[Air-L] New CDT report - Learning to Share: Lessons on Data-Sharing from Beyond Social Media

[Dhanaraj Thakur]

Hi all,

I am excited to announce that our new report "Learning to Share: Lessons 
on Data-Sharing from Beyond Social Media 
<https://cdt.org/insights/learning-to-share-lessons-on-data-sharing-from-beyond-social-media/>" 
was just published. It builds on the Center for Democracy & Technology's 
work 
<https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-FX-RAtD-workshop-report-final-int.pdf> 
to address the problem of independent researcher access to data from 
social media companies. In this new report we examine how other 
industries have attempted to balance the benefits of novel research 
against privacy and other harms, and what social media companies can 
learn from that. More specifically, we examine data sharing practices 
among clinical trials, electricity smart meters, and environmental 
impact statements. Based on this we offer several lessons for social 
media companies including how:

  * Baseline information can be shared with researchers without
    compromising privacy.
  * Addressing the “black box” problem of how data gets generated will
    make for more robust, actionable research.
  * Transparency mechanisms let civil society serve as watchdogs for
    making sure companies are sufficiently sharing data.
  * Standards make shared data usable.
  * Data sharing should be flexible to accommodate public crises.
  * Ease of understanding is a factor that should be considered in the
    design of privacy practices.
  * Data can be tailored to different use cases.
  * Having a diverse set of actors controlling access to data creates
    new affordances.

You can read a Twitter thread about it here 
<https://twitter.com/CenDemTech/status/1567879345431089152> and the pdf 
of the full report is available here 
<https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220907-learningtoshare-final.pdf>. 
Feel free to share and we look forward to your feedback.


take care,

Dhanaraj



-- 

*Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director
Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>*
*E:* dthakur at cdt.org | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj