Corynne McSherry

And I'm going to give you an example from an article I just read yesterday.

It's a long piece about Google and how it runs advertising and search and so on from Talking Parts Memo.

And Talking Points Memo mentioned that one of the problems that they have, because these processes are so opaque, they survive because of Google advertising.

Them too, right?

And they're a legitimate site trying to do good for the world.

They survive because of Google advertising.

They keep getting penalized for hate speech because they're reporting on hate speech, specifically the Dylann Roof situation.

So it's not easy to sort of disentangle...

See, now he's just trying to piss me off.

Okay.

So what we're talking about is now a step further.

It's social media companies and intermediaries, by the way, all the different people that you interact with, they take it upon themselves to out you, to pierce your anonymity.

That is profoundly, profoundly dangerous.

Anonymity, anonymous speech, is probably the most important form of political speech that we have.

The ability to speak, especially online,

without fear of retaliation, means that you have the ability to speak your truth.

If we out people, if we accept that social media companies should be judge and jury over that, should just expose people to the world without any choice, without any recourse, because once you're outed,

That weapon was also used to persecute minorities all over the... Everything was always used to persecute minorities at some point.

It's still used to persecute minorities.

The one thing we have always understood in this country, and this is before the First Amendment, is the importance of anonymous speech.