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Lecture 18, Freedom of Speech online and the Law on moderation

On Monday, we talked about the First Amendment that protests most speech offline. Today, we will focus on the online field of Free Speech, together with online moderation.

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Some issues about online speech

• Disinformation and misinformation/ Filter bubbles (political)
• Trolls, Hate speech, and harassment/threats (often targets specific communities)

Discussion: Why should we care about online speech?

• Unprecedented speech and spread of problematic speech
• lower entry barrier
• disproportionated impact towards marginalized groups

-> Content moderation is inevitable in this situation, and is the service social media platforms offer.
Claiming the weight is a kind of Content Moderation! Without it is like google without the search bar but only the “feeling lucky” button.

2 significant laws

• The First Amendment
• The Communications Decency Act (CDA) Section 230
  • Some speech/content is not allowed
  • Platforms are not (largely) responsible for the content they hold (as speech intermediaries)
  • incentivize platforms to moderate while not punishing them if done imperfectly

Are platforms speakers?
They have speech rights though - platforms can moderate however they want (delisting, promoting, ad blocking, etc.)
But not when the platform develops the illegal contents - the roommate.com situation!

How platforms implement these policies?