Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators Are Tech Companies Too Big 20240713

But essentially, monopolies and Financial Institutions that facilitate that monopolization across the country and thats what we are focused on. We have special concerns about the power of Big Technology platforms but in general we think that a lot of the economic and social problems that we are experiencing in this country today can trace back or be exact exacerbated by the dramatic outsized levels of Corporate Power that exists in our economy today. Host how did you come to that view . Guest we looked around at the world essentially. If you look at markets. If you look at Market Structure you will find that whether it is large markets like media, telecom, healthcare, online retail, amazon for example, or even small markets like Peanut Butter and cheerleading and watch components and software you have seen that over and over a handful of businesses and handful of corporations have rolled up those markets and essentially act as governing agents for other actors in that market. Host isnt that because those corporations have been successful . Guest that is a myth. About 40 years ago we saw a radical shift in the way the policymakers interact with structuring markets. So, if you look back to the new deal and now its a pretty good moment to talk about the new deal big incinerate the state of our economy there was, prior to that, a very similar economic concentration of power in the country and fdr essentially started breaking that power and breaking those concentrations of corporate and financial power and what they did was to help unleash fair competition support smaller businesses, promote broadbased Economic Prosperity across economic equality that we saw leading up to that era. Around the time of Ronald Reagan we decided to make it a different set of choices. We decided to say okay, the government will step back and we will allow essentially anticompetitive practices and we will allow large institutions to bully their way to the top and not enforce the laws that have kept markets open and competitive for entrepreneurs for smaller businesses and we are seeing this today. Host sarah miller, what is the law do you think that would prevent a facebook from buying instagram or whatsapp . Guest great question. I think when you look at the authority that institutions like the federal trade commission half they have the ability to block mergers that will substantially lessen competition. This is not something that is difficult to do and not something that is historical anomaly. That is the scrutiny that we need regulators and policymakers to make. Previously there was a whole rich landscape of law that was enforced that made sure media markets in particular and institutions that were essential for exchanging information were the concentrated and unprotected. We stepped away from that entirely and that is what precipitated the rise in institutions like google and facebook, which now dominate the internet and the way we communicate across social media and online. Host but again, google has been successful over 90 of searches are done on google. That is because its just become part of our fabric. There are options out there, arent there . Guest that again is somewhat a myth. I think that when you look at institutions like google yes, it is a search but it is also maps. Its also youtube and at the end of the day really a Digital Advertising monopoly. Facebook and google or Digital Advertising monopolies and that is something that federal regulators and policymakers have the ability to change. Host what would you do to google if you had the power . Guest basically i would establish a structure and a framework around Digital Advertising monopolies that would reestablish or establish a regulated competition approach. There is no reason for google to be able or facebook to be able to own a whole host of properties and those should be spun off so we can have competition and more accountability in those markets. That is number one pick you can do it horizontally or do it vertically or across functions. Number two is we really do need to update and design a regulatory apparatus to deal with these institutions that has been able to hoard and leverage and manipulate the public in our elections and businesses essentially, by their ability to collect so much data about us. We need to look at different regular tory approaches for changing that calculus. For institutions like google and facebook its important to look at the Business Model could what their Business Model is, which a lot of people dont understand, if you look at google and think its a company that i can search and findings on the internet but what that Business Model actually is is they collect massive amounts of data from users and then the essentially let advertisers access that data or use that data to target advertising and extremely preciseness and manipulate voice and that is dangerous for number of reasons. One reason is that it eviscerates the ability of other online and print Digital Media outlets to have revenue. They basically are harvesting revenue because they are able to access so much data about us, that other institutions cant compete and thats a core reason why youre seen so many layoffs and so many media organizations go under. That is an important thing to consider. I think the other thing is about data and privacy and all the things are linked to the ability of google and facebook to mind everything they can about us and sell that for a profit and make billions and billions of dollars a year. Host walk us through the privacy aspect of this. Guest sure. On the privacy front anything you do online, essentially at this point, it goes whether beyond use google or whether you are on facebook or instagram or whatsapp but both of these companies have the ability to track that behavior. They also have the ability to track where you are in the real world through your phone. They are the most powerful monopolies in that respect. They know everything about us from our digital world, from her digital life and from where we go on the real world. What they can then do is they take the data and allow essentially anyone for the most part who wants to pay them to do it to target us with and very precise intimate, psychologically sophisticated ways with ideas with Product Placement and with propaganda and with misinformation and they make money along side data. That type of information, as well, is the most engaging type of conflict content. Neither of these institutions are in the business of promoting factbased and responsible news. In fact, quite the opposite. They make more money when very sensationalist and emotionally engaging the type of information that makes you angry or upset is amplifying the router system. We have turned a lot of our Information Sources over to these two institutions and i think that as time goes by it will only get more dangerous and instructive towards our social fabric and our democracy. Host sarah miller, the concept of Net Neutrality has a role here well, correct . Guest right, yeah. Host in what way . Guest when you look at Net Neutrality you see that you basically want a nondescript nation approach and that is also essential in these sorts of situations. It is not safe to have corporations with this much power over information to be able to discover nate in terms of who can move that and who can move Different Things there is a system. One aspect when i think about privacy that we dont often think about privacy in terms of businesses so our Business Organization focuses on fair competition and businesses in the market place so we are taught to think about privacy as Consumer Privacy or ease her privacy but both of these institutions businesses also and this includes publishers turn all their data over to facebook and google and able to monetize that. That is an additional component that we are concerned about anything about type c and the power of these institutions. They basically cut off the relationships between publishers and smaller businesses and the enduser and through their interaction with these problems to reach market and reach customers they basically give up their advantages and ability to compete in the market place. Do you feel that a google or facebook should be looked at as a public utility . Guest i think that we generally are looking at a regulated competition approach and we do that because when you look at the history of medication, law and regulation in this country theres a clear mapping of that. I think in some cases you have to apply those possibles to make sure the nondescript nation possibles like you talked about are achieved but in general i think that you can have a competitive and regulated ecosystem in terms of Online Communications Networks Without enshrining these institutions into a public utility sort of function. One concern we do have and you hear this a lot in the policy conversation is lacking in their monopoly power because these institutions are so powerful and so know much more about their Business Models and so much more about data we are nervous about the government actually been able to regulate them effectively. We think its more important to break their power and its not entirely hard to do that i think building the political will to do that but thats one thing that is more of a challenge. Wall street spends out companies all the time every day so technically its not actually terrible difficult to do that but from a democracy perspective from a social welfare perspective having a few Companies Control the information flow on the internet and then either trying to get the government to play from behind and regulate that effectively is probably going to be very difficult. Host so, what about the issue of economies of scale. These are massive corporations that are providing services to millions, billions of people. How do you compete with that size . Do you break it up, at t in the 1980s . Guest part of it is break out. Its not terribly, gay debate you a robust Innovation Ecosystem especially online and you made regulations to make it safe for democracy and individual users. One policy solution we support and that is essential if you do break up the institutions as interoperability and that will give smaller startups from permission from users to tap into and Share Networks so fact, 20 years ago when aim instant messenger was launched there was a requirement ultimately that different types of messaging systems be able to communicate with each other so they do not develop a monopoly over that space and was effective. A similar practice could be put into place here but it would not be fairly hard. As function of political will and we have institutions that do this and create standards and different types of corporate entities can talk to each other and people can use them and the interconnected way and thats an important step in this situation as well. Host what was the effect when micro soft was on the line in 1990 . Guest microsoft and microsoft was not ultimately broken up. There was an initial judgment and the judge ruled it back. But the micro soft case did put the brakes on microsoft ability to roll up adjacent markets in the computing space and the Online Software space but what that did was allowed Companies Like google and facebook to jump in and innovate and to basically create markets for takeout market share and places where microsoft would have had a clear advantage in so i think there are valuable lessons to learn from the Microsoft Case and its time to apply those to google and facebook as well. Host sarah miller, and february there was a profile of you in the New York Times and the headline, he he wants to break up big everything great is that a your assessment . Guest no. In general the solution to every problem is not a breakup. I think thats a great headline for clicks but it wasnt quite accurate from a policy perspective. Again, in a lot of markets you do want to d concentrate on. Want to break up competition to create competition in the way. Some markets should not be commodified at all. Theres a robust know a lot about Health Insurance and singlepayer healthcare and whether that belongs in a private scene market oriented structure. Same for markets like private prisons, for example that probably shows [inaudible] when we look at concentrated markets, the solution is not always break them up. Sometimes it is to eliminate them altogether and turn them over to government and maximize them for the welfare of the public and sometimes its different approaches where the government has regulatory approach to changes so theres different approaches but in general a lot of these cases we have markets become rolled up consolidated over the last 40 years and breaking them up is one way to do that. Host when you look back at your political career you have a foot in both the Hillary Clinton camp and the Bernie Sanders camp. What are those connections . Guest sure, i was a policy staff on Hillary Clintons first run for president in 2008 and obviously is a lot of the viewers will remember there was a financial crisis during that time and we learned a lot from that. I then went on to work at the u. S. Treasury in the aftermath of the crisis over at helping to see programs in the dodd frank reform and various initiatives but we undertook to try to help the economy recover. I think one of the lessons i took away from that experience is that although we did unlock credit martic and help the economy get back to a functioning state relatively quickly we did not solve and in fact we exacerbated some of the line injustices and weaknesses in our economy, particularly in regard to inner quality, market concentration like we talked about. General kind of fragility in terms of peoples Household Economic security. You seen these problems get worse and worse and weve seen the startup rate continuing to fall and we seen wages continue to stagnate and so what that tells me is we have deep foundational problems in our economy that we need to solve and what i discovered is that so many of those problems are exacerbated or caused by the concentration we are seen across our economy the way that wall street is allowed to leverage at, essentially financial eyes markets that in ways that are disruptive and then connecting that all back to the influence that large corporations and finance have over our political discourse and over the decisions that so many of our policymakers the parameters of that debate in the outside influence they have. That has been my, i guess, transpiration in terms of seen what happened in the economy in 2008 with the financial crisis and now seeing where we are today. Host and you have a connection to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Guest i do. My husband is Bernie Sanders Campaign Managers make. Host sarah miller, imagined the startup rate is what is that and how does that apply in the tech world . Guest sure, in the tech world we have seen basically a radical change in the culture of Silicon Valley where you use to have a much more vibrant kind of culture where startups would catch fire and grow, now there is essentially a couple of strategies if you are a tech startup and will you sell it to facebook or you sell to google and what that is done is its warped the ability of innovators in Silicon Valley to innovate according to market ease and according to ideas but instead everyone is guessing how can i develop something that facebook will buy or that google will buy and that is not necessarily really how we want the economy or Innovation Sector to function. We dont want people to try to start new businesses and gravitate towards ideas because a handful of giant institutions might buy them up. Right . The other thing we are seen particularly in Silicon Valley is that partly because we have really failed in so many ways to enforce antitrust law and to crack down on anticompetitive practices even if you do have a good idea theres nothing about institutions like baseball facebook and google for copying it and facebook in particular has been incredibly aggressive about [inaudible] that we think are illegal and so we been generally quite excited at some moves and a better direction to help antitrust subcommittee is undergoing what is pretty historic investigation into digital platforms like competition we seen the fpc and doj engaged in some of that as well and we have antitrust cases among 50 state attorney generals looking into both facebook and google so there is a lot more scrutiny that is starting to bubble up as these institutions that we are very supportive of and will see outcomes for. Host another one of those large prorations is amazon and little bit of a different model but dont a lot of Small Businesses depend on sales via amazon . Guest so, yes. I think in general amazon at this point has become one of the only ways for Small Businesses to get to market. I think where in the past you had a lot of different channels for Small Businesses to reach customers now if you dont sell on amazon you are at a major disadvantage so i think that is not really something that has been consistent with the way that we want our economy to function but we dont want there to be one intermediary between Small Business person or entre nous or with the good idea and the entire customer base. This is a problem that we were focused on and i think its also important to understand how amazon basically abuses and takes advantage of the strong businesses that depend on it. They forced him to use their own shipping in their own shipping channels and they are arbitrary about where these smaller businesses fall in their rankings and can be pulled off amazon with no rationale and their livelihoods will be crushed and theres a lot of fear among Small Businesses and this is an urgent problem if we want to continue to have a robust business sector in the economy which is already on the ropes and particularly after the crisis we are seen caused by coronavirus and it is only going to get more dire and more difficult to getting online. Host sarah miller, given your views how do you avoid the google of facebooks and the twitters in the amazons . Guest twitter is a monopoly. There problems with twitter that you know, deserve concern but twitter does not have monopoly power over information flow so its not something we focus on. The point, the truth is you cant avoid them. I think that is something that demonstrates the fair monopoly power and how we need to address it and Facebook Follow you everywhere you go on the internet and everywhere at this a like button they know where you have been and google, the same. Its not avoidable. With amazon you see the businesses like aw acts which underpin a lot of the web and they arent something you can avoid. What that tells me and what that tells us is that personal choices personal decisions around what you want to interact with and what you dont are not the way to push your way out of this but you have to push policymakers to make this. The influence and reach of these institutions are so vast consumers are not going to be able to force any changes alone. Host given that what were your views about how the European Union has regulated big tech . Guest European Union has moved out a little bit ahead of where the u. S. Is to be sure. We have seen some movement in germany in particular where for example, with facebook they basically said you cant share data between different platforms that you land so if youre facebook you cant share data with whatsapp and in scram so its a breakup and thats an important step and we are seen of ossetians and actions being taken all of the world in india, for example, is something that they cannot be compete with the fellers that move their market places so its a basic antitrust tenant where you are the determine what the rates are with other people that are writing those rails and you can choose and get goods to market or compete on that platform so we are seen things happen all over the world and i think what we want to try to establish, especially with the to tech Companies Like google and facebook is that power is a fundamental problem and that is Democratic Institutions will have to break or else we will only see them wriggle out a regulation, lobby their way out of real constraints and ultimately we will be in the exact same position again or worse. Host you dont seem terribly enthused about the moves the eu and other places made it. Guest i think we are still in a process of seeing what will happen there. We have seen proposals like taxing digital platforms which, i think, in some ways is a step back because we dont want to entrench the power of these institutions and make them a Revenue Source that the state depends on. Certainly, we want them to pay their fair share in the current moment and in the Current Situation and there are very very expert at avoiding taxes but fundamentally i think we have to come to a consensus around the basic fact that the level of power that they have over a society in over the flow of information and over democracies is too great and dangerous and that has to be [inaudible] host assistant attorney general [inaudible] has been quite active when it comes to antitrust, hasnt he . Guest no, i would disagree with that. Certainly not in a consistent weight. Host why . Pgh. Guest wheezing essentially him take steps behind the scenes in terms of their amicus brief programs where they are pushing courts to make decisions that would entrench the power of the Tech Companies and not check those power of the Tech Companies. We are a little bit more focused on institutions like the federal trade commission which is undergoing its own investigation and they have more independence and running up against 40 years of a culture of handsoff in terms of addressing problems from the largest institutions and corporations and they tended to focus on smalltime scam and not one to challenge large monopolies as we see them so we are hoping that maybe were starting to see a change there but our focus has really been on the house antitrust subcommittee because you cant legislate your weight out of these problems and is not necessarily that agency enforcement, legislation is absolutely a path to addressing Corporate Power and then we are looking at the cases at the state attorney general which were historic in terms of the number of 80s that signed on in the fact that its a deeply bipartisan exercise. Host sarah miller, graduates of the university of chicago and a native of muskegon, oklahoma. Executive director of the American Economic liberties project and has been our guest on the communicators. This program and all communicators are available as podcasts. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of governme government, already this year we brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now, the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspan Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on the free cspan radio app. Be a part of the National Conversation to suspend the daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, crated by private industry. Americas cabletelevision company as a Public Service brought to you today by your television provider. Youre watching a special edition of book tv. We are now airing during the week all numbers of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight biographies. First, roberts wilson, editor of the emergent scholar recounts the life of 19th century showman, p. T. Barnum. The cofounder of the Barnum Bailey circus. Then historian adam hook shield looks at Rose Pastor Stokes who was a Founding Member of americas communist party and married to new york millionaire, james graham stokes. Later, journalist Janice Kaplan on the discoveries of women geniuses today and throughout history. Enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on cspan2