Bridget Todd (00:00):

There Are No Girls on the Internet has been nominated for a Shorty Award for DISINFORMED, our miniseries on disinformation. It would mean so much to me if you would take a moment and vote for us. It only takes a moment and you can vote every day. Go to tangoti.com/vote. That's T-A-N-G-O-T-I.com/vote to vote, or check the link in our show description.

Bridget Todd (00:22):

You're listening to DISINFORMED, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd.

Bridget Todd (00:32):

Okay, so a secret shame of mine is that I make a tech podcast, but I haven't really taken a public personal stance on one of the biggest tech policies of our time, Section 230, a piece of legislation passed in 1996, which basically says that internet platforms can be sued or held liable for content that people post on those platforms. One reason is that it's a complex issue that requires a bit of nuance and complexity to even discuss. You know who isn't exactly the poster child for understanding nuance and complexity? Donald Trump.

Donald Trump (01:04):

Currently social media giants like Twitter receive an unprecedented liability shield based on the theory that they're a neutral platform. My executive order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Bridget Todd (01:20):

When he repeatedly called for ending Section 230, it kind of threw a polarizing wrench into the existing debate, turning the whole thing into a partisan talking point rather than a real conversation. There's a diversity of thought about Section 230. Last season, we spoke to attorney Carrie Goldberg who advocated for changes to Section 230. Here's a clip.

Carrie Goldberg (01:41):

But they're saying that basically the internet as we know it wouldn't exist without Section 230, and we're going to lose all this wonderful free exchange of ideas if we lose Section 230. I call total BS on that because number one, you're assuming that the internet as we know it is a great place and that as we know it, should be preserved. It's kind of like any constitutional argument or Make America Great Again. You're assuming that things are great and that everyone has the same level of free speech. But speech on the internet really belongs to those who are the loudest and basically for companies. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, they control the internet and we've got all our issues with antitrust and also the quantity. So the most hostile people on the internet are the ones who have the greatest protections.

Bridget Todd (02:44):

But digital rights groups like Fight for the Future say over-broad changes to Section 230 will further harm marginalized communities online. Evan Greer has been fighting for digital rights online for almost a decade.

Evan Greer (02:56):

My name's Evan Greer, and I'm a Director of Fight for the Future, which is a nonprofit that works to protect people's basic rights in the digital age.

Bridget Todd (03:05):

Evan is also a musician and a lot of her music criticizes big tech. Here's a taste.

Evan Greer (03:12):

I took a bit of a roundabout path to this work actually. I dropped out of college and became a full-time touring musician for about a decade and traveled around making a living, playing poppy, queer, political, punk and folk music for a living. I started touring playing about 200 to 300 shows a year and offering workshops and trainings on a wide range of social justice, environmental justice, and economic justice issues, primarily for college students, but also for labor unions and nonprofits and high school students and youth detention centers and all different types of spaces.

Evan Greer (04:10):

I really, through the course of that work, it was the early 2000s. The internet was exploding. I had more fans on MySpace than I have like Twitter followers now, which is kind of hilarious. This was pre-Napster and there was a lot of musicians coming out of the underground, folks who were queer, folks who were playing music that was way outside the mainstream or who were kind of marginalized identities, marginalized musicians. We were seeing the internet as this incredible engine and platform for giving us a voice and taking on some of these gatekeepers that had always controlled what was cool or what music got to be heard.

Evan Greer (05:07):

There were so many of us that were putting our music up for free on archive.org and then having people send us donations, again, before Napster, before Spotify, before any of this stuff. For me, that was the wake-up where I was like, "Wow, this technology is really powerful and it has this ..." I distinctly remember one specific moment of my first tour of Europe showing up at a record store in Prague in the Czech Republic and there was like a hundred 19-year old punk kids that knew all the words to all of my songs. I had never toured there. I didn't have a record label. I didn't have a publicist. It just struck me, I was like, "This is all because of the internet. These kids have all downloaded this music, they've shared it, they've created a community of wanting to hear this type of stuff."

Evan Greer (05:59):

That was just a really powerful moment for me. I wish I had some really cool end to that story or whatever, but really the end of it is, then I had a kid and I maxed out a couple of credit cards trying to make a living supporting a family as a transgender anti-capitalist folk singer, and then I realized I might need a "real job."

Bridget Todd (06:23):

This would turn out to be an opportune time for Evan to be further pulled into the world of digital rights activism.

News Reporter (06:29):

Today, Google's main page shows a black rectangle and the words, "Tell Congress, 'Please don't censor the web.'" Wikipedia has shut down the English language version of its online encyclopedia for the day.

Bridget Todd (06:41):

A chorus of opposition was growing against legislation called the Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA. Legislation ostensibly meant to crack down on the piracy of copyrighted content online, but was widely criticized for the chilling impact it would have on free expression online. Huge internet companies like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Mozilla protested the legislation by taking their websites offline for 24 hours.

Evan Greer (07:05):

About a year after the organization had formed, a year after the SOPA strike, or the internet blackout as it was often called at the time, which was the largest online protest in human history where I wasn't even at the organization then, but Fight for the Future and many other groups basically mobilized hundreds of thousands of organizations and websites to black out their online presences. We drove more than eight million phone calls to Congress in a single day to defeat copyright legislation that could have led to widespread internet censorship. So I kind of came into the organization in the aftermath of that.

Bridget Todd (07:42):

For Evan, it was always music that illustrated the power of the internet and its ability to connect people, and that's what drives her fight to protect it.

Evan Greer (07:50):

Just quickly started kind of seeing the parallels between the work that I had done as an artist where I was trying to use a song or a little introduction to a song to connect with people and move them on an emotional level to try to move them toward action of some type or another. Maybe that was just throwing some money in the hat for the benefit, or maybe it was signing a petition or writing a letter to a political prisoner or whatever it was. But now with Fight for the Future seeing, "Well, I'm doing kind of the same thing. I'm not necessarily throwing out a song," although I still do write and record music and I've got a new album coming out and the next single comes out next week. We're also sort of painting and coloring with websites and with action tools and with videos and with infographics.

Evan Greer (08:39):

Instead of reaching dozens or hundreds, or for me on a very, very good night, maybe a couple thousand people, we're able to reach hundreds of thousands, millions, sometimes even tens of millions of people and move them to take action. Again, it's that same feeling that I had at that show in Prague of just recognizing that the internet has changed the rules for what is and isn't possible within our political system in some ways that are really terrible. I think we're starting to grapple with the reality of that, but also in ways that are really profoundly transformative and democratizing. The way that Fight for the Future's goal is to ensure that technology, and the internet specifically, are largely a force for empowerment and liberation rather than a force for exploitation and oppression. That's kind of my roundabout story of how I came to this work and also why it matters to me.

Bridget Todd (09:35):

I have to tell you, that feeling that you've described of the internet being this source of uniting people and connecting people across continents, across the globe, that was exactly the same thing that got me so excited about the internet. When I first got my clunky dial-up computer, I was definitely putting HELLO viruses on it by trying to download music off of Napster.

Evan Greer (09:59):

Word.

Bridget Todd (09:59):

I grew up in a small town, so that was such a transformative thing for me and is why I'm so interested in the internet now. I love how you've described this overlap. I noticed in your music, there is quite an overlap between your stances with, as it pertains to tech and big tech, and the music that you make. I was listening to your song before we got on the call, Emma Goldman Would Have Beat Your Ass. On the Bandcamp site, you describe the story behind that name. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Evan Greer (10:30):

Yeah, so it's funny. It's interesting, for this album, I've ended up doing a few kind of historical deep dives. The song I have coming out next week is sort of a trans liberation anthem, and I made a music video for it that features archival footage of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and the work that they did in the aftermath of Stonewall, but also going back even further to the Compton's Cafeteria Riot. I think of myself as someone who knows my radical history or whatever. Every time I really sink my teeth into this stuff, I'm just so struck by how much of our history is stolen or hidden from us.

Evan Greer (11:09):

This was an example that ... I wrote this whole song based on an anecdote about Emma Goldman that I had heard or maybe read somewhere. I wrote up the whole song and I was writing the introduction for it and I was like, "I've got to go find a source for that." Then I found out that it wasn't entirely true, basically. The story that I had heard was that she had literally bull whipped her ex-boyfriend, because he was trash talking Alexander Berkman after he had attempted to assassinate Henry Frick, who was one of these robber baron hyper-capitalist types. It was sort of this moment of division within the Left in the United States during that era.

Evan Greer (11:18):

It turns out that it wasn't quite her ex-boyfriend. It was a mentor type guy, and he had condemned Alexander Frick, and she basically hit him with a toy whip of some sort, to which I was like, "How is there a toy whip? That just seems weird. I don't know if that's really a toy. This is all very problematic."

Evan Greer (11:19):

And then when I found, and then like I wrote up the whole song and I like it was writing the introduction for it. It was like, I got to go find a source for that. And then I found out that it like, wasn't entirely true basically. But the, the story that I had heard was that like, she had like literally bull whipped her, like ex-boyfriend because he was like, trash-talking Alexander Berkman, after he had attempted to assassinate Henry Frick, who was like one of these Robert Barron, hyper capitalist types. Um, and you know, it, it was sort of this like moment of division within the, the left in the United States during that era, it turns out that it wasn't quite her ex-boyfriend. It was like a mentor type guy. And yeah, he had condemned Alexandra Frick, and she like, basically like, hit him with like a toy whip of some sort, which like, to which I was like, how is there a toy whip?

Evan Greer (12:21):

Apparently, she expressed regret about it later in her life or whatever. I don't know, I just felt like there was something powerful for me about that kind of expression of a woman's rage, and specifically toward someone who is seen like a mentor or a respected man in the community and just not taking any bullshit and literally getting up there and whacking him in front of a crowd. I just feel like I aspire to be that direct in my activism, et cetera. Emma Goldman, like every figure throughout history, had many nuances. She's definitely someone who has been an inspiration to me and many others.

Bridget Todd (13:15):

It's pretty punk rock, I have to say.

Evan Greer (13:17):

Right? I mean, come on. It's punk AF.

Bridget Todd (13:21):

The different kinds of campaigns that Fight for the Future takes up, one of them really surprised me, this campaign to ban facial recognition at festivals, like music festivals. I had no idea that was going on. I used to work for a music festival called AFROPUNK, and I thought, "God, first of all, A, there's so much overlap between digital rights and music and arts communities. Then also, there are so many ways that surveillance is playing out in these ways that we might not even know. We might not even be aware that we were being surveilled in these ways."

Evan Greer (13:52):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the good news that I can say is that that campaign that you just mentioned that we ran with Tom Morello, the guitarist to Rage Against the Machine, and a bunch of other prominent musicians was hugely successful. We actually got more than 40 of the world's largest music festivals to say that they won't use facial recognition surveillance at their events. I'm sure folks are increasingly aware of facial recognition and the problems with it, but for me, that's hugely significant, because a lot of the conversation about facial recognition has centered on government and law enforcement use of this technology. Which makes a lot of sense because it's being used right now by police and law enforcement agencies, predominantly targeting communities of color, predominantly targeting Black folks.

Evan Greer (14:42):

The technology itself is racist. It has racial bias baked into the current algorithms, and it's automating and exacerbating these existing systems that are also already racist. So when you take a system of policing that we know measurably has disproportionately harmed Black and Brown communities for centuries and then you layer on top of that a technology that essentially just speeds up and automates those same discriminatory processes that were already happening, you just get supercharged discrimination and supercharged state violence toward a community that's already disproportionately affected by it.

Evan Greer (15:26):

Again, it makes perfect sense that the conversation has kind of started there with government use, but all of those same things are true with corporate and private use as well. They are enormously discriminatory things that private companies can do with a technology like facial recognition. Music festivals, I think were a really good example, because it's so public and visible. All kinds of people like to go to music festivals, right?

Evan Greer (15:54):

It was one really good way, not just to kind of get these policies in place to protect individual music listeners that want to go to a festival without having their biometric information collected by a private corporation, but it's also sort of a way of educating people. Getting prominent musicians talking about this helped put facial recognition on the map as a dangerous toxic technology that no one likes. That's building momentum for what we really need in the end, which from our perspective at Fight for the Future, is something closer to abolition than reform. We think that this is a technology that is fundamentally unjust and that poses such a profound threat to the future of human civilization and liberty that it can't be effectively regulated. It really does need to be banned outright for both government and the vast majority of private uses as well.

Bridget Todd (16:49):

Let's take a quick break.

Bridget Todd (17:02):

We're back. Fight for the Future advocates for big stances, like the outright banning of facial recognition technology, because that's what their members want. They don't want incremental bit by bit changes to harmful tech policies. Rather, they get behind big swing for the fences bold actions.

Evan Greer (17:19):

I'm always struck by that. There's that notion in Washington DC that, "Oh, what people really want is compromise and watered-down things." That's just so bogus. We see it again and again in politics that, no, what people want is real fundamental change. What we've seen is that people actually resonate much more with the idea, "If this technology is harmful, let's ban it," than they do with, "What we really need is an opt-in consent-based regulatory framework that allows corporations to continue selling this stuff and profiting but put some rules to the road in place." No, that's is not ... A, that's an incorrect policy that won't actually protect the most vulnerable people from the harms of this technology. B, it's just not a good rallying cry either.

Evan Greer (18:13):

For us, it's both about leading with what we think is right and always fighting for the biggest possible ... we kind of frame it as just this side of impossible. We always try to aim our sights as high as we can go. We're a very small organization, so we have to ruthlessly prioritize, "Is this really one of the things to go all in on and fight for, or is this one of the ones we have to just let go and hope somebody else picks it up and fights for it?" When we decide to go in on something, that's at the top of our minds is basically, A, "Is this a win that if we win will fundamentally change things and concretely benefit large numbers of people?"

Bridget Todd (18:55):

I first met Evan when she was leading a coalition call of dozens of progressive activists and digital rights groups about Section 230 in response to the Safe Tech Act, legislation sponsored by senators, Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar to make changes to Section 230. The last time Section 230 was changed was back in 2018. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, got bipartisan support in the House and the Senate and was signed by Trump. SESTA becoming law meant that platforms would be held responsible for knowingly facilitating or supporting sex trafficking. Now, this might sound like a good thing, but it actually ended up causing a lot of harm to people involved in sex work consensually who were not being trafficked. Well-meaning celebrities endorsed the legislation in a PSA.

Speaker 6 (19:41):

Call your congressperson or senator and say, "What the ... "

Speaker 7 (19:44):

Ask them to amend Section 230.

Speaker 6 (19:48):

Then call them again and until they do something.

Speaker 8 (19:49):

Please call yours.

Speaker 9 (19:50):

Will you call yours?

Bridget Todd (19:52):

This is why people like Evan say it's so important to have a thoughtful debate and conversation about internet regulation. Most people agree that something needs to be done, but if you do something just to say you're taking action, you could end up inadvertently causing more harm. We know the people most likely to be harmed are those who are already marginalized.

Bridget Todd (20:12):

Full disclosure, ask someone who makes a podcast about the internet, people often ask me about my position on Section 230. I am kind of ashamed to admit that I said, "I don't really know. I'm glad that smart people are having the conversation." Last season, we spoke to Attorney Carrie Goldberg who was very much in favor of changing Section 230. You and I were on a call, the Coalition Call, about Section 230, which was fascinating and I feel like I learned so much. The thing that really struck me was, even though we were on this Coalition Call with civil rights groups and justice groups and social change groups, it was clear to me that there was not consensus on the call of where folks stand. I guess I want to ground our conversation in that. My question is sort of, where you do and Fight for the Future stand on Section 230? What is your position on this legislation?

Evan Greer (21:09):

I think the way that you framed it there is really important, because I think one thing that's happened is Trump, just to put it bluntly. Trump started tweeting things like, "Repeal Section 230." Frankly, Joe Biden has also called to revoke Section 230. Part of what has happened is something that's actually a very complex policy debate and conversation has now been sort of thrust into the CNN, MSNBC, Fox News level of debate.

News Reporter 2 (21:45):

It is a tiny law that's had a huge impact on the internet as we know it. Section 230 of-

Evan Greer (21:50):

Anytime that happens, just the thoughtfulness of the conversation ... you could draw a graph of how much attention is this getting on cable TV to how intelligent of a conversation are we having about it. I'm not good at math, but they're [crosstalk 00:22:07]. That said, I think within social justice and civil rights and human rights spaces, there is a more thoughtful conversation happening in the sense that I think there's maybe broad disagreement around exactly what should be done, but there's increasing agreement about the harms. All of us on the call that you referenced agree, big tech is a problem.

Evan Greer (22:41):

Their business model is fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy. They are exacerbating existing disparities in our society. They are amplifying harmful ideologies, like White supremacy that have long held a stronghold in the United States and around the world and within our political institutions and economic institutions. Everyone sort of agrees on the problems. I think we're now trying to figure out, "Well, what are the solutions?" I think it's healthy that there's disagreement or ongoing discussion about trying to figure out what the solutions are. There's tons of groups that I work with every day on issues like surveillance or issues like privacy. Maybe we don't totally agree on Section 230, but we all know we're trying to get to the same place. I think it's healthy that we can have these conversations.

Evan Greer (23:44):

That said, I think it's also really important that we push for a more thoughtful conversation. For myself, one of the things I've been really specifically trying to do is urge nonprofits and progressive groups to listen to sex workers. This has been kind of my mantra in this Section 230 conversation. Really, when we talk about what would it look like to change Section 230, we only have one concrete example, which is SESTA-FOSTA, the last major piece of legislation that created a carve-out in Section 230 that lawmakers claimed was intended to address sex trafficking. What we know is that, in fact, it didn't actually do anything to address actual sex trafficking, but it was devastating for sex workers and for their safety. It ended up leading internet platforms to shut down entire subsections of websites, shut down places where sex workers were able to kind of set their own rules, set their own terms and have more autonomy.

Evan Greer (25:00):

There's actual studies that show that that led to actual loss of life. Right. Sex workers' safety and advocacy organizations have been sounding the alarm about this since before SESTA-FOSTA. From where I'm sitting, it does frustrate me that I feel like you know, there are progressive groups who are just kind of looking to beat up on the tech companies, which I'm all for. Let's beat up on the tech companies. I am with you. I am in the front row with a pitchfork, but in doing so, trampling or ignoring the voices of a community that has already been disproportionately harmed by uncareful policy change. That's kind of a broader framing, but I didn't actually answer your question, which is what is our position.

Evan Greer (25:49):

Fight for the Future sees Section 230, not primarily as a protector action for companies, but actually as an essential law that essentially enables all user generated content on the internet. So the speech of ordinary people, the people who wouldn't be on cable TV or the radio but who are now able to create memes and jokes and write blog posts and share videos on TikTok or wherever, or share photos, or be an adult creator, or be a storybook creator or whatever it is. Section 230 is the law that essentially allows for all of that to take place by making it so that corporations who care only about making money, and we should always remember that, are not dis-incentivized from hosting our speech and our creativity and our ideas and our opinions.

Evan Greer (26:56):

I think it's particularly important for myself as a trans person and I think for anyone who's a creator of a marginalized identity of any kind to recognize that our creations, our thoughts, our ideas are often unpopular among the general public. So what Section 230 does is it basically allows platforms to host things that might be unpopular, and thus might get them sued. What happens if you radically change or remove or gut Section 230, is you put these content moderation decisions, which we know the platforms are already doing a terrible job at, and it hands them to not away from the trust and safety team or whoever is already doing kind of a bad job at it, and gives it to the most risk averse corporate lawyers in the world who are going to do an even worse job at it. These are lawyers that do not have a power analysis. They do not care about the speech of marginalized people. They just care about protecting their platform from getting sued.

Evan Greer (28:03):

So if that means that they remove wholesale entire categories of speakers or engage in widespread censorship of marginalized people's viewpoints and posts and opinions, they will happily do that in order to protect themselves from lawsuits. That's what we saw with SESTA-FOSTA. It didn't actually end up coming down on the companies. They just kind of figured out, "Alright, fine. We'll just shut down." This is not about defending the companies. I don't particularly care very much about the company's profits or how much money they have to spend on lawsuits. What I care about is the impact that that then has on marginalized people's speech, and particularly social movement. For me, Section 230 is such a crucial law for protecting speech, like for example, a video of police violence.

Evan Greer (28:58):

Which in a world without Section 230 would almost certainly invite lawsuits from law enforcement who would claim that it's defamatory or that it's incitement, like the Me Too Movement where people are able to speak out about abusive behavior. Platforms are willing to host that speech, because they know that they're not going to get sued for giving people a platform to speak and speak their truth. I always think about the impact on those movements. Fight for the Future sees Section 230 as one of the most important laws protecting free speech and human rights in the digital age. That doesn't mean that we don't think it can ever be changed. No law is sacrosanct. Laws are just laws. We are very concerned that rushed or uncareful changes to Section 230 will do far more harm than good.

Evan Greer (29:54):

We also think it's largely a distraction from the policies that we really need to be fighting for, like strong federal data privacy legislation that cuts off the huge stream of data that these companies are collecting and using to manipulate people like practices banning practices like non-transparent algorithmic amplification where Facebook isn't just letting White supremacists spout off. They are actively saying, "Hey, you seem like you might be a White supremacist. Do you want to meet these other White supremacists in this White supremacy group?", for the purpose of gaining more money through advertising. Our feeling is that there are real policies that are sitting right there in front of us, like passing strong federal data privacy legislation, like enforcing existing anti-trust and civil rights laws, like pushing for FTC investigations into specifically harmful business practices, again, like algorithmic manipulation, like micro-targeting, et cetera.

Evan Greer (31:00):

We could be getting to work getting those done if we weren't constantly going around in circles in this kind of partisan gridlock debate around Section 230. We could do it in a way that would actually address the problem at its root. Then finally, I'll just say I think one thing that people often miss when thinking about Section 230 or one thing that's happening a lot is I think lawmakers have almost got it into their minds that Section 230 or taking away Section 230 is the only lever that they have to hold big tech companies accountable. I hear this a lot from lawmakers, from groups that I work with where they're like, "Yeah, I don't think this is really a good solution, but I just don't know what else to do. Someone has to do something about these companies."

Evan Greer (31:46):

I resonate with that. These harms are real, and they're happening right now and they're traumatic. We do have that sense of, "We have to do something." Again, I think if there's one thing that we've learned over the last number of years around internet policy and if there's one thing that we should take away from SESTA-FOSTA, it's that we have to do the right thing, not just something. If we just do something, it'll almost always end up coming back to hurt the people who are already being hurt. It won't actually hold the companies that we want to hold accountable accountable, because they have exponentially more resources. They have deep pockets. They can afford the lawyers.

Evan Greer (32:28):

What we end up with, if we make changes to Section 230 that are not thoughtful, is we could actually end up solidifying the monopoly power of the largest most abusive players, like Facebook and Google. They're the ones that can afford the armies of lawyers to deal with lawsuits. We might end up inadvertently crushing any alternative that could come along and provide a better service or a better model or a better community online and leave the big tech companies as the only ones left standing, because they're the only ones that can afford to survive in a world without Section 230.

Evan Greer (33:05):

For me this, isn't sort of like, "Well, are you for the companies, or are you for holding them accountable?" For me, this is, I'm for the people. I'm for human rights. I believe that defending Section 230 and fighting instead for real meaningful policy changes that will actually address the root causes of the harms that we see from these surveillance, capitalist monopolies, that's what I'm fighting for. That's what Fight for the Future wants to see.

Bridget Todd (33:37):

More after a quick break.

Bridget Todd (33:50):

Let's get right back into it.

Bridget Todd (33:52):

I'm so happy that you started this conversation being grounded in talk about sex work. It's kind of wild to me how often people who are involved in sex work are the ones who are really innovating online, because they have to. Yet, they're so marginalized and sidelined in those same conversations about online policy. They're just not really given a voice in conversations that impact them so directly.

Evan Greer (34:12):

Your average sex worker is more of an expert on Section 230 than anyone, any Ph.D. or academic who studies this content moderation or thinks that they do, because they have to be. I think this is also about reframing how we think about expertise. I've just been banging my head against the wall over the last few months, because I just constantly hear a panel on NPR and they have random law professor A, random law professor B and a representative from YouTube or whatever or some former CIA guy who studies disinformation when they're not busy spreading it about Latin American governments or whatever, and that's the panel. They're framed as experts.

Evan Greer (35:00):

The reality is, the people who are experts in online harms and tech policy are people who have lived experience with what these policies actually do when they go into effect. I think if there is one thing ... If I could just snap my fingers and make anything happen, it would be to force every progressive nonprofit based in DC and every lawmaker to sit in a captive audience and just listen for a couple hours to groups like the Sex Workers Outreach Project or SWOP Behind Bars or Reframe Health and Justice or the Woodhull Freedom Foundation who are leading the lawsuit against SESTA-FOSTA and actually listen and listen to how these policies play out.

Evan Greer (35:51):

It feels like often a lot of the conversations around Section 230 are framed as, "Here's a bunch of terrible things that have happened." Everyone's like, "Yeah, those things are all terrible." Then it's like, "That's why we need to change Section 230." That's where the disconnect is, because again, no one disagrees that there are real harms that are springing from these platforms' behavior, from their business models, from the status quo. I am so far from someone who thinks, "The internet's fine. Just leave it alone." We need real policy and we need to act quickly, and we need to fight for meaningful change.

Evan Greer (36:33):

Again, I think that mentality of, "Well, let's just do something so we can say we did," I think is actually profoundly immoral. At that point, again, you're not recognizing that just doing "something" can actually end up doing really profound harm. If you're not listening to folks who are truly marginalized, who actually have lived experience with being on the wrong side of content moderation, with being on the wrong side of platform power, then you're not actually fighting for policies that protect the most vulnerable. We're kind of just recreating a lot of the same mistakes that we've made in the past.

Evan Greer (37:15):

Again, I think for myself, I think often about the mainstream gay rights movement that systematically for decades deprioritized its most vulnerable members, including sex workers and trans folks and basically anyone who was not a cis White man looking to get married or join the military. I think now our mainstream organizations are recognizing those mistakes and starting to reckon with them and really genuinely are, at least on a policy level, starting to fight more for policies that benefit trans folks, or at least fight against this surge in discriminatory legislation, et cetera. Then I see other movements where we're making the same mistake. For me, I always try to base my activism not in what some academic says, not in what's popular in Washington DC or what's a hot button on TV but in the lived experience of people who have real experience with how these policies actually play out on the ground.

Bridget Todd (38:22):

As someone who lives in DC and has worked for many an organization where I wonder, "Who are we actually centering here?", I think in my personal activism, I always try to think about the folks who are actually the most marginalized or the most oppressed. If we're able to center them and lift them up, we will all benefit. We will all benefit when the people who are directly impacted and most marginalized are amplified, supported, and lifted up. We will all impact.

Evan Greer (38:47):

It fundamentally changes how you think about these things. I guess for me, again, I just wish that more folks were thinking about this through the lens of what actually fixes this problem versus, "How can we score some points against the companies?". I want to score points against the companies as much as anybody else. These companies are doing harm. They are evil. They are profiting off of a business model that, again, is really incompatible with so many of the things that we hold dear. I don't want to just dunk on them. I want to actually do something about their power and take it away from them and put it back in the hands of everyone and reclaim the internet as the technology that we talked about at the beginning that you and I have both felt the power of and that is giving us this opportunity to have this conversation right now and to let people listen to it.

Evan Greer (39:45):

I just want to make sure that we, as we're looking to address harms, we also recognize the ways in which this technology has profoundly libratory potential. I think part of that is also about looking at the status quo. If we think about the world before the internet, there was still disinformation, it was just on cable TV. Look at crime reporting in the 90s, which was so blatantly overtly anti-Black and racist. It was all about constantly hyping up crime in cities to play on people's fears, specifically White people's fears, to push racist policies. Now we see that democratized in a way with things like Nextdoor and Facebook, et cetera. It's still a problem, but it's not a new problem. It's a problem that has shifted mediums and shifted forms.

Evan Greer (40:43):

I think there's something about the instinct to blame technology that is rooted in a collective unwillingness to acknowledge that these hateful, harmful bigoted ideologies and movements have been part of this country since its inception. It's almost like a collective amnesia around that that pushes us to be like, "This is a new problem created by the internet." It's like, "No, this is an old problem that's being reflected back to us by the internet." Instead of blaming the internet, we need to actually hold ourselves accountable and work for the structural change that we need.

Bridget Todd (41:26):

Structural change to our social safety net could actually be one potential solution to the spread of disinformation. We already know that people turn to lies and conspiracy theories and distortions when they're scared or anxious. If more people's basic human needs were taken care of, fear could drive less of our discourse and policy.

Evan Greer (41:43):

I would argue that policies like universal healthcare and ensuring that everyone has adequate housing and food and access to education and basic survival would do a lot more to address things like viral disinformation than anything you could do to Section 230 or even anything else with tech policy. These are problems that are springing out of broad structural issues and then being exacerbated or amplified by technology. They're not being created by it. I think that's actually really important and something that is uncomfortable to grapple with, because it also means there isn't some quick fix silver bullet. It kind of just means we've got to keep doing the work and recognize that change takes time.

Evan Greer (42:32):

I'm so inspired by those who come before us, many of whom died before they actually saw the results of their organizing. For me, it's about recognizing that every day, that there's something integral about protecting the transformative power of this technology in the hopes that in future generations, we will look back and say, "I'm glad that folks fought to make sure that we have this tool and that it's available to marginalized communities to organize and fight for our liberation and that we fought back against the worst uses of technology, like facial recognition or like automated license plate readers or other forms of harmful surveillance."

Evan Greer (43:21):

I do think this debate or this fight over whether technology with largely be a force for good or continue down this path of being a force for exploitation and greed and corruption is going to determine not just the future of technology but the future of humanity. For me, that gets me out of bed every day and keeps me up every night. That's why I think it's worth fighting for.

Bridget Todd (43:44):

Today's episode featured music from Evan Greer's new album, Spotify is Surveillance. Check it out at the Bandcamp link in the show description.

Bridget Todd (43:58):

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing.

Bridget Todd (44:05):

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you at hello@tangoti.com. DISINFORMED was brought to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our Executive Producer. Tari Harrison is our Supervising Producer and Engineer. Michael Amato is our Contributing Producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.