0:10

This is an I heeart original.

0:15

What's interesting though about the drumcase though, of course, is that

0:18

I think it's a very sympathetic impulse

0:21

to want to use some sort of law here

0:24

to convey that

0:27

what Laurie Drew and her daughter

0:30

did in this case not only did

0:32

it have a tragic ending, but

0:34

the act itself was quite

0:37

cruel. I'm

0:39

joannic Neil, and this is main

0:41

accounts the story of my

0:44

Space episode

0:47

seven. My safety

0:56

users regularly experienced

0:58

online harassment on my Space, hateful

1:02

and hurtful comments, even buying,

1:05

especially users who were very young

1:08

yet at the time, with social

1:10

networking still new and regarded

1:12

as an experiment, these experiences

1:15

weren't often taken seriously, and

1:18

to those who did experience online harassment

1:21

in the context of MySpace and

1:24

at the time and the odds, it

1:26

was so unexpected or bizarre that

1:28

they often didn't know how to process

1:31

it. Take for example,

1:33

Roommates, the web series

1:36

MySpace produced from two thousand and seven

1:38

to two thousand and eight. The

1:40

show was available to watch on MySpace.

1:44

It was also promoted through the

1:46

social network. It was critical

1:48

for driving engagement. The team

1:50

set up accounts for individual characters

1:53

on the show, audiences could

1:55

interact with the characters like they were

1:57

real people. It was exciting,

2:00

but as Roommates creator Scott

2:02

Zacharan soon found out, there

2:04

were drawbacks to being this public

2:07

available. Some of the comments

2:09

made about the characters played

2:11

by real people actors

2:14

we're really cutting. Yeah,

2:17

I mean I've happened a few times. I mean in

2:19

our early shows when people would

2:21

see the photos and people would comment

2:23

on their books any

2:25

actor, male, female, it

2:29

was really painful for them. At first, we removed

2:31

the the the garden

2:34

variety hater or

2:36

we warned them we only would

2:38

go to MySpace if there was something that,

2:41

you know, was beyond what

2:43

we should be doing, so you can get a sense

2:45

of you know, okay, this guy can be salvaged

2:48

or ignored, but

2:52

somebody else if they start to get you know, too

2:55

sexual, or you know, something

2:57

that goes beyond our standards and practices, that's

2:59

when we would kick it up to my Space. The line

3:02

between Stan and Stalker is

3:04

kind of a thin one. Like the people who

3:06

like really get enthusiastic

3:08

about a celebrity, it can be can

3:11

I get very easily tip the other way because

3:13

I think people are more nervous about doing that back

3:16

then because they didn't know what have caused. Now

3:18

it's tearing people apart is

3:20

common interactivity. Most

3:26

users on my Space did

3:29

not have access to my Space the company,

3:31

like the roommates, cast and crew. They

3:34

cannot make special requests for the company

3:36

to intervene. Typically,

3:38

it was expected back then that if

3:40

you were harassed online, the

3:43

only thing to do was ignore

3:45

it, don't feed the trolls.

3:48

This is something bridget Todd, host

3:51

of Beef and there Are No Girls on

3:53

the Internet, commented on

3:55

in our interview. I think for far

3:57

too long, people in positions

4:00

of power, or like parents and educators

4:02

and administrators, people who are in positions where

4:04

they're meant to help young people understand

4:06

the role around them, we've been telling

4:08

them this complete fiction that

4:11

what happens on the Internet is just the Internet, and like

4:13

your real life is your real life, and like who

4:15

cares what they're saying, It's just words on the on a

4:17

screen. And so when young people

4:20

are facing this kind of thing, there's

4:22

oftentimes not a lot of adults in the room

4:24

who can really understand what's happening

4:26

and like talk to them about it in a real way. That's going

4:28

to be meaningfully helpful when we're talking about

4:31

things like online harassment. It is really important

4:33

to keep that in mind. And I think that

4:35

we're seeing that that attitude

4:37

sort of slowly change, but I think

4:39

it's changing far too slowly

4:42

to actually, you know, deal

4:44

with the problem at any kind of scale.

4:48

The tragic death of Megan Meyer,

4:51

which resulted in major news coverage

4:53

ongoing for years following

4:55

the Lory True trial, was

4:59

a reckoning. The thinking

5:01

until then a mix of on

5:03

the Internet no One Knows You're a Dog as

5:06

a fame as New Yorker cartoon caption

5:08

from nineteen ninety three put it, combined

5:12

with a moral panic over youth online

5:14

that we addressed in earlier episodes,

5:18

belied how sometimes

5:20

the real threat of online harassment

5:22

is more prosaic. Your own

5:24

neighbor could create indescribable

5:27

pain for your family. Laurie

5:30

Drew, the mother of Megan Myers

5:32

classmate a neighbor of the Myers,

5:35

became virtually universally scorned

5:38

when her role in the bullying of Megan

5:40

became public. But while

5:43

most people familiar with the case believe

5:45

that her behavior toward Megan was

5:47

cruel, there was no clearly

5:50

drawn path to accountability. There

5:52

were no laws that perfectly

5:55

prevented someone else from behaving

5:57

the way that Laurie Drew had on my Space.

6:00

She was taken to court in the case United

6:02

States versus Drew and

6:04

faced felony computer hacking charges.

6:09

Drew was charged in two thousand and eight

6:11

with misdemeanor offenses of

6:14

unauthorized access to my Space.

6:17

This was overturned in two thousand and nine

6:19

and Drew was fully acquitted. Now

6:22

to a new development in the case of the Missouri teenager

6:24

who took her own life after she was harassed

6:27

on the internet. Her family wanted the mother allegedly

6:29

behind the hopes to be prosecuted. That authorities

6:31

hit a roadblock, But now there has been a

6:34

surprising development. What

6:37

kind of reactions to the Drew cose do you

6:39

get through nurse students case?

6:41

Specifically, I

6:43

would say that by

6:46

the time in the semester where I'm introducing the students

6:48

to this case, they've

6:51

already been quite outraged by the

6:54

scope of the CFAA in certain

6:56

other cases. But I think many

6:58

of them are primed to think

7:01

that the prosecutor here was really overreaching.

7:04

They already have Aaron Schwartz's

7:06

story in their minds as

7:09

somebody who was massed downloading

7:11

academic articles from j store

7:15

and was prosecuted and then

7:17

ultimately tragically took his own

7:19

life after

7:22

being charged under the CFA.

7:24

They have him in their minds. They have other

7:27

types of cases in their minds, where you

7:32

know, LinkedIn is trying to stop

7:35

another company from scraping its website

7:38

the public profiles that people have posted

7:41

on LinkedIn, and they're trying to use the CFAA

7:44

for that, and

7:47

so by the time they get to the Drew case,

7:49

I think many of them are already a little

7:51

skeptical of the

7:54

ways in which especially

7:57

sort of corporate actors can

8:00

use a law like the CFAA

8:04

to exert

8:07

forms of power and control

8:10

over websites

8:12

that they create. That's

8:16

Thomas Cardre. He teaches at

8:18

the University of Georgia School of Law,

8:20

and he's an affiliated researcher with

8:23

a Cornell Clinic to End tack

8:25

abuse, and as he just mentioned,

8:28

United States versus Laurie Drew is

8:30

a case that he brings up in his classes.

8:33

What's interesting about the Drew case that, of course, is that

8:36

I think it's a very sympathetic impulse

8:38

to want to use some sort of law here

8:42

to convey

8:44

that what the

8:48

what Laurie Drew and her daughter

8:51

did in this case, not

8:53

only did it have a tragic ending, but

8:56

the act itself was quite

8:58

cruel. And so

9:00

I think there's at least, you know, there's this perception

9:03

that what happened was was

9:07

a very at the very least uncivil

9:09

and mean spirited. And

9:13

so I think the students do

9:16

have a tough time swearing

9:20

their opposition to this very

9:23

far reaching federal law that

9:26

probably makes all of them a cyber

9:28

criminal. In my classroom,

9:32

in every class when they

9:34

drift off for a second and they go on a website

9:37

and they you know, they

9:39

violated term of service without even realizing

9:43

after the break. But we'll learn more

9:45

about the CFAA and

9:47

to find out why this and other laws

9:51

were slippery to hold Lorry Dry to account.

10:01

Essentially, the CFAA, the Computer

10:03

Fraud and Abuse Act, is a federal

10:05

criminal law that

10:09

makes it a crime to access

10:12

a computer without authorization

10:15

or to exceed your authorized access

10:17

on a computer. Now

10:20

what all of those magic words

10:22

mean has been the subject of now

10:25

decades of scholarly

10:28

debate. Different court

10:30

decisions. Many

10:33

different interpretations have been kind of put forward,

10:35

and different cases have kind of tested the boundaries

10:38

of what some of those key terms might

10:40

mean, especially the idea of what it

10:42

means to access a computer

10:45

without authorization or to exceed your authorized

10:47

access. That concept

10:49

of unauthorized access is

10:52

really at the heart of a lot of these disputes

10:55

colloquially to see if it is talked

10:57

about as the federal hacking

10:59

law. But of

11:01

course even what constitutes hacking

11:04

is a kind of disputed, and

11:08

some of the confusion surrounding the interpretation

11:10

of the statue reflects some of those those

11:13

kind of colloquial tensions as

11:16

well. One thing that I just was curious

11:18

about because it is allaw that, unless

11:21

I'm mistaken it, it's been on the books for decades

11:24

now, So has a

11:27

perception changed over the decades

11:30

because of changes in the technology

11:33

or what does

11:35

it mean to have a low of that hold? Absolutely?

11:38

Yeah. So one of the interesting things about the

11:40

CFAA is that I think best

11:42

septions surrounding the laws have

11:45

changed, and the law itself has also

11:47

changed. It's been amended by Congress several

11:49

times since it was initially passed in

11:52

the nineteen eighties, and so we've

11:55

got these kind of two parallel changes that

11:57

are going on, and they're not always syncd

11:59

up. So sometimes I would say public perceptions

12:01

surrounding the law has changed in

12:04

response to a case like

12:06

the law a Drew case, or a situation

12:09

like Aaron Schwartz, one

12:12

of the founders of Reddit, who was famously

12:14

charged under the CFAA. We've

12:17

had other high profile cases more

12:19

recently than those two, but there

12:21

are these kind of moments where there's increased

12:23

public consciousness surrounding the CFAA, usually

12:27

paired with opposition

12:29

to how it's being enforced or interpreted.

12:34

The origin of the CFAA, possibly

12:36

apocryphal, is that President

12:39

Reagan watched war games

12:41

at Camp David. It's that Matthew

12:43

Broderick movie from nineteen eighty three. You

12:46

know it. The only winning move is

12:48

not to play yeah that one.

12:51

Reagan was allegedly so disturbed

12:53

by the hacking depicted in this movie that

12:56

he whipped up legislation that extremely

12:58

broadly outlawed computer

13:01

access without authorization.

13:04

In the summer of twenty twenty one, there

13:06

was a Supreme Court case which narrowed

13:08

the scope of the CIFAA. The

13:11

way that the CIFA was applied

13:13

in the laureatory trial would probably

13:15

be considered obsolete. But

13:18

also I am very very

13:20

obviously not a lawyer, So other

13:23

Thomas Cadree take it from here. But

13:26

I still teach the case to my students because

13:29

I think it really helps to kind of ground the stakes

13:32

of what the Supreme Court was really

13:35

doing in this case last summer

13:37

in saying, well, there's

13:40

this one way that we could read the statute that might

13:42

cover all of these forms of conduct,

13:45

some of which may be harmful

13:48

but maybe not harmful in the way that this statute

13:51

was designed to cover, and other

13:53

of which may not be harmful at all, maybe really innocuous.

13:56

And of course, one of the main things that staid issue in the Drew

13:58

case and in many other cases involved in the CFA

14:01

is one of the violation of terms

14:04

of service or some other form

14:06

of contractual agreement

14:09

or written policy, whether violating

14:12

that kind of a restriction that

14:15

isn't bypassing some sort of technical restraint

14:18

on access to a computer, that is really doing

14:21

something that you're not supposed to be doing under

14:23

some sort of rule that's written down or

14:26

that's conveyed to you in some way or maybe that's implied.

14:30

Those were the cases that always, I think,

14:32

gave judges some of the greatest discomfort

14:35

in saying that the CFA should apply there.

14:38

But some courts and some judges,

14:41

including the judge and the Laurie Drew case, felt

14:43

compelled to reach that conclusion in

14:46

part because the

14:48

terms in the statute to say that you're

14:50

doing something, you're accessing a computer without

14:53

authorization, the statute

14:55

gave no specialized definition

14:57

about what without authorization should mean,

15:00

and so often when judges

15:02

are faced with interpreting a law like that, they

15:05

just look to the ordinary meanings, and we know what

15:07

without authorization means. It's synonymous

15:10

with things like without permission, not

15:12

allowed. And so

15:15

if something is forbidden in a written policy

15:17

and you go ahead and do it anyway, it

15:20

sort of makes sense to talk about that as lacking

15:22

authorization of some kind, lacking permission,

15:25

And so judges, like the judge in the

15:27

Laurie Drew case felt compelled

15:30

to say, well, these actions

15:32

because Laurie Drew

15:35

and her co conspirators, as the

15:37

court puts it, co conspirators here being her

15:40

daughter and her eighteen year old employee.

15:43

The mother's eighteen year old employee. They

15:46

violated various terms of service

15:49

that my Space had laid out, and so they were acting

15:52

without authorization and therefore they violated.

15:55

Therefore they violated the law. And so I still

15:57

teach it to my students because it's a fascinating case

15:59

to kind of show. I think a lot

16:01

of a lot of people, my students included, they

16:04

have some sympathy with

16:06

the idea that operators of websites

16:08

should be able to set certain rules and

16:11

if those get violated, it's

16:13

not just a question of oh, you breached the contract,

16:16

but you did something that violated a

16:18

criminal law, and

16:20

so we should be able to use the criminal

16:22

law to get at those kinds

16:25

of permissionless

16:27

uses of computers. But

16:30

I think the Drew case kind of pushes some

16:32

of those impulses to say, well, if if

16:35

this is allowed, then this is the this is the extent

16:37

that you could go to one question I have about

16:40

this case and then going back to this moment

16:42

in time in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, I

16:46

think a lot of reactions to the story

16:48

of Meganmeyer is that something

16:51

terrible happened and this

16:56

you know, what does justice look

16:58

like in this in this situation,

17:01

what is on the books at

17:03

all, and if the CFA is a

17:05

perfect legislation, and was

17:10

there anything at the time that could

17:12

have been more suitable, or in

17:15

the years since then have

17:17

there been developments to enforced cases

17:20

of what I would say extreme online

17:22

harassment of this nature

17:24

or any nature. At

17:26

the time, there certainly

17:29

weren't as many laws that would apply as

17:32

there are now. And that's one of the reasons

17:34

why I would imagine federal prosecutors

17:36

reached for a law like the CFAA that,

17:41

given its interpretation at the time, was

17:44

something of a capsule, or at least it could

17:46

help fill in the gaps where

17:49

some other laws wouldn't apply. And

17:52

so you might have had certain laws

17:54

that prohibited forms

17:59

of harassment but that didn't

18:02

yet apply to internet based

18:04

harassment. Or you might have had

18:07

uma

18:11

claims that could be brought for intentional infliction

18:13

of emotional distress. That's a taught that

18:15

had existed for a long time, but the

18:18

government can't bring that as a criminal charge.

18:20

That's a private lawsuit that needs to exist

18:22

between people. So you know, Megameier's

18:25

parents, for example, might have been able to sue

18:27

for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

18:31

But actually there are all sorts of very complicated reasons. We

18:33

won't get into about why it's difficult for Paris

18:35

to sue when when something

18:37

like that happens to a child. But anyway,

18:39

that the

18:41

bigger point is that, yes, that's

18:44

one of the reasons why prosecutors

18:46

reached for a law like the CFAA, where

18:50

you can you can bring in. It

18:54

gives a legal basis for our

18:57

sense of moral outrage that something

18:59

bad happened and somebody needs to be held responsible.

19:03

Since the Drew

19:06

decision, which

19:08

ultimately remember right, even though she was convicted,

19:11

it was her conviction was ultimately overturned

19:14

because of her constitutional challenge

19:16

that she raised to her

19:19

conviction. Since

19:21

then, there have been a

19:24

whole slew of cyber bullying

19:27

and harassment and stalking statutes that

19:29

have been passed in many states across the country, including

19:31

one in Missouri, the home state

19:34

where these events kind of mainly

19:36

took place. Missouri passed

19:38

Megan's Law, which was

19:41

a statute designed to

19:43

get at various forms of cyber bullying

19:45

and cyber harassment that

19:50

the terms of the statute certainly seemed much

19:55

they seemed much closer to what

19:57

happened here, right, It's actions

20:00

that are taken with the purpose

20:02

to frighten and intimidate and cause

20:05

emotional distress. There

20:07

are different provisions that apply depending on whether

20:09

the perpetrator is a minor or

20:11

an adult. So laws

20:14

like this have since been passed, but they've also

20:16

been subject to a lot of constitutional challenges

20:18

as well, usually First Amendment challenges

20:21

based on the freedom of speech. So

20:24

courts tend to get let's just say

20:26

a little more skittish when laws

20:30

make it illegal

20:33

to communicate with people

20:36

with the intent to annoy, with

20:39

the intent to m

20:43

yeah, pester, you

20:46

know, if it's with an intent to threaten,

20:48

if it's with an intent to

20:51

harass, Generally

20:54

that's you know, the courts are

20:56

a little less

20:58

likely to strike down those laws as unconstitutional.

21:02

But the story of kind of cyber

21:04

bullying laws across the country has been one of

21:07

a few successes and many failures

21:09

in terms of those laws standing.

21:13

This sort of the wealth being

21:17

being upheld by courts when they when they're

21:19

challenge Yeah, that was

21:22

a really helpful explanation

21:24

there. It raised a question that

21:26

I have now, which is it seems

21:28

like with online harassment legislation

21:31

you have different stakeholders,

21:34

the users, the people,

21:39

the business, the executives

21:42

of a platform, the victims

21:45

of cyber bullying or online

21:47

harassment. How

21:50

do you negotiate I mean, again,

21:52

I imagine it's a very imperfect process. But

21:55

how do you negotiate with these that

21:58

balance between the First Amendment rights

22:01

and the accountability Who

22:03

is responsible for what? And

22:06

how has this process evolved

22:10

over the past couple decades. Yeah,

22:13

it's constantly evolving. It

22:16

is by no means settled. And

22:19

I'll add one additional complication,

22:21

not that we need anymore. We've got enough to be

22:23

getting along with. But law

22:26

is only one possible regulatory

22:29

tool that can be used here to

22:31

address some of these harmful forms

22:34

of conduct communication

22:36

interaction, right that conducted

22:39

through technology. Technology

22:42

itself is another regulatory

22:45

force here. Technology can

22:47

enable and constrain different forms of

22:49

behavior in ways

22:51

that is certainly not a direct analog

22:54

to law, that can be complementary

22:56

to law and sometimes not so complementary to

22:58

law. And there are other regulatory

23:00

forces as well. Right, There can be

23:03

certain like market constraints on some

23:06

of these forms of behavior, and social

23:08

norms are working in the background as

23:10

well to again

23:13

push certain types of behavior enable

23:15

it or constrain it. But technology

23:17

in particular is really important to think

23:19

and talk about in this context because

23:23

your question asked about how do we navigate,

23:25

for example, First Amendment

23:28

rights to free speech or

23:31

just the political value

23:33

of freedom of expression right with

23:37

laws and other forms

23:40

of regulation, including technology that

23:42

might seek to regulate this kind

23:45

of behavior right, And this is a constant

23:47

process of evolution. I would say that

23:51

we see play out right everything

23:53

from when a

23:56

form of resident of the United States gets

23:59

kicked off Twitter, whether that is

24:01

a First Amendment issue, a free

24:03

speech issue, whether those things are one and the

24:05

same. Right they aren't, but they

24:08

often get lumped together q

24:13

the question of online

24:15

harassment by cyber

24:19

mobs, doxing,

24:22

non consensual distribution of intimate

24:25

images, other

24:27

forms of kind of networked harassment. The

24:31

values that are at stake in

24:34

each of those different situations are

24:36

types of regulations that might be appropriate

24:39

to deal with them, the constitutional

24:41

issues at stake in

24:44

some ways, I like to think that, but you know, they

24:46

are all deserving a very distinct treatment

24:49

because they do often raise very

24:51

different questions of how

24:53

to try and mitigate or address some of those

24:56

harms. And yet at the same time, they're all

24:58

intimately connected. Right,

25:00

The types of lines that you draw in one

25:02

context will inevitably at

25:04

least have to be reckoned with in the other context,

25:07

even if they don't directly apply. And

25:09

so if we want Twitter to be able

25:12

to or you know, let's

25:14

use my Space threat since it is still around, if we want

25:16

my Space nowadays to be able to address

25:19

certain forms of networked

25:21

harassment or

25:24

targeted threats that are you know, communicated

25:28

through its platform, that

25:31

has a certain vision of the

25:34

ability of those platforms to kind of govern

25:36

and police their spaces

25:39

that they've created online. That

25:43

might also apply in the context

25:46

of trying to de platform

25:48

somebody or

25:51

remove somebody's ability to engage in

25:53

these kinds of expression, and how

25:55

they go about doing that. Right, Sometimes it's

25:57

going to be a question of law. Sometimes it's going to be a

26:00

question of other forms of regulation that they might

26:02

put in place, but it's it's all pretty connected.

26:05

In this ecosystem. Social

26:08

media at scale is difficult

26:10

to govern. Any proposed

26:12

law that might aim to rid social

26:14

networks of online harassment and

26:16

prevent future laurea orus could

26:19

backfire and countless ways. But

26:22

while online harassment is real. What

26:25

you believe constitutes online harassment

26:28

depends a lot on who you are and

26:31

when I write in this area, and when I teach these

26:33

issues, I can't

26:35

just teach law. I

26:38

have to teach technology as well. I

26:40

have to teach to some extent social

26:43

norms because they're all

26:45

interacting in this space. There

26:48

are occasionally laws that are going to be a

26:51

major motivating factor, but

26:53

often there are going to be other forces that are actually pushing

26:56

some of the key protagonists in this space

26:58

to act in certain ways, to remove

27:01

certain types of content, to

27:03

protect people from certain types of harm.

27:05

Well, it seemed like no on the corporate

27:07

side of MySpace cared what

27:10

the users were doing. In fact, there

27:12

were workers of MySpace who

27:15

were on task to remove objectionable

27:17

content from the social network.

27:21

More on the MySpace content moderators.

27:23

After the break, MySpace

27:34

seemed like a free for all, a place

27:37

where you could post or upload anything,

27:41

and some took advantage of the lax rules.

27:44

There were users who uploaded incredibly

27:47

vile content. I once interviewed,

27:50

very early on in my research time a

27:53

person who had been an

27:55

executive at a digital media company,

27:58

and that person said to me very

28:02

Wiley and sagely,

28:05

if you open a hole on the inner it

28:07

gets filled with shit. And

28:11

that was like, you know,

28:13

like mic drop. So my Space

28:16

opened this hole in the Internet for people to fill

28:18

in with photos

28:20

and imagery. You

28:23

know. There were like also like you know,

28:26

kind of crude computer graphics

28:28

that were part of it too, So you can

28:30

imagine how quickly swastikas

28:33

would have shown up or you know what I mean, just

28:35

whatever crappy thing people could do,

28:38

they took the opportunity to do it. You know. It

28:40

reminds me of like when

28:44

there's a fresh piece

28:47

of sidewalk cement that

28:50

they've put in, you know, and they put some barriers

28:52

around it when they put it down, and then

28:54

in no time people are in there writing on it

28:57

and putting their face in it, like Michael Scott

28:59

in the office, and just doing stuff to it, you

29:01

know. And that's what this is. Like, it

29:03

was like this blank slate and

29:06

then what that's Sarah T Roberts,

29:09

author of Behind the Screen and professor

29:11

at UCLA. MySpace

29:13

was the first social media company at

29:16

massive scale, which meant that things

29:18

like kicking people off the platform for

29:21

say, posting swastika's

29:24

was not an easy process. There's

29:27

no size of labor

29:30

force that you could employ that could have even

29:33

gotten all the material on MySpace, you

29:35

know, much less on some of the platforms

29:38

that are out there now that are just exponential

29:41

in comparison. A lot of Sarah's

29:43

research and writing focuses on

29:46

content moderation. Big

29:48

social media platforms like Facebook

29:50

and YouTube employ massive teams

29:52

of workers, usually content workers,

29:55

to remove photos of violent or

29:57

sexual content that users have uploaded.

30:00

The worst thing you can imagine, well, someone

30:03

has probably tried to get that up on a

30:05

social media platform. At

30:07

some point. Almost every

30:10

major platform thinks

30:13

of content moderation a

30:16

little late, like they think

30:18

of it because some crisis has

30:22

predicated a new conversation within

30:24

the firm like oh, we

30:26

actually have to have some policies, or oh

30:29

my god, I didn't think someone would

30:32

nefariously do this, But here are

30:34

a bunch of people doing this thing with our our

30:37

tooling or our systems, And not

30:40

only is that distasteful

30:42

to us, but maybe it's illegal, you know, in the case

30:44

of circulating child sexual

30:46

abuse material, which people do all the time,

30:49

all the time on social media to this day,

30:52

and it is illegal, right The thing about

30:54

content moderation of social media is

30:58

that it's

31:00

treated as a trade secret.

31:03

It's treated the practices,

31:06

the specifics who

31:08

does what and where and

31:10

exactly how those

31:13

there's no consortium of social

31:15

media companies getting together and being like, hey,

31:17

we all have the same problem. MySpace,

31:20

as the first social media company at

31:23

a massive scale and one that was largely

31:25

image based, was the first

31:27

social network to grapple with the consequences

31:30

of scale. There

31:35

were like a series

31:37

of maybe moral and ethical responsibilities

31:43

that my Space felt, and then there

31:45

were also maybe some potential legal ones

31:48

that kind of came into

31:50

play, and so all of that necessitated

31:56

some gatekeeping

31:59

of some sort. But there

32:03

the firms have a hard time thinking

32:05

about that kind of activity gatekeeping,

32:08

taking material down, enforcing rules,

32:11

thinking about what can't

32:14

be done. They have a hard

32:16

time thinking about that as revenue

32:18

generating. If you were a user who encountered

32:20

some of this file stuff, maybe

32:23

someone left a testimonial with a

32:25

picture of data animals, it wasn't

32:28

clear how to flag this material, and

32:30

it wasn't clear what would happen if you did.

32:33

They often would have had no idea where it was

32:35

going. And I think in many

32:37

cases probably just presumed, oh, I'm sending

32:40

it off to the computer whatever that meant,

32:42

when in fact, you know they were sending it off to people,

32:45

but they were doing from labor

32:47

on the front end of triaging that material

32:49

already. So like maybe at

32:53

one point you had to go through

32:55

a series of menus to find where you would

32:57

report. Now, it's usually the

33:02

convention is like to have that much more

33:04

available to users, like that those buttons,

33:07

the red button or something, I've got to report this, But

33:11

you know, it was a it was a process of like flow

33:14

chart logic where you would find this place

33:17

to report, and then this is the macro category

33:20

of why it's a problem

33:22

because it's violent, or because it's

33:25

inappropriate sexual material, or because

33:27

it's some other kind of thing. I

33:29

mean, I would argue that making

33:32

a better, safer, more comfortable place

33:34

for people ultimately will generate revenue,

33:36

but that's a long that's kind

33:39

of a longitudinal argument for

33:41

companies that want quarterly returns, so

33:43

it's hard to make that case. So

33:46

what happened was, in

33:48

the case of my Space, you know, they

33:50

had to build up a content

33:53

moderation department,

33:56

which meant they also had to create a bunch of policies

33:58

simultaneously. Because the policies

34:01

governed the operations of content moderation,

34:04

executives often rationalize these

34:06

haphazard content moderation workforces

34:09

with haphazard workflows. They

34:12

assume it will all get automated

34:14

eventually, and for those who

34:16

work as content moderators, the

34:19

experience can be traumatizing. Sarah

34:24

talked to moderators from multiple platforms

34:26

for her book, including someone who moderated

34:29

my Space content. She said,

34:31

well, for the three years

34:33

after I worked at my Space,

34:36

if I met someone, I

34:38

wouldn't shake their hand. So I said, can you tell

34:40

me more about what you're saying with it? She

34:42

said, well, I know how

34:44

people are, and people are nasty and

34:47

they're growth, and I don't

34:49

want to touch a stranger's hand because

34:52

I know the stuff they do. So

34:55

this is kind of how she went forward

34:57

in the world after that experience.

35:00

She told me that she had

35:03

coworkers or employees that she

35:05

was worried out unleashing back

35:08

into the world because of the

35:11

harm that they underwent in

35:14

what they were doing and seeing. You

35:16

know. She told me, maybe some of these people started

35:18

out a little bit weird and this job

35:21

just you know, took them to the mat

35:23

psychologically, and she said,

35:26

you know, she often worried about what became

35:29

of those people, where did they end up? And in

35:32

case you're wondering, automating

35:35

content moderation would

35:37

be extremely difficult to do.

35:40

In fact, many of the much

35:42

heralded AI applications depend

35:46

on this kind of labor too. A

35:48

recent Time magazine feature revealed

35:51

that workers in Kenya moderate

35:53

and filter chat GPT content

35:56

for less than two dollars an hour. Does

35:59

it have to be that way? I

36:03

guess companies

36:05

think so for now, um

36:10

and they throw a lot of resources on you

36:12

know, again computationally, but there's

36:15

no getting away from the human the

36:19

human ability to

36:21

discern that is so uniquely

36:26

human. To take all of these

36:28

inputs symbols,

36:31

language, cultural meaning,

36:34

you know, the specificities of a particular

36:36

region in Mexico, you know, for

36:39

example, um, and

36:42

and the political situation

36:44

in that place, and

36:47

having someone who knows intimately

36:50

that area and

36:52

can respond to it like that

36:55

is nuance And it's so it's

36:59

so uniquely human in some ways.

37:02

It's like that discernment and judgment,

37:07

like yes, if it's you know, there's too much

37:09

boob in the photo. Okay, a computer

37:11

can like make a decision about that, Yes,

37:14

But when we bring in all

37:16

of these elements language, culture,

37:19

symbols, politics,

37:25

you know, like regional politics in some case

37:27

very specific religion,

37:30

all of these elements that are so complex

37:33

that people spend entire careers

37:35

studying them or you know whatever, and

37:39

then ask very lowly paid people

37:41

in a completely different part of the world to decide

37:44

about it, or we try to create

37:46

algorithms that can imitate

37:50

those decisions. You know, things fall

37:52

through the cracks, and it's

37:54

a really hard, hard problem

37:57

to solve under the

37:59

current business model social media, which

38:01

says post it and we'll

38:04

sort it out later. My Space is

38:06

still grap billing with content moderation

38:09

because MySpace still exists.

38:11

It is still around, It

38:14

exists as a company, it exists as a

38:16

platform. It collapse, certainly,

38:19

no one I know has used it in a decade

38:21

by people still work there, people post

38:24

on it. What is MySpace now

38:27

in twenty twenty three. In the

38:29

next episode, we're going to explore

38:31

what's left of it. Thanks for listening

38:33

to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace

38:36

and iHeart original podcast Main

38:39

Accounts The Story of MySpace

38:42

is written and hosted by me Joeanna

38:44

McNeil, editing its sound design

38:46

by Mike Coscarelli and Mary

38:48

Do. Original music by Alice

38:51

McCoy, Mixing and mastering by

38:53

Josh Fisher, Research and fact

38:56

checking by Austin Thompson, Jocelyn

38:58

Sears, and Marissa Brown. Show

39:01

logo by Lucy Kntania. Special

39:04

thanks to Ryan Murdoch Grace

39:06

Views at the Head Frasier. Our

39:08

associate producer is Lauren Phillips,

39:10

our senior producer is Mike Coscarelli,

39:13

and our executive producer is Jason

39:15

English. If you're enjoying the show, leave

39:18

us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast

39:20

platform Sadly, my

39:22

MySpace page is no longer around, but

39:25

you can find me on Twitter at Joe mc

39:27

Let us hear your MySpace story aunts

39:30

check out my book lurking main

39:33

accounts. The Story of MySpace

39:36

is a production of iHeart Podcasts.