Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Moderation: It's Not Just About Content
27 Plays1 year ago
TikTok is banned (and then not). Meta eliminates fact-checking. Policy-makers debate how to moderate content and provide a safe online experience. So much is happening in the world of online speech, which is why we invited John Perrino, Senior Policy and Advocacy Expert at Internet Society to join the pod. He will help clarify what’s at stake, why it matters and how using technology in moderation can improve our lives.
Episode Resources:
- The Global Impact of a US TikTok Ban - Internet Society
- Using 'safety by design' to address online harms
- An overdue idea for making the internet safer just got the funding it needs
- Push for Independent Research in Tech Accountability Legislation
Recommended
Transcript
Free Speech and Justice
00:00:03
Speaker
I think what we need to do is explain how our principles of free speech, free inquiry, will help serve the cause of justice.
00:00:12
Speaker
The First Amendment, the constitutional freedom of speech and freedom of conscience that is the bulwark of our democracy.
00:00:22
Speaker
There was a passion in what was being said affirming this, what people consider a sacred constitutional right, freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Introduction to 'Speech Matters'
00:00:34
Speaker
From the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, this is Speech Matters, a podcast about expression, engagement, and democratic learning in higher education.
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm Michelle Deutschman, the Center's Executive Director and your host.
00:00:48
Speaker
An increasing amount of our daily communication is happening online, specifically on social media.
00:00:54
Speaker
While these platforms are run by private companies and therefore are not subject to the requirements of the First Amendment, there are debates over what role technology companies should play in regulating speech online.
Fact-Checking and Social Media Challenges
00:01:06
Speaker
In the wake of the 2016 election, many introduced fact checking in order to address concerns about spreading misinformation.
00:01:14
Speaker
These tactics were tested during the 2020 election, especially when President Trump and others posted false claims that he had won the election.
00:01:22
Speaker
platforms were forced to respond or not.
00:01:26
Speaker
It seemed that things were trending towards a willingness to accept more moderation in order to stop the spread of false information and other harmful content.
00:01:34
Speaker
This changed dramatically when, among other developments, billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform Twitter, now X, and fired their whole trust and safety team.
00:01:45
Speaker
Most recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that they too would be changing their policies.
00:01:51
Speaker
And on January 7th of this year, he released this message.
00:01:55
Speaker
Hey, everyone.
00:01:57
Speaker
I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
00:02:03
Speaker
We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
00:02:08
Speaker
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
00:02:13
Speaker
So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and
00:02:19
Speaker
and restoring free expression on our platforms.
Internet Policy and Education Impacts
00:02:23
Speaker
To learn more about these events and their potential impacts, we turn to John Perino, a senior policy and advocacy expert at Internet Society.
00:02:32
Speaker
But first, class notes, a look at what's making headlines.
00:02:37
Speaker
With over 50 rapid fire executive orders issued in the first weeks of Trump's second term, I often feel like I have whiplash trying to keep track of everything that is being dismantled, especially with regard to higher education.
00:02:50
Speaker
It is not possible to recap at all, so I'll focus on the most recent developments.
00:02:55
Speaker
We're recording this on Tuesday, February 18th.
00:02:59
Speaker
This past Friday, the United States Department of Education for Civil Rights issued a staggering Dear Colleague letter that threatens to stop federal funding to any preschool, elementary, secondary, or post-secondary educational institution or state educational agency that receives financial assistance from the federal government that utilizes federal funding.
00:03:19
Speaker
race-conscious student programming, resources, and financial aid.
00:03:24
Speaker
Schools have 14 days to comply.
00:03:26
Speaker
The letter reads, at its core, the test is simple.
00:03:30
Speaker
If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person's race, the educational institution violates the law.
00:03:39
Speaker
Federal law thus prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation,
00:03:48
Speaker
financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.
00:03:58
Speaker
This interpretation letter relies on the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down affirmative action.
00:04:07
Speaker
Although the Students for Fair Admissions case solely focused on admissions, the Trump administration believes it applies to all race-conscious spending, activities, and programming at colleges.
00:04:17
Speaker
This controversial interpretation and application of the decision is certain to be met with legal challenges.
00:04:24
Speaker
The Dear Colleague letter went far beyond legalese.
00:04:26
Speaker
It also boldly, and I think incorrectly, asserts that educational institutions are toxically indoctrinating students with the false premise that the U.S. is built on systematic and structural racism.
00:04:39
Speaker
It is likely that many of you have been following the National Institute of Health's explosive announcement that indirect funding for grants will be capped at 15%.
00:04:46
Speaker
Indirect costs are the money used for overhead for research-related expenses such as labs, equipment, and staff members.
00:04:55
Speaker
While the change is expected to save the government $4 billion annually, it will have a devastating impact on universities' ability to perform research, especially in the fields of healthcare and science, including life-saving biomedical research.
00:05:09
Speaker
Numerous lawsuits were filed to challenge this NIH announcement, including one by the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the American Council on Education.
00:05:22
Speaker
The University of California submitted a declaration in support of the California Attorney General's suit against the new NIH guidance.
00:05:30
Speaker
Last Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order from enacting the new indirect cost rate in response to a lawsuit filed by 22 state attorneys general.
00:05:41
Speaker
The National Association of Diversity Offers in Higher Education and the American Association of University Professors partnered to file a separate lawsuit challenging two executive orders that will withhold federal funding from institutions with diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
00:05:57
Speaker
The suit alleges that these orders are vague and overbroad as well as violate the First Amendment.
00:06:02
Speaker
There will be an in-person court hearing tomorrow to address the plaintiff's motion for a temporary restraining order and or preliminary injunction.
00:06:12
Speaker
Not all suits are being brought by associations and attorney generals, however.
00:06:16
Speaker
The University of California Student Association filed suit against the acting Secretary of Education in order to halt the unlawful disclosure of personal and financial information that the Department of Efficiency has allegedly accessed.
00:06:30
Speaker
Late on Monday, February 17, a federal judge denied the plaintiff's motion for a temporary restraining order, saying immediate threats did not exist.
00:06:38
Speaker
We will keep you posted on what happens next.
00:06:42
Speaker
Now back to today's guest.
Content Moderation and Trust
00:06:44
Speaker
John Perrino serves as a senior policy and advocacy expert at Internet Society, where he analyzes U.S. policy developments and works with partners and policymakers around the globe to advocate for an open, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone.
00:06:59
Speaker
John previously was the policy lead at the Stanford Internet Observatory,
00:07:04
Speaker
working to root online trust and safety policy in research and technical reality.
00:07:09
Speaker
He has also held roles leading public affairs work on cybersecurity research and policy at the Glen Echo Group and working on internet policy as a fellow at the Internet Education Foundation.
00:07:19
Speaker
He has both bachelor's and graduate degrees from George Washington University in political communications and public administration.
00:07:26
Speaker
John, we are so delighted to have you joining us on Speech Matters.
00:07:30
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:07:31
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Michelle.
00:07:32
Speaker
Pleasure to be here.
00:07:34
Speaker
And I'm a fan of the pod.
00:07:35
Speaker
Thanks so much.
00:07:37
Speaker
So there's so much happening in the world generally, and then also in the world of social media and artificial intelligence, it's a little hard to know where to begin.
00:07:46
Speaker
But I decided content moderation seems to be a pretty evergreen issue.
00:07:50
Speaker
And I thought we should start there.
00:07:52
Speaker
One recent and seemingly significant shift in the online speech landscape was Meta's announcement, which we heard at the top of the episode, that they're moving from using a third party fact checking program to using the community notes model, which is also used by Elon Musk's ex, formerly Twitter.
00:08:10
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you could give us your thoughts on this shift and how it might affect what we see and we read online.
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:20
Speaker
I think there are two things with Meta's announcement.
00:08:24
Speaker
The first is the announcement itself.
00:08:27
Speaker
And then there's the actual substance of the announcement and the announcement itself might be what's most important.
00:08:35
Speaker
It was clearly framed in political language to appeal to a certain party and the language and the image that were used in the announcement, I think are really important.
00:08:48
Speaker
This was about political messaging and they even launched the announcement.
00:08:53
Speaker
They did the media launch on Fox and Friends.
00:08:56
Speaker
So there was an intended audience here.
00:08:58
Speaker
Now, the substance of the announcement is a bit different.
00:09:02
Speaker
As you mentioned,
00:09:04
Speaker
Perhaps the biggest change is cutting the fact-checking program.
00:09:09
Speaker
Now, recent polls from Gallup and Pew have shown that trust in the media is very low.
00:09:16
Speaker
We're talking less than a third of Americans and closer to 10% of Republicans just don't trust, probably the media.
00:09:25
Speaker
And there's some merit to community notes, but we don't know how effective community notes are and we don't know how effective the fact checking is.
00:09:33
Speaker
There's no real good research.
00:09:36
Speaker
Now, other parts of the announcement really weren't updates recommending political content and feeds again, you know, not that surprising.
00:09:44
Speaker
It's returned to the past talking about how content moderators are going to work out of Texas.
00:09:50
Speaker
The reality from what I've heard from people who used to work at Facebook and content moderation in the early days is that most of those people are already there in, in Texas.
00:09:59
Speaker
Right.
00:10:00
Speaker
So it really comes down in the substance to the fact checking.
00:10:04
Speaker
And then we kind of learned later on about some changes to the platform policy.
00:10:11
Speaker
And when we talk about this, I think there's two higher level things to kind of keep in mind.
00:10:16
Speaker
And the first is that.
00:10:17
Speaker
people are less likely to use the internet to its full potential if they don't trust what they see online.
00:10:24
Speaker
And the second is that people are less likely to openly participate online if they don't feel safe.
00:10:32
Speaker
So that might be a good segue to talk about some of the concerns that have come, not with the announcement, but what we kind of learned later with it.
00:10:42
Speaker
How did you know where I was headed?
00:10:43
Speaker
I definitely think that we should talk about that.
00:10:46
Speaker
And I know certain groups like
00:10:47
Speaker
Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have expressed a lot of concerns to some of the changes to Meta's hateful conduct policy, alleging that it actually may cause more harm to marginalized groups on the platform than it will benefit or protect speech.
00:11:06
Speaker
So let's hear what you think.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:08
Speaker
So when you look at the actual platform policy changes, it again reflects a lot
00:11:16
Speaker
of the political discourse that we're seeing right now in pretty concerning ways.
00:11:21
Speaker
So a line was added to the platform policy that says, quote, we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse, transgenderism, and homosexuality, end quote.
00:11:42
Speaker
That's the main line that was added into the platform policy.
00:11:47
Speaker
Now, content moderation policy is very tricky, but I don't, you have to protect people online and I don't think there's any excuse for adding language like that, right?
00:11:58
Speaker
Let's just be blunt.
00:12:00
Speaker
That's concerning.
00:12:01
Speaker
And we don't know how that's going to be enforced.
00:12:04
Speaker
We don't really know what the change means, but it reflects a broader concern and it's not just meta.
00:12:10
Speaker
Right.
00:12:11
Speaker
Um, like community notes, this is taking a signal from a broader shift on other social media platforms.
00:12:18
Speaker
And it's also kind of creating this divide.
00:12:22
Speaker
People feel less comfortable on certain social media outlets.
00:12:25
Speaker
So they move to others and they move to other spaces on the internet where they feel like they have more protections and the rules are more comfortable.
00:12:34
Speaker
Companies have the power to make these decisions, right?
00:12:37
Speaker
They're not the government.
00:12:38
Speaker
They're not first amendment rules for as much as you hear in Washington, DC.
00:12:44
Speaker
First amendment rules do not apply to private companies and social media platforms, right?
00:12:50
Speaker
So Meta can make this rule change.
00:12:53
Speaker
Other social media platforms can make whatever rule changes they want within the law for their platform.
00:12:59
Speaker
But people also have the option to move and go elsewhere.
Equity in Free Speech Online
00:13:04
Speaker
Now, one of the other kind of interesting things that's going on here is there's a lot of claims about free speech, but free speech for who, right?
00:13:13
Speaker
When people don't feel safe, they're going to self-censor.
00:13:17
Speaker
When there's uncertainty and you feel like you could be targeted and you give more power for other people to target a certain population, in effect, there's going to be a different kind of censorship going on.
00:13:33
Speaker
So as much as there's talk about freedom of speech and people say that they are against censorship, it's possible that you're going to see an impact that
00:13:46
Speaker
is not actually what they say they want here.
00:13:49
Speaker
You're going to see people self-censor.
00:13:51
Speaker
So we don't know that, but if people don't feel safe, they don't speak up.
00:13:57
Speaker
So that's, that's my concern here.
00:14:00
Speaker
Now, the other broader thing with, with fact checking is it's impossible to check every single claim.
00:14:06
Speaker
Right.
00:14:07
Speaker
And at the end of the day,
00:14:10
Speaker
Each little post and claim kind of fills into a broader narrative.
00:14:14
Speaker
And if you repeat something enough, it sticks.
00:14:17
Speaker
So with all this going on, you know, it could feed broader narratives and it could have a different kind of politics or different parts of the culture wars that are ongoing could be more prevalent for users.
00:14:31
Speaker
So we don't know yet.
00:14:32
Speaker
It's really impossible because it's been so soon, but there is reason for concern here.
00:14:37
Speaker
No, thanks for sharing that and for framing it that way.
00:14:41
Speaker
I really resonate with what you're saying about narratives and how if you repeat something enough, right, people might really start to believe it.
00:14:48
Speaker
And I think that, you know, in our...
00:14:51
Speaker
last podcast at the end of the year, we talked with Marianne Franks, who wrote this book called Fearless Speech.
00:14:56
Speaker
And one of the things she talked about was how it really benefits social media companies to use free speech and to sort of like put that kind of guise over them to say, oh, no, we're actually we can't really content moderate because of the First Amendment and free speech when in fact that's actually not true.
00:15:14
Speaker
And I think they're not unhappy that people are confused about that.
00:15:19
Speaker
So I'm really happy that you pointed that out.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I think there, obviously, you're not the only one that is concerned about what's happening, you know, on social media.
00:15:27
Speaker
And I think one of the larger questions is, what do you think are effective ways to prevent harms, you know, and is anybody on the right or a better path forward?
00:15:38
Speaker
And I don't mean just companies in the US, I mean, even globally.
00:15:41
Speaker
And I realize that's a big
00:15:43
Speaker
question, but I guess who do we look to to see a possible pathway to positivity and safety online?
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker
So there's the platform policy, there's a public policy, and then there's technical measures that can be taken.
00:16:04
Speaker
And increasingly, we're seeing them all.
00:16:06
Speaker
There's a lot of interplay between all these different elements.
Algorithmic Solutions for Better Conversations
00:16:10
Speaker
Now, on an actual perspective,
00:16:12
Speaker
platform design, there are some really interesting ideas.
00:16:15
Speaker
There's, there's something that's basically called bridging algorithms and it's an idea that's been presented by, uh, Vivo Vidaya and a, and a Harvard report.
00:16:26
Speaker
It's a concept that's been proposed in various ways by Ravi Iyer and others who have entered academia from the social media space, from that Silicon Valley, different Silicon Valley roles.
00:16:40
Speaker
And what these bridging algorithms would do is instead of optimizing just by engagement and by a user's interests and connecting those to similar interests, it would look for areas where there's perhaps productive disagreement where people aren't screaming at each other and they're talking about a hot button issue and seem to be listening and engaged in a conversation that's not just yelling.
00:17:09
Speaker
Or another way of looking at it is a whole lot of dog lovers and a whole lot of cat lovers are coming around and both engaging around, I don't know, maybe a really cute penguin is hopping around.
00:17:24
Speaker
So finding the points of agreement and finding productive conversations and positive engagement that's going on.
00:17:33
Speaker
Now, the reality is it's easier said than
00:17:37
Speaker
Right.
00:17:38
Speaker
Trying to optimize beyond engagement, you have to still define certain ways that you're going to, um, like when you were going to amplify content, there need to be certain points that you can define, right?
00:17:54
Speaker
That's how these algorithms work.
00:17:58
Speaker
And that's the part where people won't agree.
00:18:02
Speaker
So then you see other recommendations and public policy.
00:18:06
Speaker
tend to default to much simpler ideas.
00:18:09
Speaker
Those are either reverse chronological feeds.
00:18:12
Speaker
So you just see whatever the most recent post is for a page or a person who you follow.
00:18:18
Speaker
And then we're also seeing a lot of proposals to just ban people under a certain age.
00:18:24
Speaker
These are just kind of black or white, this or that kind of proposals and
00:18:30
Speaker
these are particularly effective for a reverse chronological feed it can still be gamed it's not a neutral design decision so and this is all influencers and others you know they are still going to optimize for engagement so how do you do that you post more on
00:18:47
Speaker
It's really simple.
00:18:48
Speaker
Right.
00:18:48
Speaker
And then in terms of, of keeping people out, I mean, there's benefits to social media for most people, you know, it's hard to define whatever that age is.
00:18:59
Speaker
But there's, there's benefits to social media and other online social spaces for record.
00:19:03
Speaker
So I also don't think the answer is to just keep young people out.
00:19:08
Speaker
You know, you have to prepare them and provide them safeguards, but keeping them out of online spaces, isn't the answer.
00:19:16
Speaker
So on the public policy side, what is the answer?
00:19:19
Speaker
I mean, that's, that's really hard.
00:19:20
Speaker
I don't think anyone has gotten it just right, but knowing that this is an audience of academics and students, I mean, something that I've been advocating for for a few years is more research and more transparency.
00:19:33
Speaker
We need to understand the public needs to understand how these systems work and have a better understanding of how it impacts people, the users, right?
00:19:43
Speaker
And most of this research resides within the platforms and doesn't really come to light of day.
00:19:50
Speaker
Or if it does, there have been whistleblowers and when it does come to light, the companies claim, oh, it's been manipulated.
00:19:58
Speaker
This doesn't fully tell the story.
00:20:00
Speaker
And they might have a point, right?
00:20:03
Speaker
I mean, if you're sharing it with news outlets, the most absurd, the most fiery things are going to be the things that are
00:20:12
Speaker
highlighted.
00:20:13
Speaker
So the reality is we don't really know how these things work.
00:20:16
Speaker
We need more research.
00:20:17
Speaker
We need more transparency.
00:20:19
Speaker
And this is actually coming to fruition in public policy in the European union under the digital services act.
00:20:27
Speaker
There have been us proposals.
00:20:29
Speaker
They haven't really gone anywhere, but you know, I'm hopeful to see a system developed for researchers to actually get data and do the research and do it in a way that preserves people's privacy.
00:20:42
Speaker
I think the reality is we need more research and we need more transparency.
00:20:46
Speaker
It doesn't solve the problem.
00:20:47
Speaker
And I mean, this, we're talking about a societal problem in terms of, you know, sharing false information.
00:20:52
Speaker
People have always shared false information and propaganda from the earliest days, but we're seeing it at scale.
00:20:59
Speaker
So really point one is transparency and research.
00:21:04
Speaker
And obviously we need to improve education so that people can identify these things.
00:21:10
Speaker
And then I think people do need to have more safeguards and ways to feel like they have more control and autonomy over the content that they see, the conversations that they have online, because there is research that says when people feel like they are in control, when they feel like they are empowered online,
00:21:29
Speaker
They have a better experience and they moderate their experience better.
00:21:33
Speaker
So it's, it's not any one silver bullet.
00:21:36
Speaker
It really needs to be holistic approach to addressing this, but there are little areas.
00:21:42
Speaker
And I think if we start to focus more on specific things and we further develop them, then we'll start putting in more and more tools and educate more and more people and have more and more information to better understand this and
00:21:59
Speaker
have protections and empower people.
00:22:01
Speaker
It's interesting because
00:22:03
Speaker
you've emphasized more research, more transparency, you mentioned privacy also.
00:22:08
Speaker
And it seems to me that all three of those things connect back to what you initially said, which is trust, which is that by having more data that's available to understand how the data impacts what's happening, and then making sure privacy is secured, that leads to trust, which leads to a better experience, right?
00:22:26
Speaker
So anyway, many, many building blocks.
00:22:30
Speaker
It seems like one of the challenges is that we're watching all this happening at scale, and yet the question becomes, how does one respond at scale?
00:22:36
Speaker
So even if there isn't a silver bullet, but once you figure out a couple of the tools, it seems like one of the challenges is then how do you have a response to meet the scale of what one is responding to?
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:22:51
Speaker
And, you know, one of the, just this week, so we're talking, we're currently talking on February 13th.
00:22:57
Speaker
And I believe on Monday, there is a new open source system safety project announced by nonprofit.
00:23:04
Speaker
It's called Roost, R O O S T. And the whole idea is to have open source, fully transparent software that companies can use to help identify harmful content and help users navigate online.
00:23:22
Speaker
And it doesn't have specifically
00:23:25
Speaker
This is what's harmful.
00:23:26
Speaker
This isn't harmful.
00:23:28
Speaker
But the idea is to allow more and more online spaces to be able to have scalable trust and safety tools and use AI for this type of work.
00:23:39
Speaker
So there's still work to be done, but there are initiatives to help make rest and safety tools to improve security at scale.
00:23:51
Speaker
No matter if you have the resources of the largest companies,
00:23:54
Speaker
or you're a smaller player in the space.
00:23:56
Speaker
So absolutely, I think it really does come down to being able to scale and improve accuracy.
00:24:04
Speaker
Great, I'm glad that you provided that example.
00:24:07
Speaker
So I wanna pivot a tiny bit.
00:24:09
Speaker
I mean, we're still gonna be talking about content moderation, but I wanna focus on the facet of
00:24:14
Speaker
It that deals with sort of the fraught relationship between government and social media platforms that we've seen a lot of, especially as of late.
00:24:23
Speaker
As our listeners may remember, this past June, which is when the Supreme Court term wraps up, the court threw out a lower court ruling that prevented the Biden administration from being in communication.
Government's Role in Social Media Regulation
00:24:34
Speaker
with social media companies about their content moderation policies, especially as it pertained to COVID-19 and mis- and disinformation about vaccines and other healthcare policies.
00:24:45
Speaker
And the justices argued that there was no proof that the government had pressured social media companies into restricting speech on their platforms, despite what social media companies had argued.
00:24:55
Speaker
In the announcement that we've been referring to,
00:24:58
Speaker
At Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to the case, you know, again, alleging that the Biden administration pushed for censorship.
00:25:05
Speaker
And then, of course, one of the numerous executive orders by President Trump was pulling on this idea, and it's called Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.
00:25:15
Speaker
And that EO alleges that
00:25:18
Speaker
The government, quote, trampled free speech rights by censoring American speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve.
00:25:36
Speaker
I think I have two questions.
00:25:38
Speaker
One is, what impact, if any?
00:25:40
Speaker
will this executive order have on social media companies and how they regulate speech?
00:25:45
Speaker
And then more generally, what thoughts you have about the appropriate role for government to play in these kind of back and forth conversations?
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, so I think the good news about executive orders is that they don't apply to private companies.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I really liked this line.
00:26:08
Speaker
Um, there's the university of Minnesota law professor, Alan Rosenstein was a really great one-liner on explaining executive orders.
00:26:17
Speaker
Um, he says executive orders quote are not magical documents.
00:26:21
Speaker
They're just press releases with nicer stationary.
00:26:24
Speaker
So I think what Alan was saying is oftentimes executive orders are really about political messaging.
00:26:34
Speaker
And sure they have the force of law for federal agencies, you know, there is some power to them, but it's really about political messaging and for this executive order on government and speech, you know, it is.
00:26:51
Speaker
that the government should not be suppressing free speech.
00:26:56
Speaker
For internet companies, there's also the political signaling of don't take down certain types of content because we consider that censorship.
00:27:06
Speaker
So it's a, it's a really difficult, it doesn't have the force of law over the companies, but I'm sure your listeners are familiar with the concept of job owning.
00:27:16
Speaker
or basically informal government pressure, you push the companies in a certain way.
00:27:23
Speaker
You know, it's, we call it like working the refs per se, where if you bug the referee enough times, then maybe they are likely to more likely to, to rule in your favor, uh, keep the speech that you like up and only apply the rules for the other content.
00:27:40
Speaker
Right.
00:27:41
Speaker
So I think that's the potential concern that you have here.
00:27:45
Speaker
even though the executive order doesn't say that.
00:27:49
Speaker
And it is about, oh, to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech, whose speech and how is it going to be applied?
00:27:59
Speaker
That's the big question that we have with this executive order.
00:28:03
Speaker
Got it.
00:28:04
Speaker
And generally, do you have any thoughts just more generally about the role of governments or, yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
So something that we've seen in recent days is staff at CISA or the cybersecurity infrastructure security agency within the department of Homeland security, having their jobs cut.
00:28:28
Speaker
If it was perceived that they were working on election information issues.
00:28:34
Speaker
I think that
00:28:35
Speaker
the government can have a role in helping educate people about how the government works, you know, very, very simply.
00:28:42
Speaker
So role that the federal government took was simply explaining how election processes work and identifying prevailing narratives and passing that on to the relevant state officials deal with those issues in
00:29:00
Speaker
communicate to the public in those states.
00:29:03
Speaker
So there might be a gap if people don't trust the media, don't trust the government.
00:29:10
Speaker
How do they really understand government processes?
00:29:13
Speaker
How do they understand whether the posts that they're seeing and concerned about someone's personal experience at the polls are legitimate or not?
00:29:22
Speaker
I mean, people do experience issues at the polls and each polling location for the most part is
00:29:30
Speaker
different and there's unique ways that they are run based on the equipment and a whole bunch of different processes.
00:29:37
Speaker
It's incredibly complex.
00:29:40
Speaker
So, you know, there's, there's no perfect solution to this, the government role in this, we don't even know how effective it was, but we will probably lose some degree of eye level understanding of what's being said and official government communications.
00:29:59
Speaker
in these cases.
00:30:00
Speaker
And we saw something similar at the State Department.
00:30:03
Speaker
There's something called, we call it DAC in DC, because we love our acronyms, but it's the Global Engagement Center.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's no more within the State Department.
00:30:13
Speaker
And what the Global Engagement Center does is they analyze and can engage in foreign false, you know, or misleading narratives, essentially, from
00:30:29
Speaker
outside of the United States.
00:30:31
Speaker
And, you know, we, we do probably want to have an understanding of how other countries are trying to, um, manipulate or push certain propaganda narratives and the group that was doing that work.
00:30:45
Speaker
You don't know how effective it was.
00:30:47
Speaker
And I think it's, you know, fair to kind of hook some holes in it, but now there might be nobody doing that work.
00:30:53
Speaker
So those are the types of gaps that you might see.
00:30:57
Speaker
Um, there was
00:30:58
Speaker
Less trust in government in the first part.
00:31:00
Speaker
There's always government inefficiencies.
00:31:03
Speaker
But now that kind of work just isn't there in the United States.
00:31:08
Speaker
So now we're having to deal with gaps.
00:31:10
Speaker
Okay, big sigh.
00:31:12
Speaker
So part of me feels like I really wanted to get through a whole episode without mentioning TikTok.
00:31:19
Speaker
but it seems like that is not going to be possible.
TikTok's Legal and Security Issues
00:31:22
Speaker
So let's talk about TikTok and whether it's banned or not banned by the US government.
00:31:27
Speaker
We've been covering our case, John, in our class notes, but I think I'm just going to run through a quick refresher for our listeners about what's happened and then where we stand and then ask you to kind of opine on it.
00:31:40
Speaker
So for a review...
00:31:42
Speaker
Last April, the U.S. House and Senate passed and President Biden signed a law requiring the sale of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app, to a U.S. company.
00:31:52
Speaker
Congress considered TikTok a threat to national security and worried about the ability of the Chinese government to access data about American citizens.
00:32:01
Speaker
The legislation required that the company be sold within a year or face being shut down.
00:32:05
Speaker
TikTok filed a lawsuit in response claiming that the court should intervene to strike down the law because here it comes.
00:32:12
Speaker
It violates the First Amendment rights of TikTok's more than 170 million American users.
00:32:18
Speaker
This case went its way, of course, through the court system.
00:32:20
Speaker
And last month, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously, which is unusual,
00:32:24
Speaker
voted to uphold the law, meaning the court disagreed with TikTok's allegations that the ban violates the First Amendment.
00:32:34
Speaker
So the ban is set to take place.
00:32:36
Speaker
People are videoing their swans, their sad swan songs to TikTok.
00:32:41
Speaker
It's January 19th, 2025.
00:32:43
Speaker
The app goes dark in the US.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's removed from app stores.
00:32:47
Speaker
And then poof, 12 hours later, videos are live again on the app.
00:32:51
Speaker
Users
00:32:52
Speaker
We're welcomed with a new message that says, thanks for your patience and support.
00:32:55
Speaker
As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S. Since taking office, President Trump has signed an executive order pausing enforcement of the ban for 75 days and suspending liability from tech companies that do business with the app.
00:33:10
Speaker
You, John, have argued that banning one app won't solve larger online speech issues, and so...
00:33:17
Speaker
I want to ask you to talk about what steps you believe the government should be taking to address common and systemic problems, including national security issues or the spread of child sexual abuse material or CSAM.
00:33:33
Speaker
Hopefully I'm saying that right.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:36
Speaker
So it's been quite a saga for TikTok, as you just laid out.
00:33:41
Speaker
And I've argued that
00:33:43
Speaker
with my colleague Natalie Campbell at the Internet Society.
00:33:47
Speaker
I've argued that a TikTok ban would threaten the security and in some cases the livelihood of millions of Americans and have global consequences.
00:33:57
Speaker
So on global consequences, it's a tit for tat situation where
00:34:04
Speaker
if the us is blocking an app then why wouldn't europe block you know they they could block american apps and it kind of sets a bad precedent of course china already has a completely different version of tick tock and it was banned in hongong it was already banned in india but in america we have a vision of an open global
00:34:32
Speaker
internet and this contributes to splintering that and it a lot of people rely on tick tock for income and a place to be creative so the main point is it's not just about tick tock and going app by app creates a whack-a-mole situation so what do you do instead well we're talking about privacy and security concerns so in a logical world we might have a national privacy
00:35:00
Speaker
And we might take additional security measures, but there's always holdups and it's an incredibly complicated politically thorny issue in Washington, DC with a whole bunch of different competing camps when you get to a national privacy law.
00:35:17
Speaker
So that hasn't happened yet.
00:35:18
Speaker
The other thing you can do is if you know, there are certain security issues, particularly around people's data and the government seems to say,
00:35:27
Speaker
Yes, we know certain things are happening.
00:35:28
Speaker
There's been private research that's shown this.
00:35:32
Speaker
We also know that certain reporters have had their data used in inappropriate ways to track them.
00:35:38
Speaker
There should be some transparency around them.
00:35:40
Speaker
The thing is, it's not just TikTok doing.
00:35:42
Speaker
Most social media platforms are collecting data in an identical way to TikTok.
00:35:48
Speaker
And unfortunately, there are other social media companies and other companies in the tech ecosystem who have also used
00:35:56
Speaker
journalist data for tracking and inappropriately accessed, say an ex-boyfriend or an ex-girlfriend's information.
00:36:05
Speaker
It's unfortunately not that, this stuff happens.
00:36:09
Speaker
We need more transparency and we need more rules around that.
00:36:13
Speaker
It can't be a whack-a-mole approach of TikTok ban, but then we don't address these issues at every other platform out there.
00:36:20
Speaker
Sounds like you need to be elected to office so you can create this.
00:36:25
Speaker
Privacy law.
00:36:27
Speaker
So I could keep asking lots of questions, but I want to make sure we have some time in our conversation to focus a little bit on higher education and sort of the intersection of these issues with higher ed.
00:36:38
Speaker
And I guess one of my questions for you, and I don't know if you have the answers, we've talked a lot about
00:36:44
Speaker
content moderation and some of the harms and some of the issues and concerns that have come up and the siloing and the bubbles and the algorithms.
00:36:52
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how that might translate to in real life conversations and dialogue?
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
So something that we talk a lot about at the Internet Society is the importance of encryption for everyone so that people can have
00:37:10
Speaker
open conversations, private conversations, because I think there is a growing concern about some particularly Democrats in the United States.
00:37:20
Speaker
They feel less safe.
00:37:21
Speaker
And if people feel less safe, whether or not that's true, you need to give them a safe platform to have certain conversations to talk freely, whether that's about their healthcare, whether that's about just how they are feeling, because some people are feeling very stressed.
00:37:40
Speaker
You know, probably half of America now is incredibly stressed and half of America now is excited about this incredibly rapid, chaotic change.
00:37:51
Speaker
So people need to have a secure trustworthy space to just talk about it with friends.
00:37:59
Speaker
So yes, in real life.
00:38:01
Speaker
And then also probably on our phones when we're using our two thumbs for most of our conversations, people need a safe space to do that.
00:38:10
Speaker
Um, because if not, then in real life, we might whisper or we might not quite express how we feel.
00:38:19
Speaker
So it goes back to this concern about I am large self-censorship when there's so much talk about free speech and anti-censorship.
00:38:28
Speaker
So in order to, to feel comfortable, to openly participate online and in real life, again, people need to feel safe and secure.
00:38:37
Speaker
And I think that's an amazing point.
00:38:39
Speaker
And of course, there's a lot of studies and conversations about how much self-censorship there is in the classroom right now, not just on the part of faculty, but on the part of students, which I guess is a lead up to what I also want to ask you, which is there's a lot of
Impact of Moderation on Real-Life Dialogue
00:38:55
Speaker
folks from the higher ed world who are listeners, and they are part of
00:39:01
Speaker
what makes life happen inside and outside the classroom at colleges and universities.
00:39:05
Speaker
And I'm wondering what you say to some of them, but in particular to people who are in the classroom, well, really anybody, I guess, in higher ed who's charged with educating students who are likely not just using, but relying on social media and AI in their day-to-day sort of academic and personal lives.
00:39:24
Speaker
I guess if you had to give them some things to keep in mind in this moment, what might those be?
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, so first, even when there's a lot less going on in the world, there's a lot going on for students and stress is only natural.
00:39:42
Speaker
You have to expect it, right?
00:39:45
Speaker
Students are not only in the classroom, a lot of them are also working jobs.
00:39:50
Speaker
They might be on their own for the first time or responsible for making their ends meet for the first time.
00:39:56
Speaker
They might have taken on additional responsibility for caring for family members.
00:40:01
Speaker
There's a lot of stress.
00:40:04
Speaker
So what do you do when you have a lot of stress?
00:40:07
Speaker
You probably look for an escape outlet.
00:40:10
Speaker
And increasingly that's your phone or your laptops probably open up most of the day in the classroom or schoolwork, in the library, on the job.
00:40:22
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of people go to video websites, social media, whatever their escape
00:40:31
Speaker
And it also helps them kind of stay connected to friends and family, especially if they're away from them.
00:40:35
Speaker
But it's also natural to struggle with moderation, right?
00:40:40
Speaker
And I think that's where a lot of the issues come down to.
00:40:45
Speaker
That's what we talk about a lot.
00:40:47
Speaker
The reason that there's a moderation issue, I call it compulsive usage.
00:40:51
Speaker
Typically, we talk about addiction, but it has a certain medical meaning.
00:40:57
Speaker
So I talk about compulsive usage, and that's
00:40:59
Speaker
A lot of the times what we're trying to guard against.
00:41:02
Speaker
So how do you do that?
00:41:03
Speaker
I mean, the real simple answer is to set aside time to put your phone down, to close your laptop.
00:41:10
Speaker
That's not always possible.
00:41:12
Speaker
So what are other things you can do?
00:41:14
Speaker
People need friends, family, someone who they trust and can go to talk about what they're experiencing online.
00:41:22
Speaker
Because as we've already said,
00:41:24
Speaker
There's very little boundary between online and in real life right now.
00:41:28
Speaker
People need someone who they can go to and talk to.
00:41:31
Speaker
It's not just about the technology.
00:41:33
Speaker
It's about these broader things that are going on.
00:41:35
Speaker
And then on the technical side, there are often ways to find new settings.
00:41:41
Speaker
Personally, I set my phone to go to grayscale and turn off notifications at a certain hour before I'm
00:41:49
Speaker
I go to sleep because I also struggle with always checking my phone, especially someone who works in politics, policy, public affairs.
00:41:59
Speaker
I totally get it too.
00:42:00
Speaker
My phone is always there.
00:42:02
Speaker
My wife has to yell at me about that too, right?
00:42:04
Speaker
So we all struggle with it.
00:42:06
Speaker
There are some technical solutions.
00:42:08
Speaker
There are some real basic things that we should all try and do.
00:42:11
Speaker
The other side of this in the classroom is obviously people are using this for their classwork.
00:42:17
Speaker
for writing assignments.
00:42:19
Speaker
And I remember when I was a student, the big thing was never cite Wikipedia.
00:42:24
Speaker
And it's not really don't use Wikipedia.
00:42:27
Speaker
Wikipedia can be a great source with great summaries.
00:42:31
Speaker
But at the end of the day, you need to click through and go to those links and those citations.
00:42:36
Speaker
And a lot of ways it's the same with AI.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yes, you can get a nice summary, a quick answer.
00:42:43
Speaker
It can help you move on behind, uh, beyond like the blank page problem that we all have in our writing.
00:42:49
Speaker
Right.
00:42:50
Speaker
And you can use chat GPT to kind of generate some, some texts and get you going, but it needs to be your own work.
00:42:57
Speaker
You need to double check sources.
00:42:59
Speaker
Need to click through, you need to do that direct research.
00:43:01
Speaker
Right.
00:43:02
Speaker
And I think the other thing that the professors and TAs can do
00:43:07
Speaker
Is have really clear guidelines, you know, people are probably going to use AI in the classroom.
00:43:12
Speaker
And I think a lot of class materials now do have guidelines about using AI really important to just be transparent.
00:43:21
Speaker
I think it's probably easier to say you can use it, but if you use it, you need to tell me how, and please double check your sources.
00:43:30
Speaker
If you're a student.
00:43:31
Speaker
And if you're a professor, if you're a TA, encourage people to click through and be transparent about how they use AI in their school products.
00:43:42
Speaker
That was such a terrific answer.
00:43:44
Speaker
You even answered one of the other questions I was going to ask you, which is what everyone can do, small actionable steps.
00:43:50
Speaker
And since you already answered that, I think I'd like to end with sort of going up and looking down from the 30,000 foot view and talk a little bit about democracy right now.
00:44:03
Speaker
There's so much discussion, especially from the legal perspective about what many are referring to as a constitutional coup.
00:44:11
Speaker
We're seeing what many argue is a decline of our democracy.
00:44:15
Speaker
So I guess I want to ask you to talk about why you think social media either is or is not or both valuable to our democracy, especially in this moment.
The Role of Online Spaces in Democracy
00:44:29
Speaker
I think online spaces
00:44:32
Speaker
are incredibly valuable for democracy and empowering people no matter where you are.
00:44:40
Speaker
I mean, so working at a global nonprofit, we help connect people to the internet in all different parts of the world.
00:44:48
Speaker
And we often forget that there are so many people who don't have an internet connection or maybe are relying on something that's unaffordable on your phone.
00:44:58
Speaker
And something I've heard is that for a lot of these people who get really connected, it's a source of income, right?
00:45:04
Speaker
They can start selling or start a business and reach a global audience to a certain degree.
00:45:09
Speaker
They can stay connected with family.
00:45:12
Speaker
They can get the information that they need to expand their education, to improve efficiency for their business, right?
00:45:19
Speaker
I mean, the internet can do amazing things and the internet should be for everyone.
00:45:24
Speaker
And I think most importantly for this conversation,
00:45:27
Speaker
It's about having a space to openly participate online in ways that we never would have been able to just in real life.
00:45:36
Speaker
And it provides a space for people to get news and information.
00:45:41
Speaker
It provides a space for people to have conversations when there's a whole lot of things going on in the world around them.
00:45:50
Speaker
And then, you know, inevitably there's a really lot of awful things in the world too.
00:45:54
Speaker
And that can also be reflected.
00:45:57
Speaker
And sometimes, oftentimes the news is not happy.
00:46:01
Speaker
Right.
00:46:01
Speaker
So all these things in our real life are reflected on the internet.
00:46:06
Speaker
They're reflected in the social spaces.
00:46:08
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of good.
00:46:10
Speaker
And then there's a certain point where you need to say, this is not making me feel better.
00:46:13
Speaker
This is not making me happy.
00:46:15
Speaker
And maybe I need to take a step back.
00:46:17
Speaker
Maybe I need to change the feed I'm using and go to this one.
00:46:22
Speaker
That's just dogs.
00:46:24
Speaker
Um, and I think.
00:46:25
Speaker
And I'm personally that exposes my bias.
00:46:28
Speaker
I am a dog fan.
00:46:29
Speaker
I will take that controversial position on this show, but that kind of empowerment that that potential is really important to really make these social media spaces and other online spaces.
00:46:43
Speaker
valuable to people.
00:46:44
Speaker
But then again, kind of going to this even larger level, yes, having internet access expands our opportunity, but we also need to find ways to stay safe and secure and take care of ourselves and not go down rabbit holes.
00:46:59
Speaker
Well, that's certainly a good way to end.
00:47:02
Speaker
So many rabbit holes to go down right now.
00:47:05
Speaker
Is there anything else you want to add before we officially close?
00:47:08
Speaker
And I'll just note, I am also in the dog camp and I'll go even more controversial and say I'm black licorice, not red licorice.
00:47:17
Speaker
Oh, oh, I see.
00:47:18
Speaker
I won't, I won't quite go there, Michelle, but I respect your bravery and leadership.
00:47:29
Speaker
You know, the thing is I'd want to leave listeners with is,
00:47:34
Speaker
It's really important to feel like you have a place where you can express yourself online.
00:47:41
Speaker
And in order to do that, you need to feel secure.
00:47:44
Speaker
That's both technically and your perception of feeling secure.
00:47:49
Speaker
And it's also about your own perception of trust online.
00:47:54
Speaker
And a lot of these problems that we discuss.
00:47:56
Speaker
On the internet stem from societal problems.
00:47:59
Speaker
So all the work that people do to improve the lives of the most marginalized communities is incredibly important.
00:48:07
Speaker
And for marginalized communities, there's really great research out of common sense media, I believe Amanda Lenhart, and it's called Double-Edged Sword.
00:48:16
Speaker
And it's about how for the most marginalized people,
00:48:19
Speaker
Social media can have the most benefit and it can have the most drawbacks.
00:48:23
Speaker
I think that's really important to consider.
00:48:25
Speaker
There are always huge benefits and opportunities, connection, connection with your community, and there are challenges with it.
00:48:33
Speaker
So it's about finding that moderation and it's about making sure that people feel like they can openly participate and have open conversations both in real life and online.
00:48:46
Speaker
Thank you so much for taking time to join us, John.
00:48:50
Speaker
Thank you so much, Michelle.
00:48:52
Speaker
That's a wrap.
00:48:53
Speaker
Thanks so much to John Perrino for joining us.
00:48:56
Speaker
Next month, we have the privilege of speaking with Josiah Beharie, UC Student Regent, and Sonya Brooks, UC Student Regent designee, about the challenges and opportunities that come with representing the student body on the UC Board of Regents.
00:49:10
Speaker
Talk to you next time.