Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Social Media The First Amendment 20240714

Thank you. Thank you, katie, we are very proud of our partnership with the Fourth Amendment institute of columbia. Foundation, and now have other supporters as well. I want to pick up, right with the notion of these marketplace ideas. I think thats what a lot of people think the internet was going to be. Some people really believe that it has carried, do you believe that social media are performing effectively, as the marketplace of ideas that we all drink about . Stanford, i really dont, all i do is write about how it isnt, and it is a cesspool. You know i sort of you what your answer would be you set me up for that. It is complicated, because it is not completely a cesspool, it is just the way it evolved. You brought up the idea of Public Square. Everybody thinks of these companies, that twitter is a Public Square, or facebook, or read it, or any of these sites. The fact of the matter is most of them are private squares, owned and it to the benefit of billionaires. So, it is not a Public Square. What we do is the give them rights of the Public Square, but they are not given responsibilities the public place. So the metaphor i tended to use, which i love to know what people think, is they have built these great cities cities are wonderful, they are full of ideas and diversity they built these great cities that they run, except they have not provided, and i said this many times, i have written this in the new york times, they have no police, fire, street signs, streets trash collection trash collection, none of the functions of a major city. It is sort of like the purge every night, do you know what i mean . And, maybe you will survive. At the same time, i dont know if it is their responsibility to do that. One, i do not think they are capable, and number two, i dont think it is their responsibility. So where has the federal government ban in understanding this new medium, and catching up to the impact that it has on society . Jeff, what is your view on how will the marketplace ideas are functioning online. I will take care as a metaphor, and add another one. And that is first, i think that it is correct, that there were no police, fire any services he along with social media. However, we are trying to build it now, and that is really hard. Because these services will both around the premise of not having a lot of these functions. I think it is complex, in that they are trying, but i dont know how to solve that problem. What i would like him into two, and a wrote about in the book, is that the internet is like a house that is built without a basement, and they are trying to build the basement after a house. That happened on my street, it did not work out too well. How is it going . Not very well, the house has been on the market for about five years. But, that is what they are trying to do it right now. I dont think there are any perfect solutions, but i am glad we are at least having these discussions to come up with better solutions, and to improve things. We have a long way to go, but i think we will get started on this. Your opinion on this question. I will go a different way with this analogy. I think that a marketplace of ideas is a really good phrase for understanding what is going on with social media right now. Have you seen Online Marketplaces . If we are talking about the ebay of ideas, you already start to see the danger here, or the amazon of ideas. You are seeing all of the problems on social media have a direct corollary to the federal financial marketplace on the internet. It is that human beings especially organized through these algorithm equally determined marketplaces they are extraordinarily susceptible to scams. Any platform that is built in the way that these big giants have created, anything that is funded, anything that is motivated by selling ads. Anything motivated by taking personal information and reorganizing a page to attract as much attention as possible, you end up getting very perverse incentives, that promote jews cleanses, weird teddy bears that advertised themselves as being ten feet tall, and have like theyre seven feet tall, and arms that are like one foot. And you take a picture of it from a strange angle, and it looks like a normal teddy bear, but then you get it, and it is a monstrosity. It is stuff like that that abounds on these marketplaces, because that is what happens when you get ebay, and amazons of the world. And when we see social media, we have a hard time wrapping our heads around what is going on there. The disinformation. The trolling. Just, the vast skate of terrible nice on the internet. We are just getting scammed in a different way. This is the canal street of ideas. It is just not working out, and there is a number of reasons why. Casey, you brought a case, that is actually a case against the president , not against twitter, is that right . Yes. At the night First Amendment institute, we filed a case against President Trump and dan scavino, the white house director of social media, who was his former golf caddie, and we see with the president and mr. Israel you know, on behalf of seven individuals, who were blocked by President Trump personally, as we discovered, because they replied directly to one of his tweets, at real dogs or donald Trump Twitter account. A lot of people when i heard about our case, they figured, the person who was blocked must have said something terrible, and vulgar. All of our plaintiffs said things that were related to policies. First of all, the president , obviously sometimes engages in vulgar commentary. But our plaintiffs were saying things like, from the man who brought you covfefe, here is his latest terrible policy. At one point, the president tweeted something about winning the election, and one of our plaintiffs said, to be fair, russia won it for you. We believe, that this is directly in the center of public discourse, which is the heart of First Amendment protection. And we filed a lawsuit, and our primary argument, which has now prevailed in the Second Circuit court of appeals, is that when a public official such as the president , that would apply to any public official, uses a social media account, as part of their official role as a governing person, or a person who has been elected into office, and allows and encourages people, the general public, to speak in that form, in the context of the account, than it is a public forum that is subject to the First Amendment. And this draws upon decades long president s, from the Supreme Court, that basically say, if the city council has an open city meeting, and allows everybody to come in and make a comment, you cannot kick them out of the auditorium, because you dont like what they say. And, are you convinced, that this argument is going to prevail at the Supreme Court . Well, i hear the president is appealing. Well, right now actually, he is asking for the fourth Second Circuit yes, so a three judge panel from the second circus held that the president and mr. Scavino violated before us amendment when they violated our plaintiffs in the twitter account. And by the, way they have been unblocked, as well as a number of other people who are also blocked. And the government currently is asking for the full court in the Second Circuit to review, and reverse the panel decision. If depending on what happens with that, they could petition for certain Supreme Courts. Or you could. Im sounding over confident, or yes we could petition. I cant make a prediction about how the Supreme Court is going to come out on this. I do think that in this case and the Second Circuit that ruled in our favor we look at the effects in the case and one thing is that undisputed that they watch these people because of their viewpoints and there is also the cardinal role of First Amendment laws that are not censor speech because of someones viewpoint and that has a really strong fact for us so the government and trump has spent most of his time arguing that because he is using his personal account at the dawdle tropic out which is it individual that he is continuing through which is not subject. Except is governing by it. He will look at all the facts in the records which will make important policy and transgender in the military and the appointment of new cabinet members or the director of the fbi. The fact that the National Archives with the president s tweets and the president ial records and number of effect that we are all oral all aware of in the past. When lori, drew the only bona fide staff member of the social media brave laurie. We all have to try. I have to come back to you and ask how is the social media functioning as a marketplace of ideas and we hear all this. What youve heard is not unusual and is not these things are said by a lot of people every day. For youre exactly right, these things are said by people every day and its important to keep in mind that we have people on the panel here with facebook and other companies that are a world that are scamming people and there are people here that are in this very audience that think that social Media Companies are doing too much to defuse users. The way we think about it is certainly we dont have to cast ourselves as the official public and government regulations and will and trans the powers that already exists and that doesnt mean that theres not some space and open for privacy regulation and here in the United States when it comes to that type of regulation and we are big fans of the First Amendment and talking about and the industry with facebook we talked about the industry standards board and the independent oversight and but to get back to the initial analogy, the other social Media Companies i reached out a little bit and said that we are the car of this institution about keeping communities safe and for us at facebook, where able to express yourself and feel safe. Its why we have our Community Standards and thats why we have over 30,000 content reviewers. 30 thousand people that are going to review. Is this useful for employees or contractors . A lot of them are contractors. You. How do you organize 30,000 people to review this where do they sit . laughs thats a fantastic question. Theyre there throughout the world and its important to ask that review in the market but they have the local contracts to know what a piece would known and they are mostly global and will have an effort to have a regional specialty so having the right language in the context of a really important to us and our viewers. The content that they review and a number of ways whether its use or report or learning the services and sent to them and they review. If its their difficulty they have escalated upward and that does take place with these employees and so, its really important with this metaphor and i would view this as when it comes to fire and there is a five alarm fire escalation that is the russian involvement in the 2016 election, its viral misinformation and were hiring people and trying to put in the systems and perfect our algorithms and that we can really have a community in which they feel safe to express themselves because for us, its about the marketplace ideas and it were Just One Company but your company with two billion right . 2. 7 billion monthly. Just the company im going to push back on that one. You are the dominant way that those people get their news and they do communications and anything else. Im gonna push back on this and the content moderators were just recently hired and most of them were contractors and they are two very good pieces that sarah used to work with and many of them are living in the case that you wrote and we please look at it and is operating with companies that are not well monitored and with this piece they operate in a substandard situation and working conditions. They dont get paid very much and they start i think a get nine minutes a day for Mental Health when these people are dealing with pedophiles, child abuse, pet abuse, conspiracy theories. A lot of them have started to believed in the conspiracy theories because theyve been reading the for so long. Its an amazing case and its a very fair case. One of the things that came away with was that there arent enough people to police this. It would change facebooks economics tragically if they had to pay for the amount. I think its an Impossible Task and if they had to actually police it its almost impossible to make 1 million transactions. Youtube is even worse in terms of being a place. So, they all act like contractors all around the world in the philippines or its tempe arizona or florida and its a place for these people and i thought what was interesting is that theres much more that come out for a lot of people. Is that none of them are employees and are very few employees of these companies. What id like to see is all of them sit in the middle of the facebook campus, right next to Mark Zuckerberg 30,000 of them . Thats more people than in my hometown. Its like putting off the toxic waste dump somewhere else and not getting them adequate suits and i think they are trying but this task that its not up to doing it and ai is not solving their problems and secondly, to do this given the massive popularity of Something Like facebook but youtube is another big issue and it creates a situation where its not too little too late it just feels almost too late to fix it and that there are architect it incorrectly. A lot of the internet is executive right now and for attention and for speed. When you get that you, get fake news, trolls, hate speech, considers eateries. Without thinking of the consequences of what were getting. Jeff will, go to you in a second but will go to you lori first. Ill have pushback on the pushback there. When it comes to our contractors the, allegations we taking readily seriously. We are constantly working to improving the relationships that we work with and its a gargantuan tasks and were trying desperately hard and thats why were able to take 95 of isis content out before his the platform and it goes before interviewer. Were trying to solve a problem where it does not necessarily hit the front line of the worst of the worst. But that doesnt change the fact that that is a lot of the stuff that in particular when youre talking about issues like hate speech. However, in the original answer, yes facebook is a gargantuan company. But there are others it is marketplace as well. There is a credit, youtube and twitter where credential look at the private. To say anyone of these companies is the Public Square is not a particularly a fair comparison. Because there are so many of us. Jeff . I understand, building on that, when we talk about platforms and what the platforms are doing, im worried that we do focus on twitter, facebook and read it because they are dominant in the marketplace. But to see different approaches, i would look at some of the newer interests, interest, that are using really innovative things but i think only they can do because they are building their Business Models around content moderation, with much smaller thats. Thats what i think, when you are building your product around a pc space, we are seeing a lot of really innovative, and not necessarily at the company costs, associated with them. I think that even read it, talk about right what they have done. Theyve cleaned it up considerably. They have, i think they have ten people working on that. I think there is a lot of hope for that. So, there is hope to the Smaller Companies, and the real problem we get to our the big companies. Is that what you are suggesting . I think the Bigger Companies can learn a bit from what the Smaller Companies are doing they usually just by them they do no more . No more no more of that what happened . No. Why not . Three cars they are in the middle of anti trust investigations, they wont be able to buy a sandwich soon. They have nice sandwiches at facebook twitters are better. Go ahead. Sarah . I actually disagree. The future is with these Smaller Companies. Certainly, with the patriots of the world, because they purposely defend the products to be more limited in scope. All of these things work better unless they work, that is the dark truth of it. But, the reason why facebook gets so much flak, is because facebook is big. Facebook is so big, it had the resources to investigate internally. Once it investigates internally when he launched an investigation, you will find something. When he finds something, someone makes it and it ends up on the front page of the new york times. I think that all of those Small Companies that were supposed to be doing so great, they probably have something similar going on inside. And we dont know, because they dont know, because they dont have the resources to look into it. I really just, maybe pinterest doesnt, because interest its just not usable in the same way. Because its afford incentives are so limited. Reddit, for instance, is a terrible example. They might not have the 30,000 contractors, but it relies on unpaid labor, all of the sub credits our their own little fief them, with their own set of moderators. Although those people are happy to be doing that work, that is unpaid work. Is that unpaid labor really that much more ethical, than someone making less than 40,000 dollars a year in arizona, who has nineminute Mental Health breaks every day . I am actually not sure. I think, given, did anyone look at read it leading up to the 2016 election . It was not a good place. It was not in his place. It has not been for many, many years. It was ground zero for the leaking of celebrity news. It has been a place, that has really encouraged what can loosely be called cyberbullying, on a scale that is really quite terrible. I think, this problem extends everywhere. I think facebook gets the most flak because it is the biggest maybe thats fair, because maybe you should be busted up. But i dont think that the future is in small businesses. To the extent we are busted up, we wont be able to have the resources to police the problem. But we are discussing this evening. But one thing i did want to make sure does not get lost in this conversation, is outside of the human review, and other tools we are trying to use to make the platform safer, one thing that was brought up easier, is that the internet is designed around morality. Design around edge content. That is the thing that we are keenly aware of that facebook. It is why we have made changes to our algorithm. Like last january, when we announced meaningful social interactions, and announced publicly that by shifting what people saw in their algorithms, what they saw in the news feed by shifting our algorithm, it might actually decrease the amount of time the people spent on our platform on a daily basis, and it did. But they enjoyed that time more, it pushed up more content from family, from friends. It decreased the news content here, if your feet. And as a result of that, even if users are reporting it could be a better experience. Because for us, it is a Foolish Company decision to think that we want to give people that if you are making them and healthy. Because eventually they will quit that. So our goal is to constantly have the best user experience. And that means attacking clickbait, attacking spam, attacking things that are viral but harmful. We tried to do that in a variety of ways, even to the extent that it does hurt lining the pockets of our billionaires, because we want to build a product that is right for our users. Katie, this may not be your specialty, but you are the present lawyer among the group. So, how do you assess the prospect of an anti trust case, crusading against some of these larger companies, social media . This is definitely not my area i am not an anti trust lawyer, im a First Amendment lawyer. But you make a little bit closer sorry, you have a number of attorney general, and other Government Agencies looking into the social Media Companies, the Tech Companies, and i do think that it is there are 48 of them, but go ahead. 48, not 50. Almost every state. Its a lot of them. Its general. Attorney general . Attorney general. Yes. Thats right. I think i said that. But anyways, yes, its coming from every corner. Everyone is concerned about the power that these Tech Companies have. The question is, from my perspective as a First Amendment lawyer, if these antitrust investigations become actions are successful, what does that mean for free speech . Also, i know a lot of people have suggested, that you know, social Media Companies like facebook and others contribute to a bad environment for speech. But i guess the question is in what way . Because i certainly heard criticism from a lot of different corners. It seems to me, that the solutions that each corner once may be at odds with free speech for instance. More government regulation, some people say, will they allow hate speech to proliferate . But i dont know that you will get any government regulation of hate speech, certainly under current First Amendment law, which the court has held fully protected of the First Amendment. The idea behind antitrust, because there are differences. The rights between facebook, twitter and google are not surfacing enough. Conservative content. More on the left, a lot of the hate speech is dangerous to people, some of it is, some of it is just angry people talking to each other. The point of antitrust, from my particular side, and the people i interview, and i interview a lot of people on this topic, is to break them up, in order to allow more companies to thrive. Right now, i think some people, and i would tend to agree with them, is instead of back in the day with microsoft what one company that was really dominating a lot for a long time. You have essentially, probably for. Google, maybe just three, google, facebook and amazon. And they are like semi trailers barreling down the highway, nobody can get past them. We have three of them, versus one microsoft. If you break them up, you will create much more innovation. So, say you pulled youtube off of google. Maybe youtube will say, you know, maybe we should bill ourselves as a safe place. Or maybe google will start a new Video Network focused on safety. Or instagram might be doing something else, they might be a whole new thing. What a lot of the anti trust people are thinking, is that nobody is going to, there is nobody today who is going to invest in a Search Engine. There is no way you can win. There hasnt been a Search Engine sense for ever, like 15 years. There hasnt been a new social media site, a significant one, at not talking about yo or whatever that was, there was a peach, for 14 seconds, but there hasnt been anyone since snap chat, and just today, snapchat was in beanies, because they called facebook voldemort, and they created a vial of things that voldemort had done to hurt harry potter, which the evidence of evil i guess. But theres a lot of question of how much evidence, innovation facebook boroughs, instagram specifically. So, snapchat was the last social Media Network created that was 2011. There hasnt been an ad network created for, eight to ten years meaning google and facebook split up the networks and there has been a major calmer sites and theres not a lot of major ones. Once you start to split these up you will get more innovation and there has been some history of this when you split up and push microsoft back and google came up and amazon came up and when you split up more specifically at t and you had this incredible innovation and at that think thats the main focus. It makes sense to me that if you had a lot of social media sites that were competing i was just facebook or twitter and some could say that he had a brighter a Better Privacy policy and a more restrictive content moderation for those who want more restrictive and more fair approach and that would contribute and marketplace of ideas. The question is though what the argument is what creates the competition. Some analogy to the fcc rules about ownership and certain media markets. If you have a one entity of a broadcaster and the newspaper and the radio station. Intuitively it makes sense that are not given as much diversity of equals. Theres great concentration and especially with the smaller newspapers that have reemerged. Certainly in, the past anti trust action has been used and under concentrations that are going all the way back to the Oil Companies the ftc was founded in 1914 and things like that its, about 100 years old. So yeah if, that was the point. Its not that it happens to be the industry that is the most powerful and we look at the top ten most valuable companies, i think seven of them are Tech Companies and if you look at the top ten most wealthy on this planet, i think six of them are in that area. Theres a message there. Power. Power and influence. Jeff, you paid a lot of attention to whats known as section 2 30 of the decency act which i think is genuinely regarded as the protective First Amendment umbrella of social Media Companies. Can you explain how that came about . Sure, i hope you have about ten our third jokes of a lot of material to go over. So, very quick if there is a version of that. So, there is a First Amendment for that ive been on the books for decades and said if you are a distributor of someone else is content, that you cannot be held liable for it unless you had reason. So these came up and bookstore cases where owners or for selling obscene books and magazines. The Supreme Court said we would show too much speech the hope that bookseller liable and we said we didnt want to impose the duty to read every single book. That went well for the next three decades or so. Then we get to the 1990s and the homeland surfaces and dumb, prodigy i had three different approaches to the modern content and they dont have any moderations and they have Family Friendly policies and moderators and so forth. You look at the defamation in the Party Content and it gets the case dismissed and you have a bookstore where you can read a book and a prodigy is not going to get the case dismissed under reliable suit because what the judge says of because you moderate their content, you dont get any of this First Amendment issue and will hold you a strictly liable so we are more like the newspaper and the new stand. Congress wants to address this in 1995 as he combat for the first major issue which is going to congress so there is a Senate Proposal which is blatantly unconstitutional and relate the distribution of content and the house in section 2 30 with says no provider and user what shall be used as the information provided by the contact provider. Thats a lot of words and a lot of people didnt know that men at the time but i use this in my book to create the internet because as parts interpreted overtime, it stems from the proposition of the exception applies and were not going to treat this service to be the publishers held and liable so if you go to facebook, you pull something and if its defamatory the person the post about is you but if they see facebooks there will likely be a section q 30 defence. Be part of section hugh 30 is a concern of the time that they would serve case law and provided a disincentive to moderates. 16 to 30 also has an issue that says, if you have efforts to moderate objectionable content, you wont lose your immunity. That was the sections under 2 30 that were going to give you this protection but we also are doing it because we want to be able to make responsible choices about this content. So, thats the role of the 30,000 content moderator facebook . Yes. Section 2 30 does protect facebook. For internet companies. Is not offered to the public . Its complicated, theres people that say that get rid of 2 30 and thats insane premise because i was with someone from youtube and i said they just interviewed 20 pelosi and i said its a gift to these people unable to take away the gift and people have done the same thing. The person at youtube literally turned white to publish people in our entire business so that we could be sued for every piece of content and let people pose whatever they won. Especially by republicans in congress to amends section 2 30. Josh wants to get rid of it is, a true . Its an amendment. Its been chipped away at. Its the cause of the amendment. Its just a reversal, straight up reversal. Its a ridiculous practice and he knows what hes doing. What i think its been shipped away by the issues of sex trafficking and pornography. Slowly its getting chipped away that we want to absolutely be liable for and i think if it goes away, youre going to see facebook will be sued out of it and so will all of all the other Online Services because no one really able to afford the massive amount of lawyers that will just attack which would mean be good for the internet. The question is, what is their responsibility and what can government regulate further versus taking away the immunity. Laurie, what is facebook doing about this . As you can imagine, facebook is big fans of section 2 30. We did support the sex trafficking bills that she is referencing. That is definitely worth noting in this discussion. However, for us, it goes back to if you continue to chip away at section 2 30 then you eventually enter this world that they are talking about and will have an incredibly hard time moderating content in a way that is effective. You can look at, other countries around the world war will have a different takes of laws that facebook has to engage in an era right. Maria places in europe or certain content is legal and we have to take out that content to make sure that we are following within the legal liabilities. So i think that something was considering if youre here stateside and thinking about what is the proper solution if you want more of this content off of facebook. For us, it goes back to talking about whether its creating an industry scandal for it and we really Like Solutions that or across which say companies are yielding to programs in place which will have a good faith effort to remove things tackle against her definitions and the competition amongst the sector and i think those for us are more solutions in the government. Do you explain me u. S. Supreme court thing so talk about i volunteered to be on it pass that along. Okay good. Explain what youre doing because thats really important and its a very interesting idea. The oversight boyd is separate from our industry standards and i want to make sure everyone knows that there is a difference between the two. What we are doing with the extra Oversight Board, is assembling a team of external experts they have yet to be named, although we announced as of last week we put on a draft charter, and more information about the membership selection process. The idea would be to have 48 global extra 40 . 40 experts that would have specialties in Free Expression, in online safety, that come from diverse backgrounds. We certainly want regional representation from everywhere, they might see cases and they come from around the world . From around the world. What this board what do, right now, if you have a piece of content that is removed from facebook, and you disagree with every decision that it goes against Community Standards, you can appeal that to facebook, where it will go to an additional review or. Sometimes it can get escalated quite far inside of facebook when there are very tricky calls that are on the line of our Community Standards. But in the end, that gets adjudicated one way or another. What the board would do, would give you the ability to appeal to an external body, once you exhausted or appeals instead of facebook. But outside body could decided to take your case. They would decide cases the by law is are still being written but they would decide cases that would be president ial, that would have large importance on places where they think facebook might be getting it wrong. In the end, a panel from that Oversight Board would hear the case, and the panel would make a recommendation, facebook is a bound to abide by that recommendation, even if it this agrees with something in our Community Standards, or Something Like that. They are supposed to use our standards as a baseline. The whole point is, sure this have stayed on facebook or not, based on the standards as written. They can overturn our decisions, and we are bound to add here to that. Who pays for all of this . Its facebook footing the bill for the whole process . How we are talking about it now, they would be a separate trust set up, facebook would put money into that trust, and the trust would oversee, how the board is paid. We want to create as many layers of separation, because we really do want this that should be independent from the company. At the end of the day, we are at this panel because it is not wrong, we do have responsibility as a company, to billions of people around the world, who want to say their piece on facebook. We are not the end all be all of the internet, we are an important player, we want to make sure people are hurt in the right way. Let me ask the panelist if they are persuaded. This sounds like a step in the right direction. Sarah, go ahead. It sounds like a great step in a direction i cant wait to see how facebook messes this up. What would you consider a mess up . I dont know, you guys are so creative i am really excited i am really excited to see putting Mark Zuckerbergs sister on it, for example, i dont know. I am remaining optimistic, i feel like it does sound like a step in the right direction, i will reserve judgment on anything until we see how it functions. I did want to add just a bit of color, to the issue of where we are with section 2 30. That is, the politics have shifted so dramatically with section eight to 30. Even in the past few years, it really was the sex trafficking bill, that was novel of how the industry should not handle section 2 30 issues, i should probably give the caveat of that speaking for the u. S. Military, ive speaking for myself. In the initial stages, there were concerns that people who were sex trafficking, organ traffic on the site, were trying to sue back page under a sex trafficking law, and were not able to bring it to pass because of section 2 30. There was a really powerful documentary made about some of these victims. That got the attention of congress. The First Response from the tech sector, not all of the companies, a much with facebook said. But some of the tech response initially was, this is bad but there are frivolous law suits. Maybe for some sort of security issue, you can do that. But this was sex trafficking victims. That really did not set the right tone. And then compare that with, there is a long line of different Interest Groups who have a list of grievances with Tech Companies, that has gone on from years, to many things. This was an opportunity, to get some revenge. And i think, what we are seeing how is the politics have changed so dramatically, the Tech Companies are no longer the ones that can do no wrong. How did it come about, that some powerful republican interests, i think ted cruz, for one, it seems to have gained a lot of headway, complaining that the internet is biased against republicans. He puts it very simply. I heard him do it and it is pretty impressive, when he cites all of his evidence of it. Does that lead to a ground straw for some kind of a fairness, doctrine . People fairness doctrine . Let me put it as simply as ted cruz might ted cruz is an idiot on this topic, this is just not true. There is no proof whatsoever that this has happened. Its obviously people who are more liberal i will argue there are more libertarian, than anything else. They are not particularly on this topic. They are more liberal than conservative, but they are certainly not the most political minded people. I would like him to show some actual proof. His proof is not proof. It is this, if it was proof, why is donald trump at the most important twitter troll in history . They are allowed, they are allowed that its an argument against it,. Yes no, there are plenty of people that are allowed to voice their opinions on all of these platforms. They are hardly pushed back. Guess who gets pushed back . Alex jones who violated facebooks guidelines, who violated twitter. Egregiously, for the longest time. It took him forever to actually shut him down. In fact, they gave more chances than that horrible human being deserved. Because they broke the Community Guidelines over, and over again. So, it is taking focus off of what is really important, which is keeping most people safe online, and encouraging these companies to do more things to pull out this ridiculous partisan argument about this. It does a disservice to the real people that are in trouble online. To back kara up, it is really important to go back to 2015, . 2016 . When the trending topic story on gizmodo. This is where it all began. This vital news article comes out about how facebook trending topics is created by human beings, and have the news articles that are being listed first all tend to come from left leaning outlets. And the whistle blower who gives these examples turns out, he is a conservative who is disgruntled. He loves breitbart. He sees breitbart constantly and hes upset about it being down voted. What you see, is this pattern that he describes as left leaning, you are just see institutional newspapers, being ranked higher then, really, just not very good blogs. And this is counted as left leaning bias. The headline on this piece, i forget exactly what it is but it is, like, facebook is suppressing conservative viewpoints. Pretty stupid, that reporter is stupid. What the gawker lawsuit over it john koch writes that headline and has admitted, it admitted, he says i knew the drudge report would pick this up, and that we would you monster traffic because of it. And indeed, the drudge report picked up five minutes after a came out, and they did monster traffic on it. This has set the tone for the entire discussion, it is a little piece of clickbait that was put in any type of desperation, for a news outlet, that was about to get shuttered. Like kara says, there is no evidence. It is nonsensical, base bringing up the fairness doctrine, it is just this weird thing, where speaking of marketplace for ideas, what they want is affirmative action for conservative viewpoints on social media platforms. You dont get a quota system for your ideas that is not how it works. That is not how reality works that is not how the marketplace of ideas works. And, just speaking on that subject specifically, look at what happened with the genocide in myanmar. And fake accounts being generated by the military, to promote anti rohingya sentiments. Look at the history of that, and we are talking about a party in power, using social media to promote viewpoints discriminatory towards a despised minority that has been denied citizenship, that has been turned into a refugee population, and you see facebook cracking down on what is literally the party in power. How would a fairness doctrine work in myanmar . What the result be there . I think that if you dont see the corollary is there, you are either stupid or a terrible human being. I think that, this concentration on it 2 30 and the fairness doctrine, and the bias against conservatives, is taking the argument out of a reasonable place, or even a place that is worthy of any argument whatsoever, and taken into outer space. I would also add in addition to those reasons that there are also something with the First Amendment and the First Amendment and the fairness doctrine worked with. Associated with the difference between a rock broadcast and the Supreme Court and the spectrum is scarce in the regulation which is repeatedly affirmed that the internet is not facing that same regulatory space. If you havent tested Something Like this for the inhibit of serious doubts you. Whatever survived. One thing he only miss updated it was acquiescing a lot to the pressure. In this case theyre not guilty of this mess is. But in a preferential to the University Students who happen to be here so if you would come to the microphone. Katie, where do you see this all of this going . Do you worry about the fairness doctrine being imposed. Does that become a legal issue . I have to see what is the exact proposal of holly of what he wants to rescind to 30 and . My understanding of the latest version and please forgive me if im off base but was that approval for section 2 30 would be conditional upon the ftc, to finding that you are politically neutral. That seems highly problematic from the standpoint of the idea of this schedule benefits whether you are compelled to speak in a certain way or youre forced to hold speech in a certain way that seems like could be dead on arrival. I think we should start our own social network which would have one person on it. Sorry, come on. I should say, on behalf of facebook and all of the anti conservative bias here that regardless at the end of the day, yes its true that the conservative is going well on facebook because of the fights earlier this year and the content performances that really well and theres an analysis that news monthly that has topless years. However, they include outlets that should say that it doesnt change the fact that we do take the accusations seriously and we take the accusation seriously of any mobile group or any group of users as a platform and dedicated to Free Expression and is getting ideas out into the world and our platform should be the conservative views and the liberal views and violate our Community Standards and the Community Standards that are involving so its incumbent upon us to make sure in that process that we are not having some unintentional bias where it comes through the Machine Learning or that were writing the Community Standards and theres a lot of questions that we take really seriously and we take it seriously among all users and thats why we have the anti conservative bias with the other endeavors inside the company on issues that other Interest Groups have raised. I want to clarify that this is actually something that we take seriously and not just because of the political pressure but what our mission is of the company, we take it seriously for everyone. I would really push back on that. Theres a bias built into facebook merely on the basis of everything the president says is newsworthy. Therefore, is never going to get patent banned from anything and hes never going to be censored. No matter what he says its newsworthy and no matter what he says is a political way that has to be protected. He crossed every line and in fact he has. There is just a premise thats baked in. People that are mimic the things that are said no matter how horrible or no matter whether they violate the Community Standards. Even if this content would be police differently in other countries, the United States because it is the United States and because where facebook is located and other geopolitical reasons, its a pro conservative. The trump stuff is mostly twitter. Thats his medium of choice. I think the question is, when is something not newsworthy . Weve had this discussion recently about whether say, President Trump loses the election and that day he says that everything is rigged and its been stolen for me and everyone rise up or Something Like that. Believe me it, seems crazy, but yesterdays tweet was insane. Whats going to happen is that what would twitter do that day. Its interesting its, an interesting debate. Its really interesting and i dont think theres a definitive answer. What im saying is that this idea that there is this anti conservative bias is absurd. Theres actually this other bias that we dont talk much about. But we definitely should be discussing it. It brings up some really interesting complications for sure. But instead, we have the debate another space somewhere else. Many Mainstream Media Pay Attention with what the president says and is crediting it because its the president. Lets not talk about cable. Yes yes, will go to questions, grows. Identify yourself. Im rose and im a sophomore here at the Research Assistant with free speech project. Id like to bring up the development of social media platforms that claim to be free speech utopias. For example, the out form of which was recently bought from the global google and apple app stores. There is a platform that should be intended to have as little senatorship as possible like the proverbial house we are talking about the placement. Do you think that there are any positives to the resistance of platforms like this . Or they become echo chambers for other groups that unfairly feel censored by media platforms . Alex jones still has his websites and maybe you cant be on twitter or facebook because a certain ability to be heard but i think that they should exist and the only question is when they removed him i forget which horrible shooting but it was other companies that decided not to help them and they should be able to do that and that is the marketplace they were talking about other companies. I would say the decision of other companies to decide is protected by section 2 30. I think there should be as many as possible and i would be great if there were more focus and more diversity. The thought that it coalesces around twitter. Twitter is a very Small Company compared to facebook it is very small. Twitter or read it intend to coalesce but its really facebook and twitter and youtube would be the principal ways to use these things. Is there an anti censorship vibe platform . You have the principles in place to dictate how your community develops. You look at certain affair places on the internet which is the silk road which is a massive drug marketplace. Even have prohibition on child pornography. But they have ways of talking about nuclear weapons. Wherever you go, youre going to have certain prohibitions. Its just how it works and in fact you see the minimum wage went down because of no longer hosting them because of the tax that makes it unusable and theyre certain types of interactions that are unusable and when you make those choices, you say who you are and what you will become and who you welcome and i dont i think saying youre anti censorship is actually probably arent and you just have a different agenda in the sites you differentiate yourselves from. Thank you. Next. Fascinating conversation. So you can elaborate more on the antitrust discussion you had earlier. With anti trust in the case of at t, the reason why its successful and not just the enforcement cornyn company what fiber optic cables and they could use alternative technology to provide competitive ways in the microsoft situation where google focuses and im just curious on that discussion on what article uttered of his middle rise