 How much does President Donald Trump hate Section 230, the controversial law that gives internet service providers, website operators and social media platforms broad immunity from legal responsibility for user-generated content? He's threatened to veto funding for the military unless Congress completely terminates the law, which also allows social media sites to moderate or ban speech they don't like. Trump is joined in his contempt for Section 230 by Joe Biden. Section 230 should be revoked. Immediately. Should be revoked. Number one. Democrats argue that Section 230 allows hate speech and misinformation to proliferate and to throw elections, while Republicans say it's used to squelch conservative voices in the public square. Enter Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communication Commission. In October, after President Trump went on a tear about Twitter and Facebook restricting access to a New York Post story critical of Joe Biden's son Hunter, Pai said the FCC would be looking to clarify Section 230. Even though he's announced he's stepping down on January 20th and that Congress has ultimate responsibility for passing laws governing online speech, what Pai does in his final weeks could have a lasting impact. I spoke with him right before the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason TV awarded him the sixth annual Savas Award for privatization because of his market friendly policies, including facilitating the growth of 5G networks and ending FCC regulation of internet service providers, commonly known as net neutrality. In October, Pai said that many advance an overly broad interpretation of the law that in some cases shields social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text of Section 230. Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech, he continued, but they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters. In our interview, Pai talked more about transparency than repeal. A lot of these social media platforms aren't transparent about what algorithms they use, how they essentially decide what goes and what doesn't go. If there's upfront transparency, I think generally speaking, Americans can work around that and understand that, whereas now it's sort of a black box into which people import all of their preconceived views or perhaps mistaken views about what's going on and what's not. He seems convinced that if only people knew why different platforms made certain decisions, the system would be more fair. The platform would need to kind of explain how their algorithms work and why this type of content is going to get this sort of treatment and this type of content is going to get something else. I think the gist of it is, show your work as my math teacher used to tell me back in fifth grade is, okay, we know that you reached this conclusion, but what was the reason that got you there? And I think that's something that would serve everyone in the Internet economy. But leaving it up to the platforms to decide whether or not to reveal how they moderate content would be more in keeping with Pai's light touch approach to regulation. If consumers want social media platforms that explain themselves better, nothing stopping them from screaming bloody murder when the services act poorly and ultimately taking their business elsewhere. Although squelching access to the New York Post's Hunter Biden story was reprehensible, increased government regulation of such services is surely a worse outcome. Pai emphasized that Congress, not the FCC, needs to lead on what happens next. Our role here is relatively circumscribed. All we are doing is proposing to look at the immunity provision itself and to see whether or not terms like good faith require clarifications. Are you confident that the government of all people and that Congress is going to be able to rule with a light touch? I mean, the hallmark of your administration has been a light touch towards regulation, both of technology as well as of kind of speech. Where do you think that ends up? I would like to think that over the last three and a half years, we've been very consistent in saying that at the end of the day, markets as opposed to the government deliver far more value to American consumers. And whether it is a spectrum auction or the deployment of infrastructure or the content that goes over the internet, that generally speaking, what we've tried to do is enlarge the square and make sure that the market based on the aggregated decisions of millions of individual consumers, as opposed to someone like me, is the person making that determination. If Pi is vague about what his FCC might recommend before he steps down and is replaced by Joe Biden's pick for chairman, he is unambiguously concerned that online free speech is under attack. You know, that quote misattributed to Voltaire, I might disagree with what you say, but I'll fight for the deaths for your right to say it. What do you think the percentage of Americans who would agree with that now is 20%, 25? I've very much been worried about where that's going. Everyone is looking for the slightest hint of criticism from the other side or even from their own side and looking to penalize it. That's just not the America that I want to see. We've grown up generally speaking most of us with a culture of free speech and free expression. And I think we've often taken that for granted. Once that culture phrase, who puts it back together? It's not going to be a politician. It's not going to be a regulator. It has to be the aggregated decisions of millions of Americans to say, we want pluralism again. And there's every reason to believe that Biden's pick to replace Pi will work to bring far more government interference to the workings of the Internet, including when it comes to Section 230. That's what the future of online speech looks like right now, and it's not comforting.