, an internet law professor at Harvard Law School, thinks that even with A.I.’s flaws, computers could serve as checks against human biases. “A.I., properly trained, offers the prospect of more systematically identifying bias in particular and unfairness in general,” he wrote in a recent blog post.