Earlier this year, Brian Fishman published a fantastic paper with Brookings thinking through how technology platforms grapple with terrorism and extremism, and how any reform to Section 230 must allow those platforms space to continue doing that work. That’s the short description, but the paper is really about so much more—about how the work of content moderation actually takes place, how contemporary analyses of the harms of social media fail to address the history of how platforms addressed Islamist terror, and how we should understand “the original sin of the internet.” For this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down to talk with Brian about his work. Brian is the cofounder of Cinder, a software platform for the kind of trust and safety work we describe here, and he was formerly a policy director at Meta, where he led the company’s work on dangerous individuals and organizations.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brian Fishman, co-founder of the trust and safety platform Cinder and a former policy director at Meta, discusses the intricate relationship between violent extremism and social media. He explores how content moderation has evolved, particularly regarding the shift from ISIS to far-right extremism in the U.S. The conversation dives into the challenges of regulating harmful content while maintaining free speech, the complexities surrounding Section 230, and the importance of transparency in fighting extremism online.

Former Policy Director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations at Facebook/Meta, Brian Fishman, discusses the history of terrorism online, challenges for platforms moderating terrorism, and the bad incentives created by political pressure.