Juno News - Is regulation the answer to Big Tech censorship？

00:00:00.000 Last week, Donald Trump had a standoff with Twitter,

00:00:14.240 his preferred mode of communication,

00:00:16.620 having not a great amount of confidence

00:00:18.400 in the mainstream media to get his message out.

00:00:20.780 He had labeled tweets.

00:00:23.000 That was what happened.

00:00:23.920 Twitter had labeled his tweets at one point,

00:00:26.020 misinformation at another point,

00:00:27.760 put a big old warning label in front of it.

00:00:30.680 This was the straw that broke the camel's back

00:00:33.180 as far as Donald Trump's tolerance for big tech.

00:00:35.620 So he threatened and delivered an executive order

00:00:38.360 that would aim to remove some of the protections,

00:00:41.240 some of the liability protections that social media companies employ.

00:00:46.400 The basis of this is that they identify as platforms

00:00:49.560 rather than publishers

00:00:51.420 and should be basically subjected to a level playing field

00:00:55.380 in that they shouldn't have to be accountable

00:00:57.360 for what users post on their platforms.

00:00:59.480 And the goal of this is to force them to not censor content.

00:01:04.280 Conservatives oftentimes very critical,

00:01:06.320 myself included, of an anti-conservative bias from big tech.

00:01:10.140 But the problem is, I think the cure is worse than the disease

00:01:12.940 when it comes in the form of government regulation.

00:01:16.180 So how significant is this platform publisher divide?

00:01:19.280 And more importantly, is the big tech oligopoly,

00:01:23.020 if you will, a justification for government to crack down?

00:01:26.820 I want to talk about this with Reason.com editor Robbie Suave,

00:01:30.940 author of a fantastic book,

00:01:32.620 Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, 0.97

00:01:35.540 and also has another book in the pipeline on big tech itself.

00:01:39.340 Robbie, good to talk to you.

00:01:40.300 Thanks very much for coming on today.

00:01:42.040 My pleasure.

00:01:42.580 Good to speak with you.

00:01:43.480 You and I had talked about this very briefly

00:01:45.640 in a social setting a couple of months back,

00:01:48.060 and I had shared with you something that I know you've dealt with yourself,

00:01:51.580 which is this frustration with people on the right

00:01:54.240 who are in every other area, anti-regulation, anti-government crackdowns.

00:01:58.460 But on social media, they tend to not only turn a blind eye to it,

00:02:02.220 but as we're seeing in the last week,

00:02:03.920 actively encourage government to intervene

00:02:06.560 in what are ostensibly private companies here.

00:02:09.360 What's your response to this executive order last week?

00:02:12.300 Yeah, I mean, I think the best thing you can say

00:02:15.280 about the executive order is that it won't have any practical effect

00:02:18.500 because it was sort of empty.

00:02:21.500 It really just asked Ajit Pai to look into the issue,

00:02:25.860 didn't compel him to do anything.

00:02:27.820 Again, you would actually have to have Congress look into this

00:02:30.940 to seriously do anything.

00:02:32.060 The president only has so much authority

00:02:34.140 to unilaterally command investigations and compel new regulation.

00:02:37.660 Yeah, so like you said, you would think you could fall back on principle

00:02:43.180 to be the reason conservatives shouldn't take this series of steps against big tech.

00:02:49.260 But principle isn't the only one.

00:02:51.880 Practicality is another.

00:02:53.300 It's like, it's simply not true.

00:02:54.700 So of course you can find examples of mistreatment of conservative speech

00:02:58.920 by the tech platform.

00:03:00.760 Certainly you can.

00:03:01.980 But it's not true.

00:03:03.200 I don't think it's true.

00:03:04.020 On the whole, that social media has been bad for conservative speech

00:03:07.940 or conservative media.

00:03:09.020 On the contrary, it's frankly the opposite.

00:03:12.140 I mean, Facebook is routinely a place where conservative news websites

00:03:17.240 like the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, for instance,

00:03:19.800 they perform terrifically on that platform.

00:03:23.500 The kind of gatekeeping of the traditional media,

00:03:26.760 which is much more hostile to conservative views,

00:03:29.340 you get around that by being able to air your views on social media.

00:03:34.600 So that's not to say they're beyond reproach

00:03:37.460 and there aren't some legitimate criticisms.

00:03:39.320 But I'm just, I'm really astounded at how easily and quickly

00:03:43.540 and automatically people like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, etc.

00:03:47.540 are reaching for government intervention as the solution here.

00:03:53.380 Yeah, and I mean, I would take a bit more of a critical look

00:03:57.900 than you tend to of social media companies

00:04:00.780 because I do think there is an anti-conservative bias.

00:04:03.840 But at the same time, I do take your point.

00:04:05.860 And you look at Donald Trump and Twitter, for example.

00:04:08.080 I mean, up until last week,

00:04:09.820 Donald Trump has had quite a positive relationship with Twitter.

00:04:13.100 In fact, in many cases, Twitter can be linked to his rise to the presidency.

00:04:17.220 So you can't say that the conservatives

00:04:19.380 are being completely stonewalled on these platforms.

00:04:22.200 I guess what it comes down to is that a lot of people on the right

00:04:25.360 are saying that, okay, it's not that we want government to regulate.

00:04:28.820 We just want a level playing field, this platform publisher divide.

00:04:32.460 And I know that there is a protection carved out there for platforms.

00:04:36.240 But I also think people tend to overstate the importance of that distinction.

00:04:41.820 Right.

00:04:42.600 So this is the Section 230, the law that has to do with this.

00:04:47.700 It's a confusing issue.

00:04:49.800 A lot of people, right, think that it was explicitly,

00:04:52.960 and conservatives often speak about it like it was this.

00:04:56.040 What the law said is you have to be a platform or a publisher.

00:04:59.020 And if you're a platform, you get all these special protections from liability,

00:05:02.920 from being sued for having false statements or something like that,

00:05:05.560 appear on your platform.

00:05:07.140 Whereas if you're a publisher, you're doing some kind of moderation,

00:05:10.540 some kind of curation the way like a book publisher or a library would do,

00:05:13.840 and then you would be liable.

00:05:14.960 So conservatives are saying, well, they're acting like a publisher

00:05:17.880 because they're taking action against some speech or in a politically non-neutral way.

00:05:24.980 But of course, the law didn't actually compel neutrality.

00:05:29.300 It was not part of the law.

00:05:30.460 That might be a good thing.

00:05:31.420 So there's a little bit of like wishing Section 230 said something other than what it does say.

00:05:35.740 I won't go so far as to say Section 230 is perfect or something.

00:05:41.420 There are changes I would make to it if I was the one altering it.

00:05:47.040 I think you could have more insistence on privacy protections, for instance,

00:05:52.200 would be something I might like to see in my ideal version of the law.

00:05:55.520 But the issue is I would be also fearful that any attempt to rewrite the law would get rid of

00:06:03.300 these protections in a very harmful way because, look, the result of making Facebook, Twitter,

00:06:12.260 et cetera, become more liable for speech that takes place on their platform,

00:06:17.060 the obvious result of that would be more censorship, would be more moderation,

00:06:21.960 more sort of borderline kind of right wing edgy speech.

00:06:27.500 That's the stuff that would go under a I mean, there could be Trump tweets that are up now

00:06:33.780 that would not be up under a regime where Twitter feels like it could be sued for any by anyone who's

00:06:40.020 I mean, Joe Scarborough and that series of tweets we had we had last week.

00:06:45.260 So it's fine to complain about the the unequal treatment, the bias.

00:06:50.460 You know, we can talk about how we address that.

00:06:53.940 But again, this seems like this seems like a taking taking away Section 230 in the in the kind

00:07:00.860 of blanket way that, again, Josh Hawley has talked about.

00:07:04.300 I don't think the consequence of that would be better landscape for conservative speech

00:07:08.360 on the Internet, but in fact, quite the opposite.

00:07:11.220 Yeah.

00:07:11.380 All of a sudden you force risk aversion to become more of a priority than an open platform.

00:07:16.940 However, you know, however many holes there are in that idea of a completely open platform

00:07:21.660 now.

00:07:22.240 But I guess where I would ask you about this is that we've had social media companies

00:07:27.260 like Facebook, like YouTube, like Twitter that have gone after I'll use extreme examples

00:07:32.660 here.

00:07:32.940 I know they don't represent the mainstream right.

00:07:34.800 But, you know, you're Alex Jones types.

00:07:37.020 And I mean, maybe not even maybe that's an example that I think establishes them all here.

00:07:40.780 And my issue with this as a free market person is I don't think that people should be building

00:07:45.660 their business models based on other companies and based on other companies' business models.

00:07:50.260 Because if you have a path to success that relies on YouTube getting you views or Facebook

00:07:56.020 getting you shares, eventually you're at the mercy of those things.

00:07:59.540 But do you think there is some truth to this idea that these companies are effectively public

00:08:04.840 squares now?

00:08:05.580 And it's not to say that they need to be subjected to the regulations and restrictions that governments

00:08:10.140 are, but that their role in society is public platforms.

00:08:15.960 I mean, obviously, they are functioning to a degree as the public platform.

00:08:20.040 And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has said, for instance, that he to some degree views Facebook

00:08:24.440 as the public square.

00:08:28.700 You know, they offer their terms of service, right?

00:08:32.340 They outline what are the rules and procedures under which you can operate on this platform.

00:08:37.820 I generally think they should be open, honest, and transparent about what those rules are.

00:08:43.180 They should be clearly stated.

00:08:44.860 I think if they take action that is outside the bounds of what those terms are, they should

00:08:50.320 be criticized for it.

00:08:51.800 It's still, though, it's like difficult to hold them accountable in a, like, violation of

00:08:56.260 a contract circumstance because, again, you're not paying for these services.

00:08:59.700 It would be a different thing if you're paying for the service and you could, you know, you could

00:09:03.100 present some, well, this was fraudulent behavior or something.

00:09:05.220 But, again, this is a free platform that was provided to you by a company that doesn't

00:09:09.560 charge you for it.

00:09:10.700 That's a tremendous, you know, that's a tremendous boon, in fact, to a lot of independent journalists,

00:09:15.740 self-published people, conservative commentators, activists, even non-conservatives, people of

00:09:21.200 all kinds who have an ability to transmit information, to communicate with other people.

00:09:28.020 And I agree there is some bias.

00:09:29.940 I think often the bias is on the part of the users, though.

00:09:32.700 A lot of conservatives have this idea that there's some cabal, like Jack Dorsey is sitting

00:09:37.820 in his, you know, his evil tower and deciding what speech to go after.

00:09:43.960 Maybe that's true in some narrow cases.

00:09:46.260 That might have been true with the Trump fact check.

00:09:48.480 But a lot of it is, it's complaint-driven, right?

00:09:51.300 The platforms don't do anything until someone complains.

00:09:53.900 It might be the case that very progressive-minded people are more litigious.

00:09:57.480 They're reporting more speech they don't like, and then actions taken against it.

00:10:01.460 So it produces a kind of de facto bias.

00:10:06.140 But it's actually not de jure bias.

00:10:08.040 It's subtly different than that.

00:10:11.180 So that's an issue with YouTube.

00:10:12.880 You know, YouTube has, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of new hours of content, like,

00:10:18.020 every couple seconds, something like that.

00:10:20.480 There's no way they can moderate.

00:10:22.580 They can check all that on the front end.

00:10:24.080 They have to let it go up.

00:10:25.240 And then they'll take action once there's complaints.

00:10:28.080 So if you made them liable or responsible, I mean, how would YouTube even operate?

00:10:32.520 They would have to review all the footage before it goes up.

00:10:36.380 I mean, it would, I don't think, do we want that?

00:10:38.520 I don't think conservatives should want that to be the case.

00:10:40.980 I mean, you know, Prager University's complaints about YouTube notwithstanding,

00:10:45.960 that seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

00:10:47.860 There are certain areas of the Facebook and Twitter experience that are very much human curated.

00:10:55.080 I mean, Twitter moments is one example where you've got people at Twitter that are trying

00:10:58.940 to craft a narrative.

00:11:00.240 And I don't mean that in a sinister cabal way, but just a narrative of tweets that tell

00:11:04.080 a story of a news event.

00:11:05.820 On Facebook, you have very similar things.

00:11:08.100 We know there's some human intervention in what's trending or not.

00:11:11.460 I guess the question would be, does that make them by definition publishers?

00:11:15.660 Because they're choosing what to amplify and what to share.

00:11:19.340 Now, whether or not that should make a difference as far as regulation, it's a different question.

00:11:23.400 But I do think that there is, by the company's own admission,

00:11:27.060 a level of a human curation of the user experience.

00:11:31.720 Right.

00:11:32.360 And in truth, Section 230 was specifically designed to make it so that the platforms

00:11:37.580 could do some amount of curation without being treated as publishers.

00:11:42.540 That's what actually prompted Section 230, because there was a court decision where they

00:11:46.840 told, I can't remember which platform it was, but they told them that, well, oh, so you're

00:11:51.000 taking action against obscenity or something like that.

00:11:54.740 So you're not just letting anybody post.

00:11:56.960 So then you can be liable because you're behaving like a publisher rather than a platform.

00:12:01.980 So then actually the law was to make it so that if they censor speech that actually everyone

00:12:08.660 agrees would like off the platform, just kind of crazy stuff, that they're not going to be

00:12:13.080 treated the same way like a book publisher would be treated.

00:12:16.480 So there's some amount of good faith moderation that is not political in nature that we probably

00:12:24.820 do want taking place.

00:12:26.380 Like it's a good thing that this is a private company rather than a public square.

00:12:29.600 I mean, in the public square, right, the Westboro Baptist Church can shout obscenities at the

00:12:34.820 funerals of soldiers saying things more vile than anyone can even imagine.

00:12:39.760 And the Supreme Court said in a not narrow decision that that's acceptable speech because it's

00:12:44.060 the public square and it's First Amendment protected.

00:12:46.260 So on one hand, there are benefits to the fact that Twitter is a private company.

00:12:50.780 They don't have to let that be there if they don't want to.

00:12:54.060 And that could be their decision.

00:12:55.980 And you can like it or you can dislike it.

00:12:57.820 If you really dislike it, you can find another service to use, I guess.

00:13:01.840 But there's some, you know, there's some level of like harassment and horror that is a function

00:13:06.500 of the Internet that they are taking action against in probably a responsible way.

00:13:11.280 Or if you were saying they are they are truly the public square and they are bound to the

00:13:15.100 First Amendment understanding of speech, then there'd be a lot of horrible stuff that they

00:13:20.020 would have to allow on the platform that might make it an unpleasant place for people just

00:13:24.800 in a nonpolitical sense to be.

00:13:27.220 So that's that's one that's one advantage of keeping them a private entity rather than

00:13:31.420 legally the public square.

00:13:33.200 Yeah, that's a great point, because I know that various companies or people have tried

00:13:37.580 to make, you know, completely 100 percent free speech friendly platforms.

00:13:41.540 And unsurprisingly, they become magnets for the the least desirable form of speech, the

00:13:46.860 type of people that either on principle or because they know they won't make the cut at Twitter,

00:13:51.120 Facebook, YouTube flock there.

00:13:53.240 And it does, I think, very much ask the question of, you know, should you be careful what you

00:13:57.360 wish for if you want a First Amendment platform?

00:14:00.540 And I know that I think it was Dennis Prager or PragerU had sued very unsuccessfully YouTube

00:14:05.480 on these grounds.

00:14:06.440 They tried to say that, you know, the First Amendment should extend to YouTube.

00:14:10.260 And the court, I think, very correctly shot that down.

00:14:13.000 But it is weird that all of a sudden and I don't want to take aim at people on the right

00:14:16.940 because I am on the right.

00:14:18.020 But but the ones who are being hypocritical on this, the same people that stand up for 0.96

00:14:22.820 a baker to deny making a gay wedding cake, for example, are now saying, no, no, no, the 0.96

00:14:28.080 Constitution has to apply to YouTube and Facebook.

00:14:31.200 Yeah.

00:14:31.700 And I'm right.

00:14:32.420 I'm very passionate about that issue.

00:14:33.900 I've written a lot on that issue.

00:14:35.600 Right.

00:14:35.740 I certainly don't want to compel a small business owner to to engage in work that violates their

00:14:42.400 code.

00:14:42.660 I think that violates their freedom of religion, their their free expression rights.

00:14:46.820 So, yeah, it's it's it's very baffling to me that so many conservatives, it's the same

00:14:51.180 principle when when when you look at some of these companies.

00:14:55.080 And and I just also think, you know, let's say Trump loses or or in four years or whatever.

00:15:01.220 Eventually, a Democrat is in the White House again.

00:15:03.880 Elizabeth Warren is is the most vocal opponent of Section 230. 0.86

00:15:08.680 She wants to aggressively regulate these companies because she thinks Facebook in allowing a greater

00:15:15.960 level of free speech in saying, you know what, we're not going to fact check everything, make

00:15:19.420 up your own minds, what's true or false.

00:15:21.160 We're not going to try to go through which political ads are misleading or not.

00:15:24.680 That's what Mark Zuckerberg has said.

00:15:26.100 I agree with that standard.

00:15:27.300 I think that's the correct standard to take.

00:15:30.420 Elizabeth Warren types hate that and they want to punish Facebook for doing that. 0.99

00:15:34.480 So they want to give the government more power to intervene in what these companies policies

00:15:38.560 are.

00:15:39.280 So I think it would just be so short sighted for for conservatives, for Republican senators

00:15:45.980 to set up some kind of commission, which was really Josh Hawley's idea at one point, at

00:15:50.320 least like conservatives should always fear the bureaucratic answer to this where there's

00:15:54.700 going to be like a committee of government insiders to decide these.

00:15:57.400 Like, I don't understand how anyone remotely right of center could think that is going to

00:16:02.300 result in an outcome that is favorable to more conservative speech online.

00:16:06.000 Like, there's just no way.

00:16:07.840 And I think maybe the conservative movement broadly or conservative politicians will remember

00:16:12.940 that when we no longer, when the right no longer has so much power and influence over

00:16:20.060 government.

00:16:20.780 Very well said.

00:16:21.780 Robbie Suave, senior editor at Reason and author of Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the

00:16:26.740 Age of Trump.

00:16:27.740 Robbie, good talking to you, sir.

00:16:28.740 Thanks for coming on today.

00:16:30.460 My pleasure.

00:16:31.040 Thank you.

00:16:31.380 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:16:34.160 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 02, 2020

Is regulation the answer to Big Tech censorship？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript