Moderated Content

Alex and Evelyn talk about what has been happening on social media, and the discourse about what has been happening on social media, in the run up to the 2024 US Election, how it compares to past US elections, and what to watch in the aftermath.

Alex and Evelyn sit down with New York Times technology reporters Ryan Mac and Kate Conger to talk about their new book on Elon Musk's acquisition (and destruction) of Twitter, Character Limit, and where they think Musk goes from here.

Alex and Evelyn repeat the now-annual tradition of recording the podcast in front of probably their entire active listener base. They are joined by David Thiel, Brian Fishman, and Daphne Keller, to say goodbye to Theirry Breton and RT's accounts on Meta, talk about Zuckerberg's retreat from politics, and all the developments in the land of the First Amendment and platform regulation.

Alex and Evelyn are joined by Carlos Affonso Souza, a Professor of Law at Rio de Janeiro State University and the Director of the Institute for Technology & Society in Rio de Janeiro, to talk about Brazil's ban of X, the local legal and political context, and how this is similar or different to other show downs between regulators and American tech platforms.

Alex and Evelyn discuss the arrest and charges against Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, in France, what we do and don't know, and what it means for the future of platform regulation, with Frédérick Douzet, Professor at the French Institute of Politics and the director of GEODE, and Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.

Alex and Evelyn talk about Trump's return to X and other platforms, Thierry Breton's attempt to make it all about him, the hack and leak of Trump's campaign, the FBI's new rules around communicating with platforms about foreign interference, Apple imposing its 30% commission on Patreon, and a small little sporting event that happened recently.

Evelyn sat down with Professor Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the Supreme Court's decision regarding the Texas and Florida social media laws. Not the worst opinion the Supreme Court issued on July 1, but predictably there's a lot to complain about anyway.

The Supreme Court's decision in Murthy v. Missouri is finally here! Evelyn sat down with Professor Genevieve Lakier, of the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the good, bad and ugly of the opinions.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: The attention grabbing 404 Media headline “ Has Facebook Stopped Trying? ” could be on to something. Alex discusses significant disinvestment in trust and safety at Facebook with lots of junk spreading (such as AI-generated Shrimp Jesus ) and a sextortion challenge. - Jason Koebler/ 404 Me...

Alex and Evelyn sit down with the authors of two recently released books about our online information ecosystem and what to do about it: Annalee Newitz, author of Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, and Renee DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: OpenAI published its first transparency report on covert influence operations using the company’s AI models finding the tools were used for existing campaigns by Russia, China, Iran and Israel with limited reach. - Ina Fried/ Axios , OpenAI  In very related news, Meta announced it removed...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: TikTok Tick-Tock A law requiring TikTok parent company ByteDance to divest or face a U.S. ban was passed and signed into law as part of a foreign aid and national security funding package. - Casey Newton/ Platformer , Rebecca Kern/ Politico , Mike Scarcella/ Reuters , John Perrino/ Tech Po...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by Stanford Internet Observatory’s Shelby Grossman to discuss SIO’s just-released report on the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Online Child Safety Ecosystem. Read the report here . SIO is also calling for presentation proposals for its annual Trust and Safety Research Conference. Proposals are due April 30. Details are here: https://io.stanford.e...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by University of Washington professor Kate Starbird to discuss research on election rumors. Kate Starbird is an associate professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering where she is also a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public. - University of Washington House Judiciary Committee Kate S...

SHOW NOTES Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: X this week had its lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate thrown out by a Californian district court. It’s a good and important win for free speech. - Emma Roth / The Verge A Kremlin-linked group was spreading divisive stories about Kate Middleton as online rumo...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek is joined by Professor Genevieve Lakier of the University of Chicago Law School to discuss the Supreme Court oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri .  For one of their previous conversations on this topic, listen to this episode from September last year talking about the 5th Circuit’s decision in the case. They also discuss Stanford’s amicus brief in the case, and the Stanfor...

Alex and Evelyn discuss the latest bill to ban TikTok and its many flaws; the Gemini image-generation public relations crisis; Apple's fight-picking in Europe; and Texas and Florida's latest great attempts to regulate online speech.

Alex and Evelyn are joined by Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller to talk about the oral argument in the NetChoice cases this week and what the Supreme Court justices seem to be thinking about whether and how states can regulate internet platforms.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Is the deepfake apocalypse finally here? Alex and Evelyn discuss the recent robocalls impersonating President Biden ahead of the New Hampshire primary and sexually explicit fake images of Taylor Swift that spread on X , resulting in the platform blocking searches for one of the most famous...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos talk to Riana Pfefferkorn and David Thiel of the Stanford Internet Observatory about the technical and legal challenges of addressing computer-generated child sexual abuse material. They mention:  Riana’s new paper on the topic, “Addressing Computer-Generated Child Sex Abuse Imagery: Legal Framework and Policy Implications” - Riana Pfefferkorn / Lawfare Davi...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos talk about the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Tech CEOs about “ Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis .” They mention:  The Stanford Internet Observatory’s work on Self-Generated CSAM - David Thiel, Renée DiResta and Alex Stamos / SIO The REPORT Act - Riana Pfefferkorn / Tech Policy Press Moderated Content is produced in partnersh...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by Casey Newton of Platformer and Hard Fork to talk about his decision to move his newsletter off of Substack.  Casey explains his decision here: Why Platformer is leaving Substack And talks about it on his podcast here: Why Casey Left Substack Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special...

  Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Stanford Internet Observatory’s David Thiel wrote a report documenting Child Sexual Abuse Material in a major dataset used to train AI models - David Thiel / SIO ; Samantha Cole / 404 Media Lots of DSA news from the EU: Three new platforms have been designated Very Large Online Platforms...

Alex and Evelyn discuss US military information operations, Threads testing ActivityPub integration, ridiculous statistics about TikTok, YouTube Magic Dust, the Meta Oversight Board moving with all deliberate speed, and First Amendment retaliation claims.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Elon Musk told advertisers to go f*** themselves in an interview with Jona–... sorry, Andrew Ross Sorkin of the NYT. Is this a good business strategy? - Kate Conger and Remy Tumin / The New York Times  Linda doing clean-up on Aisle Elon - Linda Yaccarino / X Meta is still algorithmically p...