Committees

Academic banned from studying Facebook ads to give evidence on the Online Safety Bill

13 October 2021

On Thursday 14 October the Draft Online Safety Bill (Joint Committee) takes evidence from an academic banned from styudying online ads and misiniformation of Facebook

Witnesses

Thursday 14 October 2021

9:45am:

  • Laura Edelson, Researcher at New York University
  • Guillame Chaslot, Founder at Algo Transparency
  • Renée DiResta, Research Manager at Stanford Internet Observatory

An academic researcher who was banned from studying online ads and misinformation on Facebook will give evidence to MPs and Peers as part of their work examining the draft Online Safety Bill on Thursday 14 October from 9.45am.

Laura Edelson, a member of the New York University (NYU) Facebook Ads Observatory, will give her views on how social media should be regulated and outline how the draft Bill should provide transparency for researchers investigating the platforms.

On the same panel will be Guillame Chaslot, former Google engineer who worked on its recommendations algorithm and founder of Algo Transparency, and Renée DiResta, Research Manager at Stanford Internet Observatory and member of the Elections Integrity Partnership.

Purpose of the session

The Committee are seeking evidence on how harmful and illegal content spreads online, how content moderation works in practice, the engineering behind algorithmic recommendation tools and how this could lead to the proliferation of  harm online.

Further information