TikTok: A Pro-Democracy Measure

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

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

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

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

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