Moderated Content

MC Weekly Update 6/27: Cage-free Eggheads (Are Men Okay?)

Episode Summary

A lot to cover this week. Alex and Evelyn discuss AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery; the first draft of history on Telegram during the mutiny in Russia; Musk's meetings with Indian PM Modi and EU officials; link taxes causing Meta to stop serving news content in Canada; YouTube taking down an RFK Jr video; Meta buckling to government demands in Vietnam; and a disappointing Supreme Court decision about cyberstalking.

Episode Notes

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, @det@hachyderm.io
• The mutiny in Russia unfolded in real time on Telegram with unreliable information spreading as few other sources of news or information were available from the country. - Jon Allsop/ Columbia Journalism Review, Matt Binder/ Mashable, Ben Smith/ Semafor, Joseph Menn, Mary Ilyushina, Shera Avi-Yonah/ The Washington Post

Twitter Corner

• Elon Musk has clearly been focused on top priorities with a late night tweet declaring the terms “cis” and “cisgender” are  “slurs” that can result in suspensions. - Sawdah Bhaimiya/ Insider, Sarah Fortinsky/ The Hill
• Meanwhile, Musk met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said Tesla will be in India “as soon as humanly possible.” - Hyunjoo Jin, Shivangi Acharya/ Reuters
• In the ongoing back and forth between Twitter and the EU, the company said it would comply with the Digital Service Act which goes into force in late August. Twitter was the first company to do a voluntary compliance “stress test” (whatever that means) at its San Francisco headquarters during EU industry chief Thierry Breton’s Silicon Valley tour last week. - Kelvin Chan/ Associated Press, Brian Fung/ CNN, Clothilde Goujard, Gian Volpicelli/ Politico, Lisa O'Carroll/ The Guardian, Alexa Corse, Sam Schechner/ The Wall Street Journal, Cat Zakrzewski/ The Washington Post
• Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued a legal notice requiring Twitter to provide information about what it is doing to address reports of an increase in hate speech since Elon Musk acquired the company and laid off most staff. - Josh Taylor/ Australian Associated Press, Ina Fried/ Axios, Byron Kaye/ Reuters, Frances Vinall/ The Washington Post, Julie Inman Grant/ Tech Policy Press
• YouTube showed up Spotify by removing a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for spreading vaccine misinformation in conversation with podcast host Jordan Peterson. - David Ingram, Ben Goggin/ NBC News
• It turns out that big social media companies may have the upper hand over users as Reddit removed moderators on popular subreddits who didn’t comply with a warning about continuing protests over the company’s decision to charge for API access. - Matt Binder/ Mashable, Jay Peters/ The Verge
• After giving Vietnamese a platform to share posts about police abuse, government corruption, and debunk government propaganda, Facebook is now complying with the authoritarian country’s demands to censor political dissent with an internal list of ruling party officials who cannot be criticized. - Rebecca Tan/ The Washington Post

Legal Corner

• The Supreme Court issued its decision in Counterman without acknowledging the very real harm that can be done by online stalkers, even when they don't explicitly threaten their victims. - Jan Wolfe, Jess Bravin/ The Wall Street Journal, @ma_franks
  • The majority opinion held that prosecutors must show that a person was reckless when they sent threatening messages, and not merely that the messages were objectively threatening
  • Justice Sotomayor's concurrence got it right in saying that this was a case about stalking, not threats, but we'll have to wait and see whether lower courts pay attention, or whether they assume that the majority opinion means online stalking is protected by the First Amendment, as long as the stalker doesn't say anything threatening.

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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