So gradually this category of adult nudity became, first of all, untenable as an absolute category. Or, in a bunch of cultures, adult nudity and breasts are a perfectly normal, accepted, celebrated kind of expression. Like people raising awareness about breast cancer, or people breastfeeding that shouldn’t be stigmatized. And then people would go, Hold on, you’re removing a whole bunch of things that have societal value. It was like, “If there’s boobs, take it down.” That was the dominant approach for a while.
The way that it started was fairly unsophisticated. It is a bit of technical, and so to break it down, let’s take, for example, adult nudity. Can you give an example of a kind of content moderation decision that embodies that way of looking at it?ĮD: Yeah, so this is really important, because it’s one of the defining features of American free speech jurisprudence that the rest of the world has like looked at and gone, Mmm, not so much. GE: One point you make is that, in this First Amendment–style approach, the distinctions are more categorical. Gilad Edelman interviews Evelyn Douek, a Harvard doctoral student who has written an article in the Columbia Law Review pointing out how the pandemic dismantled the social networks’ claims to be free speech havens: On social media, American-style free speech is dead You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.Ī selection of 9 links for you. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. CC-licensed photo by Kristoffer Trolle on Flickr. The US CDC won’t tell you, but based on what we know, wearing masks while outdoors has probably never been necessary throughout the pandemic.