Is It Difficult to Enforce Global Standards at Scale?

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I think in general, people say it's difficult to enforce global standards at scale for many reasons. For elected, high level politicians, it's actually not right? Like, they're not that many presidents and country rulers that are on a given social media around the world. But how difficult it is to keep an eye on country rulers who are on your social networks at any given moment? That's less true. I think it actually is fair that you can make a policy here and decide to enforce it.

Disinformation researchers have been fighting two battles over the last decade: one to combat and contain harmful information, and one to convince the world that these manipulations have an offline impact that requires complex, nuanced solutions. Camille François, Chief Information Officer at the cybersecurity company Graphika and an affiliate of the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, believes that our common understanding of the problem has recently reached a new level. In this interview, she catalogues the key changes she observed between studying Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and helping convene and operate the Election Integrity Partnership watchdog group before, during and after the 2020 election. “I'm optimistic, because I think that things that have taken quite a long time to land are finally landing, and because I think that we do have a diverse set of expertise at the table,” she says. Camille and Tristan Harris dissect the challenges and talk about the path forward to a healthy information ecosystem.