Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 4/5

Rogers: Previous administration pressured Twitter and Meta to censor posts

Sarah Rogers · Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show · May 4, 2026 · at 2:03

Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, describes the historical actions of the State Department's Global Engagement Center regarding social media content moderation.

0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 24.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Under the prior administration included things like global engagement center censorship efforts that were the subject of the Murphy Supreme Court litigation, where the State Department Along with other organs of the executive branch would contact Twitter or Meta and say, you know, we think that these Charlie Kirk tweets are disinformation. You should take them down. That apparatus resided inside my part of the state department”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Sarah Rogers

Assertion Supported
Rogers: State Department shifts digital freedom policy toward VPNs and Community Notes
“Like, that was the kind of thing that was countenanced before that's not countenanced now, and we're much friendlier to initiatives like censorship circumvention VPNs and to initiatives like X's Community Notes that put that power in the hands of the users or …”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 6:43 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Assertion Supported
Rogers: EU official Thierry Breton threatened Elon Musk over Trump interview
“I think, you know, one key moment in August, 20, 24 was when a now former EC European Commission official, Terry Breton, Sent a letter to Elon Musk threatening him with regulatory penalties if he aired an upcoming interview on X with then presidential candidat…”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 9:13 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Opinion
Rogers: AI military policy must be set by courts, not tech executives
“I think what is essential from a national security, national defense perspective Is that AI keeps its Western soul and that these really important debates about what you know, what kill shot the autonomous weapon should take or what the scope of data synthesis…”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 17:09 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Opinion
Rogers: AI with a Western soul is America's greatest soft power tool
“The economist Tyler Cowen talks about AI with a Western soul. And I completely agree with him that that is the greatest soft power tool we can possess.”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 0:25 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Assertion Supported
Rogers: EU investigation into X culminated in 120 million euro fine
“Then, in the same letter, Breton makes reference to another ongoing investigation against X that ostensibly they say had nothing to do with speech. This is the investigation that recently culminated in a hundred and twenty million euro fine.”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 9:48 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Insight
Rogers: Disclosing AI model weights compromises Western competitive edge
“If you force companies to disclose aspects of the AI that let foreign adversaries, for example, reverse engineer the model weights, you're really compromising the American and the Western competitive edge.”
Sarah Rogers May 4, 2026 ▶ 15:01 Digital Freedom, AI Regulation, and the Fight for the Western Internet | The a16z Show
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.