MC Weekly Update 10/30: Warning, This Podcast Might Be Highly Addictive
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Stanford’s Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:

• President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence) today. The sweeping EO includes standards setting for generative AI watermarking and red teaming. It will also set rules to mitigate privacy and bias risks before AI systems can be used by federal officials. - Maria Curi, Ashley Gold/ Axios), Mohar Chatterjee, Rebecca Kern/ Politico), Mohar Chatterjee/ Politico), John D. McKinnon, Sabrina Siddiqui, Dustin Volz/ The Wall Street Journal), Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima/ The Washington Post)

• The EO is a good step forward, but the measures are limited in power without congressional action.

• App store rules are restricting access to some Hamas-affiliated channels on Telegram where content moderation action is rare, allowing terrorist organizations to share messaging. The restrictions are inconsistent, with some channels only blocked on the Google Play store app in some cases. - Clare Duffy, Brian Fung/ CNN), Kevin Collier/ NBC News), Wes Davis/ The Verge)

• It’s another reminder of the power of content moderation rules in the stack — at the infrastructure or distributor level, like app stores.

X-Twitter Corner

• It’s been one year since Elon Musk flipped the bird (and struggled to carry a sink into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters). Our original episode on this, “Musk Flips the Bird),” held up pretty well — especially the prediction that this would be very good news for Mark Zuckerberg.

Legal Corner

• It’s not all good news for Zuck though. The state attorneys general of 41 states and D.C. sued Meta, alleging Instagram and Facebook harm kids with addictive features and privacy violations. - Barbara Ortutay/ Associated Press), Lauren Feiner/ CNBC), Rebecca Kern/ Politico), Cecilia Kang, Natasha Singer/ The New York Times), Cristiano Lima, Naomi Nix/ The Washington Post), Daphne Keller/ @daphnehk)

• This is a relatively novel legal argument, and it appears to be an uphill battle to sue for design harms and not content. Still, the alleged privacy violations could hold up and the political posturing alone may prove to be a winner in the multi-pronged legal, policy, and regulatory battle.

• The king got involved and we can’t ignore the UK Online Safety Bill Act anymore. The legislation received royal assent, becoming law last week. - Imran Rahman-Jones, Chris Vallance/ BBC News), Jon Porter/ The Verge), Peter Guest/ Wired)

• Alex and Stanford Internet Observatory graduate researcher Sara Shah published a guide) on trust and safety issues in the Fediverse with tips for running a Mastodon instance.

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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