Issues

KGI seeks to inform policy debates by translating existing research, producing novel research and policy outputs, and synthesizing evidence about the impacts of policy interventions domestically and abroad. Our work is situated within two related fields of technology policy: platform governance and competition policy.

Platform Governance

KGI’s work on platform governance addresses how platform design choices shape user behavior, risks, and societal outcomes. KGI works across policy contexts with independent researchers, civil society partners, industry experts, litigators, and journalists to inform the development of online platform accountability, transparency, and regulation.

Under the broad umbrella of platform governance, KGI has three workstreams: platform design in policy and industry, platform design litigation, and public data access.

Platform Design in Policy and Industry

Each day, billions of users use online tech platforms or scroll through social media feeds, search results, and streaming recommendations that shape what they see, read, and watch. The design of these online platforms, including their algorithmic feeds, influence how users experience the online information environment and determine what users see, wielding enormous influence over users’ online experiences and, increasingly, their lives offline. 

Federal, state, and global policymakers have proposed and adopted a variety of approaches to regulate platform designs and their impacts, from strengthening transparency and user control of algorithmic feeds to addressing deceptive design features or requiring age verification. The maturation of policymaking in this area requires bolstering scientific consensus about which platform design changes effectively mitigate which harms, how to understand the tradeoffs, how to best measure and evaluate design changes, and other questions. 

KGI is working to deepen research-to-policy connections and convene stakeholders in support of this agenda. Learn more about our work on platform design in policy and industry here.

Platform Design Litigation

Litigation is a battleground for platform accountability around the world. Lawsuits across US states now target the design choices behind online platforms – from extended use designs and algorithmic manipulation to privacy violations. Many of these cases employ legal theories grounded in consumer protection and product liability to attempt to make platforms answerable for the design of their products. As US lawsuits advance to critical discovery and remedy phases, there is a growing need to foster collaboration between three communities whose work sits at the intersection of platform design and the law: litigators, technology researchers, and legal scholars. 

KGI has two litigation-oriented projects: Litigating Platform Design and Empirical Research in Tech Litigation. See our work on platform design litigation here. 

Public Data Access

Access to public data about online discourse – the reach of viral posts, the connections between social media accounts, and so much more – is essential for accountability and informed public conversations.  Public data access enables independent research and investigation, informs evidence-based policymaking, and advances collective understanding about the role of online platforms in our lives. 

Thanks to transparency advocates, we have seen various transparency regimes take hold – voluntary, self-regulatory, and regulatory – requiring platforms to share information about their activities, algorithms, and processes with vetted entities including researchers, regulators, or business competitors, and sometimes with the broader public. Other organizations, companies, and researchers have developed automated tools to independently collect and analyze public platform data.

Yet the tools that once allowed researchers, journalists, and civil society to study platforms are disappearing, undermining transparency and accountability. Platforms restrict researcher access while public data is monetized for advertisers, data brokers, and AI training. This imbalance – where companies profit but independent researchers are left in the dark – undermines transparency and weakens oversight.

KGI advances efforts to expand public access to public platform data, drawing on the research community’s experience with platform datasets to push for practical and policy changes that improve transparency and accountability. Learn more about our work on public data access here.

Competition Policy

KGI’s work on competition policy is all about effective pathways to deconcentrating the markets that shape information production and dissemination. We focus on what can be learned from empirical analysis and on-the-ground implementation of antitrust regulations and competition enforcement regimes across the US, EU, UK, and globally. KGI provides technical insights and convenes researchers, companies, practitioners, and civil society to explore opportunities, challenges, and interventions for addressing competitive barriers in digital markets. 

KGI has two competition policy areas of focus: Search Competition specifically and Digital Markets more broadly.

Search Competition

Search engines shape how billions of people find and access information and what voices get heard online. Google Search – the world’s dominant search engine – has faced mounting regulatory scrutiny and enforcement actions around the world over its anti-competitive practices designed to preserve its dominance across the web and devices. Search is a complex market where designing effective interventions requires grappling with questions related to large-scale data collection, advances in AI and other technological inputs, relationships with adjacent markets in mobile and on the web, and consumer behavior and decision-making in the market.

Our work on search competition brings together experts from across economics, technology, law, and business to help advance and inform interventions to restore competition in the digital search market. Our work examines both high-profile antitrust litigation in the US and the development of novel ex-ante regulatory frameworks in Europe and the UK. Learn more about our work on search competition here. 

Digital Markets

Hardly a day goes by without competition regulation or enforcement involving tech companies appearing in news headlines around the world. From app stores and browsers to social networking, advertising, and AI-powered consumer services, dominant platforms shape how billions of people around the world access information. 

Our work on competition regulation and enforcement in digital markets synthesizes leading research, bridging independent research with policymaking across various jurisdictions. We examine novel regulatory and enforcement tools and strategies, with a focus on understanding which approaches effectively promote competition. Learn more about our work on digital markets here.