Social Media’s Original Gatekeepers On Moderation’s Rise And Fall

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since the inception of social media, content moderation has been hotly debated by CEOs, politicians, and, of course, among the gatekeepers themselves: the trust and safety officers. And it’s been a roller coaster ride — from an early hands-off approach, to bans and oversight boards, to the current rollback and “community notes” we’re seeing from big guns like Meta, X, and YouTube. So how do the folks who wrote the early rules of the road look at what’s happening now in content moderation? And what impact will it have on the trust and safety of the platforms over the long term? This week, Kara speaks with Del Harvey, former Twitter VP of trust and safety (2014- 2021); Dave Willner, former head of content policy at Facebook (2010-2013); Nicole Wong, a First Amendment lawyer, former VP and deputy general counsel at Google (2004-2011), Twitter's legal director of product (2012-2013), and deputy chief technology officer during the Obama administration (2013-2014). Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Elon's losing his fucking mind online.
0:02.7	It's like really today.
0:16.6	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:19.3	This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guests today are amazing. Del Harvey, Dave Wilner, and Nicole Wong,
0:26.9	three of the original content policy and trust and safety people on the internet. Del was the 25th
0:33.1	employee at Twitter. She started in 2008 and eventually became head of trust and safety for leaving in
0:38.3	2021. Dave worked at Facebook from 2008 to 2013, eventually becoming head of content policy,
0:45.0	and he wrote the internal content rules that became Facebook's first published community standards.
0:50.0	Nicole is a First Amendment lawyer who worked as VP and Deputy General Counsel at Google,
0:54.8	Twitter's legal director for products, and deputy chief technology officer during the Obama administration.
1:01.1	These three were absolutely key in designing safety and content policies at social media
1:05.2	under very difficult circumstances, but it's a hugely influential and mostly invisible job
1:10.4	that affects pretty much
1:11.2	everyone who uses the internet and a lot of people who don't. But their efforts to make the
1:15.0	internet safer and having some guardrails are being unwound by people like President Trump,
1:19.5	Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. So this is a perfect time to go back and look at the history
1:23.8	of trust and safety and content moderation. I'm very excited to talk to these three
1:27.9	particular people because despite the idiocy of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, there are
1:32.8	thoughtful people thinking through these incredibly difficult issues, not making them partisan,
1:38.4	not reducing them and making them seem silly. They're not yelling censorship. They're not
1:43.9	yelling about the First
1:44.9	Amendment, which they don't know anything about. These are hard issues, and they treat them
	...

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