MC Weekly Update 10/23: The Enemies of Progress

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

• Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of venture capitalism firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Netscape web browser, wrote a lengthy blog post with an ode to technology. He also manages to declare trust and safety “the enemy” in the rambling screed of more than 5,000 words. - Dan Primack/ Axios, Marc Andreessen/ Andreessen Horowitz
  • Have you “properly glorified” technology today?

Moderating the War

• Meta got a headline you never want in 404 Media: “Instagram ‘Sincerely Apologizes’ For Inserting ‘Terrorist’ Into Palestinian Bio Translations.” - Samantha Cole/ 404 Media
  • But don’t worry, Meta said it is “sorry” for “inappropriate Arabic translations.” - Liv McMahon, Joe Tidy/ BBC News 
• The Wall Street Journal had a big story on the tensions and challenges within Meta over moderation of speech in Palestinian territories. - Sam Schechner, Jeff Horwitz, Newley Purnell/ The Wall Street Journal
• The jawboning continues: The European Commission issued formal requests for information to Meta and TikTok about how the social media companies are removing illegal content and curbing disinformation during the Israel-Hamas war to comply with the Digital Services Act. - Kelvin Chan/ Associated Press, Clothilde Goujard/ Politico, Charlotte Van Campenhout, Bart H. Meijer/ Reuters, Natasha Lomas/ TechCrunch, Emma Roth/ The Verge
• Dozens of civil society organizations sent a letter to European Commissioner Thierry Breton alleging a misunderstanding of key components of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in letters sent to major social media companies about how they are handing information related to the Israel-Hamas war. - Clothilde Goujard/ Politico Pro

Legal Corner

• Speaking of jawboning, the Supreme Court will hear a jawboning case out of the Fifth Circuit which ruled that a broad swath of the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in their engagement with social media platforms. - Lawrence Hurley/ NBC News, Julia Shapero/ The Hill, Adam Liptake/ The New York Times, Supreme Court (.pdf)
  • Go deeper with our previous discussions on this case with University of Chicago Law professor Genevieve Lakier:
    • “The 5th Circuit's Jawboning Ruling”
    • “Government, Platform Communication, Jawboning, and the First Amendment”
• Threads is still working out what it wants to be and says suppression of search terms on controversial news topics. - Sarah Perez/ TechCrunch

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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