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 platform design litigation and advances future scholarship, policy, and technology design.
Litigation is a battleground for platform 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 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.
KGI is working with the Tech Justice Law Project 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 Platform 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 Platform 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 Platform 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.
KGI and Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT) program are collaborating on a mulit-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.
Join us in-person or virtually as Jonathan Sallet, lead litigator for the State Plaintiffs in the landmark US v. Google search antitrust case, breaks down the trial and remedies issued by the court.
In-person & Virtual
Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy Auditorium
125 E St. NW, Washington, DC
12:30pm ET
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On September 2, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an opinion that many in the tech industry had been waiting on for more than 15 years: a ruling about how to rectify Google’s maintenance of its illegal monopoly in online search. The most consequential aspect of the opinion is that the remedies will not meaningfully address the conduct at the center of the case: Google paying distributors like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla tens of billions of dollars per year to lock in Google Search as the default on nearly every mobile phone and across much of the desktop browser market.
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The UK Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally designated Google as having Strategic Market Status – a step toward curbing the company’s dominance in online search. The Knight-Georgetown Institute finds evidence to support this designation and urges the UK to prioritize stronger interventions that address key barriers to entry in the search market.
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The European Commission’s new guidelines to protect minors online mark a step forward in online child safety, offering recommendations for how platforms are designed, including limits on manipulative design techniques, defaults to maximize protection, more agency for children, and regular risk reviews.
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Robust and comprehensive remedies in the US government’s Google search antitrust case would help prevent Google from leveraging its monopoly power in search to dominate the emerging market for generative AI products.
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A new report by Ofcom, the UK’s communication services regulator, underscores the challenges researchers face in accessing platform data and proposes a roadmap to improve researcher’s access to data to support online safety.
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A new legislative toolkit from the Knight-Georgetown Institute equips lawmakers with modular components to support the development of legislation that encourages algorithmic feeds that put people first.
