atmosphere oh, but suddenly a group of people described by the crowd as anti socials. tried to disrupt the march, throwing glass bottles, stones and sticks. several were injured. oh, don't mind. you runing a beautiful day and much they have no right? it's unclear just who they were, but the incident seems to underscore that women in this country as in most of latin america still have a long way to go to achieve what they're fighting for. lucy and human al jazeera santiago. finally this bullet and the launch of the world 1st 3 d printed rocket has been called off. at the last minute. the rocket was attempting to break new ground and space exploration. but early in the launch process, teams at cape canaveral began trying to fix a problem with the temperature of the rockets, liquid oxygen and you launch date hasn't yet been announced. ah,

hello again. i'm elizabeth trotman, doha, but the top stories on al jazeera, the u. s. defend secretary has cut short a trip to israel because of protests of the government's plan. changes to the legal system. so at austin's visit will be limited to the grounds of ben gary, an effort demonstrate as have been protesting for more than 2 months against the planned articles, which aims to limit the judiciary powers. and mankind has moved from west jerusalem . this was a meeting of the was quote, quite crucial for prime minister benjamin netanyahu. he doesn't have a huge amount of invitations to sit with americans or president joe biden has like to extend an invitation to a prime minister benjamin netanyahu. so this would have been a very crucial meeting for him. yeah, she tweeted after the meeting saying today i met with you a secretary of defense, lloyd austin, our common goal is to prevent iran from obtaining weapons untoward iranian

aggressive. so fam, this meeting was about one single one, the young and it was all about iran, with no mention of the desolation of tensions the occupied westbank, the near nightly, raised by the is ready. all mean? nothing like that. the largest russians tribes on ukraine and weeks have killed at least 5 people. most of the deaths were in the western region of levine, are the targets include the capital key, the black sea port of odessa, and the 2nd largest city card cave legislators in georgia said withdrawn a controversial bill that critics had feared, would spartans the media and opponents thousands of people have been protesting against the proposed law and tbilisi. a taliban governor has been killed in a suicide bombing in northern afghanistan. it happened in mud that he should even the province of bulk is the 1st time a senior thought about official has been killed since the group took control of, of gunners thought 2021. 2 people have been convicted and indonesia for their role in the stadium. stampede that killed a $135.00 people, an investigation found the main cause was police firing tear gas into the stance.

those other headlines on al jazeera do stay with us. the stream is coming up next. thank you very much for watching. talk the law will the law with neither side, willing to negotiate is the ukraine war becoming a forever war? is america's global leadership, increasingly fragile? what will u. s. politics look like as we had to the presidential election of 2024. the quizzical look us politics, the bottom line. good with hello and welcome to the stream i met savage eat today. could a u. s. supreme court case break the internet? we'll look at cases that are challenging what's known as section $230.00. the shield law that protects social media and tech companies from being held accountable for harmful content posted online. the courts eventual rulings could

have a major impact on the future of content, moderation, and internet free speech. of course, we are always interested to hear what you have to say, just jump into our live you to chat, share your questions and comments and be part of the stream. ah, with us to discuss this is megan jojo, senior council, with the electronic privacy information center, also known as epic. and in san francisco, julie ohio executive director of internet south wants yay or internet without borders. and in oakland, california mclean, draughty of the electronic frontier foundation, he's an attorney and legal fellow that focuses on free speech litigation. ah, so many things to discuss here. a complicated topic for people who are not caught up. welcome to you all. i'm going to start with the basics. julie, what is section $230.00. thank you. no, that's a great pleasure to be here. well,

it's important to remember that basically regulation of content, moderation, by social media, because it's, that's what it's about is restricted in the united states by the 1st amendment. on the one hand and section $230.00, which we're talking about. the 1st amendment, limiting or preventing government for making laws to force interpretation of freedom of speech. but what does section to 30 says it says on the one hand to 30 c . one says on the one hand that platforms are not publishers, and therefore they're not liable for the speech on their platforms. and 2nd aspect of section 230 section 230 c 2, which is also referred, referred as a take down clause. and states that platforms can remove any material they deem objectionable for any reason. so we do see that that forms do have some freedom to decide what they want. i guess when we talk about section 230, i'm really interested in how it's kind of shape the modern internet, if you will, megan, it was supposed to incentivize tech companies if i'm not mistaken to,

to moderate their platforms. it's not what it's doing. that's exactly what it was meant to do, but almost immediately, courts miss brad, section $230.00 to immunize companies for any decisions they made about publishing, 3rd party content. so since saw so much of what internet company do can be categorized as publishing 3rd party content. section $230.00 has eliminated a lot of potential liability for tech companies. and as a result, it's incurred some pretty bad behaviors that disproportionately impact marginalized groups. so for instance, 2nd to 30 as a lab tech companies to ignore and even encourage harassment and abuse on their services. because companies claim that the harm comes entirely from 3rd party content. so like there are no, no, i just couldn't, sorry. i mean to,

there of it's, it's almost a bit confusing. i want to try to clarify this a bit. maybe mcclin's you can help us out and then we'll, we'll dig a little bit deeper. does section $230.00 give of freedom, freedom to platforms, to kind of decide what content would be deemed, you know, acceptable further spaces, their platforms and what content they would moderate with. with it, without government intervention, to be clear. section $230.00 was not meant to only incentivize platforms to take down content. it was meant to protect their content, moderation decisions in general. and some of the court cases that lead to section 230 involves people who are upset about what other internet users set about them on blogs and forums. they sued those platforms, and congress was worried that if people were able to sue because certain content was not taken down, not just what content was taken down. that platforms would not be able to evolve. and we would not have the flourishing internet that we have today. and there's no

denying that there's a lot of problems with content on these platforms. but it's not just what's left up . a lot of very good content, including in when we come, we're talking about the gonzalez case, which involves content related to terrorism. when platform start going after bad content, especially the big platforms that are using algorithms that are frankly not very well tune that are to do for millions of pieces of content every day. you start taking down content not just by terrorist, but about terrorists. not just terrorist propaganda, but from human rights organizations explaining what are the bad terrorist acts that have happened and what are be doing about it. those things get caught up and that also, you know, that on yesterday is not very ok. lot for a lot of. so so, so you're saying it's necessary to protect platforms. you also brought up the gonzalez versus google case. and for those who don't know, it's a very specific type of online interaction with huge implications, which we're going to talk about. and it's, it's basically a lawsuit that stems from and if slamming state, shooting in paris, that killed student. no, i me,

gonzalez in 2015 and her family is arguing that youtube had wrecked, recommended videos by terrorists and therefore violated laws against aiding and abetting terrorists. now, i want to get into all that before we do though. this video comment was shared with us by john berg mare, who's legal director for public knowledge. and it raises some interesting questions that lead us directly into the gonzalez versus google case. take a take a listen, didn't change the law and 1996 when congress passed section 230. section 2, there is responsible for a lot of the growth of the internet and quite a bit of what people really like about the internet. and it is in part responsible for what a lot of people don't like about the internet. and it's completely reasonable to think that the law should be changed to meet today's environment. however, the supreme court is really not the correct avenue for that effectively. the plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to rewrite the law and overturn decades of precedent in a way that i think would effectively overturn the law. and it would throughout the

baby with the bathwater. julie john says the supreme court is not the correct avenue for that. what do you make about that? that's an interesting kit take. it does highlight the fact that this, this, this case does raise issues or go way beyond recommender system that go way beyond just google and that really interrogate, can we hold companies liable for recommending terrace content? extremely fascinating question. in right now from our position, it would be difficult. first of all, it would require a very streets agreement on what terrorism means, because today we're talking about isis and in the likes. but we also know that they are very, there is an understanding of what terrorist organizations are and this is very visible. and another issue related to content moderation. because platforms do have a list of organizations that are forbidden and that are considered via that or terrorist. that's one thing. the other thing is, if we were to change in the manner that is asked from the supreme court,

if we were to change a current, we change it would basically ask those platforms to not only review the content that is available that radio available, but also to review the recommend or the recommendations themselves. and this would give another get another power to platforms not only to decide what the content is, but also to decide what you will be individually able to see. whereas, think the, the way should be entered and user can i, i think go ahead. i think julie's pointing out something really important, which is that the way we draw lines in the free speech context has massive ramifications. not just for the, the bad people that we're trying to target and the platforms who are making concerning decisions here about their content. and they did their criticism for that. but drawing lines on speech is something that we this country under the 1st amendment. as julie mentioned earlier, has always been very wary of. this is a new context when it comes to free speech, but it's not

a new issue. this is always been a question of. we have bad speech, we have people using their speech to do re, the terrible things to recruit people to terrible causes. but the solution is not to make that speech illegal. the solution is for users to have more freedom, to create their own platforms where they can exercise their 1st amendment right to say the kind of content we want this kind of content we don't want. the section to 30 is really just and training in law funded mental free speech principles that the 1st amendment are ready for tack. and the supreme court should not mess with those principles. and i don't know if this is what john in his comment was getting out. but congress yeah, not be amending and weakening stone to 30, so i'm going to go ahead. yeah. megan, i mean i know your organizations again, section 230. what do you make of americans argument there? well, where we are more for returning section 230 to its original, very narrow purpose. but, you know, one of the things that really struck me about the oral argument in gonzales was how

the justice seemed to think that their job was to engage in this policy making and making these like very nuanced decisions about what kind of liability there should be for algorithms and such, and 1st of all, that has very little to do with section 230 that has to do with the underlying liability statute which entirely agree with everything that the others have been saying about liability for terrorists or terriers related speech. but it doesn't mean that we need an overall section to 30 of means. we need to limit these laws are knocked down the laws that interfere with speech. and what the court should be doing instead is to what the courts are meant to do, which is interpret what's the statute says so much so last week had to do with that. okay, and so interesting. if i could just go ahead, go ahead and give an example. on this front. a few years ago, congress passed

a law the foster that week in section $230.00 for content that congress thought would be related to sex trafficking. that seems like a reasonable goal, right? we do want sex traffic, terrible men pick them that ruins people's lives. so we want to limit sex traffickers ability to use social media. but what ended up happening because of this broad big law that congress passed weakening platform in protections for content related to sexuality. what ended up happening is resources for sex workers, resources for victims of sex traffickers got taken down, sex workers who voluntarily wanted to use these platforms as a way to connect with their customers. because it's safer than standing on a street corner. they got kicked off of many forms, platform, sort of adopting broad policies. limiting all 3 of sexual content has nothing to do with trafficking. so the point is that again, like the reason that congress passed, section $230.00 is that it realize there is going to be bad content and there's

going to be good content. and part of free speech is platforms and users getting to decide for themselves. how are we going to draw a line between what we're going to leave up and what we're going to take down? that's not for the government, and that's not for plaintiffs bringing lawsuits. that's not for the court to decide . it's for us to decide. it's well. so that makes sense to me, i want to take a moment here. i want to get bringing some youtube chat. basically what's happening in our youtube chat live we have in here. and thing private companies limit free speech all the time. this is about the government limiting free speech. then we have anything. section 230 has allowed companies to ignore abuse and harassment on their sir services. i see megan, you nodding from the periphery here in my eye. and because of that, i kinda want to take, take a moment and let's listen to matt shewer's. matt is the president of the computer and communications industry association. and he's talking about what might happen from the perspective of tech companies. it's section 230 where to change if we,

if we ratchet up liability rules, you get 2 potential results. one is that services over moderate over filter, i over sanitize their content in and to ensure that need and there's no potential risk of liability. and the other is that they throw up their hands and abdicate responsibility. we want companies to moderate to take action against content that violates their terms, that makes their communities less safe. but they're not going to get every single call, right. and if courts penalize companies that miss needles and haystacks, that sends a signal don't look at all. and that turns the internet into a cesspool of dangerous content. i mean, mcclendon, isn't it already broken? i mean, it confusing to me. i mean, the internet service,

certainly themes that are a lot of, there are a lot of problems with the internet and there is no getting around that. but the problem is not section 230. look, i am no fan, i am no friend of the big tech companies. they have a lot of problems and they're doing a lot of things wrong. a lot of which we should criticize them for. to be clear, i'm not saying that there is no legal path or nothing the government can do. i'd appreciate the nuance and i know that it's i know that it's not, you know, black and white. so yeah, give an example like if we're concerned about the power of these big tech companies, there are other laws to do something about that. and when tech, when a company to do something bad, what normally happens is consumers go to another company. that's how a free market is supposed to work, but that's not how it's working online. and that's because these companies have become so big and powerful. that's what any trust laws are for. it's part of the reason they're so big and powerful is they have all of our data, so they're able to use their algorithms to learn and so on. that's what consumer privacy laws are. so, so, so there are other laws yeah, accountable without regulating. yeah. and julie,

i know you want to jump in. i mean, obviously we all can agree, something needs to be done about this, specifically about harmful content online. but julie, i would imagine you don't think a big tax should be getting a pass as they have. no, no, they shouldn't. and i think one thing that this case is highlighting perfectly, it's the need for transparency on how our rhythms work. because right now we are, we're making assumptions. a lot of assumptions that has been researched by most of them external. so that case would make a strong incentive to shed more transparency and oversight of algorithmic moderation and recommender systems. now, when it comes to how to deal with that, how to deal with big tech. well, certainly the way is not going to be government having to tell us what should be online or what shouldn't. that's extremely dangerous. we all know it historically. yet that doesn't mean companies get away. but at the same time, we have to recognize the limitations he, we are talking about section to 30 for web $2.00 platform. so that the facebook and

instagram and the google's youtube, sorry. and the likes. but we are on the, on the, on the brink of changing out that we're already talking about immersive technologies . and i'm thinking, of course, here about metaphors. we're also talking about the centralized platform. how do you do, how do you do moderation? how do you moderate recommender systems if any, is there any on decentralized back on these are extremely important questions, right? be dealt with narrow angle. it doesn't allow us to have this big come. so megan, i know you want to jump in and before you do, i want to share with our audience on twitter. i think this is a, yeah, this is your, your organization. treating this out. i was ripping my hair out, especially at the beginning of the oral arguments. this is what people from your organization is that about what the job just says, god, and didn't get about algorithmic harm. now, i think, you know what that underlines for me is that i don't presume to understand bow girl rhythms, and i'm trying to poke fun. it's brute supreme court's knowledge,

per se. but i do have to say, no, you know, algorithms are not so simple and it's not as if in this case the tech company is kind of also telling us through the algorithm what we want to see, it's not like we're only looking for things right. is that fair way of putting it? right? it's the, it's not that you're finding the content. the content is finding you. the tech companies targeting algorithms don't just show people what they want see, based on their own inputs. tech companies collect massive amounts of data on users, like you know, how they interact with the company's website and their location, and then they make inferences about their users. and then they recommend content based on those inferences. so what you see is like what the tech company thinks is most likely to keep you on a sir. so i can search more ad generates more revenue for that, right? and like the effect of the algorithm can be, you know, either they think, you know,

a stream ok. the video is will keep you engage. yeah. thought, you know, also a stream of extreme content might keep some people and get to be fair. yeah. i know most certainly, and it's going to go ahead i, i agree. i agree with megan on that. i, i don't like the, the framing that the tech companies are just trying to send us content that we want . i think that often giving them being a little bit the truth is a little more profit oriented for one. i mean they, they are, as megan said, trying to sell us as they're trying to keep us on their platforms. we're, we're a captive audience. and so it's not, they're not doing this out of the benevolence of their heart, but we do need to make sure there is speech protection for the many other smaller platforms that are trying to serve the public that are, you know, sometimes groups of people who get together they want to create a website or a form or a blog, and section 230 protect those people also, and they need to have breathing room. because, and the google's lawyer acknowledge this at the supreme court. fair enough,

if the supreme court weakens to 30 go might say alive, it has lawyer, great law firms, people working for that he can fight lawsuits with sure. it's the smaller platforms that are going to get hit. and so, you know, again, i agree with megan's concern about the way these companies are collecting the data the way they're designing these algorithms are thin. and again, the solution is not to attack the algorithm recommendation that this is a publishing act. that's an act of speech. we should go after the way they are collecting this data. because privacy is also important right in one that we should talk about more. it isn't, it is, and we're going to try to get all this in, in the last few minutes of this important conversation. so if you just bear with me, i want to share with you a clip from february 21st. this is when the supreme court held oral arguments on the should take a listen. i can imagine the world where you write that none of this stuff gets protection. and you know, every other industry has to internalize the costs of his conduct. why is it that

the tech industry gets to pass a little bit unclear? on the other hand, i mean, we're at court, we really don't know about these things. it with, you know, these are not like the 9 greatest experts on the internet. oh, there is no word called recommendation on youtube website. it is videos that are posted by 3rd parties that is solely information provided by another. you could say any posting is a recommendation. any time anyone publishes something you could be said, it's a recommendation. whether the videos just don't appear out of thin air, they appear pursuant to the algorithms of that your clients have. and those algorithms must be targeted to something. and they're tar that targeting, i think is fairly called recommendation. and that is google's i guess. oh you watching mad or hearing that i should say, megan, i'm wondering. i mean, so many questions come to mind, right? like what role do algorithms play in promoting extreme as content specifically or,

or causing real world harm? but then if we go back to the prophet question, i mean, many people seem to think that algorithms are somehow inherently more neutral than human beings, right? that human beings might have bias, but an algorithms design not to. is that true? i mean, i think your statement mclelland about and is just my personal opinion, just having covered tech companies and these designed aren't. these apps aren't designed for free expression or all the lofty wording that the, you know, the companies put out there. i think they're designed for profit and why is that such an important part of this debate? megan and when we look to the next steps, like what are the solutions in your mind make it. so that's exactly correct that the algorithms are designed for particular purpose and they are to make a profit for the company and that they're designed by people and people have biases . they have objectives as they both these wind up in the algorithms. so yeah, it's

a base misconception that algorithms are neutral and anyway, there's no such thing as a neutral agro algorithm. so and the thing is that, i'm sorry, please. no, no, no, i'm so sorry. it's just, i want to try to get it done actually because i interrupted if i, if i may, i want to get in the privacy law aspect of this. so to do that, i want to share with you a video common that was sent to us by caitlin vogue. then we'll come back to mac and take a listen. section 230 also encourages services to voluntarily moderate content like hate speech and dis information by ensuring that those who moderate are not at greater risk of liability than those who don't. but section 2, thirties, liability shield is not absolute, and it doesn't apply to claims that have nothing to do with 3rd party speech like those based on competition or privacy law. comprehensive federal privacy legislation could address some of the harms that are caused by providers, collection of users, personal data, and the algorithmic recommendation of content like that. it issue and gonzales. so

one could how could anti trust and privacy law actually address the content moderation problem? what do you make? what caitlin? i'd say there. i think caitlin is very on point here and i, this is really important because when we talk about things like bias and profit, those are, those can be bad incentives, but they do not eliminate protection for speech. the near time is biased, it's pretty clear from it that authorial, it also makes profit that's, it's a company. it's also very clearly it has free speech rights about what it says and how it does it, how it appeals to readers and so on. and caitlin's, right, that rather than going after and people have been concerned about the dominance of traditional media for a very long time. but the government has never been allowed to go after their speech, right. so if we are worried that google has this huge platform where everyone's going and it's hard for people to leave, because if it's algorithms, let's look at whether it's violated anti trust laws. if the reasons that it's algorithms are so effective and are recommending bad content that people are luring

people in. and frankly, it's hard to leave social media, the addictive. and part of the reason for that is they have designed these algorithms so effectively based on all of the data they've collected on us. right? so then let's do something with the incense with the objective of earning money. ok, well we have the last word. i'm going to come to you julie, go ahead and we can we, can we briefly discuss this? yes, this has been done in the european union where the digital services act right now prevents platforms for targeting minors for instance. but beyond, when we talk about section 230, we should think about the broader context as well. any decision that will be made will have in, in incredible importance. international impact given the interconnectedness of the states, that the space that we're talking about. we could end up in a space where, what is allowed in the united states become totally forbid it in other countries. how do we reconcile it as an internet community? how to platforms? very sadly, that's their problem. but really, the question is, how do we continue to make sure that the internet social media spaces allow for

speech including speech that we disagree with, and including understand the world and people today. all right, well, you know, i have so many more questions for you. 3, a, but i wanna thank you 1st and foremost for joining us on this show. that's all the time we have for today. thanks for wad saying thanks for joining us and see you next. ah ah a

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