Introduction

The past couple of months has seen controversies over misinformation, anti-vaccine and racist material, and how best to moderate content on online publishing platforms such as Spotify and Substack.

To talk more about these issues of speech, editorial intervention, content moderation, and implications for democracy, I invited two expert commentators, Bridget Todd and Elizabeth Spiers, to the Tech Policy Press podcast. 

• Bridget Todd is the creator and host of the award-winning technology and culture podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet and communications director for UltraViolet, a gender justice advocacy organization working to build a feminist Internet. Bridget wrote a great piece for The Nation, titled It’s Not Just Joe Rogan. The Entire Digital Space Is Rotten. 
• Elizabeth Spiers is a writer, NYU journalism school professor, political commentator, and digital strategist. She is also the former editor in chief of The New York Observer and was the founding editor of Gawker.  Elizabeth wrote a trio of columns on Medium addressing the issues raised by the Rogan controversy and the Substack statements.