 My name is Elliot Harmon and I am an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation I'm actually going to really quickly jump back out of the screen-sharing mode. I think I can do that pretty easily And say I've been looking forward to this discussion with you guys for a long time or you know since Scott And I first started talking about it about a month ago. I Have very fond memories of the brief amount of time I spent in Atlanta like a year ago And that was literally just a couple of days after the election of Donald Trump And I think that even though we were talking about patents that reality just very much sort of hung in the room during that discussion and as I was kind of thinking about talking with you guys again a year later one thing that I kept thinking about is that um What kinds of images are evoked when people use words like free speech or free expression? Has changed in some very very frightening ways That now when somebody talks about freedom of speech Even I as literally somebody whose job it is to be a free speech advocate Have this moment where I'm like, oh no, am I talking to a white supremacist? So there's this really kind of frightening rebranding of free speech going on But we must remind ourselves again and again how dire the stakes are that we have a president who Literally was just yesterday Saying that we should not have freedom of the press Um and and and that somebody should look into that in that weird way that trump always says things without saying them And so the the the stakes of in the heat of the moment losing some of the rights that our very republic is based on Is as real as they've ever been So again, I'm with the electronic frontier foundation, uh, and you can learn a lot more about us at eff.org I wanted to start with this image and I'm curious here. I'm gonna switch back again, and then I promise I'll quit doing this Oh, wait, I didn't I didn't actually do it Sorry, okay share I want to get a show of hands of who has ever seen this image before in their lives The free speech online blue ribbon campaign This very pixelated image by modern standards Here raise your hand if you've ever seen that before a couple of hands Um, this was a very formative thing for me. It was 1996. I was a 15 year old kid um, and there was suddenly a debate going on in congress, uh over Whether the internet should be open to 15 year old kids like me Or whether the fear that there were in fact kids looking at porn Was a reason to sacrifice most of the great things that had been built on the internet up until that point um, and it was a bill that would have put Any website that hosts any kind of sexual material in in great danger? if if it did not take Rather extreme steps not rather very extreme steps to ensure that that no children were looking at sexual material on those sites Um, there was this campaign. There were people turning their websites black It was like the first internet campaign like this and like I said, it was a very formative thing for me And we lost the cda passed in 1996 Which makes it ironic that a lot of the times now when people use those three letters cda They're actually talking about something very different That's because a court rightly struck down The bad part of the cda as unconstitutional And what they kept was this Among some other kind of uncontroversial things what they kept is this one section That people refer to as cda 230 Or sometimes a lot of the time we just refer to it as section 230 You cannot understate the importance of section 230 to the way that the internet works today If we did not have section 230 We simply would not have the internet the way that you and I think of the internet right now Here's what section 230 says 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 What that essentially means Is that any website or other kind of online service or product That hosts any sort of user content Is not liable For the content that those users post if they if they as the platform Did not have a hand in creating that content Here's a good way of sort of thinking about how this works Here we have these two figures one of which is a speaker and the other of which is providing this technical means For amplifying that speech under section 230 if that very enthusiastic ponytail wearing person were to Say something unlawful were to say something that is libelous or that or that that is illegal in some other way Then who is liable for that is the speaker and not The the person providing the technical infrastructure for them to do so And like I said a second ago if it weren't for cda 230 we wouldn't have the internet as we know it today or at least the internet would look Very very different from the way the internet looks now All of these sorts of companies, you know the big names in internet business Again would not exist or would look very very different if it weren't for section 230 facebook twitter google But there's a danger in acting as though the story ends there And even when you've seen in the media a lot of the debate over cesta It's kind of been framed as being about congress versus google when really google is just a small part of the story You also have this whole other world of online platforms that Are permitted to exist because of section 230 You have these non-profit websites that we all rely on things like wikipedia and the internet archive You know organizations that are running on very low budgets that are not doing this for a profit at all They're doing this to provide a service for education and knowledge sharing They are enabled under section 230 and you have niche websites. You have sites like meta filter I'm a big me fights. I always bring up meta filter in these discussions Metafilter, you know, it does not have the usual like facebook business model of growth growth growth It's about a really small really committed Community a single lawsuit For something that one of its users posts could likely take down a website like meta filter But that's not the end of the story either on top of those you have this whole other group of platforms With no organization behind them. No company behind them things that are really just created by people as a sort of community resource I just I looked up. I I I looked up a list of neighborhoods in Atlanta and said, okay Well, I chose wood park. That sounds nice. What if it had some kind of community mailing list? That likely wouldn't be able to exist without section 230 or even the old, you know, taking the free and open source message board software and running your own message board if you Knew that doing that could possibly expose you to extreme criminal and civil liability Not for anything you did but for something that somebody using your product did Then you likely wouldn't host that message board. You would likely just use facebook instead And so who benefits from section 230 the answer to that question is not just google and facebook and twitter Although they certainly do The answer is everybody Now section 230 does not Excuse any possible liability that a platform could ever have for speech that occurs on its platform First of all, it does not apply to federal criminal law We're going to talk about this in a little bit more depth when we get to what sesta would do But for now, uh, yeah, if a platform itself is doing something that is illegal under federal criminal law Then there is nothing to stop the department of justice From prosecuting it Also, it does not necessarily apply to all civil litigation Yes, it provides the certain amount of immunity Uh for liable for liability under civil litigation But courts have set some pretty clear boundaries to that Uh, there's a rather important case, uh called fair housing council v roommates.com Um, I don't know how many of you guys have heard this story before roommates.com Um Was doing something pretty gross if you think about it. It was this website, uh, where you could go online um And and find roommates if you wanted somebody to share an apartment or a house with And when you filled out your profile it asked you these questions about, uh Whether whether you would be okay with having a gay roommate for example or about age This is essentially enabling discrimination housing discrimination so When this case went to court Uh roommates.com of course tried to use Uh section 230 as a defense and the court said no Because and this is the important language here roommates.com was Directly involved with developing and enforcing a system that subjects subscribers to allegedly discriminatory housing practices and so you see you have this contour set by the court Saying that no if the platform is directly contributing to the problematic content Then then suddenly it's no longer protected for liability for that content under section 230 Now I shouldn't put in a little asterisk here Um and say that some of the implications of roommates.com are troubling from a civil liberties perspective Current law and so certainly before trying to uh change existing statutes People should look at the law the way that it currently is Having said that here's where we are now with this new threat To section 230, uh, which exists which is called sesta or they stop enabling sex traffickers act There is also an accompanying bill that's in the house of representatives right now That has a different name that I keep forgetting because it does not make a snappy acronym Here's what sesta would do it would Expose platforms to federal civil liability State civil liability And state criminal liability It also changes. Oh, I should say that it does all of these things With a little bit of a caveat that it is only in so far as as sex trafficking is involved Um, and we can talk a little bit later about why that's actually not enough To keep this bill from wreaking a great deal of havoc on the innovation ecosystem And it also amends, uh, federal criminal law to make it easier to prosecute platforms This would be very very expensive for web platforms And there is this irony here a lot of people think that, uh, the reason why congress is looking at sesta now is because, uh, the big internet companies like google and facebook are Not very politically popular right now because there are lots of people blaming them for Lots of the ills that we are currently in um But the irony here is that google and facebook and twitter and amazon all of those big big internet companies that, uh Represent a large portion of of our economy They will all survive sesta because they have very very big legal budgets Under sesta it would be nearly impossible for a new internet company to ever compete with google So think about that history here in 1996 we create this law That essentially makes it possible for these big internet businesses to grow And then in 2017 we pass a law That effectively cuts off that path that any new company could use to ever compete with google It's this funny irony. I saw this tweet that said, uh, imagine if sesta passed by drafting off anti facebook and google sentiment Only to entrench its monopoly position on the web And this journalist named mike masnick who you should all follow because he's very smart and very funny said There's not much to imagine here. This is literally exactly what's going to happen When i'm talking with people about sesta, this is often the point in the discussion at which they say so what? Google and facebook and twitter and all of those sites will be fine In terms of the smaller sites in terms of the hobbyist sites the people running message boards out of their basements All of those audiences will just migrate to facebook and twitter So what why are you guys so up in arms about this? And here's my response to that We shouldn't be only thinking about how sesta Will kind of change the climate for innovation and competition on the internet We should also think about how it will change those conversations on the internet themselves I wrote this blog post with one of our technologists here at eff Essentially talking about how the overreliance on automated filters that sesta will require Will actually push a lot of a lot of marginalized voices off of the internet Including victims of sex trafficking themselves So this is a statement from oracle a company that is is rather notorious for for always being on the wrong side of policy debates um, and this is a statement in which they were one of the first big tech companies to endorse sesta and they suggest here that uh all of the reasons why section 230 have to exist in order for online platforms to work have been just obviated by technology and that now we have a sophistication Of automated filters that would make it just very very trivially easy for any platform To ban sex trafficking content from their websites and nothing else And the answer is that's simply not true. In fact, it's not even true at all um When platforms Overreli on this automated filtering technology to the point that it is the filters themselves Deciding who is silenced or not? Uh, and not actual people deciding. That's when you have problems. That's when marginalized voices get pushed off of the internet I'm not going to switch back to the video because it's too much work But I if I were to ask who here has seen this image before everybody in the room would be raising their hands Because this is the image that you see on youtube when a bot on youtube Decided that a video was a was infringing somebody's copyright And the bots are wrong all of the time. So how would you like those same bots? suddenly mediating All conversations online including frankly all conversations of asexual nature And determining whether those conversations constitute advertising for sexual services specifically with victims of sex trafficking and think of how many innocent people would be censored in the process Automated filters. They're kind of like a thermostat. There is this careful balance where if if you make the filter too strong Then you have a lot of legitimate innocent people getting censored for no reason And if you make the filter too weak, then it defeats the purpose What sesta would kind of do is it would force these filters to thumb the scales in the direction of extreme Prudishness because if they did not do so then those platforms would be on the hook for severe litigation One of the great ironies of this is that the the people who are most strongly advocating for sesta uh Overstate so strongly how good automated filters are at making these very very human decisions When in fact what progress we've made in automated filters in the last 20 years is entirely thanks to section 230 This is maybe you guys have seen this before I sometimes call this the nerd harder problem Uh, and this is a problem that often plagues lawmakers where they think that technology can advance to a certain point Simply because they pass laws telling it to and you can see the exact same problem right now For example in the debate over encryption When technologists experts like yourselves say to lawmakers. No, it's actually not possible to create a back door that only Law enforcement can use and nobody else Then the members of congress who are pushing for back doors say, oh, that's just because the nerds aren't trying hard enough so so nerd harder As I said a second ago an irony of this whole debate Is that the progress we've made in automated filters simply would not have happened without section 230 I like pointing this out to people that when it was originally introduced in congress section 230 was called the internet freedom and family empowerment act And the whole reason why the bill that would become section 230 was introduced Was because there were courts saying to those old school online platforms, you know, like prodigy and comp you serve Saying to them if you filter Illegal content if you try to provide the family friendly service at all Then you are responsible when your filter messes up And the the representatives who introduced the internet freedom and family empowerment act widen and cox realized that What the courts were essentially doing was disincentivizing Any advancement in filtering technology and they wanted to be able to give platforms a wide birth to To experiment with and protect and and to to experiment with and perfect those filters And now the people who are Advocating assessed are essentially trying to take away the legal tool that protects those filters Here's something that the executive director of vff said again and again when platforms clamp down on their users speech Marginalized voices are the first to disappear My boss rainy rightman said it In a slightly more colorful way Uh, she said i've been talking telling people I know about this bill over the past few weeks and their responses are easy to predict Most of the guys I talked to understand that this is about online censorship But when I tell a woman about it, she gets that this is also about safety A girlfriend interrupted me mid-sentence and said they're pushing us back out on the street I'm not going to read the rest of this quote though. You can you can look at it yourself But she makes this point about how Uh as a woman she often has to make these decisions about who she can or can't trust And that's if you're meeting someone in a bar if you're deciding whether to get a ride home with someone and these online platforms Uh, essentially allow her to make those decisions in a place in which she's not as she puts it on the wrong side of a power imbalance And i'm sorry to tell you guys this but it gets worse As I said a minute ago, we believe that the people most victimized by sesta the people who will be uh Silenced the most by sesta and to the worst effect on their lives are actually victims of sex trafficking themselves And we've talked quite a bit with experts who are kind of on the front line providing services to At-risk sex workers and victims of sex trafficking and they agree wholeheartedly with this I talked on the phone with this woman named christin d angelo And there's a letter from her that you can read too She told me about oh and she works uh with an organization in sacramento that that works closely with uh with uh survivors of sex trafficking And she told me this just horrifying story of this woman who Had been using a website to to advertise and she was being trafficked Um, and when that website was shut down by the fbi Her pimp forced her to work on the street This is it gets a little bit disturbing here Uh, this is what uh, she wrote christin her first night out She was robbed and raped at gunpoint and when she returned to the hotel room without her money her pimp beat her Over the next seven months. She was arrested seven times for loitering with the intent to commit prostitution and once for prostitution All while she was being trafficked We approached the fbi for help, but we're told that their attorney would not likely prosecute the traffic the trafficker We were mocked and told that we watched too much tv So you can see how the people essentially trying to Make these spaces where sex workers including victims of trafficking work Uh, trying to eliminate those spaces does not do any favors to the victims of trafficking themselves Here's a quote that I will kind of leave you with from the freedom network usa where they Talk about What congress should actually be doing to fight trafficking? Every year the u.s. Government provides services and support to only a fraction of the trafficking victims seeking assistance while providers report wait lists Survivors continue to be arrested for their victimization and mandated into counseling while they struggle to find affordable housing and sustainable employment and freedom network A network of organizations that are working very closely with those survivors. They're saying that This is what congress should be doing congress should be looking at how to support these people They should be looking at harm reduction And instead they are unfortunately looking at this political stunt That will not help trafficking victims I've put some links there that I would encourage people to look at As well as the credit for the photo that I used Um, if you look at the url there, uh, eff.org slash sesta hyphen atlanta That's where you'll find the slides and you can even leave comments on them It is a google docs page. So if you'd prefer not to use google docs, just let me know and I will send this to you as a pdf And now i'm going to switch back so I can hear and see you guys And find out if everybody's left Okay, can you hear anything? Yeah, I hear you Okay, hang on Okay, can you hear anything now? I I still hear you. Yeah, okay So we have I had a bluetooth device connected to this so I could run it through a PA system that died in the middle of the talk But we were Yeah, we were still able to hear it from the laptop So, okay, cool. There's only six of us here. So I even know it's set up for a bigger crowd, but Um, but we basically heard we did hear the rest of it. So Um, cool. I'm glad I'm glad to know that Yeah, so I I still have a few little technology hiccups on this side, but at least we were able to we were able to hear and see the whole thing Uh, are there any questions or comments or uh, anything else folks want to talk about? Okay I It might attach to Yeah So, um, I'm interested in the prospect of content control But I'm hearing it from a different area than what you just talked about. So, um, there's various alternative media outlets alternate And another one whose name is gage. These are the socialist Market That it's stability to reach out Uh, and for to be found on the internet has been negatively affected up late Not because the cess for section 230 in that case because google has been pressured to revise It's algorithms has there's too much going on fake news Too much russian voices and media and etc. So, um, and I've also seen that Rt Russia today, which hosts a lot of us alternative news and public affairs shows Has also been categorized. They now have to register as foreign agents and so on And so the sort of a general the sort of mosaic of what looks like on various fronts these attempts to Delegitimize anything that's not mainstream media Establishment news and public affairs And I wonder if cest is in part of that or seem push to weaken the protection of section 230 push to change the algorithms to screen out alternative media push or overseas across border news to be Delegitimize and criminalize is this what you know is is what you're talking about say part of a bigger Interview do you have a sense of that as well? That's a really good question I'll say a couple things That's a really good question and I like Scott um, and I I'm I have a couple of comments on it I will first admit that my comments might not be very satisfying because this is a complicated issue that I'm far from an expert in um I do definitely think that um What what I would uh Maybe slightly euphemistically refer to as the anti internet lobby um Is definitely motivated by and I by the idea that a few large companies Uh, and in particular google have just far too much control over our information Um, and I think that In some ways there is a glimmer of truth to that um, a funny thing is actually a a few of the organizations that are uh Really pushing for sesta um have made articles and things pointing out that like if you google section 230 Uh, you'll find eff pages on the on the first page of results And pointing to that as an example of google being biased for what it's worth. I don't think that's an example of google being biased I think that's because EFF has been writing about section 230 for as long as section 230 has existed and our pages get linked to a lot And so google uses this algorithm based on what things get linked to What I would really say though is that If that's the if that's the discussion we want to be having of how google like sort of controls the information Uh Diet or the information ecosystem or whatever you want to call it Then what we should really be looking at is things like Uh, okay, can we see these algorithms? um, you know, we should be looking at kind of transparency of algorithmic filtering um So that people can see what is going on and improve on it um The irony is that things like sesta are sort of the very opposite solution because they are in a way sort of Throw it throwing up our hands at the idea of algorithmic filtering ever working and just sort of forcing platforms to completely clamp down Um, so yeah, I don't know if that was the most satisfying answer But I definitely do like I I think about those issues too um, and I I I think that There's definitely some shared hostility there that is that is fueling things like sesta, but I sure don't think it's the right outlet for them So in terms of controlling content controlling speech in society Yes, there's a concern That google as the central speech mediator Is in a position to control speech and people are worried about that and some of the people But but in some ways for people or entities that want to control speech Which might be the public sector as well as private corporations To the extent that the government the public sector expresses concern The google will control speech um If the public sector itself wants to control speech It's quite useful to have google as a central One-stop medium for all practically all or much speech in society because you can control google So what you might find is the push isn't to break up google So it doesn't control speech push would be more to regulate google Which in turn regulates public speech and becomes quite a powerful mechanism for controlled speech So whether it's influencing google's algorithms and pushing back against fake news Or saying google's a utility to be regulated as a utility Essentially you now have google can easily find itself doing the bidding of the regulators that are over at the moment So i'm not sure that I'm curious if it'll be a push to break up google or simply to keep it centralized and regulate more Those are those are some interesting points and I will say um although I although I am a uh I am a civil libertarian Uh, I I I I I wouldn't quite refer to myself as like a libertarian with a capital l Uh, like I I I think that competition is necessary, but not sufficient um and and so like at very least We should be very looking very very skeptically on uh Any efforts in congress that will create a much higher hurdle for any competitor previous one, uh, I wrote in the 70s and 80s when the entire information sources we had was cds abc and uh NBC and that's pretty much it and you're the whole thing The internet is Uh, one of the reasons I came here though is uh, I wanted to find out more about how you have these conversations with uh, Shall we say possible witnesses? Uh, I tried to bring this up actually somebody brought it to me and said, uh, I want to share this thing with you, but I do nothing about it And they started in and they got about two sentences into their bitch and I was like, well, wait a minute If you're talking about this man like cda 230, we're done here. I'm not going to support you And they're like no, no, let me present my evidence here. These are terrible horrible people doing sex trafficking online and people are profiting from it and I'm like And so what? 230 says it's okay And by them being in a commonly accessible forum It's easier for a law enforcement to go hunting people down and capture them And whereas if you think there's a way you are driving this behavior underground to things like the dark well Where it isn't harder to figure out where these people are by the very nature that it has in the line You have to be contactable with where to sell your product So I'm like this should be solving itself And they still didn't get it. They're like, oh, no, you support greatness. So I'm done talking to you Um Yeah, I've I've been having a number of those conversations over the past few weeks And often you'll just get to an impasse The thing and I I want to I want to be careful here because I do believe that Many of sesta's supporters are well-intentioned um There are a small handful of groups that have very successfully branded themselves to members of congress as the kind of sole anti-trafficking experts um and What I often say to people in these discussions is actually just spend 15 or 20 minutes looking at the websites of these groups And you will see that their motivations go well beyond fighting trafficking They they go to further marginalizing sex workers. They go to Uh removing things like pornography from the internet Like it actually is the same it in some of these groups are actually the same folks that were behind the original CD I just sort of under a different name um I've been talking quite a bit with folks like freedom network usa uh sex workers outreach project uh groups that frankly have a great deal of frontline experience with Victims of trafficking with survivors of trafficking And looking quite a bit at the recommendations that they are making of what congress should really do And you'll notice that it's it's very very different from the kinds of recommendations of the folks behind sesta. It's it's not It's it's it's not a spectrum at all. It is two very very different camps um, and the point we've been making is Okay, if we just take it as a matter of fact that we are all on the side of wanting to reduce trafficking of wanting to provide better support to To survivors of trafficking Then let's talk with the experts in harm reduction about how to do that And that is Honestly like like it's funny. There was you know, they have these like congressional hearings And they they have the senate one and then a couple of weeks later. They had the house one And there was a guy Talking to A tech lobbyist a guy who's sort of generally on our side and this member of congress said to him Do do you believe that sesta will actually do anything to reduce trafficking? um And I just kind of laughed and I said, why are you asking a tech person this question? Get the harm reduction experts and ask them what would do good? um, this is a situation in which we've they've kind of set the The the the agenda first and then sort of backfilled the problem rather than looking at the problem first and and working on solutions Thank you You're going to have the problem That All I would cite may go the other way so that then they're not being Regulated you but then at the same time even sites that aren't going to go that far Are going to do things like they're going to sidle They're going to say well, I'm only going to have my friends that can comment on this site I'm going to only have the people in my network able to comment on this site So it's going to turn into like kind of trust issue That are we're not going to allow just anybody who knows all this issue to just people that Align or that you personally know There's there's a uh, there's a woman who's uh, who's an academic uh named uh, what is her name? Alexandra levy Uh, and she wrote this paper called the virtues of unvirtuous spaces Uh, and it's a really excellent read. I would I would strongly suggest taking a look at it um, and she talks quite a bit about the the uh Elephants in the room as it were back page Uh, and talks about how central back page has been to All of these successful rescues of victims by law enforcement that said Just I just want to Also get this out there Uh, which is that if Back page did in fact as some people are now claiming it did Uh Directly create unlawful content Um Then yes under existing law. There is nothing to stop the department of justice from prosecuting it Uh, a couple of years ago congress passed a bill called the save act Uh, which was another amendment to uh, 18 usc 1591, which is the federal sex trafficking statute Um that added this whole other class Of of traffickers that they referred to as advertisers It was very clearly written with the purpose of prosecuting back page Uh, nobody has ever been prosecuted under the save act um, and so like if If if the problem that we are trying to solve here is a lack of prosecutions and that is a big if Um, then then we should be talking to the department of justice and not to congress um, yeah Um, right now section 230 Does have some exceptions Where the platform can be prosecuted for content law, right? Which is I think the Criminal I guess federal criminal law and intellectual property law are really good. So we're adding another That might marry me not me correctly. We're adding another class of content Which can get the platform provider in a struggle but i'm wondering you know Are we really setting a new precedent here or History has already shown that some except by creating some exceptions. They don't creep to include everything So how dangerous is how dangerous is it to add yet another exception? Will it be contained just around sex trafficking or will it in fact expand To lead to more control That's a really interesting question. Um, there's a uh Actually former representative chris cox who was one of the authors of the bill that became section 230 He's been doing quite a bit of of lobbying around sesta um, and and he he often makes this interesting point that Why is Trafficking actually the thing. Um, there are certainly other heinous crimes that some Some portion of organizing them happens online What is it that it was actually unique about trafficking? um, and I think that there's some truth to that I think that You would you will see other attempts? um And the unfortunate thing is that in those attempts to kind of chip off pieces of 230 You will see this Radical expansion of federal criminal law Because that's what they're essentially doing right? They're chopping off a piece of 230 and then expanding federal criminal law And you could imagine them doing something similar with you know, lots of other types of crimes um, but the other thing that I would say that in my opinion makes uh Makes this a a an existential threat as it were Is that The hurdle that it is creating for platforms in terms of moderation in terms of filtering Like that that hurdle is in a way uh How can I put this um It would be just as big no matter what the crime were Because just you know computer filters lack the understanding of context et cetera that uh That this would require of them. So in a way, it's almost sort of happenstance that this is the Field of criminal law that they're trying it with first the damage on online communities Would be equally bad no matter what it were I mean, they're exposed to liability right now for federal criminal law How dangerous is the platforms right now already? How much filtering do they have to do? I'm not sure if I have a great answer to that question, but keep in mind that things like, uh The uh the filtering that youtube does for for things like copyright infringement That's not required of them by law um That is a a a matter of agreement that they have made with rights holders, et cetera Uh, but their safe harbor under the dmca does not actually require that Um at the same time as you're seeing people pushing for things like sesta You're also seeing again what I'd sort of broadly refer to as the anti anti internet lobby uh pushing for Copyright filtering to be a requirement on every platform Other than the best website Which is always good when you've done this kind of talking and explanations that do you have any tips for How to best explain To other people like a key point or something because that's what I've always taken away from anything that we do here is How can I better Engage and explain something to other people without just necessarily presenting them something to read a lot of You know, sometimes you have to hook them into what what what is the urgency of the topic because there's a lot of topics And also the other thing while you were speaking is also I guess it's kind of hard to predict because the congress and everything else is very unpredictable now They don't seem to be doing very much But if something like this were to pass, um, do we have a lot of precedent as to how The imaging it would be to companies or is it a lot of theory? What was it? What was the last word a lot of what? Do we have like precedent as to how people Not not not saying like this is the way with effect on both human society examples That would say this is exactly what's going to happen to companies Because I feel like the reason I'm saying this is I feel like this is this is like a lot of issues It's a moral argument. If it didn't have the worst sex trafficking in it, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting And there wouldn't be all of these kinds of arguments So that's why they Yeah, I mean I was in the right read I read the Proposed changes and it could be something as simple as striking out a conjunction Yeah, so a couple of thoughts Um I I'm not sure what uh particular proposals for Amendments to sesta you're you're referring to we've seen a couple of those and we kind of know about some others The the the ones that we've seen and are kind of aware of Uh Do arguably fix some of the problems But you still have uh this The essential problem, which is that it is uh Trying to create liability even For now just in terms of the federal criminal statute But the same logic applies at the state level as well trying to create liability when platforms do not literally know Um, and as long as you still have that problem, then it is going to be a mess um To your bigger question About like how you have this discussion with people Um It is you're right. It is difficult um and What I do Again and again is I foreground People like Alexandra Levy people like freedom network people like Uh sex workers outreach project. There are very very smart experts who have been thinking about the problems of trafficking for a very very long time um, and they are Pointing out ways that these proposals will be specifically bad for survivors of trafficking If you can at least sort of foreground the discussion with that Then you can at very least get on the same page with the person that you and they actually want the same thing Uh, and that's what's definitely been useful to me um It's funny. I am Literally in two days getting on a plane and going to south dakota The reason why i'm going there is because uh senator thune from south dakota is the head of the commerce committee and he Could be the person to sort of quietly put this thing to bed So we're trying to raise a great deal of awareness among his constituents So I've been on the phone a lot with local grassroots groups and I Initially tried doing a lot of reaching out to like techies to the startup community Um, and lots of those folks just didn't really want to have this discussion The people who really did want to have this discussion were the the lefties for lack of a better term um and when you can uh Foreground that we all actually want the same thing uh in terms of Improving situations for victims of trafficking then you can you know cite the experts who are talking about how to do that um, oh and the one other thing I would say is When you look at the kinds of questions that members of congress have been asking Uh, you definitely get the idea that They don't understand How many people would be affected by this? Uh, there was even there was this weird moment when uh Uh, I think it was senator blumenthal um said in response to An expert pointing out how difficult this would make things for startups he said something like Well, you're talking about a few outliers And they will be prosecuted under this law It was such a weird line because one he did not understand that like startups are kind of what fuels the innovation economy and two He seems to see them as just this like obstacle to be dealt with Um, and and not like a core part of his constituency um, and so the reason why I bring this up is people in this room, uh, you know people who work in technology people who understand technology people who I would imagine some of you have to 30 to thank for your jobs um These are the people whose stories it's really really useful for your members of congress to hear And Because those those here in georgia as well as a lot of us are still Very poorly understood and not based in science Um, so we still we still have problems with criminalization here. They're sort of safe to do um So that that makes me feel like I I don't know In a bigger context of not just this law But like going forward with this kind of an issue. That's a very good way of reaching out to other people who would be affected In those organizations that I didn't even think about until you mentioned that because I didn't really think about the harm reduction But all of those kind of nonprofits could also be affected, couldn't they because they had different information as well I mean the information Without You don't have to be a for-profit business to be affected by that. Isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. Um, and I've been you know speaking of nonprofits um One of the sort of fears that I have about this thing is What's going to happen? When somebody tries to sue or when a when a state tries to prosecute The internet archive because of something that was posted on some website that the internet archive scraped up It's like, you know, we have these educational non-profit tools that are kind of so important to the way the internet works um But yeah to like the harm reduction point like I agree with that and I I actually think that um the sort of uh Techno-activist type people like sort of the the EFF people for lack of a better term um Actually need to be spending more time talking with those harm reduction experts I think that's pretty much it. I want to thank you for uh, trying this grand adventure in technology and uh Thanks, I think this despite a few new cops things turned out pretty well in this room And Um, hey, I just want to I want to thank you again scott Uh for setting this up for thinking to reach out to us about this and thanks to everyone in this You know, I wasn't I wasn't joking when I said that uh My trip to Atlanta last year was a big highlight for me um And it's cool to see how this community has grown Um, and I'm eager to keep watching it and help out however I can Well, thank you very much. Um, I guess we'll go ahead and wrap it up here Um, and we'll be in touch All right, thanks a lot everybody Thank you