Alex and Evelyn are joined by Carlos Affonso Souza, a Professor of Law at Rio de Janeiro State University and the Director of the Institute for Technology & Society in Rio de Janeiro, to talk about Brazil's ban of X, the local legal and political context, and how this is similar or different to other show downs between regulators and American tech platforms.

Alex and Evelyn discuss the arrest and charges against Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, in France, what we do and don't know, and what it means for the future of platform regulation, with Frédérick Douzet, Professor at the French Institute of Politics and the director of GEODE, and Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by University of Washington professor Kate Starbird to discuss research on election rumors.

Kate Starbird is an associate professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering where she is also a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public. - University of Washington

• House Judiciary Committee Kate Starbird interview transcript
• House Judiciary Committee Alex Stamos interview transcript

Sports Corner

Noted American sports expert Evelyn Douek discusses the NCAA women’s basketball championship in this slam dunk segment. Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks defeated superstar Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes 87-75 on Sunday in what is expected to be the most watched women’s basketball game of all time with an average ticket price hovering around $500. - Jill Martin/ CNN, Alexa Philippou/ ESPN

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on your favorite social media platform that doesn’t start with “X.”

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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SHOW NOTES

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• X this week had its lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate thrown out by a Californian district court. It’s a good and important win for free speech. - Emma Roth / The Verge
• A Kremlin-linked group was spreading divisive stories about Kate Middleton as online rumors swirled about her whereabouts. Why? - Mark Lander and Adam Satariano / The New York Times
   
• In the aftermath of the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, the destruction of X as a platform for useful information about breaking news was all too clear. - A.W. Ohlheiser / Vox
   
• Meta is shutting down its transparency tool, CrowdTangle. Brandon Silverman joins to talk about the tool and what this means for the future of platform transparency. - Vittoria Elliott / Wired
  
  
  • Brandon’s substack is Some Good Trouble
  • A group of civil society organizations and researchers wrote an open letter objecting to Meta’s decision - Mozilla
  • GW’s tracker of Platform Transparency Tools & The Brussels Effect

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on your favorite social media platform that doesn’t start with “X.”

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek is joined by Professor Genevieve Lakier of the University of Chicago Law School to discuss the Supreme Court oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri. 

• For one of their previous conversations on this topic, listen to this episode from September last year talking about the 5th Circuit’s decision in the case.
• They also discuss Stanford’s amicus brief in the case, and the Stanford Internet Observatory’s blog post summarizing factual errors that have pervaded the case.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on your favorite social media platform that doesn’t start with “X.”

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Alex and Evelyn discuss the latest bill to ban TikTok and its many flaws; the Gemini image-generation public relations crisis; Apple's fight-picking in Europe; and Texas and Florida's latest great attempts to regulate online speech.

Alex and Evelyn are joined by Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller to talk about the oral argument in the NetChoice cases this week and what the Supreme Court justices seem to be thinking about whether and how states can regulate internet platforms.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Is the deepfake apocalypse finally here? Alex and Evelyn discuss the recent robocalls impersonating President Biden ahead of the New Hampshire primary and sexually explicit fake images of Taylor Swift that spread on X, resulting in the platform blocking searches for one of the most famous people in the world.

Let’s Get Meta

• Meta will start labeling AI-generated images on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. The company is working with other technology and media companies to develop standards for identifying and labeling AI generated content, but will that be effective?
• In other democracy saving announcements by Meta, Threads will not “proactively recommend political content from accounts you don't follow.” Good thing they disclose what political content means… oh wait.
• Also in full transparency, Meta removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with little explanation of the decision which comes months after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

X/Twitter Corner

• Meanwhile, X is selling checkmarks to terrorists and failing to remove Chinese influence operations.

In Full Transparency

• TikTok is restricting searches in its Creative Center tool, used to track hashtag trends and popularity. The change comes after the tool was used to scrutinize content related to the Israel-Hamas war. The data was never that great, but this is a loss for everyone.
• Don’t worry, the Digital Service Act comes into full force this weekend with transparency requirements, and it’s definitely fully sorted out without legal challenges and with EU country regulators ready to enforce.

Legal Corner

• A federal judge blocked an Ohio law requiring parental consent law from going into effect shortly after technology trade association NetChoice filed a challenge.
• The Kids Online Safety Act was updated and now has a filibuster-proof majority of 62 co-sponsors. The bill could pass the Senate this year, but still faces long odds in the House where there is dysfunction and no companion legislation. Fewer legislation gets passed in an election year, and opponents say the updates amount only to a new coat of paint with the same structural issues in potential violation of the First Amendment.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on your favorite social media platform that doesn’t start with “X.”

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos talk to Riana Pfefferkorn and David Thiel of the Stanford Internet Observatory about the technical and legal challenges of addressing computer-generated child sexual abuse material. They mention: 

• Riana’s new paper on the topic, “Addressing Computer-Generated Child Sex Abuse Imagery: Legal Framework and Policy Implications” - Riana Pfefferkorn / Lawfare
• David’s report documenting Child Sexual Abuse Material in a major dataset used to train AI models - David Thiel / SIO; Samantha Cole / 404 Media

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos talk about the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Tech CEOs about “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” They mention: 

• The Stanford Internet Observatory’s work on Self-Generated CSAM - David Thiel, Renée DiResta and Alex Stamos / SIO
• The REPORT Act - Riana Pfefferkorn / Tech Policy Press

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by Casey Newton of Platformer and Hard Fork to talk about his decision to move his newsletter off of Substack. 

• Casey explains his decision here: Why Platformer is leaving Substack
• And talks about it on his podcast here: Why Casey Left Substack

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Stanford Internet Observatory’s David Thiel wrote a report documenting Child Sexual Abuse Material in a major dataset used to train AI models - David Thiel / SIO; Samantha Cole / 404 Media
• Lots of DSA news from the EU:
  • Three new platforms have been designated Very Large Online Platforms – how did the adult sites get overlooked before? Woops! Jon Porter / The Verge
  • The Commission has announced a formal investigation into X - Martin Husovec / DSA Newsletter
  • Researchers have reason to doubt the information platforms are submitting to the DSA Transparency Database - Amaury Trujillo, Tiziano Fagni, Stefano Cresci / arXiv
• Content moderation controversies around the Israel/Gaza conflict continue.
  • The Meta Oversight Board released its “expedited” decisions on the topic - Oversight Board
  • Human Rights Watch released a report alleging suppression of pro-Palestinian content by the company - Human Rights Watch
• Substack has a Nazi Problem - Ken White / The Popehat Report
• The Netchoice Restatement of the Law continues to expand, with the trade group bringing a challenge to the Utah Social Media Law - Hannah Schoenbaum / AP

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Alex and Evelyn talk about Trump's return to X and other platforms, Thierry Breton's attempt to make it all about him, the hack and leak of Trump's campaign, the FBI's new rules around communicating with platforms about foreign interference, Apple imposing its 30% commission on Patreon, and a small little sporting event that happened recently.

Alex and Evelyn discuss US military information operations, Threads testing ActivityPub integration, ridiculous statistics about TikTok, YouTube Magic Dust, the Meta Oversight Board moving with all deliberate speed, and First Amendment retaliation claims.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Elon Musk told advertisers to go f*** themselves in an interview with Jona–... sorry, Andrew Ross Sorkin of the NYT. Is this a good business strategy? - Kate Conger and Remy Tumin / The New York Times 
  • Linda doing clean-up on Aisle Elon - Linda Yaccarino / X
• Meta is still algorithmically promoting child sexual abuse material on its platforms. - Jeff Horwitz and Katherine Blunt / WSJ
  • They say they’re still working on it: Meta
• On the flip side, Google’s risk-averse approach to CSAM and its poor customer service creates a different problem for people who suddenly find themselves locked out of their entire accounts. - Kashmir Hill / New York Times
• Meta says it is adopting the same approach as in the past for the 2024 election season. - Nick Clegg / Meta
  • Except this time, the government apparently will not be giving them any tip-offs about foreign interference. Such communication has been stalled since july. - Naomi Nix and Cat Zakrzewski / The Washington Post
  • As Meta detailed in its quarterly adversarial threat report, though, this is not because such interference has stopped. - Meta
• A district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing Montana’s state-wide ban from going into effect in the new year. - Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times; US District Court
• Doritos has had the most important AI breakthrough of the year, with its crunch-cancellation software for gamers who like to snack. - Sydney Page / The Washington Post

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• In one of the most surprising (and rapidly developing) tech stories of the year, Sam Altman was ousted as CEO of OpenAI. The reasons are still unclear, and the story still changing as we were recording. But at least partially the story is about AI safety, and what it means to pursue responsible development of AI - Karen Hao and Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic
• Meta is advocating for online safety legislation that requires parental approval for children under 16 to download apps, shifting the burden to app stores for age verification and parental controls. - Sarah Perez/ TechCrunch, Cristiano Lima, Naomi Nix/ The Washington Post, Antigone Davis/ Meta
• Meta announced it is opening up its Content Library and API more broadly - Nick Clegg / Meta
• Everything is content moderation, and India is the most important jurisdiction for the future of online free speech, streaming platform edition, with Netflix and Amazon Prime self-censoring the content they serve in the country - Gerry Shih and Anant Gupt / The Washington Post
• Osama bin Laden’s Letter to America on TikTok didn’t seem to go viral until the media drew attention to them. Would be nice to know for sure though! - Drew Harwell and Victoria Bisset / The Washington Post, Scott Nover / Slate
• Musk launches a ridiculous lawsuit against Media Matters for reporting that Musk doesn’t like but admits is true. That’s not surprising at this point. But more surprising, and scary, is the State AGs who are willing to go along with it and have announced their own investigations. - Adi Robertson / The Verge

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Alex participated in the fifth Senate AI Insight Forum focused on AI and its impact on elections and democracy. It turns out politicians can be reasonable and bipartisan when the cameras are off. - Oma Seddiq/ Bloomberg Law, Gabby Miller/ Tech Policy Press, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Christopher Hutton/ Washington Examiner, Office of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

Label Your AI

• Meta will require political advertisers to disclose if content has been digitally altered to make content potentially misleading. - Aisha Counts/ Bloomberg News, Katie Paul/ Reuters, Will Henshall/ Time, Facebook
  • Meta will also let political ads on Facebook and Instagram question the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. - Salvador Rodriguez/ The Wall Street Journal 
• Microsoft announced a free tool for politicians and campaigns to authenticate media with watermark credentials. - Margi Murphy/ Bloomberg News, Brad Smith/ Microsoft
• YouTube will require creators to disclose realistic AI-generated content with new labels. Users can also request to remove manipulated video “that simulates an identifiable individual, including their face or voice.” - Olafimihan Oshin/ The Hill, Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, Emily Moxley/ YouTube

TikTok Tick Tock

• There’s been a burst of new calls to ban TikTok over allegations that it is boosting anti-Israel and pro-Hamas content. - Alexander Bolton/ The Hill, Cecilia Kang, Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times
• TikTok denies these allegations and faults inaccurate news reporting. - TikTok
• Verified transparency about this would be good, but there’s no real evidence for the claim. There may be a conflation of “pro-Palestinian” and “pro-Hamas” content. Many people have pro-Palestinian views, especially TikTok’s young userbase. It also turns out that other platforms have similarly prevalent content. - Drew Harwell/ The Washington Post
• The renewed calls for TikTok to be banned because of content on it that lawmakers don’t like gives the lie to the argument that calls for a ban are not about speech, which is... a First Amendment problem.
• Nepal, however, doesn’t have a First Amendment so it banned TikTok citing disruption to “social harmony” including “family structures” and “social relations” - Niha Masih, Sangam Prasai/ The Washington Post

A Trip to India

• Nothing massively new here, but worth highlighting this WaPo report: “For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.” - Karishma Mehrotra, Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post 
• Meanwhile, Apple has been notifying opposition politicians in India that they are “being targeted by state-sponsored attackers.” - Meryl Sebastian/ BBC News

Transparency Please

• The first batch of DSA transparency reports have been submitted and Tech Policy Press is tracking. - Gabby Miller/ Tech Policy Press
• The unsurprising news is that X is devoting far fewer resources to content moderation than its peers. Shocker! - Foo Yun Chee, Supantha Mukherjee/ Reuters
  • “X's 2,294 EU content moderators compared with 16,974 at Google's YouTube, 7,319 at Google Play and 6,125 at TikTok.”

Legal Corner

• The Supreme Court struggled with two cases about when public officials can block critics online. Much of the debate came down to whether there is a difference between personal and official social media accounts. - Josh Gerstein/ Politico Pro, John Kruzel, Andrew Chung/ Reuters, Ian Millhiser/ Vox, Ann E. Marimow/ The Washington Post
  • Overall, the Court sounded sympathetic to the claim that they shouldn’t be able to block people whenever they please, but much less clear on what the test should be.

Sports Corner

• Is there a Big Game in California this weekend? Alex has a lot to say for someone rooting for the team with a losing record in the 126-year series.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence today. The sweeping EO includes standards setting for generative AI watermarking and red teaming. It will also set rules to mitigate privacy and bias risks before AI systems can be used by federal officials. - Maria Curi, Ashley Gold/ Axios, Mohar Chatterjee, Rebecca Kern/ Politico, Mohar Chatterjee/ Politico, John D. McKinnon, Sabrina Siddiqui, Dustin Volz/ The Wall Street Journal, Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post
  • The EO is a good step forward, but the measures are limited in power without congressional action.
• App store rules are restricting access to some Hamas-affiliated channels on Telegram where content moderation action is rare, allowing terrorist organizations to share messaging. The restrictions are inconsistent, with some channels only blocked on the Google Play store app in some cases. - Clare Duffy, Brian Fung/ CNN, Kevin Collier/ NBC News, Wes Davis/ The Verge
  • It’s another reminder of the power of content moderation rules in the stack — at the infrastructure or distributor level, like app stores.

X-Twitter Corner

• It’s been one year since Elon Musk flipped the bird (and struggled to carry a sink into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters). Our original episode on this, “Musk Flips the Bird,” held up pretty well — especially the prediction that this would be very good news for Mark Zuckerberg.

Legal Corner

• It’s not all good news for Zuck though. The state attorneys general of 41 states and D.C. sued Meta, alleging Instagram and Facebook harm kids with addictive features and privacy violations. - Barbara Ortutay/ Associated Press, Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Rebecca Kern/ Politico, Cecilia Kang, Natasha Singer/ The New York Times, Cristiano Lima, Naomi Nix/ The Washington Post, Daphne Keller/ @daphnehk
  • This is a relatively novel legal argument, and it appears to be an uphill battle to sue for design harms and not content. Still, the alleged privacy violations could hold up and the political posturing alone may prove to be a winner in the multi-pronged legal, policy, and regulatory battle.
• The king got involved and we can’t ignore the UK Online Safety Bill Act anymore. The legislation received royal assent, becoming law last week. - Imran Rahman-Jones, Chris Vallance/ BBC News, Jon Porter/ The Verge, Peter Guest/ Wired
• Alex and Stanford Internet Observatory graduate researcher Sara Shah published a guide on trust and safety issues in the Fediverse with tips for running a Mastodon instance.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of venture capitalism firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Netscape web browser, wrote a lengthy blog post with an ode to technology. He also manages to declare trust and safety “the enemy” in the rambling screed of more than 5,000 words. - Dan Primack/ Axios, Marc Andreessen/ Andreessen Horowitz
  • Have you “properly glorified” technology today?

Moderating the War

• Meta got a headline you never want in 404 Media: “Instagram ‘Sincerely Apologizes’ For Inserting ‘Terrorist’ Into Palestinian Bio Translations.” - Samantha Cole/ 404 Media
  • But don’t worry, Meta said it is “sorry” for “inappropriate Arabic translations.” - Liv McMahon, Joe Tidy/ BBC News 
• The Wall Street Journal had a big story on the tensions and challenges within Meta over moderation of speech in Palestinian territories. - Sam Schechner, Jeff Horwitz, Newley Purnell/ The Wall Street Journal
• The jawboning continues: The European Commission issued formal requests for information to Meta and TikTok about how the social media companies are removing illegal content and curbing disinformation during the Israel-Hamas war to comply with the Digital Services Act. - Kelvin Chan/ Associated Press, Clothilde Goujard/ Politico, Charlotte Van Campenhout, Bart H. Meijer/ Reuters, Natasha Lomas/ TechCrunch, Emma Roth/ The Verge
• Dozens of civil society organizations sent a letter to European Commissioner Thierry Breton alleging a misunderstanding of key components of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in letters sent to major social media companies about how they are handing information related to the Israel-Hamas war. - Clothilde Goujard/ Politico Pro

Legal Corner

• Speaking of jawboning, the Supreme Court will hear a jawboning case out of the Fifth Circuit which ruled that a broad swath of the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in their engagement with social media platforms. - Lawrence Hurley/ NBC News, Julia Shapero/ The Hill, Adam Liptake/ The New York Times, Supreme Court (.pdf)
  • Go deeper with our previous discussions on this case with University of Chicago Law professor Genevieve Lakier:
    • “The 5th Circuit's Jawboning Ruling”
    • “Government, Platform Communication, Jawboning, and the First Amendment”
• Threads is still working out what it wants to be and says suppression of search terms on controversial news topics. - Sarah Perez/ TechCrunch

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to  subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Alex and Evelyn talk to Brian Fishman, the former Policy Director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations at Facebook/Meta, about the history of terrorism online, the challenges for platforms moderating terrorism, and the bad incentives created by misguided political pressure (looking at you, EU).

Alex and Evelyn discuss how the horrific events in Israel over the weekend make clear how important social media is during fast-moving historical events, and how X/Twitter has fundamentally degraded as a source of information. They also discuss China's ramped up crack down on app stores, and the Supreme Court's cert grant in the Netchoice cases, that could reshape the internet.

Alex and Evelyn record an episode in front of probably their entire active listener base. They talk about an update on SIO's investigations into child sexual abuse material on platforms; the fight for free speech in India; the poor outlook for election integrity at X in 2024, and what this might mean for other platforms; platform transparency mandates with Daphne Keller; and challenges to age verification laws with Alison Boden, the Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition.

Alex and Evelyn discuss reporting on a proposed deal between TikTok and the US government for it to continue to operate in the country, and the broader geopolitical context of US-China relations; how to think about search-term blocking; YouTube preventing Russell Brand from monetizing his videos on its platform; the Musk stories from the week that matter; and the enjoining of the California Age Appropriate Design Code by a California judge.

Evelyn sat down with Professor Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the Supreme Court's decision regarding the Texas and Florida social media laws. Not the worst opinion the Supreme Court issued on July 1, but predictably there's a lot to complain about anyway.

Evelyn sits down with Genevieve Lakier, a Professor at University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Missouri v. Biden, narrowing but affirming a district court injunction prohibiting large parts of the federal government from communicating with platforms about content moderation.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• OpenAI published a blog promoting how the company’s most powerful large language model, GPT-4, is being used to update platform policy and enforce content moderation rules faster and more consistently than human reviewers. - Priya Anand/ Bloomberg News, Reed Albergotti/ Semafor, Simon Hurtz/ The Verge, Lilian Weng, Vik Goel, Andrea Vallone/ OpenAI
  • Did they forget a section on the importance of human review? Not quite, but you have to actually read the blog to see that this is experimental and focused on updating platform policies and then assisting human experts with policy enforcement.
  • Alex has been testing GPT-4-based moderation tools in the classroom with his students and surprised Evelyn with his optimism. - Casey Newton/ Platformer
• Meanwhile, the company is failing to enforce its own policy against using ChatGPT to create materials that target specific voting demographics. Everything is a content moderation issue, and the policy you have is the policy you actually enforce. - Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post
  
   
• Apple is back in the news again under pressure from a new child safety advocacy campaign pushing the company to do more to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) after the company scrapped plans to scan user content for CSAM. - Tripp Mickle/ The New York Times, Lily Hay Newman/ Wired
• Meta announced it took down the largest Chinese influence operation, known as “Spamouflage,” saying the campaign was fairly basic and ineffective despite operating across thousands of accounts across more than 50 apps. - Sheera Frenkel/ The New York Times, Sarah E. Needleman/ The Wall Street Journal

X-Twitter Corner

• Musk is threatening to sue the ADL, but that doesn’t actually mean he is going to sue the ADL. It’s yet another humiliating example of Musk undercutting the authority of X “CEO” Linda Yaccarino. - Sebastian Tong/ Bloomberg News, Jordan Valinsky/ CNN

Happy DSA Day!

• The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force for the largest online platforms and search engines on August 25. - Théophane Hartmann/ Euractiv, Chris Velazco/ The Washington Post
  • Companies released blog posts about how oh-so-seriously they are taking their obligations with a mix of actually positive steps and completely performative measures. - Nick Clegg/ Meta
  • Meanwhile, the European Commission released a “Case Study” on risk assessment under the DSA for Russian disinformation, and boy-oh-boy do we have thoughts. It's a scary document that seems to validate concerns from those who worry the DSA will be used to repress speech. - European Commission
• Meta decided not to follow the Oversight Board’s recommendation to suspend former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s account. The decision raises questions about what the multi-month Board case achieved and how Meta views the purpose of the Board when it disregards its expert input in high-profile cases like this. - Meta Transparency Center

 

• Casey Newton has an in-depth report on why the notorious Kiwi Farms website is still up and what content moderation looks like at the infrastructure layer. - Casey Newton/ Platformer

Legal Corner

• Another U.S. Supreme Court content moderation showdown seems inevitable as the Biden administration filed an opinion encouraging the Court to take up the NetChoice cases challenging Florida and Texas laws that would restrict moderation action on political content and accounts. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Makena Kelly/ The Verge, Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post
  • The solicitor general’s brief stated the obvious by arguing there is a circuit split, the questions in the cases are important, and all parties want the review. 
• A federal judge in Texas ruled a state law requiring age verification for adult websites is unconstitutional, blocking enforcement due to a “chilling effect” in a state where sodomy is illegal. - Ashley Belanger/ Ars Technica, Adi Robertson/ The Verge
  • The Texas Office of the Attorney General is expected to appeal the decision in the case brought by the Free Speech Coalition, the adult entertainment industry trade association.
• A federal judge in Arkansas ruled that a law requiring age verification and parental consent to create an account on social media websites is likely unconstitutional, granting NetChoice’s request to block the law from taking effect on September 1. - Andrew Demillo/ Associated Press, Rebecca Kern/ Politico
  • Evelyn is not quite sure what to make of these two pretty decent opinions that faithfully applied precedent, but it will definitely be a big year in First Amendment law for the internet and we will be here to cover all of it!

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

X-Twitter Corner

• Twitter followed through on its threat to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The rationale has changed from a violation of the Lanham Act, a federal trademark statute, to a breach of contract and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). It's still a bad idea and not at all free-speechy. - Bryan Pietsch/ The Washington Post 
• But in a pleasant surprise, X appealed an Indian court ruling that it was not compliant with federal government orders to remove political content, arguing it could embolden New Delhi to block more content and broaden the scope of censorship. Does Musk know about this? - Aditya Kalra, Arpan Chaturvedi, Munsif Vengattil/ Reuters
• Meanwhile, Apple removed Meduza’s flagship news podcast, “What Happened,” from Apple Podcasts and then reinstated it two days later without explaining… what happened. - Meduza
  • Earlier this summer, the Russian state censorship authority asked Apple to block the Latvian-based, independent Russian- and English-language news outlet’s show.
• About a month ago, the Oversight Board told Meta to suspend Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen from Facebook and Instagram. He originally threatened to leave the platform altogether, but instead is back and posting. Meta has three more weeks until the deadline to respond to the Board’s recommendation. (Shoutout to Rest of World for being one of the only outlets covering this!) - Danielle Keeton-Olsen, Sreynat Sarum/ Rest of World 
  
   
• TikTok announced a number of new measures that it is rolling out in the EU to comply with the Digital Services Act, which comes into effect for major platforms at the end of the month. Especially ironic in light of our discussion last week, one of the measures is a chronological feed. - Natasha Lomas/ TechCrunch, TikTok
• Google said demand for its free Perspective API has skyrocketed as large language model builders are using it as a solution for content moderation. But Perspective is a blunt tool with documented issues, including high false-positives and bias, and a lack of context that can be easily fooled by adversarial users. (Shoutout to Yoel Roth for skeeting about this on Bluesky) - Alex Pasternack/ Fast Company, @yoyoel.com
• This is scary: A lawsuit brought by the adult entertainment industry group Free Speech Coalition (FSC) against the state of Utah to stop enforcement of a new state law requiring age verification to access adult websites was dismissed. - Sam Metz/ Associated Press
  • The court held that the law can’t be challenged and paused with an injunction before it goes into effect because it’s not enforced by the government, but with private lawsuits. Not only that, but the court said the group can’t raise the constitutional arguments it made against the law until a resident uses it to file a lawsuit.
  • This has to be wrong as a matter of First Amendment law, which is usually very concerned about chilling effects. FSC appealed the ruling, so we’ll have to wait and see. If this survives, it will be a scary loophole to First Amendment scrutiny.

Sports Corner

• Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi! The Matildas are through to the Women’s World Cup quarter finals with a 2-0 win over Denmark and Sam Kerr’s return to the pitch for the final 10 minutes of play. - Jon Healy, Simon Smale/ ABC News (Australia)
• We send our commiserations to the U.S. Women's team for bowing out of the World Cup in the worst possible way. Hold your head up high, Megan Rapinoe, you’ve left an indelible mark on the sport and U.S. women’s athletics! - Issy Ronald/ CNN
• Stanford Athletics is in rare company, but not the kind you want to be in. All but three other teams will leave the Pac-12 as the historic college athletics conference faces an uncertain future. - John Marshall/ Associated Press

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments. They’re joined this week by NYU’s Joshua Tucker and Stanford’s Jennifer Pan to discuss new studies released from an academic research partnership with Meta on the 2020 U.S. election.

The X Files

• Elon Musk reinstated an account that posted child sexual abuse material just a few days earlier. The account, known for spreading conspiracy theories, then criticized Musk for spreading false information and censoring the Obama birther conspiracy. - Joseph Menn, Drew Harwell/ The Washington Post
  
   
• Musk then reinstated Ye on X, but don’t worry, the platform formerly known as Twitter received reassurance that the artist formerly known as Kanye West won’t share any more antisemitic or harmful content. - Rebecca Elliott/ The Wall Street Journal
• We’re sure Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino will have no problem hiring an exceptional head of Brand Safety with this kind of model trust and safety best practices on display. - @kateconger
• In his latest move in a campaign for free speech absolutism, Elon Musk’s lawyer is threatening to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit advocacy group, for saying mean things about Twitter in research reports. - Sheera Frenkel, Ryan Mac/ The New York Times, ​​Center for Countering Digital Hate
  • CCDH lawyer Roberta Kaplan must have had a great time writing back to Musk lawyer Alex Spiro: “We write in response to the ridiculous letter you sent our clients on behalf of X… CCDH will not be bullied by your clients.” - Center for Countering Digital Hate, @jsrailton

No Labels

• Meta is not labeling state media propaganda accounts on Threads, unlike Facebook and Instagram, but says it will do so “soon.” - Newley Purnell/ The Wall Street Journal 

Shutting This Down

• Dozens of digital and human rights advocacy groups, led by Access Now, called on European Commissioner Thierry Breton to clarify his comments that the Digital Services Act could be used to shut down social media companies during protests. - Clothilde Goujard/ Politico, Access Now
  • A Commission official responded to the letter within 24 hours, writing that “Europe stands by the freedom of expression and a neutral and open internet.” - @Mr_Zakka

Getting Meta on Meta

• NYU’s Joshua Tucker and Stanford’s Jennifer Pan discuss four studies released in Nature and Science from a research partnership with Meta on the 2020 U.S. election. Tucker is a lead investigator on the project and Pan is lead author on two of the articles published in Science.
  • A group of leading academics were granted access to work with Meta researchers to study data from consenting Facebook and Instagram users during the 2020 presidential election. 
  • Their findings are complicated and disputed, but indicate that changes to limit algorithmic recommendations did not make a significant difference in partisanship or political knowledge. 
  • A key finding shows that conservatives were more likely to engage with election misinformation, and Tucker points out that it is impossible to understand the overall effect social media has on election information and political beliefs.
• The Research
  • Nature: Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
  • Science: Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook
  • Science: Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions
  • Science: How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
• Select Headlines
  • Bloomberg: Facebook False News in US Election Reached More Conservatives, Study Says
  • Meta: Groundbreaking Studies Could Help Answer the Thorniest Questions About Social Media and Democracy
  • Nature: Tweaking Facebook feeds is no easy fix for polarization, studies find
  • NBC News: Facebook opened its doors to researchers. What they found paints a complicated picture of social media and echo chambers.
  • Platformer: How Facebook does (and doesn’t) shape our political views
  • The Atlantic: So Maybe Facebook Didn't Ruin Politics
  • The New York Times: Facebook’s Algorithm Is ‘Influential’ but Doesn’t Necessarily Change Beliefs, Researchers Say
  • The Wall Street Journal: Does Facebook Polarize Users? Meta Disagrees With Partners Over Research Conclusions
  • The Washington Post: Changing Facebook's algorithm won't fix polarization, new study finds

(Evelyn’s) Sports Corner

• Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi! The Matildas are through to the round of 16 with a drubbing of Canada this morning. The Calf that Holds the Hopes of the Nation appears to be recovering. - Dan Colasimone/ ABC News (Australia)

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

ActivityPub Hub 

• A new Stanford Internet Observatory report by David Thiel and Renée DiResta found a significant issue with child abuse content in the largest decentralized social media communities that make up the Fediverse. They argue that current online safety tools must be adapted for decentralized social networks. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post
• Meta’s Threads announced future support for ActivityPub, the technical protocol that powers the Fediverse, but Alex doesn’t think that will ever happen. - Casey Newton/ Platformer
  • Instagram’s Adam Mosseri and his Threads communications team insist it’s coming. - @threadsapp
• So what kind of trust and safety and legal headaches might this create? Alex has plenty of ideas.
• One consequence might be another boon for the booming trust and safety as a service industry. - Tim Bernard/ Tech Policy Press
• That is, so long as “decentralized” doesn't become a synonym for “we don't need to invest in trust and safety.” Speaking of which, Bluesky finally responded to its failure to block usernames with racial slurs after weeks of controversy and radio silence. - Jay Graber/ Bluesky

X Corner?!

• If you drink enough of the kool aid, eventually you spill a steady stream of corporate buzzwords when you find out your company was renamed to “X” overnight by your CTO. - @lindayacc
• Shockingly, the company formerly known as Twitter continues to have “negative cash flow” and “heavy debt” as ad revenue drops 50%. - Amanda Macias, Lora Kolodny/ CNBC, Jahnavi Nidumolu, Krystal Hu/ Reuters
• Meanwhile, the “CEO” is trying to convince advertisers to come back while Bloomberg published an investigation into reports that hateful and harmful content has increased on Twitter since Elon Musk’s acquisition last year, including SIO findings that known CSAM was appearing on the site. - Aisha Counts, Eari Nakano/ Bloomberg News
  • The reporting clearly got under the skin of Twitter’s leadership team with a lengthy response from Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino with a whole bunch of unverifiable buzzwords about how the article was wrong. - @lindayacc
    • Case in Point: “99.99% of Tweet impressions are healthy. And we’re achieving this while defending our users’ right to free speech.”
  • The problem is that nothing is verifiable anymore since all the access to data for researchers has been cut off.

TikTok Corner

• The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University brought a challenge on behalf a group of independent researchers and journalists, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, challenging a Texas state government ban on accessing TikTok, arguing the law violates First Amendment rights by inhibiting academic freedom to research and teach about the popular social app at public universities. - Melissa Mahtani/ CNN, Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times, Talal Ansari/ The Wall Street Journal, Drew Harwell/ The Washington Post, Knight First Amendment Institute
• The flashy rollout of the European Union’s Digital Services Act continues. Last week, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and his team carried out a so-called “stress test” at TikTok’s Dublin offices and gave them a failing grade, but an “A” for agreeing to public humiliation. - Alex Barinka/ Bloomberg News

Alex's Cyber Doom and Gloom Corner

• Alex is among those saying a recently discovered Microsoft vulnerability exploited in a Chinese espionage campaign to access the unclassified emails of top administration officials is even worse than you think and not getting enough attention. - Shir Tamari/ Wiz, Sumathi Bala/ CNBC, Julian Barnes/ The New York Times, Jonathan Greig/ The Record by Recorded Future

Sports Corner

• Evelyn has an Aussie sports update and asks everyone to say a prayer for Chelsea and national team striker Sam Kerr's calf. - Naaman Zhou/ New Yorker

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

Threads v. Twitter

• Instagram’s Twitter competitor Threads is the fastest downloaded app, boasting more than 100 million users within five days despite pretty basic features. - Jay Peters, Jon Porter/ The Verge
  • Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Threads will be a place for sports and entertainment over politics and news. We say good luck with that! - Rohan Goswami/ CNBC, Jay Peters/ The Verge, @mosseri
  • Musk is taking it well... tweeting that the showdown against Zuckerberg should be a literal measurement of manhood and threatening to sue Meta. - Matt Novak/ Forbes, Rohan Goswami/ CNBC
  • But don’t worry, Elon, you still have a fan in the Taliban. - @AnasHaqqani313
  • The content moderation challenges will only get more difficult for Threads, especially on a decentralized protocol. - @alexstamos
  • Despite the early success, Threads can’t take flight over Twitter in the EU yet due to uncertainty with forthcoming competition regulations under the Digital Markets Act. - Jillian Deutsch, Stephanie Bodoni/ Bloomberg News, Makena Kelly/ The Verge
• The European Union officially signed off on a new data-transfer deal with the United States. Now, we have to wait and see if it will once again falter under a legal challenge. - Adam Satariano, Monika Pronczuk, David McCabe/ The New York Times, European Commission
• There was frankly frightening rhetoric in the EU threatening to cut off social media platforms during unrest from French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commissioner Thierry Breton. These are disappointing statements and flippancy about the importance of free expression. - Laura Kayali, Alexandre Léchenet/ Politico, Clothilde Goujard, Nicolas Camut/ Politico
• A U.S. Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit upheld FOSTA against a First Amendment challenge. - Gustavo Turner/ XBIZ

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

 

On July 4, a district court issued an injunction prohibiting large swathes of the government from communicating with platforms about content moderation in almost any way. Evelyn sits down with Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, to talk about the opinion, the issue of government "jawboning" of platforms, and how the First Amendment has, should and shouldn't think about this problem.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

Twitter Corner

• Twitter continues to break its product, this time by limiting how many tweets people can see and requiring people to log in to view anything. Advertisers must be thrilled! - Aisha Counts/ Bloomberg News, Ashley Capoot/ CNBC, Ramishah Maruf/ CNN, Amanda Silberling/ TechCrunch, Tamia Fowlkes, Julian Mark/ The Washington Post
• Linda Yaccarino, the “CEO,” belatedly weighed in on day four of the debacle with an “explanation” that makes… absolutely no sense. - @lindayacc
• Meanwhile, Linda is desperately trying to reassure advertisers Twitter is a grownup platform by rejoining the Tech Coalition, an industry membership organization for collaboration to address online child sexual exploitation and abuse. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal
• A group of academics and researchers sent an open letter opposing the EU’s proposed Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse. Alex supports strong end-to-end encryption, but has some thoughts on what they get wrong.
• Apropos of nothing, Meta is launching its Twitter competitor, Threads, on July 6. - Salvador Rodriguez/ The Wall Street Journal
• Meta’s Oversight Board overturned a decision to leave up a video in which Cambodian Prime Minister ​​Hun Sen calls for violence against his political opponents, calling on Meta to suspend his Facebook and Instagram accounts for six months in light of his use of social media to incite violence and the history of violence and repression in the country. - Regine Cabato and Rebecca Tan/ The Washington Post, Oversight Board
  • Prime Minister Sen responded by quitting Facebook to join TikTok and Telegram. We’re sure he’ll be very respectful and not at all incite-y on his new accounts while he threatens to ban Facebook in the country. - Joel Guinto/ BBC News

Legal Corner

• TikTok finally admitted to funding the legal challenge of Montana’s app ban brought by creators in the state… after the creators told The New York Times who was funding them. - Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times
• Tech industry association NetChoice filed yet another lawsuit against state social media regulations, challenging an Arkansas law requiring age verification for social media users and parental consent for those under 18. - Rebecca Kern/ Politico Pro, Krista Chavez/ NetChoice
• In India, a court dismissed a case brought by Twitter last July challenging government orders to block certain accounts and posts and fined the company the equivalent of $61,000 for its failure to comply with the orders. - Sankalp Phartiyal/ Bloomberg News, Manish Singh/ TechCrunch
• Twitter’s legal challenge against government orders to block certain accounts and posts under recent regulatory updates to the country’s IT rules and fined the company the equivalent of $61,000. - Sankalp Phartiyal/ Bloomberg News, Manish Singh/ TechCrunch
  • It's a bleak decision that does not give any credence to any of Twitter’s arguments, fully credits all of the government’s arguments, and does not show any concern for freedom of expression. - Vasudev Devadasan/ Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
  • While Twitter could appeal, the challenge was filed in the pre-Musk era, so Evelyn is not holding her breath.
• What is more American than sports and eating? Don’t ask Evelyn, as Alex stumps her with an Australian twist on American trivia. - Bianca Hrovat/ Sydney Morning Herald, Inga Neilsen/ 9News

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• A new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory and Thorn, a nonprofit working to counter online child sexual exploitation, examines the problem of increasingly realistic images generated with freely available tools to create sexual abuse material. - Issie Lapowsky/ The New York Times, @det@hachyderm.io
• The mutiny in Russia unfolded in real time on Telegram with unreliable information spreading as few other sources of news or information were available from the country. - Jon Allsop/ Columbia Journalism Review, Matt Binder/ Mashable, Ben Smith/ Semafor, Joseph Menn, Mary Ilyushina, Shera Avi-Yonah/ The Washington Post

Twitter Corner

• Elon Musk has clearly been focused on top priorities with a late night tweet declaring the terms “cis” and “cisgender” are  “slurs” that can result in suspensions. - Sawdah Bhaimiya/ Insider, Sarah Fortinsky/ The Hill
• Meanwhile, Musk met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said Tesla will be in India “as soon as humanly possible.” - Hyunjoo Jin, Shivangi Acharya/ Reuters
• In the ongoing back and forth between Twitter and the EU, the company said it would comply with the Digital Service Act which goes into force in late August. Twitter was the first company to do a voluntary compliance “stress test” (whatever that means) at its San Francisco headquarters during EU industry chief Thierry Breton’s Silicon Valley tour last week. - Kelvin Chan/ Associated Press, Brian Fung/ CNN, Clothilde Goujard, Gian Volpicelli/ Politico, Lisa O'Carroll/ The Guardian, Alexa Corse, Sam Schechner/ The Wall Street Journal, Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post
• Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued a legal notice requiring Twitter to provide information about what it is doing to address reports of an increase in hate speech since Elon Musk acquired the company and laid off most staff. - Josh Taylor/ Australian Associated Press, Ina Fried/ Axios, Byron Kaye/ Reuters, Frances Vinall/ The Washington Post, Julie Inman Grant/ Tech Policy Press
• YouTube showed up Spotify by removing a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for spreading vaccine misinformation in conversation with podcast host Jordan Peterson. - David Ingram, Ben Goggin/ NBC News
• It turns out that big social media companies may have the upper hand over users as Reddit removed moderators on popular subreddits who didn’t comply with a warning about continuing protests over the company’s decision to charge for API access. - Matt Binder/ Mashable, Jay Peters/ The Verge
• After giving Vietnamese a platform to share posts about police abuse, government corruption, and debunk government propaganda, Facebook is now complying with the authoritarian country’s demands to censor political dissent with an internal list of ruling party officials who cannot be criticized. - Rebecca Tan/ The Washington Post

Legal Corner

• The Supreme Court issued its decision in Counterman without acknowledging the very real harm that can be done by online stalkers, even when they don't explicitly threaten their victims. - Jan Wolfe, Jess Bravin/ The Wall Street Journal, @ma_franks
  • The majority opinion held that prosecutors must show that a person was reckless when they sent threatening messages, and not merely that the messages were objectively threatening
  • Justice Sotomayor's concurrence got it right in saying that this was a case about stalking, not threats, but we'll have to wait and see whether lower courts pay attention, or whether they assume that the majority opinion means online stalking is protected by the First Amendment, as long as the stalker doesn't say anything threatening.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Elon Musk’s drastic layoffs, cost saving, and price raising measures were an inspiration for him as some of the most active users of his site went on strike, taking some of the largest subreddit forums private in protest against the changes. - David Ingram/ NBC News
  • Huffman is trying to force changes against the will of his user base by claiming he represents the “will of the people,” and comparing subreddits moderators, who the company does not pay, to a “landed gentry” that got there first and will pass communities down to their descendants.

Twitter Corner

• Linda Yaccarino published her first memo since starting as CEO, writing that “Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. We’re on the precipice of making history—and that’s not an empty promise. That’s OUR reality.” The emphasis is hers, and this is all a bit… self-refuting. - Alex Heath/ The Verge
• While Linda was writing her memo, Musk was writing tweets about wanting a modern day Roman dictator. How is that for brand safety? - @elonmusk
• Meanwhile, former CEO Jack Dorsey confirms what we all knew: India threatened to shut down Twitter in the country unless it restricted accounts that were critical of the Modi administration. - Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Aditya Kalra, Kanishka Singh/ Reuters
  • In response, a government official said Twitter repeatedly violated Indian law during Dorsey’s tenure, but that the company had been in compliance since June 2022, which coincidentally seems to align with Musk’s takeover bid for the company announced in April 2022 and completed in October.
• Spotify continues to let Joe Rogan promote guests who spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines. Spotify and Rogan signed an exclusivity deal in 2020 that is worth more than $100 million. - Wes Davis/ The Verge
• Meta announced that its “Covid-19 misinformation rules will no longer be in effect globally” and outlined further changes to roll back its policies in published responses to the Oversight Board’s recommendations on updating the rules. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Nick Clegg/ Meta
  • The announcement came right at the deadline for responding to the Oversight Board’s recommendations and the Board took so long in delivering a decision that the World Health Organization lifted the declaration of a global emergency two weeks later, rendering many of the recommendations moot.
• In other news, the Oversight Board also released its 2022 annual report in which it said that it received nearly 1.3 million appeals and… published 12 decisions. So not only do the cases take forever, but there are very few of them! - Oversight Board

Legal Corner

• Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation that would ban kids under 18 from joining many social media sites without parental content. Kudos to The Verge for covering this! - Makena Kelly/ The Verge
  • A Louisiana bill that would similarly require parental consent for users under 18 received a lot more press as it was the foundation for copycat state legislation. - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Natasha Singer/ The New York Times
• But the Texas bill has a bunch of other provisions focused on protecting minors from “harmful content.” Tech trade group NetChoice said the law “violates the First Amendment many times over,” so it’s probably just a matter of time until another new social media law faces another tech industry lawsuit.
• The “Florida Digital Bill of Rights” was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). - Rebecca Kern/ Politico Pro, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Office of Governor Ron DeSantis
  • SB 262 includes some basic consumer rights, such as the right to know the information companies have collected about an individual, the right to correct and delete certain information, and the right to limit some data disclosures. However, the measures only apply to the largest tech companies.
  • In addressing the most pressing problems for online privacy, the bill also prohibits government officials in the state from making requests for social media companies to remove content, and requires search engines to disclose whether search results are influenced by “political partisanship or political ideology.” 

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

The Supreme Court's decision in Murthy v. Missouri is finally here! Evelyn sat down with Professor Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the good, bad and ugly of the opinions.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) Research Manager Renée DiResta and Chief Technologist David Thiel to discuss a new report on a months-long investigation into the distribution of illicit sexual content by minors online.

Large Networks of Minors Appear to be Selling Illicit Sexual Content Online

The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) published a report last week with findings from a months-long investigation into the distribution of illicit sexual content by minors online. The SIO research team identified a large network of accounts claiming to be minors, likely teenagers, who are producing, marketing and selling their own explicit content on social media.

A tip from The Wall Street Journal informed the investigation with a list of common terms and hashtags indicating the sale of “self-generated child sexual abuse material” (SG-CSAM). SIO identified a network of more than 500 accounts advertising SG-CSAM with tens of thousands of likely buyers.

With only public data, this research uncovered and helped resolve basic safety failings with Instagram’s reporting system for accounts with expected child exploitation, and Twitter’s system for automatically detecting and removing known CSAM. 

Most of the work to address CSAM has focused on adult offenders who create the majority of content. These findings highlight the need for new countermeasures developed by industry, law enforcement and policymakers to address sextortion and the sale of illicit content that minors create themselves.

Front-Page Wall Street Journal Coverage

• A Wall Street Journal article first covered Twitter’s lapse in safety measures to prevent known CSAM from appearing on the site and the importance of researcher access to study public social media data to identify and help address issues. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal
• Instagram was the focus of a larger Wall Street Journal investigation, based in part on SIO’s research findings. The app is currently the most significant platform for these CSAM networks, connecting young sellers with buyers with recommendation features, searching for hashtags, and direct messaging. - Jeff Horwitz, Katherine Blunt/ The Wall Street Journal

Bipartisan Concern and Calls for Social Media Regulation 

The investigation sparked outrage across the aisle in the U.S. and grabbed the attention of the European Commission as the European Union prepares to enforce the Digital Services Act for the largest online platforms later this summer.

• Thierry Breton, the top EU official for trade and industry regulation, announced that he will meet with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg later this month at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters to discuss the report and demand the company takes action.

In Congress, House Energy and Commerce Democrats and GOP Senators were most outspoken about taking action to address the concerning findings.

• Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested a hearing on the findings during a Senate Judiciary markup session.
• Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) @SenTomCotton: “Social media isn’t safe for kids. At a minimum, we should require age verification and parental consent.”
• Sen. Rick Scott (@SenRickScott): “Every parent should read this story. Social media is NOT SAFE for our kids. What is described here is disgusting and needs to be shut down now!”
• House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats released statements that they were “appalled” and “disgusted” by the role Instagram plays in connecting minors with buyers for abuse content. - Office of Congressman Frank Pallone, Office of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky
• Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck): “How do we expect Big Tech companies like @Meta to regulate themselves when they allow vast networks of pedophiles to operate freely? #pedogram
• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna): “Instead of meddling in elections, it would be cool if Mark Zuckerburg spent a few Zuckerbucks on cleaning up the Pedogram network.”

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Stanford Internet Observatory research discovered serious failings with Twitter’s detection and removal systems for child abuse content. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal, @stanfordio

Twitter Corner

• In another welcome gift on Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first day, leaked documents show Twitter’s ad revenue is down nearly 60% from last year. - Ryan Mac, Tiffany Hsu/ The New York Times
• Four Democratic senators sent a letter to Elon Musk and Yaccarino inquiring if there are still enough people at Twitter to comply with the company’s FTC data privacy agreements. - Brian Fung/ CNN
• Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, and head of brand safety and ad quality, A.J. Brown, resigned after Musk reversed their decision to limit the reach of a Daily Wire documentary. - Kylie Robison/ Fortune, Sheila Dang/ Reuters, Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal, Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin, Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal
  • Twitter planned to limit the visibility of the documentary for misgendering, but Elon Musk overturned the decision and issued an apology to Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing saying the content is allowed and blaming his staff for a “mistake.” - Todd Spangler/ Variety, @elonmusk
• Twitter is demanding researchers delete data acquired through academic data access agreements within 30 days after the contracts expire unless they pay a new rate of at least $42,000 per month — a near exponential increase — for an enterprise API that provides less access. - Chris Stokel-Walker/ i newspaper
• Let’s hope Linda is feeling good about DSA compliance which will start in August for Twitter.
  • Twitter dropped out of the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. - Kelvin Chan/ Associated Press, Ewa Krukowska/ Bloomberg News, Justin Hendrix/ Tech Policy Press, Natasha Lomas/ TechCrunch, @GlobalAffairs
  • The European Commission will conduct a voluntary content moderation compliance test with Twitter for the forthcoming Digital Services Act regulations during a visit to Twitter headquarters in San Francisco later this month. - Sam Schechner/ The Wall Street Journal
• Meanwhile, YouTube announced it will stop enforcing its 2020 election misinformation policy. Good thing there’s no big events coming up in the next year where the amount and importance of such claims is likely to increase! - Sara Fischer/ Axios, YouTube
• Instagram lifted its account suspension for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday, saying it was a mistake not to reinstate him after he launched a presidential campaign in April. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post
  • Kennedy’s account was previously suspended for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about vaccines and COVID-19. His nonprofit, the Children’s Health Defense, is still suspended from the platform.  
• TikTok has been sharing user data on an internal messaging tool that is accessible to ByteDance employees in China. - Sapna Maheshwari and Ryan Mac/ The New York Times
• The surgeon general released a report on the effect social media has on young people, noting benefits, but warning about specific harms and calling for action by social media companies, policymakers, researchers, children, and parents and guardians. - Casey Newton/ Platformer, Taylor Hatmaker/ TechCrunch, Matt Richtel, Catherine Pearson, Michael Levenson/ The New York Times, Department of Health and Human Services, Vivek Murthy/ The Washington Post (commentary)
• Conservative groups are hoping to take advantage of a legislative response to child safety concerns to remove pro-LGBTQ and similar content on social issues and sexual health and identity. - Mike Masnick/ Techdirt

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Alex and Evelyn discuss the Supreme Court decisions in Gonzalez and Taamneh; Montana passing its state-wide TikTok ban and the immediate legal challenge filed against it; Meta's $1.3 billion dollar fine under the GDPR; OpenAI's charm offensive; and just another Monday at Twitter.

Play the sad trombone 5 times for this week's Twitter Corner: Musk censors political content at the behest of the Turkish Government in the final days of a close and historically important election; Linda Yaccarino is announced as the new CEO; Tucker Carlson announces he's going to stream his new show to Twitter; the platform announces not-so-encrypted messaging; and continues its ad hominem content moderation practices. Also: Singapore, Pakistan, Russia all crack down on internet freedom, and the European Court of Human Rights releases a wild ruling holding politicians responsible for third-party comments on their Facebook pages.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Pornhub and other pornography websites owned by MindGeek are blocking access for users in Utah with a video message protesting an age verification law that went into effect this past week. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Jonathan Edwards/ The Washington Post, Samantha Cole/ Vice News
  • In completely unrelated news, VPN downloads spiked dramatically in Utah. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post
  • The adult entertainment industry followed up by filing a lawsuit against the state challenging the law on First Amendment grounds. - Ben Winslow/ Fox 13 News, Free Speech Coalition

Twitter Corner

• Graphic videos from a mass shooting at a mall in Allen, Texas went viral on Twitter without a warning screen or similar labeling. The glaring issue suggests Musk's staffing cuts have left the platform ill-equipped to deal with difficult, real-time content moderation problems that arise in these kinds of crises. - Benjamin Mullin/ The New York Times, Aimee Picchi/ CBS News
• Meanwhile, Musk is focusing on the real issues, like whether NPR is going to start tweeting again. - Bobby Allyn/ NPR
• But at least our benevolent leader will allow some verified public announcement and emergency services free API access. - Sareen Habeshian/ Axios, Jon Fingas/ Engadget, Ivan Mehta/ TechCrunch, @TwitterDev
• Meta released its quarterly adversarial threat report, highlighting the takedown of a pro-China influence campaign with a network of accounts posing as news organizations and a think tank. - Donie O'Sullivan, Sean Lyngaas/ CNN, Ben Nimmo, Nathaniel Gleicher/ Meta

Legal Corner

• The Ninth Circuit threw out a jawboning case brought by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others against Elizabeth Warren for a letter she sent Amazon criticizing the online marketplace for recommending their vaccine denial book. - Bob Egelko/ San Francisco Chronicle, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (.pdf)
• There is a big show-down going on in Brazil over a “fake news” bill that the government is trying to ram through, suggesting a worrying level of appetite on both sides of the aisle in Brazil to crack down on internet freedom. - Anthony Boadle/ Reuters
• Decentralized Twitter alternative Bluesky is not allowing heads of state at the moment… that’s one way to deal with a content moderation challenge! - Kylie Robison/ Fortune

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

Twitter Corner

• As we predicted, Musk is complying with more government take-down orders than Twitter used to. - Russell Brandom/ Rest of World 
• Don't expect more reporting though, Twitter has stopped sharing takedown orders with Lumen, which is how this data was compiled. - @lumendatabase
• It’s okay though, we have… this? What is this? Is this supposed to be a transparency report? - Twitter
• Meanwhile, Twitter is one of 19 online services designated as a very large online platform (VLOP) or very large online search engine (VLOSE) under the EU’s pending Digital Services Act. Those companies will have to comply with the regulation earlier than smaller platforms and have the most burdensome requirements. - Sam Schechner, Kim Mackrael/ The Wall Street Journal
  • More: The other companies on the list are pretty much what you’d expect, except something called Zalando (we’ll save you a VLOP visit, it’s an online fashion retail company) — good for it!
• Looks like someone in Montana finally talked to a First Amendment lawyer. The state’s recently passed TikTok ban is being held up as the governor seeks amendments to make it broader. If this is an attempt to make it less constitutionally suspect, it isn't a very effective one. - Meghan Bobrowsky/ The Wall Street Journal
• In another disappointing moral panic, the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act was introduced with bipartisan backing in the U.S. Senate. The bill would ban kids under 13 from using social media, implement age verification for all users, require parental consent for kids 13-17, and ban recommendation algorithms for minors. - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Brian Fung/ CNN, Justin Hendrix/ Tech Policy Press, Morgan Sung/ TechCrunch, Matt Laslo/ Wired
• The decentralized Twitter-alternative Bluesky took off over the past week. The fast-growing social network is still in beta mode and not yet ready for the many trust and safety challenges that lie ahead — it didn’t even have a blocking function until Friday. - Jay Peters/ The Verge

Sports Corner

• Alex is holding his head up high after a historic season came to an end for his beloved Sacramento Kings. - Alex Kramers/ Sacramento Kings

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Stanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn joins the show to discuss the latest developments in child safety policy on Capitol Hill. 
  • The EARN IT Act and STOP CSAM Act were officially introduced with civil liberties and online privacy advocates raising concerns. - Joe Mullin/ Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sophia Cope, Andrew Crocker, Mario Trujillo/ Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • The EARN IT Act would remove websites' immunity from civil lawsuits and state criminal charges stemming from child sex abuse material (CSAM) on their services, and create a commission to develop best practices for addressing child sexual exploitation online. - Lawrence Bonk/ Engadget, Mike Masnick/ Techdirt, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the STOP CSAM Act which would expand child sexual abuse reporting laws for social media companies, require annual reports on efforts to protect children online, and specify that platforms are liable to civil lawsuits for the storage or distribution of CSAM. - Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • In a new Lawfare piece, Riana warns that mandated transparency reporting could do more harm than good if bad actors are able to exploit the disclosures, and she compares and contrasts several online safety bills' approaches to this dilemma.
• The Department of Justice brought charges against 40 members of  the Chinese national police for deploying a troll farm using “fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents, and attempting to get the dissidents’ accounts removed from a platform operated by a “U.S. telecommunications company.” - Department of Justice 

Twitter Corner

• Professor Alexandra Roberts weighs in on whether Twitter could face legal liability for shoving blue check marks on people who don't want it. - ​​@lexlanham
• Twitter quietly removed a line with explicit protections for transgender users in its hateful content policy. - Jess Weatherbed, Emma Roth/ The Verge, GLAAD
• Twitter removed all “government-funded” and “state-affiliated” labeling for public news broadcasters, state media organizations, and affiliated journalists. - Jahnavi Nidumolu/ Reuters, Sara Fischer/ Axios, Nick Robertson/ The Hill, Michael Levenson/ The New York Times
• Meanwhile, Facebook laid off most of its information problems team. - Anusuya Lahiri/ Benzinga
• The Oversight Board, the quasi-independent entity funded by Meta to guide its content moderation decisions and policy, released an advisory report on Thursday calling for continued enforcement, but a reassessment of the types of claims Meta should remove under its current COVID-19 misinformation policies. The opinion took nine months to come down, but was the equivalent of a shruggie emoji in terms of how much concrete guidance it gave Meta. - Oversight Board

Legal Corner

• Breaking News: The Supreme Court continues to use Evelyn's course syllabus as their docket guide and granted cert in two cases about when and whether government actors can block critics on social media. - Jay Peters/ The Verge

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

TikTok Corner

• The Montana state legislature passed a statewide TikTok ban that prohibits app stores from making downloads available and bars the company from operating in the state. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte is expected to sign the bill into law, but legal challenges will likely prevent the bill from going into effect early next year. - John Perrino/ Tech Policy Press, Brian Fung/ CNN, David McCabe/ The New York Times, ACLU, SB 419 - An Act Banning TikTok in Montana (.pdf)
• Our colleague Riana Pfefferkorn warns that the legislation is “clearly unconstitutional” and “contrary to the vision of a free and open internet that the US has long promulgated abroad as part of our commitment to democracy.” - Lily Hay Newman/ Wired

Discord had a Week with the Leak

• Discord published a legal blog response to revelations that massive U.S. intelligence leaks stemmed from messages in a small private group on the platform. Don’t share classified documents on Discord, it’s against their terms of service! - Clint Smith/ Discord
• A failure to spot the leaks in private and then niche corners of the web have spurred calls for more counterintelligence monitoring, but that might be the best idea. - Carol E. Lee, Ken Dilanian, Dan De Luce/ NBC News, @drewharwel
• Our colleague Renée DiResta co-authored an analysis that highlights how “the future of counterintelligence will be digitally native.” - Renée DiResta, Jon Askonas/ Foreign Policy

Substack’s (lack of) Content Moderation Plans 

• Substack CEO Chris Best just launched a Twitter competitor, but he dodged questions about content moderation during a must-listen episode of the “Decoder” podcast. - Nilay Patel/ The Verge

Twitter Corner

• Elon is still CEO (or maybe his dog, Floki, is)
• In a post that seems like a blast from the past, a new Twitter 2.0 policy will display labels on content with limited visibility for violating a policy and provide a user appeal system. It pains us to say it, but good work! - Twitter Safety 
• Musk claims that the government was reading your Twitter DMs. That’s either taken out of context, or something that needs to be looked into as it would violate the law. We’re guessing it’s the former. - Olafimihan Oshin/ The Hill, Matt Young/ Daily Beast, Ari Blaff/ National Review
• But no, it's crazy and a witch hunt for the FTC to be investigating Twitter's privacy practices — this is the implication of the GOP subpoena to Chair Lina Khan this week. - Ryan Tracy/ The Wall Street Journal, Stef W. Kight/ Axios, Alayna Treene, Sara Murray, Zachary Cohen, Annie Grayer/ CNN  
• NPR, PBS, and American Public Media have stopped posting on Twitter in protest of misleading government-funded media labels. If Starship is government-sponsored, should there be a giant label on the spaceship? - Sara Fischer/ Axios, Shelly Hagan/ Bloomberg News, David Folkenflik/ NPR, Paul Farhi/ The Washington Post
• Twitter backtracked and agreed to remove content in Brazil that supported recent attacks at schools. - Amanda Audi/ The Brazilian Report

Bot or Not

• Russian fake account operators boast of only being detected 1% of the time, according to recently leaked classified documents. - Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post 

Arkansas’ Unusual Definition of Social Media

• Google successfully lobbied to get an exemption for YouTube in an Arkansas law requiring parental consent and age verification to use popular social media, but it’s unclear whether the law actually covers TikTok or Snapchat as lawmakers claim. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Jess Weatherbed/ The Verge, SB 396 - Social Media Safety Act

Legal Corner

• The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Counterman v. Colorado, this week about when sending persistent unwelcome DMs to someone can be criminalized. -  Issie Lapowsky/ Fast Company
• In an amicus brief with Genevieve Lakier and Eugene Volokh, Evelyn argues the case has been misunderstood by the parties and the media, and this creates a risk that the Court will accidentally eviscerate a whole bunch of important protections against online stalking. - Supreme Court (.pdf)

Sports Corner

• Alex’s Sacramento Kings had a historic win against the Golden State Warriors in game one of the NBA playoffs first round. All four California NBA teams are still alive! - Kendall Baker/ Axios

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Twitter had a ridiculous week, even by Twitter's new standards.
  • A senior lawyer working on FTC compliance issues resigned. We can't imagine why. - Ryan Mac, Kate Conger/ The New York Times 
  • Germany is gearing up to fine Twitter under its NetzDG law for a systemic failure to remove illegal hate speech. Fines could exceed  €50 million, but it’s the first Musk heard of this. - Natasha Lomas/ TechCrunch, @elonmusk
  • Musk also didn’t understand what “state-affiliated media” means, picking a fight with NPR over the new label and then changing it to “government funded media.” - Bobby Allyn/ NPR, Shelly Hagan/ Bloomberg News
  • Meanwhile, Twitter is no longer taking steps to limit the reach of Chinese and Russian state-controlled media outlets. - Wenhao Ma/ Wenhao’s Newsletter, Louise Matsakis, Bradley Saacks/ Semafor
  • And this week's “but I never thought the leopards would eat MY face” update is about Substack: 
    • Twitter took a bunch of steps to reduce engagement with Substack links this week, but ultimately reversed most of those limits. - Mitchell Clark, Jay Peters/ The Verge, Igor Bonifacic/ Engadget, Timothy B. Lee/ Ars Technica
    • Musk said he took action because “Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.” - @elonmusk
    • One thing not reversed? Twitter Files author Matt Taibbi was “disappeared.” Taibbi announced he had quit the platform and Musk unfollowed him for opposing the limits on Substack. - Robby Soave/ Reason, Taylor Lorenz/ The Washington Post
    • Poor Matt! He tried so hard to stay on Elon's good side last week during a viral MSNBC segment. - Mike Masnick/ Techdirt, Marcy Wheeler/ emptywheel, @MehdiHasanShow
• India amended its IT law to prohibit social media companies from publishing false or misleading information about the government — as determined by the government’s own fact checking unit. Violations can strip platforms of safe harbor protections for user content. - Manish Singh/ TechCrunch, Sarvesh Mathi/ MediaNama
• Everything is a content moderation problem, including the massive intelligence documents leak this week which seem to have first been posted on Discord gaming channels. - Aric Toler/ Bellingcat, Idrees Ali/ Reuters, Shane Harris, Dan Lamothe/ The Washington Post
• Arkansas is the latest state to join the “won't you think of the children” bandwagon with a new age verification and parental consent law heading to the governor’s desk. - Lindsey Millar/ Arkansas Times, Daniel Breen/ KUAR, Michael R. Wickline/ Northwest Arkansas Gazette

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Twitter is (partially) open sourcing its recommendation algorithm. In this special episode, Evelyn and Alex are joined by New York University Research Associate Professor Sol Messing to talk through what he found in the code.

• Twitter Corner
  • Musk is now the most followed person on Twitter, passing former President Barack Obama. Hope it was worth every cent! - Emma Roth/ The Verge
  • Twitter verification is officially pay-to-play as the platform began to slowly remove legacy blue ticks on April Fools’ Day. - Associated Press, Rachel Lerman, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington Post
• In a blow to Musk’s core constituency, @catturd2 and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) were upset about their temporary suspensions for sharing posts supporting a “Trans Day of Vengeance” protest. - @MattBinder, Barbara Ortutay/ Associated Press
• YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said the company is looking into claims that videos from Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi are being artificially suppressed as he faces jail time for alleged defamation against the ruling party. - Newley Purnell/ The Wall Street Journal
• Midjourney took these content moderation capitulations and said “hold my beer.” The tool was recently used to generate a viral graphic of the pope in a white puffer jacket and visuals of Trump fleeing arrest in New York, but you can’t generate images of Xi Jinping — that’s too controversial. - Isaac Stanley-Becker, Drew Harwell/ The Washington Post

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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 the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• The attention grabbing 404 Media headline “Has Facebook Stopped Trying?” could be on to something. Alex discusses significant disinvestment in trust and safety at Facebook with lots of junk spreading (such as AI-generated Shrimp Jesus) and a sextortion challenge. - Jason Koebler/ 404 Media
• YouTube announced it is testing a feature for users to add notes under videos with context or fact checks. - YouTube
• The U.S. military ran a covert anti-vaccine influence operation on social media intended to discredit China’s COVID vaccine in the Philippines. - Chris Bing, Joel Schectman. Reuters
• U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media platforms in a New York Times opinion essay. - Vivek Murthy/ The New York Times, “The Daily”, Erin Burnett/ CNN
  • Not everyone agrees with his recommendation (not to mention the First Amendment or existing evidence). - Clay Calvert/ AEI, Deidre McPhillips/ CNN, J. Nathan Matias, Janet Haven/ Tech Policy Press, Mike Masnick/ The Daily Beast, Caroline Mimbs Nyce/ The Atlantic
  • They reference this report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine - National Academies 
    • And this one pager
• New York state lawmakers passed and Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act prohibiting social media companies from using “addictive” algorithmic feeds for minors under 18 without parental consent. - Anthony Izaguirre/ Associated Press, Carolyn Thompson/ Associated Press, Mark Wilson/ Fast Company, Kat Tenbarge/ NBC News, Austin Jenkins/ Pluribus News, Anthony Ha/ TechCrunch, Common Sense Media, Governor of New York
  • Negotiations at the end of the state legislative session on June 6 limited a restriction on overnight notifications and removed the right to take private legal action against social media companies for alleged violations.
  • Tech trade associations oppose the legislation arguing it is unconstitutional with free speech restrictions that make children less safe with less curation of social media feeds. - Chamber of Progress, NetChoice

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• The TikTok Tick Tock
  • Of course, we had to lead with the TikTok hearing. CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee during a five-hour grilling last Thursday. There was bipartisan support for comprehensive data privacy and protection legislation, a TikTok ban or restrictions, and children’s online safety policy. - Ashley Gold/ Axios, Gopal Ratnam/ Roll Call, Cat Zakrzewski, Jeff Stein/ The Washington Post
  • Alex wrote for CNN that U.S. national security policy guarding against Chinese data collection and influence operations must include but look beyond TikTok. He calls for comprehensive privacy legislation and researcher access to social media data.
  • Over the weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made the case that TikTok should not be banned in her first TikTok by focusing on the broader need for data privacy and protection rules.
  • The hearing was bad for TikTok and Chew did not demonstrate he could stand up to China. He conceded that Chinese employees can access U.S. user data but evaded most questions and refused to condemn Chinese persecution of the Uyghur population.
  • There are also likely First Amendment challenges to banning a single social media application without a clearly demonstrated national security threat. - Jameel Jaffer/ The New York Times, PEN America
• India continues to crack down on online speech, and platforms (cough, Twitter) continue to acquiesce. - Samriddhi Sakunia/ Rest of World 
• People were freaking out about generative AI images of Donald Trump being arrested, which seemed to convince more people that the AI apocalypse was finally here than convinced anyone that Trump had been arrested. - Manon Jacob/ AFP, Ashley Belanger/ Ars Technica
• In further proof that everything is a content moderation issue, Midjourney, the company that developed the software used to generate the images, banned journalist Elliot Higgins for creating the images. - Chris Stokel-Walker/ BuzzFeed
• The governor of Utah signed into law a crazy social media bill that gives parents and guardians complete access to their children’s accounts. Start the countdown until the legal challenge. - Sam Metz, Barbara Ortutay/ Associated Press
• Completely unrelated, the tech industry group NetChoice launched a litigation hub to track and respond to lawsuits on platform safety with amicus briefs. - Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post
• Twitter Corner
  • Musk is still CEO.
  • No changes to the API. 
  • The algorithm is still not open source.
  • Twitter announced it will start deleting legacy verifications on, no joke, April Fools’ Day. - Alyssa Lukpat/ The Wall Street Journal, Jay Peters, Mitchell Clark/ The Verge, @verified
    • It will be good to have a signal of who not to pay attention to, although Twitter Blue subscribers might soon be able to hide their blue checkmarks. - Mitchell Clark/ The Verge

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• The TikTok Tick Tock
  • The Department of Justice is investigating TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, for surveilling American users, including journalists. - Emily Baker-White/ Forbes, Glenn Thrush, Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times
  • The Biden administration is pushing for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a U.S. ban. - David McCabe and Cecilia Kang/ The New York Times, John D. McKinnon/ The Wall Street Journal
  • TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before a House committee on Thursday where he will face scrutiny from both parties. - House Energy and Commerce Committee
• Getting Trumped 
  • Trump was reinstated on YouTube and posted a video clip to Facebook and YouTube on Friday marking the first time he has posted on reinstated accounts. - Mark Niquette and Mario Parker/ Bloomberg News, Reuters, Brett Samuels/ The Hill
  • YouTube's “explanation” of why Trump was reinstated is pathetically thin, fitting into two tweets. - @YouTubeInsider
  • The reinstatement, based on a lower threat to real-life violence, came just in time for Trump to incite a riot in New York. - Michelle L. Price/ Reuters
• Twitter Corner
  • We are taking bets on how long Musk will remain CEO and whether his promise that the recommendation algorithm will be made open source on March 31 will come to fruition. - @elonmusk
  • No changes appear to have been made to the API.
  • Musk said he’ll solve the problem of influence operations with AI. - @elonmusk
• Legal Corner:
  • The New York attorney general is appealing a ruling that halted a law to compel social media companies to report hateful conduct. - Eugene Volokh/ Reason
  • The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity did not violate the First Amendment in using Twitter’s Partner Support Portal to flag tweets potentially violating the platform’s civic integrity policy. - Isaiah Poritz/ Bloomberg Law, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (.pdf)
• Sports Desk
  • We need to address the BIGGEST STANFORD SCANDAL. The top-seeded Stanford Cardinal women’s basketball team was knocked out in the second round of March Madness, losing to eight-seed Ole Miss, a school that just hired this guy. - Alexa Philippou/ ESPN

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Riana Pfefferkorn weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Update on last week’s segment on Law Enforcement Data Requests:
  • California passed a law last year that seeks to block warrants requesting information about abortions from tech companies. - Andrea Vittorio/ Bloomberg Law
  • California lawmakers are looking at ways to stop dragnet reverse warrants and keyword search warrants. - Tonya Riley/ CyberScoop
• The FTC Takes on Twitter
  • The Federal Trade Commission is probing whether Twitter still has the staff and budget to comply with a 2011 consent decree for privacy and data protection standards and reporting. - Ryan Tracy/ The Wall Street Journal, Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, David McCabe/ The New York Times, Brian Fung/ CNN
  • House Republicans created an outrage fest about FTC investigations into Twitter’s compliance with its consent decree. - Jared Gans/ The Hill, Emily Brooks, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill
  • Not to say “we told you so,” but this FTC action was predicted in an episode last year which still provides a good primer on Twitter’s data security problems with the FTC. - Evelyn Douek, Whitney Merrill, Riana Pfefferkorn/ Stanford Law
• House Republicans passed an anti-jawboning law, H.R. 140, the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act. Of course, it does not apply to Congress, and it faces long odds in the senate. - Brian Fung/ CNN
• Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) introduced the RESTRICT Act, which would give the Secretary of Commerce authority to ban technology products from companies with ties to foreign adversaries, including TikTok. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Brendan Bordelon, Gavin Bade/ Politico
• Any user can lose access to social media accounts for refusing to verify their age and parental consent is required for children under 18 to create social media accounts under a bill, SB 152, that passed the Utah State Legislature and is soon expected to be signed into state law. - Kim Bojórquez, Erin Alberty/ Axios
• Twitter announced new enterprise packages for access to collect tweets through its API with the lowest tier priced at more than $500,000 per year. - Chris Stokel-Walker/ Wired
  • More: Academics currently receive free access. Now, most if not all academics will be priced out of even the lowest tier of data access.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn on Twitter at @evelyndouek.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• TikTok bans accelerated with Canada and the EU’s diplomatic arm joining U.S. states and other government agencies in banning the app from devices and networks as the White House set a 30 day deadline for federal agencies to block and remove TikTok. - Christopher Nardi/ National Post, Paul Vieira/ The Wall Street Journal, Stuart Lau, Laurens Cerulus/ Politico, David Shepardson/ Reuters
  • The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill to give the president authority to ban TikTok nationwide, moving the legislation to the House floor on a party-line vote. Will someone think of the First Amendment? - Brendan Bordelon/ Politico, Amanda Silberling/ TechCrunch, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill
• TikTok will introduce a “screen time limit” that is not really a screen time limit. - Hope King/ Axios, Sheila Dang/ Reuters, Cormac Keenan/ TikTok
• Twitter has a new violent speech policy. It’s a lot like the old policy. Content moderation is hard. - Mitchell Clark/ The Verge, Karissa Bell/ Engadget, @TwitterSafety
• Meta said it would make changes to its controversial cross-check program, which provides additional protections before content is removed for certain high-profile accounts, in response to Oversight Board recommendations. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Nick Pickles/ Meta, @OversightBoard
• The FTC published a blog warning industry against making false claims as part of the “AI hype” around chatbots and other products. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Michael Atleson/ Federal Trade Commission
• Local law enforcement agencies around the country are looking to get information from social media companies to enforce abortion bans. Blaming the social media companies, however, is not the answer as this article making the rounds suggests. - Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert/ Insider
• A Texas Republican wants to block websites with information about getting an abortion pill or procedure. - Jon Brodkin/ Ars Technica
• Google released a civil rights audit with little fanfare and managing not to say much. Kudos to the Washington Post for making sure it didn’t fly under the radar, but it shows the risk of audits becoming a box-ticking exercise. - Cristiano Lima, Gerrit De Vynck/ The Washington Post

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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