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Episode Summary

First up, Stanford's Riana Pfefferkorn joins the show to give an update on two child safety bills on the Hill. Then Alex and Evelyn discuss the DOJ's charges against members of a Chinese troll farm; Prof. Alexandra Roberts from Northeastern University weighs in on the Blue Checkmark Fiasco and possible legal claims that could follow; in a great sign for 2024, Twitter has stopped labelling "state-affiliated" media and Meta layed off a lot of people from its information operations investigations team; the Meta Oversight Board delivered a shruggie emoji of an opinion about Meta's COVID-19 policies; and the Supreme Court granted cert to hear two cases about whether and when government actors can block people on their social media accounts.

Episode Notes

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• Stanford Internet Observatory Research Scholar Riana Pfefferkorn joins the show to discuss the latest developments in child safety policy on Capitol Hill. 
  • The EARN IT Act and STOP CSAM Act were officially introduced with civil liberties and online privacy advocates raising concerns. - Joe Mullin/ Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sophia Cope, Andrew Crocker, Mario Trujillo/ Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • The EARN IT Act would remove websites' immunity from civil lawsuits and state criminal charges stemming from child sex abuse material (CSAM) on their services, and create a commission to develop best practices for addressing child sexual exploitation online. - Lawrence Bonk/ Engadget, Mike Masnick/ Techdirt, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the STOP CSAM Act which would expand child sexual abuse reporting laws for social media companies, require annual reports on efforts to protect children online, and specify that platforms are liable to civil lawsuits for the storage or distribution of CSAM. - Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • In a new Lawfare piece, Riana warns that mandated transparency reporting could do more harm than good if bad actors are able to exploit the disclosures, and she compares and contrasts several online safety bills' approaches to this dilemma.
• The Department of Justice brought charges against 40 members of  the Chinese national police for deploying a troll farm using “fake social media accounts to harass and intimidate PRC dissidents, and attempting to get the dissidents’ accounts removed from a platform operated by a “U.S. telecommunications company.” - Department of Justice 

Twitter Corner

• Professor Alexandra Roberts weighs in on whether Twitter could face legal liability for shoving blue check marks on people who don't want it. - ​​@lexlanham
• Twitter quietly removed a line with explicit protections for transgender users in its hateful content policy. - Jess Weatherbed, Emma Roth/ The Verge, GLAAD
• Twitter removed all “government-funded” and “state-affiliated” labeling for public news broadcasters, state media organizations, and affiliated journalists. - Jahnavi Nidumolu/ Reuters, Sara Fischer/ Axios, Nick Robertson/ The Hill, Michael Levenson/ The New York Times
• Meanwhile, Facebook laid off most of its information problems team. - Anusuya Lahiri/ Benzinga
• The Oversight Board, the quasi-independent entity funded by Meta to guide its content moderation decisions and policy, released an advisory report on Thursday calling for continued enforcement, but a reassessment of the types of claims Meta should remove under its current COVID-19 misinformation policies. The opinion took nine months to come down, but was the equivalent of a shruggie emoji in terms of how much concrete guidance it gave Meta. - Oversight Board

Legal Corner

• Breaking News: The Supreme Court continues to use Evelyn's course syllabus as their docket guide and granted cert in two cases about when and whether government actors can block critics on social media. - Jay Peters/ The Verge

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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