Moderated Content

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Apple announced plans to expand end-to-end encryption data protections from messages and content on the device to the iCloud service used by many to backup their files and media for access anywhere. - Robert McMillan, Joanna Stern, Dustin Volz/ The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post, Lily Hay Newman/ Wired, Frank Bajak/ Associated PressCue the music for the Twitter Files!Musk tweeted an excerpt of former trust and safety lead Yoel Roth’s doctoral dissertation to falsely insinuate he supports the sexualization of children, opening up harassment and potential violence against the staffer he once praised. - Dana Hull, Kurt Wagner/ Bloomberg NewsThe Oversight Board released a long-awaited policy advisory opinion (PAO) with dozens of recommendations for improving Meta’s murky and controversial cross-check program which gives VIP Twitter accounts a higher level of scrutiny for enforcement of platform policies with little transparency. - Jeff Horwitz/ The Wall Street Journal, Oversight BoardMorocco’s win over perennial power Portugal and Ronaldo in the World Cup was a historic first for an African or Arab country to reach the semifinals of the tournament. They will next face France, the nation that colonized Morocco. - Issy Ronald/ CNNJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting in May, New York passed a law imposing certain obligations on social media networks regarding "hateful conduct" on their services. It went into effect at the start of December and Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA Law who runs a legal blog, is challenging the law as unconstitutional. Evelyn sits down with Eugene and Genevieve Lakier from UChicago Law to discuss.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Using a powerful AI language model developed by OpenAI, the new ChatGPT tool allows anyone to generate short text that is indecipherable from written text and that draws upon vast amounts of publicly available information. - Janus Rose/ Vice, Ina Fried/ AxiosMore: ChatGPT has fun and informative uses, but is also easy to abuse — from generating recipes or funny movie scripts, to the spread of misinformation or nefarious tips to get away with crimes.TikTok and Bumble are adopting a tool developed by Meta with international charity SWGfL’s Revenge Porn Helpline. The tool uses hashing technology for submitted content to identify and block non-consensual intimate media from participating platforms. - Olivia Solon/ Bloomberg NewsMore: Victims make a tradeoff on whether a single human reviewer seeing their intimate image outweighs its spread across the social media and dating services using the technology. - @oliviasolonRumble and the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog run by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, are challenging a New York law that prohibits hate speech in a federal lawsuit, claiming it would violate First Amendment free expression protections. - Chris Dolmetsch/ Bloomberg NewsThe “Twitter Files” were released in a staggered thread of more than 40 tweets on Friday evening. The string of tweets includes screenshots of Twitter staff’s internal communications and external email correspondence which lack any smoking gun. Instead, the thread is most likely to reinforce existing beliefs about the decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story and related content. - Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington PostTwitter CEO Elon Musk disputed news reports on research by advocacy and civil rights groups that found hate speech slurs were more prevalent on the platform. Musk claimed the data actually shows a decrease in the reach of hate speech on the platform since his acquisition and said the Twitter safety team will publish weekly reports on the data going forward. - Mohar Chatterjee/ PoliticoMore: As University of California, Berkeley researcher Jonathan Stray points out, both sides can claim they are right depending on the data and measurement of success. More transparency and collaboration could move these efforts in the right direction. That seems unlikely for now, but could be required under the EU’s new digital regulations.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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:As protestors against China’s zero-Covid policy fill the streets, images of them fill the internet and China’s censors are struggling to contain them. – Liza Lin, Karen Hao / Wall Street JournalThis is partly because the Chinese people have had years of practice at evading censors and know a trick or two. – Paul Mozur / TwitterSo China is trying to bury that content with its own spam about escorts, porn and gambling. – Jon Porter / The VergeSome of that spam includes … an AI-generated image of Alex with horns? – Alex Stamos / TwitterElon doesn’t seem too concerned though. He’s too busy picking a fight with Apple. – Elon Musk / TwitterAnd maybe drawing up plans for his own phone if Apple kicks Twitter out of the app store? – Elon Musk / Twitter Meta published its quarterly adversarial threat report this week, which included information about accounts it took down conducting information operations that had links to the US government. – MetaAlex walks us through the report Stanford Internet Observatory wrote with Graphika on these operations and what they found. – Graphika, Stanford Internet ObservatoryAs a result of this report, the Pentagon ordered a review of information operations conducted by the US military. – Ellen Nakashima / Washington PostAlex gives Evelyn an apparently now-weekly update on Stanford football news.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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:How else would Elon Musk decide to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account than a Twitter poll? Okay, well maybe the content moderation council he proposed to deal with reinstatement decisions. - Faiz Siddiqui, Drew Harwell, Isaac Arnsdorf / The Washington PostMusk’s mind is also made up on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones whose account will not be reinstated on the platform. - Brian Fung/ CNN Former Twitter trust and safety lead Yoel Roth penned a New York Times opinion piece on why he left Twitter and the influence that app store operators have on content moderation. - Yoel Roth/ The New York Times (commentary)The EU might just scare Musk straight. After the Financial Times reported the headline “Elon Musk’s Twitter on ‘collision course’ with EU regulators,” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager responded that “We are never on a collision course with anyone because we consider ourselves a mountain.” - Javier Espinoza/ Financial Times, Silvia Amaro/ CNBCMastodon might not be the paradise we hoped we could toot freely and safely in. Content moderation is hard and there’s less control or quality assurance in a federated model, as Block Party CEO Tracy Chou already knew too well before she had a post blocked and now faces torrents of harassment. - @triketora, @mmasnickA Mastodon server administrator is deciding who is a journalist while other server operators block those verified journalists from being seen on their “instances.” - Mathew Ingram/ Columbia Journalism ReviewMeta “has fired or disciplined more than two dozen employees and contractors over the last year whom it accused of improperly taking over user accounts, in some cases allegedly for bribes.” - Kirsten Grind, Robert McMillan/ The Wall Street JournalFBI Director Chris Wray testified that TikTok poses a national security challenge for the United States because the Chinese government may be able to access extensive data collected by the app or even use recommendation algorithms to push the country’s influence operations on users. - Chris Strohm, Daniel Flatley/ Bloomberg News, David Shepardson/ Reuters, Suzanne Smalley/ CyberScoopSport ball is happening in Qatar “without controversy,” and Meta is using the moment to highlight its recently introduced anti-harassment features on Instagram to block or limit offensive messages aimed at players and encourage fans to think twice before sending potentially abusive content. - Jess Weatherbed/ The Verge, MetaJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Come for the discussion of whether Musk is going to find himself in hot water with the FTC, stay for the discussion of privacy and data security regulation more generally. Evelyn discusses Twitter’s data security problems and what this says about privacy regulation more generally with Whitney Merrill, the Data Protection Officer and Privacy Counsel at Asana and long-time privacy lawyer including as an attorney at the FTC, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:The Election Integrity Partnership, led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, analyzed narratives with the potential to interfere in or delegitimize the 2022 midterm elections. - Election Integrity Partnership, @EI_Partnership, EIP Post-Election Update (.pdf)A divided Congress will likely mean more gridlock with a lot of smoke but no fire on Capitol Hill. - Ashley Gold, Peter Allen Clark/ Axios, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post,  Frank Konkel, Mariam Baksh, Kirsten Errick, Alexandra Kelley/ Nextgov, Anna Edgerton/ Bloomberg News A lot happened at Twitter:Chief Twit Elon Musk got into a Twitter feud with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) over impersonation issues on the site. - Ashley Capoot/ CNBCTwitter may have violated a Federal Trade Commission consent decree with the top brass who would be held responsible resigning the day the company’s reporting was due. Musk dismissed potential personal liability, although Uber’s former CSO knows that risk is real. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Department of Justice, @Riana_CryptoStanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn and data protection and privacy law expert Whitney Merrill will dig into this more with Evelyn later this week!Twitter is at serious risk of a breach with departures by the security, privacy, compliance, and trust and safety leaders last week and a drastic staff reduction. - John Sakellariadis/ Politico, @alexstamosMusk tweeted that he is “turning off the ‘microservices’ bloatware” and seemingly fired an employee for tweeting that Musk didn’t know what he was talking about. Now, two-factor authentication may be broken. - @elonmusk, Michael Kan/ PC Magazine, @josephmennMusk tweeted about Brazilian politics this morning… we are sure that will end well! He’s previously promised to look into allegations of censorship in the country by far-right political figures in the country. - @elonmusk, Andrew Downie/ The GuardianA spoofed Twitter account resembling Eli Lilly and Co. with a purchased blue “verified” check mark tweeted that “insulin is free now,” causing the real company’s market cap to drop $15 billion. Now, the company paused its Twitter ads, worth millions of dollars, and may pursue legal action. - Kyle Barr/ Gizmodo, Drew Harwell/ The Washington PostEvelyn has her calendar marked for the Big Game, a matchup of two 3-7 teams on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. PT. “Give ’em the axe, the axe, the axe!” - ESPNJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Elon Musk announced that Twitter will start charging $8 for users to keep or gain blue check marks on the platform, changing the meaning of the symbol to indicate subscribers to the “Twitter Blue” service. The company then delayed launch until after the midterms. - Ines Kagubare/ The Hill, @elonmuskBlue-chip companies including General Mills, Pfizer, and Volkswagen have all paused advertising on Twitter over concerns that Musk will limit content moderation on the platform. - Suzanne Vranica, Patience Haggin/ The Wall Street JournalAfter single-handedly hosting a call for Twitter with civil society and advocacy organizations, many of those participants were among the more than 60 advocacy and civil society organizations that called for an ad boycott on the platform. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Rebecca Kern, Mark Scott/ PoliticoElon Musk responded to a right-wing influencer’s tweet suggesting he “has tortious interference claims” against activist groups involved in the ad boycott campaign. (spoiler: he doesn’t) - @elonmusk, Mark Frauenfelder/ Boing BoingPeople are leaving Twitter and fleeing to… Mastodon? - Rachel Metz/ CNNRumble has suspended services in France, blaming government rules banning Russian state media and government accounts. - @rumblevideoRumble is building its own cloud services, a move similar to Parler, but that would require a more expansive scale for more highly trafficked video content. - Kaitlyn Tiffany/ The Atlantic, Taylor Hatmaker/ TechCrunch “The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that ‘leaked’ documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the ‘smoking gun’ of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.” - Mike Masnick/ TechdirtMore: “The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.”The Election Integrity Partnership published a blog on rumors and false and misleading narratives to expect on and after Election Day. - Election Integrity Partnership India is amending an IT law that regulates social media content moderation by adding a panel with three government-appointed members to review social media grievances. - Manish Singh, Jagmeet Singh/ TechCrunch, ScrollA revised Online Safety Bill is expected to head back to the UK House of Commons later this month with amendments that limit the government from forcing platforms to take action on “harmful but lawful” content. - Dev Kundaliya/ Computing, Chloe Chaplain/ i newspaperJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

SHOW NOTESStanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Elon Musk has been busy since officially acquiring Twitter.He tweeted that the company will form “a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.” That sparked comparisons to Meta’s Oversight Board while others noted that Twitter already has a Trust and Safety Council, but wondered if Musk was aware. He also said no major decisions will be made about reinstating accounts or changing content rules until that body comes together and reiterated in a quote tweet that no changes have been made to Twitter’s content moderation policies, likely in response to a reported rise in specific hate speech terms on the platform. - Emma Roth/ The VergeIndian authorities conducted searches at The Wire newsroom and the homes of four editors after a complaint was filed by the ruling party official at the center of reporting that was retracted by the news publication. - ScrollThe Election Integrity Partnership published an analysis of social media platform policies finding that many election rules are vague and lack transparency for how they are enforced. - Election Integrity PartnershipElon Musk tweeted and then deleted a link to a conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi attack in reply to a tweet from Hillary Clinton. - Gina Martinez/ CBS News, Kurtis Lee/ The New York Times, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington PostMeta was fined nearly $25 million by Washington state for violating campaign finance disclosure laws and ordered to pay the state’s legal fees. - Associated Press, Rebecca Falconer/ Axios, Eli SandersThe Digital Services Act (DSA) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The publication provides the final text of the DSA and begins the countdown for the DSA to enter into force and its application for large and then all covered platforms and search engines. - Luca Bertuzzi/ EuractivJoin 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.Like what you heard? Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

Evelyn and Alex talk about, what else, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. He says he’s freed the bird, but there’s a whole bunch of restraints he clearly hasn’t thought about. He’s got some not-so-fun meetings and phone calls coming up.