Hi, everyone welcome to the Essex since the podcast, I'm sonal, and I'm sharing our special episode on all things section. Two thirty of the communications Decency ACT Ceta. In what wired a senior writer there specifically described, as quote one of the clearest, but still nuanced explainers, I have heard and is worth listening to. It was originally published. Last May on her show sixteen minutes which you can subscribe to. If you haven't already in the context of previous protests and presidential tweets and an executive order, then to prevent quote online censorship, but is exactly as relevant today, perhaps now more than ever and our expert guest as MIKE Masonic, founder and editor in chief of tech dirt, who has long covered these and related issues. We all

discuss. How does a sloth layout against broader questions and debate around platforms and content moderation, but we begin with explaining section two hundred and thirty of the nineteen ninety six act which make sure that interactive websites are not liable for their users content. Precisely what does and doesn't it say, given that for completion out there, the laws actually very short and very simple and very straightforward, and I should note that the communication decency ACT itself did have many more things at a did, but all of that was too to be unconstitutional? So the only thing that survives section- two thirty there was big lawsuit, ACL you verses Reno in the late nineties, and that throughout most of the communications decency act as unconstitutional. The thing that remained was to thirty. So what section to there Does it really does two things and their somewhat related and they're, both incredibly important to the functioning of the modern internet? The first thing that

does: is it puts the liability on the person actually violating the law So if someone goes onto a website and says something that is defamatory or otherwise violates the law. The liable but before that action belongs on the person who is speaking and not the platform or site that is hosting that content. The second thing that does is that it says a website chooses to moderate its content, they think that is put on the site. Then it is not liable for those moderation choices, I'm so glad you're bringing that up, because this is the number one thing I wanted to start with, which is the flip side of it, not just the protection, but the fact that they can moderate whatever they want. Who can you actually break that down MIKE? What does that mean so? Where it came from, which I think is important, is to give sort of the history very quickly is that there were

of lawsuits in the early nineties that try to hold internet services that had moderated some content and the were defamation cases effectively brought up most famous one is Stratton Oakmont, Vs Prodigy and as a little fun aside, Stratton Oakmont was a financial firm that was immortalized in the movie, the Wolf of Wall Street, it's a fun, packed yeah and Stratton Oakmont got upset because people in prodigies message boards were accusing the company of being up to no good and so they sued prodigy and a court said that prodigy was liable for the libelous statements, because his prodigy positioned itself as a family friendly service that would moderate content and because it moderated some content to try and take down cursive

or porn anything that it felt was inappropriate that anything at left up according to the judge it was now liable for as if it had written that content itself and that freaked out people in Congress, namely at the time to members of the House, Chris Cox, Republican and RON Wyden. The Democrat and they put together section two thirty to say: wait, that's crazy! If a website wants to moderate content to create, for example, a family friendly environment, it shouldn't get sued for the content that it chose not to take down, and so that section of

Two thirty is designed to make sure that any website can moderate content, how it sees fit in good faith to present the content in a way that meets with the goals of the service right and to be clear. These are not just quote content moderation, thing like it could be spamming posts and the kind you know it. I shall turn you off from using a service or a wedding. family friendly site and getting rid of porn that companies can use whatever discretion they wanted, as long as it complied with their terms of services, basically, which that itself could change, but was in doing about this backstory, it's a very I'll thing that was preserved by the had puke consequences for where we are today in terms of the internet. We have today whether it's going on a recipes up site, whether it's sharing photos of family and friends, whether it's posting a are for sale. There are so many layers to this. It has allowed the modern internet to thrive. One of the best lines I heard. I think this is actually an

urges that in many ways this act was a gift, not too big companies, but a gift to the internet. I think the point is not that, as is the biggest gift to big internet companies bore, that is a big gift to the internet. I think it's really the biggest gift to free speech, for everybody right, because if you don't have to thirty set up the way it is set up, there would be much more limited ability for users to actually post content online, and little bit crazy to me that people think that changing or getting rid of two thirty will enable more free speech when the balances that are set up within Thirty are very much designed as a gift to free speech. Ok, phenomenal for you is given that we did enter this world where user generated content, whether on sites like Youtube, videos or, educational or non educational or political or non political. We now live in a world where a lot of these sites, people often use the framing of platform versus publisher, which I think I've kind of meaningless and arbitrary.

and then they also sometimes the ridiculous phrase, platter sure, as a hybrid of the two I'd love to get your take on that framing and how that doesn't or does apply. So one of the things that comes up over and over again, you see people say well if they moderate or if they change content they are, no longer a publisher. They are now a platform and therefore they lose section. Two thirty protection, the law It makes no distinction between platform and publish the law is not designed to protect what one or the other or say that there is a difference between it. There's no classification, it's not the safe harbor, where you have to meet. You know in sea criteria. In order to get the protections you just need to be an interactive computer service that hosts third party content, so the debate over are they. a publisher or are they a platform is,

we mean less under the law. Let's I should talk about some recent events, because I think it's a useful case and sort of understanding to thirty, and then we can break down some of the recent news. As well around that's a one, recent event is at twitter. It added a feature earlier this week where one of the president's tweets they added a link to other sites as a sort of quote fact check mechanism, and this could be contentious because a lot of people do not actually believe that everything the media rights is correct. That

Tad it linked to other third party new sites and it kind of labelled it as a fact check feature. Then they added a another thing where they kept a tweet from the President up in the context of the Minnesota George Floyd protests, but put like a limit on it. Where people could retweet with comment, but they couldn't retweet like or reply to it because it violated there sites terms of services, around speech that incites violence, and so in case one there were adding what they quote called a fact check layer and in case too, they were. Adhering to their own terms of service around spreading violent speech, which they said they kept up in the public interest. So that's a super super high level. Summary of what happened so far question for you now MIKE is how does and doesn't

section two thirty apply here, because in this case the fact check could be construed, commentary content, not just third party content, it's a really complex. topic and each layer of it adds new complexities and each of those. Like. Cities is in some way important. Let's do the to tweet separately, the first tweet they. I did something and just as a minor correction, and this has been going around a lot. People said this is the first time that twitter had used. This twitter has been using that feature over the last couple of months, but this is the first time they had done it on a politician. His tweet, and so what's amusing to me is time I saw it used before, which was about two weeks earlier. It was used to debunk a Jimmy Kimmel video that was making fun of MIKE Pence.

And twitter put on the thing that said this is manipulated media. It is not accurate. It was a tweet that had gone viral was making fun of something that pence had done and Twitter stepped in and said. No. This is incorrect, four manipulated media and it had a link to third party content, saying why it was manipulated and so that is allowed under two thirty. What it is doing is adding more speech. It is Looking to other sources, it is providing more context. The part that is not protected by two hundred and thirty was never protected by two hundred and thirty, and no change to two hundred and thirty is going to change. That is any speech that comes directly from twitter,

self. So in this case that was the very narrow line that was put under Trump's tweet. That says something like get more facts about mail in ballots or something to that effect. That particular line is from Twitter itself and therefore has not protected by two hundred and thirty, but is completely protected by the first amendment. The third party content that they link tooth It is then protected by two thirty and then the second tweet Twitter did something new which new this one I had not seen before, in which they put up a note. That said that this tweet violates the terms of service. However, they want to keep it up because they feel that it is relevant and important for people to be able to see the content, but to understand that it that the terms of service of service adding more adding and they limited the ability for people to reach. We did or reply

I to it and again this is one hundred percent allowed by two hundred and thirty. It did not remove the content that didn't take it down, even if Twitter chose to take it down or take down his speech or take down that tweet that wouldn't violate his free speech. Rights of the first amendment protects the government acting not from a company. I have also since seen twitter now use that tweet violates our terms of service, but we are leaving it up because it is news worthy, a message on at least one other tweet this morning from somebody who is defending the president. Let me ask you another question and then we can break down the executive order, which is what do you make since we are taking to debunk this platform. Publisher distinction that these companies, that provided interactive, web services are like phone companies like they always use this line that all, but imagine if the phone company decided to take down that poverty.

if you had an interrupted you in the middle, what do you make of that analogy? Yeah, so that is popular and wide variety of circles across the political spectrum that doesn't fallen to any sort of partisan viewpoint and sort of the public utility argument and that by the way have crusher muslim net neutrality, which we both covered quite right. There are some funny parallels between this situation in the new treaty and that a lot of people's positions are reversed from one to the other. We don't have the time to talk about net neutrality about I covered it extensively at wired. As you know, on from all different perspectives from carriers to see to internet companies, you name it. That is exactly what's fascinating to me that the position than the sides are embedded in this case, though anyway. What do you make of it one in common carrier type of argument yeah. So it's an important one to understand, but I don't think it applies, and I think that most people who are deeply familiar with public utilities and what is required to be declared a public utility would recognize

is that internet services were sometimes called edge providers, which are the services that you and I use every day that we interact with that they do not qualify and they do not meet the requirements of a typical traditional utility service, and to clarify what that means. Usually, a utility service is something that is offered to buddy but also is something that is commodified the telephone service. If you you whose eighty anti or sprint or sprint or Verizon. You are sing the exact same service. There is no real differentiation in terms of the service that you're getting. It is a commodity. One added to the other same thing. That is not the case with various internet edge providers. You know, Google Youtube Twitter, Facebook, each of them have all of these different features and all these different things. They are not one to one replaceable. It is not a commodity that you can switch out and therefore the public utility argument does not really apply. You can argue that there should be

some other kind of classification and some people argue that, but comparing them directly to a telephone service is different, because it's not court infrastructure, its things that are at the edge things they use. It as a service provided beyond that. What do you then make of this public square slashed public forum? Argue? and people say that twitter or Facebook shouldn't be allowed to do any moderation. They should be able to take down any content because it's the new public square and therefore it violates their rights. They will often point to two different our suits in making this argument. One is approved, yard and the others packing him in these two cases. Up and they have been brought up in a whole bunch of lawsuits and I'll just say that every time they been brought up in a lawsuit to argue that a social media site is the public square, they have failed. I have not seen a single judge anywhere agree that these things make any sense in this context, but just to give the quick background on the two cases and they go deeper. I'm going to give as high level levels I can and as quick as I can prune yard was a kid about a mall that was

and to kick people out effectively, and it was argued that the mall was a gathering place and became the sort of de facto public square and that took away some of the rights of the private property owner that owned the mall to kick people out and the court said that it was a de facto public square and they could not kick. People out Now it is an extraordinarily limited ruling and extraordinarily focused on the facts of that case, which was that this was effectively the only place in town that anyone could gather that the mall owner but acted as a local government and was therefore replacing government function. Functions that normally were done exclusively by the government. Every other case after that that references, prune yard, has effectively limited It only applies in a very a narrow situation, which is basically prune yard and prune yard alone. You can't just say that something is a public square, the packing ham case. is it more recent case was a Supreme court case that kicked out a state law that was basically If have had done some sort of criminal act,

the online part of their punishment could be that they are barred from using the internet and the Supreme Court said you cannot pass a law that kicks people off of the internet, because the internet is so essential to people's lives and ability to work and all kind of stuff. So people have taken that to me like. Oh, then, the services themselves cannot kick people off, but that is not what the cases said. It has just said that the government cannot pass a law that forces people offline. There is third case- that people never mention, but it's the most important case that was just decided last summer and is the Manhattan NEWS Network case- and this was a It's get into the details, but what the Supreme Court ruling just last year and it was written by Brett Cavanaugh, who is the most recent appointment and his room, said that you can't just declare any place where people can speak. Even if a lot of people speak there a public square and

it doesn't become a state action. It doesn't take on government control the idea that something is a public square or that there is state action involved from a private company, only applies in a very limited set of circumstances where that service or operation is again replacing activities that were exclusively traditionally done by the government, and that ruling makes it very clear that things that twitter and Facebook and two and every other websites out there do does not qualify. They are not real basing government they are not offering services that were traditionally only given by the government right is basically means that if the site that do perform services that are exclusive but service provided by the government, it would be an example like if the government decided that all tax reimbursed would be done entirely online and no longer through the U S postal Service and therefore that would then have to comply with being treated as a thing that would happy provisions right there.

Be an example of something that was traditionally an exclusively handled by the government and so It could see an argument where, like someone, could not be kicked off or blocked, because that would imply state action issues to now. Let's talk about the news again as a way to explain what cd eighty thirty is and isn't. We've explained and debunked some of the myths and framing around arguments of platforms and publishers, and analogies too far systems. So just talk, it briefly about the recent executive order that was issued this week, because this show's purpose is to tease apart. What's hype, what's real- and this is very rich in that very domain, let's talk about what the executive order can and can't do here or what it purports to you and doesn't right. So there were drafts of this kind of executive order that made the rounds of the last two years. This is something that the White House has kind of been thinking about. It a long number of other news sites reported on different swear leaked out to the press. All about these early

air versions of this executive order, and the story is that in the past they ve passed us around two different agencies, like the F c c in the empty sea and the message, at the White House got back was that this was unconstitutional and they couldn't do any of this, but it seemed They took it out of the drawer and dusted off and put a fresh coat of paint on it, and it says a lot of very angry stuff about the internet, services and platforms and the way they handle moderation. There's like seventy. sections and the two sort of scary issue. Parts of the executive order that are concerning is that to one extent it effectively asks the FCC with coming up with a new interpretation of two thirty, where it, hence very strongly what the FCC interpretation should be and that interpretation is totally at odds with both what is written in the law and what. twenty years of case law have set and that's why

some only to the extent that anyone would ever actually pay attention to that. Fcc interpretation, the ecstasy in Asia. You vs Reno, which is the lawsuit that rejected and made most of the communications decency act. Unconstitutional made it extremely clear that the FCC has no authority whatsoever to regulate websites non zero zilch, its lobby remain open question. They cannot and just to be very clear here- the Activity Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency. It has a fine member commission. I believe, there's currently three Republicans to Democrats and what it can do and can't do that comes up a lot of things you can do. This can't do this like a cannot make laws, but it does have the ability to sort of interpret existing laws and put out certain rule making things like they do. These, like request for comments which

public records of people's commentary and what not, and they also have the power to ask for documents and Big- can do distracting beings, but they may not have legal making. Authorities, I think, could be very helpful if you to break down, but more specifically here what they can get away with it I can't yeah, so they can do rulemaking, and that is a long involved process and, interestingly, because it is an independent agency, the president cannot instruct them to do something. So the executive order instructs the anti ay, which is part of the Commerce Department, to ask the F c c to do this and technically the emphasis he does not need to do this. But we have to see will certainly feel the pressure to probably do something they have since he could. Just certainly create a lot of nuisance. And yes, there will be comment periods and people will have to testify and put in comments, and you know, as we saw but the net neutrality hearing the comments, system was filled up with bots and nonsense, so they come.

thing and the world making process is a bit fraught with distraction, and so yes, it can make rulemaking. and then it can do something to enforce that rule making if the Making covers things that It is authorized that the FCC is authorized to have regulatory power. Over by Congress that are in its jurisdiction, so to speak? in its jurisdiction and websites, are not are clearly not Congress. Has ever? Never said that websites are within the empty jurisdiction and the main court case that tested the theory that websites were in the of jurisdiction has said No and one other thing that I do want to know about the executive order and the request to the FCC is that it is couched in a from the totally misinterprets cd to thirty, which is Thirdly earlier I talked about the two different parts of the city. That one is about liability on third party content and one is about the platforms protection in moderation, and there are a few there, a narrow conditions

that moderation ability. It says it has to be in good faith and is a list of different kinds of content that you can moderate. That includes otherwise objectionable content that otherwise have content is very, very broad, can cover basically whatever the. One thinks is otherwise objectionable and good faith in order to argue good faith would open up a other first amendment can of worms, but what the Instructions to the FCC indicate is that those limitations, the good faith otherwise objectionable stuff that somehow applies to the first part of CD, a two hundred and thirty, which is the part about not being responsible for third party content that has never case nobody's ever suggest, as is the case it is never shown up in any lawsuit, is never been argued in a legitimate way, and yet the

executive order suggested. The fc should look into whether or not that interpretation makes sense. So your basically saying that the two provisions of thirty eight, you thirty, that people are not liable for libel s, content that their users might put on their side or any other content they're using my put on their sites is being conflated in this case. put the good faith aspect of being able to discretion early moderate in good faith. Exactly they're sort of mixing those two things up and I would That is done in bad faith, to make use of the good faith. Limitation of so what other aspects of the executive order again without going into breaking down every little detail, because this is really more about the underlying principles, would you say, have impact for understanding and really interpreting and explaining what CD eight to thirty isn't isn't so an important part in this was added at the last minute, perhaps literally, because the draft that was leaked the night before did not have this, but the final executive order did have. It is that it instructs

the attorney general to draft a law, oddly a federal law, but to draft like a reference state law too, effectively reinterpret Cba, two hundred and thirty, in a way that diminishes its power, and that could be problem Here's, an aside that I probably should have brought up earlier, which is that two thirty is not- a universal immunity. It is not as universal as people make it out to be, and one thing that it does not cover is federal, criminal liability. So if you break a federal law, drug trafficking, human trafficking

All of that stuff. The sites are still liable to thirty, specifically exempts that so the Justice Department and the F B, I if they felt that any of these platforms were violating federal law, they have always always under two thirty, been able to go after those sites, and that includes third party content. There's a whole bunch of conditions on the So. If there is drug dealing human trafficking, those things going on on those sites. Those sites potentially could be criminally liable, so the attorney general and the Justice Department, the FBI, I have always had the leeway to make use of the law to go after these sites and yet for the last few. The attorney general has been attacking to thirty and acting as if it limited his power in some way when it simply does not, but now he can draft law and heat.

report, even during the week, so amazing about what you just said, though MIKE the part about the federal part actually immediately reminded me of encryption debate, which we actually have discussed on this very show. Sixteen minutes and listeners can listen to our. We framing of that debate, another place where policy It on both sides have very conflicted views on and there's already a bill. That's in Congress that was put together with the help of the attorney general and it sort of ties. The two thirty debate to the encryption debate and it's very common. It's an old, this is the earn it the earn it act and what it has the potential to do is to say that if you, who are offering end to end encryption on your service. You no longer get to thirty protections, it's a little more complicated than that, but his ability to do that In a manner that would remain, constitutional is a pretty big question, but again it could create a huge news and part of this- is also he's going to establish a working group, and so there will be.

Questions and round tables in panels and hearings and subpoenas and all sorts of things that are going to happen in the meantime that are designed to be an intimidation tactic to I am the phrase that everyone uses work the wraps right. It means basically hey Twitter, Facebook Youtube. If you don't want to keep causing trouble for you, maybe don't be mean to us. You know, don't fact check us, don't limit our tweets, don't limit our. and don't put extra notices on it or other limitations on it. Because the are you do that? The more of a pain we're going to be to you so summarize at a super high level, the SSC has extremely limited jurisdiction over websites, specifically the attorney general does have some ability. We haven't talked about what not in the executive order, but this is where there is a little bit of the dust or misery distracting, which is that Congress could choose to rewrite policy if they wanted

using this as an incitement for that year. There are people in both the House and Senate who have said that they will introduce legislation based on this and try and do more than the executive order can do whether or not at legislation, can actually go anywhere. Any such legislation would almost certainly be subject immediately to a first amendment challenge and would likely fail, but there would be many years into the future right that we forgot one bit of the executive order, which is probably the only legit thing in there, seemingly, which is that part of this had the threat of limiting any government dollars of advertising going to these sites, and I, by the way, did a little quick check and based on federal procurement records. This is according to the verge, apparently only two hundred thousand Twitter, specifically since two thousand and eight,

It can't be getting everything that seems way too low, but even still it does the just that the government advertising is actually very tiny piece of the bottom line. Revenues of these companies, but I'm here so you're take on that yeah. So that is one thing that an executive order actually can do right, which is and instruct certain federal agencies in terms of how their spending their money in some form or another, about way to be clear when you say their money were actually still talking about. Yes, yes, mostly taxpayers money, there, a few exceptions, but mostly taxpayer, and here's what we're talking about here and what's funny is the executive order, sort of implies? it is telling agencies to stop spending on these website, but it doesn't actually say that it's as they have to account for what they are spending and they have to submit it to the Office of Management and budget, and then thing may happen in the future. Based on that, and the implication is that they should not be spending. So there could be a tiny

tiny, tiny, minuscule drop in spending, and what silly, of course is that, if you look, I would bet that the very his political campaigns of everyone. Who is cheering this on our still spending much more money themselves, as campaigns on these social media platforms. In order to advertise no question on all sides, so the one Concern from a societal perspective is that the few federal agent is that do advertise on social media actually probably have pretty good reason for that one. Big example is the Census Bureau and it's twenty twenty and we're in the midst of supposedly collecting the census. I forgot about every ten years. We have to do a census and one of the best ways that the government is found to get out the word and to get people to actually fill out. Their census forms is through advertising in on social media and therefore pulling that jet and telling the census bureau that they cannot advertise actually could limit the ability

of the Census Bureau to collect the data that they are wired under the constitution to collect so MIKE. This is a wonderful summary. So far of what section two thirty of the communications decency ACT does and doesn't allow of the recent news what type what's real and sort of really using that explain, sort of these laws that have allowed our modern internet. I will be linking just in the show notes of people. Note a lot of the articles that did good explainers a lotta, your wonderful pieces in particular, as well as the actual executive order, and they now is this of the differences that Eric Boardman are mutual friend put up and did one question I do have for you. This is very much playing out against a broader backdrop of debates around big tech debates, around content, moderation, and so one question I have is given that the recent example did not necessarily remove or necessarily even fully restrict, except, maybe and spread and enjoy

meant and scale. There's been a lot of complains about things like shadow banning there's, also a lot of conflation between content and behaviors like what sites can do versus what they say and for me it seems like when it comes to this content, asian debate your damned? If you do in your damn, if you don't I'm curious for your thoughts on a where this fits in that longer brought her escape of that debate and then be. Is there a way forward in your mind, so I put a joke on Tecord a few months ago and I keep referring to it over and over again because of a famous economist, Kenneth Arrow. Had this thing called, the arrow impossibility theorem, which is looked at all different kinds of voting systems and argued that none of them can accurately reflect the will of the populace. And so I did a play on that which I called humbly the mass making possibility theorem if you are on the way back, I think it's been quite a number of years. I've known you, I don't even remember how long ago that was, but it was way back cause it might be-

Fifteen, don't have maybe fifteen almost like twelve years. I dunno. I love that you named it after yourself. I want about the magic and possibility, It is that it is impossible to do content, moderation, well a variety of reasons. For that, one being that any kind of on tat moderation is going to piss off some one, and that is generally the person whose content was moderated. The second element of it. To is that so if this is subjective decision making and everybody has a from view on these things, and everyone has a different determination on this, and we ran a sort of conference event. A few years ago, where we met everyone in the audience, have to be content moderators for a number of different case studies effectively and We had one hundred content, moderator experts in the audience and none of them agreed Ray case that we did. People had strong disagreements over what should have been done about this particular content, and then, on top of that, you just have the love large numbers and if you're

Making decisions on five hundred million pieces of content a day, and you get at nine nine point, ninety nine percent correct you're, still going to have a huge number of mistakes. I redefined mistakes. There are things that are going to be missed, there are things So they're going to be taken down, there probably should not have been taken down. That is going to happen. There's no way to avoid that and absolute numbers, because the overall set is so large. It's going to appear like these companies are incompetent and how they moderate content. That is just the reality of the process of moderating content and nothing is going to fix that Hiring more human moderators is not going to fix that bill better ai is not going to fix that you can improve on it, but one of them these things about section two, thirty and the way it is structured and that there is no liability for the moderation is

and it allows for different experimentation to happen. So you have very different approaches and everybody focuses on Twitter and Facebook and Youtube. But then you have to take into account tons of other sites, including computer wikipedia- is allowed to have all these individuals editing their platform because of two thirty or you look at another. Another site like Reddit right Reddit has set up all these different submarines when each of them have their own moderators that allow them to set up their own rules? That's allowed. That is possible because of section two thirty many of these changes could make those kinds of things impossible. It's funny, because the unexampled you listed you'd made sites that are very often used by students like Wikipedia for research, but also I just want to make a point on those that it up I stood vaccine sites and anti vaxxers sides. It applies all kinds of sites, and that variety is partly the point here as well, and I think that's really important under and let me underscore it even further CD d- a thirty protects every website online people say that

It's a gift to big tech and newspapers. Don't get this now newspapers gonna too, for their website Every website gets this, and that means you're. personal blog, it means when you retweet someone you get that protection as well all of these things and all of these, other sites and all these other services and everything that everyone is building, I mean lots of people listen to this, our building different internet services. All of those services are protected by two hundred and thirty, and this matter, a beyond just the big three or four companies out there so glad you brought that up MIKE, because the most and really only alarming line in the executive order to me was this quote for purposes of this order. The term online platform means any website or application that allows users to create and share content or engage in social networking or any general search engine, and that is quite literally every site, as is, is every every site of every size, and it makes me think of

the other law. It's not maginnis, love and possibilities. It is the law of unintended consequences, and this teams, true for regulation and I think of GDP, are and all his other regulations that all they really did in fact was hope, bigger companies, a very group there are trying not to and then all the smaller players who don't have huge compliance, arms and legal officers and many more people. They can hired a moderate and process queries and take on request, get which then further entrenches as a vicious loop essentially- and that should be very scary because part of the executive order itself starts out by claiming that the reason they have to do this executive order is because there are limited number of social media sites out there, and yet the deaf so that they have in the set up of what they're trying to do would effectively limit that even further by making it impossible for new competition to show up and for smaller sides to exist, and the more you put in place, these kinds of rules and regulations, the more difficult

make it for there to be any new start ups in the space, any new websites, because it becomes a costly mess for any smaller website to comply right, and while I completely agree with you that people alone or technology alone is not the answer, one thing I do want to point out about the way forward. Part of it is that this conflict, the ownership of who decides verses, also the size of the company that decide so, for instance, instead of having like a single seat, YO decide. This is my vision for this big company. Crypto is an often we cited case. My partner Chris Dixon has been an opt out and wired about this a couple. The go as the way forward for thinking about the governance of some of these sites and thinking of a crypto decentralized native way, so that as a community owned and operated service, which has his way of thinking about it and united about crypto many many times over the course of our friendship in years, and I think at the inaugural Cobia Policy Institute, I didn't get a whole section on crypto via a member and Ivan Cure

for your thoughts on that as well yeah. So last year I wrote a paper for the Knight First Amendment Center at Columbia University, which is called protocols, not platforms. I remember that I tell you about it like a vertically whore across hollows, and I myself do not love when people using area potter analogies, but my god that was so perfect for very large allies not of aircraft calls not planned. Yes, you know that paper discusses what the content moderation world looks like in a distributed these, July's system potentially based on crypto. The paper touches on not just crypto, but just more decentralized interoperable protocol based systems and changes. A number of the car

at moderation, questions it doesn't make them go away, and I do think that is one mistake that some people make, which is they think like. Well. If we just set it up on a crypto based distributed system, then we just wipe our hands. Is have it and it's everybody's individual decision and, however, it's implemented. Let that happen. It also doesn't leave room for the variety of governance, approaches that are inevitable in that as well, because for the record, just as you're arguing for a variety of experiments, whether it's a private leone. public one company centralized decentralized, whichever even in the crypto world, there's a variety of governance, approaches that can be applied, which is great and there's been a lot of experiments already playing out on that front when it comes to protocols and I think that's good is that experimentation that we need and that experimentation is not I'm just to like find the best result, but to recognize that there are different best results for different communities and different purposes and different services, and there are certain

This is where you want a week, pdf approach in their certain cases where you want to read it approach in their certain cases: Rwanda, twitter approach and whatever other approaches there are as well, and you can have all these different things and some of them work in some cases is the only way we are allowed to figure that out, as if we have the freedom to make those choices and see what happens. That's wonderful net to end, So in this show we ask our gas our experts to bottom line it for me, and while this has been longer than sixteen minutes, it's a special long episode bottom line it for me MIKE what they take away. So the rules of how the internet works are under attack. This executive order by itself is not going to effectively change. Anything directly is going to cause a lot of heat and light, but very little fire. But what we are seeing in this goes beyond just as executive order is that people are really try. To change the way moderation works online and already seen some laws. then, the? U S and certainly else,

outside the: U S, there been a bunch of laws that are directed that content moderation and that is going to Can you- and I worry, very strongly about what that does and whether that law? everyone into a specific type of content, moderation and what that means over the long term for freedom of speech on the internet. Thank you, so much region, This agreement, might they do for our remit