What I’m Reading - 10/22/23

Free panic responsibly stickers to the first 50 paid subscribers who want them!

I’m writing this again from the Acela, returning from New York City, where I participated in a roundtable at the Knight First Amendment Institute on government jawboning. You can read all of the participant papers’ here. Conversations like this are getting richer as more former platform people can participate in marrying the theoretical discussions with the reality of how things might work inside a company.

Two things before we get to the links. 

One. You might remember my newsletter from a few weeks ago, where I implored everyone to “Panic Responsibly.”

Well, I’ve tried that phrase out at more than a few speaking events, and it seems to be resonating with folks. So, I decided to design some stickers.

I have 50 free ones to give to paid subscribers. To get one, scroll to the bottom of this newsletter, where you’ll see the link to the form. If you aren’t a paid subscriber but want one, either sign up for a paid subscription OR keep an eye on this space, as I bought the URL and will create a print-on-demand merch store.

Second, Mike Masnik has created an excellent game called Trust and Safety Tycoon. Unlike Marc Andreessen, who thinks trust and safety teams are the “enemy,” this game walks you through the complex tradeoffs that those managing platforms have to consider. I highly recommend you play it. I beta-tested it last week and lost my first two times for having too slow moderation times, and then figured it out on the third. 

What I’m Reading

1. October 23-24, 2023: Forum on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America and the Caribbean

2. NBC News: Supreme Court blocks restrictions on Biden administration efforts to get platforms to remove social media posts 

3. Nate Silver
   : It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to admit when you do. 

4. New Yorker: How Social Media Abdicated Responsibility for the News

5. Mashable: Are people actually using TikTok for news?

6. The Atlantic: The Internet Could Be So Good. Really.

7. MIT Tech Review: How to fix the internet

8. NBC News: Ella Irwin says working at X was 'the hardest experience' of her career 

9. New York Times: An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I. 

10. New York Times: What if We Could All Control A.I.? 

11. Politico: How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington 

12. Rest of World: Signal President Meredith Whittaker on resisting government threats to privacy

13. Business Insider: Mark Zuckerberg delivers on promise to pour 'gasoline' on Threads growth as the platform regains users while X shrinks 

14. Forbes: On TikTok, White Supremacist ‘Active Club’ Recruitment Videos May Have Reached Millions

15. Axios: Social media firms scramble to curb wartime misinformation 

16. ProPublica: Local Newspapers Are Vanishing. How Should We Remember Them?

17. Center for Politics: Partisan Desires Override Support for Constitutional Freedoms and American Values

18. Poynter: Fact-checkers and the social media misinformation tsunami: A Q&A with Lucas Graves

19. The Information: What To Do About Misinformation in the Upcoming Election Cycle? 

20. WSJ: Elon Musk’s X Courts Political Advertisers Ahead of a Contentious Election Year

21. Washington Post: How Ron DeSantis Lost the Internet

22. The Future, Now and Then
    : Why can't our tech billionaires learn anything new? 

23. Journal of Free Speech Law: Platform Transparency and the Rule of Law

24. Brookings: The long reach of Taamneh: Carriage and removal requirements for internet platforms 

25. Journal of the European Economic Association: The Effect of Social Media on Elections: Evidence from the United States

26. International Republican Institute: IRI’s Regional Civic and Govtech Convening 

27. Duke Law: The Meta Oversight Board's Human Rights Future 

28. Stanford, MIT, Princeton: Foundation Model Transparency Index

29. Harvard: Facebook Files Archive

    Harvard finally released their database of all of the docs leaked by Frances Haugen. 

30. USC Neely Center Newsletter
    : Introducing the Neely Center Design Code for Social Media

31. Washington Post: India uses widespread internet blackouts to mask domestic turmoil 

32. Sean Topham: From Underdogs to TikTok Titans: The digital campaign that rewrote NZ’s political playbook

33. TechCabal: Nigeria still wants to regulate social media

34. Fast Company: Europe’s Gaza misinformation crackdown could set a dangerous precedent 

35. United States Institute of Peace: Russian Influence Campaigns in Latin America 

36. Bloomberg: Big Tech, AI Models, Google, Facebook to Face Antitrust Inquiry in South Africa 

37. TikTok: Our continued actions to protect the TikTok community during the Israel-Hamas war 

38. The Verge: Discord is going to give out warnings instead of permanent bans 

39. Meta Response: Videos Criticizing a Turkish Government Official’s Response to the Turkey Earthquake 

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