Congress: Stand Firm on Content Moderation and AI Safeguards in Tech

Today I take pen in hand to communicate with Tech leaders to resist administration pressure to abandon content moderation and AI safeguards. These protections aren't just ethical obligations—they're essential to technology business survival. It’s clear that effective content moderation keeps users on platforms and advertisers engaged. Technology that enables violence, threats, harassment, and doxxing drives people to alternatives. Free speech is not carte blanche for tech companies to do whatever they want and allow violence, misogyny, anti-civil rights behavior to flourish. Outsourcing moderation to users through crowdsourced models isn't enough, that’s certain. The largest tech companies do have both the legal right and responsibility to decide what gets published on their platforms. However, moderation must be transparent, responsive to reality with human oversight, and conducted by employees with full protections. AI deployed without safeguards causes real harm. People have been denied mortgages, housing, and educational opportunities because of biased algorithms. Now we see that misuse has caused many to have been wrongfully arrested. As our voice in government, you must comprl them to develop and deploy AI thoughtfully by monitoring for bias, making tools accessible to researchers, disclosing training data, and minimizing the black box effect. Right now, the worst behavior may be to cooperate with the administration to avoid retribution. Communities, employees, and consumers will remember if these companies provide technology or consumer data that can be weaponized against them, particularly in immigration enforcement. Remind them via hearings that Trust is the foundation of user engagement. Remind them that safeguards around privacy, speech, and equity build loyalty and strengthen brand reputation. Remind them that they can either work with Congress or they will bring on compensatory taxes and a heavier hand of regulation to change their destructive behavior. Thank you.