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.
There is broad recognition that the way platforms are designed impacts how users, communities, and societies experience benefits and harms from those platforms. The pitfalls of content moderation – including efficacy, consistency, legality, and business sustainability – have spurred a large and growing movement in academia, civil society, and public policy focused instead on how content-agnostic design patterns can more effectively support prosocial interactions and user well-being.
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. In the US, regulating effectively in this area requires grappling with a host of complex questions related to the First Amendment and Section 230 that will continue to be contested for years to come. Yet the existing research is only loosely connected to many ongoing policy development efforts. 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. Projects include:
- Better Feeds: Our Expert Working Group on Recommender Systems issued a comprehensive roadmap for policymakers and product designers to create better algorithms through detailed algorithm design transparency, user choices and defaults, and assessments of long-term impact on users. KGI engages broadly with enforcement authorities, legislators, industry, and independent experts to demonstrate how the Better Feeds concepts can form the basis of sound policy and design of algorithmic systems.
- Design-Focused Regulation: KGI advances research and policy analysis on platform regulation, including the implementation of the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s online safety regime. Through reports and commentary, KGI highlights practical pathways for the EU to align recommender system design with user rights, ensure the effectiveness of child safety strategies, and strengthen design-focused risk assessment requirements for platforms. This work provides evidence-based insights to strengthen policy implementation and ensure that its protections translate into meaningful public benefit.
- Age assurance: KGI conducts technical analysis of the effectiveness of age assurance mechanisms that have become a focal point for kids online safety debates, engages with the designers of these systems, and connects technical findings with policy discussions around the world.
