us yeah, and to mo, gun victims in fort worth, texas right now. we know that 2 persons have so come to their injuries and have passed away from being shot at this point. republicans in congress continue to resist calls to pos meaningful gun legislation, including a ban on assault weapons. this in the face of statistics showing more than 340 met shootings have taken place in the us. this year alone cannot alter 0 washington. or despite the violence in the us, millions of americans have been enjoying independence day. it was a full day holiday weekend, comes to an end fireworks with the style over the capital in washington, dc. with some of the scenes from coast to coast. it was on july, 4th, and 1776. when great britain's 13 economy is in north north america because their independence and established the united states for me, the

corporate could check the headlines here. this is where the forces of now complete withdrawal and from the janine refugee camp convoys with thing leaving 2 days off to the launch of the biggest a sold in the occupied westbank in decades. 13 palestinians and one is ready. soldiers were killed. meanwhile, israel's military has targeted sites and the gaza strip off to a barrage of rockets was fired into southern his route to save the island. on 2, miss ellen system intercepted the rockets. some odd one has moved from the gallons a strip. the civil air dislikes a bite is right withheld in the northern side of the gauls trip in a city the city of bit lot here as well as the southern side of the city of causal, but as reported by the administrative health, no casualties. when he pointed it's, it's where the to know that as since no casualties would have forwarded an assassination is, is taking place. and by these re, administration is where it is not costing these rape lines which could result in

more escalation in goals on. meanwhile, thousands of people have gathered in humans capital sent out to express their support for palestinians in jeanine. some brand is really an american flags. i know the and tennessee, the palestinian man carried out a car running on stumping attack. at least 8 people were injured. 3, i would a serious condition, suspect was killed by a pacified. there's been heavy fighting in that around the sydney's capital caught soon, the armies launched as spikes in the neighboring city of i'm doing them on the palm and a treat rapids. the 4th 4th, it says get down an army fight to just ukraine says dozens of people have been injured in russian and selling in the hockey region. 12 children who heard officials say if you have time to hit a ministry funeral, a nato was extending the time of 2nd to general young stilton. for another yes, he's been in the job since 2014. the alliance was due to name a successor, but could not reach consensus. well that was what the headlines and he's continues

here and i'll just be around after the stream state you. thanks for watching. that's off the frank assessments. quite frankly. let's address the elephant in the room. the reason the south koreans want their own nuclear to tyrese's because they don't trust the us informed opinions. fighting has basically lock this thing up so far that it is impossible virtually for somebody else 7 to the race at this point in depth analysis of the case headlines. so then case by the end of the states that there is no strong government to control and which means that this might face other countries inside story on al jazeera, the hello, and welcome to the stream. i'm at 17. today could a us supreme court case break, the internet will look at cases that are challenging what's known as section $230.00, the shield law that protects the social media and tech companies from being held

accountable for harmful content posted online. the courts eventually rulings could have a major impact on the future of content in moderation and internet 3 speech. of course, we are always interested to hear what you have to say, just jump into our live youtube. chad, share your questions and comments and be part of the street. with us to discuss this is megan your yo. senior council, with the electronic privacy information center, also known as epic. and in san francisco, julie arono, executive director of internet, south 24 internet without borders. and in oakland, california, my phone dropped to you of the electronic frontier foundation. he's an attorney and legal fellow that focuses on free speech litigation. 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 a cabinet. that's

a great pleasure to be here. well, it's important to remember that uh, 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 preventing government from making laws to force the interpretation of freedom of speech. but what does section to 30 says it says on the one hand uh, 230 see one says on the one hand that platforms are not publishers. mm hm. 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 apply phones can we move any material they deem objectionable for any reason? so we do see that, that sums do have some right for you to, to decide why they want. and i, i guess when we talk about section 230 i'm, i'm really interested in how it's kind of shape the modern internet,

if you will make it. and it was supposed to incentivize tech companies, if i'm not mistaken to, to moderate their platforms. it's not what it's doing to do. that's exactly what it was meant to do. but almost immediately, courts misread section $230.00 to immunize companies for any decisions they made about publishing, 3rd party content. so since so much of what internet companies do can be categorized as publishing 3rd party contact. section $230.00 has eliminated a lot of potential liability for tech companies. and as a result, it's encouraged some pretty bad behaviors that disproportionately impact marginalized groups. so for instance, 2nd do 30 is a lot of tech companies to ignore me and even encourage harassment on abuse on their services. because companies claim that the harm comes entirely from 3rd party content. so like say our gosh, no, no,

i was just getting it. sorry. i didn't meet you through it, but it's it's, it's almost a bit confusing. i want to try to clarify this a bit. maybe more couldn't you can help us out. and then what was the big a little bit deeper. does section $230.00 give free the freedom to platforms, to kind of decide what content would be deemed um, you know, acceptable for their, their spaces, their platforms and what content they would moderate with with it without government intervention. so 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 suit those platforms in congress was worried that if people were able to see you because certain content was not taken down, not just what content was taken down, the 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 because a lot of very good content, including in when we come, we're talking about the gonzales case, which involves content related to terrorism. when platforms start going after bad content, especially the big platforms that are using algorithms that are frankly not very well seen because it's hard to do for millions of pieces of content every day. you start taking down content, not just by terrorist, but about terrorist, not just terrorist propaganda, but from human rights organizations explaining what are the bad terrorist acts that have happened and what are we doing about it? those things get caught up and then that also been a, you know, on that on catching. yeah. already is now 3. okay. i platform 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, with huge implications which we're going to talk about. and it's, it's a basically a lawsuit that stems from an assignment state shooting in pair as the killed

student. no, i me, gonzalez in 2015 and her family is arguing that youtube heddrick recommended videos by terrorist and therefore violated laws against aiding and abetting terrace. now, i want to get into all that before we do though, this video comment was shared with us by john berg mirror, who's legal director for public knowledge. and it raises some interesting questions that will lead us directly into the gonzalez versus google case. take, take a listen. i didn't change the lot since 1996 when congress passed section 230 section 2 thirds responsible for a lot of the growth of the internet. and quite a bit of what people really liked about the internet. and it isn't 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, especially the plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to rewrite the law and overturn decades of president in a way that i think would effectively overturn the law and with the route 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 case is take, it does highlight the fact that this, this, this case does raise issues that go way beyond recommender system that go way beyond just google and that really interrogate, can we hold companies liable for recommending terrace content? that extremely fascinating question in it right now from our position. it would be difficult. first of all, it would require a very strict agreement on what terrorism means. because today we're talking about prices and in the likes. but we also know that they are varies, varies understandings of what terry's organizations are. and this is very visible. i mean other issue related to content moderation, because platforms do have list of organizations that are forbidden and that are considered environment or target. that's one thing. the other thing is, if we were to change in the manner that is asked from the supreme court,

if you were to change occurrence, we change it would basically ask those platforms to not only review the content that is available that's already available, but also to review the recommend or the recommendations themselves, and this would give another, yet another a power to platforms not only to decide what the content is, but also to decide what you will be individually able to see. whereas out. yeah, i think the, the way she think it's like you're in the center. and since you're there, can i, i think go ahead. i think julie is 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 were trying to target. and the platforms were 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 has always been a question of, we have bad speech, we have people using their speech to do, read the terrible things to recruit people, the terrible causes. but the solution is not to make that speech legal. the solution is for users to have more freedom to create their own platforms where they can exercise their 1st amendment right, to say this kind of content, we want this kind of content. we don't want to section 230 is really just in training in law fundamental free speech principles that the 1st amendment already protects. 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 throw some kind of go ahead. yeah. megan, i mean i know your organizations again section 230. what do you make of mcclin's? argument there as well where we're more for returning section 230 to its original, very narrow purpose at. but, you know, one of the things that really struck me about the oral argument in gonzalez was how

the, just as a seem to think that their job was to engage in this policy making and making these like uh, 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 terrorist or tourist related speech. but it doesn't mean that we need an overall section 230. it means we need to limit these laws or knock down these 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 the shattered says so much. so a lot last week i had to do with that. okay, and it's so interesting document. if i could just please look and go ahead,

go ahead. we can go ahead. i can give an example on this front. a few years ago, congress passed a law. that's the foster that week. and 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 is terrible, and has many victims that ruins people's lives. so we want to limit sex traffic or is ability to use social media. but what ended up happening because of this broad big law that congress passed weakening, platform 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 pot forms, platforms started adopting broad policies, limiting all sorts of sexual content that had nothing to do with tech trafficking. so the point is that again, like the,

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 cod. mm hm. 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 plaintive springing lawsuits. that's not for the course to decide it's for us to decide. it's well so that, that makes sense to me. i want to take a moment here. i wanna get bringing some youtube, a chat, basically what's happening in our youtube chat live we have in here in thing, private companies limit 3 speeds all the time. this is about the government limiting freeze speeds. then we have anything. section 230 has allowed companies to ignore abuse and harassment on their sir uh, services. i see megan uniting from the periphery here in my high. and because of that, i kind of want to take a take a moment and let's listen to match sewers. 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 $230.00 where to change if we, if we ratchet up liability was you get to potential results. one, is it services over moderate over filter, over sanitize their content and to ensure that, you know, there's no potential risk of liability. and the other is that they threw up their hands and advocate 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 dangers content to. i mean, i mean i couldnt isn't it already broken? i mean, it seems a bit confusing to me. i mean,

the internet certainly certainly seems that we are, 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 it to be clear. i'm not saying that there is no legal path or nothing the government can do no i, i appreciate the nuance and i know that it's, i know that it's not, you know, black and white. so yeah, let's 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. okay? when tech, when companies 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. 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 tourist in and, and so on. that's what consumer privacy laws are. so, so, so there are other written laws as well. yeah. and accountable without regulating.

yeah. and, and julie, i know you want to jump in. i mean, obviously we all can agree, something needs to be done about this, you know, specifically about harmful content online. but julie, i would imagine you don't think the big tech 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 i'm reading this work. because right now we are, we're making assumptions, a lot of assumptions that has been research uh, but most of them external. so that case would make a strong incentive to rat shed more transparency and oversight of algorithmic moderation and recommend, or systems. now, when it comes to how to deal with that, how to deal with the tech? well, certainly the way is not going to be governments 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 to get away, but at the same time we have to recognize a rec limitations. here we are talking about section 230 for web 2 point oh

platform. so the, 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, but 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 spectrum? these are extremely important questions right. and dealt with. yeah. and with this narrow angle, it doesn't allow us to have this bigger company. 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, uh, yeah, this is your, your organization treating this out. i was ripping my hair out, especially at the beginning of the oral arguments, and it says, 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 the algorithms

and i'm not trying to poke fun. it's bruce supreme court's knowledge, per se. but i do have to say, 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 your finding the content. the content is finding you. the tech companies targeting algorithms don't just show people what they want to 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 certain is so they can certainly more add, generates more revenue for that, right. and like, be effective that algorithm can be, you know, either facing, you know,

a stream of cat videos won't keep you engaged. yeah. but, you know, also a stream of extreme is content might keep some people and get to be fair. yeah. know most certainly, and it's you know, and i'll go ahead go ahead. i couldn't say it's probably 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's uh awesome, giving them this being a little bit the, 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 protections for the many other smaller platforms that are trying to serve the public that are, you know, sometimes groups of people just get together they want to create a website or for them, or a blog, and section 230 protect those people also, and they need to have reading room. because and the google's lawyer acknowledge

this, of the supreme court. fair enough if the supreme court weakens to 30. yeah, go might say alive, it has lawyers, it have a great lot of people working for that. they can fight last seats with sure it's the smaller platforms that are going to get hit. and so you know, again, i agree with megan is concerned about the way these companies are collecting the data the way they're designing these algorithms there for us in and again, the solution is not to attack the algorithm. the recommendation that there is a publishing act that's an active speech we should go after the way they are collecting this data. because privacy is also an important right. and one that i want to talk about more it is and it isn't. 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 issue. take a listen. i can imagine the world where you are right, that none of this stuff gets production. and, you know, every other industry has to internalize the costs of his conduct. why is it that

the tech industry gets a pass a little bit unclear? on the other hand, i mean, we're a court, we really don't know about these things that we, you know, these are not like the 9 greatest experts on the internet. there is no word called recommendation on youtube. the website. it is videos that are posted by 3rd parties that is solely information provided by another. you can say any posting is a recommendation. any time anyone publishes something you can be said is a recommendation, whether the videos just don't appear out of thin air. they appear pursuant to the algorithms that your clients have and those algorithms must be targeted to something. and they're taught that targeting, i think it's fairly called a recommendation, and that is google's i guess, watching that 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 is 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 in algorithms design not to is that true? i mean, i think your statement mcluhan about and is just my personal opinion, just having covered tech companies and it's designed aren't. these apps aren't designed for free expression or all the loft, the 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, and when we look to the next steps, like what are the solutions in your mind make it. and so that's exactly correct that the algorithms are designed for a particular purpose, and they are to make a profit from the company and that they're designed. 5 people and people have biases. they have objectives as a boost. these wind up in the algorithms. so yeah, it's

a visual misconception that algorithms are neutral in any way. there's no such thing as a neutral arrow algorithm. so the thing is that, i'm sorry, please. no, no, no, i'm so sorry. it's just, i want to try to get into the, i'm actually because i interrupted if i, if i may, i want to get in the privacy law aspect of this. so it to do that. i want to share with you a video comment that was sent to us by caitlin vogue and we'll come back to more come take a listen. section 230 also encourages services to voluntarily moderate content like hate speech and does information by ensuring that those who moderate are not at create a risk of liability. then 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 issue and gonzales. so what

kind of, how could anti trust and privacy locks the address, the content moderation problem? what do you make of what kaitlin had said there? i think caitlin is, is very on point here and i add 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 new year times is bias. it's pretty clear from it that a tauriel. it also makes profit that's, it's a company. mm hm. and it's also very clearly, it has free speech rights about what it says and how it says 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 rights. so if we're worried that google has this huge platform where everyone's going and it's hard for people to leave because of its 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 content that people are lowering

people in and frankly, it's hard to leave the social media subjective. 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 about the with the incent, with the objective of earning money. okay, well we have the last word, i'm going to come to julie, go ahead. can 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 or targeting minors for instance. but beyond that, when we talk about spectrum to 30, we should think about the broader context as well. any decision that will be made will have in a incredible import in 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 becomes totally forbidden in other countries. how do we reconcile these as an internet community, how the platforms, reco savvy? that's a problem. but really, the question is, how do we continue to make sure that the internet social media space is allow for

speech including speech that we disagree with, and including sticks that help us understand the world and have a today? all right, well, you know, i, i have so many more questions for you 3 a, but i want to thank you 1st and foremost for joining us on this show. that's all the time we have for today. thanks for watching. thanks for joining us and see you next the the basically allergies. does the wind fits the purpose was like many critics sites

just pump salise and doesn't get anywhere near enough done to the amount of money that is poured into its hard hitting intravenous. do you think look to the lines of washington enough for money to go on its own and build its on thoughts providing on for centuries, people have been taken care of are. so i have every confidence that future generations will do it as well via the story on told to how does era the sub antarctic region of chilly is the southern most part of the america's before and target itself. it's one of the very few on touched areas onto this scientist here are studying climate change and global warming. this is kind of a, you'd esick bark that has survived the impact of more that and maybe so to, to offer. so that was this kind of not the level that bodies on this enormous peat bog climate change expert frederick colossal has installed sophisticated instruments that measure how wind temperature, ultraviolet lights impact it,

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was fine from the own place. president biden call to action up to a number of my.