Keynote Address - Intimate Privacy, Expressive Power, and Trust: Essential Inputs For a Healthy Democracy
Thank you so much for including me in this crucial discussion about the impact of digital technologies on the health of our democracy. Human beings are central to every aspect of this discussion, from the design of networked tools to their use and more. As Professor Rebecca Green underscored, digital tools, including machine learning techniques that create deepfakes, can be used to enhance democratic participation. My talk focuses on the dark side of that coin. Digital tools are being exploited to target individuals, chill democratic discourse, and disrupt the political process. Social media companies cannot be trusted to tackle online abuse; market incentives point in the opposite direction given the dismantling of content moderation efforts. Legal reform is essential to securing the preconditions to online expression.
Let me begin by describing online abuse that imperils democratic participation. The abuse typically involves cyber stalking—targeting a specific person with a continuous “course of conduct” that causes them to fear physical harm or to suffer serious emotional distress. Victims often face a perfect storm of threats, defamatory lies, and intimate privacy violations. Women and minorities are disproportionately targeted; the abuse is sexually threatening and demeaning. Victims face rape threats, accusations that they have sexually transmitted infections, the publication of their home addresses next to the claim that they are available for sex, and the posting of authentic or hyper-realistic, fake nude images (deepfake sex imagery) without permission.
Female politicians around the globe face relentless online abuse. Nearly every day, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez receives tweets from men telling her that they want to kill her; her face has been morphed into porn via deep fake technology. During her tenure, Vice President Kamala Harris faced relentless abuse online, especially as she emerged as the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2024 campaign. No surprise, her face was morphed into pornography; deepfake sex videos of Vice President Harris circulated far and wide.