YouSaid · the spoken record

Jameel Jaffer

lines on the record: 76
first: 2018-11-19
most recent: 2018-11-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Then you can by just studying individual data points. And all that has far reaching privacy implications, and we started having this privacy debate in the wake of the Snowden disclosures. But I think we're only now starting to grapple with the free speech implications.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, or even if you gave your consent, people give their consent for limited purposes and then the information is used for other purposes or the government loves to make this argument in other contexts, but people give one piece of information in one context and another piece of information in another context. And together these things form a mosaic. And you can learn a lot more about a person by putting all this stuff together as data aggregators are paid to do.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that the risk there is that, yes, they will stop misbehaving, but they will also take down a whole lot of information that is constitutionally protected and valuable, but they'll worry about liability. And again, I'm not worried about Alex Jones here. I'm worried about, I don't know, Black Lives Matter or a million different controversial politically controversial topics that private actors, other private actors will write to Facebook or government officials will write to Facebook saying, why do you have this up? And Facebook will panic and take it down. And so I'm not categorically opposed to. An amendment to Section 230. It's already been.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We should consider regulating the social media companies, and there are a lot of different possibilities that range from, again, low-hanging fruit like transparency regulation to much more intrusive regulation relating to content, like a must-carry rule, for example, would be, yeah.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is not unprecedented at all. Yeah, so we regulated broadcast in this way, common carriers, the railroads, right? And I'm not even suggesting that we should think of the social media companies in the same way. I'm not saying that we should. Yeah, I'm just saying that it's not unprecedented to require.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't put them out though. You can't vote them out. That's the problem. You can demand that they provide things like due process protections and transparency protections, right? But if you think of the social media companies as governors or akin to governors, Then why not also have whistleblower rules, right? Why doesn't Google, why don't Google and Facebook and Twitter have whistleblower rules to protect people who would tell the public about abuses of one kind or another that are taking place within those companies? Because again, if you take seriously the fact that these come, as you should, that these companies have an outsized effect on public discourse and therefore an outsized effect on our society, then there ought to be some safeguards in place to ensure that the companies are working in the public interest.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, if you do conceive of these Kate Klonic as a legal scholar who has this recent article called The New Governors where she characterizes the social media companies as akin to governors and therefore the implication is we ought to treat them that way and they ought to Well, we ought to demand things of them that we would demand of our governors.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's one another form of transparency, which is what we're asking for in this letter we sent to Facebook, which is essentially make it easier for journalists and researchers to study what's going on on your platforms. Make it easier for the world to understand how these platforms for you.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I would do a number of things. So, one I've already mentioned, which is provide more information about which accounts are being taken. Tell us what's going on. Yeah, they don't want to show you that, both in individual cases and more generally. You asked me what I would do. I'm just telling you, I'm not going to do that.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but the question So, what would you do? It's a harder question. What would you do if you were running one of these things and you have all this not just fake news as a whole nothing? But that's a whole issue. That's not. Protected, it's lies, essentially.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. You broke this from the service. Well, it's an easy one under their policies. That's right. Yeah, but the question is, are there policies the right ones for society? It's a harder question.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you ask me Do you want that guy who you disagree with all the time to be quieter or to stop from speaking by the government, if I look at that in isolation, then maybe I would say, yeah, it's totally fine if the government stops him from speaking. I don't like what he says. But that's not the way the world works. No, of course.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I find it hard to answer that question in isolation because I think the Alex Jones thing, it's a mistake to look at it in isolation because the decision that Twitter or Facebook makes is a more general decision that will have implications for cases involving people who aren't Alex Jones. Right. So that's one reason why I don't like answering the Alex Jones question. Fair point.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what would you do if you were eventually Twitter did the same thing, even though you knew they were going to do it, kick off Alex Jones. Took them a while. They wanted to make their speeches about the First Amendment, and then they did exactly what everybody else did. How did you look at that?”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The platforms themselves are making these decisions. The platforms decide to amplify some speech and suppress other speech. They decide to facilitate some kinds of communities and to foreclose other kinds of communities. And they need to take responsibility for those decisions.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. It's a good idea. This is part of why the Alex Jones debate, again, makes me uncomfortable, not because I disagree that Alex Jones is a toxic person who is causing real harm to real people. Obviously, he is. But I think that a lot of the responsibility, most of the responsibility for the problems that most concern People like you and me right now disinformation or discrimination on these platforms or echo echo chambers and filter bubbles. I mean, all those problems are the result not of people like Alex Jones, but of people like Mark Zuckerberg.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But get more behind the idea that they don't want the responsibility of something they built. See, I think they have responsibility for it. So they got to figure it out. It's not my problem, but they want to push it away. And yet they hold all the benefit parts. Money, the advertisement”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think that they have definitely made moves in that direction over the last few years. I think part of the concern is the way It could lead to calls for regulation But I still think they have a responsibility to do it.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, look, I'm not unsympathetic to their feeling that we don't want to have to decide these questions. But I would be a lot more sympathetic to them if they were at the very least offering us this low-hanging food of transparency and notice and an appeal right. At the very least, they should tell us what decisions they're making, who is getting excluded from the square, whose voices are getting amplified, whose voices are getting suppressed. Offer statistics about all those things and offer transparency at the level of individual cases and transparency at the level of the algorithms.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've had him do this to me. I'm like, well, you still, why don't you, why are you the controlling shareholder? Why do you have $64 billion? You can't own it and control it and say you don't own it. Yeah,”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, a community listserv or something like that because Facebook wouldn't have this kind of outsized effect on public discourse and on our society. If you accept, and again, there's an argument about this, but if you accept that Facebook is rightly characterized as the public square or a big piece of the public square, then I think you should be very troubled by the idea that Facebook is going to decide who gets to speak and who gets hurt.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the fact that Facebook is so big and that Facebook arguably controls the public square or arguably controls a large segment of the public square, that's when I think free speech advocates start to get nervous about Facebook excluding people from the platform, especially where there's an argument that they're excluding people on the basis of viewpoint. And you can think whatever you want to, but Alex Jones, but worry not about Alex Jones, but about the next person or next year, or who is it that Facebook is going to be excluding next year? And if we know anything from the history of government censorship, we know that this power is going to be used most aggressively against marginalized voices, controversial voices, marginalized voices that we especially need to hear. And, you know, this would not be a worry if Facebook were”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think you have summarized quite well the basic First Amendment arguments here. Alex Jones has the right to speak, but that doesn't mean he has the right to be on Facebook's platform. Yes, and Facebook has its own First Amendment rights here, and it expresses them by ejecting Alex Jones from the platform. I think none of that would raise difficult questions if it weren't for Facebook scale.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have been very reductive about the First Amendment, especially when it comes to these social media companies. And the other argument, of course, is they're private companies. They can do whatever they want.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, all right, but when you talk about this debate, use a debate like the Alex Jones thing. A lot of people pulled out this, he has a First Amendment right. And often I say, well, he does, but doesn't mean he doesn't get kicked off. It's two different things. Like, I think I wrote Freedom of Speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence. And if you break the rules of a platform. You get to pay for that, essentially. How do First Amendment scholars look at this? Because I think people sort of have convoluted.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm not sure we really want a situation where Facebook is subject to the First Amendment in the same way that the government is. I mean, it would require Facebook to allow pornography on the platform, for example. It would require Facebook to allow constitutionally protected hate speech. So Facebook would be required to host that. And I'm not sure anybody would see that as a solution to the problems that we're facing right now. So that's all just to say that it's complicated. I don't have any answers.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's how you get to proposals like, well, maybe we should have a must carry rule, which requires Facebook to carry everybody that restricts Facebook from. But you run up against pretty serious First Amendment arguments on the other side. Facebook can, I think, quite plausibly say that it has a First Amendment right to create the kind of community that wants to create.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in that sense, they control the public, the public square, and not just in the United States, but in a lot of the world, right? And, you know, again, the First Amendment is concerned principally with government power, but we resisted the centralization of control over the public square in the government because we didn't like the idea of centralization of that kind of power. And so maybe we should resist the idea of centralizing power in the social media companies for the same reason, you know?”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a whole level of surveillance under the speech and they're monetizing the results of that surveillance. So that, you know, in those respects, it doesn't look like a public square, right? But there's no question that these companies have Immense power to decide not just who can speak, but also who gets heard, right? Who can speak because they decide who gets onto the platforms and who doesn't, but who can be heard because their algorithms decide what speech gets prioritized and what speech gets suppressed.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Commercial corporations. You're walking to public square, and this is how they're walking across. And here's they might want an ice cream right here because they seem hot. Right, right. I mean, there's this whole level of surveillance under.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Resisted the idea of calling the social media companies public squares because really their whole model is based on feeding you just information that's really made just for you. So it's the opposite of a public square in a way.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah Well, I think what I mean by that is that conversations that used to take place in spaces that were subject to the First Amendment are now taking place in spaces that are controlled by private actors and therefore not subject to the First Amendment. Now, public square is used in a lot of different ways in a lot of different contexts. There was this decision a couple years ago, the packing him decision that Justice Kennedy wrote in which he described the social media platforms as the public square and Justice Alito wrote a concurrence effectively scolding Justice Kennedy for using that language saying you don't want to go down that road. You don't even mean what you're saying. So there's this debate at the level of legal doctrine. Are the social media companies at public squares or not? Then there's a question sort of in a more practical way. I know Zanip Tefecki has”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, we're back in. No, no, I know. I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you. But I just think that the hard question doesn't get presented until you recognize that they do it all the time. Now we recognize they do it all the time. Well, what's the answer? So on the one hand, you have the platform saying, well, we have a First Amendment right to create the kinds of communities we want to create. And that's a plausible argument. And on the other hand, you have the very real concern that centralizing the power to control debate in the social media companies would be the worst thing in the world, which is also very serious argument. And the First Amendment is concerned principally with centralization of power in the government, centralization of the power over. Yeah, the First Amendment doesn't obviously have very much to say about this.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Because one of the things that I think, and the next section we'll talk about is they get, you know, I was having an argument with someone about Alex Jones, and they're like, they shouldn't do this first amendment. And I said, they do it all the time. Are you kidding me? To have them go on and on about how they protect the First Amendment. I'm like, do you know how many people they've taken down? And by the way,”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the fact that they make these decisions on a sort of second by second basis is not just about taking down accounts. It's about how you prioritize the information, which information you decide to show me and when you decide to show it to me and in what form you decide to show it to me. Why is it that Alex Jones' speech spread so quickly? Maybe you can put some of that on Alex Jones, but some of it's on Facebook and some of it's on Twitter. Some of it has to do with their algorithms.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think there's a good argument that Alex Jones' power comes not so much from his access to the platform, but from the fact that the platform's algorithms privileged that kind of speech. Yes. Which is cold.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And how they do these things. And so that's one part of it. But the other thing is Focusing just on the Alex Jones style cases, which are about account takedowns or posts that are taken down. I think that's too narrow too because as you know these maybe the more fundamental content creation that these platforms engage in every day is just through algorithmic decisions that prioritization like which information you see which information you don't see”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I do worry that the debate focused on Alex Jones gives people the impression that we can just say the voices we really don't like will be kept off the platforms and everything else will be the same. You know, I do worry about marginalized voices that do not have, that aren't noticed in the way that Alex Jones is, whose accounts are taken down or whose posts are taken down. And the debate should encompass the...”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How many counts are taken down? Yeah. But one observation about the debate so far is that the debate has focused, at least the public debate. I think that the academic debate and the debate amongst technologists is a deeper one than this, but the public debate has focused on these very spectacular censorship, just spectacular in the sense that they get tons of attention, like Alex Jones, right? Right. And there are hundreds or thousands of these decisions made every day that aren't affecting people like Alex Jones that are affecting people who are on the margins. Yeah, made in seconds or made by machines, right?”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know I saw it, but Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, now there seems to be, I think, broad agreement maybe overstating it, but broader than there was a year ago that the social media company should be more transparent about which accounts they're taking down and why they're taking them down. There are the Santa Clara principles that some advocacy groups have put together that have to do with providing notice to people who are affected by those decisions, giving them an opportunity to appeal, disclosure of statistics about how many of these decisions are being made.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the research side, we are just now launching a project focused on regulation of the social media platforms, Jamal Green is a Columbia law professor who is now going to be visiting at the visiting from very far away, but he's visiting at the Knight Institute for the next year. He's a constitutional scholar there, and he's going to focus on what they should do.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can use it only to inform the public about matters of public concern. And obviously there's going to be disagreement about the meaning of some of these terms and Facebook's going to have to flesh it out over time. Facebook would have to decide over time which projects it was willing to allow and which ones it was going to shut down. But in our view, that's a better situation than we're in right now where Facebook has effectively categorically prohibited all of this journalism and research from taking place. Right.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. So, you don't want to create a situation where just because it's a reason, just because it's a researcher, it's okay. You can't create that kind of situation. So the safe harbor that we drafted, again, it's focused only on public information. And then it requires journalists and researchers to observe certain safeguards or limitations. So for example, you have to protect Facebook's users' privacy.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we wrote to them about a month ago. We asked them to respond by just after Labor Day, and they responded very graciously. And we've been in a conversation with them since. I think it's too early to say whether that conversation is going to lead anywhere, but we're glad to be in the loosening of...”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. Facebook has changed its policies in response to the Guardian's reporting around Cambridge Analytica, in response to Propublica's reporting around discriminatory advertising. So yes, some of it could be embarrassing to Facebook, but some of it could also be very useful to Facebook and more importantly, crucial for its users.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we've gone to Facebook and we've said, will you create a safe harbor? Amend your terms of service to make it possible for journalists and researchers to use these tools to scrape the platform, public information from the platform. Our safe harbor is focused only on public information, information that users decide to make public. But we've said, can you create a safe harbor so that journalists and researchers can scrape that kind of information from the platform or so that they can use temporary research accounts to see how the platform responds to different kinds of profiles? And can you assure them that you won't invoke the terms of service against them if they take on public interest projects?”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, entirely good instinct, and especially right now, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook and Twitter and other platforms are under a lot of pressure to crack down on or to ensure that that kind of abuse doesn't occur. So all that is understandable, but one effect of those general prohibitions is to prevent journalists and researchers from doing work that we really need them to do right now.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so they want to study the platform, and there are these restrictions that prevent them from using the tools that would be most useful to them. And the restrictions generally make sense. It's entirely understandable why Facebook wants to limit its work.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, working or not working and shaping public discourse and thereby shaping our society, right? And some of these things are discriminatory ads are, you know, I think Julia was focused principally on the effects domestically, but some of the effects of the social media platforms are very significant internationally. The New York Times has written about ethnic violence in Myanmar or ethnic violence in Sri Lanka. Right. And this is reporting that is especially crucial right now because nobody and certainly not the platforms, nobody fully understands the implications of the decisions that the platforms are chipping away.”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, basically, you know, a whole lot of what we know about how Facebook works and how Facebook affects the world. And obviously Facebook and other platforms now have a huge, if not fully understood, effect on public discourse, not just here in the United States, but around the world. What we know about the effect that social media platforms are having on public discourse, we know because of the work that digital journalists and researchers have done. So the Cambridge Analytica story, for example, is a result of work done by the Guardian or Julia Engine has done a lot of work about discriminatory ads on Facebook. Cash Hill has written about the people you may know tool. And all of these journalism has told us a lot more about how they work”
2018-11-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT