This panel discussion was held on Wednesday, December 1, 2021 at 12:30 p.m. EST
Social media platforms are conduits for user-generated content, offering essentially infinite bandwidth to target specific audiences with content that is much less moderated than traditional media organizations’ editorial boards. Instead, these platforms use complex algorithms, often exposing users to more radical posts than they may have sought out on their own. How can truth, disinformation and censorship be governed in the online world?
The Middlebury College Center for Careers and Internships and Middlebury in DC, in collaboration with the Middlebury Professional Network, bring you a discussion among professionals who have a variety of vantage points on governments’ and private enterprises’ roles in governing internet content.
The panelists include:
- Host: Ryan Kellett ’09, Vice President of Audience at Axios
- Eric Einhorn P’25, P’21, Chief of Staff, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)
- Eli Sugarman ’02, Director of Content, Oversight Board
The content segments below indicate the approximate time marks in the recording during which the specific content is discussed.
The segments include:
- Session introduction (0:00 to 2:43)
- Framing of the challenge with Senate Hearing video: mime or sophisticated understanding of finsta (“fake Instagram”) (2:48 to 7:18)
- Governance primer on regulation of content, e.g., section 230 and congresses intentions historically to today (7:18 to 13:11)
- Governance challenges of today and in the future (13:20 to 17:48)
- Government regulation of content vs self-regulation vs third party oversight using something like Facebook’s Oversight Board (17:49 to 31:38)
- What other countries are doing in regulating online activity/content and possible learnings for the U.S. to apply (31:49 to 40:02)
- Student Q&A (40:09 to 58:43)