MC Weekly Update 4/17: TikTok Boom!

Moderated Content

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

TikTok Corner

• The Montana state legislature passed a statewide TikTok ban that prohibits app stores from making downloads available and bars the company from operating in the state. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte is expected to sign the bill into law, but legal challenges will likely prevent the bill from going into effect early next year. - John Perrino/ Tech Policy Press, Brian Fung/ CNN, David McCabe/ The New York Times, ACLU, SB 419 - An Act Banning TikTok in Montana (.pdf)
• Our colleague Riana Pfefferkorn warns that the legislation is “clearly unconstitutional” and “contrary to the vision of a free and open internet that the US has long promulgated abroad as part of our commitment to democracy.” - Lily Hay Newman/ Wired

Discord had a Week with the Leak

• Discord published a legal blog response to revelations that massive U.S. intelligence leaks stemmed from messages in a small private group on the platform. Don’t share classified documents on Discord, it’s against their terms of service! - Clint Smith/ Discord
• A failure to spot the leaks in private and then niche corners of the web have spurred calls for more counterintelligence monitoring, but that might be the best idea. - Carol E. Lee, Ken Dilanian, Dan De Luce/ NBC News, @drewharwel
• Our colleague Renée DiResta co-authored an analysis that highlights how “the future of counterintelligence will be digitally native.” - Renée DiResta, Jon Askonas/ Foreign Policy

Substack’s (lack of) Content Moderation Plans

• Substack CEO Chris Best just launched a Twitter competitor, but he dodged questions about content moderation during a must-listen episode of the “Decoder” podcast. - Nilay Patel/ The Verge

Twitter Corner

• Elon is still CEO (or maybe his dog, Floki, is)
• In a post that seems like a blast from the past, a new Twitter 2.0 policy will display labels on content with limited visibility for violating a policy and provide a user appeal system. It pains us to say it, but good work! - Twitter Safety
• Musk claims that the government was reading your Twitter DMs. That’s either taken out of context, or something that needs to be looked into as it would violate the law. We’re guessing it’s the former. - Olafimihan Oshin/ The Hill, Matt Young/ Daily Beast, Ari Blaff/ National Review
• But no, it's crazy and a witch hunt for the FTC to be investigating Twitter's privacy practices — this is the implication of the GOP subpoena to Chair Lina Khan this week. - Ryan Tracy/ The Wall Street Journal, Stef W. Kight/ Axios, Alayna Treene, Sara Murray, Zachary Cohen, Annie Grayer/ CNN
• NPR, PBS, and American Public Media have stopped posting on Twitter in protest of misleading government-funded media labels. If Starship is government-sponsored, should there be a giant label on the spaceship? - Sara Fischer/ Axios, Shelly Hagan/ Bloomberg News, David Folkenflik/ NPR, Paul Farhi/ The Washington Post
• Twitter backtracked and agreed to remove content in Brazil that supported recent attacks at schools. - Amanda Audi/ The Brazilian Report

Bot or Not

• Russian fake account operators boast of only being detected 1% of the time, according to recently leaked classified documents. - Joseph Menn/ The Washington Post

Arkansas’ Unusual Definition of Social Media

• Google successfully lobbied to get an exemption for YouTube in an Arkansas law requiring parental consent and age verification to use popular social media, but it’s unclear whether the law actually covers TikTok or Snapchat as lawmakers claim. - Brian Fung/ CNN, Jess Weatherbed/ The Verge, SB 396 - Social Media Safety Act

Legal Corner

• The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Counterman v. Colorado, this week about when sending persistent unwelcome DMs to someone can be criminalized. - Issie Lapowsky/ Fast Company
• In an amicus brief with Genevieve Lakier and Eugene Volokh, Evelyn argues the case has been misunderstood by the parties and the media, and this creates a risk that the Court will accidentally eviscerate a whole bunch of important protections against online stalking. - Supreme Court (.pdf)

Sports Corner

• Alex’s Sacramento Kings had a historic win against the Golden State Warriors in game one of the NBA playoffs first round. All four California NBA teams are still alive! - Kendall Baker/ Axios

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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