In this session, speakers will provide an overview of the current legal landscape in the U.S. and the free expression cases the US Supreme Court will be hearing this term. We will explore the key legal and policy questions being debated in the courts and in Congress, and discuss the main drivers of these debates and the crucial questions we can expect the Court to address. What consequences could these decisions have for how online services—and our democracy—work?

Join Meta Oversight Board members Jamal Greene and Julie Owono for a first look at the Board's new Policy Advisory Opinion on Meta's "cross-check program." This practice, in which Meta conducts a secondary review of proposed enforcement actions against high-profile and influential accounts, has been criticized for giving politicians and celebrities preferential treatment in content moderation. This session will introduce the PAO and discuss the Board's findings and recommendations and reflect on the experience of the Oversight Board as an accountability mechanism.

This session will explore the potential consequences of the Supreme Court's decisions for different communities and different approaches to addressing online abuse. The panel will examine key threads and challenges that different communities face online, what is and isn't working in content moderation and current approaches to platform accountability, and what impact the Court's decisions could have on different strategies for fighting online abuse.

Join CDT's Policy Director Samir Jain for a conversation with Patrick Carome from WilmerHale. They will discuss Pat's distinguished career litigating First Amendment and Section 230 cases, including a seminal Zeran case, how the law around online speech has developed over the past 30 years, and what to expect from the upcoming Supreme Court cases.

In 2022, Florida and Texas both passed social media laws that would require online services to carry lawful content, even if it violated the services’ content policies. These laws raise significant First Amendment questions: Is content moderation a form of protected editorial discretion, or a form of “censorship” that the state can prohibit? The lower courts have split on these issues and now the questions are almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. Join this panel of experts to unpack these cases and understand where they sit in the broader legal doctrine around common carriage, editorial discretion, and the First Amendment.

In January 2023, the Court will hear arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, two cases involving Anti-Terrorism Act claims against social media services. In Gonzalez, the Court will consider the scope of Section 230’s liability shield for the first time. In Taamneh, it will consider whether, if no liability shield is in place, online services can be liable under the ATA for failing to moderate terrorist content. Join this panel of experts for a deep dive into these cases and the directions the Court might take them, and a discussion of the broader consequences of these decisions for online speech.

If the Court makes significant changes to the U.S. legal framework around online expression, how will this affect the global Internet? This panel will discuss the potential impact of changes to Section 230 and First Amendment doctrine beyond US borders. We will explore similar proposals for “must carry” obligations in other countries and discuss the clashes that arise when laws in one country require services to host content that is illegal in another. We will place these US legal developments in the broader global context and consider whether the Court may be on track to hasten Internet fragmentation.

While the Court’s main focus will be on social media services, the debate about whether and when online intermediaries should exert control over users’ speech extends far deeper into the Internet. In this session, panelists will discuss the broader push for infrastructure intermediaries to engage in content moderation, and the risks to free expression that occur when they do. We’ll also examine the issue of net neutrality and understand when (and where in the stack) “must-carry” laws (such as net neutrality laws) might support freedom of expression and access to information.