Review: The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century, Jamie Susskind – The New York Times

Many of his proposals could do a lot of good. Congress should, as he suggests, require tech companies to be more transparent about their inner workings. Audits of their algorithms and procedures, like inspections of industrial plants, would allow regulators and users to understand how tech products operate and assess what harm they may be doing.

Another promising idea is establishing a system of premarket certification for digital products. In the same way the Food and Drug Administration clears drugs for the market, a regulatory body could review and evaluate software and other digital products before they are released to ensure they comply with the law, and perhaps evaluate how they comport with community values.

Some proposals, however, seem more suited to the ivory tower than the real world. Susskind calls for a vast system of deliberative mini-publics, groups of ordinary citizens that would develop policies in areas like taxation of data processing. Its an idea that no doubt has great appeal in the seminar room, but Ive taken to looking at my fellow subway passengers and wondering how they would do hammering out data-processing taxation policy. Im skeptical.

Susskind also proposes a system for regulating the moderation of websites, including checklists of things moderators must do. He suggests disciplinary mechanisms by which moderators could be subject to fines or disqualification. As we saw this spring with the debacle of the Department of Homeland Securitys advisory board to combat disinformation, Americans, at least, have a deep resistance to the idea of government getting too involved in deciding what speech is acceptable. Even if Susskinds idea is a good one, its Orwellian overtones would doubtless make it, at least in the United States, a political nonstarter.

Susskind notes that he was too young for 1990s cyber-utopianism, but at times he seems to be engaging in a 2020s version, such as his vision of citizen panels churning out policy edicts to fix big techs problems. Still, in trying to make the world right, an excess of idealism is not the worst thing. As we take on the task of pushing back against the internets baleful influences which we must Susskinds intelligent book can serve as a valuable guide.

Adam Cohen, a former member of the New York Times editorial board, is the author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Courts Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America.

THE DIGITAL REPUBLIC: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century, by Jamie Susskind | 304 pp. | Pegasus Books | $28.95

Continued here:

Review: The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century, Jamie Susskind - The New York Times