Multiple experts explained that technology now plays a central role in access to critical opportunities like job openings, home sales, and credit offers, but that too often companies’ algorithms display these opportunities unequally or discriminatorily target some communities with predatory products. And participants highlighted the risks to public safety that can stem from information recommended by platforms that promotes radicalization, mobilization, and incitement to violence. Another participant explained why mere self-help technological protections for privacy are insufficient. Other participants sounded the alarm about risks for reproductive rights and individual safety associated with companies collecting sensitive personal information, from where their users are physically located to their medical histories and choices. Some experts tied this to problems of misinformation and disinformation on platforms, explaining that social media platforms maximize “user engagement” for profit by using personal data to display content tailored to keep users’ attention-content that is often sensational, extreme, and polarizing. Several participants raised concerns about the rampant collection of vast troves of personal data by tech platforms. Another participant highlighted that large platforms can use their market power to engage in rent-seeking, which can influence consumer prices. One participant explained the effects of anti-competitive conduct by large platforms on small and mid-size businesses and entrepreneurs, including restrictions that large platforms place on how their products operate and potential innovation. In the meeting, experts and practitioners identified concerns in six key areas: competition privacy youth mental health misinformation and disinformation illegal and abusive conduct, including sexual exploitation and algorithmic discrimination and lack of transparency. Today, the White House convened a listening session with experts and practitioners on the harms that tech platforms cause and the need for greater accountability. The rise of tech platforms has introduced new and difficult challenges, from the tragic acts of violence linked to toxic online cultures, to deteriorating mental health and wellbeing, to basic rights of Americans and communities worldwide suffering from the rise of tech platforms big and small.
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