Radiolab Content Warning
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Oct 17, 2025 
In this engaging discussion, Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John's University and expert on online speech and content moderation, shares insights on how TikTok has transformed digital landscapes. She contrasts TikTok's proactive engagement strategy with Facebook's reactive model. Topics include the addictive nature of TikTok's content, implications of Zuckerberg's changes in fact-checking, and the evolving political pressures on platforms. Kate also predicts a future of automated moderation and the growing influence of personalized media.
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Proactive Curation Replaced Reactive Takedowns
- TikTok shifted moderation from reactive takedowns to proactive curation and downranking.
- The platform pushes milquetoast, feel-good content and suppresses polarizing material through the algorithm.
Fact-Checking's End Was Largely Symbolic
- Facebook ended its fact-checking program and moved toward community notes in 2025.
- That shift served more as a political signal than a large operational change, because fact-checking had limited reach.
Hunter Biden Links Were Removed Pre-2020
- Kate recounts the Hunter Biden laptop links being removed from Facebook shortly before the 2020 election.
- She says platforms overcorrected out of fear of foreign influence after 2016, making hard moderation calls.