KGI is advancing collaboration between litigators pursuing cases against online platforms, researchers, and legal scholars to strengthen platform accountability through litigation. In collaboration with partners, KGI develops practical resources and tools to support litigators in shaping discovery and remedies, while also mapping how empirical research factors into judicial processes. This work helps inform technology design litigation and advances future scholarship, policy, and technology design.
Litigation is a battleground for technology accountability worldwide. A surge of lawsuits now targets the design choices behind online platforms – from extended use features and algorithmic manipulation to privacy violations. Many of these cases are employing legal theories grounded in consumer protection and product liability to attempt to make platforms answerable for their design decisions. 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 technology design and the law: litigators, technology researchers, and legal scholars.
KGI has two litigation-oriented projects: Litigating Technology Design and Empirical Research in Tech Litigation.
KGI is working with Tech Justice Law and the USC Neely Center to build a network of collaborators to develop practical resources and tools for direct use by litigators as they shape their approaches to discovery and remedy. Our joint Litigating Technology Design initiative seeks to bridge the gap between litigators, technology researchers, and legal scholars through empirical research, learning, convening, and development of model resources to bolster accountability strategies.
The Litigating Technology Design initiative is focused on three critical phases of litigation:
Through research, stakeholder interviews, interdisciplinary convenings, and the development of model resources, the initiative informs litigation strategies, expands access to data and evidence, facilitates empirically-grounded design reforms, and catalyzes sustained collaboration across disciplines. While Litigating Technology Design is focused on the litigation context in the US, lessons and learning are relevant for emerging litigation in other jurisdictions, including the UK, Europe, East Africa, and beyond. Ultimately, this work seeks to help ensure that litigation plays a transformative role in safeguarding the public from potential harms of digital platform design.
Key outputs include:
KGI and Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT) program are collaborating on a multi-year interdisciplinary research project to understand how empirical research is used in technology litigation in the US. Amid ongoing debates about platform design and online harms, this research project is mapping how and under what circumstances empirical evidence informs legal arguments and judicial reasoning in technology policy litigation in select cases.
As courts consider cases related to addictive design, consumer protection, age verification, and digital platform regulation, this project will map how empirical evidence informs legal arguments and judicial reasoning in technology policy litigation in select cases.
Key research questions include:
This project seeks to clarify the role of empirical research in judicial processes and inform future scholarship, policy, and design related to platform accountability. The project is part of KGI’s broader effort to strengthen platform accountability by increasing the use of empirical evidence in litigation through collaboration among litigators, technology researchers, and legal scholars.
Learn more here.
KGI’s Age Assurance Rules provides practical recommendations for designing age assurance rules that support youth online safety while appropriately accounting for tradeoffs involving privacy, service availability, competition, and openness.
KGI’s Assigning Responsibility for Age Assurance examines how policymakers can allocate responsibility for age assurance across the digital ecosystem. It provides practical recommendations for assigning age assurance obligations in ways that support youth online safety while appropriately accounting for tradeoffs involving privacy, competition, accessibility, and openness.
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KGI’s Measuring Risk I report examines what EU risk assessments and US litigation reveal about Snap and YouTube’s approaches to risks on their platforms, with a particular focus on risks to minors. The report explores the gap between what these platforms publicly disclose about risk mitigation and what has emerged through discovery in US litigation, including their own internal research, product development, and risk evaluation.
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The appeals of the United States v. Google search antitrust case turn in part on whether the remedies ordered address Google’s illegal monopoly in search – or whether, by declining to ban the payments Google makes for search defaults, the District Court has left the conduct at the heart of the case largely intact. In Pay for Half, KGI’s Alissa Cooper joins leading economists and competition experts in showing how the court can reasonably cap those payments rather than ban them, opening at least half of the market to rivals, including emerging AI-powered entrants, while preserving revenue for distribution partners.
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As the European Commission advances efforts under the Digital Markets Act to require Google to share its search data with competitors, lessons from historic antitrust remedies underscore how data access could be transformational in the AI-powered search market. While the Commission’s proposals represent a novel and comprehensive approach, key improvements to data scope and sharing frequency, privacy protections, and dispute resolution are needed. US courts and enforcers charged with implementing similar provisions should take note.
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As lawsuits involving AI, social media, privacy, competition, and platform accountability expand worldwide, courts are emerging as central actors shaping technology governance. A new tech litigation tracker developed by the Knight-Georgetown Institute, Tech Justice Law, and Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture & Technology program centralizes and tracks technology-related litigation and regulatory actions across jurisdictions and issue areas.
