Post No Evil Redux

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we revisit our story on Facebook and its rulebook, looking at what’s changed in the past two years and exploring how these rules will impact the 2020 Presidential Election.

Back in 2008 Facebook began writing a document. It was a constitution of sorts, laying out what could and what couldn’t be posted on the site. Back then, the rules were simple, outlawing nudity and gore. Today, they’re anything but.

How do you define hate speech? Where’s the line between a joke and an attack? How much butt is too much butt? Facebook has answered these questions. And from these answers they’ve written a rulebook that all 2.2 billion of us are expected to follow. Today, we explore that rulebook. We dive into its details and untangle its logic. All the while wondering what does this mean for the future of free speech?

This episode was reported by Simon Adler with help from Tracie Hunte and was produced by Simon Adler with help from Bethel Habte.

Special thanks to Sarah Roberts, Jeffrey Rosen, Carolyn Glanville, Ruchika Budhraja, Brian Dogan, Ellen Silver, James Mitchell, Guy Rosen, Mike Masnick, and our voice actor Michael Chernus.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Okay, so in the layer cake of mayhem that we find ourselves in that metaphor makes no sense.
0:06.2	I want to update a story that we played a few years ago that is fascinating,
0:12.3	but definitely shifting and changing as we speak and worth tracking,
0:17.1	and yet hard to track with all the things that are happening right now.
0:20.1	This is a story that aired, I believe two years ago, but still very timely, as you hear,
0:26.1	but later in the episode we'll come back around and update it, bringing up to the present.
0:31.2	Oh, wait, you're listening.
0:32.4	Okay.
0:33.7	All right.
0:34.9	Okay.
0:36.3	All right.
0:38.0	Door listening to Radio Lab.
0:40.6	Radio Lab.
0:42.1	WNYC.
0:44.1	Yeah.
0:49.2	Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod.
0:50.4	I'm Robert Krollwich.
0:51.6	Radio Lab.
0:52.4	And today we have a story about what we can say.
0:55.6	And what we can't.
0:58.7	And by the way, there's going to be a smattering of curse words here that we're not going to
1:01.8	believe, which I think makes sense given the content of the story.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.