Now, look, a lot of people, they've been asking me,
"Hey, what is it like having your own TV show?"
And I tell them all the time, "I don't have a TV show.
I have a web series. This is Netflix."
And I love that this show lives and dies on the Internet,
and I really do love that because I'm a child of the Internet.
I grew up with the Internet. Do guys remember your first computer?
-Yes. -Okay, I remember mine.
It was a Compaq Presario that we bought in 1995 at Fry's Electronics.
The monitor was a cinder block. It was huge.
Taking it from the floor to the desk felt like you were doing dead lifts.
[grunts] Like, "I don't want to pull a hamstring."
And it had, just wait for it...
56K dial-up Internet.
AIM, Napster, LimeWire, Winamp, chat rooms.
The craziest thing anyone would ask you is A/S/L.
You'd be in a chat room, and your friend would be like,
"You told them we were two dudes in Davis?
They're gonna find us now!"
Back then,
the Internet represented progress.
It was an exciting new world that tore down barriers.
Twenty years ago, my father was like, "I'm going to save up
so my child can be on the Internet. That is where everything happens."
And now I'm like,
"My child cannot be on the Internet.
That is where everything happens."
I'm trying to keep my baby off of social media.
We know the big four, you know!
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
Facebook has over two billion users.
That's as big as Christianity and bigger than Hinduism and Islam.
Although, Facebook's messenger is probably weaker.
Look, I don't care if you're like, "Oh, I'm not on social media.
It doesn't affect my life."
Trust me, social media is HPV. Just because you don't have it...
doesn't mean it doesn't affect you or someone you know.
Now, look.
If you're not laughing...
you have HPV.
[laughs]
Just the dead stare of like...
These companies profit off everything we share.
They've stockpiled our data.
We are placing an incredible amount of trust in them.
But every day, we are learning more and more why we shouldn't.
Facebook coming under fire this week.
The New York Times with a bombshell piece
about how the social media giant handled Russian interference.
[woman] Facebook's top executives not only ignored warning signs
of Russian interference in 2016,
but sought to conceal them from public view.
This has been a huge story, but what pisses me off is that for months
Zuckerberg said Facebook couldn't have influenced the 2016 election,
but later admitted that 126 million Americans
may have seen Russia-linked political ads on Facebook.
It's like tobacco companies acting like they didn't know smoking was bad
even after four Marlboro men died from smoking.
They're like, "Come on, man. It was all that horseback riding."
Oh, that's what you call lung cancer.
Lung cancer? They must have been smoking near a microwave.
Facebook is emblematic of what can go wrong on social media.
That's why tonight,
I want to talk about content moderation and free speech.
Free speech you already know.
Content moderation is oversight of the material on the Internet,
and what happens on the Internet can have real world consequences.
The worst thing on the Internet used to be Nigerian princes and boner pills.
Now, it's this.
Let's go ahead and go to the report, Pizzagate is real.
[man] North Carolina man arrested in DC pizza shop after brandishing a gun.
Swatting and doxxing and cyberstalking.
[man] We have been spreading our memes. We've been organizing on the Internet.
As you can see today, we greatly outnumbered the anti-white,
anti-American filth.
What he just said, is they are taking their fight
from the Internet to the real world, and that is happening more and more.
Look what happened to Christine Blasey Ford
the woman who testified against Brett Kavanaugh.
People have posted my personal information
and that of my parents online on the Internet.
This has resulted in additional emails, calls and threats.
My family and I were forced to move out of our home.
That is just one prominent example of someone being doxxed on Twitter,
and there are mounting problems with Facebook and local communities.
It has repeatedly failed to move quickly when it comes to harassment.
They use the same excuse I use with my dentist when it comes to flossing.
I'm like, "I'll do it, Dr. Peroni, just trust me.
Can we talk about this in six months?"
And social media has also caused huge problems around the world.
In India and Sri Lanka, social media has incited racial violence.
In Sri Lanka, where we've seen an escalation of violence.
The government blocked Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Viber,
saying that they were instrumental in spreading and amplifying hate speech.
A 32-year-old man has been lynched in southern India by a huge mob,
incensed by rumors of a child kidnapping spread on WhatsApp.
Military personnel in Myanmar use Facebook as a tool for ethnic cleansing.
This is not just spreading fake news.
Facebook has now turned into a beast
than what it was, what it was originally intended to be used.
The UN confirmed that Facebook helped exacerbate genocide in Myanmar.
So even if you delete Facebook and choose to opt out
and take ownership over your own life, it doesn't matter.
Facebook shapes how people around you behave, make decisions, even vote,
and when asked to flag and remove content,
tech companies always seem to defend their actions the exact same way.
Freedom of expression is one of our core values.
YouTube's mission is to give everyone a voice.
From our perspective, the primary focus is that
every user has paramount rights to free expression.
That last guy is Twitter's senior strategist of public policy.
A man named Mr. Pickles.
Now, look. Life is short.
So can we just take a moment to enjoy members of Congress
saying "Mr. Pickles."
-My name is Nick Pickles. -Thank you, Mr. Pickles.
So, Mr. Pickles.
-Mr. Pickles. -Mr. Pickles.
Mr. Pickles.
I wish I was at Twitter during his job interview.
Like, "Hey, thanks for coming in. Now, we need someone to be
a serious interface between us and the US government.
There is only one man for the job, Pickles!
You're hired!
The First Amendment has always been one of the ways tech companies
shield themselves from criticism.
Freedom of speech is their superstar in "Mario Brothers."
It lets them run through anything. [imitating video game music]
Nazis.
The other way they shield themselves from criticism
is the Communications Decency Act or the CDA.
Think of it as their Hylian Shield, the CDA is the law that gives them cover
from being sued for libel.
Now, I know people are like, "How could you mix up Mario and Zelda?
Those are two different things."
I don't care, it's the same Nintendo universe,
and these things are complicated.
The CDA is a law
that dates back to the 1990s when the Internet was still coming of age.
People really didn't know what it was.
Especially Bryant Gumbel.
That little mark with the A and then the ring around it.
-At. -See, that's what I said.
-Katie said she thought it was about. -Yeah.
What do you write to it like mail?
No, a lot of people use it and communicate--
I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and producers.
Allison, can you explain what Internet is?
Oh, yeah, and, Allison, while I have you, you know that guy Matt who reads the news,
definitely don't go into his office.
Yeah, he's got a button on his desk that closes the door.
[laughing]
Look, look... that's objectively creepy, I'm sorry.
Eventually, people started to see the promise of the Internet.
[woman] From the biggest company to a guy in his basement,
anyone can have a site on the World Wide Web.
Soon you'll be able to shop at your favorite stores
without leaving home.
[man] If you have a strange obsession, whatever it might be,
there's a place for you on the Internet.
We have someone's page that's called "Talk to My Cat."
So, whatever you type is gonna be said to the cat.
[automated voice] Roll over.
See what happened right now. See, this right here
is the most depressing thing about comedy.
No matter how hard I try, nothing I ever write will ever beat...
a cat falling off a desk.
The way you guys exploded.
I'm just like, I should just be Bob Saget
doing America's Funniest Home Videos: Melanin Edition.
Now, through the '90s, the Internet was spreading more and more,
and families were logging onto the Internet,
and that's when the trouble really started.
[man] Even though the Internet is like a vast library of information
to learn throughout the world,
parents need to know what it can bring into their homes.
Oh, the most graphic pornography that you could ever imagine.
[man] They can look under the word "Jesus Christ"
and find absolute pornography.
They can go to research, like, the White House
and find absolute pornography.
Wow.
Associating the White House with pornography.
Can you imagine?
That's crazy.
The thought of pornography
being piped into every house in America caused a knee-jerk moral panic.
There is available on the Internet every kind of pornography
you've ever envisioned and many you've never thought of.
A site, it had a description "male bears,"
and I looked at it and it was definitely not of the grizzly bear type.
All right, those aren't even bears.
Those are otters, and she would know that if she had Google.
The porn freak out led Congress to pass the 1996 Communications Decency Act,
which tried to restrict Internet porn with fines and prison time.
But porn wasn't going down without a fight.
A big victory today for those fighting for free speech protections on the Internet.
A panel of federal judges blocked a new law against images like this
on the Global Computer Hookup.
Global Computer Hookup,
sounds like Tinder in the Soviet Union.
It's Global Computer Hookup, you're like...
"All right, I'll meet some hot KGB girls."
Have you noticed everyone who's tried to go up against porn loses?
Since the beginning of time, porn is undefeated-- 82 and 0.
They have never lost-- Remember that line in Jurassic Park?
Where they're like, "Life finds a way."
Fuck that.
Dinosaurs are dead, porn is still here.
Forget life, porn finds a way. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down
large portions of the CDA for violating the First Amendment,
but a critical part of the law survived. Something called Section 230.
And I know everyone in Silicon Valley is watching this like,
"Yeah, everyone knows about Section 230, okay?
I couldn't live without Section 230, Tim Ferriss or Allbirds."
Now, I'm sorry, but as a sneakerhead, Allbirds are fucking disgusting."
They are the Kevin Durant of footwear.
They're in Silicon Valley, tons of people like them
and they are corny as fuck, and if you get offended by that joke
and Tweet me about it, you truly are like Kevin Durant.
Do you know who also wears Allbirds? Paul Ryan.
Look, there in the players tunnel on the way to repeal health care.
Okay, back to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Man, I really hope Fallon doesn't cover this by the time we air.
Section 230...
established that websites relying on user-generated content
cannot be treated like publishers.
This was a game-changer for the Internet.
Think of it in terms of the magazines you see on a newsstand.
-You guys remember magazines, right? -[audience laughs]
It's like Instagram that you could hold.
It's crazy.
Publishers create the content, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Cosmo.
Platforms are the newsstands themselves.
They don't publish the material, but they decide how to arrange it,
and if you walk by and go, "I don't like Cosmo, okay?
I did everything it said to get a summer bod,
but my abs are mid-December at best.
I'm suing you."
You cannot successfully sue them.
Without Section 230, every single social media company
could have been liable for every single tweet or post.
But the flip side of that is Section 230 gives platforms
the ability to moderate content however they see fit.
They arrange the newsstand, and they can take down whatever they want.
They basically act like a giant curator of content.
And let's be real, when it comes to YouTube, Facebook
and other social media platforms, curation is everything now
because there's so much content.
YouTube says 400 hours of video content is uploaded every minute.
That's about a century's worth of video content
added every day and a half.
That is just one platform.
As PewDiePie and Poppy have shown us,
a lot of awful shit can get uploaded to the Internet.
That is why Section 230 also established the Good Samaritan Clause,
which basically says tech companies can take down anything on their sites
that they think is objectionable.
You just can't sue them as long as they're doing it in good faith,
and they're doing this all the time.
Millions of images and videos are taken off platforms
when the most awful stuff is caught by content moderators.
Many social media users just assume that content moderation is automated.
In reality, there are reportedly
more than 150,000 content moderators worldwide working today.
Real people, all over the globe, are screening the most heinous content
and oftentimes suffering psychological trauma,
and some moderators are paid as little as $1 an hour,
and by every account, it is a hellish job.
[man] Smitha Patil works as a content moderator.
She gets through 2,000 photos an hour.
That's 1.6 seconds to decide if an image is violent, pornographic
or doesn't adhere to community rules.
1.6 seconds, it takes me a full minute after I wake up to realize
that shirt hanging on my chair isn't a man trying to kill me.
It's like, "Who are you, Mr. T-shirt? Oh, we're cool."
But here's the thing about shitty content online,
it's not all bad for tech companies.
They don't separate between what's good and bad.
They just look at engagement metrics.
[man] In the first two days after it was posted on Facebook,
the video of the little boy being beaten was shared more than 44,000 times.
From Facebook's point of view, it's the really extreme, really dangerous
form of content that...
attracts the most highly engaged people on the platform.
Social media companies don't allow porn porn,
but they are happy to give you outrage porn.
They know controversial content generates a lot of engagement
and this is not new. Every form of media has done this.
If it bleeds, it leads. Sex sells. We know this.
What is new is the scale.
They made a product that...
was a better tool for advertisers than anything that had ever come before.
Twitter and Facebook are ad companies.
This isn't about connecting with friends
or finding out which classmates are Nazi sympathizers.
This is about curating an experience for maximum growth in ad sales.
Free speech was never on the table.
Even Twitter's CEO, Jackie D, admitted it.
This quote around free speech wing of the free speech party
was never a mission of the company.
It was never as a descriptor of the company that we gave ourselves.
It was a joke. [laughs]
Yeah, it was a fucking joke.
Every time I see Jack from Twitter, it makes me miss Tom from Myspace.
It was a simpler time.
Remember section 230? It divided companies into two categories.
You're either a platform or you're a publisher.
That's been the framework.
You're either a tiger or you're a lion, but social media companies
have become a monstrosity that we don't have a category for.
They're this weird hybrid, they're ligers.
And if you don't know this, ligers are real.
They can be up to 12-feet long,
and girls named Brittany love taking pictures with them.
Okay, this photo pisses me off. Indians would never do this.
Ever. We would never-- even fictional Indians would never do this.
In both Life of Pi and The Jungle Book,
Pi and Mowgli are like, "Yo, I don't trust that tiger at all."
But if The Jungle Book was about Brittany,
she'd be like, "Is that a tiger?" [snarls]
Credits.
Over in two minutes.
That's it.
Now, look. We don't have meaningful languages or laws for ligers.
They're operating with near immunity.
And what's even more terrifying is now Facebook has said that they want
to form their own internal Supreme Court
to decide what should and shouldn't be acceptable speech.
After everything we've learned about how much they've lied and covered up,
why should we trust them? With the way things are set up right now,
tech companies are getting all of the benefits of a platform
and none of the risk of a publisher, and they use it to their advantage.
Just this summer, Facebook was sued by an independent app developer
for cutting off access to Facebook user data,
and in court, Facebook argued it can do that
because it is a publisher, and it's protected by the First Amendment.
This is very difficult issue, and the solutions here aren't simple,
but relying on the good faith of tech companies to regulate themselves,
that ain't working.
'Cause with the way things are right now,
social media gets to be platform in the streets
and publisher in the sheets, and you can't have it both ways.