 Hello and good morning or good afternoon wherever you might be. Welcome to our latest future tense conversation. Future tense for those of you who don't know is a collaboration between Arizona State University, America and slate magazine and what what we do is we look at the impact of technology on society. We do so with terrific articles on slate I say terrific because they're edited by my colleague. You can follow us on Twitter at future tense now. And my name is Andres Martinez by the way I am the editorial director of future tense and I'm also a professor of practice at the Cronkite school at Arizona State University. Today feels almost like a family celebration because we are here because one of our favorite future tense contributors Jeff Jeff cost of his published his latest book, and it is on a fantastic subject so what brings us here together is the issue of anonymity. And the question of whether we have a right to separate our advocacy and our speech our messaging from our identity. Jeff's new book, the United States of anonymity how the First Amendment shaped online speech. It's one of these awesome topics because oftentimes, these issues play out in the online space and in the internet and people often discuss them as if we have never seen anything like this before, right. So one of the things that we try to do at future tense and we've done so for the last couple of years in our free speech project and Jeff is really great at this is to provide context about underlying principles and and history to that informs of these debates and these new trade offs that are being negotiated and navigated in a new space but that are actually not entirely novel to put it mildly. I mean when you look at the history of anonymous speech in the United States that goes back to the very foundation of the Republic and has been an interesting tension throughout with tremendous rights given to people, thanks to anonymity, but at a cost and I'm really excited to have Jeff and Nora tease that out. So in terms of housekeeping, you'll notice there are buttons on the bottom of your screen where you can you can purchase Jeff's book. For those of you who also might have read Jeff's previous book, the 26 words that created the internet and spoiler alert that's that's our favorite section 230, you know how masterful Jeff is at bringing these issues to life. That's why we love publishing and met at future tense as well. You can also pose questions post questions down below, and we'll be referring to audience questions throughout the conversation. So, I mainly want to get out of the way at this point and learn from Jeff and Nora. In terms of a slightly more formal introduction, I should say that Jeff is also a, you know, I mentioned his previous book and my, my phone here is frozen so I want to make sure I get his title right This is the associate professor at the inner science, the cyber science department at the US Naval Academy, and of course the author of the just published United States of anonymity, really honored today to have Nora help us out and guiding the conversation. And I'll be this is a senior counsel and director to digital justice and civil rights program at free press. And she is also an ASU colleague in that she is a faculty associate at the Cronkite School of journalism and mass communication, where she is sharing a lot of her wisdom and expertise on first issues to our Cronkite students who are fortunate to have her. So thanks Jeff and Nora for doing this with us and nor I'd like to pass the moderating baton to you to guide us in this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Andres and thank you to the rest of the future tense team it's it's really wonderful to be here. I remember when we used to be in person for events like these and I lament that to some extent but Jeff, it's wonderful to to see you here. Before we get really started. Why don't you give your typical your sort of go to disclaimer I know you often get that. Yes, thank you. And I almost forgot so yeah everything I say today is only on my behalf now on behalf of the Naval Academy the Department of Navy or the Department of Defense, my family doesn't want to take credit for what I say it's just Oh, I love it. If you've watched Jeff speak before that's his boilerplate and he does it every time. And I sort of feel like we can't now have our discussion without it I look forward to it in a very surreal way. We can't set military policy on this so we have to be really careful. Good. Well, it's great to be here with everyone I will keep reminding you if you have questions please put them in the Slido and I'll be peppering questions from the audience throughout our discussion together. We have about 50 minutes with Jeff and I really want to dive in because this topic is one I think about all the time. And as a little bit of background I will just say, Jeff has now written three books, I think I'm right on that a textbook, the of course very well known 26 words that created the Internet, and now the United States of anonymity, which explores how the internet age has been shaped by, and how it has continued to now shape the First Amendment and our conceptions of free speech. This is a little bit of historical background I just sort of want to set the stage for us in the United States the ability to speak or engage without revealing one's identity has incredibly deep historical ties. From the earliest days in this country people have often sought anonymity as a way to shield themselves and to then be able to address difficult or controversial questions in our public spaces. If you've written about this of course in your new book, I would love to just sort of open up first some of the history of what anonymity has meant in this country. There are so many examples, whether it's the authors of the Federalist Papers, other cases from the early Supreme Court days. Tell us just a little bit about what the right to be anonymous has meant in this country. Yeah, that's a great way to open it and it really so the right to be anonymous really in terms of being a First Amendment right didn't really start to be recognized until the 1950s. But to really understand why it was recognized, you have to go back to even before the founding of our country to look at what was the way that people spoke about particularly important and difficult political issues and overwhelmingly it was anonymously or under pseudonym. So you had Thomas Payne writing common sense, signing it written by an Englishman. You had the letters from the farmer from Pennsylvania. You had the after we had independence we have the Federalist Papers that argued for the ratification of the Constitution that Hamilton Madison and Jay wrote under Publius, and they kept their identity pretty secret, and they had a few people who knew at the time that it was them and some people speculated but I mean they even went to the extent of using cipher to communicate there to communicate to shield their identities from being disclosed so and there were anti Federalists who wrote under pseudonyms. And that was just the tradition of speech, but it didn't really come up in terms of whether there's a First Amendment right to be anonymous until the late 50s sort of right after Brown versus Board of Education. There was going to be NAACP that was getting into trying to get Alabama and other states to desegregate under the Brown ruling and Alabama pushed back and one way that they tried to push back was to find this loophole in a immigration registration statute basically saying that NAACP did not properly register in the state so they filed a lawsuit to shut down rather than saying just file the right form. That wasn't the state's objective. They wanted to shut down the NAACP but even more alarmingly as part of the discovery forced the NAACP to disclose its membership lists, which obviously would expose members in the south to a lot of retaliation potentially so the NAACP challenged this and it went up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that there is a right to anonymous association and that under the First Amendment. And then two years later they extended that to strike that right to speech to strike down an ordinance that required the authors of handbills to put their name on them and in that opinion in 1960 the Supreme Court wrote this is based on our tradition of anonymous speech going back to the federalist papers and these foundational documents and the court has since then reaffirmed the right in various contexts. It's not absolute. And there are a number of cases particularly in the campaign finance disclosure setting where the court has required disclosure but it's a fairly strong right and it's much stronger than any fundamental right of anonymity in many other countries. Well and my understanding is that you know this right to be anonymous has different protections in different contexts and as you already alluded there are these rights or the kinds of protections as part of speech and association rights, which are quite high I would say when it comes to how the court has you know reviewed what anonymity means for engaging in discourse at that level, but then there are those less protective areas and campaign finance is certainly one of them. And then there is this newer and burgeoning area, if we can even call it burgeoning at this point in time around speech online. It feels like we've arrived there, maybe some years ago, your book of course focuses on anonymous speech and what how that has sort of been shaped by the First Amendment but what for you at a personal level prompted the new book, because we've sort of gone through as quickly as possible in these first five minutes the the long history of what anonymity means the value of it and I'm curious, coming now to present day, you know, why you wanted to talk about and write about this book topic now. Yeah, so it really was, it was not a subject that I spent a tremendous amount of time on as an academic, but it was really an outgrowth of the section 230 work, because one of the main sort of to distill the summary of section 230 by its most ardent defenders they all that section 230 says is that you can't sue the platform for defamatory or otherwise illegal content, but you can sue the person who posted it or who wrote it. And that that sounds pretty straightforward, but then it's not always true, and it's not true for a few different reasons. And many of them get to anonymity the poster may have been using their neighbor's Wi Fi connection they might be using tour, they might be at a coffee house that doesn't require authentic logins, or even if they are using their own internet connection. What I was aware of, but I had not really pursued in depth was that that courts had set a fairly high standard to be able for a plaintiff in a defamation suit or some other related type of claim to use a subpoena to unmask an anonymous poster. And I really found that fascinating. And I've got to admit when I started when I when I started sort of the research and reading every case I could about anonymity, I was much more sympathetic to the plaintiffs because the cases that I hear about are involved sympathetic plaintiffs, people who have suffered from harassment and really horrific defamation, which I read about in the book. But what I found and what sort of change made made made everything more complex, which is fun when you're writing a book is that I found that so many of these cases, where people are trying to be unmasked the plaintiffs are big companies that are trying to figure out which employees criticize them. And that I'm not as sympathetic about I mean, obviously there could be there have been some legitimate claims by these companies but what I what we found going back to the 1990s, when you first had Yahoo Finance have a bulletin board where any pseudonymous person could go on and post about companies was that it really revolutionized the way that companies had to deal with criticism that before Yahoo Finance and before the criticism that companies received publicly was primarily from business journalists and they knew how to deal with that they complain. But they knew who it was, but the idea that some lowly employee could have the nerve to go to the world and say that the CEO is doing something that's not wise. That got under their skin, and they wanted to figure out how to deal with it. And they, until you had civil liberties groups, you had folks like Paul Levy, the EFF, you went until you had them really get in and it took years to basically get the courts to set high standards but the the companies were able to use this process to basically figure out who posted they had no really interest in actually litigating the case. They would typically use the subpoena to unmask the person, dismiss the case, fire them, and often make it more difficult for them to get a job again. And that's when you start to see the sort of the power rationals for anime that you have. I mean a lot of these employees, I mean some of them just didn't like their supervisor or they had crudges but I mean a lot of them were exposing really bad stuff that was happening or warning people like hey you don't want to work here. And they were really, and I personally have a problem with companies using our legal system and the power of a subpoena to unmask someone because they're not comfortable with being criticized. Well I want to come back to some of that because that's so fascinating. I guess I have a lot of questions Jeff, before we keep going I want to make another flag please put questions for all of you that are tuning in to our Slido. I'll be peppering those throughout the discussion so we want to make it as interactive as possible and this is your one chance to be with the complete legend that is Jeff so please please drop questions in. You know one of the things when I first started reading the book is, you know I just sort of thought to myself what an odd and exciting perspective to take on that you're dealing with online speech given your previous book, but also citing the First And that there is this weird tension I pick up on very early on in the book and thinking about where responsibility lies where the legal remedies are for people who are victims and I don't just mean those types of victims that are major companies trying to seek out who an anonymous complainant was but really the the more horrific stories and those are jarring. There is such a long line of anecdotal and research studies that look at how online abuse has affected people that it is when you know the perpetrators are anonymous. Their anonymity is a shield against any kind of remedy for victims who are silenced for any number of reasons, whether it's journalists or political dissidents. And so I would love for you to just sort of walk the audience through a little bit of what some of those stories look like and how did that shape the way you thought of the book. So are you talking about both sort of the positive uses and the benefits. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah I mean I, I think that the in terms of the benefits I mean there are so many I write about a privacy blogger named descent dough who I have long read and she is a psychologist and she has a real interest in privacy particularly data breaches and health privacy. And she really gets in there she reports on hackers who we all have reason to be afraid of. And she she gets and she also reports on companies that have really recklessly exposed customer data and so she has really good reason to be anonymous so I talk about her stories and the harassment that she's faced. But, but also the various rationales. I talk about my personal experiences with anonymity that that I view, I mean, I've used online bulletin boards there's one in DC DC urban moms and dads where people about a variety of subjects about health, finance jobs where people, it's the default is anonymous you can't, you can I guess write your name in the comment but there's no everyone posts as anonymous. And it's moderated so like the anything that's really abusive gets taken down but what I find is people are incredibly candid far more candid than you would be with anyone other than maybe your closest closest friends or relatives and even in that case you might not be. I think that is Jeff, I'm curious, I know that the sort of known psychological effect of online anonymity. Yeah, well, because you can be honest about, you know, this is, this was a time that I messed up at work, or this was. This was a really tough time in my relationship, something that you would not that I think a lot of people would not definitely post publicly where it could be Googled and their name would come up but even like with a casual acquaintance you wouldn't typically say a lot of that. And that I mean there are so many other uses. There, there are some uses that are controversial I write about a website called make them scared which was started by moderators who say and I emailed with them I don't know what their identities are but they're anonymous and they say they were Washington students who were during the Me Too revelations in 2018, they realized that a lot of the, the, a lot of the coverage was from people who involved in people who were very prominent, and they wanted to give a voice to the many, the many who were students at college who had who wanted to have their voice heard and they recognized that they often wouldn't want their name associated with the allegations so they actually start started a website with the list where people submit names of assaulters and harassers and the stories and I talked about the complex interaction with anonymity that the, so the men are named and there's a lot of criticism about having the men named the moderators started requiring the post the submitters to actually at least give their email address on their social media profile so they could verify and try to adjudicate disputes. And I mean it's gotten criticized quite a bit but I think it just demonstrates the power dynamic with anonymity again setting aside sort of the judgment about whether it should should be there. And then there are some truly disturbing uses of anonymity that I so the one that I spend the most time on that slate had actually reprinted involves someone named Ryan Lynn who was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison which is a very high sentence for a cyber harassment and stalking related crime. And he, I found out about this. What one of my very good friends is Kerry Goldberg and she runs a law firm that is dedicated to helping victims of online harms. And I went to her and I said, you know, I'm writing this book about anonymity and we disagree about a lot. I also value her. We disagree about section 230 quite a bit. Oh, we do but talking with her always makes my knowledge expands my knowledge about 230 and it challenges my views and that's good. And so I said, you know, I'm writing about anonymity. Have you had any cases of any really tough cases involving anonymity and she immediately said yeah, Ryan Lynn case and so this was a case where he was in his twenties who he had been a computer science major. He moved into a house with a few other people who were around the same age. He was only there for a month. There was a dispute particularly with one female roommate, and he was able to access her online passwords because her laptop had been unsecured. So he was able to get into all of her accounts and and find an intimate thing details about her life as well as access intimate images. And for several months after he used tour VPNs all sorts of techniques to launch this horrific campaign against her sending intimate images and stories not only to her and her coworkers and friends but to her parents her parents coworkers, calling bomb threats, signing her up for fetish sites. I mean it really and what what really sort of challenged my views in many ways about anonymity with this case so I read through the really voluminous court records for this case but I also spoke with her and she talked about how she went I mean she it wasn't really a mystery who it was to her she she she was sure who it was. But there's a difference between being sure who it was and being able to get them to stop and have them prosecuted, or at least somehow get them to stop using legal means. So she went to the local police and they really wanted to help her and one police officer was so dedicated to this that he went into computer classes, but they weren't able to and by some stroke of fortune she ended up being acquainted with an acquaintance of Kerry. This was several months later and got in touch with Kerry and Kerry represented her and Kerry knows all the folks at DOJ and the FBI computer crimes. And because this involved one of the things he did was he sent child sex abuse material, and it also involved bomb threats so the FBI and DOJ got involved and they were able to basically he based on how he used a VPN they were able to get enough evidence to bring charges he played guilty and was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison but this very as the woman told me this very very easily could not have been a DOJ case. And so that then I spend some time looking at you know how could, how did anonymity and shape this and obviously because he was able to hide enough of his identifying information he was able to engage in this really harmful conduct. But how would changing the First Amendment protections have altered that or help that. And I don't know how much they would have because if I mean if she had sued him which I think for a variety of reasons would not have been terribly effective just a civil suit. I mean I can't imagine a court clashing with subpoena in that case even under the high standards. I guess that some countries have real name requirements which I think would be unconstitutional in the United States, but even then I think there are we as we see with Facebook there are ways to circumvent real name requirements and so I looked at you know what what else could be done and I mean I think first the experience with law enforcement tells me that you know, in with other sorts of crimes, you don't always have law enforcement say you know we really want to help you we just don't have the experience with dealing with this sort with the sort of thing and so I really hope that local and state law enforcement invest more heavily in expertise on cyber crimes because they're not going away they're only going to get worse. I also think identifying identifying threats or troubling behavior among youths early. Yeah, his file his file showed some behavioral issues from when he went back when he was in middle school. I know it's hard it's hard to sort of spot what those would turn into but I think that there are there are a lot of interventions that I think would be more effective, because I don't know how changing anonymity would necessarily I don't know how it could actually be effective because I think if someone really is dedicated, they're going to be able to circumvent barriers, but then the people who actually really legitimately rely on anonymity for a good reason they might say you know I don't break the rules so I'm not going to so I think that's where it gets really really difficult to sort of evaluate but I think it's more than just looking at okay how do we restrict being anonymous because I don't know if that will actually solve the underlying problem. I mean, you started the book I'm curious I hope you'll answer this do you think that you were in your own mind, hoping to correct or debunk your own assumptions about your view of anonymity and the value of it. I'm so curious if you felt just privately when you started writing, I'm really more leaning in this pro anonymity posture. And I realized that's a little reductive but as I hear you talk I can kind of hear you talking yourself out of and then talking yourself out of the counter positions and I'm curious just that personal writing and drafting experience. How did you did you wrestle with somehow feeling like you were torn between sides. I went back I mean I had like a million drafts I was, I mean all through the editing process I was tweaking things and I mean ultimately I think that there are some things that could be improved. And I mean I think the issue is and I mean I looked at a lot of research social science research about online anonymity and what I saw was that you know, a lot of my, I probably came into the project much more willing to write something about anonymity and this book is not sort of just a tribute to anonymity I talked about some of the harms but when you look at some of the social science research what you see is that people are and this sort of does. It's it's coherent with my experiences which is that when people operate under their real names online, they actually get more aggressive and this is kind of what the research has found and that people who operate under pseudonyms often focus much more on the argument they're having and it's not as much of a personal attack then it is sort of trying to have a substantive discussion I mean I'm in my neighborhood I'm I'm on our next door next door group, which all is under real names and I actually participated in my first thread or respond into an extra thread to something that had like hundreds of comments they were all and I was like I can't do it I can't do it but it was something that dog group is like half of what's on next door. But but people got really vicious and they always do which is why I avoid it. And I think that and Facebook is the same way I mean Facebook has a real name policy it's not terribly well enforced, but they have one and I think a lot of people go by it and it's not like Facebook is the model of civility. And then you look at I spent a chapter looking at real name policies you look at Reddit and Twitter which have really made the ability to be pseudonymous something that sort of core to their product. And what you've seen in research is that I mean this is actually something, for example, the LGBT community has really relied on to be and that's what we've seen throughout the history of our country that groups that don't have the luxury of being anonymous, are speaking under their real names rely on being anonymous. So, I mean, I, I can speak under my real name, I mean I'm a tenured professor, I can, I mean I have a lot of advantages that I don't that I can say things. But there are a lot of people who don't have that that luxury, Jillian York at EFF, she she calls all of these proposals, they're like every few months they're these proposals to say let's just require every social media company to register people under their real names, and that'll solve everything and Jillian calls that the white man's gambit. As a white man I can say, yeah that's an appropriate characterization because I think it really does demonstrate pretty effectively that certain groups are much more able to use their real name so these restrictions on anonymity will disproportionately harm groups that don't have that ability. Well, when I teach about the First Amendment and sort of just this bigger concept around what free expression means the value of being able to speak to listen to engage. One of the things that I often ask my students is what I think the sort of hardest nut or nugget within teaching the First Amendment is, which is where is the line, so to speak, the line between allowable speech, and then everything else. And that's the question that, whether it's an illegal context, a moral context, any other conversation people will have very intense opinions that there is a body of content of speech that's over here, and then there's this other stuff. You know it can hurt someone maybe it can incite it can offend it can maybe cause other harms and in the online realm, we've just seen the explosion of both confusion and nuance and are, I think our policy leaders and other leaders really not quite know, as they wrestle with the question of what to do. Is it really a First Amendment issue not often and I try to make that clear to people that what happens online may not in part illuminated by you in your first book, you know may not actually be a question of government censorship. And so the question of a line being drawn and what the government can or cannot do is not what we're considering anymore it's something else. And I'm not sure there's necessarily a question in there but just the tension and like how we've gotten to a moment where the questions themselves are so nuanced. That's something that I try to hear and walk through with students to kind of make them aware of how difficult it is that this moment is just so complex. I'm curious for some of your reactions to that. Yeah, so I mean the and this comes really more from my section 230 experience because the book came out in 2019 I started writing it in 2015 and when I was writing in 2015. I'll say there were a number of academic publishers who were like this is far too obscure even for nobody knows what section 230 is so I found an academic publisher that was thankfully willing to take a chance on this weird law. But if in 2015 you told me that five years from now there will be presidential campaign rallies, where the candidate is talking about section 230 at a rally. And the other candidate also is saying that section 230 should be repealed. I would say that you were absolutely bonkers that there's no possible way that this is happening, but it has and so over the past few years I mean, pretty much every week, at least once once a week I'm meeting with staffers on the hill or members of Congress, who all have really I push back on this narrative that you know Congress doesn't understand technology at all. I think they do. I mean I think some members understand it better than others I think staffers really understand it it's not like they're like, oh what's a computer like I mean they know they know what they know what it is and they know what the technology is. The problem is that we're so far apart on consensus as to what the problem is. And so, I mean they, they'll always asked me, well what's your solution what's your proposed solution. And I say okay to what problem. And when I talk with sort of individual interest groups they are very clear on what the problem is it's either harmful content, or it's you know platforms are censoring us. And there is, they're so far apart, because when I talk with the members and the staffers it's the same thing I'd say half the people I speak with on the hill are really legitimately concerned about harmful content. That is First Amendment protected so with or without 230 it's not something that we're going to regulate away. But some of it is defamation and things that can be can be addressed with 230 reform, but then the other half, say you know, why are we giving this immunity to an industry that so unfairly discriminates against people with our political viewpoints. And I try to explain well if you got rid of 230 they'd probably take down more content, but that's not really the issue the question is, why, why would we give them what they view as a subsidy is you know why why do we provide this immunity that so few other industries have anything even close to it. When they're just basically saying we're going to take down the sort of content and you try to explain well there's certain policies and standards and they try to apply them evenly but I mean they, it's an issue that needs to be addressed in terms of you know, why do we get some agreement, because I mean I think that if you want to even look at changing 230, then you first have to figure out what your goal here. And I mean, even if you do change 230, you still have First Amendment protections that the First Amendment does protect platforms from being forced to keep content up. I don't think that platform that social media platforms are like the phone company. We have some people who disagree with me on that but I, but I also think that you know, very frequently I get people on the other side who say, Well, we've got to deal with misinformation so we have to amend section 230. Well, what do you mean by misinformation because a lot of that is constitutionally protected. So you can't deal with it. It's a problem, but you're not going to fix it by eliminating or making changes to 230. But, but I mean my, ultimately we're so far apart from the vision of what the internet should look like that I don't, I think it's such such disagreement that I don't know what changes would satisfy at least even a majority right now. One of the biggest worries I have when it comes to the harms online, and this is to your question you may ask staffers and members of what's, you know, define the problem. One of the problems I find is really the kinds of, you know, extractive data practices we see by platforms themselves that are gathering data about us. And there has been what seems to be a rather encouraging movement within Congress and in Washington to think about privacy related protections of federal roadmap of some sort. And I'm curious as it relates to your new book now on anonymity. You know, just as we think of those potentials to pass federal privacy legislation. How might that impact the ability for one to feel empowered through anonymity. Do you think that it would. So I do, I think private. So what I write about in the book for the last part of it is that, you know, the First Amendment, despite sort of what you see in a lot of the current debate the First Amendment applies to state action. So it says that in the anonymity context it says that, you know, the Congress can't pass a law that requires real names on social media because that's government action. It applies to subpoenas, even though they're sought by private parties because they're using the power of the judiciary. But the First Amendment does not restrict the purely private actions, the purely private decisions of a private social media company. There was a time when this was not controversial. I'll say there are some people who will disagree with me on that. So the problem is that so much of our identifying information is not going to be addressed and protected by the First Amendment as we have more as I mean, I think could best be described by Shoshana Zuboff as surveillance capitalism that we have these private companies and I'm not just talking about the big tech companies. I'm frankly more concerned about the data brokers that sell your geolocation information and can which even without your name, I mean, I live in a place where nobody else works at the Naval Academy. So if someone gets a geolocation set where someone every day is traveling from my neighborhood to the Naval Academy, that's identified me and if there's any online commentary or anything that is associated with that, then that's identified. You have Cashmere Hills Excellent reporting on Queerview AI. And I think we do need privacy laws because you can't rely on the First Amendment to address that. And I'm worried about the direction in which our privacy laws have gone, because we've had basically non action for like two decades in Congress. I mean, they're like, okay, we'll regulate video tape rentals in the 1980s because of Robert Orks records being accessed and we'll have health privacy and financial institution privacy rules, but nothing generally. So the states have started to do it. And I don't think the states have done a very good job. And I not to, I don't think it's their fault, but I think both procedurally it's not terribly effective, I think the substance of it, basically giving people access and access, I think that's good. I think it's a good step. And I say in the book that I think it's a good step, but I don't think it's going to solve everything. In part because I'm talking about data brokers like I don't know who has all of my data and it's putting a big burden on individuals to figure that out. I mean, what I'd like to see, in addition to those choices is to have restrictions on companies that say, okay, there are certain things that you cannot do with personal data. And I mean, you've kind of seen that in the local government context involving facial recognition where some local governments have just said, you know, you're not law enforcement is not able to use facial recognition so they can't use Clearview. And I think that we need to have a much broader discussion at the federal level. Now that's what I'd like to see. I'm also realistic. I've been in DC for far too long. And I think that despite, you know, all of the upset about big tech, I think that this would be even far harder to pass than a section 230 bill because this will affect every type of company. And when you put all the companies together, that's a lot of lobbyists. And I worry just, I mean, my expectations might have just been battered from being in DC for too long, but I just think, you know, I don't see anything really meaningful when it affects such a wide range of companies. I really hope I'm wrong, because I think we need it. And I think we need to protect anonymity as well as other that privacy values. But I'm not terribly optimistic about it. Well, limits on data brokers and what they can do, or frankly, the way that they are currently selling our information to any other party, including intelligence agencies is one that often worries me. And when it comes to this sort of what's happening under the surface, I think most lay people have no idea what's really happening with their information. You know, of course you do or I do because we're in these issues every day, but for the most part, I think much of what happens to our data and, you know, very personal information, people either don't know or they say, Well, if that helps me have a better online experience, great, you know, then I can get my personalized ads. And so there is one, I think quite a bit of public education to do. And then of course the work of how do we properly reform and think of the policy solutions that take this on in a more meaningful way beyond just, as you've said, you know, choice for consumers but more restrictions or at least guardrails around what those other third parties can and can't do. I've started getting questions in the chat. Thank you all. I want to, we have a few now, Jeff, and we have about 12 minutes and I don't want to go over so I guess I'll sort of start with some of the bundled questions around some international considerations here. One, you know, we of course know that so much of what's happening online in the social media context is a lot of anonymous political speech coming from what one anonymous question asker has called foreign robots wearing track suits speaking in a Russian accent. And that prompts for me the question then of, you know, how do we think about what to do with that anonymous political speech. And is there maybe another international example that we can learn from in thinking about how do we protect legitimate interests for anonymity while minimizing the harm that it may bring. Yeah, so I mean I think that that raises a bunch of different questions. So I mean one thing in terms of the foreign misinformation. There's what one thing that and I try to sort of grapple with this in the book is what's what about the ability to receive anonymous speech, and also to anonymously receive speech which are two separate issues and we don't have as much good case law on that we have some court opinions about there being a right to receive speech from the 1960s. Joseph Tai, a law professor has, he's probably written the most sort of on point articles about the right to receive foreign speech which I would highly recommend and I don't think there are any easy answers because we've not been sort of the misinformation context and the Russian bots we've not necessarily dealt with that with that particular issue I don't know how to solve it easily because I mean again Facebook has always had a real name policy and they were not immune from the 2016 election from having some of a lot of foreign interference and I mean I think part of it is that we too often conflate impersonation with anonymity and those are two different issues so I mean almost every platform the big platforms at least they all prohibit impersonation, and if someone's impersonating someone else they're kicked off, but that's different than being anonymous. And so, I don't know, I mean, there are technological solutions for at least some of it, not all of it but I mean and the platforms are getting better on that. And other countries. It's hard I mean that so Germany actually had so in a lot of Europe, the subpoena standards are lower. It's easier to subpoena someone, but Germany has actually they did it's sort of still in the court system but they've made the books real name policy as a privacy violation. And so that that's one area where and I talked in the book about how in the United States we really view anonymity as a free speech issue and we have I mean it makes sense because we have a very first amendment and the courts have interpreted anonymity through the lens of the first amendment, but in Europe and also in Canada, they have their anonymity protections come also from their privacy values, the Canadian courts when they look at anonymity they also consider PAPIDA, which is their privacy law so most of many other countries I would not look to for protecting anonymity, because many other countries either have real name registration requirements or real name posting registration requirements. China has a requirement that you have to register under your real name with the government, but you can post under a pseudonym which to me is not all that much different than just having to post under a pseudonym, the Chinese government knows who your name is what your name is so yeah I mean I think that there's not I mean I think in a lot of ways the United States has some some of the most robust protections but again because it's limited to the first amendment and the first amendment is limited to state action that's where we have some boundaries. One of my favorite just in sort of a follow up here to this question is one of my favorite thinkers on this issue is really David Kay's work on anonymity in the global context and I'm sure you are familiar with his report from 2015. I would say are rather stringent view of what guardrails should look like and really what the value of both encryption and anonymity are in the global context which I'll just flag and and say that it's he does a tremendous he and I have frankly disagreed on quite a bit when it comes to the very clear need he feels for anonymity, even when it may allow for the flourishing of harms and we've we've disagreed on this before but it's a great report to at least for those in the audience to dip your into that international question. We have a few more questions Jeff and only a couple of minutes so I want to sort of pick one more from the audience and then I'll close us out with a couple of final things. Do you think that the political backlash to quote unquote censorship, whether that is credible or not is changing the calculus for how people view anonymous speech. You know, I, I think that the political backlash to misinformation it so the sort of the other side of the debate, I think that I think the on the side that say there's too much censorship by platforms. I don't think they're they're not focused as much on anonymity it's more the folks are saying you know we have to look at the harms and there there's this misperception that frankly I had when I started writing the book that anonymity equals harms, letting people speak without their names to catch means that there's some way to avoid responsibility and so it's going to be a bad thing. And I think that's really where more of the threat is coming from. Well, I want to give you a chance to have a couple of closing comments and I'm curious just to kick us off. You know what comes next for you, you've written this book I encourage everyone to buy it. It is a blast to read actually. And how are you thinking about your own work now in this context. Yeah, so this book actually has led into the book I'm currently writing. No, you're such an overachiever. So, I decided to take on a topic that doesn't have any controversy, which is explaining why the First Amendment protects a lot of false speech. Everyone's going to agree with me for during during the time when everyone is worried about misinformation. I'm taking the really popular stance that the First Amendment does and should continue to protect a lot of false speech. And kind of the first half of the book traces the various contexts in which US courts under both the First Amendment as well as common law and statutes have protected the ability and why courts have said, we should protect false speech and then the second half looks at, you know, how do you deal with misinformation within this framework without compromising that framework. And that really came out of this anonymity book because it really looking at like the question about, you know, the anonymous speech coming from foreign actors that sort of thing that that really did get me thinking about how do you, you know, the First Amendment protects so much speech and you can't just pass an anti misinformation law. And why is that. And so, yeah, I think there are other ways to more effectively deal with these harms then just saying we're going to censor more speech. Well, that is very exciting. Certainly I, one of my favorite things about all of your work is your laying out what perhaps misconceptions are about issues and then the very elegant debunking of why that because of history and our legal jurisprudence and other elements is actually somewhat flawed and I see that in the First Amendment context all the time, you know, so many people will say, we're more divided than ever. And yet, we've been quite divided throughout history on a number of issues and certainly when it comes to speech and expression and so I really love and always value the way that you take that on carefully, whether it's in the digital context or, you know, other speech context so I'm thrilled to hear about this new book. I want to make a final plug as we wrap up for the United States of anonymous, Jeff Koss if you are fantastic. You're such a star it's wonderful to always be with you. People can buy the book where Jeff. They can buy it on Amazon, it's available on Amazon it's on Kendall there's an audible version Cornell presses website has copies, my personal favorite Powell's has copies so yeah it's pretty widely available on the various websites. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for tuning in. I will be closing us out the United States of anonymous how the First Amendment shaped online speech is, I would say a must read. It is not overwhelming it's exciting and I encourage everyone to get a copy so thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Andres for your wonderful introduction. Thank you to the rest of the future tense team for making today possible. Thanks.