How to audit platform algorithms, Supreme Court round-up and TikTok reshuffle
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation, your guide to the policies, products, platforms and people shaping the future of online speech and the internet. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
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Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The fact that it took four hours of oral arguments to hear two cases just goes to show just how much is at stake in the NetChoice cases (EiM #236). You may have followed the livestream, or The Verge's live blog; I caught up by picking through the avalanche of commentary:
- Most of the justices seemed to side with NetChoice but, as The Verge's Lauren Feiner wrote, they also seemed "worried about creating an industry that could not be touched by regulation". It was suggested that discretion be awarded to platforms on the basis of the "expressive nature of the business", meaning Facebook or Reddit would have more leeway than, for example, Uber or Etsy.
- A key component of the discussion was the type of challenge that NetChoice, the tech industry body representing the platforms, made. Vox's Ian Millhiser did a good job (at least as far as this non-US, non-legal scholar is concerned) of explaining the difference between a "facial challenge" and an "as applied" one.
- From what I read, most people think the Supreme Court will reinstate the Texas and Florida laws to see what effect they have. This will force platforms to comply or pull out of states entirely. In the meantime, wrote David Sullivan of the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership, platforms should continue to "demonstrate that the decisions they make are neither arbitrary nor discriminatory."