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PODCAST

Scaling Laws

Lawfare & University of Texas Law School

Scaling Laws explores (and occasionally answers) the questions that keep OpenAI’s policy team up at night, the ones that motivate legislators to host hearings on AI and draft new AI bills, and the ones that are top of mind for tech-savvy law and policy students. Co-hosts Alan Rozenshtein, Professor at Minnesota Law and Research Director at Lawfare, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas and Senior Editor at Lawfare, dive into the intersection of AI, innovation

government politics

All Episodes

57:49

The Facebook Oversight Board, One Year On

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

It’s been roughly a year since the Facebook Oversight Board opened its doors for business—and while you may mostly remember the Board from its decision on Donald Trump’s suspension from Facebook, but there’s been a lot going on since then. So we thought it was a good time to check in on how this experiment in platform governance is faring. In October, the Board released itsfirst transparency report, and Facebook—now Meta—has publishedits own updateon how it’s been responding to the Board’s decisions

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52:28

Video Games Cannot Escape the Content Moderation...

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Content moderation in video games turns out to be just as much of a bummer as content moderation everywhere else, perhaps even more so. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daniel Kelley, the director of strategy and operations for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society. He studies how companies deal with the many moderation issues that pop up in gaming, from harassment to digital

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55:57

What Is Integrity in Social Media?

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

There’s been a lot of news recently about Facebook, and a lot of that news has focused on the frustration of employees assigned to the platform’s civic integrity team or other corners of the company focused on ensuring user trust and safety. If you read reporting on the documents leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, you’ll see again and again how these Facebook employees raised concerns about the platform and proposed solutions only to be shot down by executives.That’s why it’s an

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54:30

The SEC and the Facebook Papers

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we’re talking about a subject that doesn’t come up much on theLawfare Podcast: the Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has made waves with her congressional testimony and the many damaging news stories being reported about Facebook based on the documents she released. But before these documents became the Facebook Papers, Haugen also handed them to the SEC as part of a whistleblower

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45:14

Twitter’s Head of Public Policy Explains the...

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

On this week’s episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nick Pickles, Twitter'ssenior director for global public policy strategy, development and partnerships. They discussed a new paper just released by Twitter, “Protecting the Open Internet: Regulatory Principles for Policy Makers”—which sketches out, in broad strokes, the company’s vision for what global technology policy should look like. The paper discusses a range

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58:35

Finstas, Falsehoods and the First Amendment

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s recent testimony before Congress has set in motion a renewed cycle of outrage over the company’s practices—and a renewed round of discussion around what, if anything, Congress should do to rein Facebook in. But how workable are these proposals, really?This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jeff Kosseff, an associate professor of cybersecurity law at the United States Naval

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59:42

Russia Cracks Down on Social Media

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

In the last few weeks, the Russian government has been turning up the heat on tech platforms in an escalation of its long-standing efforts to bring the internet under its control. First, Russia forced Apple and Google toremove an appfrom their app stores that would have helped voters select non-Kremlin-backed candidates in the country’s recent parliamentary elections. Then, the governmentthreatened to block YouTubewithin Russia if the platform refused to reinstate two German-language channels run by

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54:46

Defamation Down Under

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Just two days ago, on September 28, CNNannouncedthat it was turning off access to its Facebook pages in Australia. Why would the network cut off Facebook users Down Under?It’s not a protest of Facebook or… Australians. CNN’s move was prompted by arecent rulingby the High Court of Australia inFairfax Media and Voller,which held that media companies can be held liable for defamatory statements made bythird partiesin the comments on their public pages,even if they didn’t know about them. This is a

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47:53

Inside the Facebook Files

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Today, we’re bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem. We’ll be talking about “The Facebook Files”—a series of stories by the Wall Street Journal about Facebook’s failures to mitigate harms on its platform. There’s a lot of critical reporting about Facebook out there, but what makes the Journal’s series different is that it’s based on documents from within the company itself—memos from Facebook researchers, identifying problems based on hard

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56:14

The Broken Rube Goldberg Machine of Online Advertising

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Today, we’re bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem.In a 2018 Senate hearing, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question about how his company makes money with a line that quickly became famous: “Senator, we sell ads.” And indeed, when you open up your Facebook page—or most other pages on the internet—you’ll find advertisements of all sorts following you around. Sometimes they’re things you might really be interested in buying,

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56:49

Content Moderation Comes for Parler and Gettr

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

Let’s say you’re a freedom-loving American fed up with Big Tech’s effort to censor your posts. Where can you take your business? One option is Parler—the social media platform that became notorious for its use by the Capitol rioters. Another is Gettr—a new site started by former Trump aide Jason Miller.Unfortunately, both platforms have problems. They don’t work very well. They might leak your personal data. They’re full of spam. And they seem less than concerned about hosting some of the internet’s

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53:56

The Disinformation Industrial Complex

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

This week on our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information ecosystem, we’re going to be talking about … disinformation! What else? It’s everywhere. It’s ruining society. It’s the subject of endless academic articles, news reports, opinion columns, and, well, podcasts.Welcome to what BuzzFeed News reporter Joe Bernstein has termed “Big Disinformation.” In a provocativeessayin the September issue of Harper’s Magazine, he argues that anxiety over bad information has become a cultural

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57:25

Why the Taliban Can’t Use Facebook

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

When the Taliban seized power following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this month, major platforms like Facebook and Twitter faced a quandary. What should they do with accounts and content belonging to the fundamentalist insurgency that was suddenly running a country? Should they treat the Taliban as the Afghan government and let them post, or should they remove Taliban content under U.S. sanctions law?If you’re coming at this from the tech sphere, you may have been seeing conversation in

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1:00:19

Facebook Shuts Down Research On Itself

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

In October 2020, Facebooksent a cease and desist letterto two New York University researchers collecting data on the ads Facebook hosts on its platform, arguing that the researchers were breaching the company’s terms of service. The researchers disagreed and kept up with their work. On August 3, after months of failed negotiations, Facebookshut off accessto their accounts—an aggressive move that journalists and scholars denounced as an effort by the company to shield itself from transparency.For

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50:05

With Disinformation, The Past Isn’t Past

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

We live in the Disinformation Age. The internet has revolutionized our information ecosystem and caused disruption totally unprecedented in human history, and democracy may not survive. ... Just like it didn’t survive the television, radio, telegram and printing press before it. Right?When it comes to talking about the internet, all too often history is either completely ignored with bold claims about how nothing like this haseverhappened before—or it’s invoked with simple analogies to historical

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58:56

Facebook’s Thoughts on Its Oversight Board

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

There have been a thousand hot takes about the Facebook Oversight Board, the Supreme Court-like thing Facebook set up to oversee its content moderation. The Board generated so much press coverage when it handed down its decision on Donald Trump’s account that Kaitlyn Tiffany atThe Atlanticcalled the whole circus “likeShark Week,but less scenic.” Everyone weighed in, from Board Members, tolawmakers, academics, critics and evenLawfarepodcast hosts. But there’s a group we haven’t heard much from: the

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59:50

The FBI, Social Media and Jan. 6

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

The attempted insurrection on January 6 is back in the headlines. This week, the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot began its work with its very first hearing. So for our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information environment, Evelyn Douek interviewed Quinta Jurecic about social media’s role in warning of the riot. Specifically, they talked about anessay Quinta wrote inLawfareon the FBI’s failure to examine social media posts announcing plans to storm the Capitol—and how

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53:24

Facebook v. the White House: Renee DiResta and...

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

This week we're bringing you the breakdown of the heavyweight bout of the century—a battle over vaccine misinformation. In the left corner we have the White House. Known for its impressive arsenal and bully pulpit, this week it asked for the fight and came out swinging with claims that Facebook is a killer—and not in a good way. In the right corner we have Facebook, known for its ability to just keep taking punches while continuing to grace our screens and rake in the cash. The company has hit back

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1:00:06

Florida Man Regulates Social Media

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

On May 24, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill designed to limit how social media platforms can moderate content. Technology companies, predictably, sued—and on June 30, Judge Robert Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida granted a preliminary injunction against the law.Thelegislation, which purported to end “censorship” online by “big tech,” received a lot of commentary and a great deal of mockery from academics and journalists. Among other things,

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59:00

Can America Save the News?

Scaling Laws ·

2022/02/04

The news business in America is in crisis. Between 2008 and 2019, newspapers in the U.S.lost half of their newsroom employees. Journalism jobs cut during the pandemic number in the tens of thousands. Local news is suffering the most, with cutbacks across the country and many communities left without a reliable source of information for what’s going on in their area.Why is this a crisis not just for journalists, but also for democracy?In today’s episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online

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