A General Defense of Information Fiduciaries
Whether or not an information fiduciary model would be the best way to regulate data governance, it is not guilty of many of the accusations that Lina Khan and David Pozen lob at it.
Privacy Legislation, not Common Law Duties
NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. The United States has the distinction among developed nations of lacking a comprehensive consumer privacy protection law. To fill this gap, Professor Jack Balkin proposes the creation of a new class of common law fiduciaries subject to a…
Radical Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries
NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. I was delighted to read Lina M. Khan and David E. Pozen’s recent article, A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries describing the reasons to be skeptical of the “information fiduciary” concept as a promising one for solving the…
When All You Have Is a Fiduciary
NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. Online platforms do different things for (and to) users. Some of these things are a good fit for fiduciary principles, some are not. Perhaps most obviously, platforms collect data about users. Some of that data is inherently sensitive,…
Scaling Trust and Other Fictions
NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. The Centenal Cycle, the Hugo-nominated trilogy by novelist Malka Older, describes a not-too-distant future in which the existing liberal world order has been replaced by a regime of mass-mediated micro-democracy. With some exceptions—a handful of so-called null states…
Symposium: A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries
In recent years, the concept of “information fiduciaries” has surged to the forefront of debates on platform regulation. Developed by Professor Jack Balkin, the information–fiduciary proposal seeks to mitigate the asymmetry of power between a handful of dominant digital firms and the millions of people who depend on them. Just as doctors, lawyers, and accountants…