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SPEAKER_18: Crack cocaine plagued the United States for more than a decade. This week on Notes from America author Donovan Ramsey explains how the myths of crack prolonged a disastrous era and shaped millions of lives. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_16: Hey folks, just a quick warning before we get started. This episode contains some swear words as well as some frank discussions about sex and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. Oh wait, you're listening to Radiolab. From WNYC.
SPEAKER_06: Come on, come on. Help the assassin for ass. Hello, hello, hello. Hey. Lovely. Hey, this is Radiolab and I'm Simon Adler sitting in for Lulu and Latif this week. Yeah, how do you feel that the B team has been sent in for this? Yeah, they're like, um, you know, the understudy of the understudy was out today, so you're
SPEAKER_05: going to have to take Simon. So you're going to have to take just the
SPEAKER_06: uh, the usher. Because a while back, our reporter producer Rachel Cusick, she sat me down in the studio to tell me a story about both how beautiful we humans are, but also just how down right awful we can be and the tricky business of deciding who should be held responsible when that ugly part of us shows.
SPEAKER_02: Let's hit it. So, okay, so we are going to start on a stoop
SPEAKER_05: in Harlem. Over in West Harlem in what, 2016? Yeah, 2016.
SPEAKER_20: With this guy? Matthew Herrick. Wait, do you go by Matt or Matthew? Most people call me Matthew.
SPEAKER_20: Cool. At the time, Matthew had recently moved from LA to New York City.
SPEAKER_20: It was definitely, you know, a punch to the face, if you will.
SPEAKER_05: Trading palm trees and sunshine for a smelly city stoop. Yeah. Anyway. I think it was around October, mid-October. I was sitting on my stairs, just like in the
SPEAKER_20: front of my building. What's this guy look like? Do we know?
SPEAKER_05: Like tall, muscular, salt and pepper hair nowadays. I think probably just pepper back in the day. I was having a cigarette and a gentleman walked
SPEAKER_20: up and stopped and just stood in front of me. And you know, it's New York, so you have a lot of fucking weirdos. So I just figured it was just some weirdo being weird. Like whatever. I'm just going to ignore them. Yeah. Like, it's all good. So I'm like kind of avoiding eye contact, but then I realized that they're standing there for, you know, an extended period of time. So I like looked up.
SPEAKER_05: And it's someone that he doesn't know, someone that he doesn't recognize. But this guy. He went, hey, Matt. And I was like, hi. Like, how the hell do you know my name? And he says,
SPEAKER_20: it's so-and-so. We were talking on Grindr. Grindr, dating app used primarily by gay men.
SPEAKER_05: And so this stranger tilts his phone towards Matthew and he's like, look.
SPEAKER_20: And it's a profile on the app with, you know, a picture of me. And I was like, that's not possible. Like that is a photo of me. But that's not me. That is not a profile that
SPEAKER_05: I made. I'm not on Grindr, you know? So he looks up at this guy. Like, I don't know how
SPEAKER_20: to explain this. I don't know who you're talking to. I'm very confused right now. Like, you need to leave. And I got up and I went inside and I remember I looked at my roommate, Michael, and I was like, someone just showed up looking for me from Grindr. Like, how weird is that? Yeah. Little did I know.
SPEAKER_05: Because after that, another guy came and then another.
SPEAKER_20: People started showing up. It just keeps happening.
SPEAKER_20: Sometimes I would be home or sometimes I'd be leaving the building and there'd be people outside. Each time a different man.
SPEAKER_05: You know, one or two a week. All saying the same thing. Like, we were talking
SPEAKER_05: on Grindr. Let's have sex. So he reports the profile to Grindr, got the like automatic reply. We'll get back to you soon or whatever the hell it said.
SPEAKER_05: But he doesn't actually hear back from anyone at the company. And meanwhile, people were
SPEAKER_20: showing up to my home in large volumes and like, I'm living my life. Leave me alone. Can I get a break? And finally one night he's annoyed. He's fed
SPEAKER_05: up. I stood up and he said, fuck this.
SPEAKER_05: And he decides he is going to get to the bottom of this.
SPEAKER_20: Yeah. So I downloaded Grindr. He makes a profile.
SPEAKER_20: Without a photo. And then logs on. And I saw the fake profile of myself. Very close proximity.
SPEAKER_05: Grindr actually has this map feature where you can see where other people are who are on Grindr. And this person who had Matthew's name and his photo is like right there. Right outside his apartment. So I walked outside and I remember looking
SPEAKER_20: down the street and he took off running. And I went and chased after him.
SPEAKER_05: And while he's running, Matthew is looking at the Grindr app, scanning for the fake him.
SPEAKER_20: Because you can refresh it and it'll tell you how far that person is away.
SPEAKER_05: And this fake Matthew, he was like 20 feet away.
SPEAKER_20: So I'm walking along Morningside Park, refreshed the app. And then 15. I was walking and I was walking. Then 10. And I remember I looked down and I was like, he's five feet away. How is he five feet away?
SPEAKER_20: And I stood on the park bench and I looked over the fence and laying face down in the bushes was JC. His ex, JC.
SPEAKER_20: And I screamed, I fucking caught you. I caught you. I knew it was you.
SPEAKER_05: JC started yelling back at him. Matthew ran away. JC chased him. The cops got called. It was a mess.
SPEAKER_06: Ugh. So an ex lover made a fake profile for the purpose of terrorizing him?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Matthew and this guy JC had started dating not long after Matthew arrived in the city.
SPEAKER_20: And we dated for, I want to say eight to 10 months.
SPEAKER_05: You saw some little red flags and ended things. And that's when these people started coming. I think once Matthew broke up with him, he was like, if you don't want to date me, then like screw you. I'll make your life a living hell. Anyhow, once he knew it was JC, I ended up getting an order of protection against him.
SPEAKER_05: And so JC couldn't go anywhere near him in real life. But an order of protection doesn't really apply when JC is sending other people to his store. There was no ramifications for what he was
SPEAKER_20: doing. There wasn't anything the courts or the cops
SPEAKER_05: could do about it. So Matthew contacts Grindr again and is like, this is the guy. Shut him down, please. But still, nothing. No acknowledgement.
SPEAKER_05: We reached out to Grindr for comment. Didn't hear back. Anyhow, with Grindr doing nothing, JC went on the offensive. He actually made multiple fake Matthew profiles. There were two to three existing on the platform.
SPEAKER_20: And that's when, you know, the gay zombies started coming for me.
SPEAKER_05: Do you call them gay zombies? Yeah, it's because it's like everyone's like
SPEAKER_20: mad. Just like must get sex now.
SPEAKER_20: Yeah. I would leave at six o'clock in the morning to walk my dog. There would be somebody outside waiting for me. I would come home at night, 1130, 12 o'clock at night. There'd be somebody waiting for me. Literally every single day of my life.
SPEAKER_05: And it wasn't just a lot of awkward but harmless encounters because these profiles said I was
SPEAKER_20: looking for rape fantasies. Matthew would try to explain the situation
SPEAKER_05: to people calmly. But then the profiles were telling these individuals
SPEAKER_20: it was part of my turn on. So to stay and then approach me again.
SPEAKER_05: Just diabolical. Yeah. And so again, he tries reporting the profiles. I had friends reporting profiles, family reporting
SPEAKER_20: profiles, sending emails to the company. Again, nothing. I was slammed against the wall. Oh my God. There was someone who broke into my building and physically assaulted my roommate were trying to get to me. He goes to the cops. File a police report and they turned me away. They were like, we don't understand. I don't think anybody really could grasp what I was actually talking about.
SPEAKER_05: JC started making profiles that promised people crystal meth and said they should show up at the restaurant where Matthew worked. I was taking an order at a fucking table.
SPEAKER_20: And I remember this guy is tapping on my shoulder saying my name high out of his mind. And I'm looking at the people that are sitting down and they're looking back up at me and they're like, what is going on? And my eyes are just welling up with tears because I'm like, Oh my God. And I'm like, how do you want your burger cooked? You know what I mean? And this went on for months.
SPEAKER_05: Jesus. Did you hate hearing your name at that point in your life? Oh, I hated it. I hated everything about existing.
SPEAKER_20: I hated it all. Like I remember sitting there saying to myself, like I either want to fucking blow my brains out or throw myself off a building. And then one day Matthew's talking to his
SPEAKER_05: lawyer, my family court lawyer, she said, Hey, there's this woman named Carrie Goldberg.
SPEAKER_20: She might be able to help you. And at that time I was so just beat to a pulp. I just heard the word help. And I was like, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So he takes the train to downtown Brooklyn. I sat in her office and she told me a little
SPEAKER_20: bit about herself. I mean, as, as background, I started this
SPEAKER_04: law firm after I had been the target of a malicious and creative and relentless ex. Attorney Carrie Goldberg. One of the most malicious things that my ex was doing was, was, um, blackmailing me with naked pictures and videos that he had contacting everybody in my life. He was making false IRS reports against my family.
SPEAKER_05: Now at that time, Carrie was already a lawyer herself, but she really only did family law stuff, wills, guardianships, things like that. And I had so much difficulty during that process,
SPEAKER_04: finding a lawyer who knew what to do and like was at the intersection of intimate partner violence and internet law and first amendment and knew how to get an order protection. I was really desperate. And so after this all ended, I became the
SPEAKER_05: lawyer I needed a lawyer for people like Matthew. So she told me her story and I told her mine
SPEAKER_20: and before I could finish, she said, I would like to represent you. I think we can slow this attack on you. And the way to do that, Carrie said, was to
SPEAKER_05: go after Grindr, take him to court and argue that this guy JC used Grindr essentially as a weapon that Grindr knew all about it and did absolutely nothing to stop it. And so they have the hearing Carrie and her team file in, sit down, confident, looking at their little table. We're pretty bad ass litigators. And across the aisle is of course Grindr's lawyers and as the hearing begins, the Grindr guys, they stand up. I'm imagining they do
SPEAKER_05: that thing that men do where they like put their tie tucked in like inside their jacket and they're like, your honor, we don't have to do anything because of section 230.
SPEAKER_06: Section 230. Yeah. And the judge is like, you're right.
SPEAKER_05: We don't have to go any further. That's the end of this.
SPEAKER_20: It was over. It was over. And I said, what the fuck is section 230? I didn't even understand what that meant. Okay. So let's start there. Okay. Section 230
SPEAKER_11: is a provision passed by Congress in 1996. That's not a typo. 1996, right?
SPEAKER_05: Attorney and justice correspondent at the nation magazine, Elie Misthal. So that's how old this law is. Now it's worth pointing out that most of the rest of the
SPEAKER_11: law is no longer good law. It's been amended. It's been shaped. It's been overcome with the kind of newer, better laws that take into account what the internet has actually become. But section 230 is the beating core that remains. And 230, it does one simple thing.
SPEAKER_11: It relieves internet companies of liability for illegal things posted on their websites.
SPEAKER_05: Meaning he says not only in Matthew's case, but in others like it, when someone lies about someone else or threatens them or even tries to do them some kind of harm using an app or a website, these tech companies, they get off scot-free. That's exactly what's happening. Section 230 is fundamentally at core a liability shield.
SPEAKER_05: A shield that no other industry gets except the tech industry. In short, section 230 makes
SPEAKER_20: the tech world untouchable. It's just not fair.
SPEAKER_05: So unlike Matthew, Kerry already knew about section 230. She knew the Grindr lawyers would use it against Matthew. And so she had actually been trying out this way to get around 230 by arguing that Grindr was a faulty product that harmed Matthew as a consumer. But the judge wasn't buying it. And with Matthew, appeal after appeal after appeal, the case just kept getting dismissed. Each time because of section 230. And so section 230 is my nemesis.
SPEAKER_04: She hates it. I can only talk about it once a day because I get so aggravated that I then can't do my job. I think it can be totally decimated and thrown into the sun.
SPEAKER_05: And weirdly enough, this hatred Kerry feels, as you know, Google enjoys a special immunity
SPEAKER_07: from liability under section 230 of the communications decency, is shared by a lot of people. A lot of Americans have concerns. Conservative lawmakers like Ted Cruz, Congress to get rid of special
SPEAKER_10: immunity for social media companies. And President Joe Biden called to have it removed. Section
SPEAKER_08: 230. We have to get rid of Section 230 politicians. And so did former President Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_05: That is the thing about Section 230. It's kind of built this like king sized mattress of strange bedfellows who are all teaming up and saying, we want it gone. It is literally
SPEAKER_20: just like I'm this looming monster. But Matthew, I don't think they should get rid of it. Is
SPEAKER_05: not one of those people. Because even though this law lets companies like Grindr completely ignore what happens on their platforms. Without Section 230, we couldn't live the way we do
SPEAKER_20: today. It is the law that makes the internet possible. And so now we're really getting
SPEAKER_11: into the heart of Section 230. That heart and what our lives might look like without
SPEAKER_05: it after the break.
SPEAKER_02: Lulu here, if you ever heard the classic Radiolab episode sometimes behave so strangely, you know that speech can suddenly leap into music and really how strange and magic sound itself can be. We at Radiolab take sound seriously and use it to make our journalism as impactful as it can be and we need your help to keep doing it. The best way to support us is to join our membership program, The Lab. This month, all new members will get a t shirt that says sometimes behave so strangely. To check out the t shirt and support the show, go to radiolab.org slash join. Radiolab is supported by Capital One with no fees or minimums. Banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See Capital One dot com slash bank Capital One and a member FDIC. Radiolab is supported by Apple Card. Apple Card has a cash back rewards program. Unlike other credit cards, you earn unlimited daily cash on every purchase, receive it daily and can grow it at 4.15 annual percentage yield when you open a savings account. Apply for Apple Card in the wallet app on iPhone. Apple Card subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility requirements. Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Member FDIC. Terms apply.
SPEAKER_15: After but her emails became shorthand in 2016 for the media's deep focus on Hillary Clinton's server hygiene at the expense of policy issues. Is history repeating itself? You can almost
SPEAKER_12: see an equation again, I would say, led by the times in Biden being old with Donald Trump being under dozens of felony indictments. Listen to on the media from WNYC. Find on
SPEAKER_15: the media wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_06: Simon, Rachel, Radiolab, and we are back and we're gonna go backwards. All right. To a
SPEAKER_05: time not that long ago when what the internet would be, what it would look like and feel like was a very open question. A time when sort of anything seemed possible. It's the world of this website. Sorry, what year are we in? Okay, so 1992. Things are starting to happen. Things are starting to happen. Back when getting
SPEAKER_11: on the internet required somebody else in your house to get off the phone. The internet
SPEAKER_05: has evolved from this thing that really only academics use. It's taken us five years of
SPEAKER_20: real hard work to develop a system like this. To something niche and nerdy communities are
SPEAKER_05: playing on in the form of chat rooms. Ask him why not go talk to real people. To finally
SPEAKER_05: introducing the power of Prodigy. Something that everyday people like you and me were
SPEAKER_05: using through these bulletin boards. What Prodigy does is connect our computer with
SPEAKER_06: a fantastic range of services. Prodigy was one of these main early bulletin boards and
SPEAKER_05: you know it let people post something on there and then other people would comment on it.
SPEAKER_08: It had no graphics, no pictures of any kind. It was only text and although it may have been primitive you had access to information all around the world. And as amazing as that
SPEAKER_05: was as more and more people were logging on to get world news or share recipes or share their opinions about financial markets. Prodigy needs your attention. You have new mail. These bulletin boards they began to get heated. Instant message. Don't be fun. Go find yourself.
SPEAKER_19: Goodbye. And so guys like Chuck. Chuck Epstein, moderator of the Prodigy money talk bulletin
SPEAKER_08: board. Were brought in to turn down the temperature by removing posts that went too far. So you
SPEAKER_08: know I just took down swear words, derogatory words, racial slurs, etc. And it's just you
SPEAKER_05: there. You're all by yourself. That's correct. I was the only one who had the software, the
SPEAKER_08: moderating software and there were easily a couple thousand posts per day on the money talk bulletin board. What stocks, bonds, real estate, equities. So it was exciting. And
SPEAKER_05: so Chuck, he managed to create this little neighborhood where people could connect and say what they wanted but where he could also be a kindly curator. Make sure that no one got out of line until. Well one evening I was at my house, took my poodle out the front
SPEAKER_08: door for a walk. He was a miniature French poodle, Bo. And we walked down the street about 40 paces. Bo does his business. Chuck stretches his legs. A man literally jumps out of the bushes. Oh my God. It was like from the spy movies. I didn't know what this guy was doing. And standing there under a street light. He says like Mr. Epstein. I
SPEAKER_08: said yes. And he hands me a piece of paper in an envelope. It was an envelope and he says thank you. Have a nice night. I thought you were going to say he said I'm here to
SPEAKER_06: have sex with you. I've been sent. I am a gay zombie of yesteryear. This is where it
SPEAKER_16: all started. Anyhow, so Chuck turns around, walks home quickly. I went back in the house
SPEAKER_08: and opened the envelope. The first thing that he sees on this piece of paper, it says Stratton
SPEAKER_08: Oakmont versus Prodigy. And big letters at the very top. And I said, what the hell is this? Turns out that Stratton Oakmont was suing Chuck's employer, Prodigy, claiming
SPEAKER_05: that someone had used Chuck's bulletin board to smear their company, saying that their president was a thief involved in some scams. And Stratton Oakmont was a criminal organization.
SPEAKER_08: Basically attacked the reputation and the financial acumen and the honesty and the ethics of Stratton Oakmont. And that these posts constituted defamation. And this 100 billion
SPEAKER_08: dollar lawsuit. Now, as would be discovered years later, these posts were not defamatory.
SPEAKER_05: In fact, Stratton Oakmont and their president were doing so many illegal things that they would one day inspire Leonardo DiCaprio. Was all this legal? Absolutely not. In the film
SPEAKER_05: The Wolf of Wall Street. We don't work for you, man. Yeah, my money taped you. Boobs.
SPEAKER_18: That leads to work for me. Yeah, Jonah Hill's character was actually
SPEAKER_05: based on the guy who cried defamation. But at the time of the suit, nobody knew anything about that. And so the lawsuit was about a when the thing went to trial, these wolves
SPEAKER_05: of Wall Street, they argued that because Prodigy employed people like Chuck, moderators who left posts up and took posts down, that they were responsible for every defamatory post they left up. And this judge agreed. The judge ruled that Prodigy was responsible.
SPEAKER_08: The world of Prodigy. Now, the irony here is that right around this
SPEAKER_05: time there was another company. Access to the Internet. Enter CompuServe. CompuServe.
SPEAKER_08: And CompuServe did not hold itself out to be a family friendly bulletin board.
SPEAKER_05: They were just like Prodigy, but they had no moderators, no Chucks, didn't take anything down. All the swear words, defamation, racial slurs, all of it stayed there. And when they went to trial in a very similar online defamation lawsuit, they won. And so weirdly in this situation, if Prodigy had never set out to be a family friendly place, if they said, whatever you want, have it, they would not have lost this lawsuit.
SPEAKER_06: Well, that seems completely ass backwards. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_10: What the law was saying is that if your approach is anything goes, then you'll be scot free. But if you attempt to have rules of the road, then we're going to make you responsible for every piece of content that's uploaded by every single one of your users.
SPEAKER_05: Former Republican representative of California, Chris Cox. And when he learned about this, he was like, this is not the way we want the internet to be regulated.
SPEAKER_10: Because of the obvious consequences. You know, the rate of increase in users of the internet was exponential. And it was clear that this new means of communication was going to be vital importance, either for good or for ill.
SPEAKER_05: And he worried that this precedent set by these two cases, like reward the wild Wests, punish the family friendly sites, that that could be disastrous.
SPEAKER_10: And one of the great things about being a member of Congress is that when you pick up the newspaper and you see some thing that needs to be fixed, you say there ought to be a law. And then your next thought is, who can do this for me? I could do that.
SPEAKER_05: But he needed a partner. So I made a beeline to my friend Ron.
SPEAKER_09: Ron Wyden, one of Oregon's United States senators.
SPEAKER_05: Democrat, little buds, they get ice cream together.
SPEAKER_09: Chocolate chip for me. I'm chocolate, although when I'm being very extravagant, I have one scoop of vanilla and
SPEAKER_10: one scoop of chocolate.
SPEAKER_05: That's living the life. And he says, Ron, like, I think it's really, really important that we do something about this. Explain these two cases and how, You know, online platforms would offer the choice. You could either police your website
SPEAKER_09: and be liable for everything, even if something slipped through. Or you could turn a blind eye and not police anything. And Chris and I said, maybe we can come up with something that really promotes the best Internet.
SPEAKER_05: An Internet where sites could take down what they wanted without getting in trouble. And the point was to keep it really simple. So Chris and I went to the house dining room,
SPEAKER_09: sat by ourselves, and we put this together. A couple days later. We're done. It wasn't perfect by any means.
SPEAKER_05: And do either of you know it by heart? I'm sure you do because you talk about this all the time. But could you just say it just so we have it on the recording?
SPEAKER_10: Yes, sure. What it says is that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
SPEAKER_05: In other words, these Internet companies could control the things that got posted on their sites as they saw fit without the threat of being sued. And so,
SPEAKER_07: Right now we're going to take you over to the Library of Congress for this signing ceremony.
SPEAKER_06: Mr. Clinton used the same thing. February 8th, 1996.
SPEAKER_01: Today our world is being remade yet again by an information revolution.
SPEAKER_05: In a woodpaneled hall, President Clinton signed these 26 words into law.
SPEAKER_01: This historic legislation recognizes that with freedom comes responsibility. This bill protects consumers against monopolies. It guarantees the diversity of voices our democracy depends upon. Perhaps most of all, it enhances the common good.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, just as one example, if it hadn't passed and sites remained liable for every little thing that we posted,
SPEAKER_10: You couldn't imagine a project like Wikipedia taking off as it has.
SPEAKER_05: Or the Me Too movement, or that ice bucket challenge that raised millions of dollars for ALS research, or Black Lives Matter.
SPEAKER_10: They absolutely could not exist without Section 230.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, Section 230 let websites moderate as best as they could without the threat of constantly being dragged to court, which allowed space for this massive online wave that we're all still surfing today. But of course, waves can be dangerous. And now more than ever, it's starting to feel like we could use some more lifeguards. Because you know, these wonky little bulletin boards that sparked all this, they evolved into comment sections, which evolved into social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and then into dating apps like Tinder and Grindr. And before we knew it, billions of people were on these things. And while these sites have enabled lots of good things to happen,
SPEAKER_11: They've also given us this whole new universe of ways to be cruel to one another.
SPEAKER_05: And even though the platforms make some efforts to weed out the bad stuff,
SPEAKER_05: so much of it gets through.
SPEAKER_05: And when someone comes to them and says, please make it stop, like Matthew, our Grindr guy, or countless other people,
SPEAKER_05: they say, it's not our problem. Section 230.
SPEAKER_13: I really don't think I'll ever get these images down from the internet. And I just I'm sorry to my husband. I'm sorry to my children.
SPEAKER_11: Again, Section 230, while critical to how the internet was made, critical to how it functions, is old.
SPEAKER_05: Once again, Justice correspondent Elie Mustal. And contemplates a late 90s internet world that simply no longer exists.
SPEAKER_11: So yes, it's a sense of like, our laws should be updated to reflect how the internet works today, not how it worked in 1996. And so there is a coalition amongst hardcore conservatives and some progressives to do something about Section 230 and take it away.
SPEAKER_05: It seems not unlike 1996 when Section 230 passed. There's this open question again of what is the sort of internet that we want?
SPEAKER_11: However, the other side of it is also, you know, we're kind of backing into the actual point. So do you mind? I want to start the point differently, right? Because here's the thing.
SPEAKER_11: One of the reasons why we don't know what's going to happen with Section 230, sorry, the best way of saying it.
SPEAKER_11: The bottom line is that we don't know what's going to happen to the internet if we take away Section 230. One way it could go is for everybody to go back to a wild, wild west scenario where there is no moderation anywhere at all, right? However, the other way it could go would be to have extreme moderation. Nobody has open comment threads. Nobody has a forum where they can say whatever they want. Everything is either completely closed off or highly monitored by an AI, by the algorithm that is just without pride or prejudice, just running around and smacking people based on keywords. Doesn't matter the context, right?
SPEAKER_05: Which you know, it would take out racial slurs, problematic stuff, but it also might weed out these kernels of ideas that led to the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter and Me Too.
SPEAKER_11: So only the most kind of anodyne, Disneyfied, I like soup kind of comments.
SPEAKER_05: Are those options like both equally likely if Section 230 were to go away?
SPEAKER_11: Well, are you conservative or are you liberal? Because what you think is more likely really tracks with your politics right now. Liberals, at least the ones who think Section 230 should be taken away, think the social media platforms will go full on aggressive, stopping, hateful comments. However, conservatives like Josh Hawley really think that it's going to go the other way. That in a post-Section 230 world, because of the threat of liability, these companies, they would go in a Wild West format and just let everything ride so nobody gets in trouble.
SPEAKER_05: But the problem there, Ellie says, is...
SPEAKER_11: You've got to be able to turn the internet upside down and shake money out of it, right? None of this happens if somebody can't make money off of it, right?
SPEAKER_05: Meaning in most cases...
SPEAKER_09: Sometimes I just want to rent a car and go, you know?
SPEAKER_15: I do know. And I think I can help you with that.
SPEAKER_11: Advertisers, yeah? I love Hertz!
SPEAKER_15: Oh, yes!
SPEAKER_09: Love Hertz.
SPEAKER_11: And what the advertisers want is for there to be moderation, because they make more money when things are, for lack of a better word, nice. So it's highly likely that the advertisers simply will not stand for a Wild Wild West scenario where, like, when you click on the page, all the comments are like, F you, you dumb n-word.
SPEAKER_05: And if that happens, you're basically calcifying the internet as we have it today. Like these small companies, these startups, these homespun sites, they will not have the resources to moderate.
SPEAKER_11: If you put these moderation controls on them, the next Twitter, the next Facebook, the next TikTok, there will be no way for them to compete.
SPEAKER_05: So what we will have is basically just the titans that we have today.
SPEAKER_05: So we are stuck between like a rock, a hard place, and a freaking like dagger right in front of our face. Like there's no, it feels like there's like no clear way to tackle 230 without then destroying the internet as we know it.
SPEAKER_20: It wouldn't be so comp, it wouldn't be a complicated issue if it wasn't a complicated issue.
SPEAKER_05: Once more, Matthew Herrick from the beginning of this episode, whose life got literally destroyed by Section 230, but still thinks we shouldn't get rid of it. I'm so surprised that you're, you don't want to just get rid of it altogether. I don't know. It's like a freaking shark came and bit your arm and you're like, well, the shark has done some good for the ocean, you know, like, Well, because I understand how complicated it is.
SPEAKER_20: I mean, I don't want to sound, you know, I mean, obviously I'm fucking pissed, but like I'm launching a coalition with, you know, a nonprofit organization to help survivors. I'm, I'm, I'm trying to like seek out what I can utilize through that experience to create positive in the world. And I think that's all I can do. But I'd be bullshitting you if I said that I had the right answer. I just know all the wrong answers.
SPEAKER_05: And he's not alone. Like no one's quite sure how to fix this thing. So the decision for now just seems to be to just leave it.
SPEAKER_11: And the Supreme Court said so. Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court.
SPEAKER_10: Section 230 C1. So this past term, the Supreme Court heard two cases about Section 230.
SPEAKER_01: 1333, Gonzalez versus Google.
SPEAKER_11: Google v. Gonzalez and Twitter v. Tamina.
SPEAKER_05: And during one of these trials from the bench, Elena Kagan says, why is it that the tech
SPEAKER_14: industry gets a pass? A little bit unclear. On the other hand, and we're a court, we really don't know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet. And boy, there is a lot of uncertainty.
SPEAKER_05: And they decided to leave it in place.
SPEAKER_11: There is a reason why a law from 1996 is still the law today. And it's because, not because it works, but because it is the least bad option.
SPEAKER_06: This story was reported by Rachel Cusick and produced by Rachel and myself with mixing from Arianne Wack. Special thanks this week to James Grimelmann, Eric Goldman, Naomi Leeds, and an extra, extra big thank you to Jeff Kosif. All right, that's about it for it here. I'm Simon Adler. This is Radio Lab. Thanks for listening. Hi, this is Mr. Fiedler's fifth grade class calling in from Monona, Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_03: Radio Lab was created by Chad R. Radler, an independent high schooler and healer, Lulu Miller, a chief master of our field goals, Dylan James, a member of the Southside. Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Brassler, Rachel Cusick, Ekadee Foster-Keys, W. Harry Fortier, David Gable, Maria Paz-Gutuyeva, Sindhu Nayanasambandam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sarah Khari, Ana Kuwet Paz, Sarah Sandback, Ariana Wach, Pat Olters, and Molly Webster, with help from Sachie Kejima Mulkey. Our fact checkers are Deanne Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.
SPEAKER_19: Hi, this is Jeremiah Marba, and I'm calling from San Francisco, California. Leadership support for Radio Lab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Simon Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Special support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
SPEAKER_00: WNYC Studios is supported by On Being with Krista Tippett. I'm Krista Tippett of On Being, where we take up the big questions of meaning for this world now. In our new podcast season, we're going to have a different human conversation about AI and also the intelligence of our bodies, grief and joy, social creativity and poetry, and so much more. A conversation to live by every Thursday.
