Twitter: The Most Invisible Job of Content Moderation

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The job of content moderation is what makes every forum on the internet usable at all. It's a hard job and it just kept getting more complicated, says David Weinberger. The biggest case yet landed on UL's desk in 2020 when Donald Trump tweeted that mail-in ballots were going to lead to widespread fraud. Twitter had never taken action against the president's tweets before.

In a congressional hearing this week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared to be on the same page as lawmakers: It’s time to regulate A.I. But like so many other proposals to regulate tech, will it actually happen? The Times’s technology reporter Cecilia Kang helps us understand whether Congress will actually act, and what that could look like.

Then, Casey talks with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, before and after Elon Musk took over the company.

On today’s episode:

Cecilia Kang is a reporter at The New York Times covering technology and regulation.
Yoel Roth is the former head of trust and safety at Twitter.

Additional reading:

Sam Altman urged Congress to pass legislation to regulate A.I., including the proposal that A.I. developers should be required to get licenses from the U.S. government to release their models.
Casey Newton reported for This American Life on Roth’s time at Twitter, before and after Musk took over.