Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Will Arremus.

Hey everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership

between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. We're recording this on the afternoon

of Tuesday, July 17th. My co-host, April Glazer is off this week, but we're lucky enough to

welcome back Maya Kosoff, tech writer for Vanity Fair.

On today's show, we'll talk about the latest congressional dog and pony show involving the big

social media platforms. We'll get into a recent controversy over whether Facebook should ban the

prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Info Wars. And meanwhile, there's a new owner of the title

Wealthiest person in modern history. We'll talk about who that is and what it says about our economy. Then I'll be joined by Vigia Gatti. Gatti is a top-level executive at Twitter in charge of their legal, public policy, and trust and safety teams. When I say top-level, her title is actually lead, so I was clarifying with the company, what does that mean? It's not like a VP. And they said, no, she's above the VP. So she reports directly to Jack Dorsey, the CEO. So it's her job to fight the bots, the trolls, the Russian agents that have been swarming the platform, all while navigating the laws of the dozens of different countries in which Twitter operates. We'll ask her how that uphill battle is going these days and find out how Twitter is thinking about the balance between free speech and user safety at the highest levels of the company. We'll end with Don't Close My Tabs, some of the best things we saw online in the past week. All right, as you've noticed by now, April Glazer is out this week, but in her place,

I'd like to welcome back Maya Kossoff, tech writer for Vanity Fair. Hey, Maya. Hey, Will. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, it's great to have you back. I see that you have been cranking out fascinating stories in the past week. We're going to get to a couple of those today. how are things for you this week?

Things are going well.

It's a little rainy in New York, though, so that could be better. the past week. We're going to get to a couple of those today. How are things for you this week?

Things are going well. It's a little rainy in New York, though, so that could be better. But otherwise, it's good. Yeah, it hasn't rained here in months, so I can't really relate to you on that. But you can have my sympathies for it. But let's get right into the news of the week, which is that the big tech platforms were back on Capitol Hill,

testifying before Congress on their so-called content filtering policies.

Maya, what does that mean and why do we have these companies back in front of Congress yet again?

So it feels like the umpteenth time this has happened. But Facebook, Twitter, and Google all sent

reps today to basically go through the ringer and be asked the same questions that we've

kind of heard members of Congress asking them for months. Specifically, what we heard was

right-wing members of Congress asking the platforms about things like censorship.

Most memorably, I think, was Iowa representative Steve King asking some questions about

right-wing outlet gateway pundit losing reach on social media and basically asking how

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