I love this honesty from Justice Kagan, who is expressing extreme skepticism on the suggestion that the court ought to strip protection from companies operating on the internet.
“Isn’t that something for Congress, not the court?”
Correction: The line in question was from Justice Kagan, not Justice Sotomayor, as originally attributed.
Justice Sotomayor asks:
If you write an algorithm for someone that in its structure ensures the discrminiation between people, a dating app, for example. … someone says “i’m going to create an algorithm that inherently discriminates against people.” you would say that internet provider is discriminating, correct?
Apparently this stumped the plaintiffs, who declared this hypothetical too abstract to respond to. Strange, considering the YouTube algorithm is probably more complicated than this scenario.
That’s it. That’s the whole post.
Justice Thomas sanely rebuts the plaintiff’s argument that simply providing a phone number of a terrorist in a search result constitutes “aiding and abetting” an enemy. Even the creation of URLs seems up for grabs here, according to plaintiffs. Talk about blowing up the internet!
Justice Sotomayor asks a pointed question about whether recommending content is the same as helping people connect via chatrooms — basically an interrogation of whether algorithms, intentionally, connect people with radicals. This question will likely be explored in more detail in tomorrow’s case. Here’s Justice Sotomayor:
I can really see that an internet provider who was in cahoots with ISIS provided them with an algorithm that would take anybody in the world and find them for them, and do recruiting of people by showing them other videos that would lead them to ISIS, that’s an intentional act, and I could see 230 not going that far. The question is, how do you get yourself from a neutral algorithm to an aiding and abetting? An intent, knowledge… there has to be some intent to aid and abet.
Asking about whether the algorithm is the same for cooking videos as all other content, Justice Thomas is first up in today’s questioning. A long-silent member of the Supreme Court, The New York Times pointed out in 2021 that he has become far more vocal.
Rarely has a US president made such a risky trek. The details of the journey are fascinating, and you can read more about it in this detailed report from The New York Times.
The gambit is especially wild in an era where few people enjoy privacy from phone cameras and other prying eyes.
[The New York Times]
I’m glad that The Washington Post’s Editorial Board is recognizing the intimidation, harassment, and damage that has been done especially toward female journalists in our industry. But notably absent from this opinion is any institutional responsibility to defend colleagues and allies; instead, it blames Twitter for the abuses.
Yes, Twitter and every platform should do better. But the buck stops with newsrooms, which ought to stand up for their reporters against bad faith attacks from all directions.
This problem is unlikely to be solved by tech companies. Journalists deserve to be protected by the media companies that publish their hard work.
[Washington Post]
This is a fascinating report from Justine about scientists working to make useful items out of fake Moon dirt (lunar regolith). I first learned about regolith while mining it in the amazing Klei game Oxygen Not Included,
Now, companies are competing to prove they can make things like solar cells from the harsh raw materials on the orb orbiting the Earth. It’s a very cool challenge, even if human attempts at creating fake lunar dirt have had some dubious results.
Elon Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to promote free speech, but as it turns out, his own speech is getting an exclusive premium.
The whole “free speech” myth of Musk buying Twitter has already been definitively refuted, but this latest development is the final nail in that coffin: this guy just wants everyone to see how funny and popular he is, despite all evidence to the contrary. All of this could have been avoided if Musk just admitted he wanted to buy Twitter because he loves to post.
