We tried. What came out of committee was depressing. I testified in the House Judiciary Committee on the limited exception for intentional sex trafficking. You reallyd cant comprehend it. The lawyers will be riskaverse. Opposed tonitely not section 230 changes. I think they need to be really careful and deliberate and not some legislative compromise that gets attached to an appropriations bill right before the december recess. That is not what we want. It is jims proof of concept. I am a pollyanna. I am always happy to help. I will not give up on the enterprise. That is what you were talking about. I will ask one more question. I will ask questions. Whether you are a pollyanna or pessimist, be prepared. We will bring me mics around. Eliminated, what does that world look like . Do we still have these platforms . Does it destroy their Business Models . Is it something radically different . What does that world look like if it did real harm in the effort of reforming to this provision . I dont think we know for sure because for the entire modern internet we had section 230. There are a bunch of different outcomes. Platforms could take the the firsthat, not in amendment will give me protections if i dont to many moderation, which i think most of us would say that is not a great outcome. They could become riskaverse and say we are not going to allow you because that exposes us to too much risk. Or perhaps it will be somewhere in between. I cant say with certainty what would happen because that would really be New Territory for us. After you have thrown your computer out the window. Exactly. Jennifer huddleston has a good article on the common Law Development coming along when 230 was passed. Trend, because publishing has changed, towards trading platforms as conduits treating platforms as conduits that are not responsible for what appears on their site. That gives me confidence the longterm outcome is debatable but would probably be good. Economically efficient and free speech protected results would retain, but in the short term there would be a stampede against the platforms with litigation. If the repeal of 230 were to opposed toral law is protections for liability, that could undercut the development. I dont know how you get there from here. What happens if 230 goes away . Common law and First Amendment protections. Perhaps with some narrow tweaks to the worst examples of egregious behavior supported by hinge would be in infringed upon and go away. We will go to questions. If you have a question, raise your hand. There, gentleht man with a laptop if you care to say where you are from. U. S. About the value of section 230. There was a good paper they came out. 440 billion over the next decade in th dachshund value. In value. Months 5ved in six billion accounts. There was active content moderation. I want to hint on something you brought up. What if we get rid of section 230, and you point out in your book, it goes to encourage content moderation. 8chan does not matter if they lose section 230. Do you expect to see a rise in hate and offensive and terrorist content as platforms move away from the risky content moderation to achieving total immunity if we do nothing . That is not true. They dont risk it by engaging in content moderation. You are saying if we change section 230 sorry, i want to make sure i understood the premise of the question. Then you wipe out 230 and we live in a world where we are afraid of being treated as publishers so we engage in no moderation, content moderation. Wroteied about a paper we moderationld have no or too much moderation. I share your concerns that we will end up looking like either the wild west or it is familyfriendly and overly censored. That is what we thought 25 years ago. I am jumping back in. Do you think they would love to be out of this business . They would love to be out of the figuring out what hate speech and not hate speech . They would like europe off their back. Conversation,h that is because of europe. Say theyd also just love to be out of this business but they need to be in this business. This is a product any service they are making a lot of money off of. This is part of the job. It should be said at least once at this event that the users out there are little responsible. Whatcomes to fake happened to dont believe everything you read . You are very quiet over there. That back table right there. My name is roger. I was the ibm0s, executive responsible for worldwide internet policy. Thus had a front row seat in the development of section 230. There was an important piece of the puzzle the panel has not discussed and it leads me to think of what might be a blunderbuss way to deal with the issue. Of the elements that went into the assumptions we all made at that time was that the future would be very much like the past. That thes had in mind time to 30 was approved of computer bulletin boards. That is what we thought of his content. Thinking was that someday they would be 100 Million People on the internet and they would be 100,000 websites. Everyone assumed there wouldnt be they be thousands of facebooks. None would have more than 2 market share. Everyone assumed there would be a google. There would be hundreds of googles and none of them would have more than 1 market share. It would be a distributed system like the internet itself is distributed. Expectationver any of enormity that we see today. Your question . Perhaps that assumption that went into thinking and because of that it was assumed the internet will be made up of thousands and thousands of Small Businesses that could never possibly monitor 100 Million People posting on the bulletin boards. Is i realize this is a blunderbuss solution, but suppose we went as far as to say any network that has one billion users were 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 of today have georgetownert today have when they posted make a judgment. At that scale you are a publisher. No gray area. You have the same responsibility that a callin Radio Program or neighborhood newspaper has of duty of care when you reach that size. Think abstractly about both things but i have a hard time thinking justice changes. The terms of justice in the world changes with as the size of your network goes above 999,999,999. I want the rules to be rooted in justice and not administrative stuff that keeps the lawyers working. Is you are doing it right or doing it wrong. There is reasonable and unreasonable in the law should be as close as possible to that. Not that you have to be reasonable when 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 bank small to employees. I dont want that, not in this area. The gentleman right here. Right in front of me. Good morning. I am jeff jarvis from the newmarket journalism at tun ney. I have learned a lot. I want to throw some quick ideas out. One from the group i learned is maybe we should not concentrate on content and set of behaviors. There is a suggestion that there should be National Internet courts where matters of legality should go to a court where we negotiate norms in public with due process. In terms of the legal bit we have facebooks Oversight Board where they are trying to establish that and see how that goes. I wonder about your views of these efforts to in essence come up with new commonlaw through different paths as we negotiate this new landscape. You have written about this. Shouldy book i argue we a company should engage in technological due process. They should be transparent and accountable for their content moderation and practices. That could be as a matter of law but they should. The different speech, the line is blurry. The difference between content and conduct yes, we should be more careful. Some speech is tantamount to conduct in the harassment and sexual harassment. We can say that is truly like a bludgeon of an instrument rather than a message or viewpoint. It is really hard. Spiritlike i have a free my speech friends with me here. Conduct and speech are one of conduct, like a lot of is expressive and vice versa. I dont want to talk about that. You talk about what you want to talk about. The National Internet court. It sounds like a thing you will get if you just wait around for a couple of years and older judges move out and younger judges move in. This becausellenge you mentioned it a second time. The idea that companies should be providing due process and transparency. Im a fan of transparency. But true transparency in your content moderation would be a adversary. O your 8chan, theyn, or would figure out how to gain the rules and follow the line between the two. They work hard. People, socially maladaptive but theyre working hard to publish rules. Thats a gift. You are saying we should not have laws . Gamable. Ut it is them rathergame than living right. I would say there has to be more transparency. We are getting better. I think today compared to three or four years ago there is much more transparency but we have a long way to go. This is one thing i really stressed to tech companies. Section 230 is not a constitutional right. This is Something Congress has provided and there are people that will say section 230 is not a benefit to the tech companies. Of course it is. Receive ies do they have been able to structure Business Models around this. I have no problem with some sort of transparency be the premise of section 230 because we need to have a better idea of whats going on. Now you see what is going on now with the debate, which is chaotic. Get an account get suspended, its not a mystery. The person should have that kind of expectation if they engage in that behavior. I think they can maybe help. Mprove User Behavior but also more transparency about the broader policies. Platforms have policies but they are fairly broad. Getting more specificity as to how decisions are made, thats a benefit overall. Shorter and clear policies. Eluctant to ask a question i am really pointing with my red pen. Elizabeth banker with internet association. I have a question about the proposal. As many commentators have noted, one of the advantages of section 230 is that it does allow companies that are sued to get rid of cases 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. I am 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 would not necessarily have the same resources. Is there a way you idea takes into account the smaller Business Impact . Reasonableness itself would. What is reasonable is different but it does address your point about the cost of litigation. What is reasonable, you can adjudicate and be very different. It is true there would be costs. At the same time we shouldnt forget there are costs in the Current System where there is no expense, the sniffles, and we lose a lot. We lose a lot in terms of victims to go offline. We have a lot of harm. Xternalized what i would say is i recognize that would be true. It would be more challenging and expensive for Small Companies to face litigation that it would facebook then it would facebook. Expense. D be the you have more censorship and collateral censorship. They cant litigate. At the same time some small actors are the folks running revenge porn sites. It is not all tradeoffs in speech in one direction, which is just a poor provider. There is also a lot of tradeoffs for victims who without any change would be driven offline. I thought there was another question over here. The john ray. Thank you. I want to talk about something jim brought up that i think is an important point. I was wondering for the panel with think about it. The question posed is should we reform section 230 . We have our academic question. Is there a possible way that 230 can be improved . Then there is the other side, should we kick off the progress in d. C. And congress . Beneficial. Very its very important to the internet that we enjoy today. My fairly quick question is, with congress not being trusted with a lot of tech policy or policy more generally to get things through and it gives us what we want, would you take that risk that congress could potentially undermine section 230 just to get through . Otentially reforming article one says they have to. I think looking at it is one thing. One of the jobs of congress is to look at the laws they pass. I would agree there are some challenges that congress has with Understanding Technology to be as broad as possible but that is not a reason to not look at laws. There are efforts to revive the ota which would help inform that and is essential. It was basically congress inhouse think tank. I think congress has to look at the laws. Whether they should do anything is something different. Choice. No other show wequestion helps are kind of talking about two different types of governmental bodies. Do we trust the legislator or judiciary more . The talk of common law is on the judiciary side. No question world of litigation could be reformed quite a bit. The earlier questions you referred to are serious and not to be forgotten. May Familiarity Breeds contempt. I have been a congress watcher for a lot of years and i dont think i would try to run anything through there. We are better off leaving 230 where it is. We have time for only one more question. Nice to be concise, powerful. Raise your hand. Wait for the mic. These private moderation systems that these platforms managers are private legal systems. They need to be legitimate in someones eyes. In whose eyes should they attempt to legitimate themselves . Users, states, the population at large . What renders these private governance systems legitimate or not . The market. [laughter] thats an amazing response. Allows me to add on to what i said about transparency. I think its a gift of people trying to game your system. If transparency will give your users enter governmental overseers confidence in what you are doing is right, go ahead. Yourill have problems with adversaries because of that transparency. Allstar panel, allstar audience. Thank you for coming. [applause] [crowd talking] thisternoon afternoon, modernizing the u. S. Army. Are live coverage of this event will start at noon eastern here on cspan, online at cspan. Org, or this and at the free cspan radio app. She is a Senior Advisor with Democracy Alliance in a contributor to the nation magazine. With us to talk about where the Republican Party is with women voters and women in the party in general, representatives on capitol hill. We are here because of the piece you wrote for the nation. Th