Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Captioning performed by vitac i think a lot of the sites that were all concerned about, i dont think should be entitled to section 230 protections. The problem is, section 230 is often decided at a very early stage. So theres no discovery to determine whether the platform has contributed to the development of the content that doesnt receive section 230 protections. I would like to see a standard where the judge believes theres reasonable cause that its contributed to the content. We do that for personal jurisdiction. I think that would be a way to go after the bad actors that never should be getting protected by section 230 while still preserving protections for the sites that really are not contributing to the material. Thats one thing. The second is, i hear from people on all sides about various issues with 230 ranging from there shouldnt be any moderation to there shouldnt be any protection at all. This is all anecdotal and its all i have this specific story. We do not have good evidence and it is such an important issue. It affects the speech of everyone in the united states, essentially and the ability to receive information. I would like to see a congressionally created commission to really gather a good factual basis for this before proposing specific solutions because we dont have that right now. And im really worried when i hear all these different stories which are really opposed to one another and that i dont know whether any of the solutions will actually pass. But i would like to get a much better factual record before we make any decisions on what to do with platforms or 230. What is sort of what are the upside Downside Risk . Whats the upside of smart legislation and what is the downside of getting it wrong . I dont think theres any debate that section 230 has been one of the real legislative foundations of the entire internet economy. Whats the upside of getting these reforms right and what is the downside of, boy, we got it wrong . What does this all look like. A little speculation. The upside is that if we crafted it well, i think if we conditioned the immunity on reasonable content moderation practices or denied really bad actors the ability to enjoy that immunity, wed have a lot more speech online. We would not have stalking, harassment, threats and po pornography which drives people offline. Theres an upside theres a speech upside. Any other up sides or just down sides of getting it wrong . How can it be better . I see far more down sides than up sides to any changes and because of the problem of getting through congress. We could craft something brilliant and get together and we could put together a perfe legislative history and send it down is street and we would get back Something Different. The decisions are being made by lawyers. I assume there are a number of lawyers in this room. Decisions about moderation have to at least get cleared by the lawyers and you see what happened after the sex trafficking amendment, craigs list got rid of its personal section because it was too much risk. And i think changes to section 230 were you surprised at that outcome . No. I think we worked on it with different offices. It was depressing what came out of the sausage factory. I testified in the House Judiciary Committee in support of the limited exception for intentionally facilitating sex trafficking, its a standard that you cant comprehend it, so the lawyers will be risk averse. Im definitely not opposed to section 230 changes. I just think they need to be really, really carefully crafted and deliberate and not sort of some legislative compromise that gets attached to an appropriations bill right before the december recess. Thats not what we want. Thats everything these days. Exactly. Youre worry, jim, is im a pollyanna. Im engaged and happy to help offices. Im not going to give up on the enterprise. But thats what youre talking about. Im going to ask one more question and i want to the great panel, im going to ask questions, whether youre a pollyanna pessimist, be prepared. If 230 was eliminated, what does that world look like . Do we still have these platforms . Does it destroy their Business Models. Is it Something Different . What does that world look like if we did real harm in the effort of reforming, you know, to this provision . So, i dont think we know for sure because for the entire modern internet weve had section 230. Platforms could take the approach that, okay, the common law and First Amendment give me more protections if i dont do any moderation, which i think most of us would say thats not a great outcome. They could also become risk averse and say were not going to allow user content because that exposes us to too much risk. Or perhaps it will be somewhere in between. I cant say with any certainty what would happen because that would be New Territory for us. And perhaps because you would have thrown your computer out the window. Theres a good article on the common Law Developments that they saw coming along when 230 was passed. A trend, because publishing has changed, a trend toward treating platforms as conduits that arent and cant be responsible for what appears on their sites. That gives me confidence that the longterm outcome i know its debatable. But it gives me confidence that the longterm outcome would be good. But in the short term, there would be a stampede against the platforms of litigation if the repeal of 230 were to signal that the federal law is opposed to protections for liability, then that could actually undercut the proper common law development. I dont know how you get there from here. But if you ask the question in the abstract, what happens if 230 goes away, i think the common law protections for platforms would arrive at about the place where 230 has gotten, perhaps with some narrow tweaks. Okay. Thoughts or should we go to questions . Well go to questions. If you have a question, raise your hand, we will send the mic over to you. Well start with that table right there. Gentleman with the laptop. If you care to say where youre from, feel free. James, you asked about the value of section 230. Mike is a really good paper that came out, 440 billion over the next decade is the value. You asked about content moderation, net choice has a report coming out that aggregates all of the transparency reports. They removed in six months 5 billion accounts and posts. I want to hit on something you brought up at the end, what happens if we get rid of section 230. And section 230, jeff, you point out in your book, goes to encourage content moderation. 8chan, it doesnt matter if they lose section 230. Danielle, you brought up grinder. Do you expect to see a rise in hate and offensive and terrorist attack terrorist content as we move toward total immunity if we do something. Thats not true. They dont risk it by engaging in content moderation. Youre saying if we change section 230. So sorry. I wanted to make sure i understood the premise of the question. We wipe out section 230 and we live in a world which prodigy, afraid of being treated as publishers. And so we engage in no moderation, content moderation and i think thats in part what were worried about in a paper that we wrote. That we would have either both bad, no moderation or too much moderation. So, i share your concern, right, that were going to end up looking like either its like the wild west or, you know, then its family friendly, then its overly censored. Just what we thought 25, whatever, years ago. Im jumping back. Do you think that do you think they would love to be out of this business . They would love to be out of the figuring out whats hate speech, whats not hate speech. Thats not because of us. The hate speech conversation, that is because of europe, truly that pressure is less they love to be out of this business, but they need to be in this business. This is a product theyre making a lot of money off of. This is part of the job. It should be said at least once in this event that the users out there are a little bit responsible too. Totally. Whatever happened to dont believe everything you read . Turn it off and put it down that side, youre very quiet over there. Back table right there, right next to mike, how con convenient. My name is roger and during the 1990s, i was the ibm executive world for worldwide internet policy and thus had a front row seat in the development of section 230. There was an important piece of the puzzle that the panel hasnt discussed and leads me to think might be a way to deal with the issue. One of the element that is went into the assumptions that we all made at that time was that the future would be very much like the past and most of us had in mind at the time 230 was approved, computer bulletin boards. How can the thinking was that someday there would be a hundred Million People on the internet and there would be 100,000 websites and everyone really assumed that there would be facebook in the future, in fact, there would be thousands of facebooks and none of them would have more than 2 market share. And everybody assumed there would be a google in the future, in fact, there would be hundreds of googles and none of them would have more than 1 of a the market share. There was never any expectation of enormity that we see today. And your question, sir . And the question is, perhaps that assumption that went into because of that, it was assumed that the internet was going to be made up of thousands and thousands of Small Businesses that could never possibly monitor a hundred Million People posting on their bulletin boards. The question then is, if we and i realize this is a blunder blus solution. Any network that has a billion users are market value of a trillion dollars is by definition a publisher, with the same rights and duty to care that the northwest current and the georgia towner today have when they post want ads where they have to look at it and make a judgment and at that scale, you are a publisher and no gray area, you have the same responsibility that a callin Radio Program or a neighborhood newspaper has of duty of care when you reach that size. All right. Anybody want to jump in on that one . I might think abstractly about most things but i have a hard time that justice changes, the terms of justice in the world change if the size of your network goes above 999,999,999. I want the rules to be rooted in justice and not administrative stuff that keeps the lawyers working. Either theres either youre doing it right or wrong. Theres reasonable and unreasonable. And the law should hew as closely as possible to that, not you got to be reasonable once you reach a certain threshold of users. That type of rule exists all over the place and you see lots of Small Businesses staying small so they dont have to provide Health Insurance to their employees and i dont want more of that, not in this area. Gentleman right here. Good morning. Thank you for doing this. Im also a member of a Transatlantic Working Group on content moderation. I learned a lot, i want to throw two quick ideas out to get your response. One from that group ive learned is maybe we should concentrate not on content but on behaviors. Thats what law does. And theres a discussion coming from one member of the group that there ought to be National Internet courts where we negotiate legal norms in public with due process. And in terms of the legal, but irritating, now we have facebooks Oversight Board where theyre trying to publish that and well see how that goes. I wonder about your views of these kinds of efforts to come up with new common law through different paths as we negotiate this very new landscape . Youve written about this quite a bit. In my book i argue that we should a company should engage in what i call a different venue technological due process. They should be transparent and accountable for their content moderation practices. And im not sure if i see maybe you can join me on this, the difference, conduct and speech, the line is really blurry. The difference between content and conduct, you know, yes, its true, i think we should be more careful to realize that some speech is tantamount to conduct to stalking, harassment, there are some moments where we can say thats an instrument rather than con vaing a message or viewpoint. I feel like that would be, you know, conduct and speech are one in the same, a lot of conduct is expressive and vice versa. Yeah, but i dont want to talk about that. You talk about what you want to talk about. A National Internet court sounds like a thing youll get if you wait around for a couple of years and the older judges move out and the younger judges move in. I dont know about a Specialized Court for this. And i want to challenge because you mentioned it a second time now, the idea that companies should be providing due process and transparency, im a big, big fan of transparency not because just that we could require them too. But true transparency in your content moderation would be a huge gift to your adversary because over on 4chan, or 8chan now, they would go and figure out how to game the rules you just published and do the things that falls right on the line between the two. It is nonsense. Its not nonsense. They work hard. They work hard to game published rules. Thats a gift, i think to thats law. So youre saying we shouldnt have law thats published can and no. But its gamable. People will game laws with too many nooks and crannies. I would say there has to be more transparency than there is right now and were getting better. I think today compared to three or four years ago, there is much more transparency but we have a long way to go. And this is one thing that i really stress to the Tech Companies is that section 230 is not a constitutional right. There are some people will say section 230 isnt a benefit to the Tech Companies and i think thats nonsense. Of course its a benefit to the Tech Companies. But, Tech Companies do receive theyve been able to structure Business Models around this. I have no problem with some sort of transparency being a premise of section 230 because we need to have a better idea of whats going on. We havent and now you see whats going on now with the debate which is chaotic. When someone an account gets suspended, its not a mystery, youre like, that makes sense, i get why that happened. And the person should have that same kind of expectation. I think that can maybe help improve User Behavior than it compared to where it is. But also more transparency about the broader policies. The platforms have policies posted but theyre fairly broad. Shorter and clearer policies. Over here, reluctant to ask a question, one straight im sort of rudely pointing with my red pen right there. Elizabeth banker. Im with internet association. I have a question about the proposal, as many commentators have noted, one of the advantages of section 230 is that it does allow companies that are sued to get rid of the cases fairly quickly. It sounds like your proposal would require litigation before being able to get to that stage. And im just wondering about the impact on Smaller Companies. We did talk about how, you know, with the without section 230 the Bigger Companies would have the resources to do more litigation while Smaller Companies wouldnt necessarily have the same resources. So is there a way that your idea kind of takes into account that smaller Business Impact . So, reasonableness itself would. What is reasonable is different from a small but it doesnt address your excellent point about the cost of litigation. Whats reasonable, we could adjudicate and it would be very different from whats reasonable. Its true there would be costs. At the same time we shouldnt forget that there are costs of the current system. Theres no expense, theres dismissals and what happens is we lose a lot, we lose a lot in terms of speech of victims that go offline. We have a lot of harm thats externalized. So i guess what i would say is i recognize that that would be true, it would be more challenging and expensive for the Small Company to face small litigation. And even if it cashes out that there would be the expense, of course. You might have more censorship for the small versus the big. At the same time, some of those small actors are the focuses running revenge porn sites. We cant overlook that there are meaningful tradeoffs. Its not all tradeoffs in speech in one direction, which is just that poor provider. Theres a lot of tradeoffs for victims who without any change, they will be driven offline. Excellent. Theres another question over here. Maybe, the gentleman right directly thank you. I wanted to pry into something that jim brought up at the end that i think is an important point and i was wondering what the panel would think about. This the question posed at todays event is should we reform section 230. We have our academic question of, well, is there possible ways that 230 can be improved and the other side which is should we kick off that process here in d. C. And in congress . And i think there seems to be, you know, complete agreement on the panel that 230 has been very beneficial, is very important to the internet that we all enjoy today. So my quick question is, with congress not necessarily being trusted with a lot of tech policy or even policy more generally to get things through in a way that gives us what we want. Would you kick off that process . Would you take that risk that potentially congress could undermine section 230 just to get reforms that you see as beneficial. We have article one that says they have too. Theyre the ones that charge with it and i think looking at it is one thing. One of the jobs of congress is to look at the laws that theyve passed. I think just i would agree there are some challenges that congress has with Understanding Technology and ill be as broad as possible in saying that. But thats not a reason to not look at laws. I think their efforts to revive the ota would help inform that. It w