The law that rules the internet lives to see another day

Make Me Smart May 18, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, Jay, you ready? Alright, let’s go. Hell to the yes…

Kimberly Adams 

Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to make me smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal, it is Thursday today. This one is the 18th of May. Thanks to everybody for joining us today. We’re gonna do a little news as we always do, the smile thing as we always do, and then you get the rest of your afternoon or evening or morning, depending on where you’re listening to this back. So news, Ms. Adams. You’re up.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. Supreme Court today putting out some pretty big rulings when it comes to Section 230. So section 230 is the little portion of law… hello Bonz is that section of law that has for, since the creation of social media, basically given that buffer to internet companies that says just because someone posts something on your platform doesn’t mean you as a company are liable for what they post. And that law and that rule has been challenged over and over again over the years. And most recently, in these cases, and it’s two separate cases, one of them targeting Twitter, and the other one targeting Google, with families of people who were killed in ISIS terror attacks who basically are accusing these companies of effectively aiding and abetting terrorism by allowing ISIS to promulgate messages and to recruit people on their platforms. And so today, specifically, in the case against Twitter, the Supreme Court unanimously said that Twitter was not liable in this case, because Twitter didn’t really treat this content any different than the rest of the content on its platform. It didn’t amplify it. There wasn’t a direct link between Twitter’s actions as a company and the fact that these terrorists, specific terrorist attack happened. And then on the Google case, they basically said, “Well, based on our ruling, just now, you are going to kick that back to the lower court to say, you know, we’re not going to pay, we’re not going to rule on this because given what we just said about Twitter, you can, you know, interpret that. We’re not going to do anything.” But the court was very, very careful to say that it was a narrow ruling in these cases, and that they weren’t saying that Section 230 gives, you know, carte blanche for these companies to avoid all liabilities. And the court definitely has made it abundantly clear that they think Congress needs to take another look at this because this was, you know, guidance written before the internet that we know and love today, and all of the different ways that the platform’s can be used. And so it’s just another example of our laws and regulations just being completely out of step with modern technology, and the court saying, “we’re not we’re not going there here, but we might later.” Why does this matter for the rest of us? The way that these platforms are being utilized, especially given all these new AI tools that are just flooding the space, we’re going to see more misinformation, we’re going to see more targeted content, it’s going to be a lot easier for casual users and malicious users to put forth content on platforms that looks real, that can be really damaging to people, but that isn’t real. And the platforms are not going to be liable for it in all likelihood, unless Congress changes the law. And the court is saying “we’re not stepping in here.”

Kai Ryssdal 

Right and see also the hearings this week on Capitol Hill with Sam Altman, the head of a company that does Chat GPT. Open AI, or is that the name of the company? Who said, this is the guy who is making a business out of this. He said, “When this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.” So Congress has some work to do, honestly.

Kimberly Adams 

And speaking of open AI today, you can now get the ChatGPT app on your iPhone. I downloaded it today and played around with it a little bit. It’s the number two app on the iTunes store, right below TikTok, which Montana has officially now banned. So much technology news today. And already some TikTok creators have countersued the state of Montana saying it’s a violation of their free speech. And the tech industry really doesn’t want these sort of individual bans on apps. But Open AI, the Chat GPT app is now available on iPhones. And I think it’s going to be available on Android coming up. And I think that’s going to be the threshold where a lot of people who might not have gone for it on the website might be a little bit more comfortable downloading an app and playing around with it. And so it’ll be interesting to see what now. And one of the first warnings that gave you when I was signing up. So it wanted my email, it wanted a real phone number, not my little fake VoIP number, did let me do that. And it said, you know, be aware that whatever you put in here might be used to train our language models. So we’re just, we’re just making it smarter. Every one of us, we’re making it smarter. I guess that’s a point… I was about to say, our podcast is good for making AI smarter too. Yay. All right, what do you got?

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, so I’ve got two. One was kind of, yeah, we saw this coming. The other one was kind of like totally… (drops something) Oops, sorry. Are we still there? Am I still there? Yes, we’re here because I just kicked the meraki right over holy cow. All right, well, so so Steven Skullr, or Ian Adams, if you’re listening to this podcast, everything’s fine. Anyway, so two items. Number one, The Walt Disney Company and the state of Florida, specifically, Governor DeSantis have been in in there’s been some tension, shall we say. With the don’t say gay bill, between the Disney having, you know, jurisdiction over its own special tax zone there… I mean, there’s been just all kinds of stuff going on. And DeSantis so far, has been generally speaking, doing whatever the heck he wants. Well, today, Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney did whatever the heck he wants and he pulled out an almost $1 billion project in Florida that was expected to bring 2,000 jobs to that state because, and this is Iger, he said he didn’t like business conditions. So are you the one who said the other day, it’s the second part of blankety blank and find out.

Kimberly Adams 

Mhm yes. That’s what I said.

Kai Ryssdal 

So Governor DeSantis has blankety blanked and now he’s finding out. And Disney is despite all of its billions of dollars in investment in the state of Florida, clearly feels no further need to engage in a business sense with the current governor. And it’s just… this is really interesting. DeSantis gets to do what he does. And Disney as a company gets to do what it wants. So I don’t know.

Kimberly Adams 

Did you see Gavin Newsom’s response?

Kai Ryssdal 

No, what did he say?

Kimberly Adams 

Newsom was I’m gonna have to find the actual tweet, but he is basically like, “we’re happy to have your business here in the state of California, where our laws align with your company values” or something like that. And yeah, that was, yeah, that was yeah. So you know.

Kai Ryssdal 

More to come in that one. I’m, I’m very, very sure. Here’s the other one. And this one just kind of got me in boy, tax laws are stupid. So I scroll through the Washington Post every day to you know, just sort of see what’s going on and check in on policy and this and that. And this thing caught my eye, which kind of blew me away. So Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and another senator whose name I forget, I apologize Senator, if you’re listening this podcast… have introduced a bill to get rid of penalties and interest payments for Americans who are unlawfully detained overseas. And as part of the press release for that bill, this fact was in Washington Post today. That Jason Rezaian, who we’ve had on this podcast, who was imprisoned in Iran for 500 and something days… when he came back, he had 10 or 10s of 1000s of dollars worth rather of interest, fines and penalties from the Internal Revenue Service because he couldn’t pay because he was being held in Iran. And he went to the IRS and he said, “I was in an Iranian prison.” And the IRS apparently said, “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the computer codes and the ability to wipe away this debt.” And so Rezaian had to pay 1000s of dollars. He got some of it taken care of, but he had to pay 1000s of dollars, because the IRS didn’t know what to do. Which reminded me of a relatively funny but kind of not so funny in retrospect anecdote from Apollo 13, a great movie. But there’s a there’s a line or two in that movie, where one of the astronauts asks somebody on the ground to talk to somebody at the Internal Revenue Service because they hadn’t filed their taxes yet. I think it was Jack Swigert actually, the Lunar Module Pilot, or maybe the command module pilot actually who asked them to get a hold of the IRS because this was April 1960, 1970 whatever it was. 70, 71? And taxes were due. And they hadn’t talked to the IRS. So tax laws are stupid. That’s all I’m saying. Tax laws are stupid. That’s it. That’s all I got.

Kimberly Adams 

And yet vitally important at this particular juncture in the American economy, because those tax revenues are awfully crucial to avoid the looming debt ceiling at this particular juncture.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know. Unbelievable.

Kimberly Adams 

(Transition music plays ) I guess he’s done with us. Jay’s like “and moving on.” Alright, why don’t you go first Kai.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, I’ll go first. So this one is yesterday, I think. So if you’re a fan of history and a fan of shipwrecks, which I kind of am a little bit, the news out of the North Atlantic as it were, is kind of amazing. There has been a full digital scan of the Titanic, the wreckage of the Titanic done. And you know, if you’ve ever seen videos of what it’s like two and a half miles under the Atlantic Ocean, it’s dark and murky, and you can’t really see sort of the whole perspective. So they spent like months, this crew did, last summer in the North Atlantic scanning the entire thing and the debris field so you can get the whole ship. It’s not an artist’s conception, it’s actually a digital scan. They never touched the ship. They respected the fact that it’s a, that it’s a grave, basically. But they scan the whole thing and they scan it down to the millimeter. You can see rivets, you can see serial numbers on propellers. We’re gonna put this on the show page. It’s crazy cool. It’s crazy cool. That’s all I got.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I was looking at some of the photos and it’s, it’s pretty wild you can see sort of how the ship, the how twisted it is in some places, but how perfectly intact it is and others which gives you indications about sort of how it fell into the ocean. And it’s just like so far down in in the ocean. And, you know, it’s really, it’s really tragic. I was a couple let’s see, I guess it was about a month ago, there was… I’m sorry, the cat has jumped on my lap and is sticking his face directly into the mic in case you hear purring.

Kai Ryssdal 

This is a very noisy random podcast. I’m smashing the meraki. You got a cat going on. My dogs are barking. Oh my goodness.

Kimberly Adams 

In my neighborhood here in DC, there’s actually a memorial for the Titanic, specifically dedicated to the men on the Titanic who gave their lives so that women and children could get on to the lifeboats. And this particular statue used to stand over by where the Kennedy Center is now. But when they built the Kennedy Center, they moved it into my neighborhood. And apparently when they were raising money for the statue, it was so, such a popular fundraiser at the time that they had to limit everyone’s donations to $1 at at a time. And every year here in DC, people meet up at this memorial on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic for like a moment of silence to recognize the people who who died in that shipwreck. And so it’s like little tiny little moment of DC history or information. Not exactly smiley, but that was a super cool story. And the photos are really astonishing. And wow, science and technology. Okay, mine is way more just, gotta love dogs. And particularly I know we were talking the other day about Golden Retrievers and how just unconditional love they are. So if Golden Retrievers are unconditional love, Huskies are unconditional drama. And case in point, a story in the Huffington Post highlighting a Facebook post where an Alabama Animal Shelter had to literally adjust its hours on Tuesday because when they showed up in the morning, there was a Husky that had broken out and was just sitting there at the door waiting for them surrounded by just chaos. Because the Husky had broken out, trashed the entire inside… I’m talking like scratched down blinds, knocked over computer monitors, like thrown stuff around and broken out to other dogs. And there’s this amazing photo of the, the shelter’s director who showed up first and he’s standing at you know, outside the door and you can see his reflection in the door of the shelter and the Husky’s on the other side surrounded by just like all of this trash, waiting for people to come. And you can see the shelter’s director standing in the reflection just smoking a cigarette like “Okay here we go.”

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s great. Oh my.

Kimberly Adams 

Luckily, since since then, this this particularly active Husky has been adopted by a very experienced family that knows how to deal with Huskies and at least one of the other accomplices has been has been adopted. Huskies are such beautiful dogs, but I don’t think I could. I could never. That’s that’s a lotta energy.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s a lot of dog. It’s a lot of dog. Oh my goodness. All right. So I believe with that we are done. Back tomorrow for economics on tap, we’ll do the YouTube livestream thing. 6:30 Eastern, 3:30 Pacific. More news, a game and some drinks.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, and speaking of drinks, if you want to get a sneak peek at what we’ll be having for happy hour tomorrow, or if you’re just looking for some interesting cocktail recipes and the occasional beer recommendation, you can check out our make me smart newsletter. That’s where Kai and I are sharing some of our favorite drinks and what we’re thinking about for Friday. You can sign up at marketplace.org/newsletters.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ahhh Jay is in charge. Sneaking up the theme song. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Jay Siebold. Our intern is Antonio Barreras.

Kimberly Adams 

Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital which includes On-Demand as we learned.