The Digital Townsquare: Silicon Valley and the Regulation of Online Speech

Overview

Presented by Bloomberg and the First Amendment Coalition and Electronic Frontier Foundation

Trolls, bots, fake news—social media sites have become breeding grounds for misinformation and extremist content. Tech giants are in the middle of a nearly impossible balancing act, with pressure from some to regulate content more strictly, and from others urging them not to restrict free speech.

Since the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, they’re left to decide for themselves what to allow and what to censor. What is the future of free speech up with tech giants policing communications on the Internet? Who will be heard and who won’t? And what can the public do about it?

Panelists:
Moderator: Sarah Frier, Bloomberg social-media reporter
Del Harvey, Vice President of Trust and Safety at Twitter
Renee DiResta, Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation and Trust
Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation
Daphne Keller, director of intermediary liability at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society