Moderated Content

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:TikTok CornerThe 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/ WiredDiscord had a Week with the LeakDiscord 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/ DiscordA 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, @drewharwelOur colleague Renée DiResta co-authored an analysis that highlights how “the future of counterintelligence will be digitally native.” - Renée DiResta, Jon Askonas/ Foreign PolicySubstack’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 VergeTwitter CornerElon 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 ReviewBut 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 PostTwitter backtracked and agreed to remove content in Brazil that supported recent attacks at schools. - Amanda Audi/ The Brazilian ReportBot or NotRussian 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 MediaGoogle 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 ActLegal CornerThe 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 CompanyIn 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 CornerAlex’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/ AxiosJoin 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, @elonmuskMusk 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 NewsMeanwhile, 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/ SemaforAnd 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 TechnicaMusk 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.” - @elonmuskOne 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 PostPoor 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, @MehdiHasanShowIndia 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/ MediaNamaEverything 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 PostArkansas 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 GazetteJoin 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!

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 CornerMusk is now the most followed person on Twitter, passing former President Barack Obama. Hope it was worth every cent! - Emma Roth/ The VergeTwitter 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 PostIn 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 PressYouTube 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 JournalMidjourney 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 PostJoin 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 TockOf 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 PostAlex 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 AmericaIndia 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 TechnicaIn 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/ BuzzFeedThe 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 PressCompletely 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 PostTwitter CornerMusk 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, @verifiedIt 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 VergeJoin 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 TockThe 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 TimesThe 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 JournalTikTok 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 CommitteeGetting 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 HillYouTube's “explanation” of why Trump was reinstated is pathetically thin, fitting into two tweets. - @YouTubeInsiderThe 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/ ReutersTwitter CornerWe 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. - @elonmuskNo changes appear to have been made to the API.Musk said he’ll solve the problem of influence operations with AI. - @elonmuskLegal 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/ ReasonThe 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 DeskWe 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/ ESPNJoin 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 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 LawCalifornia lawmakers are looking at ways to stop dragnet reverse warrants and keyword search warrants. - Tonya Riley/ CyberScoopThe FTC Takes on TwitterThe 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/ CNNHouse 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 HillNot 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 LawHouse 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/ CNNSens. 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/ PoliticoAny 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/ AxiosTwitter 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/ WiredMore: 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/ ReutersThe 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 HillTikTok will introduce a “screen time limit” that is not really a screen time limit. - Hope King/ Axios, Sheila Dang/ Reuters, Cormac Keenan/ TikTokTwitter 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, @TwitterSafetyMeta 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, @OversightBoardThe 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 CommissionLocal 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/ InsiderA Texas Republican wants to block websites with information about getting an abortion pill or procedure. - Jon Brodkin/ Ars TechnicaGoogle 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 PostJoin 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:Meta released its latest quarterly adversarial threat report, outlining influence operations it took down that were linked to Russia, Serbia, Cuba, and Bolivia. - Ben Nimmo, Nathaniel Gleicher/ Meta, Renée DiResta/ @noUpside, Alex Stamos/ @alexstamosMore: Alex and Evelyn are among those warning that the Q4 2022 report might mark the last time Meta and Twitter collaborated on addressing influence operations and resisting government data requests. Twitter failed to release its own quarterly report on government requests for data and observed influence operations. - Adam Rawnsley/ Rolling StoneTikTok announced a research API, opening an application to academics at nonprofit universities. The application and API details have received criticism for restrictions that would fail to meet academic research standards or return limited data with potentially misleading findings. - Aisha Malik/ TechCrunch, Mia Sato/ The Verge, Joe Bak-Coleman/ Tech Policy Press, Emma Lurie, Dan Bateyko, Frances Schroeder/ Stanford Internet ObservatoryTwitter CornerTwitter delayed changes to API access again (and again), with plans now pushed to some point in “the next few weeks.” But don’t worry, the delays and lack of information about the new deadline or pricing are just due to “an immense amount of enthusiasm for the upcoming changes with Twitter API.” - Ivan Mehta/ TechCrunch, Lauren Leffer/ Gizmodo, Heidi Ledford/ Nature, Chris Stokel-Walker/ WiredElon Musk ordered changes to prioritize his tweets in all user timelines following the Super Bowl when the Twitter CEO’s (since deleted) tweet had lower engagement than President Joe Biden’s. - Casey Newton/ Platformer, Faiz Siddiqui, Jeremy Merrill/ The Washington PostFirst it was the Taliban. Now it’s the Russians buying blue check marks which boost content and give a veneer of authority on Twitter. We’re shocked! - Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post Twitter will soon only provide SMS-based login authentication, or 2FA, for paid subscribers. While 2FA is the weakest form of multifactor authentication, it is also the most commonly used and significantly more secure than only using a password. - @ZoeSchiffer, Sean Hollister/ The Verge, Lily Hay Newman/ WiredMeta is introducing verification with a blue check mark displayed and higher visibility for posts. Déjà vu? - Emma Roth/ The VergeFacebook and Instagram are the first platforms to participate in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s “Take It Down” tool for people to submit non-consensual intimate photos or videos recorded of them when they were underage to be hashed and removed by participating platforms. - Antigone Davis/ Meta, Ginger Adams Otis/ The Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Levine/ ForbesThe European Commission and the EU’s diplomatic service banned TikTok on staff devices and personal devices with work-related apps, citing security concerns. - Emily Rauhala, Beatriz Ríos/ The Washington Post, Monika Pronczuk/ The New York Times, Stuart Lau, Laurens Cerulus/ PoliticoCompanies including TikTok, Twitter, Meta, Pinterest, and Snapchat have confirmed they are VLOPs under the DSA and will need to comply with the strictest rules later this year. - Clothilde Goujard/ PoliticoSusan Wojcicki announced she’s stepping down as YouTube CEO in a massive blow to Evelyn’s “Wojcicki to the Hill” campaign. - Peter Kafka/ VoxA New York court blocked a state law requiring social media platforms to post policies on “hateful conduct.” - Eugene Volokh/ ReasonModerated Content Supreme Court correspondent (and director of Stanford’s Program of Platform Regulation) Daphne Keller was in the courtroom for oral arguments in the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases. If you haven’t already, tune in for those episodes:Tech Law SCOTUS Superbowl First Half: GonzalezTech Law SCOTUS Superbowl Second Half: TaamnehJoin 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!

Evelyn speaks with Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller again to discuss the oral arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh, and the big elephant that was missing from the courtroom.

Evelyn speaks with Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, to discuss their quick takes on the Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:A full-day House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter’s decision to temporarily block a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop delivered on political theater, but failed to produce much new information or a “gotcha” moment from the former executives on the panel who agreed the decision was a mistake, but refuted claims of government influence. - Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Will Oremus, Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima / The Washington Post, Tech Policy PressMore: Alex’s beautiful face was featured on a poster during the hearing as he was name-checked by a congresswoman who displayed correspondence where he suggested a contact that Facebook and Twitter staffers could reach out to for more information about claims about a fake poll worker on Election Day 2020.It turns out that Republicans also contact social media platforms to complain about posts they don’t like. In one such case, the Trump administration contacted Twitter about a string of swears tweeted by Chrissy Teigen to describe the former president. In fact, there were so many requests that Twitter made a database to handle them all. - Adam Rawnsley, Asawin Suebsaeng/ Rolling StoneTurkey initially blocked access to Twitter in the aftermath of powerful earthquakes that resulted in mass casualties. The Turkish government is using special powers to remove content critical of the country’s response and even launched a new app to report “disinformation.” - Adam Satariano/ The New York Times, @fahrettinaltunThe Guardian tested AI tools used by tech companies to measure how sexually suggestive posts are, finding that photos of women working out or with partial nudity received significantly higher ratings than those with men — resulting in less visibility. Should companies have different rules for where to draw the line on “raciness”? What kind of transparency could verify biases? - Gianluca Mauro, Hilke Schellmann/ The GuardianGraphika discovered the first known deepfake influence operation, featuring fictitious newscasters pushing pro-China news. Is the “information apocalypse” finally here? - Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur/ The New York Times, GraphikaWhat does the balloon mean for geopolitics in an era of deflating relations and entangled economics for China and the U.S.? - Fareed Zakaria/ The Washington PostDonald Trump officially had access restored to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Anyone checked on YouTube lately? - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Jason Abbruzzese/ NBC NewsJoin 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 CornerTwitter announced it is ending free API access, potentially cutting off hobbyist developers and their weird and helpful content and tools. - Ryan Browne/ CNBCMusk said the change would help rid the site of malicious bots. But cats might save the internet once again, as the Twitter owner later backtracked, replying to @PepitoTheCat that he might still allow “bots providing good content that is free.” - Ivan Mehta/ TechCrunchThe change has stark implications for public interest researchers and journalists who use the Twitter API to analyze current events, conduct studies on important societal issues, and develop open source tools that democratize online research. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Justin Hendrix/ Tech Policy Press, Coalition for Independent Technology ResearchThe New York Times and the Canadian Center for Child Protection found child sexual abuse material continues to spread on Twitter with more than 200,000 engagements and hundreds of accounts sharing explicit content. - Michael H. Keller, Kate Conger/ The New York TimesTwitter trust and safety head Ella Irwin outlined how Twitter makes decisions about whether to suspend accounts for “restricted content,” such as threats and calls to violence or. She also said removal reasons will be made public soon — we’ll see about that! - @ellagirwinMore: Irwin said the company pushes back against government demands, but “Not everyone has a sense of humor.”- @ellagirwinSpeaking of questionable orders:India set up its government-appointed panels that will review user appeals of social media content moderation decisions. - ScrollWikipedia was blocked in Pakistan for blasphemous content, and then restored after three days (just before recording). - Kamran Haider/ Bloomberg NewsMeta denies its moderation of the Ukraine war is biased. The company’s response may be raising more questions than it answers. - Jacob Turowski/ MetaRep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) introduced the Social Media Child Protection Act to ban children under 16 from accessing social media. It's almost certainly unconstitutional. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Office of Representative Chris StewartThe battle to get rid of TikTok has inevitably resulted in pressuring app stores. Senate Intelligence Committee member Michael Bennet (D-CO) sent letters to the CEOs of Apple and Google last week calling on them to ban TikTok from their digital marketplaces. - John D. McKinnon/ The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Flatley/ Bloomberg NewsFormer Twitter executives will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. They will be grilled on the decision to limit a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 presidential election cycle. Take a drink of (Irish) coffee for every mention of “jawboning.” - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Anders Hagstrom, Chad Pergram/ Fox NewsJoin 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!

A little over a year ago, Evelyn interviewed Josh Parecki, Zoom's Head of Trust & Safety and Associate General Counsel, and Josh Kallmer, Zoom's Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations, about how Zoom thought about content moderation. And since then, they've been doing some rethinking. So Evelyn asked them back to talk about what's changed in the way they think about trust and safety, the change in regulatory landscape even in the last year, and the difficult problems that pop up for every communications platform.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:India UpdateAt least some of the YouTube, Meta, and Internet Archive takedowns of clips from a BBC documentary that examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political rise were due to copyright claims made by BBC, rather than requests made by the Indian government. Maybe they could have mentioned that a bit earlier? - Rishi Iyengar/ Foreign Policy, Russell Brandom/ Rest of World, Internet ArchiveLuckily, Twitter owner Elon Musk chimed in with a tweet reply that he hadn’t heard of the issue, adding “It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.” - @elonmuskTwitter reinstated Indian Hindu nationalist accounts previously suspended for hate speech against Muslims. - Newley Purnell/ The Wall Street JournalTwitter CornerA new Twitter Files thread on the German Marshall Fund’s Hamilton 68 project, which tracked Russian influence operations on Twitter, illustrates the dashboard’s flawed methodology. That doesn’t change the fact that there was Russian interference during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. - @mtaibbiMusk made the rounds on Capitol Hill, meeting with House leadership to ensure that Twitter will be “fair to both parties.” We are sure there will be tons of transparency. - Tony Romm, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Adela Suliman/ The Washington PostTwitter will allow anyone to appeal an account suspension, starting this Wednesday, February 1. - @TwitterSafetyAnd Twitter is re-suspending some of those accounts. White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was suspended less than 24 hours after his account was reinstated. - Julia Shapero/ The HillIn completely unrelated news, Twitter is being sued in Germany over failing to remove antisemitic hate speech. - Molly Killeen/ Euractiv, Aggi Cantrill, Karin Matussek/ Bloomberg NewsTikTok OffensiveTikTok is going on the offensive with public engagements explaining its private negotiations with the U.S. government. Executives are briefing members of Congress, academics, and think tank researchers about Project Texas, the company’s plan to audit content recommendation systems and securely store and process U.S. user data in partnership with Oracle. - Cecilia Kang, Sapna Maheshwari, David McCabe/ The New York TimesResearchers briefed on TikTok’s proposal to continue operating in the U.S. said that a new subsidiary, TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. (USDS), will house all of its U.S. content moderation under the governance of an independent board that will report to the U.S. government (CFIUS) — not to ByteDance. Plans also call for TikTok’s source code and content recommendation systems to be audited by Oracle and a third-party inspector. - David Ingram/ NBC News, Matt Perault, Samm Sacks/ Lawfare (commentary)Other storiesThe messy business of operating in China caught up with Apple again as the company’s Safari web browser seems to have quietly adopted a Chinese government website block list. - Sam Biddle/ The InterceptGoogle plans to sunset a pilot program that stopped political campaign emails from winding up in the spam folder as it seeks to dismiss a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee claiming that Gmail filters have political bias. - Isaac Stanley-Becker/ The Washington Post, Ashley Gold/ AxiosThe Financial Times had a miserable experience attempting to run its own Mastodon instance, facing “compliance, security and reputational risks” in addition to cloud hosting costs and creepy factor issues, such as seeing direct messages by default. - Bryce Elder/ Financial TimesSports CornerDid Alex receive a call from the San Francisco 49ers football team during their NFL playoff game this weekend? No, not for that cyber issue last year. Things get “Purdy'' desperate when a team’s first four quarterbacks are injured. - Nick Wagoner/ ESPNJoin 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!

Evelyn sits down with Nate Persily, Professor at Stanford Law School, and Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss Meta's decision that it is reinstating former President Trump's accounts. Nate is pragmatic, Alex is cynical, and Evelyn is a naive little formalist about it all. Here's their quick takes.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:This should be a far bigger story: India is ordering platforms to take down content related to a BBC documentary. The widely predicted and highly consequential dramatic escalation in India’s legal battles with platforms is here, and we better be watching - Hannah Ellis-Petersen/ The GuardianThe UK Online Safety Bill was back in the House of Commons last week, but the Sunak administration is biding time in negotiations over the wording of a new criminal liability provision for social media executives. An amendment also adds videos that show people crossing the Channel in small boats in a “positive light” to a list of illegal content that must be proactively blocked from users. Dan Milmo/ The Guardian, Dan Milmo/ The Guardian, Dan Milmo/ The Guardian, BBC NewsAn investigative report highlights the mental health challenges and low wages for workers in Kenya that reviewed text snippets of disturbing situations and hateful speech in support of an OpenAI system to detect and prevent toxic content from appearing in ChatGPT and other tools. - Billy Perrigo/ TimeThe Federal Election Commission tossed out claims made by the Republican National Committee that Google’s Gmail spam filters are biased against conservatives because they send a higher percentage of GOP fundraising emails to spam. - John McKinnon/ The Wall Street JournalFormer President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is formally petitioning Meta to reinstate his social media accounts in a written letter. And Trump wants to get out of an exclusivity agreement to post first on his own social network, Truth Social, as his campaign plans to ramp up later this year. - Marc Caputo, Jonathan Allen/ NBC News, Asawin Suebsaeng, Adam Rawnsley/ Rolling StoneTikTok has an internal tool for staff to manually amplify individual videos, picking and choosing brands and creators to go viral without disclosing that recommended content for users. - Emily Baker-White/ ForbesCourtroom Corner:The Supreme Court has put two state content moderation cases on hold, asking the Biden administration to weigh in on challenges to Texas and Florida laws that would restrict social media companies from removing posts with political opinions. - @steve_vladeck, Adam Liptak/ The New York Times, Andrew Chung/ ReutersNearly 50 amicus briefs were filed last week in support of Section 230 in Gonzalez v. Google. - SCOTUSblogIt turns out that international soccer star Messi's record for the most-liked picture on Instagram was the result of coordinated authentic behavior. Following Argentina’s World Cup victory, fans organized to like Messi’s post and unlike the picture of an egg that previously held the title of the most liked Instagram post. - Lucía Cholakian Herrera/ Rest Of The WorldBecause of course, members of Taliban leadership were among the Twitter Blue subscribers paying for a blue check mark verification badge on their accounts. The badge was removed from the accounts following intense backlash, but what do the blue checks even mean anymore? - Abdirahim Saeed/ BBC News, Ramon Antonio Vargas/ The GuardianJoin 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 study found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” - Gregory Eady, Tom Paskhalis, Jan Zilinsky, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker/ Nature Communications, @CSMaP_NYUWe hear from Josh Tucker, a co-author of the paper and co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics. Importantly, the findings are limited to Twitter where a small, highly partisan audience was targeted. The findings do not fully reflect the multifaceted impact Russian interference had on faith in American elections. @j_a_tuckerA study conducting a $9 million social media advertising campaign reaching two million moderate voters in five battleground states found little effect for driving voter turnout during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. - Minali Aggarwal, Jennifer Allen, Alexander Coppock, Dan Frankowski, Solomon Messing, Kelly Zhang, James Barnes, Andrew Beasley, Harry Hantman, Sylvan Zheng/ Nature Human Behaviour, @_JenAllenWe hear from one of the co-authors, Sol Messing, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University. He highlights why campaigns might want to shift to focus on early voter turnout based on the findings. - @SolomonMgTwitter is cutting off API access to third party clients in an effort to force users to return to Twitter’s own website and apps, according to messages reviewed by The Information. It was previously reported that users of apps including Tweetbot and Echofon were experiencing bugs late Thursday evening. - Erin Woo/ The Information, Ivan Mehta/ TechCrunch, Mitchell Clark/ The VergeState universities are banning access to TikTok on their WiFi networks and official devices in response to nearly two dozen state bans on government access to the popular short video social media service with a Chinese parent company. - Sapna Maheshwari/ The New York Times, Kate Mcgee/ The Texas TribuneApple promised to provide more information about why it bans certain apps from its App Store in countries like China and Russia in response to pressure from activist investors. - Kenza Byran, Patrick Mcgee/ Financial TimesLegal corner:“A public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.” - Gene Johnson/ Associated PressThe Supreme Court took a new case, Counterman v. Colorado, about what kind of mens rea, or intent, is necessary to prove a true threat. The case is based on the prosecution of a man who stalked and harassed a local musician on Facebook for years. - SCOTUSblogIn a new Supreme Court brief, Google argues that holding the company liable for recommendation systems that promoted ISIS videos in a case brought by the parents of a terrorist attack victim could “upend the internet” and result in websites with either extensive censorship or floods of questionable content, but nothing in-between. - John McKinnon/ The Wall Street JournalPresident Biden set priorities for bipartisan internet policy cooperation in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, focusing on data privacy, Section 230, algorithmic transparency, and antitrust measures. The piece left a lot to be desired, but signals these will continue to be hot issues over the next two years. - Joe Biden/ The Wall Street JournalJoin 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:An EU regulator is putting behavioral advertising at risk and leveling more than $400 million in fines against Meta for Facebook and Instagram privacy violations. - Sam Schechner/ The Wall Street Journal, Vincent Manancourt/ Politico, Adam Satariano/ The New York Times, Stephanie Bodoni/ Bloomberg NewsMore: Meta plans to appeal the ruling against its legal basis for processing data to provide targeted posts and ads based on user activity. - MetaGoogle is implementing an appeals process for users suspended for sharing child sexual abuse materials on its platforms and will provide more information about why an account is suspended. - Kashmir Hill/ The New York TimesThe move follows New York Times reporting on fathers who lost access to their accounts after sharing requested photos of their children’s genitals for medical treatment. Criminal investigations found them innocent, but Google refused to restore their accounts. - Kashmir Hill/ The New York TimesTwitter announced it relaxed policies for cause-based U.S. advertising and will expand permitted political advertising as ad revenue declines under Musk’s ownership due in part to brand safety concerns. - @TwitterSafety, Brian Fung/ CNNMore: Many platforms banned or limited political advertising ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Analysis by Duke University researchers found there is little evidence those bans achieved their intended effects of limiting the spread of false or misleading information about elections. - J. Scott Babwah Brennen, Matt Perault/ Duke UniversityFacebook wants out of politics, but there is no escape! Efforts to reduce political or socially divisive topics had unintended consequences as users saw more spam content and less hard news. - Jeff Horwitz, Keach Hagey, Emily Glazer/ The Wall Street JournalFacebook’s self-imposed deadline for deciding whether to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account has come and gone with any action and a public announcement expected in the coming weeks. - David Ingram/ NBC NewsThe Oversight Board released a new decision overturning Meta’s removal of a Facebook post with a slogan used to protest the Iranian government, literally translating to “death to Khamenei,” in reference to ousting the current political regime led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. - Oversight Board, Katie Paul/ Reuters Members of the January 6 special committee staff who specialize in technology research and policy highlighted important findings that Trump received special protections on platforms despite red flags raised by trust and safety staff, however, right-wing networks with everyday people drove extremist views and organizing. They argue for increased transparency as the first legislative step to hold social media companies accountable. - Dean Jackson, Meghan Conroy, Alex Newhouse/ Tech Policy Press (commentary)WhatsApp added a feature that makes it easier for users in repressive regimes to bypass internet censors that attempt to ban or block access to the service. - Andrew Jeong/ The Washington PostThe Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit filed against the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group that claims the company is responsible for the illegal surveillance of 1,400 individuals to proceed. - Jessica Davis/ SC Media Researchers are raising the alarms that Brazilian far-right activists were organizing in the open across social media platforms far in advance of this week’s violent attacks on government buildings in protest of the recent presidential election. - Elizabeth Dwoskin/ The Washington Post, @detJoin 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:Senators Chris Coons, Rob Portman, Amy Klobuchar, and Bill Cassidy introduced the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) on Wednesday. The Bill would give researchers at universities and nonprofit organizations in the U.S. access to study data from the largest social media companies and provide public transparency on the most widely shared posts, advertising, content moderation practices and recommendation algorithms. - John Perrino / Tech Policy PressMore: Nate Persily puts in a cameo appearance to explain the bill and its history. Nate has been working on platform transparency for years. - Tara Wright / SLS NewsAn internal investigation by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, found that employees tracked the location and user data of multiple journalists, in an attempt to identify leakers at the company - Emily Baker White / Forbes More: One of the reporters who was tracked, Emily Baker White, has a good toot-thread of the reporting on the company that she has done over the past year that led to her being tracked. - Emily Baker White / MastodonThe password manager LastPass dropped a lovely Christmas present on its users, announcing a major security breach. Yikes. - Karim Toubba / LastPassOver at Twitter:Musk is still CEO.No, the US Government is not paying Twitter millions of dollars to censor information (Musk on Twitter). It reimburses the company for the costs of complying with orders to hand over data under the Stored Communications Act. - 18 U.S. Code § 2703, § 2706The Twitter Files finally had some interesting reporting about US Government covert information operations. - Lee Fang / The InterceptNo, it’s not news that platforms struggled with content moderation during the pandemic and often made mistakes. Yes, there should be a proper review of content moderation during the pandemic. - David Zweig / TwitterElon Musk has a worrying lack of understanding of Twitter’s data security obligations. - Faiz Siddiqui / Washington PostHere’s a primer of what he should know and why he should be worried Moderated Content prepared earlier - “Elon puts rockets into space, he's not afraid of the FTC”And for Orin Kerr’s take on why he really, really shouldn’t share people’s DMs, listen to MC Weekly Update 12/12Everything has a content moderation angle – Leo Messi’s post celebrating his world cup win has become the most-liked Instagram post of all time. - Dan Ladden-Hall / The Daily BeastJoin 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.Extra special thanks this week to the production team, Brian Pelletier, Alyssa Ashdown and Ryan Roberts for making sure this reached you during winter shutdown.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 bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. and could be extended to other social media companies with ties to “foreign adversaries” was introduced in the House and Senate, but lacks Democratic co-sponsors in the upper chamber. - Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Rebecca Shabad/ NBC NewsMeta released its annual report on “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Enforcements,” noting the milestone of 200 takedowns. - Ben Nimmo, David Agranovich/ Meta, Alexander Martin/ The Record by Recorded Future, @DavidAgranovich, @benimmoTech trade association NetChoice sued the state of California in an attempt to block the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act over First Amendment protections for content moderation. The law would go into effect next year with broad online privacy and safety components for children. - Natasha Singer/ The New York Times, Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Lauren Feiner/ CNBC, Rebecca Kern/ Politico ProThe Supreme Court schedule is set for hearings on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh on February 21 and February 22. The cases are focused on content moderation and recommendation algorithms. - Adi Robertson/ The Verge, @GregStohr"Former President Trump said Thursday that he’d ban the U.S. government from labeling any domestic speech as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ if he returns to the White House.” - Julia Mueller/ The HillMatt Taibbi named the Election Integrity Partnership in a Friday afternoon version of the Twitter Files. - @mtaibbiTwitter suspended over 25 accounts that track private planes and nine journalists — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Ryan Mac of the New York Times, and Drew Harwell of The Washington Post — who shared links about the @elonjet account which posts public information about the location of Musk’s private jet. Most reporter accounts have since been reinstated after Musk conducted a Twitter poll on whether to enforce his new policy against sharing flight trackers and similar information. - Jason Abbruzzese, Kevin Collier, Phil Helsel/ NBC News, Ashley Capoot/ CNBC, Ryan Mac/ The New York Times, Paul Farhi/ The Washington Post, Jordan Pearson/ ViceMusk banned linking out to other platforms… and then conducted a Twitter poll, subsequently reversing the decision, with 87% of voters opposed, and taking down the tweet announcement and blog page on the policy. Some users are still unable to post links to Mastodon and other social media sites in tweets. - Mack DeGeurin/ Gizmodo, @JuddLegumMusk conducted a scientific Twitter poll asking if he should step down as CEO. Nearly 58% of the more than 17 million respondents voted for him to step down. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street JournalIt was coincidentally just after he was at the World Cup with Jared Kushner and... a bunch of Emiratis. Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer quipped that twitter’s content moderation panel looks different these days. - @ianbremmerSports balls were kicked and a team scored more points than the other team after time was added, and then stopped, and then added, and then people lined up to kick more balls into the net than the other team. Congratulations to Argentina! - Ben Church/ CNNJoin 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:Apple announced plans to expand end-to-end encryption data protections from messages and content on the device to the iCloud service used by many to backup their files and media for access anywhere. - Robert McMillan, Joanna Stern, Dustin Volz/ The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post, Lily Hay Newman/ Wired, Frank Bajak/ Associated PressCue the music for the Twitter Files!Musk tweeted an excerpt of former trust and safety lead Yoel Roth’s doctoral dissertation to falsely insinuate he supports the sexualization of children, opening up harassment and potential violence against the staffer he once praised. - Dana Hull, Kurt Wagner/ Bloomberg NewsThe Oversight Board released a long-awaited policy advisory opinion (PAO) with dozens of recommendations for improving Meta’s murky and controversial cross-check program which gives VIP Twitter accounts a higher level of scrutiny for enforcement of platform policies with little transparency. - Jeff Horwitz/ The Wall Street Journal, Oversight BoardMorocco’s win over perennial power Portugal and Ronaldo in the World Cup was a historic first for an African or Arab country to reach the semifinals of the tournament. They will next face France, the nation that colonized Morocco. - Issy Ronald/ CNNJoin 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!

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting in May, New York passed a law imposing certain obligations on social media networks regarding "hateful conduct" on their services. It went into effect at the start of December and Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA Law who runs a legal blog, is challenging the law as unconstitutional. Evelyn sits down with Eugene and Genevieve Lakier from UChicago Law to discuss.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Using a powerful AI language model developed by OpenAI, the new ChatGPT tool allows anyone to generate short text that is indecipherable from written text and that draws upon vast amounts of publicly available information. - Janus Rose/ Vice, Ina Fried/ AxiosMore: ChatGPT has fun and informative uses, but is also easy to abuse — from generating recipes or funny movie scripts, to the spread of misinformation or nefarious tips to get away with crimes.TikTok and Bumble are adopting a tool developed by Meta with international charity SWGfL’s Revenge Porn Helpline. The tool uses hashing technology for submitted content to identify and block non-consensual intimate media from participating platforms. - Olivia Solon/ Bloomberg NewsMore: Victims make a tradeoff on whether a single human reviewer seeing their intimate image outweighs its spread across the social media and dating services using the technology. - @oliviasolonRumble and the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog run by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, are challenging a New York law that prohibits hate speech in a federal lawsuit, claiming it would violate First Amendment free expression protections. - Chris Dolmetsch/ Bloomberg NewsThe “Twitter Files” were released in a staggered thread of more than 40 tweets on Friday evening. The string of tweets includes screenshots of Twitter staff’s internal communications and external email correspondence which lack any smoking gun. Instead, the thread is most likely to reinforce existing beliefs about the decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story and related content. - Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington PostTwitter CEO Elon Musk disputed news reports on research by advocacy and civil rights groups that found hate speech slurs were more prevalent on the platform. Musk claimed the data actually shows a decrease in the reach of hate speech on the platform since his acquisition and said the Twitter safety team will publish weekly reports on the data going forward. - Mohar Chatterjee/ PoliticoMore: As University of California, Berkeley researcher Jonathan Stray points out, both sides can claim they are right depending on the data and measurement of success. More transparency and collaboration could move these efforts in the right direction. That seems unlikely for now, but could be required under the EU’s new digital regulations.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:As protestors against China’s zero-Covid policy fill the streets, images of them fill the internet and China’s censors are struggling to contain them. – Liza Lin, Karen Hao / Wall Street JournalThis is partly because the Chinese people have had years of practice at evading censors and know a trick or two. – Paul Mozur / TwitterSo China is trying to bury that content with its own spam about escorts, porn and gambling. – Jon Porter / The VergeSome of that spam includes … an AI-generated image of Alex with horns? – Alex Stamos / TwitterElon doesn’t seem too concerned though. He’s too busy picking a fight with Apple. – Elon Musk / TwitterAnd maybe drawing up plans for his own phone if Apple kicks Twitter out of the app store? – Elon Musk / Twitter Meta published its quarterly adversarial threat report this week, which included information about accounts it took down conducting information operations that had links to the US government. – MetaAlex walks us through the report Stanford Internet Observatory wrote with Graphika on these operations and what they found. – Graphika, Stanford Internet ObservatoryAs a result of this report, the Pentagon ordered a review of information operations conducted by the US military. – Ellen Nakashima / Washington PostAlex gives Evelyn an apparently now-weekly update on Stanford football news.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:How else would Elon Musk decide to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account than a Twitter poll? Okay, well maybe the content moderation council he proposed to deal with reinstatement decisions. - Faiz Siddiqui, Drew Harwell, Isaac Arnsdorf / The Washington PostMusk’s mind is also made up on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones whose account will not be reinstated on the platform. - Brian Fung/ CNN Former Twitter trust and safety lead Yoel Roth penned a New York Times opinion piece on why he left Twitter and the influence that app store operators have on content moderation. - Yoel Roth/ The New York Times (commentary)The EU might just scare Musk straight. After the Financial Times reported the headline “Elon Musk’s Twitter on ‘collision course’ with EU regulators,” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager responded that “We are never on a collision course with anyone because we consider ourselves a mountain.” - Javier Espinoza/ Financial Times, Silvia Amaro/ CNBCMastodon might not be the paradise we hoped we could toot freely and safely in. Content moderation is hard and there’s less control or quality assurance in a federated model, as Block Party CEO Tracy Chou already knew too well before she had a post blocked and now faces torrents of harassment. - @triketora, @mmasnickA Mastodon server administrator is deciding who is a journalist while other server operators block those verified journalists from being seen on their “instances.” - Mathew Ingram/ Columbia Journalism ReviewMeta “has fired or disciplined more than two dozen employees and contractors over the last year whom it accused of improperly taking over user accounts, in some cases allegedly for bribes.” - Kirsten Grind, Robert McMillan/ The Wall Street JournalFBI Director Chris Wray testified that TikTok poses a national security challenge for the United States because the Chinese government may be able to access extensive data collected by the app or even use recommendation algorithms to push the country’s influence operations on users. - Chris Strohm, Daniel Flatley/ Bloomberg News, David Shepardson/ Reuters, Suzanne Smalley/ CyberScoopSport ball is happening in Qatar “without controversy,” and Meta is using the moment to highlight its recently introduced anti-harassment features on Instagram to block or limit offensive messages aimed at players and encourage fans to think twice before sending potentially abusive content. - Jess Weatherbed/ The Verge, MetaJoin 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!

Come for the discussion of whether Musk is going to find himself in hot water with the FTC, stay for the discussion of privacy and data security regulation more generally. Evelyn discusses Twitter’s data security problems and what this says about privacy regulation more generally with Whitney Merrill, the Data Protection Officer and Privacy Counsel at Asana and long-time privacy lawyer including as an attorney at the FTC, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:The Election Integrity Partnership, led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, analyzed narratives with the potential to interfere in or delegitimize the 2022 midterm elections. - Election Integrity Partnership, @EI_Partnership, EIP Post-Election Update (.pdf)A divided Congress will likely mean more gridlock with a lot of smoke but no fire on Capitol Hill. - Ashley Gold, Peter Allen Clark/ Axios, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Frank Konkel, Mariam Baksh, Kirsten Errick, Alexandra Kelley/ Nextgov, Anna Edgerton/ Bloomberg News A lot happened at Twitter:Chief Twit Elon Musk got into a Twitter feud with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) over impersonation issues on the site. - Ashley Capoot/ CNBCTwitter may have violated a Federal Trade Commission consent decree with the top brass who would be held responsible resigning the day the company’s reporting was due. Musk dismissed potential personal liability, although Uber’s former CSO knows that risk is real. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Department of Justice, @Riana_CryptoStanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn and data protection and privacy law expert Whitney Merrill will dig into this more with Evelyn later this week!Twitter is at serious risk of a breach with departures by the security, privacy, compliance, and trust and safety leaders last week and a drastic staff reduction. - John Sakellariadis/ Politico, @alexstamosMusk tweeted that he is “turning off the ‘microservices’ bloatware” and seemingly fired an employee for tweeting that Musk didn’t know what he was talking about. Now, two-factor authentication may be broken. - @elonmusk, Michael Kan/ PC Magazine, @josephmennMusk tweeted about Brazilian politics this morning… we are sure that will end well! He’s previously promised to look into allegations of censorship in the country by far-right political figures in the country. - @elonmusk, Andrew Downie/ The GuardianA spoofed Twitter account resembling Eli Lilly and Co. with a purchased blue “verified” check mark tweeted that “insulin is free now,” causing the real company’s market cap to drop $15 billion. Now, the company paused its Twitter ads, worth millions of dollars, and may pursue legal action. - Kyle Barr/ Gizmodo, Drew Harwell/ The Washington PostEvelyn has her calendar marked for the Big Game, a matchup of two 3-7 teams on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. PT. “Give ’em the axe, the axe, the axe!” - ESPNJoin 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:Elon Musk announced that Twitter will start charging $8 for users to keep or gain blue check marks on the platform, changing the meaning of the symbol to indicate subscribers to the “Twitter Blue” service. The company then delayed launch until after the midterms. - Ines Kagubare/ The Hill, @elonmuskBlue-chip companies including General Mills, Pfizer, and Volkswagen have all paused advertising on Twitter over concerns that Musk will limit content moderation on the platform. - Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin/ The Wall Street JournalAfter single-handedly hosting a call for Twitter with civil society and advocacy organizations, many of those participants were among the more than 60 advocacy and civil society organizations that called for an ad boycott on the platform. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Rebecca Kern, Mark Scott/ PoliticoElon Musk responded to a right-wing influencer’s tweet suggesting he “has tortious interference claims” against activist groups involved in the ad boycott campaign. (spoiler: he doesn’t) - @elonmusk, Mark Frauenfelder/ Boing BoingPeople are leaving Twitter and fleeing to… Mastodon? - Rachel Metz/ CNNRumble has suspended services in France, blaming government rules banning Russian state media and government accounts. - @rumblevideoRumble is building its own cloud services, a move similar to Parler, but that would require a more expansive scale for more highly trafficked video content. - Kaitlyn Tiffany/ The Atlantic, Taylor Hatmaker/ TechCrunch “The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that ‘leaked’ documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the ‘smoking gun’ of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.” - Mike Masnick/ TechdirtMore: “The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.”The Election Integrity Partnership published a blog on rumors and false and misleading narratives to expect on and after Election Day. - Election Integrity Partnership India is amending an IT law that regulates social media content moderation by adding a panel with three government-appointed members to review social media grievances. - Manish Singh, Jagmeet Singh/ TechCrunch, ScrollA revised Online Safety Bill is expected to head back to the UK House of Commons later this month with amendments that limit the government from forcing platforms to take action on “harmful but lawful” content. - Dev Kundaliya/ Computing, Chloe Chaplain/ i newspaperJoin 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!

SHOW NOTESStanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Elon Musk has been busy since officially acquiring Twitter.He tweeted that the company will form “a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” That sparked comparisons to Meta’s Oversight Board while others noted that Twitter already has a Trust and Safety Council, but wondered if Musk was aware. He also said no major decisions will be made about reinstating accounts or changing content rules until that body comes together and reiterated in a quote tweet that no changes have been made to Twitter’s content moderation policies, likely in response to a reported rise in specific hate speech terms on the platform. - Emma Roth/ The VergeIndian authorities conducted searches at The Wire newsroom and the homes of four editors after a complaint was filed by the ruling party official at the center of reporting that was retracted by the news publication. - ScrollThe Election Integrity Partnership published an analysis of social media platform policies finding that many election rules are vague and lack transparency for how they are enforced. - Election Integrity PartnershipElon Musk tweeted and then deleted a link to a conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi attack in reply to a tweet from Hillary Clinton. - Gina Martinez/ CBS News, Kurtis Lee/ The New York Times, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington PostMeta was fined nearly $25 million by Washington state for violating campaign finance disclosure laws and ordered to pay the state’s legal fees. - Associated Press, Rebecca Falconer/ Axios, Eli SandersThe Digital Services Act (DSA) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The publication provides the final text of the DSA and begins the countdown for the DSA to enter into force and its application for large and then all covered platforms and search engines. - Luca Bertuzzi/ EuractivJoin 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!

Evelyn and Alex talk about, what else, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. He says he’s freed the bird, but there’s a whole bunch of restraints he clearly hasn’t thought about. He’s got some not-so-fun meetings and phone calls coming up.

When we talk about content moderation, we often focus on companies at the application layer of the internet, like the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. But there are a whole bunch of other companies in the internet stack that have the power to knock things offline. So what is similar or different about content moderation when it moves into the infrastructure layers of the internet? Evelyn spoke with Alissa Starzak, the Vice President and Global Head of Public Policy at Cloudflare and Emma Llanso, the Director of CDT’s Free Expression Project to explore this increasingly pressing question.

SHOW NOTESStanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:The Wire retracted recent coverage of Meta and will conduct an internal review of past coverage by staff involved with the reporting. - The WireFrench police are investigating severed fiber-optic cables that disrupted internet and phone services in the Marseille area. Alex urges caution before jumping to any conclusions. John Leicester/ Associated PressTurkey's parliament voted to adopt a law that could send social media users to jail for up to three years for spreading false information to "create fear and disturb public order" despite free speech and media freedom concerns. - ReutersBrazilian authorities granted the power to order that online platforms remove content to the country’s elections chief who also sits on the supreme court. - Jack Nicas/ The New York TimesKiwi Farms was available at its original URL over the last month but is back down. - Ellie Hall/ BuzzFeedThe Republican National Committee sued Google over alleged spam filtering bias. It still has not enrolled in a new pilot program Google created with FEC approval to address those concerns. - Sara Fischer, Ashley Gold/ AxiosElon may very well buy Twitter — could an alternative platform pop up? - Perry Bacon Jr./ The Washington Post (commentary)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!

SHOW NOTESStanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:An article with bombshell allegations against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, appears to be based on forgeries, but the news outlet continues to stand by the reporting and now claims a technical expert at the publication was hacked. - Aditi Agrawal/ newslaundry, OpIndiaMore: Last week, an article was published by The Wire, a nonprofit Indian digital news organization, claiming an internal Instagram report revealed an official in charge of social media for India’s ruling party, the BJP, had special privileges to report pieces of content to Instagram and have them taken down automatically.Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denied the report saying that that was not how the XCheck program worked, and that the “the underlying documentation appears to be fabricated.”But Wait, There’s More: The next day, The Wire published a new article claiming to have an email in which Meta’s Stone asked employees how the document leaked.Meta CISO Guy Rosen denied the allegations and explained how he determined the evidence and email were forgeries.Then: This weekend, The Wire released another story standing by their reporting with evidence that the internal email and report URL were real. The story included a video explanation of their technical analysis.Meta’s Rosen responded debunking new claims, and other experts (including Alex) pointed out flaws with purported technical evidence that the internal emails were real.We’re Still Not Done: Meta released an updated blog post debunking the purported internal system shown in The Wire’s video as an external account created after the story was reported.The Wire responded in a statement saying that the reason why Meta keeps denying their reporting is to try and get them to publish more information that will reveal their sources but they “are not prepared to play this game any further.” The statement was later edited to delete the description of a “personal” relationship with a source.Got All That? Here’s Some Context: India is pushing ahead with legislation that would create a government-appointed panel to review user complaints about social media content moderation decisions. - Megha Mandavia/ The Wall Street JournalMeta officials are also reported to leniently apply policies, such as those barring hate speech, for the Indian ruling party. Newley Purnell, Jeff Horwitz/ The Wall Street JournalYe, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has reached an agreement to buy the conservative social media platform Parler. The move marks a growing trend of billionaires buying social media companies when their posts are moderated. - Ryan Browne/ CNBC, Marlene Lenthang/ NBC News, Bobby Allyn/ NPR, Kelly Hooper/ PoliticoThe Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Fat Bear Week bracket voting tournament was marred by an attempt to artificially inflate votes for 435 Holly over Bear 747 in the semifinal round. Luckily, the organizers caught the fishy business and preserved the sanctity of the tournament which had a record of more than one million total votes. - Miles Klee/ Rolling StoneJoin 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!

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court granted cert in two cases concerning the scope of platform liability for content on their services: Gonzalez v. Google, about whether platforms lose section 230 immunity when they recommend content to users, and Twitter v. Taamneh, about whether platforms can be found to have aided and abetted terrorism if they are found to have been insufficiently aggressive in removing terrorist content from their sites. The cert grants were a surprise, and the cases are complicated. Evelyn sat down with Daphne Keller, the podcast’s Supreme Court Correspondent, to dig into the details.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:The Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases that could determine the scope of liability for websites and social media platforms that host and promote user content. - Rebecca Kern/ Politico, Rachel Lerman/ The Washington Post, David Ingram/ NBC NewsGonzalez v. Google is the case getting the most attention because somehow the words “Section 230” have become clickbait — quite an achievement for a random provision of federal law. The question in Gonzalez is whether platforms lose Section 230 protections for content that they promote. The family of a victim of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks brought the suit.But we also really want to highlight Twitter Inc. v. Taamneh, which is about whether platforms can be found to have “aided and abetted” terrorism by having terrorist content on their services. The case was brought by the family of a victim of a 2017 terrorist attack in Istanbul which claims Twitter, Google, and Facebook aided and abetted terrorism by allowing the Islamic State on their platforms in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act.Meta took down influence operations linked to China and Russia. The Chinese campaign was the first to target U.S. politics ahead of the midterms, but was clearly fake and had low engagement. The larger Russian network replicated media organizations to spread pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine. - Steven Lee Myers/ The New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan/ CNN, Ben Nimmo/ Meta, Nika Aleksejeva, Roman Osadchuk, Sopo Gelava, Jean Le Roux, Mattia Caniglia, Daniel Suárez Pérez, Alyssa Kann/ DFRLabSpotify announced it is acquiring content moderation company Kinzen, bringing expertise and proprietary tools in house to improve trust and safety. - Sarah Perez/ TechCrunchPayPal is facing blowback after proposing rules that would have allowed it to fine users $2,500 for promoting misinformation — which the online payment service has since called an error. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington PostCalifornia passed a “cyberflashing” law that allows recipients of unwanted sexual imagery to take legal action against the sender for up to $30,000 in civil damages. California is the third state to pass a law that provides legal recourse for this form of sexual harrassment and abuse. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington PostMore: The dating app Bumble played a significant role pushing for the new law. The app requires women to send the first messages to matches in an attempt to create a better dating experience.Context: The new law may be a sign of a trend across state legislatures which are increasingly passing measures against online harms and abuse. A Bumble executive to The Washington Post the company plans to push for similar legislation in Maryland, New York and D.C.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!

Last week the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas social media law that, among other things, prevents platforms from discriminating against users based on their viewpoint. The leading opinion declared that a bunch of things we thought we knew about how the First Amendment and content moderation work are wrong. Next stop: the Supreme Court. evelyn talks with Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, and Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law and the Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar at the University of Chicago, about what the ruling said and what it means—to the extent that’s decipherable.