The Disinformation Panic

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By giving online intermediaries a sizeable degree of immunity from liability for user content, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 combined a characteristically American defense of free expression with a determination to ensure that this promising new sector was not stifled by another American tradition, predatory litigation. The outcome, through blogs, social media, and countless other outlets, has been to open the public square to voices that once would never have been heard.

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AI: Corporate Governance – Who’s in Charge?

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In last week’s Capital Letter, I wrote about the drama at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company and creator of ChatGPT which has the eventual goal of designing an AGI (artificial general intelligence), an automated system that could reason as well as Homo sapiens, before, presumably, overtaking us all. 

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Elon Musk’s Twitzkrieg?

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How Twitter polices speech on its platform is, assuming it remains within the law, up to Twitter. If those who run the company wish to do so in a way that offends our notions of free expression, that is, with one crucial exception, solely up to them. Twitter is privately owned, and the U.S. government has no business regulating how legal conversations are supervised behind the company’s virtual walls. Nor, for that matter, should any “independent” body be set up under the auspices of the state to review Twitter’s speech policy.

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