Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators 20240711

Host as many people do when they are trying to research a a new place or a new thing, i went to wikipedia and want to get your reaction to what is on your wikipedia page. It says parler markets itself as free speech and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as twitter and facebook have however, journalists and users have criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays. Guest we have heard some of those criticisms but i have not seen evidence that really backs it up. If you read our Community Guidelines you will see we permit the widest possible amount of speech, consistent with law because of course we will not allow our platform to be used as a tool for crime or anything else. Within that we are in the spirit of the First Amendment. We are viewpoint neutral. To the extent that there is human beings involved in the process we have Community Jury and sometimes the jury is fallible, but otherwise no, we are viewpoint neutral. We train our jurors to be neutral. We are probably the most permissive platform on the web consistent with law. Host when and why was parler founded . Guest it was found in 2018 a couple years ago by john and shared and also rebecca mercer, people of been reading was provided funding. They all observed there were two big problems with social media. They were becoming speech restrictive, the dominant platforms, and at the same time they were not respecting the privacy of individuals. There was a lot of data mining or as we heard in the hearings yesterday in the senate, data stripmining was new phrase i heard. Data mining to a large extent. Neither of them were satisfied with that and they decided they would instead of just complaining about like others do, they would go out and start their own platform and try to compete which is the american approach to problems like this. Host ms. Peikoff, is parler i conservative site . Is it an alternative for conservatives . Guest parler has provided a platform this is an alternative for many conservatives recently about they have been mistreated another platforms like it is not intended as a conservative platform. We are viewpoint neutral. Many of the people for in parler who dont think of themselves as either liberal or a conservative, what we believe in is free speech. Allowing that alternative for people has been a particular just a conservatives of late because they have felt theyve not been treated with transparent consistent at by policies on the other platform. What they do is they trust us because they know we are again allowing the widest amount of speech possible consistent with the law. Host how many followers at this point back . Guest in terms of the counts i know we have at least 10. 5 million now, which is up about 6 million from just a few weeks ago. Its been quite a lot of growth recently. We may indeed be approaching 11 billion or more but i havent kept up with it in the last couple of days. Host has parler turned a profit as of yet . Guest im not sure about the turning a profit part but i do know this been a substantial amount of advertising revenue. We started to ramp up our monetization model. Im not sure exactly. Those are the many people have to talk to. Im more of the policy person tremont joining our conversation as well is Karl Herchenroeder of communications daily. Nice to meet you. I wanted to ask you about twitters handling of the president s twitter account, particularly since the election. Whats been the conversation like at parler . Guest well, obviously we dont do anything like what twitter has been doing. So what twitter has been doing and jack dorsey was explaining it at some length yesterday, is a have been putting tags onto the president s tweets, and those tags will take you to links in which they provide what they call context, broader context for the information that the president puts in his tweet or the argument or position he puts in his tweet. With that also comes some restriction either reach or the ability of other twitter users to engage with the tweet. There have been studies showing there is quite a bit of restriction that comes with twitter, putting a label on the tweet. Its not just a label and then everything is the same otherwise. There is a significant reduction in engagement with that material whenever they do this. We do not do that on parler. The attack we taken is similar to what senator kennedy talked about in the Senate Hearings with dorsey and zuckerberg. We allow people to think for themselves. Suggest as kennedy was questioning the two of them saying do you believe everything you read . No, of course not. We dont think any person who goes onto a platform like parler or twitter or facebook should just take everything thats on there at taste outages because its been put out there in the world. We think people should be thinking critically for themselves we will not so to put a bandaid on anything him anything else we will not encourage them to outsource their critical thinking. We think they should look at the president for harley from the president if he ever does come to parler and ask themselves is it necessary true, just because the president says its true . Maybe i need to check some other sources especially if it is a very significant claim that could affect something thats very important, perhaps i should look into the facts behind it. We disagree with the policies they take you to think its a private Company Twitter has right to do it. We do not call it censorship. That was one thing we heard in hearing as well. To have this false alternative they were presenting you with. On the one hand, it was either censorship and it was wrong, that was the conservative view. Or a lot of the democrats would say that its not censorship and, in fact, they didnt believe twitter or facebook were doing enough to combat socalled misinformation. At part we think both of those approaches are wrong. We think that what Twitter Facebook are doing is that censorship. If you say censorship your implying there is a government solution to the problem, that some of their doing what government does. They are not doing that. Its not censorship. At the same time we do think it wrong because we think its best for people to be in the practice of thinking for themselves, not outsourcing the thing to do anybody else. We dont do that at parler. Is President Trump were the projected winner and biden were claiming victory, how would parler handle the situation . With you taking action . Guest no. No, same story come same story. We treat everybody equally. If you come on and you are actually putting some things after their violations of law, such as child pornography, all the usual suspects, then were going to of course treat you as violating our Community Guidelines and in appropriate cases when there are in segments and threats we would cooperate with law enforcement. But other than that everything is viewpoint neutral. Are people on the platform obviously who dont like a liberal viewpoint, and so there are some people who say this is supposed to be a conservative platform and so why is this on . They will try to report it but our jurors are trained. We are viewpoint neutral and we do not either van content or people or anybody else from our platform template present a different view. We would treat joe biden no differently. We invite joe biden to come on, come on to parler. Its been rumored the president is going to join us come maybe joe biden should be first. Should content moderation be totally handsoff . Guest it cant ever totally the handsoff because again we do not want to know ns the law permits us to have our platform to use as a tool for the crime, any sort of intellectual property violation in addition to the other examples i gave. You cant be completely hands off and also we do not want to a faithful to the person it on our platform so we provide assistance with those sorts of things as well. It cant be completely handsoff but again we believe it is the best approach when youre talking about hate speech, socalled misinformation, anything else to address those problems with the more speech, not with any type of content restriction. We act accordingly. Host amy peikoff, how do you monitor whats happening on your site . Guest him him him, the employees. But primarily what we rely on a Community Jury system whereby any person who is on parler, a user of parler, can report a piece of content. We have dropped in menu if you go to the upper right at any parlay or any other piece of content and you can report that piece of content and theres a menu with the different types of violations and you can include syntax, et cetera. That goes into our Community Jury portal and our volunteer jurors will look at the piece f content. They get training on a regular basis and they can tell whether or not its a violation. Its a quorum system so it requires a majority of a jury panel in order to deem it a violation. But then also what we do have is we have a special notation that they can put in which is a think the content is illegal and should be immediately removed, it gets escalated more quickly. Try what you could use the term parler and parlay. What is the correct pronunciation and what did that make where did that name come from . Guest i admit ive been working for parler since july and my first opening for the platform and it took some french in high school i thought it should be pronounced parlay, infinity for the french. They had already just started pronouncing it parler and thats just how its always been. I think we sort of make up without a little because instead of the tweet, the posts on parler are called parlays that its actually spelled like parlay any normal english. To parlay his job discussion that bridges competing viewpoints coming to an understanding between people of two different viewpoints. We love that connotation because its exactly the discussion with trying to foster. Host i want to go back one more time to the wikipedia page, and usually wikipedia is pretty neutral, but it seems to be a little bit slanted, the wikipedia description of parler and it says that harper has him face of trump supporters, conservatives and right wing extremists. Guest i mean, we do have quite a number of conservatives on the platform now and its for the reasons that i stated we had policies that i would say encourage user trust and since were very transparent about what we do with our content. We also are very considerate of and respectful of use privacy. We dont get any data mining at all. None of our advertising is targeted in any way except for it somebody chooses to follow a particular influencer he or she might see ads that come to influencer network. So our policies are very different and i think they do encourage user trust. I would say the first group, Significant Group of people who decided they would give up the comfort and the familiar over at facebook and twitter were a lot of conservatives who felt that they were mistreated on the other platforms. So they would come out and give us a try. But now we are seeing all sorts of people from im hearing this morning were having substantial number of fitness experts come health and fitness experts who also feel theyve been mistreated. Those people run the ideological spectrum. I think different people for Different Reasons of found they are dissatisfied with the other platforms and to see enough of the friends are over on parler now that were growing, they will at least give it a shot. What we plan is to give them enough features and a good enough User Experience and to earn their trust so we can continue to keep their business. Host back to Karl Herchenroeder. I wanted to follow up on peters question. Mention 4chan in 8chan where hate speech have run rampant. What kind of policies does part have in place to prevent the platforms from becoming anything like that . Guest theres one thing i think makes us a bit different from some of the platforms, and an affinity with the operation of 4chan and 8chan and what they may or may not do to sort of fan the flames of hate among some groups. But i think some of the algorithms that facebook and twitter have any rumored to use, and if you saw the social to let you wouldve some of this. I think those will actually make the problem of hate and hate groups worse because insofar as they were designed to increase engagement, to put content in front of people in their feeds that there were more likely to feel extremely positive or extreme negative about, and thats the sort of thing theyre doing over the years. I think it did encourage that. On parler we do not have in our Community Guidelines any prohibitions against socalled hate speech. Its largely for the reasons that you see in this book. This is the book from nadine strossen. Hate, why should we respond this date with free speech and uncensored. The professor whos also that of the aclu, the nationwide head of the aclu for many years, she explains how insofar as there have been hate speech restrictions, whether theyre on social media but especially as they have been legislatively in country of the world, they have actually publicly serve to be counterproductive, that the best answer, she says we should resist it. We should resist hate but the best way to do it is with more speech and so for those reasons and because the course of a significant portion of socalled hate speech that is protected by the First Amendment, the First Amendment will protect hate speech come socalled hate speech insofar as it is not any sort of incitement to violence or threats. Those are already illegal and, of course, those we dont permit. Both facebook seal Mark Zuckerberg and twitter Ceo Jack Dorsey yesterday both spoken and more transparency, regarding algorithms. Is parler in favor of that train of thought . Would you be supported more transparency . Guest so we are in support of transparency but if you listen to Mark Zuckerberg closely yesterday, he repeatedly used the opportunity to buy some of the questions to tout the transparency programs they have. I guess they put together a Quarterly Report he was talking about, about the way in which the platform treats various categories of objectionable content. Some of it of course is a type of content we of course prohibit on parler because it is illegal. Some of the types of content they might handle in that report might be things they prohibit in their Community Guidelines that we dont. In any event what he was eager to do yesterday apparently because he call for for a few s even when he was speaking with ben sasse, ben sasse state explicitly hes not for a come solution. Mark zuckerberg was asking for regulations around transparency, and the regulations he described which was required the same types of reports with all the extensive Data Analysis they do in the supports, plus he was hinting may be in addition the transparency itself that there would be a minimum level of socalled effectiveness even with the various types of speech, perhaps even the types of speech that we do not prohibit an Hour Committee guidelines. If that was put in place that would at the minimum create a barrier to entry that would make it impossible for smaller people to compete, smaller startups to compete, because facebook as this extensive infrastructure in which they have invested a whole lot of money. Second, it might make it, if the types of speech that are going to be involved again are going to be hate speech and of the kinds of things we dont prohibit, then theyre going to make it impossible to compete in a way that involves a different set of guidelines as to what speech is permitted on the platform. In effect they would make their Community Guidelines the industry norm mandated by government which in effect would be censorship by proxy. Right now we are saying lets allow maximum out of speech permitted by the First Amendment. They are saying and effect lets regulate that a way to make that impossible. I just want to ask a quick, has parler, had any conversation within offices on capitol hill about sending their ceo to testify . Guest there was at one point in inquiry with respect to an antitrust hearing just to get some of rsns on issues about it, but there has not been any sense yet about having him testify. Of course you know its been only in the last couple of weeks where parler has grown so significantly that i think that might become a real option. It would be good to have a representative of parler there as well to talk about this because again there are real options. One of the main focus is bad on hearing as you are yesterday was a villain was supposed to agree that section 230 needs to be revised there was one person who said some of the internet has outgrown section 230, but i dont know if its known with there was a statement that Justice Thomas gave it, a denial of certiorari in the case, and Justice Thomas and some length detail the ways in which section 230 he believes has been misinterpreted as currently written. And how you could interpret it correctly and thereby solve a lot of the problems the congressmen were discussing yesterday in the hearing. So, for example, Justice Thomas indicates by interpreting section 230, the language as it is, appropriately, you do have to give immunity for all of the content or the selecting or editing. There is the phrase does the platform create or develop content. It doesnt have to be deemed a publisher to be held liable in some of the way for the creation or development of certain content. Similarly for decisions to remove certain types of content, you dont have to be a publisher to be liable for your actions. And similarly come he discussed the structuring of the output, the way the user interface is designed, et cetera. He indicated by this narrow were interpretation section at 230 which language supports that you might not need to do anything to section 230. I happen to be of the belief if you have a compromise between those two sides which in effect are providing a false alternative, which when you get a something that is much worse than what we currently have. And might, in fact, shut down social media as we know it. Host amy peikoff, two questions. The first one is, you have referenced a couple of times a spurt of growth in parler in the last couple of weeks. Why is that . Guest one of the things i said before is i believe a lot of the other platforms have started losing the trust of their customers. So, for example, i have friends who are not particularly political, and they were complaining about how facebook, every single thing that the posted, even things that didnt even seem to be related to the election, would get the little tags and things on it. All those election related information was in the face of maybe theyre just trying to forget about it. Some of the decisions the other platforms have made are starting to annoy people enough that when they hear that theres an alternative platform and if they go past the wikipedia entry and they do a Little Research and they learn that we actually are unbiased and we are neutral, we dont just say only conservatives are welcome, et cetera, they might come over and give us a try. I do think it is right that there was a coordinated Movement Among some people, conservatives, who thought that they were being deprived of a voice on the other platform en masse, as it did come over. That a lot of of the people came over. Weve had a lot of liberals come over because they want to criticize those conservatives here if all those conservative folks left the other platforms and want to engage with them and sometimes you want to insult them, sometimes what have discussions, they come on over. Host and secondly, whats your level of comfort, or where do see the governments role in mediating or being involved in social media . Guest i mean, i think that government doesnt need to be anyone involved than it is right now. I think we do have section 230 that does i think, i agree with Justice Thomas, that if we just took the language and looked at a a better interpretation of it, it does all the work that needs to be done. I do not think the earnest act would be anything that is advisable. I think the dangers that some of the privacy advocacy groups have been talking about with respect to earn it and the danger it poses for endtoend encryption is a a real danger and to think that is something that hope will not pass. Similarly again i dont think section 230 should be revised. Any of the regulations that are being called for i think will just entrench the bigger platforms. Once you entrench the bigger platforms and you create all these barriers to entry, everyone will be dissatisfied and take the only solution is some sort of partnership between social media and government. If you start having too much partnership between social media and government, what you are going in up with is, its going to sound like an exaggeration but if you think about it, social media transmits information and the other platforms at least suck up a whole lot of personal data, if you put that together with government, what you get . You get orwell 1984. Return it fiction book into an instruction manual. Keeping them apart as much as possible is very desirable. Host Karl Herchenroeder, we have five minutes left. Are the any pieces of legislation that are related to section 230 that the company is supportive or open to . Guest no, no. I mean, again, i think the best thing to look at is whether the interpretations of the current language are correct. And insofar as you are dissatisfied with the ways that companies are exercising the latitude that they had under section 230, then the true solution to that is a free market solution. Go find a competitor who is provide exactly what you want and give them your business. Why would you want to continue to help monetize a platform that is restricting what you can see and trying to keep you engaged and maybe do things to get you addicted, to something you talk about yesterday as well. We dont do that. We give you a purely chronological feed. We do not do anything to try to enhance engagement or anything else. I think ours is a little bit more friendly to an individual who wants to put themselves on a good social media diet whereas a benefit to your life and that something that you get addicted to. Come over and try a different alternative and give them your business. No continue to monetize these other platforms that treat you like commodity or, you know, otherwise did you addicted and treat you badly, they dehumanize you i think it away. The sec are conducting a will making to reinterpret section 230 which was initiated by an executive order from President Trump. What are your thoughts on that . Guest its not clear in which way it would go based on the executive order. Theres been some speculation about it, but i dont know exactly what the current interpretation thats going to be favored. I would look at overall narrower interpretation into an Justice Thomas is discussing again in the statement. If the fcc was going use some sort of guidance then they could be a wellinformed thing, but personally i think that trump did not like the way he was being treated, and yes, i can understand because we disagree with some of the ways he has been treated again on twitter, but i think the solution, the proper american solution is a free market one. Just go to a competitor. Host amy peikoff, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved as chief policy officer for parler. Guest sure. So i am an attorney, but most of my life ive been involved in academic pursuits and teaching various places. I did my dissertation on the right to privacy and so thats where i ended up having a lot of interest in comments with parler strategic investor. In fact, last year what he did as i wrote an amicus brief indication of states versus facebook, which is one around this most recent ftc consent to decree. Jeffrey read that brief and out of touch with me and we started talking about it. This was earlier in the year before parler was really starting to grow anything. As in the summer we get some of our first burst of user growth in parler, it started to become a clear theyre going to need somebody to come on into policy. They had been small and very much startup mode at that point night so we thought and i agreed that i i would be a good fit fr that. Here i am. Host amy peikoff is chief policy officer for parler. Karl herchenroeder Converse Technology for communications daily. We appreciate you both being on the communicators. Guest thanks for having me on. You are watching cspan2, your unfiltered view of government. Created by americas cabletelevision companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Now illinois senator Tammy Duckworth takes part in a in a discussion on u. S. Alliances in the indopacific region and future relations under the biden administration. And look at chinas impact on the region and steps you should take to strengthen relations. Held by the brookings institution, this runs an hour ten minutes. My name is lindsey ford and i want to welcome you to todays conversation on the indopacific in the future of u. S. Alliances in the region. Im a soldier in the Foreign Policy program at brookings and i have the pleasure of