none, this is getting used to life without running water in a 5th floor have under apartments. so you know, has to fill up puts bucket and even have a washing machine with drinking water. in the future, you have people in this building has spend the last 2 weeks caring will to up the stairs because the water pump on the out of a tubs broken. we've informed the authorities, we keep complaining. we don't know what else to do. that on his residents used to ongoing. what's the problem is the situation is now critical. the city's water system has not been operated since the 19 twenty's and leaking pipes mean around 50 percent of the water supply is lost with crippling us sanctions on an economy that hasn't recovered from the fund demik. the cuban government doesn't have enough money to maintain its infrastructure. dozens of people rely on these websites for the now in the field up once every few days. many residents are resorting to desperate dimensions. we're open to my hold wednesdays. what to to feed up. we do want you to know there any way we've always pushing anything to the cuban

government says that more than a 100000 people in the capital living without running water, we must do everything. we can even the impossible. so the people get water and monitor who's the most effective so that water gets to them. and we can figure this out by being outside in the street. for people living in this state, delta health can't come soon enough. as they might, i won't, they must say, you know, yeah, well, there's no water in havana. we're going through a difficult situation. we may have skin diseases soon because we've gone through so many days without water. did you sell it today? okay. did you show it yesterday? i normally would you? i didn't shower yesterday. there's no water. it's hard to sleep night. yeah. well, well, the blazing stomach continues. people treasure, what's in this water? they have had augustin alger 0. have on the

this is al jazeera and these are the headlines this our up to 2 days of assault on jeanine and the occupied west bank is rouse, military has declared into as operations in the city. at least 12 palestinians have been killed and more than 100 injured. hundreds of soldiers jump drive and strikes, anom and boulders, as we used in the assaults, causing wives for destruction in and around. jennings refugee camps. meanwhile, is rouse military as talkative sites in the gaza. strip after a by roger rockets was 5 into southern israel with our he said the i and i'm asking michelle system intercepted. those rockets has been heavy fighting in and around the certainties, capital cotton, the army has launched a strikes in the neighboring city of on demand the rapids support forces say they shut down a 5 digit. all right, those are the headlines. i'm emily angland and wednesday to now for the stream, which is up next and one use of the top of the. so july on,

i just the thing goes to the post office, the local election, sort of shift to the right click the country with this another here with the info, right? government 11 piece meets the indian women, breaking down gender barriers as they fight to become champ, features the coast african need is from across the continent as well. so 6 different and relations with the region. people in power focuses on somalia as a fight for survival. as years of draft and hom conflict have combined to create humanitarian disaster. as the security becomes an increasing global concern, the united nations launches a report examining food crises and tongue around the world. to live on a jersey to the hello and welcome to the stream. i'm at 17. today could a us 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 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, 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 the 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 o, one o, executive director of internet south frontier for internet without borders and in oakland, california, mcluhan's righty. 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 platforms, 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 that's exactly what it was meant to do. but almost immediately, courts misread section $232.00. it'd be nice 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 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 do 30 is a lot of tech companies to ignore me. even encourage harassment and abuse on their

services. because companies claim that the harm comes entirely from 3rd party content. so like say are you, no, no, no, i was just getting it. sorry. i didn't get 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 then? what are we doing about it? those things get caught up and then that also then you know, on that on stuff. 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 and it's planning stage shooting and parents that killed student know, i me, gonzalez in 2015. and her family is arguing that youtube had directed 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 burden there, 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, a dan, it's changed a lot since 1996 when congress passed the section 230 section 2 thirds responsible for a lot of the growth of the internet. and quite a bit of what people really like about the internet and, and it's 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,

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 around the baby with the bathwater, julie john says the supreme court is not the correct avenue for that. what do you make about? so that's an interesting case as tank. it does highlight the fact that, uh, this, this, this case does raise issues that go way beyond recommender systems that go way beyond just google and that really interrogate, can we hold companies liable for recommending terrace content and then extremely fascinating question in it right now from our position would be difficult. first of all, it would require a very straight to agreement on what terrorism means. because today we're talking about isis and in the likes. but we also know that they are very various understandings of what terry's organizations are. and this is very visible on another issue related to content, moderation,

because platforms do have list of organizations that are forbidden and that are considered environment or tires. that's a 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 should be like you're in the center. and so, so user friendly, 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 as 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 or really terrible things to recruit people to 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. yeah. so section 230 is really just and 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. so 230, so some kind of go ahead. yeah, megan, i mean, i know your organizations again section 230. what do you make of what kinds argument there as well where we're more for returning section 230 to its original,

very narrow purpose. and 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 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 tours related speech. but it doesn't mean that we need an overall section to 30. 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 statute says so much. so what last

week i had to do with that? okay, it's, it's so interesting. i mean, if i could just please look and go ahead, go ahead. we can go. i could, given an example on this front a few years ago, congress passed a law. that's 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 is terrible and has many victims. it 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 gonna leave up and what we're going to take down? that's not for the government and that's not for plaintiffs bringing lawsuit. 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 free speech. then we have anything. section 230 has allowed companies to ignore abuse and harassment on their search 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 yours. 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, if we ratchet off the liability was to get to potential results. one, is it services over moderate, over filter, over sanitized, their content, and to ensure that, you know, there's no potential risk of liability. and the other is that they throw 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, the current, isn't it already broken? i mean, it seems a bit confusing to me. i mean, the internet certainly certainly seems that way or, or a lot of your, 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 me. 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 law 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 her 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 should get away. but at the same time, we have to recognize direct 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 break of changing out that we're already talking about immersive technologies and i'm thinking of course, here about medicare as well. so 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. 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. this is what people from your organization is that about what the dog 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, but 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 they think, 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 was probably, i agree. i agree with megan on that. i, i don't like 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. uh the truth is a little more profit oriented for one. i mean they, they are, as megan said, trying to sell us ad. 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 $230.00 protected those people also, and they need to have reading 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 lawyers that have a great lot of people working for that. they 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 is concerned about the way these companies are collecting the data the way they're designing these algorithms. yeah. 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 we should talk about more it is, it isn't. we're going to try to get all this and 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 at 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. and 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 an algorithms design not to. is that true? i mean, i think your statement, mcclure and about, and it's 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 last, 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. 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 and anyway, 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 my friend. 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 me, we'll come take a listen. second, 230 also encourages services to voluntarily moderate content like hate speech and just information by ensuring that those who moderate are not at create a risk of liability. then those who don't. but section 230 is 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. someone kind of how could anti trust and privacy locks the address, the content moderation problem? what do you make of what kaitlin had to say there? i think caitlin is, is very on point here. and i, this is really important because when we talked 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 of would be on, but when we talk about section 230, 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 to platforms, reco savvy? that's a 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 speech, that's how it is, understand the world and who lives 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 a wide saying thanks for joining us. and see you next, the the,

the 19 sixty's, the decade of change across the middle east and north africa in the 2nd of a 3 part series, l g 0 was explores the explosion of ox and culture. intellectual as we're building new dreams. and the idea is because the revolutions of the 1964 in the political parts of the mind for music to tv, the poetry of protest and revolution, they make the 60s in the arab culture. oh no jews here. how do you states control information controlling the narrative, dominating the media? how does the narrative can pull public opinion and norma spite? it might not be the most important story about china of today. but that's what the big piece attention to. how is this has been, jim listened. rephrasing the story. the listening post,

i fix the media. we don't cover the news. we covered the way the news is covered. what happens in new york has implications all around the world. it's international perspective with a human touch, booming way in and then pulling back out again the these rounds on me and it says sells on jeanine leaving a trial of death and destruction. 12 palestinians and killed and thousands more left homeless. the hello, i'm emily. angry and this is l g 0 live from so how it will so coming up ukraine and russia accused each other of planning attacks around the separation nuclear power plants.