Less than a year after I called for tech companies to publish a a public political ad file as open data online, Facebook has committed to doing so this August, through an API. Working with Congress to draft a law … Continue reading
This past week, Facebook launched a new political ad transparency website. Facebook believes that “shining a light on ads” will increase transparency, which in turn “will lead to increased accountability & responsibility over time – not just for Facebook but advertisers as well.“
I think they’re right — which should be no surprise given my focus on advocating for more political transparency in Washington over the two years I spent at the Sunlight Foundation — but reviewing reports of unlabeled political ads is going to be hard.
Overall, this site is a welcome step towards more transparency, but misses the mark. The site only “exceeds expectations” if you think a search interface that exposes no underlying data is sufficient to inform the public and regulators.
In my initial assessment, I concur with journalists who found Facebook’s new political ad system is missing a lot, as ProPublica reported. (Please install ProPublica’s political ad collector so they can inform the public about how well Facebook’s tool actually works.)
It was easy to use @Facebook‘s new archive of “ads with political content” – essentially a simple search tool for paid political ads that have run since May 7, 2018 – once I got on my laptop and logged in. I found recent ads that matched Trump, Clinton, gun control & corruption. pic.twitter.com/Fhx0lrMzBE
— Alex Howard (@digiphile) May 24, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
On the one hand, it was easy to use Facebook’s new archive of “ads with political content” – essentially a simple search tool for paid political ads that have run since May 7, 2018 – at least once I got on my laptop and logged into Facebook. I found recent ads that matched Trump, Clinton, gun control and corruption.
If you click on “see ad performance,” you can learn more about each ad.
If you click “see ad performance,” you see the ad content, who paid, when it was active, how many impressions it received, total spent, & breakdown of audience by age, gender & location.
But clicking “view all ads” brings you to aggregate search results, NOT the page or a profile pic.twitter.com/8XtzmWqdYy
— Alex Howard (@digiphile) May 24, 2018
If you click on the username, you arrive at the Page behind the ads. Unfortunately, there’s no tab for political ads or link to this archive. It’s hard to see how folks will find them, without it.
If you click on the username – in this case, Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump‘s campaign account on @Facebook – you arrive at the Page behind the ads. Unfortunately, there’s no tab for political ads or link to this archive. It’s hard to see how folks will find them, without it. pic.twitter.com/EASlccVAhF
— Alex Howard (@digiphile) May 24, 2018
As I noted on Twitter, however, there’s one more critical wrinkle: you can’t get to the page unless you’re logged into Facebook!
This would be hilariously ironic, if it weren’t for the context of Russian interference and how Facebook handled it. Self-regulation is not enough.
As sociology professor Zeynep Tufecki noted, no one — whether member of the public, the press, watchdog, academic, regulator or legislator – should have to agree to Facebook’s Terms of Service and become a user to access political data.
😱 You shouldn’t have to agree to Facebook TOS in order to access information about political reports. In fact, that is a core problem. I’ve seen examples where schools put *emergency* information on Facebook and people have to agree to FB TOS to learn whether children are safe. https://t.co/6kmsOXgYgu
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) May 24, 2018
To Facebook’s credit, the director of product at Facebook, Rob Leathern, responded publicly to Tufecki on Twittter, stating that this page is a first step:
“More ways are coming to make the ads with political content and information more accessible to people. One of those is an API, another is exploring opening the archive to people not on Facebook. We started with the Facebook community to see how they use the tool and gain feedback from third parties, including our newly-formed Election Commission. We’ll continue to update on our progress.”
If Facebook started with open data with no log-in, they could have gotten feedback from third parties like the Center for Responsive Politics or the public. No one should have to be part of Facebook’s “community” to understand who is buying electioneering on the platform, for whom, and what’s being shown.
As I commented to Leathern, if Facebook is only “exploring” making this archive open to people not on Facebook, then it is not implementing the Honest Ads Act, as its staff has claimed to Congress and the public. I asked Facebook to post a public ad file as bulk open data on the open Web.
Leathern told me that “we have prioritized getting the archive in the hands of people to use (as of today) + will follow up soon with an archive API. Thank you for the feedback, we are definitely listening.”
That’s good news, but not good enough.
Real transparency at Facebook will look like a public file of all paid political ads that are disclosed on a public website with bulk open data downloads and an API, none of which require the public to log into the site.
The good news is that I think Facebook understands this page as a start, not an end. In a post that closes matches what he told me, Leathern wrote that they’re “working closely” with a new “Election Commission” to launch an API for the archives.
It’s good news, but no deadline cited.
It’s hard for me not to be happy that Facebook is finally explicitly embracing political ad transparency in words and (some) deeds, including public soul searching about what constitutes a political ad and a policy.
That’s progress.
It’s just long overdue. Ultimately, elected representatives should be the ones to enact standards for transparency for political ads online after debate, not tech company executives.
Until Congress and other legislatures around the world empower regulators like Federal Election Commission by updating electioneering rules and enacting standards for disclaimers and disclosures, however, I’m glad to see positive actions.
I hope Facebook, its founder and its staff deliver on its most recent promises and their public obligations. Given past, current or predictable interference, opacity is unpatriotic.
The Bot Wars, begun they have. Over the past two years, automated social media accounts and fraudulent regulatory filings have been used by anonymous parties to obscure public opinion, distort public discourse, and corrupt the integrity of rulemaking in the … Continue reading
Today, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Ajit Pai released a statement & fact sheet on the non-public FCC’s proposal for Open Internet Rules, which would be applied to regulating broadband Internet service providers. He tweeted out a picture of himself holding the document (above) several days ago. In his statement today, Pai said that the American people are being misled about what’s in the rules and broke out an outline of the 300-page document. Reporting and analysis of Pai’s objections to the proposal may be found at the New York Times and National Journal. Subsequent to Pai’s statement and press conference, FCC Special Counsel for External Affairs Gigi Sohn tweeted out a series of rebuttals, including a clarification regarding the size of the document.
Here, I’ll focus on something else: the commissioner took FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to task for not releasing them ahead of the scheduled vote on February 26th, in DC, although Pai did note that doing so would be “unprecedented.” In fact, FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly tweeted much the same thing, stating that “all FCC meeting items should be made public when circulated to Commissioners. ”
O’Rielly published a blog post on advanced posting of Commission items back in January, following a previous post in August 2014.
In August, I wrote a blog post urging the Commission to post on its website the actual text of the items to be considered at our Open Meetings at the same time they are provided to Commissioners. I made the suggestion because the inability of the public to obtain a complete picture of what is in a pending notice of proposed rulemaking or order routinely leads to confusion over what exactly is at stake. Making matters worse, Commissioners are not allowed to reveal the substantive details to outside parties. We can’t even correct inaccurate impressions that stakeholders may have received, and we are barred from discussing what changes we are seeking. This barrier to a fulsome exchange can be extremely frustrating for all involved. Despite positive feedback from people at the FCC, outside parties, Members of Congress, [1] and the general public, four months later, we have yet to post a single meeting item in advance. Moreover, the lack of full disclosure and transparency has continued to be a problem as some parties have not been fully briefed on recent items, such as the recently adopted 911 Reliability NPRM, while others are not briefed at all. The reason that nothing has happened, I am told, is that there are two basic concerns with the proposal: 1) that it could be harder to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA); and 2) that it could be more difficult to withhold documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I do not find either argument persuasive or insurmountable
Wheeler took a question on this issue in a press conference last month: “The precedent here, through Democratic chairmen and Republican chairmen, has always been that just like, you know, in the court system, and elsewhere that when you’re handling cases like this, you have an internal discussion and then you release what the result of that vote is. And you don’t change that decades of precedent overnight without following the procedures to review questions like that.”
Asked for comment, FCC press secretary Kim Hart Jonson said that “Chairman Wheeler circulated his proposal to his fellow Commissioners three weeks before the planned vote in accordance with long-standing FCC process. We are confident the other Commissioners will give the proposal an exhaustive review. The Chairman looks forward to receiving their input and releasing it to the public after the February 26 vote.”
What this boils down to is that publishing proposed rules before a vote is technically legal but has never been done before. As Pai himself noted, “FCC rules prohibit disclosure of nonpublic information except as authorized by the Chairman.” Then-FCC chairman Julius Genachowski didn’t pull the full version of the 2010 Open Internet rules up until right before Christmas, well after the vote. The standard FCC procedure for rulemaking is to circulate the draft rules at least 3 weeks prior to a vote, incorporate edits received from FCC commissioners, then finalize everything. In practice, however, some commissioners have complained that edits may be made right up until a vote. Once rules have been voted upon, they’re published in the federal register.
As long-time readers know, I was critical of that decision at the time, and remain so. To reiterate what I said them, Genachowski made a commitment to a more open, transparent and data-driven F.C.C. under President Obama’s Open Government Directive. In many respects, in its first year of open government, the agency made commendable progress, with strides towards taking public comment through e-rulemaking at OpenInternet.gov, Broadband.gov and Reboot.FCC.gov. The sites were deployed by an able new media team that has used online communications in unprecedented ways. The chairman and his managing director, Steven Van Roeckel, both deserved credit for their plans to reboot FCC.gov as a platform for government including the use of APIs and open source technologies like Drupal.
When it comes to the question of whether the public could see the proposed Open Internet rules before the commissioners vote upon it, the agency fell short of its transparency pledge. I have not found a legal precedent that explicitly gives the agency authority to keep the text of a proposed rule secret until it is voted upon by the Commission. While it is true that the FCC does not appear to be under no legal obligation to do so, given that the members of the commission presumably had to negotiate on the details of the final rules for vote, the decision not to share a version publicly may have made such discussion more flexible.
The choice not to post the proposed rules online before the most reced vote is an example of the same level of government transparency in the creation of important regulation as before, not more. It’s possible that the legal context for how the FCC operates might change in the future, if a bill by Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) were to be passed. Per his office, the FCC Reform Act would:
“provide more opportunities for the public to see pending FCC action by publishing the exact rule or amendment to a rule for at least 21 days and by allowing any Commissioner to ask for a vote on any order issued by a bureau. *Enhance consistency and transparency in the Commission’s operations by requiring the FCC to establish procedures for handling extensive new data submitted towards the end of a comment period, adequate review and deliberation regarding pending orders, providing the status of open rulemaking proceedings, minimum public review periods for statistical reports and ex parte communications. *Empower the Commission to operate more efficiently through reform of the “sunshine” rules, allowing a bipartisan majority of Commissioners to meet for collaborative discussions subject to transparency safeguards.
A provision that the FCC must “identify a market failure, consumer harm, or regulatory barrier to investment before adopting economically significant rules,” however, may well mean that Democrats in the Senate won’t support its advance. As always with these net neutrality stories, to be continued.
UPDATE: Commissioner Pai tweeted another picture of a revised plan February 21, including his intention to vote against it and again noting that the public cannot see it before the vote. In the tweet, he says the plan is now 317 pages, which means it has been trimmed by 15 pages.
Here is Pres. Obama’s revised 317-page plan to regulate the Internet. The public still can’t see it. I’m voting no. pic.twitter.com/RirBVPChmV
— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) February 25, 2015
“…armed with low-cost phones and an Internet connection, people are using civic-minded apps like ForageCity to tackle everything from public safety to potholes. The question is whether the technology will have the long-term effect that some foresee, or whether the “commons 2.0” and “participatory urbanism” will become empty marketing slogans.”
-Angela Woodall, writing in the Oakland Tribune about a new mobile application from Oakland’s Youth Radio that is designed to help people redistribute extra fruit and vegetables to people in need.
[Image Credit: Susan Mernit]
Woodal asks good questions and, as it happens, posed them to me last week in a phone interview. (I’m quoted in the article.)
Here’s a couple of thoughts that didn’t make it in. Mobile applications that civic developers are creating around the world — like ForageCity — are making it increasingly possible for more people to interact more easily and for less cost where ever and whenever they wish. That does lead to giving more power to more people to connect to one another and solve problems, or at least discuss them.
The potential for such apps to connect and, crucially, scale is particularly significant when there is a shared standard for the open government data that fuels, as with the standard for transit data (GTFS) that now exists in 450 different cities. Around the U.S., cities are slowly working with one another to define more such standards — but it’s a complicated process that doesn’t happen overnight, or even years.
The question is whether the technology will have the long-term effect that Code for America founder Jen Pahlka described to Woodall. On that count, I tend to give Pahlka — and my publisher, Tim O’Reilly — the benefit of the doubt.
As I said to the reporter, the potential for civic apps is enormous — but these the tools are only as good as the people who use them and adapt them. The tools can be quite good on their own — full stop — but many network effects will only take place with broad, mainstream adoption.
Smartphones can now be used for finding shelter, improving medical care and documenting riots — but the same devices are also used for gaming, pornography, celebrity gossip and shopping. While the apps used to find city services are generally not the ones used to surveil citizens, in practice the mobile device itself may be an agent of both actions.
Working out how to both protect the rights of citizens and empower citizens using mobile devices will be a difficult and crucial need in the years ahead.
It’s not immediately clear, at least to this observer, that state governments, Congress, regulators and law enforcement are up to the challenge, but it’s hard not to hope that they rise to the challenge.
Last month, I traveled to Moldova to speak at a “smart society” summit hosted by the Moldovan national e-government center and the World Bank. I talked about what I’ve been seeing and reporting on around the world and some broad principles for “smart government.” It was one of the first keynote talks I’ve ever given and, from what I gather, it went well: the Moldovan government asked me to give a reprise to their cabinet and prime minister the next day.
I’ve embedded the entirety of the morning session above, including my talk (which is about half an hour long). I was preceded by professor Beth Noveck, the former deputy CTO for open government at The White House. If you watch the entire program, you’ll hear from:
Without planning on it, I managed to deliver a one-liner that morning that’s worth rephrasing and reiterating here: Smart government should not just serve citizens with smartphones.
I look forward to your thoughts and comments, for those of you who make it through the whole keynote.
If the town square now includes public discourse online, democratic governments in the 21st century are finding that part of civic life now includes listening there. Given what we’ve seen in this young century, how governments deal with social media is now part of how they deal with civil liberties, press freedom, privacy and freedom of expression in general.
At the end of Social Media Week 2012, I moderated a discussion with Matt Lira, Lorelei Kelly our Clay Johnson at the U.S. National Archives. This conversation explored more than how social media is changing politics in Washington: we looked at its potential to can help elected officials and other public servants make better policy decisions in the 21st century.
I hope you find it of interest; all three of the panelists gave thoughtful answers to the questions that I and the audience posed.
After years of wrangling about online privacy in Washington, the White House has unveiled a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. A coalition of Internet giants, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, have committed to adopt “Do Not Track technology” in most Web browsers by the end of 2012.
These companies, which deliver almost 90 percent of online behavioral advertisements, have agreed not to track consumers if these choose to opt out of online tracking using the Do Not Track mechanism, which will likely manifest as a button or browser plug-in. All companies that have made this commitment will be subject to FTC enforcement.
“American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online,” said President Obama in a prepared statement. “As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy. That’s why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important. For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure. By following this blueprint, companies, consumer advocates and policymakers can help protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains a platform for innovation and economic growth.”
The announcement coincided with the release of a long awaited white paper: Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy. (Embedded below.)
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) welcomed the Administration’s unveiling of this “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” calling the industry announcement by industry to respect “Do Not Track” settings in Web browsers is “a positive step for consumer privacy.”
“The Administration’s call for a comprehensive privacy bill of rights comes at a pivotal time when there is a tremendous concern among consumers about their personal information,” said CDT President Leslie Harris in a prepared statement. “While we believe legislation will likely be necessary to achieve these protections, we support the White Paper’s call for the development of consensus rules on emerging privacy issues to be worked out by industry, civil society, and regulators.”
“For five years CDT has pushed for the development of a reliable ‘Do Not Track’ mechanism; today’s Digital Advertising Alliance announcement is an important step toward making ‘Do Not Track’ a reality for consumers,” said CDT’s Director of Consumer Privacy Justin Brookman in a prepared statement. “The industry deserves credit for this commitment, though the details of exactly what ‘Do Not Track’ means still need to be worked out,” Brookman said. “CDT will continue to work through the W3C standards setting process to develop strong and workable ‘Do Not Track’ guidelines.”
As Edward Wyatt reported at the New York Times, however, implementation of these online privacy guidelines won’t be just a matter of adding some lines of code:
Much remains to be done before consumers can click on a button in their Web browser to set their privacy standards. Congress will probably have to write legislation governing the collection and use of personal data, officials said, something that is unlikely to occur this year. And the companies that make browsers — Google, Microsoft, Apple and others — will have to agree to the new standards.
There will be a press conference tomorrow, streamed live from the White House. (Much more to come on this story tomorrow, though given that I’ll be traveling, you’ll be reading it elsewhere.)
· Individual Control: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data organizations collect from them and how they use it.
· Transparency: Consumers have a right to easily understandable information about privacy and security practices.
· Respect for Context: Consumers have a right to expect that organizations will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
· Security: Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
· Access and Accuracy: Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data are inaccurate.
· Focused Collection: Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
· Accountability: Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
White House Privacy White Paper(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();
This story has been updated as more statements and news stories came online.
President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, Jan. 4, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
On January 18, 2011, President Obama issued an executive order directing that regulations shall be adopted through a process that involves participation. 13 months later, the nation’s primary online regulatory website received an overdue redesign and, significantly, a commitment from the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to make regulatory data available to the public.
Today, the White House announced the relaunch of Regulations.gov in a post on remaking public participation by Cass Sunstein, the administrator of the OIRA:
…the President issues Executive Order 13563, in which he directed regulatory agencies to base regulations on an “open exchange of information and perspectives” and to promote public participation in Federal rulemaking. The President identified Regulations.gov as the centralized portal for timely public access to regulatory content online.
In response to the President’s direction, Regulations.gov has launched a major redesign, including innovative new search tools, social media connections, and better access to regulatory data. The result is a significantly improved website that will help members of the public to engage with agencies and ultimately to improve the content of rules.
The redesign of Regulations.gov also fulfills the President’s commitment in The Open Government Partnership National Action Plan to “improve public services,” including to “expand public participation in the development of regulations.” This step is just one of many, consistent with the National Action Plan, designed to make our Federal Government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.
I’ve embedded the video that Regulations.gov released about the launch below:
The relaunch includes the following changes:
That last detail will be of particular interest to the open government and open data community. Sunstein explained the thinking behind the role of APIs at the WhiteHouse.gov blog:
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are technical interfaces/tools that allow people to pull regulatory content from Regulations.gov. For most of us, the addition of “APIs” on Regulations.gov doesn’t mean much, but for web managers and experts in the applications community, providing APIs will fundamentally change the way people will be able to interact with public federal regulatory data and content.
The initial APIs will enable developers to pull data out of Regulations.gov, and in future releases, the site will include APIs for receiving comment submissions from other sites. With the addition of APIs, other web sites – ranging from other Government sites to industry associations to public interest groups – will now be able to repurpose publicly-available regulatory information on Regulations.gov, and format this information in unique ways such as mobile apps, analytical tools, “widgets” and “mashups.” We don’t know exactly where this will lead us – technological advances are full of surprises – but we are likely to see major improvements in public understanding and participation in rulemaking.
While the APIs will need to be explored and the data behind them assessed for quality, releasing regulatory data through APIs could in theory underpin a wide variety of new consumer-facing services. If you’re interested in the APIs, click on “Developers – Beta” at Regulations.gov to download a PDF with that contains API directions, URLs and information about an API Key.
This move comes as part of a larger effort towards e-rulemaking by this White House that will almost certainly be carried over into future administrations, regardless of the political persuasion of the incumbent of the Oval Office. In the 21st century, the country desperately needs a smarter approach to regulations.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last year, the ongoing regulatory review by OIRA is a nod to serious, long-standing concerns in the business community about excessive regulation hampering investment and job creation as citizens struggle to recover from the effects of the Great Recession.
As the cover story of this month’s issue of The Economist highlights, concerns about an over-regulated America are cresting in this election year, with headlines from that same magazine decrying “excessive environmental regulation” and calling for more accurate measurement of the cost of regulations. Deleting regulations is far from easy to do but there does appear to be a political tailwind behind doing so.
We’ll see if an upgraded online portal that is being touted as a means to include the public in participating in rulemaking makes any difference in regulatory outcomes. Rulemaking and regulatory review are, virtually by their nature, wonky and involve esoteric processes that rely upon knowledge of existing laws and regulations.
While the Internet could involve many more people in the process, improved outcomes will depend upon an digitally literate populace that’s willing to spend some of its civic surplus on public participation.
To put it another way, getting to “Regulations 2.0” will require “Citizen 2.0” — and we’ll need the combined efforts of all our schools, universities, libraries, non-profits and open government advocates to have a hope of successfully making that upgrade.
Last week was “Social Media Week” here in DC. The week featured speakers, panels, workshops, events, and parties all across the District, celebrating tech and social media in the nation’s Capital, including a special edition of the DC Tech Meetup. I moderated four panels, participated in a fifth and attended what I could otherwise. I found the occasion to be a great way to meet new people around the District. Following is a storify of some of my personal highlights, as told in tweets and photographs. This is by no means representative of everyone’s experiences, which are as varied as the attendees. It’s solely what I saw and what lingered from the social media week that was.
http://storify.com/digiphile/selected-highlights-of-my-2012-social-media-week-i.js[View the story “Selected Highlights of my 2012 Social Media Week in DC” on Storify]
E Pluribus Unum 