Research & Commentary

Across the EU and US, two influential digital governance regimes are producing new evidence about how large social media companies assess and respond to potential risks on their platforms. KGI’s latest paper compares Meta and TikTok’s EU risk assessments with internal documents emerging from US litigation, revealing significant gaps between public claims about risk mitigation and evidence of how these risks are actually addressed.

Governments around the world are adopting online age assurance requirements of different kinds, reshaping how digital services are accessed by adults and youth. KGI’s latest report provides a technical assessment of how age assurance systems work in practice and examines their accuracy, circumvention resistance, availability, and privacy implications.

Algorithms determine what we read, watch, and encounter online, and, increasingly, they also influence our offline lives. Yet algorithms are often built to maximize short-term engagement and capture attention, rather than to deliver long-term value to users. KGI’s new commentary takes a deep dive into the evolving landscape of recommender system design, highlighting six innovative trends that show it is possible to design better feeds that put people first.

Model legislation published by the Knight-Georgetown Institute provides a pathway for lawmakers who want to encourage better algorithmic feeds that put users’ interests front and center.

Should we be able to understand the risks kids face online? Understand how brands communicate with consumers? How politicians communicate online? These questions – and many more – can only be answered when public platform data is accessible. A new series by Tech Policy Press and the Knight-Georgetown Institute explores why public platform data matters, what threats researchers and journalists face trying to access this data, and how we can build a more transparent digital public sphere.