MC Weekly Update 3/6: A "Comprehensive" Episode

Moderated Content

Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• TikTok bans accelerated with Canada and the EU’s diplomatic arm joining U.S. states and other government agencies in banning the app from devices and networks as the White House set a 30 day deadline for federal agencies to block and remove TikTok. - Christopher Nardi/ National Post, Paul Vieira/ The Wall Street Journal, Stuart Lau, Laurens Cerulus/ Politico, David Shepardson/ Reuters
  • The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill to give the president authority to ban TikTok nationwide, moving the legislation to the House floor on a party-line vote. Will someone think of the First Amendment? - Brendan Bordelon/ Politico, Amanda Silberling/ TechCrunch, Rebecca Klar/ The Hill
• TikTok will introduce a “screen time limit” that is not really a screen time limit. - Hope King/ Axios, Sheila Dang/ Reuters, Cormac Keenan/ TikTok
• Twitter has a new violent speech policy. It’s a lot like the old policy. Content moderation is hard. - Mitchell Clark/ The Verge, Karissa Bell/ Engadget, @TwitterSafety
• Meta said it would make changes to its controversial cross-check program, which provides additional protections before content is removed for certain high-profile accounts, in response to Oversight Board recommendations. - Rebecca Klar/ The Hill, Nick Pickles/ Meta, @OversightBoard
• The FTC published a blog warning industry against making false claims as part of the “AI hype” around chatbots and other products. - Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post, Michael Atleson/ Federal Trade Commission
• Local law enforcement agencies around the country are looking to get information from social media companies to enforce abortion bans. Blaming the social media companies, however, is not the answer as this article making the rounds suggests. - Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert/ Insider
• A Texas Republican wants to block websites with information about getting an abortion pill or procedure. - Jon Brodkin/ Ars Technica
• Google released a civil rights audit with little fanfare and managing not to say much. Kudos to the Washington Post for making sure it didn’t fly under the radar, but it shows the risk of audits becoming a box-ticking exercise. - Cristiano Lima, Gerrit De Vynck/ The Washington Post

Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.

Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.

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