What is he proposing, and what do you think . Patrick a lot of the principles of this regulatory policy come from the 20th century and even the 19th century. We are talking about overly prescriptive government regulation managing the minutia of the policies of technology companies. He is talking about very prescriptive regulations in terms of how these Companies Use data. There are good things about the policy, i would say, things like reempowering congress through the office of technology analysis. So there are good parts of the proposal in terms of wanting to create more education, more knowledge, out of the companys work and how the digital economies work. But there are also things in this plan that resemble what we see in a lot of plans coming from both sides of the aisle. I would say this plan shares a lot of similarities with things proposed by senator josh hawley and other senators in terms of regulating how you interact with platforms, the amount of time you spend on the platform, particular to joshs bill, autoplay and things like that. Host what are the challenges federal regulators have, congress has, the administration has, in regulating, not Just Technology companies that are different, the challenges that are different from regulating other sorts of businesses . Patrick i think that the challenges arent so different. I challenge the premise of that a little bit. What we see in trying to regulate these companies, pretend as if these companies are so different because we are on a frontier of a new type of technology. The principles of regulation are still the same. You want to set up a competitive dynamic where these companies are competing with one another, and you are allowing customers to decide which platforms work best for them, which privacy settings work best for them. And when you try to assign a onesizefitsall regulatory scheme in these areas, which we have seen in the past in other areas of the economy, looking although it backed airlines and things like that, you tend to see competitive effects diminish because of the issues of regulatory capture, and the barriers regulation can create to competition. So the challenge policymakers really have is making sure that whatever regulatory structure is put in place doesnt diminish competitive effects within the sector. Host part of what he says is this, Big Tech Companies are winners of that when he First Century economy. They have amassed too much power largely profiting from personal data and unaccountable responsibility. We have reached a point where the government needs to step in. Digital giants such as facebook, google, apple, renders them more like quasisovereign states than companies, rendering decisions on things the government usually makes like speech and safety. Their Business Models are driven by algorithms that are supercharged by technology to predict behavior, such as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, and that feed off our data, creating and increasing asymmetry of power without any accountability. What are your thoughts about terms of use of personal data, and what Big Tech Companies do with that data . Patrick that is why we want to have as Many Companies in this space as possible, so consumers can ultimately make that decision. The problem i have with plans like this, whether they are coming from the left or the right, is that they tend to assign the politicians personal preferences for how their data is used, to Public Policy. By having as Many Companies as possible in the sector, you allow consumers to make the choice. Right now we are seeing facebook and apple trading barbs publicly over who has the better approach of protecting your privacy. And apple offers services where you can pay a little extra, and pay for the service instead of having the service compensated by advertising that funds the service, and is reliant on the data. I would point out a couple of challenges to that particular quote from mr. Yang. You mentioned facebook, apple, amazon and google. Not long ago it used to be facebook, apple, amazon, netflix and google. And now netflix faces almost unlimited competition. Within the last two weeks we saw the launch of disney plus, and that is because government has kept a lighttouch Regulatory Framework to the streaming sector, the streaming part of the big tech economy. And now we have seen a lot of new market entrants. To the extent they have outside power in these companies have grown too large, the companies of grown large because they provide Services Consumers find valuable. Nobodys putting a gun to anybodys head saying you have to use facebook, apple products, and another part i would like to challenge mr. Yang on is this idea of rights. These companies have rights as well. And these companies, government doesnt assign or create rights. Government is limited. We have inalienable rights and the government power to regulate those is limited. So when you talk about these companies regulating speech are things like that, what they are doing is exercising their own speech rights and their own Association Rights. So when you have the government challenging doubts, essentially the government is challenging, is at risk of breaching the First Amendment, when it is talking about regulating speech and Association Rights of these private companies. Host Patrick Hedger is our guest, talking about proposals to regulate big tech by andrew yang and others. We want your calls and comments. We have already made the decision as users to use these. What responsibility is there of government to assure a safe environment for that . Ist invdividual privacy not compromised. Patrick we already have frameworks in place. Any new emerging technology, you want to have a Regulatory Framework that encourages competition and new market entry. We tend to have this kneejerk reaction when we have a technological economic frontier like this, where we want regulations that control outcomes, but government is bad at predicting outcomes, it is bad at predicting where the economy is going. So we want to have a type of regulation that encourages permissionless innovation, instead of a mother may i approach. The economy moves faster than the regulatory process of government. We have seen areas of our economy work, businesses have to ask for permission before they engage in business practice. And in those areas you see less competition, higher prices, not something we want in the tech sector when we have Services Offered at zero price for a lot of consumers. So it is about balancing the precautionary principle versus permissionless innovation, and we dont want to be so cautious with innovation that we smother technologies and may not be able to predict, that have been founded in a basement or garage or dorm room somewhere. Host andrew yangs plan, for reference, would establish data as a property right. He would create a department of attention economy, focusing on smartphones and apps and establishing guidelines and age restrictions and there would be a new tax on digital ads and require disclosure of all political ads and to regulate algorithms. This past week, google made a policy change in terms of political ads. What is your thought . Patrick google, facebook and twitter, they are all taking different approaches to political ads. That is the competitive effect of competitive regulation and Market Regulation that we are seeing, and that is all happening without any sort of significant or formal government intervention. You are seeing these Companies Respond in different ways to social and market pressures, and that is the dynamic we want to keep encouraging. When you set down a set of overly prescriptive regulations, you get rid of those options, you get rid of that experimentation, which i think is really valuable. So time will tell. We will see whether google, twitter or facebook, we will see which of these companies has the best approach to political ads. The ultimate issue with these regulatory proposals is that they assume they are going to create the best outcome, and the problem is that we only have one option when government creates Something Like an overly prescriptive regulatory proposal that applies to all companies. We want as many options as possible and see which one works best. And the other issue is, we cant assume the government regulatory solution is going to solve all problems are be the perfect solution. We tend to come up when we approach regulation in any sector, but particularly tech, we assume the government regulatory solution is going to be some sort of perfect solution. And in this kind of approach, you make the perfect the enemy of the good. Host Patrick Hedger with the competitive enterprise institute. Republicans have been raising this issue of search results and a bias against conservative views. Is there a role for government in regulating that arena . Patrick absolutely not. The First Amendment is clear about that. Again, these companies have their own speech and Association Rights. And i would caution conservatives about taking that approach, because, trying to regulate speech on these platforms, you are making the government the arbiter of truth. That is counterproductive to some things most americans dont want to see, but particularly conservatives. You are talking about empowering government bureaucrats to decide what is and is not truthful in what is and is not biased. I would rather have a marketbased approach to that. If conservatives are upset with the results of the access they are getting on these platforms come i would encourage them to find other options. That is going to be a much better option than assigning a onesizefitsall approach from government that may be actually works for conservatives in the long run. Host do you think Companies Like facebook, twitter, etc. , are reacting to that criticism and types of in terms of the type of content they deliver and views they express on those platforms . Patrick yes, i do see that. A good example of that was the recent new approach to speech on facebook outlined by Mark Zuckerberg at his speech at georgetown. He is striking a good balance for his platform, but that is ultimately up to facebook users to decide. Twitter is taking a different approach. Im just happy to see these Companies Taking different approaches. It shows two things. One, they are still accountable to users, and two, they are facing competition from one another. That is a sign of a healthy, functioning market sector. Host Mark Zuckerberg was on capitol hill testifying before a house committee, and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez questioning the facebook approach on political ads . Here is a look. Could i run advertisements on facebook targeting republicans in primaries, saying they voted for the Green New Deal . Im sorry, could you repeat that . Could i run advertisements on facebook targeting republicans in primaries, saying they voted for the Green New Deal . If you are not Fact Checking political advertisements, i just here. Tand the boundaries i dont know the answer off the top of my head. So you dont know if i would be able to do that. Do you see a potential problem with a complete lack of Fact Checking on political advertisements . Lying is bad. If you ran an ad that had a lie, that would be bad. That is different from it being, in our position, the right thing to do to prevent your constituents from seeing that you had lied. So you wont take down lies, or you will take down lies . It is a simple yes or no . Im not talking about spin im talking about disinformation. In a democracy, i believe people should see for themselves what politicians they may or may not vote for so you wont take it down . You may flag that it is wrong, but you wont take it down . It depends on the context it shows up. Host some back and forth on the basic idea of Fact Checking on these platforms. Patrick again, it is trying to ask these companies to really do the impossible, because particularly in politics, one persons truth is another persons lie. And do we really want to centralize Fact Checking within one particular company . I would like to see as many voices as possible countering one another with varying arguments, and to essentially have Fact Checking going on inside a black box, be it at one of these companies or in government, who is deciding what is the truth . The best way to approach this is to make sure we have as many voices as possible, so that if somebody is putting out something that is perhaps misinformation or a lie, that people are able to challenge that openly. That is the approach that they are trying to strike. I dont see how facebook, whether it is an employee at facebook or twitter or any other big tech platform, or a bureaucrat at a Regulatory Agency in washington, is going to ultimately, everybody has their own personal biases, so i dont see how we can essentially have perfect arbiters of truth or what is or isnt a lie in politics at either a company or agency. Host we welcome your comments on facebook. Com cspan. To calls first, from yaya in chicago. Caller most people dont know how important it is to keep a Digital Identity safe. There are a lot of scams. And i take offense at this idea that regulation suppresses competition. Regulation is about public safety. Nothing is ever really free. Data has value, when you load these apps, they want your contacts, they want your location, they want your device id number, they want your isp address. It is not free. They are collecting that data. You can go online and find a website that posts stolen lists of usernames, maybe even passwords, there are so many scams. Regulation is about safety. It is not about suppressing competition. Thank you. Patrick i understand those concerns. The only counter that i would have, and i certainly think americans should be vigilant about using their data and what they agree to in the use these services, and if they dont like terms of these services they should opt out and find another that better suits their data privacy needs or desires, but the counter i would have to that is that regulation is not a perfect solution. And when we assume that regulation is a perfect solution to some of the risks that occur in this sector, you tend to create issues of moral hazard, where people may not be as cautious or vigilant as they should be in terms of using their own personal data, if they assume the government has it all covered. And we have seen many examples in the past where the government doesnt has issues of data privacy or security coverage. One of the worst hacks in u. S. History was at the u. S. Office of personnel management. Something over 20 million files at personally identifiable information of government employees, and eluding people with topsecret clearances, was believed to have been leaked to i believe a source of hackers in china. We are trying to balance tradeoffs. We want to make sure there is policing of wrongdoing, but we dont want regulation to the extent it is controlling Business Practices of companies, and therefore limiting competition. Competition is what holds these companies more accountable than anything else. Host another take on giving up data, this is frank in Council Bluffs iowa that texted us, great discussion on big tech. People that use those platforms give up their data freely when they sign up and agree to terms and conditions. If you accept without reading terms and conditions, that isnt the problem of big tech, says frank. From euclid ,ohio on the independent line, good morning. Caller i appreciate the two young ladies that spoke prior to myself and said it is not so much a regulation of big tech as it is just social media in general. You dont necessarily have to regulate in that way. Im only 35 years old, but what you see on the internet is usually a lot of people younger than myself, what they believe. And if you are not putting up anything that is of any truth, and if people have enough money to go through, they are going to be flooded with misinformation and false narratives. Because nobody wants to take down the time and go through the individual points. I watched over the past few days myself, different proceedings and everything else, and obviously people arent going to look at all the finetuned things, but what they see on the internet is what people believe. At some point there has to be something that ensures they do. Not even so much regulation of big tech, but we do look out for reasons of being internal, as you would say, from our country, that are shooting up schools and churches and everything else. All of this stuff has to be looked at and needs to be regulated to some degree. How we look at it is going to depend and everybodys going to look at it on a different way. Host what are your thoughts on government responsibility in terms of regulating the internet for children, or big tech platforms for children. Patrick theres certainly a role. We want to make sure kids are protected online, but i raise the issue again of moral hazard. Create Regulatory Frameworks that are overly prescript event claim to solve these problems, number one, you take responsibility away from parents, which needs to remain there, we want to make sure parents are still vigilant because they are the first line of defense for the kids. So if we are out there saying, dont worry, this regulation is going to protect your children no matter what, we dont want to parents