Transcripts For CSPAN2 Social Media Companies Legal Responsibility Regarding Users Content 20240714

More than 20 years, since the birth of the internet age as we know i, section 230 has provided websites we put the immunity from liability from other users post. The Electronic Frontier foundation describes important sectionos of 230 this way. This legal and policy framework has offered youtube users to upload their own videos, amazon yelps offered countless offer reviews, craigslist lads, and facebook and twitter offer social networking to billions of internet users. Given the sheer size of user generated websites, it would be impossible and feasible for online people to have objectionable content popping up on their price. In short, section 230, a lot to protect the kind of innovations that is allowed the internet to drive since 1996. And yet, over the past few years section 230 has faced heighten criticism for both the left and right. They encouraged from the left argued that social media giants enjoy special protection. They know consequences. And other critics on the right have argued that these companies have gone is it too far. In policing for these vices or have gone is it too far in policing conservative voices and enacted a bias double standard when it comes to content moderation. In light of these criticism and align we put the bipartisan political backlash against this, weve seen recalls on section 230. This debate, that we are going to discuss today and they offer you the phrase also, this time i didnt mean it especially. This is the great panel. Immediately, to my right is danielle, author of the 2014 book hate crimes in cyberspace. Also professor of law at Washington University of school of law where she teaches the right about privacy and free speech. Next to danielle is jim, refocuses about privacy issues, and over on the end is jeff, assistant professor of cyber keep security lot of the enable academy Cyber Science Department and author of the 2016 word that created the internet 26 words. Welcome all. We start with jeff what do we know for sure did reasonably for sure we put the intent behind section 230. Why did legislatures feel the need to bring it into me. Jeff there are two main reasons, we do look the legislative history and advocating for section 230. The first was there is really concern at the time of about legal that was it available to children online. There was aco series of Court Rulings on the First Amendment which basically stood for the proposition that if you did not moderate content, you could actually increase your chances of being protected from liability for all user content but if youlf started to moderate then you could expose yourself to liability for defamation and other types of things. There really was a concern that the system was giving an incentive for platforms not to moderate. So that was one driver of section 230. The other was everything about the time, 1995. The modern internet was really at its infancy and congress wanted to get regulation and lawsuit out of the way of the developmentte of this new technology. So between those two reasons, those were really the driving forces behind section 230. So is there, confusion about that original intent. Which i think youve tried to dispel we put your book. What is the confusion. It seems very straightforward and i have often talked to people involved staffers legislations. Jeff do we have all day. [laughter] i will speak on my own behalf. What was the point of this to begin we put. Jeff theres a lot of confusion. I would say the biggest bit of confusion right now is the section 230 is conditioned on neutrality. That it only applies to neutral platforms what of those might be. Rather than publishers. The plaint the point of section 230 was to eliminate that and to allow platforms to exercise discretion and figure out what their users should or should not be exposed to. And not face liabilities. So i would say that the biggest confusion. James the issues that were foremost at the time, about pornography and defamation. They were so much about political views were they . Jeff not at the time, there was a statement in the findings and the bill for something about fostering the recourse. There was recognition there eculd be free speech online. Om but there was no conditioning of neutrality in section 230s protections. Ec the title and the idea was it was applied to good samaritans. We were protecting against and filtering offensive speech. Absolutely incentive that the idea was to self moderate. To provide protection for those who are blocking and filtering offensive speech. Its completely legally protected speech but we wanted toiv synthesize. James what did they mean by offensive. Jeff twentysix words. Good faith efforts to block access to a list of types of content including other objectionable content. Congress wanted to give a very wide range of discretion to these performers. To feel free to block content and not be exposed to liability. Brief legal. Were they not already protected on the First Amendment. Did they not protect these Companies Customer so that was ati problem that led section 230 the first place, theres a lot of different First Amendment protections. One is for content treat that that was created. The rule is if you know a distributor you can only be liable for others people content. If you either knew or had reason to know, but the problem became that the court started staying if you start to moderate, you dont even receive the protection and you become aystrictly liable just like a newspaper would be for letters to the editor. That was the weird system that was created by the First Amendment. It wasnt so much the First Amendment but the common law that the courts wered looking t this new media becoming out of different places. Both ofor Platform Providers waa publisher or speaker. In my opinion, the law kind of jump ahead to i think was the right result. E but it is important that we got there through legislation rather than through continued commonlaw developments. I think of it had been taken years but it wouldve taken here is the winner we are talking about if the rule had been generated from the bottom up, through experience, i think it mightve been a stronger role in a better understood rule than one thats based more deeply in practice. Rather than getting us overr th top of legislation which was pretty good, not perfect. Seema. On history, how controversy or was it. Ro to people didnt know or understand all of the consequences that would flow out permit or was there much real debate at some. In the process. So there was a little bit of floor discussion no real opposition. It was passed. This was part of the broader Overall Telecom rules laws of 1996. Section 230 was really seen as an alternative to the Communications Decency act which ended up being put in the top telecom act. Impose all search of prohibitions. For speech that was indecent. The Supreme Court. Section 230 barely any Media Coverage at the time. What i did receive mediae there was no coverage of the fact that it was going to shield platforms from liability for most types of user content. It was really and after problem. Im curious, do we have this law the shields Internet Companies and big platforms, how did it work in upper western europe francis. Did they have their own version of sectionet 230. So they have rules. Europe has a number of different roles. It varies a little bit and when he gets into the classification of both of as a conduit or some other dive boat service. There are some cases where the courts have said not only do you have to take down user content if you get a notice complaining about it you also might have a duty to actively patrol or user content might violate not just defamation laws but hate speech laws and things like that. Its much more restrictive and really most other jurisdictions butve it is in the United States we are very unique in that respect. It may be unintentionally it protects big platforms but it also protects small platforms. I ran a psych washington wash. Com government transparency, there is nothing there but broken dreams now. [laughter] and web two shame so long, remember that phraseology. Thats when people actually started to be able able to comment and vote and have their nown material. So we had a comments section and we had little success, it was built to extend fair benefits Unemployment Benefits and i had Something Like 200,000 comments. I was the only guy in my spare time, watching what was going on on the site and of course there were people behaving horribly to undermine the conversation. There were people who were telling me that someone else was using w their name. And i was called on to moderate the situation. I wasnt cautiouslytu w using sectionse 230. I was just trying to do my very best to create a good environment. But its extraordinary like the people will go to in my case, to undermine the site because they thought i was in favor of this legislation when factor was neutral. Or is meant to be initial platform. Unfortunately the internet for all his blessings allows people to be truly wicked from behind that an amenity and they will take every effort to upset each other, they will take every step to undercut the platform itself so it is an area that is brought into 30 is the very important protection. Its not that is just to make them upset. People will use Network Tools to destroy people his lives. T to ensure they cant get a date, or keep their jobs or get a new one. They will threaten. People will post information that one can never sorta respond to. Im not a prostitute, i dont have a to sexuallytransmitted infection. That kind of mischief that weve seen isnt just hurtful things, it is speech that we would take that isnt even legallyee protected that weekend siminalize and ensure liability for and there are sites that make it a business. Out of hosting architectural pornography. And they get this we put glee say i can encourage people to produce and give me nude photos. Its a liability. I think its just important to note that the mischief isnt, and im we putpe you because i outrun current opinions we were busy filtering. We in his farmer than that. Like any wonderful tools for great things and also if we see a lot of ill illegality and destruction of lives. Indeed. We have these legislations, now very controversial. Ro and as i alluded in my remarks, for Different Reasons than from a different perspective before we get to that, you mentioned that perhaps we could all sort of organically. But given again how the internet developed, if that section 230 had not happened, what might be the internet look today and how might have evolved. Now we want to change it in an reform it. If we didnt have a right, what would it look like. You have an argument on that i think. Im a little skeptical that the common law would have developed to this extent of protection at 230 provides. I think some of the early court cases were not very well reasons or will decide that really impose significant liability. I dont think the really broad protection of section 230 provides, for thirdparty content wouldve been the same on common law. I think there probably would be in north mormon notice and takedown system where if you get notification of intentionally illegal content your choices dealer take it down or you have to stand in issues of the person who posted it and then defend it. Whichha most rational platforms will not want to do because theyre not going to want to litigate all of these defamation cases. I dont think you would see that necessarily the social media extent all of the services not coincidentally are based in the United States. Where are all of these social media giants you wroteas and you think to 30 is the big reason why. While we have them and they dont. Very much so. I think they were able to develop in the way they currently are because of section 230. We would probably have different types of services but it wouldntam have the same sort of rules that they have right now that went out section 230. Big social Media Companies like in china. Complete censorship and control. They would just look different. By posting videos. I think its right that we get the social media media that we did because of 230. Is that right orbi strong. You can also see 230 as some sort of subsidy. Liability, subsidy to businesses that cant hunt of the cost of consumers who bit liability from corporations. For social media platforms. It shame at a cost though. In victimization and select people and in some cases that are very sympathetic. Some of those negatives include speech. When your targeted and you know harassed on line, you know silent so often we forget that those negative externalities are just lost jobs and potential violence but also speech. It suddenly seems a very controversial topic right now. Roll those are externalities and sort of victims. They were really there from the beginning. I know the book, t there is so many cases people actually hurt. Extremely sympathetic stories but yet were there any calls back then and this is generating victims we do something. Or is it pretty much continued to its present date c to sort of ignore that policy makers. I think for the first decade it was not really an issue or even in the second decade there wasnt. There were some tough cases. Senatorna lieberman, the identity wanted to pressure google and youtube to take down terrorist videos. Thats like in 2004. I was just ignored. Was that, i only knew about the zephyrs at the time. The public attention to. Nearly the same. There were really tough cases in the beginning. There are a lot of people who argued theres only been difficult cases over the past two years. The second case ever litigated on section 230 is the caseer called bildt versus aol. Her mother sued aol because there was child pornography we put her son and her teenage sonn that aol was being marketed in aol chat room. She kept contacting aol and they wouldnt prevent it. That is a difficult case. Its not just like they were only defamation, easy defamation cases there were tough cases all the way in the early days. Federal criminal law, doesnt and joy that immunity. She was in negligence. Just wanted to clarify. Changing technology over overtime. In the early days the 230, maybe you had manual processes entirely. Nowadays a thing like child porn you can kind of automate so tracking,os and systems are in place we can know if there are porn files and you can review anything. Theres a case in the circuit where aol found child porn and delivered it to a Government Act for those purses. Ackerman. Its a very good opinion on his own. Automatedwr review for things tt are selfevidently criminal, seizing an area where you might be able to hold platforms. Hold them liable. Retaking stocking or defamation, its really hard for his person coming in for the first time to conversation to figure out both of someone is defaming another. What is the reality of it. When he never person contact me and said someone elses using my name. Even rare names are repeated around the world. To the argument, are dubious. I couldnt take something down because it was the same name. I dont think that the people who are faced we put these decisions are myriad of different kinds of problems and stories coming to them in the bowels and the social media organizations are going to be able to negotiate navigate those kindsto of determinations very readily. Is somewhat evident strong. Things that are so strong, liability for those platforms. His of these cases would come up and these that would be their stories. But generally this is sort of what that soundse like. Sort of not anymore. Is it the case that you have these big platforms, the been in the news and these are why now. Why now. This incredibly controversial issue was there a triggering if it or is it just that intrusive of our lives. Were taking a closer look at all of these companies and regulations and what laws apply to them. A couple of things coming together all at once. I feel like we take each thread and bring it together right. People like the Tech Companieset as much. The sonic controversial. And more zuckerberg testifying. Northeast effort theyre getting all of these wonderful opportunities for every senator and congressperson to hop in the bandwagon and say you are the problem. [laughter] you have the responsibility online. It was sort of an easy god. What else can wee throw into the mix. The tech about a country from russia and disinformation. And therefore remain the platforms for noton doing anythg about it. What they were caught off guard and underwear. Deep thanks. I dont take up the thunder, if you like will want to pitch in something. One thing i have served is b that the traditional news media perhaps its not very happy we put the Business Model of some of the large platforms. One criticism that enables those very Business Models and that is not just about moderating and shielding these companies but a key part of why these companies are worth 500 billion or a trillion dollars. They are gauged in surveillance. This amount of money, and they are feeling from new companies. One problem familiar to students and regulation is if you were to deeply cut section 230, the Big Companies would be able to navigate the law. The little onesw would be ableo try to challenge them but not costeffectivelys, go up against them. It would lock in the status quo in the marketplace. Facebook his natural decline would be delayed if not foreclosed by doing away we put 230 or deeply undercutting the protections of 230. Is there is much for the small competitors as it is we put big platforms. We can talk about that later what that might be, that would intrigue the big platforms and the smaller farms differently. Were not there together yet. Also say the larger platforms have lacked transparency. Of they started to change but it was often like a black box to figure out whats going on there. Conservatives that think that they dont understand why people are being taken down and went at that person. This is happened to me. Do i call an 800 number or what do i do. I thrive on transparency. On twitter, to discuss the statement that section 230 is terrible, enables hate. Enables hate and harassment. And it does my things two. You bring about these things. I have and thats right f and its a free pass. Work in 2017, a proposed that that went out is it too much violence in the great things that it does. Because of the one hand section 230 provides a a safe harbor whh is sentnd on a Good Behavior but when it comes to on filtering, it comes to over filtering on good things. But for on filtering, that you know that you read aloud, it doesnt condition that immunity on any Good Behavior. You just have this immunity, were not going to treat was a publisher or speaker. Somebody elses content. What that has done and been interpreted fairly broadly, is to be not even websites that encourage pornography, that higher Business Models is abusive essentially. Sites that have videos, they get to enjoy the immunity from liability even though they are not engaged in any dive boat content moderation in fact theyre encouraging it and making money off of it. So talk about my proposal. Not yet. Okay [laughter] i dont want anybody to tune out proposals coming. I want to get rid of this, i think section 230 is incredibly important. For these early years in which we do have facebook an incredible social activity online. It is nowlp good. It seems like all of these positive things that most of the stories that you here, are about actual harassment or hate speech or people being uploading or really a violent video, that these companies have been given power and gotten very big. They show absolutely no responsibility. Empirically speaking im darting its true. The company is actually the largest platform has been working on these issues and ive been working with them my facebook, twitter, microsoft, for years. I havent done a terrific job they been trying. Theyve gotten better at it as its been bad for business. Why does twitter take a stand against stocking and threats and not abadvertisers started pulling their money, same with facebook. If its bad for business, they long tried to have done a great job but they are making efforts they been around for a while. I think a lot of people think that he would have better policies, more aggressive policies at this point. And the politicians may be really didnt care but maybe they didnt really care that much. One of the things i think has been important to highlight is that a lot of the worst wrongdoing that happens online has a wrongdoer on the other side of the platform doing the wrong thing. You take Something Like revenge porn or Something Like that. You know exactly who the perpetrator is and the other y one thats the actual wrongdo maybe you can divided up in percentage terms. If they had done what they did the platform wouldnt have any of the material on it. Theres a case i think i dealt with in the Second Circuit recently where its unclear that they actually saw it as a grander case. Its unclear that they did very much to try to stop the actual bank actors. Grinders did literally nothing in the designer site so they made it impossible. Very well and good. May be spent 30 seconds saying what the issue is. Grinder is a hookup site and a jolted exlover adopted the identity of the other and invited i think Something Like thousands of men men to come to his house. He posted fake ads saying he was interested in aml rate. Really horrible behavior. Over a thousand men came to this mans house. Really awful behavior. On the part of a known individual. And with grinder, opted not to do anything but the known individual i think there was a protective order against him. Its not enforced in Law Enforcement. Hi Law Enforcement has done nothing. Its a Law Enforcement story more than a grander story the attractive defendants of course grinder and not probably penniless perpetrator. And not sure we should feel so badly for granted because grander tells Michael Herrick that it has no capacity to identify anyone on their site and they cannot present people abprevent people from reappearing. Its a design choice cut. People ability to avoid id tracking is pretty readily used. I think if you are required to figure out when and where a person was making fake accounts on your own platform you have a hard time doing it would take a lot of resources so this is dedicated to defeating you. You have to put fulltime employee against any individual trying to do wrongdoing. Where 230 is not doing the job. I think ultimately grinder says, we chose the designer site in a way that would make it at all easy to block people who are doing mischief. Twitter can block mischief makers. Its not that technically difficult. They design it, join me if im wrong about this. Grinders Business Model they said would be deserved by changing the architecture of their site. I think its given how its been misused strikes me as theyve created something thats ultra habit and they walk away and dont care. A lot of us in the privacy Community Want surveillance to be pretty hard even for atcorporations around the site. Its not necessarily a bad thing that theres a platform that makes it hard to figure out who is who. Its a tough balance to strike. Im not sure that grinder was wrong with the actual perpetrator in the wrongdoing was entirely left alone but the pursuit as readily as platform. And going to a conference in october with the Supreme Court i think it probably has the best chance of getting granted the jenny section 230 sir petition because it makes a really unique argument about Product Liability rather than a section 230 is really clear, treating as a speaker. I think there is a reasonable chance the Supreme Court would take its first ever section 230 case and thats a really big deal because the section 230 we rely on efourth circuit case which is the first opinion to interpret section 230. Everyone is kind of taken that how you interpret section 230. This i think is the biggest challenge ive seen yet getting it to Supreme Court. One reason this is sort of in the news we have more high profile examples of harassment. We have hate speech online, and an issue that companies have been given this ability to moderate and they are not. He said he worked with some of these companies and do they feel like they are being treated poorly . By the media that all their good efforts its a lot harder than what you think. People just dont get the difficulty in moderating scale . Scale is a huge problem. For any given grievance its hard in scale to get it right all the time. This is speaking from nonconfidential information. Up until 2014 it was doing the right thing. It had a very handsoff approach when it came to threats and stalking. It sort of changed its direction. Facebook has long banned harassment and stalking and bullying and i would like it to be more transparent. They have a licompletely comple role internally. Inward facing they have guidelines, it to read all of it. But not public facing. So while they say they ban hate speech, they dont define hate speech. They say they banned harassment and stalking, define it for us. Explain to us why you ban it and give us examples. And tell users why you are banning them and give them a chance to respond. Are they doing better than 2014 . They are. Are they doing a great job . I dont think so. Online twitter safetys task force had been working on with facebook with their abbut i do it in a way i dont get paid so that i can be honest with them and i can talk about it publicly. Not based on confidential information but its important we dont get paid you can be as an academic, you are free to say i can criticize you and your not doing a perfect job but by my life, facebook and twitter are like virtuous compared to the revenge pornography. We think of these things as a scale, less twitter, facebook, microsoft, google, youtube, for trying a little bit. Because you have sites whose Business Model is abuse and who their entire ability to make money is contingent on encouraging you to engage in nonconsensual pornography. I would also add that moderation is really hard at the scale they are having to moderate. We can talk about hate speech policy for a large platform but when you are getting this flood of hate speech or other potential violations all the time and contract moderators i encourage everyone to acread th Great Stories about the life of social media moderators. On Jenna Roberts new book. I think the people make 30,000 a year and exposed to the worst possible aspects of humanity having to apply these detailed policies they are going to be mistakes even in terms of whether it violates the policy. And theres judgment calls there is no easy solution. Nothing that congress does or doesnt do is going to solve the problem we have right now. Its not just the United States. The European Union has written a lot about the pressure that Eu Commission has brought to bear against the major platforms. Bullying them into taking that hate speech within 24 hours and at least a sincere and serious censorship creed because their terms of service they use globally. If we are seeing censorship due to pressure from europe it ends up here. Its not just conversations within the United States, we are seeing pressure from europe as well. These companies are global. Something we sort of touched in the beginning outlining the problems is you have people on the right who are absolutely convinced that these platforms are being offensive, censoring political key points they disagree with and part of the argument they said section 230 was established with the intent that platforms would be neutral and theres no difference between platforms a difference between platforms and publishers when i went on twitter again tweeting about this some said, listen, they have to choose are they a platform a publisher . They need to fulfill their 230 responsibility . Its one of the myths. I guess the two questions to answer, do they think that the big Platform Companies are suppressing conservative republican speech and what about the platform versus publishers distinction . I could answer no. But i think to get a little more detailed there is not a distinction in section 230 but this is also a law that congress passed. Whether there is and should be is a different question. Congress could say theres going to be a neutrality requirement and we could debate the merits of that. I think that is a debate we tscould have but i think some o the debate is been completed in terms of what section 230 says and what some people think it should say. I will open the debate on whether there should be neutrality, there is no such thing, you cant administer neutrality rule so dont even try. a there is no monitoring. You have no moderation at ra all. Electric wires are neutral. Platforms are not. They have the way they work in the way their users use them and thats not neutral in any administrable offense. While you are referring to the piece of legislation and the judge holly missouri where the commissioners from the fcc would be appointed they would have to certify that these platforms were politically mutual if they want to get the section 230 protections that would apply to think specifically the very largest platforms. One indicating already is that a good idea and if you didnt think it was a good idea, could you actually do it . Like how would that actually work . If you wanted to certify the platforms as being politically neutral. You would have to have a federal speech agency. [laughter] that concludes my answer. To try to have any federal body determine whether a platform or any speaker is neutral and fair. We had a fairness doctrine at the fcc irt for a very long time. I think that debate is over. That ship has sailed. Yes of Course Congress will talk about it like it could happen but it would die in the courts of the cut through the legislature. Is it unconstitutional . I think it would have to be tested. I think it probably would be. I think even beyond the constitutional issue, practically the ftc even with their native advertising. They are not very comfortable in making editorial judgments on things. I think theres constitutional issues practical issues and requirement for super majority so that would mean even though Minority Party could block section 230 from some of the large platforms if they wanted to. I think there are a lot of logistical issues as well as constitutional issues. It might be helpful to explain why its a back to your point about the s First Amendment who are the First Amendment fiactors . Whose speech would be controlled by government and compelled . It would be private actors. Platforms are speakers too. They are private actors they are not the government. They are not First Amendment actors that owe us freedom from regulation. They would argue, to channel Eugene Vargas they would argue that there speakers platforms and its their speech and that they should be free from government regulation. I thought that might be worth, the teacher in me. That brings up what i call my well facebooks. Mark zuckerberg he was touring the country for people to run for president. What if he says one day, and very concerned about the direction of this country. From now on on facebook you feel free to post about your family funny pictures. And you can post about issues racism and gender but no trump post. We dont want to see post about the trump agenda and will be well facebook. Is that a government issue at that point . It was a massive platform. So influential in our lives. To change the base. Him. They have tremendous power but not a public forum. That would be okay. Guess what, go to gads go to somewhere else. Go to twitter. There was a dating Online Dating format made that very same choice. I think we had a recent spring Court Decision a few months ago that Justice Kavanaugh wrote which found that cable access station did not have the First Amendment requirements. I was reading an interview with senator holly and i think there were a lot of misperception about what section 230 called for and there wasnt some grand decade ago about how it would operate. When this regulation we didnt have the big platforms. It was not as big we do not have the Business Models you imade it so the reform part of the conversation. Just to be clear, their role in political speech even though it might not have been the top line issue back in 1996 it certainly covered in this idea that they can choose to be neutral or not neutral its not just defamation and its not just pornography. Professor citroen said that facebook is powerful but i think you quickly understand the limits of facebooks power that Mark Zuckerberg tried to declare it no trump zone. 100 . But it would likely play into trumps hands to have this kid in power. abyou would have an ultimate social media site popup. They are already out there waiting. Congress has concerns but i dont think they are real. The capacity to control the company by a million head strings is long blue but never well demonstrated. There are a lot of republicans who are absolutely convinced that they see there are 20 twitter accounts suspended by republicans for every one that might be on the other side. This is probably abits anecdotes and if you dig in a bit it seems completely overblown and untrue that i can come up with 10 stories about black lives matter protesters who are removed from facebook and twitter. We all have examples inherently speaking it seems to be pretty long. The audience might have questions on this very issue. We will reserve time which i shouldve mentioned earlier and i will even look all over on the other side. We want to be mentally putting these together. To get the issue i wondering if people grasp the difficulty of the content moderation. At the same time, i dont want to let these companies off the hook that they been doing a fantastic job with content regulation. When its clear its a work in progress. Given the challenges and pressures outside the United States. Whether its addressing a deep problem by coming up with Technical Solutions which is going to be very hard to do but with new types of policies and thoughts if theres pressures on companies to do something then they will reiterate. They will experiment. Do think theres a political space for the iteration . The response is ferocious that they cannot get it right. We happily arent in a position to see what it would be like if they were doing the job they are doing. The articles you referred to earlier whats the abrebuild article about what the moderators are seeing and what they are preventing you all from seeing and you have a little bit of respect for what they are doing. Its one of those things. The things we are not seeing. It might make you think they are doing a better job. People are criticizing these content moderation policies say, let a thousand, million folk flowers bloom. People can decide for themselves who they want to follow or not follow. I would throw my computers and devices out the window if that was the case. It would be terrible. And want to rip on that to talk about future scenarios we might have in mind now. No Technology Talk would be complete without block chain. Stop it. Literally the answer is not blasphemy. Is not actionable investment or advice. There are future block chain base social networks where you cant remove content somebody could post it and its going to be there forever. Theres no corporation to asked to take it down. As distributed across the world and it would be mathematically impossible to remove content. If its coming it might be coming in might be aware you could solve this problem right now sprinkle your magic legislative dust on this problem and the bad actors go right over to this other place where things are on censure both. That means challenges to the existence or utility of defamation law. That means revenge porn one up is permanently up and cant be taken down again. Theres a whole world out there that could emerge and cant really be altered that i can imagine. So we should think about all the expectations and all the law that emerged in the past might be deeply challenged by teacher technology. So 230 emerged in the past, e i think people who say things that were very different now i think thats a completely valid point and i think looking at what is happening now what the law that needs to be formed perfectly valid. Keeping in mind that the downside is youve mentioned of getting this wrong its been wildly successful people say what can government do . This is something government did to seem to work out really well i dont want to screw it up so being very careful i think about forms, what did the reforms look like . We could go down the line. How would you go about reforming section 230 . Feel free to comment on each others. And you can ask me. Just figuratively. Not literally. I think we should preserve section 230 but it shouldnt be a free pass. Section 230 c1 we should make it conventional. Donna conditional. Vernacular treat an interruptive Service Entry vionline Service Providers has publishers or speakers if they engage in reasonable content moderation practices. Thats not looking at any given decision its looking at their practices with large. The premise of 230, lets go back to the original purpose was to incentivize selfmonitoring. We should go back to that purpose and condition the immunity on engaging content moderation practices in the face of known in the illegality. In the proposal that i have the language ready weve offered it. Ive been talking to a bunch of Different Senate offices maybe they will be interested. What it would do it would mean that you get to enjoy section 230 immunity but it was not let the revenge pornographers off the hook. The sites that engage in no content moderation knowing that there are videos on the site. If you do nothing in the face of known illegality and mischief then you shouldnt enjoy the immunity from liability. You have an earned it. But i would say the facebook, twitter, they have extensive speech roles have extensive speech moderation practices with i think like 30,000 people on facebook at this point. They are engaged in reasonable content moderation practices would depend on the type of speech like if we are talking about pornography, its reasonable is whats different asfrom threats and defamation. It might be a hash Program Facebook is increasingly engaged in is a really good idea. But using ai for threats is impossible because threats how we know its a threat its consensual. Stocking is as well. Stocking is not one of those things thats inherently illegal. You got to look at the whole picture in context. So whats reasonable in one content and approach and whats reasonable would do is incentivize experimentation. In moving with the times and with the technology. And is moderation of scale issue with that proposal . Yes. Its aimed at not any specific decision content but at scale the speech rules and practices and design. Its looking at a companys approach to content moderation. The design of the site. How they respond to certain types of speech and problem known problem. The idea to look at it, how are they doing the scale and whats reasonable for yelp . Whats reasonable for facebook is certainly whats different reasonable what was reasonable for us abconcurring opinions 10 years ago we have like 300 commenters on any given day is different unless we were the conspiracy when it was doing its thing thousands of commentators. There are like six people running it. So it would matter the size of the company, who was participating, what kind of activity they were hosting. Reasonableness, the idea the premise of it is tailored to the set of circumstance. I think these are reasonable reforms. It is about reasonableness but i share the concern about some of the bad actors. There are some bad actors that we need to figure out how to solve the problem with them. But my concern about reasonable standard and this comes from having practiced cybersecurity law where a lot of the regulations come down to reasonableness is the lack of certainty as to eawhat would be reasonable when ultimately there could be federal appellate judges who perhaps dont necessarily understand the technology. Could we ever have specific rules for siebel security . They would get uploaded in five seconds. We have standard we have missed standards and state laws that have incorporated but they are broad standards. But they give some controls and give specific controls. I think without any certainty at all just having reasonableness and when you are conditioning other people speech on this reasonableness that is what i struggle with with having reasonableness for section 230. I wonder how much of the free speech that there would be and perhaps we dont want that but i do really worry about this t lack of certainty if you just have reasonableness. I think in other areas of the law there is it speech thats dependent on it but this there is. Thats what i that would be my concern having reasonableness. Reasonableness is really hard to administer but its probably the only thing to do. The problem is, that you got this legislation in place that has this language can you got a congress you cant rely on to do the careful little cut and pruning. My solution. Very skeptical. I been here a couple years. [laughter] my solution is to go back in time not have section 230 and that common law develop uptodate. You had to have reasonableness. In that world reasonableness would be so litigated would have i think they actually know better what was reasonable then we knew now. Because we have a flat rule against liability and its been mostly people getting booted out of court. And you cant go back in time. We know this piece of legislation i dont trust congress to change it and you do have courts as professor citroen has pointed out you have courts coming back on in places back to pure publisher type protection on liability and not where a site is kind of in the business of procuring trafficking or whatever it might be. So its reasonableness but the immediate proposal i have is 230 in place cant we just give people let people post on the sites but let people handle the filters. Why cant there be more filters that heres the kind of content i will see and thats all i will see. You could blank out particular words. Where there are more tools to people . I dont know. Twitter enables like 8 3. I just issue they could do better on it. We are up for any reform. One is a fairly specific one and one is broader. The specific one is i think a lot of the sites id like to see some sort of standard where in cases to allow limited discovery on the issue. We do that for personal jurisdiction. I think that would be a way to go after the bad actors. But never should be getting protected by section 230 while still preserving objections for the sites that really are not contributing to the material. The second is, i hear from people on all sides about various issues with 230 ranging from there shouldnt be any moderation there shouldnt be any protection at all and should be moderating everything. This is all anecdotal. We do not have good empirical evidence and it is such an important issue. It affects the speech of everyone in the United States and the ability to receive information. I would like to see commission congressionally created commission to really gather a good factual basis for this before even proposing specific fosolutions because we dont ha that right now. I dont know whether any of the solutions will actually pass but i would like a much better factual record before we make any decisions on what to do with platforms or 230. Who went to the upside of the downside. Whats the downside of smart legislation . What is the downside of getting it wrong . If theres any debate section 230 with the real legislative foundation of the entire economy obviously handle with care. Whats the upside of getting the reforms right. What is it look like in the downside of we got it wrong. Speculation whoever wants to take a crack at that. The upside is that if we crafted it well if we could do should be attributed if we denied really bad actors the ability to join the immunity we have a lot more speech online. More often those people are women and will people from marginalized communities. There is a speech upside. Any upsides or downsizing getting it wrong. How could it be better. I see far more downsides than upsides. Because of the practical problem of getting to congress i dont trust congress to do we could craft something brilliant before it appears in all the folks in the room would get together and put together perfect legislative history and send it down the ldstreet and what we get back might be something radically different. The decisions are being made by lawyers i assume theres a number of lawyers in this room. We are all at risk people. Decisions about moderation have to get cleared by the lawyers. We worked on it. I testified in the House Judiciary Committee in support of limited exception for intentionally facilitating sex trafficking what ended up its a standard that you really cant comprehend it. So the lawyers basically will be riskaverse. I think im definitely not opposed to section 230 changes i just think they need to be really carefully crafted and deliberate. And not just some sort of legislative compromise that gets attached appropriations bill right before the december recess. Im a pollyanna so im always engaged and happy to help officers. American give up on the enterprise but the process is what you are talking about. Im going to ask one question then abwhether you are pollyanna or pessimist, be prepared i think we will bring microphones around. If 230 was eliminated, what does that world look like . Do we still have the platforms . Is it destroyed the Business Models . What does the world look like if we did real harm in the effort of reforming. To this position. For the entire modern internet weve had section 230. To give me more productions if i dont do any moderation, which i think most of us would say thats not a great outcome. They could also become risk aversion and say we are not going to allow you to use content because that exposes us to too much risk or perhaps somewhere in between. I cant say with any certainty what would happen because that would really be New Territory for us. And perhaps because you wouldve thrown your computer out the window. Exactly. abhas a good article on the commonlaw developments they saw developed coming along when 230 was passed. Publishing has changed the trend toward treating platforms as conduits that arent and cant be responsible for what appears on the russo is cool so that gives me confidence that the longterm outcome i know its debatable but it gives me confidence that the longterm outcome would probably be good. We would get a good result with free speech protective result would pertain. But in the short term there would be a stampede against the platforms of litigation. If the repeal of 230 were to signal that the federal law is opposed to productions for liability then i could actually undercut the proper commonlaw developing. I dont know how you get there from here but. If you have a question raise your hand we will send the microphone over to. Gentleman with the laptop. Curl awith no choice. James comey asked about the value of section 230. Mike nasdaq had a good paper that came up 440 billion over the next decade is a value. He asked about content moderation, we actually had the choice of a report coming out shortly that aggregates the transparency reports from facebook, google and twitter. They were removed and six months. 5 billion accounts and d post. So there is content moderation but i want to hit on something you brought up at the end. What happens if we get rid of section 230 . Section 230, jeffy pointed out in your book, goes to encourage content moderation. It doesnt really matter if they lose section 230 because they dont engage in content moderation. You brought up grinder which seems to engage in content moderation. Do you expect to see a rise in hate and defensive and terrorist content as prof donna content moves from the risk. Ry thats not true, they don risk it by engaging in content moderation. You are saying if we change section 230 . So sorry, i just wanted to make sure i understood the premise of this question. So if we wipe out section 230, will i put section 230 and we live in a world which prodigy which afraid of being treated as publishers so we engage in no moderation, content moderation. I think thats in part what we worried about in the paper that we wrote that we would have either a [inaudible] i share your concerns that we can end up looking like the wild west or familyfriendly that its just overly friendly. Do you think they would love to be out of the figuring out what hate speech and whats not hate speech . Oh yes. But thats not because of us. The hate speech conversation, that is because of europe. Truly that pressure is less common. I would also say that they love to be out of the business but they need to be in this business. This is a product and a service they are making a lot of money off of. This is part of the job. It should be set at least once in this event that the users out there a little responsible too when it comes to fake recruiting what happened to dont believe everything you read . Another question. The back table right there. My name is roger cotati and during the 1990s there was the ibm executive responsible worldwide internet policy. Best had a front row seat and the development of section 230. There was an important piece of the puzzle pedal hasnt discussed that leads me to think of what might be a blunderbuss way to deal with the issue. One of the elements that went into the assumptions that we all made at that time was that the future would be very much like the past and most of us had in mind at the time 230 was approved computer bulletin boards. Thats what we thought of as content. Someday the thinking was that someday they would be 100 Million People on the internet and they would be 100,000 websites and everyone really assumed that there would be facebook in the future, in fact, there would be thousands of facebooks and none of them have more than like two percent market share and everyone would be a google in the future and there would be hundreds of googles and none of them would have more than one percent market share that would be a distributed system like the internet itself is distributed. There was never any expectation of enormity that we see today. Your question. The question is, perhaps that assumption that went into thinking abbecause of ntthat, it was assumed that the internet would be made up of thousands of thousands of Small Businesses that could never possibly monitor the question then is, i realize this is a blunderbuss solution but think about it, supposedly went as far as to say that any network that has a billion users or market value of 1 trillion is by definition a publisher with the same rights and duty to care that the northwest current in the georgetown or today have when they post want ads and they have to look at it and make a judgment and at that scale you are a publisher and no gray area you have the same responsibility that a call in Radio Program or neighborhood newspaper has a duty of care when you reach that size. All right. I might think to abstractly about most things but have a hard time thinking that justice changes the terms of justice in the world change if the size of your network goes above 999,998,000 and 99 i want the rules to be rooted in justice and not administrative stuff that keeps the lawyers working. Either you are doing it right or doing it wrong. Theres reasonable and unreasonable. In the law closely should adhere closely to that not you got to be reasonable once you reach a certain threshold of users or market capitalization. That type of rule exists all over the place and you see lots of Small Businesses staying small so they dont have to provide Health Insurance for their employees. I do want more of that. Not in this area. The gentleman right here. Right in front of me. Good morning, thank you urfo doing this. Im jeff jarvis from the Newmarket School of journalism at cuny and also a member of Transatlantic Working Group on content moderation and freedom of expression organized by susan neff. I learned a lot i want to throw two quick ideas to get a response. One from the group youre trying to get rid of behaviors and thats what law does. This is digestion coming from one member of the group there ought to be National Internet courts where matters of legality should go to a court where we negotiate legal norms in public with due process. In terms of the legal but irritating, which is what the uk wants to go after, now we have facebook oversight fork where they are trying to establish that and we will see how that goes. I wonder about your views of these kinds of efforts to come up with new common law through different paths as we negotiate this very new landscape. Written about this quite a bit. In 2014 in my book i argue that we should accompany should engage in what i call a different venue technological due process. They should be transparent and accountable for their content moderation practices. The different conduct in speech, the ones are really blurry and so the difference between content and conduct its true i think we should be more careful to realize that some speeches amounting to conduct in the Workplace Sexual Harassment there are some moments we can say, thats truly like a bludgeon instrument rather than conveying messenger viewpoints. Its really hard. Im not sure if that would be i feel like i have my speech friends with me here. That would be conduct and speech are one and the same. Im going to channel teddy mckinnon a little bit. There are a lot of conduct expressive and vice versa. Yes but i dont want to talk about that. It sounds like the thing you will get if you just wait around a couple years and the older judges move out in younger judges move in. I dont know about a specialized corporation and i want to challenge because you mentioned a second time now, but the idea that companies should be providing due process im a big fan of transparency. a [multiple speakers] true transparency in your content moderation would be a huge gift to your adversary. Because over on for chain im a fuddyduddy i think for chain. [multiple speakers] it falls right on the line between the two. Its not nonsense. They work hard. [multiple speakers] they are working very hard to gain published rules. Thats a gift i think. Thats wrong. You are saying we shouldnt have law thats published . No but its capable and you have to have laws that dont have too many nooks and crannies because people will gain them rather than live right. I would say there has to be more transparency than there is right now. We are Getting Better i think today compared to three or four years ago theres much more transparency but we have a long way to go. This is one thing i really stress at the Tech Companies is that section 230 is not a constitutional wound right. This is Something Congress has provided and theres some people who will say section 230 isnt a benefit to the Tech Companies and i think its nonsense. Of course its benefit to the Tech Companies. It was a benefit to the public for free speech platforms. Tech companies receive, they been able to structure Business Models around us. I have no problem with some sort of transparency being a promise of section 230 because we need to have a better idea of whats going on. We havent and now you see whats going on now with the debate which is chaotic. So when someone account is suspended its not a mystery avyou are like it makes sense i get why that happens and the person should have the expectation they engage in that behavior they will understand likely result. I think that i think it maybe helps improve User Behavior compared to where it is now but also more transparency about the broader policies. They have policies posted but fairly broad and i think getting more specificity as to how the decisions are made i see that as being a benefit overall. Shorter and clearer policies. We are reluctant to ask a question. Elizabeth banker with internet association. As many commentators have noted one of the advantages of section 230 is that it does allow companies that are soon to get rid of the cases fairly quickly through a motion to dismiss asserting the 230 immunity. It sounds like your proposal would require litigation before being able to get to that stage. Im just wondering about the impact on Smaller Companies. We talked about how without section 230 the Bigger Companies would have the resources to do more litigation, Smaller Companies wouldnt necessarily have the same resources. Is it your way takes into account of Small Business impact. Reasonable itself would whats reasonable is different from small but it doesnt address your excellent point about the cost of litigation. Whats reasonable we could adjudicate and then be very different from whats recent with this. Its true that there would be costs. At the same time, we shouldnt forget there are costs of the Current System with no expense there is dismissals and what happens is we lose a lot. We lose a lot in terms of speech of victims to go offline, we have a lot of harm that is now abeven if it cashes out your left owners roles are small and big, there was be the expense he might have more censorship and collateral censorship for the small versus the big because they cant litigate. At the same time, some of the small actors are the folks running revenge porn sites. I think we cant overlook their meaningful tradeoffs and its not all tradeoffs in speech in one direction which is just a poor provider its also a lot of tradeoffs for victims with the change they will be driven offline. Theres another question over here. Gentlemen directly ab thank you. I wanted to pry into something jim brought up at the end which i think is an important point. I was wondering what do you think about it. The question posed at this stage advantage is should we reform section 230 you think theres two halves i think we have the academic question is there possible ways to 30 could be improved and then the other side which is should be kicked off the process here in dc and congress . I think there needs to be agreement on the panel that 230 has been very beneficial. Very important to the internet that we all enjoy today. My fairly quick question is with congress being trusted with a lot of tech policy or even policy more generally to get things through gives we asked what we want would you kick off that process to kickoff the risk that potentially congress could undermine 230 faithfully just to get through potentially reforms you see beneficial. We have article 1 which pretty much says they have to. They are the ones charged with it. I think looking at it is one thing. One of the jobs of congress is to look at the laws that they pass. I would agree there are some challenges that congress has with Understanding Technology and i will just be as broad as possible in saying that but thats not a reason to not look at laws. I think their efforts to revive ota, which would help inform that and absolutely essential. Which basically was congresss inhouse technology think tank. That sort of thing, i think congress has to look at laws whether they should do anything as something different, i would like my commission to help inform that but we have no other choice. Your question i think helps show that we are kind of talking about two different types of governmental bodies. Do we trust legislature or do we trust judiciary more. It might be handled better there. No question that the world of litigation could be reformed quite a bit itself. But the cost earlier question referred to are serious and not ulto be forgotten. May be Familiarity Breeds contempt but i worked in congress and have been Congress Watch her for a lot of years and i dont think i would try to run anything through there. We are much better off keeping 230 where it is a leading case by Case Treatment back more appropriate. We have time for one more question that needs to be concise, powerful, if you are going to raise your hand theres going to be a huge. This is a biggie. Wait for the microphone. Everybody needs to hear you. Will defilled kale institute. These private moderation systems that these platforms manage are essentially private Legal Systems in order for them to work to get by in they need to be legitimate in someones eyes. In whose eyes should they attempt to legitimate themselves . Users, state, the population at large . What renders these private government systems, legitimate or not. The market. [laughter] i do not know the answer to that question. The question allows me to put an important on what i said about transparency. Transparency i think would be a gift to people trying to gain your system but if transparency will give your users and your governmental overseers confidence that what youre doing is right, then go ahead but you are going to have problems with your adversaries because of the transparency. I think that will have to be it. Our panel allstar audience. Thank you very much for coming. Next, a discussion on efforts to counter irans illicit financial networks. After that hearing on protecting Consumers Digital identities with banking, Financial Security and Consumer Protection industry representatives. And then a form of recession planning featuring moodys chief economist mark sandy. And panels on Lessons Learned from previous recessions. Saturday on booktv at 11 00 p. M. Eastern Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch discusses his book the republic if you can keep it. Of these papers were published online, and publicly abet available. Around the world publicly available. They began looking for these files specifically for these papers to go through them and appropriate, the chemical formulas to learn how to make these new drugs. Entity in eastern, oregon senator jeff, conditions for migrant families at the us southern border. In his book, america is better than this. Boys were being warehoused in walmart. I went to find out about it and they decided they didnt want me to see what was going on. They had called the police, and the video went viral and suddenly all of america was hearing about cages and secret warehousing of migrant children. Watch book tv every weekend on cspan two. Cspan2 assisted trip marshall billingsley, talks about efforts to counter irans illicit financial net worth. The Atlantic Council boasted this hour and 20 minute foreign. [background sounds] hello everyone and