Panel Concludes U.S. Relatively Unprepared to Lead Global Push for Web Transparency

WASHINGTON, December 7, 2021 – Digital policy experts said at an Atlantic Council event Monday that the U.S. is unprepared to lead an emerging global push for online platforms to institute more transparent website policies.

Efforts abroad, such as the Danish government’s “Action Coalition” as part of its Tech for Democracy Initiative, may prove difficult for the U.S. to support, with continued absence of  substantive online privacy policy on American soil.

Many believe that to promote international web transparency, the U.S. must regulate the large number of companies headquartered within its borders. However, the U.S. does not have a federal privacy law and such regulation is thus difficult.

Within the U.S., privacy experts have called on the Federal Trade Commission to enforce privacy protections against internet service providers.

Experts say that the necessary actions of democratic governance to promote online transparency must take place in parallel in order for such a push to be successful.

Chloe Colliver, head of digital policy and strategy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Global, said Monday that European Union involvement in transparency efforts still remains somewhat unclear, yet its involvement could provide a significant boost to the movement.

Much of the difficulty in promoting better transparency among online platforms lies in that allowing platforms to write rules that would govern themselves would create a significant conflict of interest, yet no one would be more knowledgeable in writing rules for governance than those same platforms.

In terms of other transparency reforms, Colliver suggests that how much data companies can collect from users be rethought, and many experts believe that multistakeholder research and development centers should be created as well as that models for research oversight may require revision.