Moderated Content – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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