Media Regulation online is tricky

The software being developed would allow researchers to analyze and gain insight from datasets on a variety of different social media and other platforms without being able to directly view or access that data - providing privacy for the platforms' users.

It means research about algorithms - which currently is typically limited to looking at data from one or two platforms - would now be able to examine and compare data across several companies without risking users' privacy.

New Zealand and Microsoft are funding the initiative. Microsoft will also assist with testing the tool and Twitter will support its development.

Development of the initiative is expected to take place over a nine-month period with a total cost of approximately US$1.5 million.

Ardern said a better understanding of algorithms was needed. "Companies, governments, civil society, we will all benefit from this initiative. It will help us create the free, open and secure internet we are all driving for."

Twitter legal, policy and trust lead Vijaya Gadde said: "Our work with the New Zealand government and Microsoft to support the development of innovative technology by Openminded is a key building block to significantly expand the ability of researchers to understand the role of algorithms in content discovery and amplification while protecting the privacy of people's data.

"There is significant potential to provide a far more robust evidence base for a policy debate of critical importance to the future of online services."

"If we can see true collaboration between tech companies, governments, civil society, academia and most importantly affected communities of online harm, we could get closer to eliminating the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content online."

Section 230 is a rule that states "No or user of a interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 

The US is home to one of the hugest interactive computer services in the world, which isn't a coincidence as section 230 has played a very active role of fostering the growth of social media search engines consumers review sites because there is sort of this almost laissez-faire attitude towards user content because of section 230.

At the time hardly anyone understood the implications of 230 it was actually just an adaption of a new law that protected bookshop owners it was argued that they couldn't be expected to read every book they stopped so it would be to persecute them something written in one but in the case of books course there are publishers who can be sued and therefore act as gatekeepers, what the frames of 230 completely failed to do appreciate it that on the internet the barriers to publication would disappear there would not be no gatekeepers, there'd be no gates.