WN TBD: Inside Facebook’s Supreme Court
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After years of controversial content moderation decisions, from deepfakes to deplatforming, Facebook is trying something new. In January, the social network announced that its new Oversight Board, which will act as a sort of supreme court for controversial content, will begin hearing cases this summer.
Could this independent board change the way we govern speech online?
Guest: Kate Klonick, assistant professor at St. John’s University School of Law, and fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's this famous photo from 1972, taken during the Vietnam War. |
| 0:09.7 | The photographer was a journalist named Nick Ut. |
| 0:12.5 | And while the photo is officially called the Terror of War, people often refer to it as Napalm girl. |
| 0:19.3 | You've probably seen it. |
| 0:20.5 | It was taken moments after a U.S. commander ordered South Vietnamese planes it as Napalm girl. You've probably seen it. |
| 0:25.4 | It was taken moments after a U.S. commander ordered South Vietnamese planes to drop Napalm near a village just north of Saigon. |
| 0:28.7 | In the photo, children are seen running away from that village. |
| 0:33.0 | And in the center is a nine-year-old girl, Kim Fook, naked, crying, and running toward the camera. |
| 0:39.9 | The image is unforgettable. |
| 0:42.7 | In the U.S., newspaper editors made exceptions to their policies banning frontal nudity and published a photo widely. |
| 0:49.3 | It became one of the most indelible war photos ever taken. And it won the Pulitzer Prize. |
| 0:58.4 | Four years ago, a Norwegian writer named Tom Eglund posted that same photo to Facebook. |
| 1:04.5 | It is a photo of a nine-year-old girl running naked through the streets, and it was removed under the child exploitive imagery rule. |
| 1:13.1 | That's Kate Klonick, a lawyer and writer whose research is focused on Facebook. |
| 1:17.8 | And it happened to have been posted by a very famous Norwegian author who got very upset and |
| 1:23.7 | threw a fit on Facebook after it was removed. And the Norwegian Prime Minister then posted it and it was removed. |
| 1:31.6 | And then there was a letter to Mark Zuckerberg that was published on the front page of a Norwegian newspaper said, Dear Mark Zuckerberg. |
| 1:39.4 | And it was a whole lecture about censorship. |
| 1:44.9 | First, you make rules that don't distinguish between child pornography and important war documentary photos. |
| 1:52.5 | Then you practice these rules without sound judgment. |
| 1:57.2 | Facebook eventually allowed the photo to go back up. |
| 2:00.2 | But the whole controversy, Kate says, was a turning point. |
... |
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