The Download: listening robots, and Google's AI emissions

We all want to be able to speak our minds online--to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don't want to be exposed to unpleasant speech. Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected under federal law, hiring in-house moderators to examine individual pieces of content and removing them if posts violate predefined rules. The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues. We need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects their choices have on us.