Tech Policy Podcast

#214: Information Intermediaries in a Nutshell

Episode Summary

Recently Facebook has unveiled multiple planned changes to its newsfeed. Now we will see more content from our friends and fewer posts from news sites and businesses. They also hand checking the credibility of news organizations by users and the wider Facebook community. This has likely been done in response to the harsh criticism of the information dissemination that happened before the 2016 Presidential election. Facebook and other platforms that host third party content are often called “information intermediaries.” In this episode, we dig into the current challenges they face in the modern social media era and are joined by Tiffany Li, Resident Fellow at Yale Law, who leads the the Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information.

Episode Notes

Recently Facebook has unveiled multiple planned changes to its newsfeed. Now we will see more content from our friends and fewer posts from news sites and businesses. They also hand checking the credibility of news organizations by users and the wider Facebook community. This has likely been done in response to the harsh criticism of the information dissemination that happened before the 2016 Presidential election. Facebook and other platforms that host third party content are often called “information intermediaries.” In this episode, we dig into the current challenges they face in the modern social media era and are joined by Tiffany Li, Resident Fellow at Yale Law, who leads the the Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information.