But was the sex viewpoint-neutral?

Episode 408 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

This week's Cyberlaw Podcast covers efforts to get the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas law that treats social media platforms like common carriers and prohibits them from discriminating based on viewpoint when they take posts down. I predict that the Court won't override the appellate decision staying an unpersuasive district court opinion. Mark MacCarthy and I both think that the transparency requirements in the Texas law are defensible, but Mark questions whether viewpoint neutrality is sufficiently precise for a law that trenches on the platforms' free speech rights. I cite a story that probably tells us more about content moderation in real life than ten Supreme Court amicus briefs – the tale of an OnlyFans performer who got her Instagram account restored by using alternative dispute resolution on Instagram staff: "We met up and like I f***ed a couple of them and I was able to get my account back like two or three times," she said. Really, that explains so much.

Meanwhile, Jane Bambauer unpacks the Justice Department's new policy for charging cases under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It's a generally sensible extension of some positions the Department has taken in the Supreme Court, including refusing to prosecute good faith security research or to allow companies to create felonies by writing use restrictions into their terms of service. Unless they also write those restrictions into cease and desist letters, I point out. Weirdly, the Justice Department will treat violations of such letters as potential felonies.

Mark gives a rundown of the new, Democrat-dominated Federal Trade Commission's first policy announcement – a surprisingly uncontroversial warning that the commission will pursue educational tech companies for violations of the Children's' Online Privacy Protection Act.

Maury Shenk explains the recent United Kingdom Attorney General speech on international law and cyber conflict.

Mark celebrates the demise of Department of Homeland Security's widely unlamented Disinformation Governance Board.

Should we be shocked when law enforcement officials create fake accounts to investigate crime on social media?  The Intercept is, of course. Perhaps equally predictably, I'm not. Jane offers some reasons to be cautious – and remarks on the irony that the same people who don't want the police on social media probably resonate to the New York Attorney General's claim that she'll investigate social media companies, apparently for not responding like cops to the Buffalo shooting.

Is it "game over" for humans worried about Artificial Intelligence (AI) competition? Maury explains how Google Deep Mind's new generalist AI works and why we may have a few years left.

Jane and I manage to disagree about whether federal safety regulators should be investigating Tesla's fatal autopilot accidents. Jane has logic and statistics on her side, so I resort to emotion and name-calling.

Finally, Maury and I puzzle over why Western readers should be shocked (as we're clearly meant to be) by China's requiring that social media posts include the poster's location or by India's insistence on a "know your customer" rule for cloud service providers and VPN operators.

Download the 408th Episode (mp3)

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The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

Comments

[Kazinski]

So all it would have taken for Trump to get his Twitter account back is to offer Parag Agrawal sex?

A little demeaning, for both of them, but it does seem a lot simpler of a solution than lawsuits, legislation, and a 46 billion aquisition.

[DaivdBehar]

As t AI, it is inevitable. An upgrade in humans will be required. End high school to increase human productivity now. Then CRISPR-cas 9 talents into everyone. Talent comes from nowhere and cannot be figured out, predicted, nor duplicated.

[John F. Carr]

Would you sleep with me in return for an unbanning?

…OK.

How about for $46 billion?

No, what do you think I am?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How does this cranky right-wing authoritarianism get published regularly by a self-described "often libertarian" blog at an ostensibly libertarian website?

The answer says everything a mainstream American citizen or genuine libertarian needs to known about The Volokh Conspiracy and reason.com.

[Cheerio]

Perhaps you missed this: "The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets."

Similarly, EV and other bloggers here often posts things without giving - and often even before forming - their own opinions. Most of them are somewhere on the right (libertarian/conservative), but no where near the caricature that you keep trying to insinuate (with one or two exceptions, perhaps).

And Reason.com overall is indeed quite libertarian, FWIW.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Cyberlaw Podcast summaries are unrelentingly authoritarian as well as predictably right-wing.

If you contend there is nothing remarkable about a steady stream of clingerverse authoritarianism at a "libertarian" blog hosted by a "libertarian" website . . . that might be your partisan blinders talking.

[David Bremer]

I don't know if (or how much of) the story about the un-banning is true. But this sort of stuff does feed into the persecution complex of a lot of the Trumpian right-wing.

We keep hearing about "elites," which seems to generally mean that educated, generally liberal and generally wealthy or influential class that looks down on rural/uneducated/religious conservatives. While their posts and accounts are getting blocked and flagged (generally for good reason), they hear that one of those "elites" can use his influence to have sex with an OnlyFans star.

You can understand why this sort of story--which may be only half true--gets amplified and becomes a point of frustration for that crowd.

[DaivdBehar]

This elite is a failed elite, plus they are all degenerates. They are looking out only for themselves, kowtowing to the Chinese Commie Party for access to its market. They are disloyal to the US. One compensation is the rough nature of life in their jurisdictions.

I can live much higher on $100000 in flyover country than on a $billion in one of those shithole cities. These elites are kidding themselves about the asymptotic value of massive money. Yet they will betray our nation and our values to accumulate more.

[M L]

"While their posts and accounts are getting blocked and flagged (generally for good reason)"

lol, right.

Tell me about some of the instances you are familiar with, of people you personally know having their posts or accounts blocked and explain how it was for good reason. Just the first 5 or so examples that come to mind.

[David Bremer]

I have a friend (currently on account #2 because the first one was locked for spreading false claims) who regularly complains that his Facebook posts are tagged as misinformation. I can think of several posts of his that were flagged, mostly having to do with things like Covid-19, hydroxychloroquine, pro-Putin/Russia stories, and other things are are easily debunked by a simple Google search.

His non-mutual friend, who complains of the same thing and likes to argue with me over issues, complains about the same thing.

[M L]

So if someone says something false, that should be blocked from Facebook?

[MatthewSlyfield]

If they applied that evenhandedly Facebook would become a ghost town.

[David Bremer]

What Facebook should do is Facebook's business. But it's free to pick and choose which lies it wants to accept.

If you come to my house and claim something like you ate a muffin for breakfast, but really ate oatmeal, I won't care. But if you come in an claim something demonstrably false like Trump won the 2020 election, that hydroxychloroquine has any positive impact on Covid-19, or that rap today is better than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, I'm telling you to GTFO.

[M L]

The question isn't what Facebook has a right to do.

So if you were CEO of Facebook, you would want to ban people expressing opinions that you disagree with and political stuff that you don't like. Got it. This explains why you think Facebook censorship is "generally for good reasons." I think that's stupid, but that's of no consequence, you're entitled to your opinion.

[Pedant McPedantFace]

*The Attorney General for England and Wales, to be precise

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