Cybersecurity for Democracy

Cybersecurity for Democracy is a multi-university center for problem-driven research and research-driven policy. We conduct cutting-edge cybersecurity research to better understand the distorting effects of algorithms and AI tools on large online networks and work with platforms and regulators to help all parties understand the implications of our findings and develop solutions.

Featured content

Two of our researchers won awards at this year's Privacy Enhanced Technology Symposium (PETS)! Julia's research on how online trackers are often configured to collect sensitive personal data, and Cat's research on how enabling Google's privacy features actually results in a worse user experience were both published in the PETS journal. Read more about the research and key take-aways here.

A swath of potentially consequential cases for kids’ online safety are making their way through U.S. courts that focus on how Meta’s design features and choices allegedly harm young users. We partnered with legal and social media experts on an amicus brief in the multi district litigation (MDL) case against Meta, explaining why Section 230 should not apply in this case.

Big tech companies are collecting increasingly detailed information about us across all websites, including those that handle especially sensitive and legally protected data, like financial aid applications, doctor appointments, and tax filings. Our research shows how Google and Meta encourage website administrators to not only install tracking scripts on their websites but configure them to automatically collect users’ Personally Identifying Information (PII).

Our research defining transparency mechanisms and experience building transparency tools have informed legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) in Europe. In October, the European Commission launched a public consultation on the rules for researchers to access online platform data under the DSA, the goal of which was to solicit input ahead of adopting the rules in the first quarter of 2025.

For the past year and a half, we at Cybersecurity for Democracy have been working extensively with the TikTok Research API. We’ve discussed our first impressions of it and our open-source library to help researchers interface with the API.

At Cybersecurity for Democracy, one of our goals is to increase transparency in the tech industry and build tools to increase researchers ability to study online platforms. Recently we’ve been diving into TikTok’s ecosystem to better understand the platform's influence on polarizing topics and how people communicate on social media.