CDT’s Future of Speech Online 2024 Event Spotlights AI, Elections & Speech

Since 2017, the Center for Democracy & Technology has partnered with Stand Together Trust to host experts from around the country and representing a range of perspectives for an event examining the Future of Speech Online (FOSO) – a gathering, including leaders from government, civil society, industry and academia, to examine how free expression is being shaped by technology. Against the backdrop of a record-number of global elections and in the advent of an AI age, FOSO 2024 fittingly spotlighted “AI, Elections, & Speech.” Leading voices on a range of issues participated in a two-day event (September 16 & 17) full of discussions on how to preserve free expression and proactively protect election integrity. 

Keynote speaker Renee DiResta kicked-off the event, pointing out how a fragmented social media landscape and isolated information silos have created an environment conducive to spreading rumors. Echo chambers of mis- and disinformation create splintered realities that can undermine the integrity of elections. Despite these challenges, DiResta remained optimistic about society’s ability to create systems and design solutions that preserve democracy and support free speech.

“What’s At Stake?” was both an urgent question and fitting title of the first FOSO panel which featured CDT’s own Kate Ruane and Tim Harper, Factchequeado’s Laura Zommer, Dangerous Speech Project’s Cathy Buerger, and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ David Toomey. Harper pointed out how generative AI can create new ways of spreading existing narratives and expressed concerns about AI’s ability to hypertarget individuals with misleading information. He highlighted CDT’s new report which showed how AI chatbots could impact the right to vote and overall election integrity for voters with disabilities. Zommer observed that these trends are not unique to the U.S., but happening at a global scale. The panelists noted how efforts like counterspeech, fact checking, and reporting misinformation can help improve the quality of our information environment. 

A fireside chat focused on the major role companies have in protecting elections closed out FOSO’s first day. The conversation, moderated by CDT CEO Alexandra Reeve Givens, featured Meta’s Roy Austin and Microsoft’s Ginny Badanes. Austin and Badanes addressed some of the anticipated harms that AI-generated deepfakes can have on elections. They also noted some benefits of AI, especially as a tool to facilitate content moderation at an unprecedented scale, and pointed to watermarking and image labeling of AI-generated content as a potential way to combat deepfakes. The panelists emphasized how technology companies are talking more publicly about these issues and colloborating to combat the coordinated inauthentic behavior that continues to pollute online environments.

During the second day of FOSO, discussions around the infrastructure of the information ecosystem continued. Internet Sans Frontières’ Julie Owono, WITNESS’s Sam Gregory, and Wikimedia Foundation’s Costanza Sciubba Caniglia participated in “Infrastructure of Truth,” a panel discussion moderated by the National Press Club’s Beth Francesco. The panelists agreed that short term solutions, like fact-checking, which are currently used to combat misinformation are not sustainable in their current form. Gregory called for “a mindset shift” to building systems that address content moderation at scale. Owono observed a need to refocus from attempting to ensure every piece of content is “right,” to building societal trust in  large-scale content moderation systems. 

The recent Supreme Court case decisions in Murthy v. Missouri and Netchoice v. Paxton were the focus of the next panel, titled “Free Speech on the Ballot.” CDT’s Becca Branum led a conversation with Knight First Amendment Institute’s Alex Abdo, Lawyers’ Committee’s David Brody, and National Coalition Against Censorship’s Lee Rowland. The conversation explored how these decisions left much unanswered about how the government should approach speech on private platforms. As CDT’s Branum noted in an earlier blog post, “there is much work to do to understand the intricacies of how the First Amendment protects social media platforms and their users.”

The concluding panel of FOSO, “Post Mortems: Researcher Access to Data and Oversight Mechanisms to Study the Election,” addressed this concerning trend. Rebekah Tromble and Brandon Silverman, both of George Washington’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, Atlantic Council’s Rose Jackson, and Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression’s Agustina Del Campo, examined ethics around data access and its importance to preserving election integrity. Panelists cited Meta’s decision to shutter CrowdTangle as a key example of the impact corporate decisions can have on civil society’s ability to monitor elections in the U.S. and abroad. (CDT has advocated for Meta to reinstate this open access tool.) 

This year’s FOSO event provided a forum to discuss both emerging problems and potential solutions to some of democracy’s most pressing issues. Greater access, increased collaboration, and clearer policies, were just some of the paths forward that arose in the conversations. As the sociotechnical landscape continues to evolve, there’s work to be done to preserve democratic values and protect civil liberties. “We are not passive observers,” DiResta asserted in her keynote address. “The power to shape our future is in our hands.” 

Missed the event? Links to stream FOSO 2024 below.
Day 1 Recording
Day 2 Recording