Moderated Content

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: In one of the most surprising (and rapidly developing) tech stories of the year, Sam Altman was ousted as CEO of OpenAI. The reasons are still unclear, and the story still changing as we were recording. But at least partially the story is about AI safety, and what it means to pursue respon...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Alex participated in the fifth Senate AI Insight Forum focused on AI and its impact on elections and democracy. It turns out politicians can be reasonable and bipartisan when the cameras are off. - Oma Seddiq/ Bloomberg Law , Gabby Miller/ Tech Policy Press , Cristiano Lima/ The Washington...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence today. The sweeping EO includes standards setting for generative AI watermarking and red teaming. It will also set rules to mitigate privacy and bias risks before AI systems can be used b...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of venture capitalism firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Netscape web browser, wrote a lengthy blog post with an ode to technology. He also manages to declare trust and safety “the enemy” in the rambling screed of more than 5,000 words. - Dan Primack/ Axios ,...

Alex and Evelyn talk to Brian Fishman, the former Policy Director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations at Facebook/Meta, about the history of terrorism online, the challenges for platforms moderating terrorism, and the bad incentives created by misguided political pressure (looking at you, EU).

Alex and Evelyn discuss how the horrific events in Israel over the weekend make clear how important social media is during fast-moving historical events, and how X/Twitter has fundamentally degraded as a source of information. They also discuss China's ramped up crack down on app stores, and the Supreme Court's cert grant in the Netchoice cases, that could reshape the internet.

Alex and Evelyn record an episode in front of probably their entire active listener base. They talk about an update on SIO's investigations into child sexual abuse material on platforms; the fight for free speech in India; the poor outlook for election integrity at X in 2024, and what this might mean for other platforms; platform transparency mandates with Daphne Keller; and challenges to age veri...

Alex and Evelyn discuss reporting on a proposed deal between TikTok and the US government for it to continue to operate in the country, and the broader geopolitical context of US-China relations; how to think about search-term blocking; YouTube preventing Russell Brand from monetizing his videos on its platform; the Musk stories from the week that matter; and the enjoining of the California Age Ap...

Evelyn sits down with Genevieve Lakier, a Professor at University of Chicago Law School, to discuss the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Missouri v. Biden, narrowing but affirming a district court injunction prohibiting large parts of the federal government from communicating with platforms about content moderation.

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: OpenAI published a blog promoting how the company’s most powerful large language model, GPT-4, is being used to update platform policy and enforce content moderation rules faster and more consistently than human reviewers. - Priya Anand/ Bloomberg News , Reed Albergotti/ Semafor , Simon Hu...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: X-Twitter Corner Twitter followed through on its threat to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The rationale has changed from a violation of the Lanham Act, a federal trademark statute, to a breach of contract and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). It's s...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments. They’re joined this week by NYU’s Joshua Tucker and Stanford’s Jennifer Pan to discuss new studies released from an academic research partnership with Meta on the 2020 U.S. election. The X Files Elon Musk reinstated an account that posted child sexual abuse material just a few days earlier...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: ActivityPub Hub  A new Stanford Internet Observatory report by David Thiel and Renée DiResta found a significant issue with child abuse content in the largest decentralized social media communities that make up the Fediverse. They argue that current online safety tools must be adapted for...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Threads v. Twitter Instagram’s Twitter competitor Threads is the fastest downloaded app, boasting more than 100 million users within five days despite pretty basic features. - Jay Peters, Jon Porter/ The Verge Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Threads will be a place for sports and entertai...

On July 4, a district court issued an injunction prohibiting large swathes of the government from communicating with platforms about content moderation in almost any way. Evelyn sits down with Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, to talk about the opinion, the issue of government "jawboning" of platforms, and how the First Amendment has, should and shouldn't...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Twitter Corner Twitter continues to break its product, this time by limiting how many tweets people can see and requiring people to log in to view anything. Advertisers must be thrilled! - Aisha Counts/ Bloomberg News , Ashley Capoot/ CNBC , Ramishah Maruf/ CNN , Amanda Silberling/ TechCru...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: A new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory and Thorn, a nonprofit working to counter online child sexual exploitation, examines the problem of increasingly realistic images generated with freely available tools to create sexual abuse material. - Issie Lapowsky/ The New York Times...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Elon Musk’s drastic layoffs, cost saving, and price raising measures were an inspiration for him as some of the most active users of his site went on strike, taking some of the largest subreddit forums private in protest against the changes. - David Ingram/ NB...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos are joined by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) Research Manager Renée DiResta and Chief Technologist David Thiel to discuss a new report on a months-long investigation into the distribution of illicit sexual content by minors online. Large Networks of Minors Appear to be Selling Illicit Sexual Content Online The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) publish...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Stanford Internet Observatory research discovered serious failings with Twitter’s detection and removal systems for child abuse content. - Alexa Corse/ The Wall Street Journal , @stanfordio Twitter Corner In another welcome gift on Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first day, leaked documents...

Alex and Evelyn discuss the Supreme Court decisions in Gonzalez and Taamneh; Montana passing its state-wide TikTok ban and the immediate legal challenge filed against it; Meta's $1.3 billion dollar fine under the GDPR; OpenAI's charm offensive; and just another Monday at Twitter.

Play the sad trombone 5 times for this week's Twitter Corner: Musk censors political content at the behest of the Turkish Government in the final days of a close and historically important election; Linda Yaccarino is announced as the new CEO; Tucker Carlson announces he's going to stream his new show to Twitter; the platform announces not-so-encrypted messaging; and continues its ad hominem conte...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Pornhub and other pornography websites owned by MindGeek are blocking access for users in Utah with a video message protesting an age verification law that went into effect this past week. - Brian Fung/ CNN , Jonathan Edwards/ The Washington Post , Samantha Cole/ Vice News In completely un...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Twitter Corner As we predicted, Musk is complying with more government take-down orders than Twitter used to. - Russell Brandom/ Rest of World  Don't expect more reporting though, Twitter has stopped sharing takedown orders with Lumen, which is how this data was compiled. - @lumendatabase...

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments: Stanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn joins the show to discuss the latest developments in child safety policy on Capitol Hill.  The EARN IT Act and STOP CSAM Act were officially introduced with civil liberties and online privacy advocates raising concerns. - Joe...