The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Where angels fear to tread
Episode 253 of the Cyberlaw Podcast: NewsGuard takes on fake news
Our interview is with two men who overcame careers as lawyers and journalists to become successful serial entrepreneurs—and who are now trying to solve the "fake news" problem. Gordon Crovitz and Steve Brill co-founded NewsGuard to rate news sites on nine journalistic criteria. Using, of all things, real people instead of algorithms. By the end of the interview, I've confessed myself a reluctant convert to the effort. This despite NewsGuard's treatment of Instapundit, which Gordon Crovitz and I both read regularly but which has not received a green check.
In the news, Klon Kitchen talks about the latest on cyberconflict with Russia: CYBERCOM's takedown of the Russian troll farm during 2018 midterms. The Russians are certainly feeling abused. They are using US attacks to justify pursuing their "autonomous Internet," and they've sentenced two Kaspersky Lab experts to long jail terms for treason, likely because of their law enforcement cooperation with the United States.
Gus Hurwitz, Klon, and Nick Weaver muse on the latest evidence that information intermediaries still haven't found a way to deal with wayward members of their ecosystems. Amazon marketplace sellers will now have the ability to remove what they deem counterfeit listings. Amazon has let the FTC discipline fake paid Amazon reviews. And Facebook is being criticized for the costs of using human beings to enforce Facebook's content rules. (The failure of Silicon Valley to get a handle on this problem is, of course, the key to NewsGuard's business model.)
Finally, just to give me an excuse to link to this Dr. Strangelove clip, Gus tells us that not even our prosthetic arms are safe from IoT hacking.
Download the 253rd Episode (mp3).
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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of the firm.
