FROM THE TRENCHES — ANTHONY HOUSEFATHER, the parliamentary secretary for public services and procurement, is no stranger to tense exchanges with The Platforms. Back in March, Housefather joined the House heritage committee in grilling SABRINA GEREMIA, the head of Google Canada, after the company claimed a temporary blocking of news content for a fraction of Canadian users was simply a “test.” — On the road: Last week, Housefather was in Brussels for meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism, which includes lawmakers from the E.U., United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-Florida) is a co-chair, alongside MICHAL COTLER-WUNSH, a former member of the Israeli Knesset. The task force's two-day confab included meetings with civil society groups and a three-hour hearing featuring European reps for Twitter, Meta and YouTube. Housefather came away unsatisfied by their inability to root out antisemitic posts by enforcing their own content moderation policies. He and his colleagues want the platforms to open themselves up to independent review of those policies. Playbook got on the horn with Housefather while he was still overseas. We spoke about the power and influence of major platforms in modern democracies — and how governments should respond. Here’s what stood out from our conversation. — One stat that matters: “The experts all estimated only between 4-11 percent of antisemitic posts are actually removed from major platforms, versus the platforms' confident assertions that they're taking off more than 90 percent. The experts talked a lot about the importance of algorithmic transparency, and giving them the information that allows them to track what's happening on the platforms.” — Not a monolith: “Each of the different platforms has its own unique models, its own interrelationships with government, its own leadership that has different perspectives. “I think ELON MUSK's purchase of Twitter has created a situation at Twitter, in terms of repealed policies and mass firings, that is different from the other platforms. “The attitude of Meta in Canada is different from the attitude of Google, in terms of my own interactions with them. I think Google has made some kind of an effort to work with parliamentarians that Meta has not. “I, for one, prize the ability that we have as parliamentarians to engage with the platforms and have our own efforts outside of legislation to try to convince platforms to do certain things." — On reining in the platforms: “It's not a free speech issue. It's an issue of contracts. The platforms’ users are the ones they enter into a contract with, and they're not respecting the contracts they have with their users. And the users are put into a contract of adhesion that they have no control over, because it's basically you accept it or you don't get on the platform. Governments need to help them fight back. “I am convinced that the governments of different countries need to act in concert. We should have very similar terms that comply with every country’s Bill of Rights and Charter of Rights — but that places the onus on the platforms to keep the platform safe, based on their own published guidelines.”
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