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00:00From your perspective, what at the moment would be wrong with trying to pick apart section 230 as it stands? Well, I think it's important to differentiate between what Section 2 30 does, which is really provide a kind of a liability routing mechanism. It means that if I go onto Facebook and I say, Bob's a crook, Bob can sue me for defamation, but he can't sue Facebook. And the reason why we have Section 230 is to ensure that Facebook can continue to operate, allow those user comments. But that's not really the heart of what was being considered. A day was being considered a day is when you go on to say, Spotify and song as recommended or you put something in your Amazon shopping cart and another product is recommended. Or if you go to Google search results and you get those recommendations. Do those recommendations algorithmically driven? Did those have 230 protection? That's really what the court was grappling with today. And I think it was a lot of discussion about whether it's possible to separate those algorithmic recommendations from the content itself and from the value that those services provide to consumers in the first place. And the Chamber of Progress is essentially a trade group. Right. And I think it's worth pointing out that you represent the technology companies. I would say that's fair. But one of the things I continually hair out here in Silicon Valley at least is actually section 230 protects the user. And that doesn't seem to be a point of consideration right now. I think that's absolutely right. In actually even I would rewind a step, which is I think that the fact is if Truth Section 230 were reformed, the reality is that the big companies, the Googles and the Facebook, would probably be okay because they have armies of lawyers. They could, you know, tie up these cases in litigation. It's a lot of times the small services clubhouse emerged on the scene during the pandemic. And Section 230 is really critical for a site like that because it can start providing user generated content and have not have to worry about liability protection. That's a point that was made in court today. But I agree with you, it also protects the users. And I think this is not well misunderstood because section 230 becomes almost a political football, particularly with respect to Democrats and Republicans using it as a little bit of a tool. But if you got rid of that liability protection, I think he would give you would force platforms to choose between being, say, Disneyland. Right. Which is sort of a sanitized environment where nothing was allowed or a wasteland, where services were disincentives, ISE to look for that content. And that was also a point that came up in court today. I wanted the justices made the point that the panel of justices are not the sort of definitive experts on the Internet and that that comment elicited a laugh from those in attendance. You represent the tech companies. Is it the Supreme Court that should be considering this? Is it even the right place to have this conversation? I have to say, I I and I think a lot of others went in today pretty nervous about why the Supreme Court would be taking this case, whether it was a sign that they were prepared to blow up Section 230 walking out of the arguments. Frankly, I think what I heard was a lot of acknowledgment from justices about the benefits of Section 2 30 for the economy, for user generated content platforms, for consumers. And so I don't think that's as likely now as I know as I was worried about at the beginning of the day. It's still a possibility that they could say, well, OK, maybe certain types of content recommendations don't have as much protection. And I do think that could have downstream stakes, not just for the big companies, but for small companies and for consumers as well. Certain types. Like what, Adam? Well, sir, it's as I said, I think people section to 30 is not even one of things that it's a pro competition law. Right. Because it again, allows new social networks to emerge. Right. And not have to have the armies of lawyers like Facebook and Google do. That's really important. But I also think the fact that this the issue here was about algorithmic recommendations. And when you saw the justices grappling with what's it's really hard to look at a service like Google search and say like, OK, it's all algorithmic recommendations. Right. One of the things there's a lot of discussion about what's neutrality. There's a there's a case where there was a statement saying I've applied neutrality, even justice course, which would be someone who is somewhat critical of 60 to 30, said, you know what, I really think about it. No algorithm is neutral. All algorithms are trying to highlight and privilege certain types of content, maybe relevant content, maybe high quality content. And so it's really hard to say that there should be any kind of neutrality, a test applied to the algorithms. And I think it was really interesting to see the Supreme Court kind of grapple real time with a lot of these concepts. I mean, push us towards tomorrow, because then it's Twitter's time in the spotlight. And of course, that is more around how broadly you can read into the anti-terrorism act in some way. This, again, sadly, involves death by terrorism. But Twitter's role and not taking down some content. Is this some sort of way in which the overall Supreme Court might find an off ramp in some way? Well, Emily talked about that, a lot of people have speculated about that, and I think that is a very strong possibility. I think one of the things that's interesting about the arguments that they are on this case, were you wondered why the Supreme Court took this case, right? Because, you know, you even think, again, there were a lot of people who thought, well, there were justices like Justice Thomas who were pretty critical, who basically have said in previous decisions will bring us more to 30 cases because we kind of want to take a fresh look at 230. But by the tenor of their questions, many of those conservative justices were sort of asking, why are we even here? And so I do think it was really an interesting signal of I think the justices interest in looking at two thirty. They spent three hours on this. As Emily said, that's really unusual. It's about twice as long as they were supposed to spend. I don't think tomorrow's case will be quite it will will be quite as lengthy because it's a much narrower statute, this anti-terrorism statute. That's a question. And I think a much narrower question.

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Social Media Faces Test at Top Court

Chamber Of Progress Founder & CEO Adam Kovacevich joins Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde to discuss the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as the Supreme Court starts hearing oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google. (Source: Bloomberg)

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