Alex StamosFeb 8, 2023

Watching the House Oversight hearing and the ex-Twitter witnesses are doing a great job while being attacked by pretty much everybody.

Some initial reactions:
1) Despite the high-profile nature of this hearing, members don't seem much better prepared than in other tech hearings. Lots of misuse of technical terms (Rep. Jordan asking about "hard coding" multiple times) and confusion on the Hunter non-consensual tweets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fo_yD8r3w4

Full Committee Hearing - Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story

Learn more at https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/

YouTube
Show threadAlex StamosFeb 8, 2023

2) The panel, especially Yoel, is doing an excellent job of staying calm and explaining why the wildest theories exposed by the committee are not supported by the evidence.

3) This is a clear demonstration of the no-way-to-win dynamic on all political content moderation. I expect it will have the (intentional?) effect of reducing the willingness of companies to take any action on political accounts. This was a dynamic @evelyndouek, Nate Persily and I discussed here:

https://moderated-content.simplecast.com/episodes/meta-reinstates-trumps-accounts-7l3bLsEf

Meta Reinstates Trump's Accounts | Moderated Content

Evelyn sits down with Nate Persily, Professor at Stanford Law School, and Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss Meta's decision that it is reinstating former President Trump's accounts. Nate is pragmatic, Alex is cynical, and Evelyn is a naive little formalist about it all. Here's their quick takes.

Moderated Content
Show threadMark
@alex @evelyndouek honestly you would be better off rebasing any kind of social media company in Europe at this point and avoiding this bullshit.
Feb 8, 2023 at 4:51pmWeb
Show threadAlex StamosFeb 8, 2023

@mdh @evelyndouek Eh, no. This is about to get much worse in the EU as there will be years of litigation around the speech rules of each member state and the DSA.

Unfortunately, no major democracy is going to be able to resist trying to shape the speech of their citizens online.

Show threadMarkFeb 8, 2023
@alex @evelyndouek I guess I was thinking in terms of the partisanship and assuming free speech maximisation wasn’t your end goal. Europe seemed calmer and more predictable in that sense but probably doesn’t do well with US free speech discourse to be fair.
Show threadAlex StamosFeb 8, 2023
@mdh @evelyndouek I think it's much less predictable because companies operating in the EU face the same dynamics, empowered by the DSA, in 27 governments ranging from socialist parties or Orban's Hungary.
Show threadMarkFeb 8, 2023
@alex @evelyndouek going to defer to your expertise and experience on this one. Fair enough.