The Stanford Cyber Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, is Stanford University's research center for the interdisciplinary study of issues at the nexus of technology, governance and public policy focused on digital technologies impacting democracy, security, and geopolitics globally.
Spring Seminar Series | APRIL - JUNE
The Spring Seminar Series kicks off April 11th. For dates and speaker list visit the Spring Seminar Series page. Titles and abstracts coming soon.
The mission of the Global Digital Policy Incubator is to inspire policy and governance innovations that reinforce democratic values, universal human rights, and the rule of law in the digital realm. We serve as a collaboration hub for the development of norms, guidelines, and laws that enhance freedom, security, and trust in the global digital ecosystem. The bottom line question that guides this initiative: How do we help governments and private sector technology companies establish governance norms, policies, and processes that allow citizens and society to reap the upside benefits of technology, while protecting against the downside risks?
The Stanford Internet Observatory is a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media. Under the program direction of computer security expert Alex Stamos, the Observatory was created to learn about the abuse of the internet in real time, to develop a novel curriculum on trust and safety that is a first in computer science, and to translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good.
The Program on Democracy and the Internet envisions digital technologies supporting rather than subverting democracy by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the threats through changes in policy, technology, and social and ethical technological norms. Through knowledge creation and education, and by leveraging the convening power of Stanford University, PDI creates and shares original empirical research around how digital technologies are impacting democracy to inform and educate decision-makers in the field, including the next generation of technologists, business leaders, and policymakers.
The Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) is dedicated to world-class scholarly and policy-oriented research on the political, legal, and economic implications of digital innovation and global competition. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a proliferation of smart, connected devices will revolutionize warfare and create new challenges and opportunities in statecraft. They will enable automation in countless domains, and lead to as of yet unknown applications that catalyze new industries and business models—and in the process, massively alter how economic value is created, captured and distributed, with ripple effects in the domestic politics of nations and the broader global political economy.
The Program on Platform Regulation, headed by Daphne Keller, focuses on current or emerging law governing Internet platforms, with an emphasis on laws’ consequences for the rights and interests of Internet users and the public.
The Stanford Social Media Lab works on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. The team specializes in using computational linguistics and behavioral experiments to understand how the words we use can reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, and relationships.
A cornerstone of life online has been that platforms are not responsible for content posted by users. What happens if that immunity goes away? Daphne Keller spoke with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker about how the Supreme Court may change how the Internet functions.
Moderated Content host Evelyn Douek discusses Twitter’s data security problems and what this says about privacy regulation more generally with Whitney Merrill, the Data Protection Officer and Privacy Counsel at Asana and long-time privacy lawyer including as an attorney at the FTC, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Large-scale voting fraud may be a chimera, but counting a rising number of ballots quickly will require investments in state and local election administration. Published in the Wall Street Journal.
SIO is now part of the new Coalition for Independent Technology Research to share independent, trustworthy research on digital technology and online harms.
Daphne Keller of the Program on Platform Regulation writes about the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a major milestone in the history of platform regulation. Other governments are now asking themselves what the DSA’s passage means for them. The post briefly discusses that question, with a focus on platforms like Facebook or YouTube and their smaller would-be rivals. Published in Verfassungsblog.
Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory writes about the growing body of research suggesting human behavior on social media is strikingly similar to collective behavior in nature. Published in Noema Magazine.
Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy & Technology and Daphne Keller from the Program on Platform Regulation are guests on the TechDirt podcast to talk about us the DSA and its many implications.
Charles Mok is an internet entrepreneur and IT advocate. He was formerly a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and founded the Hong Kong chapter of the Internet Society. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. This article appeared in OPTF.
