Brian Fishman on Violent Extremism and Platform Liability
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2023
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Earlier this year, Brian Fishman published a fantastic paper with Brookings thinking through how technology platforms grapple with terrorism and extremism, and how any reform to Section 230 must allow those platforms space to continue doing that work. That’s the short description, but the paper is really about so much more—about how the work of content moderation actually takes place, how contemporary analyses of the harms of social media fail to address the history of how platforms addressed Islamist terror, and how we should understand “the original sin of the internet.”
For this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down to talk with Brian about his work. Brian is the cofounder of Cinder, a software platform for the kind of trust and safety work we describe here, and he was formerly a policy director at Meta, where he led the company’s work on dangerous individuals and organizations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The original scene of the internet is the naivete of founders, funders, |
| 0:39.0 | and to some extent users of the internet that you can create products, |
| 0:45.0 | well-intentioned products created by well-intentioned people are always going to be used by well-intentioned users. |
| 0:51.0 | That's simply wrong. |
| 0:53.0 | I'm Quintedurusic, a senior editor at LawFair. |
| 0:57.0 | This is the LawFair podcast, May 12, 2023. |
| 1:03.0 | Today we're bringing you an episode of Arbiters of Truth, |
| 1:06.0 | our series on the information ecosystem. |
| 1:09.0 | And we have a conversation that's been in the works for a while. |
| 1:13.0 | Earlier this year, Brian Fishman published a fantastic paper with a Brookings institution, |
| 1:19.0 | thinking through how technology platforms grapple with terrorism and extremism, |
| 1:25.0 | and how any reform to section 230 must allow these platforms space to continue doing that work. |
| 1:31.0 | That's the short description, but the paper is really about so much more. |
| 1:37.0 | But how the work of content moderation actually takes place. |
| 1:41.0 | How contemporary analyses of the harms of social media fail to address the history of how platforms |
| 1:47.0 | address Islamist terror and extremism, and how we should understand the original sin of the internet. |
... |
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