Jonathan Zittrain on the Great Deplatforming
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2021
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Yesterday, January 13, the House of Representatives impeached President Trump a second time for encouraging the violent riot in the Capitol Building on January 6. And yet, the impeachment is probably less of a crushing blow to the president than something else that’s happened in recent days: the loss of his Twitter account.
After a few very eventful weeks, Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation is back. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, about the decision by Twitter, Facebook and a whole host of other platforms to ban the president in the wake of the Capitol riot. Jonathan, Evelyn and Quinta take a step back and situate what’s happening within the broader story of internet governance. They talked about how to understand the bans in the context of the internet’s now not-so-brief history, how platforms make these decisions and, of course, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Listeners might also be interested in Zittrain's February 2020 Tanner Lecture, "Between Suffocation and Abdication: Three Eras of Governing Digital Platforms," which touches on some of the same ideas discussed in the podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | It's not like, well, how do you scale it to all of the presidents around? |
| 0:37.2 | There aren't that many presidents. |
| 0:39.2 | There's like not that many presidents of the United States. |
| 0:42.4 | And therefore, there's just not the question of, well, gosh, we just, he tweets so much. |
| 0:49.3 | How could we possibly keep on top of it? |
| 0:51.6 | They can and at that point, we confront the question of, all right, now that they have |
| 0:57.3 | the power to shape it, is it safer to ask them to, according to some higher principle, |
| 1:03.1 | or safer to say, no, no, you shouldn't touch it at all because you might get it wrong. |
| 1:09.6 | It leads to wrong incentives or whatever it is. |
| 1:13.3 | I'm Quinted Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast, January 14, 2021. |
| 1:21.3 | Yesterday, January 13, the House of Representatives impugged President Trump a second time for |
| 1:27.2 | encouraging the violent riot in the Capitol Building on January 6. |
| 1:31.9 | And yet, the impeachment is probably less of a crushing blow to the president than |
| 1:36.2 | something else that's happened in recent days. |
| 1:39.1 | The loss of his Twitter account. |
| 1:42.1 | After a few very eventful weeks, our Arbordus of Truth series on disinformation is back. |
| 1:47.1 | Evelyn Dwik and I spoke with Jonathan Citrion, the George Behmis professor of International |
... |
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