Some are calling for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies to actively police content on their platforms while others caution that enforcing content moderation would violate First Amendment principles—even if the First Amendment itself doesn’t bind private companies. Join Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, David French of the National Review, Marietje Schaake of European Parliament, and Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law for a live NPR show as they debate whether or not free speech principles can save social media companies from themselves. John Donvan, Emmy Award-winning correspondent for ABC News, moderates.
This program is presented in partnership with Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates and sponsored in part by generous grants from the Charles Koch Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.
Participants
- Corynne McSherry is the legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property, open access, and free speech issues. Her policy work includes leading EFF’s effort to fix copyright, promote net neutrality, and promote best practices for online expression. McSherry comments regularly on digital rights issues and has been quoted in a variety of outlets, including NPR, CBS News, Fox News, the New York Times, Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone. Prior to joining EFF, McSherry was a civil litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP.
- David French is a senior writer for the National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, an attorney, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is a New York Times best-selling author, and his next book, The Great American Divorce, will be published this year. He was previously the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom.
- Marietje Schaake is international policy director and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, respectively. She is a former member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, and was a member of D66, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe political group. She is also the founder of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Digital Agenda for Europe, a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and an adviser to the Center for Humane Technology.
- Nate Persily is a professor at Stanford Law School and the director of the Stanford Project on Democracy and the Internet. His scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law, which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. Persily’s current work, for which he has been honored as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.
- John Donvan is the host of Intelligence Squared U.S., moderating their debates since 2008. An author, speaker and journalist, Donvan has reported for ABC, CNN and PBS, including multi-year postings in Moscow, London, Jerusalem, and Amman, and a term as chief White House correspondent for ABC News. His 2016 book, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, was a New York Times bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year. John is a four-time Emmy Award winner and was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2010.
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