The Future of the Internet

In this podcast event held by The Verge: Rapid Response, host Adi Robertson, senior reporter from Verge talks about the future of the internet, privacy and Section 230 with Verge policy editor Russell Brandom.

The duo started off with talking about Section 230 and its impact on Patreon. With regards to the future of the internet, Russell believes that Section 230 matters to Patreon every single minute because we are a platform that has thousands of creators, that has millions of patrons that are constantly communicating with each other and the creators that are creating new art and content works on a regular basis. If we had to proactively take steps to identify or monitor, validate, and verify that content prior to posting, it would be incredibly tedious, effortful and difficult for that platform to exist.

Adi further asked John about the Pact ACT which is known to be moderate, for which Russell feels that transparency reports are not the most controversial thing on earth. It’s something that we all are looking at doing in the future as well at some point in time. Some of the items that are being proposed, like call centers, just sound better on paper than in practice and any lawmaker proposals that are being considered need to make sure that they aren’t basically solving problems that are targeted towards larger companies, and at the same time, that they don’t throw out the baby bathwater in regards to creating a whole new regulatory model which is an approach that is quite a burden.

Russell then goes on talking about the relationship between Section 230 and the First Amendment in the US Constitution that says that it prohibits the government from restricting most forms of speech, which would include many proposals to force tech companies to moderate content. A law that required companies to moderate content based on the political viewpoint it expresses, for example, would likely be struck down as unconstitutional.

While talking about the future of the internet private companies can’t be ignored. They can also create rules to restrict speech if they so choose. This is why Facebook and Twitter ban hate speech, for example, even though it is legally permitted in the United States.

The duo furthermore touched on various topics on privacy laws, Internet safety and security and how democracies and big tech are at war in various geographical spectrums of the world and how the internet can get back to what it used to be in its younger days.