 Hi, I'm Henry Brady, former dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and a political scientist who studies American institutions, especially such things as trust in American institutions. I'll be moderating today's session. We have an all star cast here today, and I'll introduce them in a moment. First, let me set the stage. We live in an era where a majority of Republicans believe that Donald Trump won the presidential election, whereas Democrats believe overwhelmingly that Biden won. Where a substantial fraction of people believe that COVID is fake, or that the vaccines for COVID have not been thoroughly tested, and that they have bad side effects. Where watchers of Fox News believe that Christians in America face more discrimination than black Americans and other people of color. These beliefs exist against the background of partisan polarization between the two political parties and lack of trust for major American institutions. Republicans trust the police, the military and religion, whereas Democrats trust education, science and the press. Partisan polarization and disinformation, the decline of journalism, especially local journalism, and the rise of the internet with its ability to spread rumors and lies as truths seem to be at the root of these problems. What can we do about them. We're going to spend some time first asking what's the problem, and then trying to see if we can come up with some solutions. Well, is a distinguished one. Gita Anand is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author and author and dean of the Graduate School of journalism. Erwin Shamarisky is Dean of Berkeley Law and one of the nation's leading authorities on the First Amendment in the Constitution. County for read associate dean and head of the school information is an expert on digital forensics deep fakes cybersecurity and human perception. John Hyde is chair of the Department of Political Science co director of the Institute of International Studies and a scholar who studies democratic backsliding countries that are becoming more authoritarian by the day. And John Powell is director of the other and belonging Institute and an expert in civil rights civil liberties structural racism and democracy. I'm going to moderate the panel as I said, let's get going. First is the nature of the problem. We start with Henry who knows a lot about the internet. What is disinformation. What has changed socially and technologically to ignite the current storm of disinformation. What are the dangers from social media, especially. Thank you Henry and good to be here with such an amazing group of my colleagues here on the Berkeley campus. Let's let's start with some definitions. Let's start by distinguishing between disinformation and misinformation which are often used interchangeably disinformation is the intentional spreading of lies and conspiracies. Think for example, state sponsored actors trying to so civil unrest or interfere with an election. Think partisan hacks and trolls on Twitter and Facebook misinformation on the other hand is the unintentional spreading of lies. Think your quirky Uncle Frank Facebook posts about how Bill Gates is using Kobe to implement a mandatory vaccine program with tracking microchips. By the way, a pretty bizarre claim that some 28% of Americans believe. So disinformation of course is not new and we should acknowledge that for as long as there's been information, there's been disinformation. However, in the digital age, I don't think it'll surprise you to learn that, in particular in the age of social media, the nature and threat of disinformation is quite distinct. So, first, we've democratized access to publishing. Many great things have come from that, but that now anybody with nothing more than a handheld device can instantaneously reach millions of people around the world. Second, the gatekeepers of social media are not traditional publishers and so posts that drive engagement are favored over just about everything else with little consideration to journalistic standards, or harm. Now here it's important to understand that critical to social media success is driving engagement and time spent on the platform and in turn ad revenue. So this is accomplished, not by chance but by algorithmically determining what shows up in your social media feed. These algorithms aren't optimized for an informed citizenship, civility or truth. Instead, repeated studies from outside of the social media companies and inside of the social media companies have shown that social media's algorithms favors outrage favors anger lies and conspiracies because that drives engagement. And it's this algorithmic amplification that is the most significant difference today in the disinformation landscape. So let me just say a few more things on because you asked a series of these questions and I want to try to hit each of them. An additional threat to this algorithmic amplification or manipulation is the risk of filter bubbles and which, as you said at the very beginning, Henry, we seem to have two alternate realities, because we are all consuming content inside of an echo chamber and a filter bubble driven by social media. And so although disinformation is not new, what we are seeing is a scale in belief and even the most bizarre conspiracies that is unprecedented in history. So here's another example, for example, the far reaching far right QAnon conspiracy claims among many things that a cabal of Satan worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles and child sex traffickers plotted against Donald Trump during his term as president. It's a pretty outrageous even by American conspiracies. However, a recent poll finds that 37% of Americans are unsure whether this conspiracy is true or false and a full 17% believe it to be true. In addition, we're seeing widespread vaccine hesitancy promoted all over social media with huge, huge implications for our public health. We're seeing, as you said at the beginning widespread US election lies with huge implications for our democracy. And we're seeing widespread climate change dis and misinformation with huge implications for our entire planet. I think this information is leading and I don't think this is hyperbolic to existential threats to our society and democracy. And I don't know how we have a stable society and the democracy. If we can agree on basic facts, because everybody is being manipulated by the attention grabbing dopamine fueled algorithms that promote the dredges of the internet creating these bizarre fact free alternate reality. I'd very much like to believe in Brandeis's concept that the best remedy for these falsehoods is more truce, not silence. It only works in a fair marketplace of ideas, where ideas compete fairly on their merits, but social media doesn't come even close to being a fair marketplace of ideas, it is manipulating users in order to maximize profits. And there it is Henry is the big difference today from 20 years ago is how we are being actively manipulated in terms of the information we are being presented. Thank you. So, John Powell, we've just heard the technological reasons why things have changed and outlined really directly. What about human beings and our psyches, and maybe especially Americans, how much of this is based upon our tendencies towards tribalism and other. What about what can we do to minimize that and to limit the degree to which those kinds of factors affect the way people process information. Is that part of the problem. Thank you Henry is press of us I'd like to be here with such distinguished guests and I look forward to hearing and learning from all of you. The problem, you know we sort of have a better sense of the problems and do have solutions. I'm pretty fast at it has suggested that the internet social media has sort of complicated the problem by far. But I'm going reading Martha Nessmoons book now on religion and fear and Aristotle is talking about this problem 2000 years ago, and that it could be hijacked. And so, part of it does sort of mess with human nature and society. And tribalism is interesting. I'm part of more in common and I looked at some of their materials in preparation for today's call today's talk. I'm not in favor of the term tribalism I'll tell you why. First of all think about the US history and our relationship with tribes here. By many accounts the tribes are much more welcoming to the Europeans and the Europeans were welcoming to the tribe, but even more pointedly tribalism as we understand it evolutionary tribes were only small. They were in from anywhere from 50 to about 150 people. There were people you had contact with every day. There were people that you knew. And yes, so in that you had there are kinds of what we recall biases. These were the people you trusted. But tribes couldn't be 1000 people tribes couldn't be a million people. And so what we're seeing, I think tribes is actually a misnomer. And so what allows for people who don't know each other, who will never see each other to actually feel like they're part of a same group and hostile to another group. Rather is blacks or Jews or Muslims. So I think tribalism, like I said is a misnomer. But I do think changing demographics actually plays a big part. And there's as discussed there's polarization and identity along ideological lines but there's also along social lines along people. And there's very strong correlation between anxiety of change of demographics and polarization. It doesn't have to happen. I think it sort of seeds it creates an environment, and then people use it. The elites use it to actually constitute or exaggerate the fear and the threat. And one thing that's very important I think to sort of point out is that the other is not natural. The other is socially constructed. The meaning and content of the other socially constructed. And it's not saying we're all the same, but the meaning, especially saying that someone's not fully human that there are threat that they're like an animal that they smell their smelly. And the other is to show up over and over and over and over again, whether you're talking about again blacks or Jews or immigrants or East. And it's a dominant group. If you will, leaders oftentimes using that to sort of create a sense of us and them. So this is calculated as suggested this not misinformation this is disinformation. The tools available are more profound than they used to be 20 years ago. But also the changing demographics and I'll end by just saying this, think about the report of the census data. I was very unhappy with the reporting, the reporting from my perspective was laced with fear, and it may have been implicit, but it was like almost like saying white people be afraid. You know you're about to lose the minorities people black people Latinos, they're coming, and you're going to lose. Just scores of stories about this white anxiety and it didn't paint a picture of how we might be a society where all the racial majority and have and living a harmony and peace and coming together. It said nothing about the explosive expression of American families now, one of the fastest growth are mixed race miss ethnicity families. That's potentially positive is simply was absent from the story. Thanks john. So that's the human side, and then there's journalism. Historically the way we've learned about others is from journalism. Gita and in have things changed for journalism and is part of the problem the decline of journalism, or journalism never have a chance with respect to the internet. And also are there other historical periods that looked like the one we're in now. And is there hope that we can get out of the mess we're in. Thanks Henry and it's a pleasure to be amongst this group, discussing this incredibly enormous challenge to democracy and to our world. I mean the rise in social media has shifted ad revenue and shifted public attention away from traditional news publications. There's been a 62% drop in ad revenue for traditional news publications in between 2008 and 2018. More than 2000 of the 9000 publications around in 1995 are no longer around today. Half of people under 30 get most of their political news from social media news publications just cannot compete with social media and with disinformation disinformation is cheap. It's expensive to train people to go out and report news to check sources to make phone calls to check public records. Social media companies are making billions and news organizations are barely hanging on and they're weakened just at the time where we need the most. I think honey talked about this, but also jump how negative information, controversial information draws attention and always has I trust on Harris famously said that fake news spread six times as fast as credible news. Again, putting traditional news organizations at a disadvantage, and there's confusion in the public minds about what actually is a legitimate news publication and what actually are facts and what are not. And there's huge distrust in the media right now. I believe this is because of the decline in local news publications those thousands of local news publications that have gone out of business so this means that most people have never met a reporter. They don't understand how reporters do their jobs they don't understand journalism ethics. When they do meet a journalist it's when some huge catastrophe has happened in their community and someone has come in from far away to do a story on their community someone who doesn't know that community very well. So people think of journalists as elite outsiders uninformed about their world and their lives. This is a problem. And the situation is getting worse more and more traditional news publications are failing and social media is getting more of the revenue and more of the eyeballs. There's just a cacophony of sources on the internet. Many of them, random organizations many with poor with with evil intent without editors demanding accuracy. Without editors deciding what stories should be most are the most important for the day. And as all of you know and as all of you have said democracy needs and engaged and informed public to be having debate and dialogue. And if we can't even agree on a set of facts. If we're so polarized and so confused about what the facts are and about our information. We are at a huge disadvantage and being able to deal with the enormous crises of our times from climate change and on and on. So we absolutely need to as a society address this enormous challenge and you know the success and survival of journalism is vital to the success and survival of democracy. Thanks. Thanks, Gita. Timorinsky up the legal framework here is complicated and could you clarify two things I think exactly what does the first amendment do to perhaps create some of these problems because of the so called marketplace of ideas and the failure to limit some kinds of and second of all, the communications decency act of 1996 and especially the section 230 which gave the internet a very privileged type of sort of role. Of course, it really is a pleasure to be part of this discussion. Let me put this in context. I think the internet is the most powerful tool for expression, since the development of the printing press is already mentioned. It democratizes the ability to reach a mass audience used to be and be rich enough to own a newspaper or get a broadcast license to reach a large number of people. Now anyone with a smartphone backs the modem in a library can do so. It gives all of us access to seemingly infinite information, and it doesn't respect national boundaries. It's very hard for any country to exclude speech over the internet from other nations, but this comes at a cost. Speech is very cheap over the internet. Speech can be used for misinformation or disinformation speech that's harmful that invades privacy can be immediately circulated, and it also lets other countries influence electoral processes. We saw what Russia did in 2016 in the United States. This is part of section 230, your latter question. Section 230 I believe was the key to the development of the internet. It says that internet companies can't be held liable for that, which is posted there. And that section 230, which is 23 words, are the 23 words that created the internet. Without section 230, the internet companies would have to monitor everything that is put there, because if they didn't, there was something that was illegal or tortuous, they could be prosecuted. It allows people to post things on the internet and social media without the risk of significant censorship from the internet companies. Now that's not to say the internet companies aren't monitoring. They're clearly doing things like excluding child pornography. They're excluding hate speech. They're doing this on their own, not for fear of liability. Section 230 protects them. In that context, I can talk about the First Amendment, Henry, and answer your question. The First Amendment, of course, limits the ability of government at all levels to protect speech. First Amendment isn't absolute. There are categories of speech that are unprotected or less protected. Child pornography is an example. Speech that incites illegal activity. Speech that constitutes a true threat. And we go on with the other categories of unprotected speech. How does this all relate to the internet? I want to couple wise. First, the internet companies, the major social media companies, things like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Google are private entities. They do not have to comply with the First Amendment. They can decide to include what they want or exclude what they want. When some of the social media companies excluded Donald Trump, he soon said this violates the First Amendment. It's a matter of constitutional law. That's nonsense, because these social media companies are private. They're not the government. They don't have to comply with the First Amendment. Key principle, the First Amendment limits what government can do, not private entities. But there's a second way in which this is relevant, too. The First Amendment protects private entities from being regulated by the government. The government can't regulate newspapers and what they publish. That would run a file of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The First Amendment also limits the ability of the government to regulate social media companies, even if it wants to. And finally, what I would say is the assumption of the First Amendment is that generally, more speech is better. And if false things are said, the best response is true things. What we've talked about so far today is all of the problems with that, but I'm not sure what's better than it. The alternative to allowing the marketplace of ideas to work is to give the government the power to decide what's true and false and sense of what's false. And I am much more afraid of that than I am of allowing all the ideas to be expressed, even in light of the problems we've discussed. Thanks, Erwin. A great synopsis of the issues. Susan Hyde, let's get a little bit beyond America and talk about what's happening around the world with various countries. Are these same kinds of factors operating in other countries? And how are they affecting those countries in respect to the health of their democracy and the future of their democracies? Thanks, Henry. It's a real honor to be here and so important to continue talking about this both today and continuing the future. As Gita said, it really influences our ability as a society and as humans around the world to address a long list of other challenges that require collective action. I think disinformation is really pernicious in our ability to address a whole host of problems. Of course, this is nothing new in some sense. Propaganda has been around for a long time and has been used very frequently to try to sway elections and voting behavior in other countries, both from within, often by the government in power, but also from without. So folks have already mentioned Russian interference in the US elections, but historically it's important to acknowledge that the former USSR, now Russia and the United States have been active in promoting propaganda and election interference in a lot of countries around the world. So this is not new in some sense, but what is new is that this toolkit that is related to disinformation and the use of social media for disinformation specifically is I think the scale and the ability to target messages at the individual level in a manner that can be but of course isn't always harder to document and therefore harder to understand the extent of, which is important for some of us who are interested in thinking about the degree to which these are problems for elections all elections have some problems. It's not about one voter not having a chance to vote in our typical evaluations it's usually about the extent of the problem and if we're not sure how many people were affected by disinformation or exactly what forms of disinformation they received. It can be very difficult to have a solid assessment in real time about how an election proceeded. And this is a problem in a lot of countries around the world. We're pretty used to thinking about election fraud as a game of cat and mouse, or a game of evolving strategy so lots of efforts to deter election manipulation have been met with counter efforts. And this is one area in which I think the micro targeting of disinformation actually makes it even more difficult to come up with those counter measures. One of the things that I wanted to reference is that we're talking about this as a phenomenon that's taking place in many countries around the world there's an ongoing study out by a group of scholars out of Oxford. This is a 20 study documented the use by governments and political parties of social media to manipulate governance processes or elections in 81 countries. I don't have time to delve into how the tools and strategies vary. But I think it's important to acknowledge that not everything that we've seen in the United States is what other countries are seeing around the world. And with that that's important for us to acknowledge in part because we might see some of these other things here soon, but also in thinking about solutions I think it's important to acknowledge that what we're what we're seeing here is just a small slice. There are also increasingly documented cases in which businesses are using these tools on behalf of political actors. A lot of this is for hire. And I think this is connected to the more general sense that we're in a period of democratic backsliding in many countries around the world. And it's clear from the experiences in other countries that there are really dozens, if not hundreds of ways to combine these new tools of disinformation with the old menu of the classic tools of election manipulation. And so I think it can make things like vote buying easier, for example, it can make voter intimidation easier, for example. And because it makes it easier to target specific individuals, it's potentially more pernicious and more difficult to document. One other thing I'll note that's not disinformation but we are seeing authoritarian governments diffuse their surveillance technology to one another so they're sharing technologies for the surveillance of their own citizens. This is not exactly disinformation but I do think it's connected to this broader conversation about how disinformation is influencing voting and democracy around the world. Okay, I think we've established that there is a problem there are a set of issues and it's a complicated situation. Let me now go on to ask if we've got solutions. Let's start with the ones that we always hope that we have with your technological fixes. Honey, are there technological fixes for what's going on. Can the internet police itself with technology. Yeah, since technology sort of got us into this mess you'd hope that there are some technological solutions to get help us get out of this mess. So there's a number of challenges here let me enumerate them first. First, social media operates on an unimaginably large and global scale. Every day for petabytes that's more than 4 million gigabytes of data are uploaded to Facebook, every day, and every minute, there's more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube mitigating harm at that scale can be an enormous challenge just because of the volume and the borderless nature of this content. Second, we should acknowledge that while some disinformation is easy to identify the earth is not flat. The video purporting to show Nancy Pelosi drunk is fake. The Louis Clinton is not in fact running a child porn ring out of a basement of a pizza joint in DC. On the other hand, other pieces of information might be harder to classify. For example, theories of the origin of COVID have been in flux over the last year and so deciding what is true and what is not can also be tricky. As I was already mentioned but worth mentioning again, we have seen some less than democratic countries and at least one US president stifling criticism by crying fake news because of inconvenient facts. And so we have to tread very lightly here on labeling things as true or false. I know the bad news in some ways, but on the other hand, recent studies have shown that despite the scale of Facebook. On Facebook 65% of COVID related disinformation originated from only 12 people, the so called dirty dozen as they're called. Similarly, in our own studies, we found that by reducing the visibility of about a dozen channels, YouTube was able to significantly decrease the prevalence of conspiracies in their recommendations. So in some cases, the problem is not actually that big and could be as simple as demoting a relatively small number of very, very bad actors responsible for a large amount of disinformation. Now, we've also seen that tweaking the underlying recommendation algorithms that I was talking about earlier can have a big impact on mitigating disinformation. So in 2020 Facebook conducted an interesting experiment called good for the world bad for the world, in which their users were asked to categorize post as one or the other. And what Facebook researchers found is that there was a positive correlation between the popularity of the post and its categorization is bad for the world. This is what Gita was talking about earlier. Then Facebook trained the recommendation algorithms to make bad for the world posts less visible. They didn't ban them. They didn't delete them. They just made them less visible on our news feeds. And the research was successful. It reduced content that was quote unquote bad for the world. But you know what else it did? It reduced the amount of time that people spent on Facebook. And so what Facebook said was nice try, but we're literally going to turn this off and now knowingly recommend posts that we know are bad for the world. So there are mitigation strategies, despite the challenges, the scale, the definitional problems, there are mitigation strategies that are fairly well understood and could be implemented. The problem, of course, is that these changes are not necessarily good for corporate profits. And here we run into the tension here. So I would argue that while the problem of disinformation is complex, the problem with disinformation on social media today is not primarily one of technology, but one of corporate responsibility. I would also argue that we can mitigate harm without, and this is to Erwin's point earlier, without necessarily banning specific types of speech or users. But instead we can tweak as we have already seen the underlying recommendation algorithms to simply favor civility and trust over hatred lies and conspiracies. And of course, there are some definitional things that we have to get right there. The last thing I'll say here is we have been waiting for now several decades for the technology sector to find their moral compass, and they have not seemed to be able to do that. They continue to unleash technology that is harmful to individuals, to groups, to societies and to democracies, and left to their own devices that will continue. We cannot sit back and say, well, the technology sector will self-regulate. We need to start thinking about modest and thoughtful regulation that will put some pressure points on the technology sector. Erwin was talking about section 230 of CDA, which has removed many of the pressure points. You don't want to add too much because then the government risks overreaching, but too little we have the mess that we have right now. So the question is, how do you balance those issues? But again, I want to just emphasize, while there are technological challenges, I think many of the issues, we actually know how to address a significant amount of them. We're just choosing not to. Thanks, Henry. So, Gita, the journalism is in decline. It has problems, especially at the local level, but also otherwise. Is there an argument to be made that the social media companies should be asked to take some of their profits and give them to journalism? And maybe that can be done through a tax on internet exchanges or ads or something like that, and that that would be given to journalists so that local journalism could perhaps thrive more? There's definitely an argument to be made in that regard, Henry, and I think journalism and democracy would benefit from such attacks. Other ideas, though, for rebuilding trust, because a key problem is the lack of visibility of good journalism, but also the lack of trust in the media. And something I'm really in favor of and that the journalism school here at Berkeley is investing in as local news. We really need to, unless we build back up local news publications, people are not going to see reporters doing their work. They're not going to know them. They're not going to understand what journalism is about, and they're not going to believe in journalism. We have two news publications, Richmond Confidential and Oakland North, and we've been investing more in them in the last couple of years hiring an editor. There's other nonprofit efforts to do the same. Report for America is an incredible effort to put local journalists and publications around this country. ProPublica, which is the best nonprofit investigative organization in the country, is collaborating much more with local reporters to produce local investigations holding local governments accountable. Public universities around the country could commit themselves to investing, could and should commit themselves to investing in the local publications around them as one small step to improving the sustainability of local news and to promoting trust in journalism. But to your point, Henry, when you asked about this tax, I mean the economics of journalism are broken. Advertising revenues have in most, more than 50% of advertising revenues have shifted to social media from traditional news organizations. Many of the best news organizations have shifted to the subscription model and have seen subscriptions rise astronomically, especially in the last few years, as many people have recognized the value and importance of investigative reporting on everything from our president to climate change to Facebook, an incredible series in the Wall Street Journal, the Facebook files this past week. The problem is that people aren't willing to pay for news when there's so much disinformation available masquerading as news. For example, I was talking to a friend of mine, a colleague actually here at Berkeley Journalism who was Mexican and was in Mexico recently. All the anti-vax propaganda was being spread, her friends were believing it, and there was a New York Times story countering exactly the misinformation or disinformation in one story. She shared it with all of her friends, but none of them had New York Times subscriptions, so they weren't actually able to open the story that countered the disinformation. So clearly we need a solution to fix the journalism ecosystem, and the tax idea I think is a brilliant one. But I think that the solution to the disinformation problem will need to be multifaceted. We'll need to convene experts in all different disciplines as are here on this call. I think Berkeley can do that. We have the most incredible brains, legal brains, technology experts, public policy, government, belonging experts, journalism experts here right on our campus. And I'm hoping and I've been together with you been taking some steps to be conveners of finding a solution to this problem in which we cannot have any area that we refuse to consider or reconsider. We have to think outside the box and we have to include the industry in helping us understand where the solutions lie in a way that doesn't make them feel defensive, which they are. But somehow we have to bring people together and address this in a legislative way immediately. Thank you, Gita. It's easy to believe fantastic things about other people when you're othering them when they're not sort of like your next door neighbor or your family. John Powell is an expert in thinking about othering. How can we as a nation go beyond trying to just fix the internet or fix journalism to actually fix the problem we have maybe that's at the root of a lot of this, which is that we other one and we have done so throughout much of our history. It's important question is a great question. And you're right, Henry, this is this is a problem that's hypercharged by technology but it's not simply a technological problem. For example, if you look at voting trends, part of this voting trend shows is that racial and ethnic segregation actually increase extreme voting. When people actually only hang out with people like themselves and homogeneous groups, the groups are more likely to be extreme. America has never dealt with. In fact, I would say we've actually, we came up with a recent study showing that the country is actually moving toward greater segregation, both racial, economic, but also ideological segregation. So if you're conservative, you're more likely to live with people who are just conservative. If you're liberal, you're more likely to live with people who are just liberal. And to your point, Henry, once you other people, you actually, we have a lot of data showing people actually don't understand the other side. They exaggerate their views. Some of the polarization is more perception than reality. We actually are closer together. Also, the people who drive politics are relatively small. There's no section of people who just turned off. And they don't want to be in the sling fight. They actually want something different, but they don't know how to get it there. So I think these are huge problems. And the idea that fear moves faster than a positive emotion. If you're trying to create fear, you have a huge advantage. If you're trying to create and create hate, you have a huge advantage already on your side is much more difficult to create these other mechanisms. And I agree with the speaker, other speakers, it has to be deliberate. And I don't think it will fix itself. I don't think that technology. I believe the container is actually has a crack in it, and it might break altogether. It's not clear to me that democracies will survive this, unless we do something very deliberate and very robust. And I agree we have to put a lot of things on the table. And I mean, we've just watched years and even the study that was cited early in terms of Facebook saying, yeah, we could we could fix the problem. And the question is, if you don't fix the problem, what's the cost of democracy? That's not the question they're asking. They're asking what's the cost of their shareholders. So I think, I think this should be a major effort, if not by Berkeley, by multiple universities and others. I mean, we really are in a someone called an existentialist ontological product challenge. And I mean, I started writing about authoritarianism in like 2004 and I didn't anticipate how broad it would become in 1617 years. It was like this goddess industry, a few of us writing about it thinking about it is now it's say democracy in retreat, and it's on his heels. And the last thing I'll say is that it's not just factual we talk about people getting factual information. People actually join groups to belong. People actually, there's a lot of work that that's done through social media and things people are not just going to social media to get the facts they're going to feel like they belong. They're going to for community. And once you're in that community, in a sense that community polices you. And so part of the thing is that the sense of belonging in America is in steep decline. Most Americans feel very isolated benefit connected to the community to the nation to institutions. And then they become prey to these really extreme groups where you can at least belong. And so again, it's not just a cognitive thing how do we have people be smarter process facts is that what's being done. And the last thing I'll mention, there was someone been interviewed about Donald Trump, and the interviewers was signing up, but this is a lie he just lied on this, the person basically said, of course he lies. You know, I know that I'm not stupid. But he creates a community. He cares about us. That's what's important. So I think we have to be much more sophisticated than assuming that this is just a question of truth versus fiction. I'm going to follow up with john he has to leave at one o'clock, and I want to get a bit more of his wisdom. A recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences called our common purpose made a bunch of recommendations for how we could maybe minimize, or even eliminate other and they suggested things like universal public service where everybody would have a year of universal public service. This would not necessarily be the military this could be America or this could be all sorts of community activities. And the idea would be to mix and mingle people so they would get to know one another. Another thing they recommended is a telling our nation's story initiative that would fund efforts around the country to bring people together from all diverse perspectives to tell their stories as part of the nation's story. So are those the kinds of things we should be supporting and thinking about to reduce the amount of other in that occurs in our society. I know there are other ways that we could do it. Certainly part of it I mean people, especially on Berkeley you know people hate for me to get this example, but one of those successful examples of addressing other is the military. Another good is that you bring people from diverse backgrounds together. Think about it. You oftentimes not to exaggerate between young black man, young Latino man, young white man off from a South, put them in a put put them together and give them a gun. That sounds like a tragedy. That sounds like an accident about to happen. But instead, what happens in military is worked on it is you have good lifelong friendships. And part of it is what you're saying when we people doing something together with a common mission and getting to know each other and relying on each other. We know a lot about contact theory, telling better stories. So yes, I think something like that, because democracy depends on the idea of being able to take another's perspective, being able to see another person. Othering is a caricature when we other people we flatten them, they become more they become single dimension, just this they're just black they just gay they just this, all of us have multiple dimensions. And, and I'm rushing through things. It's not impossible to hate up close but it is harder. It is harder, especially if we do it right. And so yes, telling each other stories, telling different stories telling stories about a larger we, and about a new future, but also having some common purpose, even things like football games. You know, I mean, what people come together. There's a whole bunch of literature showing how important Jackie Robinson was in terms of breaking the color line not just in baseball. But in society. When you had whites who otherwise didn't know any blacks and didn't like blacks, cheering him on that made a difference. So we're not using a lot of the information we know, and we need new information as well. I grew up with Jackie Robinson as a hero and the Brooklyn Dodgers as heroes and vividly remember the 1955 World Series where the Dodgers finally won the World Series. So, Erwin, the legal framework here is complicated. Let me let me use a vivid analogy and I know it's a bit unfair but I'm going to use it anyway. If we had a water company that didn't check the quality of the water, and people were pouring poison into the water system. And, and, and, and that was affecting people's health. Would we be happy with that we allow the legal framework to continue to do that. An analogy isn't an apt one to start with the water company isn't protected by the First Amendment. Also, there's no harm in forcing the water company to monitor the quality of the water. There's only good to come. But I think there's great harm if we would create liability of media companies. When it comes to the false and damaging information there. The newspaper exercises editorial judgment over what's within the newspaper. The water company exercises control over what's in the water. But the whole idea of section 230 is that the internet and social media companies should be platforms where any speech can be expressed. And that's why there's no analogy to your water analogy water example, or the newspapers was mentioned earlier, there are 4.75 billion pieces of information, post them on Facebook, each day. If Facebook could be held liable for anything there that might be criminal might commit a tort. Facebook would have to monitor all of that. And undoubtedly Facebook would err on the side of taking things down rather than facing liability. We wouldn't lose just the harmful water, we would lose so much of the good water as well. For a while I came to believe that it would be possible to say well we'll only create liability for media companies and social media companies, if they have knowledge that there's this harmful material, and if they don't take it down. But then I looked at an analogous law, it's called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it creates an obligation to take down things when there's an allegation of copyright infringement. And I learned that the take down provisions led to tremendous over censorship and loss of information that we'd want to have anyone have speech. Henry, everyone wants to criticize section 230. The right criticizes it, President Trump threatened to veto a defensive preparation bill, unless Congress changed section 230. The left criticizes section 230. But if you study this carefully, I don't see a better alternative. And I worry that if we were to repeal or change section 230, the result would be much worse. In fact, you were talking about the American Academy, and they said that with regard to debate about political speech online, quote, it requires solutions outside the scope of reforming or repealing section 230. I think what we should be doing is putting social pressure on the media companies themselves to do a better job excluding unconstitutional, harmful, illegal, tortuous, hateful speech. They can do that because they're not the government. They can regulate speeches they choose. We should put pressure on them to change their algorithms. But I think it's much better that it come from the media, social media companies and pressure on them than it come through government regulation. I'm convinced that any effort to try to significantly modify section 230 will be much harmful that it will be beneficial. We're going to get Susan Hyde in a minute. But I want somebody to maybe reply to Irwin and talk about his position, because he's got a very absolutist First Amendment position. Let's start with Gita and maybe Hanne wants to say something and then we'll go to Susan. I think of just the burgeoning social media as just a whole new infrastructure in this world. I just think if we had sort of a whole new rail system or a whole new air traffic system or whole new system of transportation like air we have over the centuries regulated whole new systems of infrastructure that have been invented. And I'm just not convinced that we can count on social media just based on the track record to regulate itself. I hugely support pressuring social media companies to see themselves more as news organizations with a responsibility for accurate information. I think that there's, I support a suggestion, or I'm interested in the suggestion that Tristan Harris put forward in a piece of the Financial Times a few year or two ago, in which he suggested that social media be considered like a public utility and brought to and held accountable for the environmental impact of their, their work, perhaps social media organizations should be held accountable and regulated in the same way and maybe that the experience of being brought to hearings and having to answer questions about their impact on the public good would put the same kind of pressure that Erwin is talking about on them to to regulate and regulate themselves in additional ways that over to you, honey. Thank you. First of all, let me say, I don't like arguing with Erwin who is arguably one of the finest legal minds in the country. So I, I'm not entirely fond of this vision, but I'm going to argue with him and nevertheless so a couple of things one is, Erwin's absolutely right the DMCA has been misused. And we should acknowledge that that it is an imperfect piece of legislation but the point to the misuse of the law and not point to where it has been effective in, for example, creating the Apple i stores and the Amazon Primes and the Netflix and the who lose you know, unlike 1520 years ago we're downloading movies and music all the time and now we have a very robust online ecosystem where creators of movie and music and books are in fact paid and has there been abuse, sure. But the point to that abuse and say DMCA is on the whole negative I think is incorrect. Now, to Erwin's question is let's put social pressure on the social media. I've been doing that for 10 years. I mean, it's hard to think of a week that goes by without some scathing article around Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Google, Amazon, Apple, and that has been going on for years now. Last year we tried an ad boycott against Facebook. It was one of the largest ad boycotts in history had hundreds and hundreds of company, and it fizzled out with absolutely no effect. We slapped a $6 billion fine onto Facebook and they shrugged it off the next day with their stock price going up. When you have these massive trillion dollar monopolistic companies, there is no social pressure understand this isn't like the airline. It's not like an automotive industry, or I can go down the street and buy a different brand because I don't like the practices of this company. We don't pay these companies. We're not the customer. We're the product. And that's a very different relationship with the corporate entity when it comes to putting pressure. And by the way, I will point out that as we're talking about the abuses of these companies, we are streaming this video on YouTube and Facebook. Why are we choosing to do that? We're just we're seeding the middle ground to them. Why for the love of God, are we sorry Facebook? Why are we streaming this on Facebook? But to Erwin's point, that's the problem is we all do this. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to a reporter who writes scathing articles about social media, the brilliant Wall Street Journal Facebook files from last week. You know what it says at the bottom of the article? Follow us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. So, you know, it's easy to say put social pressure, but that has not been working. And the last thing I'll say on this is, I don't think any reasonable person says we should repeal section 230. But I think there are reasonable proposals for modifying it. And the one I like the most is from SU and Melanowski that says we are not, in fact, going to hold you for every single piece of content that gets uploaded to your service. But if your algorithms reach into that sea of data and pluck out pieces of content and slap an ad on it and monetize it, you should have some responsibility for that because now you sound a lot like a publisher to me. And I think that's a reasonable modest proposal. Having said that, we should, Erwin is right, we should tread lightly. But I don't think we can sit back anymore and just wait because what we have seen is horrific harm from online platforms from child sexual abuse to terrorism and extremism, illegal drugs, illegal weapons, sex trade and disinformation that is destroying, as John was saying, existential threats to our democracy and waiting around for Mark Zuckerberg to get it together. I just don't think it's working. So John, do you have anything to add? If not, because I knew you have to leave in a minute. Now we're going to go to Susan, who's going to tell us how other countries have dealt with these problems and what the solutions are. Well, I'm appreciating the conversation and just to sort of add, I think we can't wait. And at the same time, they're dangerous. You know, it's like, it's like with COVID, right, for the non-vaxxers. And I've talked to a number of them. It's like, you know, there's dangers in the vaccine. And yes, there may be some dangers in the vaccine, but there's also a danger in the virus. You know, and so that's a legitimate conversation, but just to point to one danger. And on this, I'm agnostic. So it's not like I don't know what to do, but I know we need to do something. And just saying that if the government involves in regulation, that's a greater danger. I'm not convinced that's accurate. That's maybe is empirical. But I do know, as Hennie suggested, just doing nothing. We're just sort of sliding into the demise of our democracy. So I'd like to see some people seriously grapple with this. And then the last thing, as I said earlier, how do we actually deal with this? Not just in the United States, the sort of fear of the other, the fear of people moving around is a global problem. And a lot of countries don't have the same kind of loyalty to the First Amendment. And we are talking about monopolies, which, you know, years ago we said monopolies were bad, but now we sort of accept it essentially that these monopolies can do whatever they want to and we're dependent on them. So the terrain has shifted. So I think we have to shift the way we think about it. I'm going to put you on mute and then stay on as long as I can, but there's going to be some background noise. Thanks, John. So let's go to Susan and what's happening in other countries and what lessons can we learn from them? So one of the questions that I was thinking about in advance was just like what we can do to sort of rebuild from this moment that we're in. And I agree with, I'm really intrigued by this conversation about regulating social media, thinking about what can be done proactively, because I do think this is a problem that makes it more difficult for us to do almost anything else. I wanted to say that the most hopeful thing I've heard about the moment we're in was a tweet from former UC Berkeley Ph.D. And Meg Meng is now at the University of Virginia. And she said in a very offhand manner that I just have to found just like mind blowing was for all of our worst case scenarios about where we're headed as a country. This could be the moment in which the US finally democratizes, not just on average, but for everyone, including those people whose participation has long been deliberately excluded. And making participation in political life and real political representation available and accessible to all Americans is threatening to some people. That is where some of our tumult is coming from and I think it's important for us to think about that and to really counter that head on. So I am talking about this in reference to the US not just talking about other countries around the world. It's in part because all of a sudden my research on election violence and election fraud and democratic backsliding is suddenly relevant to the United States. And I'll say that in other countries that are divided, for example, those are that are experiencing the immediate aftermath of a civil war in which neighbors were literally killing each other. Not decades ago, but in last year, there are really high levels of distrust as well. And it can be very hard to find domestic political actors that are viewed as neutral across the political spectrum that can cut through this hyper division that we're experiencing. This is particularly acute around elections, I think, because it has to do with whether people accept the outcome of those elections and they're willing to protest elections that are in fact stolen, but also accept the results of elections that were democratic and having a resource available that can offer an opinion on whether the election was in fact problematic or not. It is a problem that a lot of countries have encountered and this is where international election observation basically came from. Countries that had super high levels of distrust domestically that they couldn't find a resource domestically that was trusted across the political spectrum to make this critical judgment about whether or not elections were stolen, which can be very difficult for an average citizen to discern. And so I think that when we look towards solutions, I think there's a number of things that we should talk about that are very common in other countries that might move the needle a little bit in the United States. First of all, I keep saying this, I'm going to say it in this form too, election administration should be known partisan. We are the only country in the world that is vaguely democratic as partisan election administration and I think that we need to change that I just don't think it's sustainable in the long term and it's a real problem today. I can think of a number of other similar proposals that are worth a shot, including similar reforms including a lot of other things, but I think it's important to also say something about what's going on right now with the Republican Party. I mentioned some of this at the beginning. It has really been taken over by a set of anti democratic forces, many of whom also support a white nationalist agenda, and they are actively using disinformation, or taking advantage of the disinformation for their own political advantage. So I personally long for a Republican Party that returns to its roots as a driver of policy that puts forward serious policy ideas, and that debates those ideas with other political parties, it's very hard to think about a good outcome from the game that they are playing which is a rejection of our country's political institutions, a questioning of the way that we've been doing things for so long, and an outright and deliberate manipulation of their supporters through fear, rather than persuasion, and through proposing better policies. I think this is a very dangerous game, it's hard for me to see a way out of the place we are in as a country, without confronting this problem, which I don't think is a partisan issue I think it is a democracy issue. And as a democracy issue that is particularly afflicting one of our two political parties, but in order to have a functioning democracy, we need to have two political parties that are playing by the rules of the democratic game and that are that are not dealing with many members of the Republican Party leadership is doing right now and I think that's a problem. I'll say one other idea that's concrete it's small, and I was going to say it really quickly because I think it's interesting. I've been fretting about what to do just for my own self what can I do to help support democracy in this country. I think the conversation about social media is really interesting. And another thing that a lot of other countries have experienced with, again that came out of these periods of distrust hyper partisanship, and that is a grand coalition of organizations leaders civic groups that participate as non partisan domestic election observers. It's a very small thing but I think it's very possible that people need additional experience that I'm curious if it would make people more likely to put democracy above their own more narrow political interests in this country. It has worked in a lot of other countries and also can potentially provide. I don't maybe an opportunity for the pro democracy Republican actors, as well as civic business, religious and other groups to to unify around defending US democracy. We, we can imagine campuses getting involved with this kind of thing too that's very common in other countries so it's a, it's a little bit of a lark it's an idea I'm throwing out there. I know some people are working on it but I think things like this initiatives like this that are that are participatory for lots of people and then involve pro democracy political participation I think could could move the needle a little bit in the right direction so I wanted to end on the hope moment. Thanks Susan. I want to go back to Erwin, but I want to first propose a bunch of things. These social media companies are enormously rich. They have tremendous amounts of money, their monopolies. Can't we require more of them, maybe not that they monitor every single transaction that occurs through their pipes. And we can say things like, they have to support public service service forums at a very large level, and really support local journalism, for example. Perhaps they could support efforts to have deliberative polls in local areas that which bring together a random sample of local people and who get together and then discuss politics, and that's put on the medium and so on and so forth. And then we find some way to make sure that they're thinking about their social responsibilities in a bigger way. Another way might be to rate them in terms of social responsibility, and to make that a public thing that everybody knows about, and to and in fact, say there's pressure on them to make sure that they are socially responsible. Can't we do some of those kinds of things. That's unquestionably so. I don't deny the threat that exists to democracy right now. I think to some extent though blaming social media internet is blaming the messenger. I think the problems in our society that are leading to the threat to democracy are much greater than in that caused by the internet and social media, the internet social media contribute to it. That's what I'm saying and I'll talk about can be part of the solution. In contrary, he said and I'm not an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. I believe that there is speech that's unprotected by the First Amendment. Child pornography incitement, true threats and other things. But I also believe that there is a benefit in our society of having platforms for speech that anyone can participate in, and anyone can use to reach a mass audience. And so until the development of the internet, one of the main problems with regard to speech was the scarcity of media and how little most people had access to be able to get their message across. We're now in the golden age of free speech, and I want to be sure we don't lose that. Now, in terms of creating liability, something that was raised earlier. We're not going to create liability on social media companies for anything that's posted there. They will have to monitor, and they will greatly over censor. There is the proposal that some have offered up. Well, if they have noticed that it's harmful speech, force them to take down. It was in that context that I referred to the digital and a copyright act, and we can talk about that in detail. I think the takedown provisions of it have been much more harmful than good. In fact, there have been other efforts to regulate speech on the internet and social media. I think on balance, they've been counterproductive. There was a law adopted a few years ago called the allow states and victims fight online sex trafficking. There was meant to try to keep things like that page from advertising for sex there. And what we found is it hasn't decreased trafficking. And in terms of protecting sex workers, it's been very harmful. It hasn't achieved what's what said greater harms. So my point isn't an absolutist one against regulation. My point is that I think we've got to be very careful that we do doesn't end up being much worse than what we have now. Now, with regard to what you said a moment ago, Henry, I think there are things that can be done. You mentioned three, tax the social media companies to help local media. I think that would be constitutional. I think it would be appropriate. Martha Minow, the former Dean of Harvard Law School in a new book, has proposed something like that. I think that would be constitutional. I think are having some entity that rates social media platforms. I think that would be constitutional. That's just more speech forcing the social media companies to hold events and then to publicize them. I think that on question would violate the First Amendment. Because remember, the government regulating these media platforms and government regulation raises First Amendment questions. Maybe if nothing else with this discussion shows is it's enormously complicated. But in the end, I am so distrustful of government regulation. I'm going to accept the benefits of unregulated speech. Thanks, Erwin. And I think these this is the nexus of the problem is that on the one hand we want to make sure that we continue to have free speech. But on the other hand, speech has gotten a bit out of hand. And the question is, what do we do in those circumstances? Honey, you've been shaking your head in various ways. Tell us what you think about these issues. Good. A couple of thoughts. Again, I don't like to argue with Erwin, but a couple of things about SESTA first of all, which was designed to protect children online. First acknowledge that companies like Backpage were hiding behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and knowingly trafficking in young children. And they got protection. That is insane. And so SESTA FOSTA was in response to this absolute horrific misuse of that law. Now, if you look at the impact of SESTA FOSTA, Erwin's right. It didn't actually reduce sex trafficking. But the reason is not because of the law. The reason is because of the global nature of the Internet, because this law only impacted U.S. based companies. And so what happened is everybody just migrated to other platforms. So it wasn't so much that the law wasn't effective. It's just that we have a very leaky border in the digital world. And by the way, the claims that SESTA FOSTA was going to lead to more violence against women is not sustained. There's a recent study, large scale study from Carnegie Mellon University that showed that in fact that has stayed steady. And in fact, what happened is right after the law was passed, there was a decrease in sex trafficking as the platforms, the U.S. based platforms were no longer able to have the ads, but then it had a rebound over time when everything migrated offshore. So was the law effective? Was it not effective? Well, it depends on how you actually count. Now, to Erwin's point too about I would rather have everybody participating, because once you start taking down speech, we run into this problem. But here's the issue is we have a problem on, say, Twitter, where women on a daily basis are subjected to horrible abuse. People of color, people from the LGBTQ community community, immigrants. And so what happens to their voice? What happens to their voice when the most vitriolic, hateful, spiteful, angry and not necessarily illegal content shuts out other voices? So saying everybody should have a voice I think is a little naive on the way the internet works, because if you are a person who is from an underrepresented group, you are going to get off Twitter and you're going to get off Facebook and you're getting off YouTube, because on a daily basis there are horrors that you are being subjected to, which frankly you just decide, look, I don't want it and then the bullies win. So I think this is where Erwin and I disagree. I don't actually trust the government either, but I certainly don't trust private companies who have one mandate and one mandate only, which is to maximize shareholder returns. And what we have seen in every industry, online or offline is that left to their own devices, these companies will do exactly what they are mandated to do, which is to maximize shareholder profit. And when you have a monopoly in this space, rate the social media companies all you want, what are you going to do? Go to Myspace? I mean, where are you going to go? Rates Facebook as a zero on a scale of zero to 100, where are people going to go? We're still going to be streaming this video on Facebook. So I just, you know, maybe Erwin's right that the government can overreach, but not having the government step in and put some pressure points doesn't seem to be working either and I saw Susan's hand up. Yeah, Susan, maybe you can tell us about how he has made it clear that there's global dimensions to this and maybe you can discuss some of that. Yeah, I just, I wanted to just say something else, which is just that because I'm thinking about the change in the rules of the game, right, not just playing the game that we have in the United States and we've had for a long time, upholding our Constitution, continuing to live in the system we currently live in. The concern that I have is that the problem that we're facing is one that's going to send us into a system of government. Not to be too alarmist, but that is authoritarian and doesn't allow for any kind of free speech. And so at the extreme, what we're talking about is, you know, continuing to sort of dance the tango on a sinking ship. It's just not working to have democracy. This is a fundamental threat to democracy, what we're seeing right now. And the Constitution is not going to matter on some level, if we get to this really extreme worst case scenario, I'm not there yet. But I do think about the worst case scenario, right, and I think that we do have to confront that the Constitution is not going to matter under those circumstances. I want to go around, Gita, I just want to ask you about journalism and then we'll get back to Hanny and maybe Erwin. But just to ask you about what do you think that journalism could positively do to solve some of these problems. Is there a way to give voice to some of the people who honey worries will be thrown off Facebook and Twitter through better journalism and methods like that. I mean, journalism itself needs to do a better job of giving voice to underrepresented groups. I mean, journalism leadership in journalism is disproportionately made up of privileged social classes that has to change. As a journalism school we're committed to trying to change to take the lid off who gets to become a journalist in this country because we know who the storytellers are matters because we all see the world through the prism of our own lived experiences. But all of that said, if we change who the storytellers are if we produce the highest impact investigative stories if we are telling stories from the points of view of indigenous people and underrepresented people. If no one is reading those stories because they are buried on social media platforms where everyone is going to get their news in an increasingly polarized world, then journalism itself becomes irrelevant. We can be producing the best work but if no one has access to it because the infrastructure that we've created the monopolistic infrastructure has algorithms that bury journalism. Then, then our work is meaningless and this as Susan has and many others have said this is a huge threat to democracy because we are, we are just creating, we're taking away the ability. We're creating an unlevel playing field where disinformation and and angry fearful fear mongering proliferate and the best stories however excellent and equitable. They are are just hidden. Tony is there any way to try to figure out how to rate sources so that people could know what the reliable sources are I know there are truth checking fact checking enemies out there I don't know that they get much play for most people but is there some way we could direct people to better places. Sure, absolutely there are and there are many very good serious journalists and fact checking organizations that will fact check posts will fact check sites. But here's the problem and it gets back to something that Susan said that I think is incredibly important is that what we have seen unfolding over the last few years is not just people believe the earth is flat. Not just believe that Hillary Clinton is running a child porn ring out of a piece of joint in DC. It's that they also now as get to a saying they don't trust the media. You know who else they don't trust they don't trust the government. They don't trust institutions they don't trust experts. They don't trust you Henry and they don't trust me because we're a bunch of liberal loving academics and when you get into that world where we don't trust in institutions we don't trust governments we don't trust experts we don't trust scientists fact check all you want. It's not going to matter because people know what they know, and they listen to who they need to listen to. And back to Susan's point is, you know, if we get into this world, which we've already are dangerously into where we don't trust our government we don't trust the media we don't trust the expert. How do we address social change how do we address climate change how do we have democracy how do we deal with a global pandemic. And that's the fear I have is that we've completely eroded trust. And so is it too late, can we return from this. Are we ever going to get to a place where people are going to trust the fact checkers. I don't know I'm fearful that we may be getting close to that tipping point of no return. So in my research, what I've shown is that over the last 50 years there's been an extraordinary diminution and trust for institutions and a polarization and trust as I mentioned with the outset. And it's something that has me deeply worried. It used to be that most people from both parties trusted major American institutions, and they didn't have particularly different opinions about those institutions. And now it's highly polarized, and it makes it very hard for those institutions to operate, for example in the midst of the COVID epidemic when people don't trust science they don't trust medicine. They don't trust all sorts of institutions. So, Susan, are there any thing is other things that other countries are doing that we could think of that might help solve some of these problems, or is there really very little experimentation that looks useful. Well, I tried, I tried to talk about a couple of those things in my last round of remarks but I do think that I'm going to reemphasize one of the problems and I'll ask the question which is that I see some of that distrust Henry this is really a question for you but you know happy if others want to answer it. I have read with hope that partisans follow party leaders. Right. And so part of the problem that we're in right now is not because citizens are pulling the Republican Party, really far into this arena of distrust right and of distrust of media of distrust of government of all of these things. We can go back to Reagan we can talk about where this came from you know, I'm here from the government and I'm here to help as a terrifying phrase. I would like to talk about whether there's anything that can be done to increase the pro democracy nature of the Republican Party that could be through business interest I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest from other countries that businesses prefer to live in democracies right they prefer to do business in democracies they prefer to have their headquarters in democracies. It is authoritarian regimes tend to be a lot more corrupt right and you just have to pay more bribes you have to you have to deal with less stringent regulations so I can go on about this forever but I wanted to sort of pose a question. Is this a locus where we should be focusing attention for reform and is there any reason to be hopeful about that. Because I from my view comparatively you just can't fix this problem when you have a major political party in a two party system leading their supporters in this super extreme direction and they themselves seem to be afraid of their most extreme right. I'm not sure that they're all true believers, there may not be that many people who are who are real true followers of Q and on, but man it does seem like congressional leaders are afraid of them right now. Yeah, I think it was interesting that during the last election we found some companies who actually came down on the side of democracy, and of course, people on the right were highly critical of that I think shocked in fact to find out the people who traditionally had been supporters of the Republican Party were suddenly being critical of the Republican Party and what had happened during the November election. And by the way that brings me to Fox News which a question from the audience is here and they want to know what can we do about Fox News and I'd be interested in anybody who has any ideas about that, or are they just a fact of life, you have to live with them, because of the marketplace of ideas. Yeah, 30% of Americans who said at the beginning believe that Donald Trump won the election, 15% of Americans believe that Q and on and what they say is true. What do we do about that. And that's the same question as my what do we do about Fox News. Do we want someone to have the power in our society to say that those things are false and to exclude speech that we believe is false. What would we want to give that power to, I'd be very afraid to say, somebody has the power to say, This is what's true and false with the Gordy election or Q and on around Fox News, because if you give that power to us today. Tomorrow we're not going to be an authority, and they're going to decide that what we believe is false and censor us. So if you don't like Fox News, don't watch Fox News, but I don't think the solution can be censorship or liability for the speech that we don't like. Let me just say, one of the things that stuns me is the Tucker Carlson, however, is used in court cases and defense that nobody believes, pretty much what he says and therefore, how can you possibly criticize him for saying things that are untrue because actually he's just a story teller. No problem there with our libel loss or what? Yeah, but that of course mean and this has come up in the context of Sidney Powell in the false things she said about the election machines. And there is liability for defamation false things that injure reputation. And there should be liability for that. And I think it's a silly defense for Sidney Powell to say, Oh, no one believed me anyway, that's never been a defense to defamation. So I'm not an absolutist. I do think we can have liability for defamation other things, but I'm very afraid of giving anyone the power to decide in our society, what's politically true and what's false and censor what we don't like. Yeah, I'd like to make the point that I don't think that's the put that's what I'm saying or I'm not saying that the government should decide what is true and false and I don't think any reasonable person would say that. What I'm saying is that social medias don't take two ideas and put them on an equal platform. They don't take Trump won the election Trump didn't win the election and give them fair ground. They are biased. They give the most outrageous conspiratorial and sensational content more airtime than less airtime and I'm simply saying, I don't want to hold the companies or the government responsible for what's true or not but I want a fair marketplace. And I don't think it's too much to ask for a fair marketplace, by all means, let all the ideas be out there, but let's let it be fair. Let's not favor the most outrageous salacious. And because they're doing exactly what you are afraid of, but in the opposite direction. And I'm just trying to level the playing field as opposed to saying what is true and what is not true which I don't think we want to get in the business of doing. I think the question is that I think we would wish many of us that their algorithms didn't try to focus on the most outrageous communications because that gets the adrenaline pumping and gets us all very excited and we want to know more and more and more. But how do we do that. I mean it's not clear to me that there's an obvious way to do it, short of trying to really get inside the algorithms and tell the media companies how to do those things. Sure, I don't think there is an obvious way to do it and I think it has to be a multi dimensional. So first of all, we need some competition in Silicon Valley there's basically five tech companies right now and they're multi trillion dollar companies. And there's no oxygen and Silicon Valley for better ideas for better business model for a better moral compass. And so we need to really think about how to give some oxygen and by the way, when when Google steps up and says no no no we should not be rather regulating the technology sector or doing anything with antitrust. We should remind the folks at Google is that the reason they exist is because the Department of Justice stepped in and told Microsoft and knock it off and give room to this little upstart and so there is room for the government to step in and say we need more oxygen. I disagree with Irwin here I think we need modest sensible regulation to hold the company somewhat responsible for how their algorithms are selecting content not for what it's being selected but for how it's selecting. We obviously need more education. We obviously need technology to do better on the algorithmic side without introducing a whole nother set of biases for example, we don't want algorithms that are biased against content generated by women or content generated by people of color so we have to be thoughtful about that. And I don't think any one of these things is going to get us but I think we have to pull on all of these strings equally and find a more civilized online platform and look. Don't get me wrong I'm a technologist I'm a computer scientist by training I believe in the power of technology I really do, but this is not the internet I was promised 20 years ago. Thank you, Susan next and then I want to end with data who's going to tell us what she thinks the future of journalism is. I just wanted to say that I made this point less well before but I wanted to say very bluntly that I think it'll be a real shame if democracy dies on the altar of free speech. You don't get to have free speech and authoritarian regimes it's just not how it works we don't see that anywhere. And so I think that I just want to emphasize that we have to get at this I remember it's been a long time since I took and or GSI for constitutional law, but I'm pretty sure that you can't falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. And I believe that still holds and there just has to be a way for us to do something about this. The other thing I just wanted to add for those who are interested in this there's a wonderful book by Robert dollars older called after the Revolution and he talks about the power of expertise, versus the power of democracy. And it is wonderful and you should read it I think it has some really interesting insights about when expertise is necessary for democratic system to continue to function. That's some of what we're talking about here. I feel like that's journalists in many cases. And Gita. So, I hope you can say some encouraging words that their future is possible for journalism. And I think as as has become clear in this conversation the solution has to be multifaceted. I think we're in a free speech it's not just government regulation it's not just focusing on social media because, as Erwin rightly pointed out what about Fox. So, we need to get beyond this state in human evolution where disinformation proliferates where unfair advantage and when we have a deeply polarized public here in the US but around the world and where authority or authoritarian regimes can use the unfair advantage that social media gives that kind of speech to benefit themselves and this is all putting democracy in great danger and putting and journalism in great danger and it matters as like the oxygen of democracy. I am gravely worried but I'm also hopeful because it is so vital to democracy and because as some of you have noted powerful business interests also want to operate in a democracy. I'm hopeful that we that a coalition of the good and of people deeply committed to democracy will emerge and is emerging right now on this campus and elsewhere to stand up and invest in journalism as a vital tool for democracy and in democracy itself and and and in being bold taking risks thinking out of the box. I'm not holding on to any one principle that worked in the past as being the ultimate one that we all need to serve for the greater good of democracy in this country. Well, thank you get in and it shows what an important role by the way the university is playing in a lot of this I think I want to thank an extraordinary panel and a wonderful discussion. Get in on the graduate school of journalism dean Erwin Chemerinsky the dean of the law school and Erwin thank you especially for being willing to push a particular point of view and give us something to discuss which was great. Thank you to everybody who's the head of the School of Information Susan hide who's the chair of the Department of Political Science and john Powell who's director of the other in belonging Institute. This has been a fabulous panel I thank you all. Henry.