My paper "A Genealogy of Digital Platform Regulation" is now forthcoming on
@GLTReview
. Given the key influence that
@julie17usc
's work has had on the genesis of this piece, I can't think of a better home for it - thrilled!
✨2023 feels much like 2022 but for one - important - detail: I'll be moving back to Boston and starting a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in Law and Computer Science at
@NUSL
and
@KhouryCollege
in July!! ✨
🌟Officially a doctor!! Proud of the work, humbled by these incredible people' mentorship & excited to be starting a joint Postdoc Fellowship
@ILI_NYU
and
@dlicornelltech
with *amazing* scholars, mentors, and peers in New York in January. Looking forward to what awaits.
Doctor of Juridical Science (in Latin: Scientiae Juridicae Doctor, or SJD). Years of Latin in school were not what got me here. Thanks to all those who were, or that I have met, along the way.
We are pleased to announce that
@Elibietti
, an expert on market regulation, data and antitrust law, will join the
@Northeastern
community on July 15, 2023, as assistant professor of law and computer science.
#NUSLPride
@NUGlobalNews
🥁NEW PAPER ALERT🥁
Delighted to share a draft chapter that traces a genealogy of platform regulation discourse, and in particular how views of law, freedom and power evolved from early roots in 1990s cyberspace visions to current debates
I guess the more annoying part of studying AI is being surrounded by people who prefer to speculate on dystopian futures than to diagnose the dystopian present
My grandmother Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri passed away yesterday. She was one of the most prominent Italian archeologists of the last half century. As a woman in a climate not so favorable to women, she also fought many other battles.
Lina Khan is suffering from what I'd call the Greta Thunberg effect: 1 A competent young woman with vision and integrity starts stirring things up. 2 Interest groups find her a threat and build an image of evil, corruption or incompetence on thin air. 3 The public takes the bait.
Proud and slightly terrified to share this pre-publication version of my article on the normative emptiness of notice and consent in digital settings (forthcoming on Pace Law Review)
🥁🥁🥁📢Announcement📢🥁🥁🥁
After months in the works, in collaboration with the
@yaleisp
@knightfdn
, we are thrilled to announce the launch of a new White Paper Series on the Digital Public Sphere
Hi legal academic Twitter! I am on the entry-level academic market. I write on technology law, privacy and antitrust in the digital economy, focusing on how platforms like Google or Facebook shape our political consumption choices.
More here:
💥🥁 My paper, "The Data-Attention Imperative", explores the particular harms and regulatory gaps around digital platforms' data and attention-based business model. 🥁💥
It is still looking for a good 🏡.
On SSRN for those who want to peak:
Delighted to announce that the final version of "A Genealogy of Digital Platform Regulation" 7 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 1 (2023) is now published on
@GLTReview
Asking whether one should "break-up" or "regulate/democratize" digital platform companies is the wrong question. We must break-up, we must regulate, we must experiment with many legal approaches to digital markets at once. A short thread 1/-
Also, since today is a Twitter day, here is a photo of happy me at the mountains in Italy. And also, in personal news, I will soon join
@ILI_NYU
and
@dlicornelltech
as a joint fellow in NYC. More updates to follow. Be well everyone and don't spend all your time on Twitter 💛
Friends, how to express my amazement at the idea that *all* of the Chapters of my thesis will very likely be ready in a week after four years and a couple of months of grueling PhDing and two pandemic years. Feeling some glimpses of pride.
I wrote up some thoughts on how to understand data's role in competition policy. Antitrust authorities have not always thought of data as relevant. Now they do, but are they getting data right?
@ProMarket_org
Very excited to finally announce that we won a research grant for a comparative US-EU-African antimonopoly project with
@jackie_mwangi
@BostoenFriso
So excited to dig in this much needed research
Where I declare myself a Rawlsian sympathizer and annoy pretty much *everyone* ...
New draft essay titled "Rawls and Antitrust's Justice Function" is up on SSRN.
My article "Structuring Digital Platform Markets: Antitrust and Utilities' Convergence" has been shortlisted for a writing prize by
@Concurrences
Help me win by reading & clicking on the stars at the bottom of this link 👇
In case you thought my schedule in the coming weeks wasn't crazy enough, next week I'll be speaking at
@knightcolumbia
and
@OxfordLawFac
about my article on the Genealogy of Digital Platform Regulation and in DC at a conference on Tech Platforms & Antitrust
Gotta say LPE is a really cool space. It is different from other progressive/regulatory/legal spaces in that it combines legal and policy creativity with real intellectual depth and breadth.
This is an important point and a huge blind spot in US academia. Ignoring relevant local knowledge is a mark of *bad* scholarship. US Law Schools must think seriously about about their role in reinforcing hegemonic knowledge structures.
Thinking of starting a reading group on 'infrastructure', specifically what naming something 'infrastructure' makes possible legally & institutionally. It could meet online or in the Boston area. Interested?
@NUSLclic
@BKCHarvard
@yaleisp
Just uploaded to SSRN an updated version of "Structuring Digital Platform Markets: Antitrust and Utilities' Convergence" (forthcoming 2024) A short thread describing its main contributions and why this piece of writing matters (to me). 1/
After more than a year hidden in my secret folders, it is time to share this new version of my paper "From Ethics Washing to Ethics Bashing" (previously published in the proceedings of the ACM FAcct/FAT* 2020 conference)
🥁🥁Another announcement 🥁 I wrote a short piece on the cyberlibertarian & neoliberal roots of current digital platform regulation efforts. And on how to move beyond them. Thanks to
@AsherSchechter
@ProMarket_org
for the helpful editing!
What should I read or assign my students on generative AI? News articles, academic papers, white papers, anything goes. Please post recommendations including your own writing below. My attempt to remedy a summer of AI-voidance...
🤖 Today at 4 pm: Elettra Bietti (
@Elibietti
@Harvard_Law
) discusses "From Ethics Washing to Ethics Bashing: Viewing Tech Ethics from Within Moral Philosophy"
More info:
▶️Livestream:
Au revoir Twitter, you're a bit too toxic for me rn. I hope people understand that these 3 things can be true at once and are the essence of academia: (a) I'm a fan of
@Klonick
; (b) I think Kate's work is pioneering and important; (c) I sometimes disagree with Kate.
There's an important sense in which "digital platform governance" is popularly perceived as focusing on "speech and communication" on digital platforms. As privacy and antitrust scholars can attest, platform governance can mean a lot more than that.
I am excited to be spending a semester at
@privacyint
and
@cambridgelaw
working on data protection, competition law, speech, adtech and, of course, platforms... Come visit or ping me if you are around!
UNRWA lifesaving assistance is about to end following countries decisions to cut their funding to the Agency.
Our humanitarian operation, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing. I am shocked such decisions are taken based on alleged behavior of a…
I was invited to discuss
@julie17usc
's wonderful book "Between Truth and Power" alongside smart talented friends
@jennifercobbe
and
@mikarv
. Thanks
@lilianedwards
for encouraging me to write up my thoughts on disinfo & platform governance. Here they are
My piece "Self-Regulating Platforms and Antitrust Justice" is now out on
@TexasLRev
, volume 101. I argue against the separability between welfare (or efficiency) maximization as a goal of antitrust law and distributive justice considerations
For no particular reason, I want to remind doge-land that I write and think about the notion of (distributive) justice in (digital) markets. Here's a recent piece on the relation btw efficiency and distribution in the antitrust context.
I wrote a(n oxymoronically) short deep dive on some old and new trends in antitrust enforcement in the United States and Europe, with a focus on this moment of ferment in Big Tech regulation
@AdaLovelaceInst
@BKCHarvard
@yaleisp
🌟Long due update 🌟My essay "Self-Regulating Platforms and Antitrust Justice" is now up on SSRN. It is forthcoming in the next print volume of the
@TexasLRev
and I am thrilled to be working with the journal's amazing editors
Heartbroken by repeated failed attempts at being reunited with the people I love. I can only start to imagine what it must be like to be systematically denied border access because of one's nationality or religion or skin color.
Update: In Paris til March 13, then Boston & New York where I'll present on the political economy & justice of data
@AINowInstitute
on March 25, then Big Tech and Antitrust conference
@yaleisp
presenting on Rawls and antitrust, then Portsmouth workshop on disinfo, then London!
Last day of teaching privacy with
@ugasser
and
@bea_botero
at Harvard Law School. Humbled by students' feedback. What an astoundingly generous, enriching and successful collaboration in the midst of a global pandemic. No doubt a highlight of this first half of 2021.
Controversial statement: I would rather let people track me unlawfully than have to click "I accept" on every single webpage I open. Consent cannot work. Please let's rethink cookies. This is collective madness.
The biggest thing I learned working in the corporate sector was not how evil people were or how flawed their outputs or work ethic, but rather how miserable it made me to be surrounded by standards, feedback and incentives modelled around cutthroat competitiveness and greed
Picking up an old draft article you thought you'd never publish and realizing it might actually make an important contribution - and basically trying to get it ready for publication in a week while moving cities? I say why not...
If you think data as property analogies seem cool again, think twice. My take on why this is a misdirection: (can share longer piece in draft if you ask)
I cannot emphasize how much better I find student essays that are able to describe a problem as opposed to ones that rush into conclusions, policy prescriptions.
On Monday, a court sided with the FTCs effort to stop Facebook from profiting of off children.
Facebook responded by filing a claim to declare the FTC unconstitutional.
They don’t want any barrier to the exploitation of children and the FTC is putting up that barrier.
For anyone outside the US trying to understand what's happening on campuses, these links are a good start.
In short: students are doing what they are supposed to do, fight for peace and democracy in the face of silencing, repression, authoritarianism.
Confused & dismayed about what is going on at Columbia? If you read just two things make it these
Blistering and brilliant editorial by
@ColumbiaSpec
On norm breaking by the admin by Prof David Pozen (Law)
A new niece was born two days ago in NYC, and it reminded me of how lavishly we spend money on our Western newborns and how recklessly we kill babies in other parts of the world. Our systems of government and standards of morality are heartbreakingly unjust.
Kind reminder to my US colleagues that the geopolitics of information is dominated and shaped by US capital markets far more than it is by any Russian spy network or Chinese app, however successful.
I don't want my timeline to be a succession of retweets of important, heart-wrenching, difficult, puzzling, existential questions around what is happening in Gaza, but I also kind of want to because it is THE MOST IMPORTANT & unbelievable thing happening right now.
I often wonder whether all the podcasts, op-eds and newsletters exist because of the needs of listeners/readers or because of the needs of authors/hosts. I find them fun but also see them as symptomatic of a society that prioritizes quantity and speed over quality and depth.
Very excited that the first cluster of essays in our series on the "Digital Public Sphere" hosted by the
@yaleisp
and funded by
@knightfdn
is finally out and published on the
@YaleLJournal
. Thrilled about the invaluable contributions these essays make in this space.
The first part of our new Collection, Envisioning Equitable Online Governance, is now available in the YLJ Forum! We collaborated with the
@yaleisp
and the
@knightfdn
to publish a series of Essays examining law and the digital public sphere through equity frames.
My PhD took much out of me, too, but we did not have COVID then and had precious social support (outside of academia). I wonder what we can do to change academia for people PhDing now? And, since many of us feel COVID exhaustion and academia feels so squeezed, how to do it?
I've long wanted to write a piece about the internet through the lens of the built environment. Architecture, decay, ruins... this could be the right time :)
What is interoperability? And is it that important? We have the answers to everything you have always wanted to know about interoperability without daring to ask in our explainer. 👇
To all the followers who are here for the data, privacy, platforms, antitrust, speech and philosophy content, this is what's on offer today. Have a nice Sunday
"Having privacy" in the United States means spending 20 minutes trying to opt-out from T-Mobile selling your data to advertisers through their website, failing because the link doesn't work, and then spending another half an hour on the phone with them.
The Berkman Klein Center’s *open call for fellows* is back 📢 now accepting fellowship applications for the 2022-2023 academic year. Deadline: January 31, 2022.