Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 502 ｜ Facebook Whistleblower： Dem Operative or Hero？｜ Guest： Rachel Bovard

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so

00:00:14.640 far. Today we are talking to Rachel Bovard. She is a journalist. She writes about big

00:00:23.140 tech and we've had her on the podcast before talking to her about the solutions that she

00:00:29.520 proposes to the power that big tech holds in the lives of Americans and even the power that they

00:00:37.360 have to influence our elections and why that's a problem and where she thinks the federal government 0.99

00:00:42.980 should step in and try to curb some of the influence that they have. She's coming from a 0.99

00:00:48.560 conservative perspective though, whereas as we will talk about today, Democrats who want more

00:00:55.700 authority over these technology companies seem to want to do so, not because they want to

00:01:03.660 protect the country from their influence, but because they actually want to try to control

00:01:08.760 the flow of information and the messages that, especially the political messages that the

00:01:14.620 American public is receiving. So Rachel Bovard is very nuanced on this issue. She is very well versed

00:01:20.460 on this issue. She is going to talk to us a little bit about that, but really what we're focusing on

00:01:25.800 is this Facebook whistleblower, or if she's being called a whistleblower, her name is Frances Haugen.

00:01:31.700 She testified during the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection,

00:01:37.700 Product Safety, and Data Security. She worked for Facebook and she came out and said, you know,

00:01:43.860 Facebook is doing all of these bad things. They know that they're doing bad things. And also,

00:01:48.440 she believes that Facebook should step in or the government should step in and should basically

00:01:53.600 regulate Facebook. There's some disagreement on the right and the left about whether or not she is

00:01:58.860 a hero or whether she is just kind of a partisan hack because some of the things that she said during

00:02:05.220 this hearing, like wanting to censor political information that she doesn't like, that's something

00:02:10.900 that she believes that Facebook should do. Obviously, people on the right don't like that,

00:02:15.840 but at the same time, she is pointing out that Facebook is knowingly devastating the mental health

00:02:24.140 and the safety of young children, especially young girls, and they're not doing anything

00:02:29.000 about it. And so it's important that we look at all sides of this and think about what some solutions

00:02:34.620 to this problem might be. And Rachel's going to do that for us. Now, you probably noticed a couple

00:02:42.880 days ago that Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook, were all down.

00:02:50.620 And I don't think we have all of the information of why that happened, but there are some questions

00:02:55.620 as to whether or not it had to do with all of this because there have been internal documents that

00:03:01.980 have been leaked by this so-called whistleblower. There's some disagreement about whether or not we

00:03:07.340 should be calling her that, that have showed, you know, a lot of the problems within Facebook and

00:03:16.840 the nefarious things that are going on there. So they're already going under that PR crisis. Then

00:03:21.480 things shut down to the point to where apparently Facebook employees couldn't even get inside the

00:03:26.640 building like their little, the keypad wasn't working to get inside the building. And I don't think

00:03:33.200 we even know all of the reasons why. And so there's some questions about whether or not this is all

00:03:39.880 interconnected somehow. You know, I don't know, but Rachel is going to lend as much insight as she

00:03:48.140 possibly can. She is very, very clear. She's going to break all of this very complicated stuff down in

00:03:54.580 a way that makes sense. I don't know about y'all, but when I was on, so when I was on trying to get on

00:04:00.760 Instagram the other day, I think it was on Monday after I recorded the episode with Jonathan Isaac,

00:04:08.080 I was going on Instagram to tell you, um, Hey guys, like I just recorded that and it wasn't

00:04:14.200 loading. And so I definitely, I was like, you know what? They are perfect. They're coming after

00:04:18.080 Ali B. Stuckey and they are not allowing me to post what I want to post on Instagram. This is

00:04:22.960 censorship. So I deleted the app and then I redownloaded it. I tried to open it back up and

00:04:28.600 it still wouldn't let me on. Took me a long time before I figured out, okay, I need to go on

00:04:33.220 Twitter. This is what everyone does. You go on Twitter and you search the words Facebook and

00:04:37.440 Instagram to see if other people are dealing with this. And they were, everyone was on Twitter and

00:04:42.880 on Telegram and things like that to, uh, to talk about how unfortunately Instagram was down. And it was

00:04:49.460 a little weird. Like I, it reminded, it reminded me or it showed me, I guess that I rely on Instagram

00:04:56.280 a lot to connect with you guys. And obviously there have been days where I've been off Instagram,

00:05:01.820 but it felt weird not being able to talk to y'all. I mean, I spend a pretty good chunk of my day

00:05:08.300 responding to messages from you guys on Instagram. Um, and if I haven't responded to you, I'm not

00:05:13.760 ignoring you. I can't get to all of them, but I do respond to people and repost the things that you

00:05:18.860 guys tag me in. And it felt really weird not being able to talk to y'all. I did not like it. And it

00:05:25.800 made me realize maybe I need to diversify my platforms, um, a little bit, but it also takes

00:05:31.280 a lot of energy to post on all of the different platforms. And, um, but that's probably something

00:05:38.360 that I'm going to have to do so I can stay connected to you guys, even when Instagram

00:05:41.820 shuts down. But it just showed me, wow, these platforms have so much power and play such a big

00:05:47.320 role in our lives. It really, really is important that we are paying attention to what they're doing

00:05:52.920 and what's going on behind the scenes. So that's why we're talking about this today, especially if

00:05:56.660 you are a parent, guys, if you are a parent, you need to listen to this. And we have to be so

00:06:01.680 cognizant of what our kids are consuming. As long as your kids are under your roof, like they are 0.99

00:06:07.380 under, um, your authority, you get to set the rules. If you feel like, Oh dang, you know, if I took

00:06:13.480 away Snapchat for my 13 year old or Instagram for my 14 year old, who we know from these internal

00:06:18.820 Facebook documents are really, really negatively affected by the kind of content that they consume

00:06:24.860 on these platforms. If you're afraid that they might be mad at you or something, my humble advice

00:06:30.780 as someone who is not a mom of a teenager, but who has been a teenager not too long ago is that it is

00:06:37.100 worth it. It's worth the frustration. It might be worth the anger that they show towards you. You are

00:06:42.900 doing what God has called you to do, which is steward their hearts and their minds to the best of your

00:06:47.460 ability. You can't protect them from everything. Um, but you can do what you can while they're under

00:06:52.860 your roof to try to make sure that what they are consuming and what they are taking in is that which

00:06:58.740 is good and right and true. So that's just my encouragement before we get into this conversation

00:07:05.280 with Rachel. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us again. Okay. I just want you to break down this

00:07:16.800 whole Facebook whistleblower thing. Who is Frances Haugen? Where did she come from? What is she 1.00

00:07:23.600 saying? And what should we think about all of this? Well, thanks for having me back. And yes,

00:07:30.600 Frances Haugen or Haugen, I suppose, burst onto the scene with a congressional hearing yesterday,

00:07:36.100 but we've been reading about her findings for the last several weeks. If anyone's, if anyone's been

00:07:41.320 following the Facebook files that the Wall Street Journal has been putting out showing the fruits of

00:07:47.060 her research, basically this trove of documents of internal research that came from Facebook showing

00:07:52.800 that they know how their products harm children, specifically 13% of teenage girls tracing their

00:07:59.780 suicidal ideations back to Instagram, you know, the cartels and sex traffickers that use their platform.

00:08:05.480 Um, the fact that they know the Chinese government is using their platform to stalk Uyghur Muslims, 0.97

00:08:10.680 you know, who are they at? They are actively trying to wipe out in China. All of this has been 0.96

00:08:14.840 discussed in the Wall Street Journal. But yesterday we really saw the face of, of Frances Haugen. We saw

00:08:20.940 her on 60 minutes on Sunday as well. So she's a former Facebook employee. She went to work for

00:08:24.740 Facebook in 2018. So, you know, you have to wonder, she knew what Facebook was doing at that point

00:08:29.160 in time, but went to work for them anyway. And she's released these documents in an attempt,

00:08:34.480 I think, to push Congress to implement some reforms. And now, if you listen to her testimony

00:08:39.420 yesterday, it was disturbing to a lot of us on the right because she didn't call for, you know,

00:08:44.300 breaking up Facebook or reducing the power Facebook has. She explicitly said, no, we need

00:08:49.800 a government misinformation agency. We need someone to regulate Facebook. I mean, what she was calling

00:08:54.580 for was basically overt government censorship of speech, you know, more entrenchment of these

00:08:59.600 platforms to go after, you know, January 6th insurrectionists, which we know because of

00:09:04.480 definition inflation on the Democratic side, that just means any conservative who they don't like.

00:09:09.480 So her proposed solutions, I think, are very suspect. But I do think the information she's

00:09:15.340 provided is useful and I think could provoke investigations on, you know, privacy, what Facebook

00:09:21.460 is doing with the information about your children, and even some information about their ad

00:09:25.980 practices. All of that should go to the regulating agencies for investigations. And I hope that's

00:09:30.760 what does happen. Yeah. So I guess that leads to my next question. What should be the solutions then?

00:09:36.900 Because we would agree that a lot of the problems that she lists are actual problems, but we don't

00:09:43.220 think that the answer is necessarily the government coming in and just regulating the heck out of

00:09:47.640 Facebook. And so what would you suggest we should do? So my first policy proposal has always

00:09:54.300 started with the antitrust enforcement. One, because these are laws on the books, right? We don't have

00:09:58.860 to create, you know, this new regulatory structure to go after these companies. Antitrust laws are

00:10:03.380 supposed to protect the free market. And I think we've done a very poor job of enforcement around

00:10:08.460 the tech space. And that's my preferred solution for a lot of these speech problems is competition,

00:10:13.320 right? If you actually had a free market in tech, you could compete a lot of these concerns away.

00:10:17.960 And I think that that takes away a lot of the speech concerns if you look at speeches downstream of

00:10:22.260 market power. And what I mean by that is think about Google right now. Google filters information

00:10:27.420 for 90% of America. And so what they choose to suppress, what they choose to amplify can literally

00:10:33.660 change the minds of, you know, a big proportion of the country. If that market power is broken,

00:10:38.640 I don't care what Google suppresses or amplifies if they're only doing it for 30% of the country,

00:10:43.480 right? The market for information is much more open and less of a cartel. So I think antitrust

00:10:50.180 can solve that problem. But I do think that there are other reforms that need to be made. You know,

00:10:54.520 you often hear Section 230 bandied about. Now you'll hear Democrats want to use it again for

00:10:59.520 speech control, for censorship. I do think it has to be done in a way that keeps Section 230 in place,

00:11:05.000 but brings it back to its original intent. And Justice Clarence Thomas has now written about this

00:11:10.100 twice. You know, he said, look, the lower courts have gotten this wrong. What was a porous immunity has

00:11:14.840 become a bulletproof one? You know, guys, the original intent here was so that like, child

00:11:19.840 pornography didn't flourish on the platforms. You know, there's this was never supposed to be expanded

00:11:23.920 as a protection for sex trafficking on Facebook, which is what Facebook claims as its immunity is

00:11:29.460 Section 230. It was never designed to, you know, engage in or protect overt political censorship,

00:11:34.760 which is what we're seeing now. So there needs to be a retraction, a return to the original intent of

00:11:39.280 that statute. Yeah. You know, and then I also think data privacy and data portability play a big role

00:11:43.920 here, too. And that's an area that Congress, frankly, hasn't even begun to explore. Yeah. Can

00:11:48.640 you just quickly summarize you? You kind of did. But in a very basic form, can you summarize what

00:11:55.340 Section 230 is supposed to be what it was originally intended to do? So Section 230 was never even

00:12:03.560 actually a bill. It was an amendment to a much larger telecommunications package. And the title of

00:12:09.120 the amendment was the Family Online Empowerment Act. It was supposed to, again, give these companies

00:12:15.620 an incentive to take down sort of the smutty, you know, violent, harassing content that nobody wanted

00:12:21.200 to see. And to do that, it basically says, look, these platforms are not subject to the liability for

00:12:27.780 what users post on their platform. Right. They're not publishers in that regard. They can't be sued for

00:12:32.360 what we say. And then it gives them a protection. It says, look, even if this is constitutionally protected

00:12:37.260 speech, we want you to be able to take down. And it lists a whole host of criteria, you know, lewd,

00:12:42.460 lascivious, harassing, all this criteria. That's what it was designed to do. But unfortunately,

00:12:47.420 the lower courts have just expanded it so dramatically that, again, the Texas in the Texas

00:12:53.960 Supreme Court, Facebook recently argued against three moms who brought a case there. Their 14 and 15

00:13:00.980 year old girls were trafficked into sex slavery on Instagram. And those moms said, hey, look, 0.98

00:13:06.300 Facebook knew this and did nothing. Facebook is responsible. And Facebook said, no, we're not.

00:13:10.100 Section 230 protects us. We're not responsible for this. And so that's how it's become so grossly

00:13:15.220 distorted that it's protecting Facebook from even knowing sex traffickers are on their site and doing

00:13:21.200 nothing about it. And so I do think that that needs to be brought back to bear because this is

00:13:25.420 just non-sustainable. The size and scale of these platforms makes that kind of policy unsustainable.

00:13:30.080 They're protecting criminals and getting away with it.

00:13:31.780 Right. So it was supposed to say, hey, you have the power to be able to take off really bad

00:13:37.720 content from your platforms without being liable for the rest of the content that is on

00:13:43.080 your platform, which is good because that allows them to remove really bad content that we don't

00:13:49.000 want on there. But the thing that I'm thinking is that they very often don't remove really bad

00:13:54.500 content that's on there. Like you said, like we've seen several times, this is a source,

00:14:00.020 Instagram, Facebook or a source of not just harassment and bullying and doxing that very often is never

00:14:08.860 held accountable and never removed. But also it is a vessel for trafficking and for grooming and for

00:14:19.540 the sexualization of children. And they don't seem to be using Section 230 to empower themselves to

00:14:30.660 remove that kind of content. It seems like they only invoke Section 230 when they don't want

00:14:37.040 responsibility to remove that content and also when they want justification for removing, say,

00:14:44.700 political content that they don't like in the name of misinformation. Is that part of the problem?

00:14:50.000 That's a huge part of the problem. And I think especially when you're talking about political

00:14:53.720 speech, you know, these platforms, the reality of them now, and this was not the reality when Section

00:14:59.780 230 was passed or when Facebook began, but the reality of them now is that, you know, Facebook and

00:15:05.700 even Twitter to some extent, these are how candidates now reach their constituents or voters. You know,

00:15:11.880 this is how these are. We saw this with President Trump, right? This is how candidates and elected

00:15:16.480 officials talk to the voters talk to potential voters. And when you remove the ability of,

00:15:22.220 you know, one party or one candidate in a primary to access that forum, that does have a political

00:15:28.680 impact at this point. And that's a reality that our laws haven't grappled with yet. You even saw

00:15:33.940 the RNC, the Republican National Committee brought a lawsuit to the Federal Elections Commission after

00:15:39.720 Twitter suppressed circulation of the story about Hunter Biden from the New York Post. RNC went to FEC and said,

00:15:44.980 look, this is a campaign violation. This is an in-kind donation to Joe Biden, you know, to suppress this

00:15:51.920 critical story at this critical time. And even the FEC said, look, it's not because we think Twitter is

00:15:57.700 a publisher. We think Twitter is a media outlet. You know, they weren't trying to, you know, sway the

00:16:02.300 debate in any way. They have a First Amendment right to do this. And that just flies in the face,

00:16:06.920 I think, of reality at this point. But I think it speaks to the fact that our laws simply haven't

00:16:11.440 caught up to what these platforms actually are right now, which is sort of key avenues of,

00:16:15.700 you know, speech, political speech, commerce, information flow. You know, when we have laws

00:16:21.140 that just don't, I think, accurately reflect that reality at this point.

00:16:24.520 So Democrats want to regulate these social media companies in the name of trying to police

00:16:38.420 misinformation to protect the public from what they deem misinformation, which we know is probably

00:16:43.420 just an Orwellian descriptor for political speech, like you said, that they don't like opinions that

00:16:48.800 they don't agree with. Do you think, do you think that they are using Haugen's testimony? And I don't

00:16:56.960 want to get too conspiratorial, but do you think that this was pre-planned, that they kind of hoisted

00:17:02.100 her up to bring forth all of these issues that the American public really cares about? Okay, you care 0.71

00:17:07.680 about if Facebook knows that it could be helping drive young girls to the brink of suicide, it's making

00:17:13.700 their body image issues worse. It's a source of trafficking and grooming for young children. 0.99

00:17:20.780 Like, has she been purposely platformed by the side that wants to regulate these social media 0.87

00:17:26.260 companies? Is that or is or is that just how she's being incidentally used? 0.99

00:17:32.740 I do think that, you know, there is a little bit of an overt effort by Democrats here to use her

00:17:38.920 testimony to favor their own solutions, right? Which is this like major government crackdown on

00:17:43.900 social media, not in the way that Republicans would like it, which again, is to let speech

00:17:48.860 flourish, let the free market solve these problems. But through a very top down heavy handed approach,

00:17:53.660 I do think that, you know, she is impeccably groomed and, you know, well spoken and suddenly,

00:18:00.560 right, all of the sudden, you know, leaking documents, the Wall Street Journal then ends up on a 60

00:18:05.000 minutes interview, then in very, very quick turnaround has a Senate hearing, you know, all

00:18:10.460 working with a PR firm, there is a little bit of like, there was clear pre planning that went into

00:18:16.280 place here. And I but I think, you know, the right can, I think, very legitimately criticize that they

00:18:21.380 can very legitimately criticize her policy solutions, because she's not an expert, they don't have to

00:18:25.940 listen to Francis Haugen. But what they should not ignore is the information she's produced, which

00:18:31.420 there are some very damning indictments of what Facebook is up to. And I think if we ignore that

00:18:36.620 simply because we've, you know, discredited Francis Haugen, then, you know, we aren't doing our job

00:18:42.100 and actually saying what are our solutions for holding Facebook accountable, because what she's

00:18:46.120 produced, exclusive of, you know, her motivations, is still important in this debate.

00:18:51.700 What do you think the motivations are for Facebook and Instagram? Obviously, they,

00:18:55.960 Instagram is an entity of Facebook. But you know, Google, YouTube, and again, YouTube is an entity

00:19:02.400 of Google, even Twitter to not do more of a thorough job to protect its young users from the kind of

00:19:12.500 material that we know is damaging them, not just psychologically, but also physically, if they are

00:19:17.500 groomed into some kind of abuse. I mean, obviously, they make a huge effort to try to censor any

00:19:24.700 information about, say, COVID therapeutics, or people's opinions about masks and things like

00:19:30.960 that. They have certainly mobilized a large team of people to take down that kind of information.

00:19:38.460 Why aren't they quite as motivated to censor the material that they know is damaging the public?

00:19:48.660 Well, I think the really difficult thing to grapple with about that is because it's their business

00:19:53.340 model, right? And the thing that makes what's very clear in these documents is how critical it is

00:19:59.740 for Facebook, and by extension, Instagram, to attract those young users. They, you know, there

00:20:06.200 was lines in those documents about Facebook has teams of people that want to figure out how to,

00:20:11.600 quote, leverage your child's play date.

00:20:13.780 What does that mean?

00:20:15.300 I don't know. And I'm concerned, actually, about what it means. Like, I would like more information

00:20:20.220 about what those teams are doing to, quote, leverage the play dates of children. But they

00:20:24.760 want more clicks on Facebook Messenger, right? Because they have a Messenger for Kids app,

00:20:29.780 basically. And they want to figure out how kids playing together can somehow mean more clicks and

00:20:35.860 more eyeballs on Facebook. Because that is their business model. The more users they can attract,

00:20:40.120 the more data they can collect, feeds their very highly lucrative, highly targeted ad business,

00:20:45.700 which is what funds Facebook. That's how Facebook makes money, right? And so there's far less of an

00:20:51.580 incentive, I think, to police for, you know, things that, you know, could be put could begin to put

00:20:58.880 kids down a very bad track. And that's what's happening, right? We know this. And there's a lot

00:21:04.100 of comparisons these days, you know, among people who defend these companies who say, well, this is not,

00:21:09.180 you know, this is like the crusade of the 90s to get rid of video games, because video games are going

00:21:14.500 to make us all violent. But again, I don't think that comparison grapples with what social media

00:21:17.900 really is. And how, yeah, and how ubiquitous it is. It's everywhere. Yeah, you know, and as soon as a

00:21:22.900 kid has a smartphone, they are on these apps. And it's very difficult, I think, to, to police that

00:21:27.980 even even if you're a helicopter parent, right, even if you know exactly what your kid is doing at all

00:21:32.300 times, you know, they aren't in your control at all times. And the internet is everywhere.

00:21:36.880 Yeah, it's, it's certainly not the same thing. One, because, well, I would actually argue that

00:21:44.040 anything that we put into our mind can have an effect on our thoughts, and therefore our

00:21:48.380 behavior. So that goes for video games, that goes for the things that are online. But it's even more

00:21:55.160 dangerous when it comes to social media, because they're not just playing a game that is, you know,

00:21:59.740 closed, they're actually connecting to real life people that could do them harm. That I'm not on

00:22:05.400 Snapchat, but the things that people send me, they screenshot like the explore page or whatever it is

00:22:11.140 that has different news stories. I mean, there are 11 year old kids that are on Snapchat. And gosh,

00:22:18.520 parents, if you're listening, and your preteen is on Snapchat, change that ASAP. But the stories they

00:22:25.540 have are like, you know, different sex positions, and how to have safe anal sex. And here's how to get 0.74

00:22:32.280 an abortion without your parents permission. I mean, that stuff is on Snapchat. And it's not just for,

00:22:36.980 okay, if you're 18 and over, these are the kinds of stories that will show you. They don't care. I

00:22:42.960 don't know what the intent is behind sexualizing kids that age. I don't even really want to think

00:22:48.440 about it. But the fact of the matter is, it exists. And I don't think kids have the brain development

00:22:55.760 to be able to filter out that kind of information. And also, they also just don't have the discernment

00:23:02.980 quite yet to say, maybe I shouldn't send this kind of picture, because then it's going to be

00:23:07.540 spread. Or maybe this person is a trustworthy that I'm talking to. I mean, there are all kinds of

00:23:12.320 problems that do obviously primarily rest on the shoulders of the parents that are helping make

00:23:18.080 decisions for their kids. But you would like to think that there are at least a few parents at

00:23:24.180 these companies that would sympathize with the concerns of the American public. And I don't know,

00:23:30.000 it just doesn't seem like there is. Well, you have to think about it. You know,

00:23:33.600 on the right, we always prize the profit motive, right? We're like, this is what drives the economy

00:23:37.300 forward. And that's true. But if these companies, they aren't distinguishing between what's good for

00:23:42.300 children and just flat out consumers. They only care about the consumer. Because again, this is how

00:23:47.380 they make money. This is why they are doing, you know, you saw Instagram trying to create Instagram

00:23:51.560 kids, you know, and this is what Facebook was doing with the full knowledge of what can happen to

00:23:57.400 kids on their website. Right. They don't, they don't distinguish between child safety necessarily,

00:24:01.920 you know, and what could be a future consumer. And you see this from Google as well. I mean,

00:24:05.460 there's a reason Google hands out free Chromebooks in every school it can. They want to addict your

00:24:09.420 child early because that's their next generation of users. So there's always, you know, I don't think

00:24:14.680 we can trust these companies to look out for child welfare. They've, they've proven again and again,

00:24:17.960 they kind of frankly don't prioritize it. And even when they're punished for it,

00:24:22.140 they barely respond by changing anything. Yep. My last question is, do you have hope that

00:24:28.460 this kind of new crop of conservatives that seems to be coming up, or at least they're running for

00:24:33.680 office and some of them are already in Congress, obviously Josh Hawley has been on this beat for a

00:24:38.280 while. But then you've got people running like Blake Masters, JD Vance, who say that they really care

00:24:44.640 about, you know, about the dominance of big tech and the effect that it's having on society.

00:24:50.920 Do you have hope that there are some Congress people, hopefully some younger Congress people

00:24:56.480 who are waking up to this kind of thing, they understand the threat and that they're actually

00:25:00.640 going to do something about it, at least on the right? I am encouraged, I think, you know,

00:25:06.640 not just by the sloganeering and the rhetoric, but by the fact that, you know, people like JD Vance,

00:25:12.100 you know, is pretty sophisticated. Blake Masters actually kind of has experience in Silicon Valley.

00:25:16.400 They know how these companies work. And I think that's a lot of what's missing, you know, from

00:25:21.340 the current crop of policymakers. They just, they're just not technologically savvy.

00:25:26.180 Well, Blumenthal, he, oh my gosh, I'm sure you saw, he said, and I don't know if the audience saw,

00:25:31.440 he said something like, will you commit to ending Finsta? And Finsta is like a, you know,

00:25:37.460 a slang term for a fake Instagram or like a friend Instagram. Oh gosh. So that is,

00:25:42.240 that's a huge problem. They just don't understand. Well, and, you know, I think this younger generation

00:25:46.780 of lawmakers, they have young kids, right? They have kids that grew up in this environment in a

00:25:52.180 way that I, I didn't, and perhaps you didn't either. You know, I'm in the elder generation

00:25:56.040 of millennials who didn't have Facebook, right? Until like the end of college. Yeah. So I think

00:26:00.140 they are much more aware and, and I think fluent in what the problem is. And then I think in addition

00:26:05.740 to that, this newer generation is skeptical, far more skeptical, I think, of concentrations of power

00:26:11.300 outside of the government. And that I think for a long time is what's been missing on the right.

00:26:15.680 You know, we very rightly look at the government and say, this is a big threat and, you know,

00:26:19.300 we should be wary about what the government is up to. But in many cases, and I think, no,

00:26:23.160 not many cases, in certain cases. And I think in this case with big tech, you have an unprecedented

00:26:27.820 accumulation of power and control here that deserves just as much scrutiny and skepticism. And I think

00:26:33.280 the younger generation of lawmakers is far more savvy in that regard and fearless,

00:26:37.260 I think, too, about calling it to account. Yep. Well, I'm hopeful. Obviously, we don't know the

00:26:43.540 results of those elections. We can hope. I do think having some young blood and having a new

00:26:48.360 understanding and also feeling like you have a vested interest in these companies changing because

00:26:54.780 you've got those young kids that are being exposed, that are being exposed to that. And there's really

00:27:00.520 only so much that parents can do to protect their kids from that. They go to a friend's house,

00:27:05.080 they go to school. I mean, this really does affect everyone. And it can very seriously shape the

00:27:12.220 minds of an entire generation for the worse. So I'm thankful for the work that you do to try to

00:27:18.420 inform people about what's going on. And maybe there are some good things that will come out of this

00:27:24.900 quote unquote whistleblower testimony that aren't just, you know, a government overhaul of these

00:27:33.180 of these companies. That's the hope. Yeah, that's the hope. Well, thank you very much. Where can

00:27:38.480 people find you and follow you? So you can find me on Twitter at Rachel Bovard and all my work is

00:27:44.380 at CPI.org as well. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you so much.

00:27:48.980 Okay, guys, thanks so much for listening this week. This was a big week. We had NBA player on Monday,

00:28:00.180 Jonathan Isaac, talking about his decision not to get the vaccine and how he has the courage to stand

00:28:06.460 up for these controversial opinions nowadays, vaccine choice. But also last year, he was the

00:28:15.460 only player on the Orlando Magic to stand up for the national anthem and not wear a Black Lives Matter

00:28:20.100 shirt. When he was asked the reason why he shared the gospel. I mean, the guy is solid. I really

00:28:26.260 appreciated him coming on and kind of telling us his reasoning and sharing his story. If you have not

00:28:31.440 heard that conversation, definitely go listen to it or watch on YouTube. We had our 500th episode

00:28:36.420 on Tuesday and just the messages and the comments and the reshares that you guys put out there and just

00:28:43.200 the encouragement and the kind words that you gave to me and what relatable has meant to you.

00:28:48.120 Just it means so much. Thank you, guys. I'm so thankful to be able to do this. If you do love

00:28:53.460 this show, please leave a five star review on Apple. Tell us why you love it. Just a couple sentences is

00:28:58.480 great. That would mean a whole lot. Monday, we've got Christopher Rufo coming on and he has really led

00:29:05.440 the charge against critical race theory in schools. And you guys might have seen the story of the

00:29:10.900 Department of Justice led by Merrick Garland, Biden's Department of Justice. They are now

00:29:15.760 mobilizing the FBI against parents that they say are threatening, you know, school board members or

00:29:22.800 public school teachers. Now, of course, any threats of violence are not OK, not right. But what the fear

00:29:29.320 is and the very justified fear is that the DOJ is going to actually be weaponized against parents who

00:29:37.340 just raised their concerns and that this is more of an intimidation tactic than anything else to try

00:29:43.200 to silence justifiably concerned parents. So make sure you tune into that. That'll be a big episode.

00:29:49.800 And I hope you guys have a great weekend. I will see you on Monday.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 07, 2021

Ep 502 ｜ Facebook Whistleblower： Dem Operative or Hero？｜ Guest： Rachel Bovard

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 07, 2021

Ep 502 ｜ Facebook Whistleblower： Dem Operative or Hero？ ｜ Guest： Rachel Bovard

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 502 ｜ Facebook Whistleblower： Dem Operative or Hero？｜ Guest： Rachel Bovard