 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today for this event, the Digital Platform Commission Act, a webinar to talk about some recent legislation that Senator Bennett and Representative Welch introduced. We look forward to the conversation. Let me introduce myself. My name is Greg Geist, the Director of Government Affairs here at Public Knowledge. Public Knowledge's mission is to promote freedom of expression and open internet and access to affordable communication tools and creative works on behalf of the public interest. We look forward to the conversation we're having here today. This conversation actually began for public knowledge back in 2017 when we were addressing some of the due process concerns that platforms are raising. As we started looking into those issues, we noticed that this was more than just a one-off that this was actually a systemic problem, and a systemic problem calls for a systemic solution. Two of our panelists, Tom Wheeler and Harold Feld, also were working on this, and they said, you know what, we got to figure this out. And so they put out papers and some books that underpin the foundations of these bills that were introduced in Congress. Today, what we will do is we'll hear from our bill sponsors first, and then we'll turn it over to Prince Albert, who I'll introduce after the videos, and have a discussion around these bills. With that, let's go ahead and roll the videos. Hi, everybody. It's Michael Bennett. I want to start by thanking Public Knowledge and especially Harold Feld for hosting this discussion and for your leadership on this issue. Harold, as you know, literally wrote the book on why we need a digital platform commission, and his work set the stage for the introduction of our bill. I also want to thank Chairman Wheeler for his leadership and partnership. I spoke with Tom about this idea earlier in the year, and we wouldn't be where we are today without his support and expertise. Let me start by recognizing that no other country on earth can claim the staggering success of America's tech sector. The rapid rise of companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook testify to America's capacity for innovation. But the rapid rise of these companies has also given them vast power over our economy, society, and democracy, a power that remains almost entirely unregulated. As these companies move fast and break things, Americans are left to pick up the pieces. Consider the crisis of teen mental health. Even before the pandemic, teen suicides increased 60% in the U.S. Social media isn't solely to blame, but as the father of three daughters who grew up in its grip, I have no doubt it plays a role. Facebook's own research links Instagram use with poor teen mental health, and a majority of teenagers today say they're addicted to social media. The rise of these platforms has also created enormous pressure on small businesses. In today's economy, small businesses have to sell online to survive. And although platforms like Google have given them powerful new tools to reach customers, they can also take a cut of 30% or more. Worse, one tweak to a platform's algorithm can privilege their own products while dooming a competitor. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I also see how digital platforms have amplified foreign disinformation. Ahead of the 2016 and 2020 elections, Vladimir Putin wielded disinformation to tear at every division in our society and to great trust in our institutions, abetted by social media bots, rage-hungry algorithms, and complacency by platforms that put their growth above our democracy. All the while, Washington has been content to wag its finger and literally do nothing. The situation is unsustainable, but not unprecedented. After Upton Sinclair exposed ghastly conditions in meatpacking facilities, Congress finally created the Food and Drug Administration in 1906. As broadcasting became more central to American life, Congress created the Federal Communications Commission in 1934. It created the Securities and Exchange Commission following reckless behavior on Wall Street that led to Black Tuesday. In each case, Congress understood that it lacked expertise to effectively oversee complex sectors of the economy, so it empowered an independent body with the mandate tools and teeth to protect the public interest. Today, there is no such body for digital platforms, and that's why I introduced a bill last month to create a Federal Digital Platform Commission, an independent body with five Senate-confirmed commissioners to protect consumers, promote competition, and ensure platforms operate in the public interest. The commission would have the power to hold hearings, conduct research, and pursue investigations. Most important, it could establish thoughtful rules of the road for the sector and enforce penalties. For the past 20 years, American teens, parents, businesses, and election officials have battled alone to get some of the most powerful companies in human history, and they're losing ground. Let's level the playing field with the new Federal Digital Platform Commission. Thank you. And now we'll hear from Representative Welch, who is the House sponsor of this legislation. I want to thank Public Knowledge for the tremendous work you've been doing, particularly Harold Feld, and also Tom Wheeler, who is president. You know, what has happened with digital communications in the whole tech industry since the passage in 1996 of Section 230 is astonishing and in some ways devastating and very threatening. The whole promise of tech, and obviously there's huge benefits and there's been enormous economic benefits as well, has come with a cost, which we're only now beginning to face in significant part through the leadership of Public Knowledge. But the whole premise of Section 230 was that we stand aside and let the tech companies develop and do what they can do best. And we hoped, and to some extent worked out, that our tech industry would get a head start, and they did. What none of us anticipated were that many of the promises that the Zuckerbergs of the world made that the tech revolution would connect us all turned out to be fantasy. And in fact, worse than fantasy in many ways has been very destructive because it has become something that has been used to divide us. It's having significant impacts on our democracy, significant impacts on the mental health of young people, significant impacts on competition in our society, significant impacts on our democracy and election interference. And of course, what we've seen is that the tech industry has used Section 230 basically as a carte blanche. They've created algorithms that spur interactions in clicks and the more clicks they get, the more advertising revenue they make. And of course, they get more clicks with more controversy. And of course, that ultimately gets into disinformation. We've seen that their capacity to get data, which they monetize, creates a huge privacy concerns and loss of custody of information for individuals whose information is being monetized. We've seen how in the whole debate that must take place in the public sphere, if we're going to have a viable and energetic democracy gets traumatized by the misinformation. And we've seen how it also results in local media deserts and that local information from trusted local news sources is something that's been essential to our democracy is very much under threat. In Congress, there's been a growing realization that something's out of whack. But each time we try to take something up, it's like a one off. We try to do something on privacy. We try to do something on data security. We talk about election misinformation. And the reality is we can't keep up. We're not staffed to do it. That's why it is time, if not past due time, to have a digital authority that is going to be staffed up with experts. It's going to have the resources necessary basically to act on behalf of the public interest. And that'll be a debate. What's the public interest? But what we have is not the public interest. It's the private interest of the tech companies who are doing just fine. Thank you. Where they are totally in control and don't have to answer to democratic values. So we get a digital authority in many ways. It's like in the past when the securities industry was totally out of whack. And we created Securities and Exchange Commission when the railroads were running rampant and really sticking it to farmers and consumers. And we created the Interstate Commerce Commission. It's really time that we do that when it comes to big tech. And the goal, as I mentioned, would be that you have a public entity properly staffed and resourced whose function is to serve the public and not essentially be a cheerleader for the tech industry. So thank you public knowledge. Thank you, Harold. Thank you, Tom, for all your leadership on this. Again, I'm looking forward to working with Senator Bennett, who has a similar bill almost identical in the Senate, and get this going. We need your help and let's stay at it. Well, thank you, Senator Bennett and Representative Welch for those remarks. I would just say I think Representative Welch's point that this is not a job that Congress can do is another great reason why we need this. With that, I want to turn it over to the moderated portion of our webinar and introduce our policy council will be moderating our discussion and introducing our panelists. Antoine Prince Albert III we calling Prince works in our government affairs department on a variety of internet platform issues, including platform governance competition, artificial intelligence algorithms section 230 using licensing and more. We actually have other staff but Prince is killing it prior to joining PK Prince worked at Georgetown's Institute of technology law and policy is center on privacy and technology with Senator Ron Wyden and at the leadership conference for civil and human rights. Before working as a public interest advocate and tech and telecom space. Prince also served as an officer in the United States Navy, and as a high school teacher. He holds a JD from Georgetown Law Center and his vet is a very proud alumnus of more house college with that Prince, I will turn this over to you. Hi everyone and thank you so much Greg for that very comprehensive introduction. We have people joining from all over the world on zoom but this event is also being live streamed on public knowledge is YouTube channel as well. So for those who can't stay until the end, don't worry, you know, we will post the entire event and conversation on our YouTube channel. As the panelists shared their insights, you will see links to longer versions of their work in the chat as they speak for live streamers also don't worry all those links we share today will either be sent to attendees and a follow up email after this event, or you can find in the description of the YouTube video. Before we begin with the meat and potatoes of our discussion today, I have the honor of introducing our esteemed panelists. First, we have the honorable Mr Tom Wheeler. Tom is a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and is the CEO of the Shiloh Group strategy development and private investment company, specializing in telecommunication services. Tom is a businessman and author and was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017. For over four decades, he has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services. At the FCC, he led the efforts that resulted in the adoption of net neutrality consumer privacy protections, and increased cybersecurity policies. Prior to being appointed to FCC chairman by President Barack Obama, Tom was the managing director at Core Capital Partners. He co founded Smart Brief, the internet's largest curated information service for vertical markets. Tom served as the CEO of several other high tech companies. And notably, he was the president and CEO of two very important trade associations, the National Cable Television Association or NCT as we call it, and the cellular telecommunications and internet association CTIA. Tom, thank you for bringing your breath of technology and telecom experience to our discussion about the DPCA. Thanks Tom. Again, Megan Foster is currently the deputy chief of staff and legislative director for Congressman Peter Welsh, the people's representative for the great state of Vermont. Before joining Representative Welsh, Megan served as a senior policy advisor for Senator Tom Udall, as well as a legislative assistant for Senator Mark McGitch. When she was born and raised in rural Ohio, she lived in Alaska for five years where she worked for various members of the state legislature. Megan now lives in Washington DC with her husband and her very cute rescue dogs, Sierra. So welcome Megan. I also have Vivek Chalukri. He serves as the deputy chief of staff for Senator Michael Bennett, the Democratic Senator from the great state of Colorado. Vivek has worked for the Senate since 2017 and previously served as a speechwriter and senior advisor for policy concerning technology telecommunications Senate. He served at the U.S. Department of State as a speechwriter and advisor to the undersecretary for civilian security democracy and human rights as a political appointee in the Obama administration. Vivek earned a master of public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Robertson scholar. Welcome Vivek. First but certainly not least, we have our very own Harold Feld. Harold is the senior vice president at Public Knowledge and the author of the case for the Digital Platform Act, a guide to what government can do to preserve competition and empower individual users in the huge swath of our economy now referred to as big tech. Harold described this book as a tour de France of the issues raised by the digital economy and internet capitalism in 2017 Illinois Senator Dick Durbin praised Harold for his blog saying quote, it's doing a lot of work, helping people understand how the FCC's decisions affect people and communities on the ground and quote. Even in 20 years Harold has practiced law at the intersection of technology broadband and media policy and broke the private sector and in the public interest community. Harold holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a law degree from Boston University, and has clerked for the DC Court of Appeals. Harold, thank you for bringing your advocacy passion and your brilliance to our discussion about the DPCA. Okay, let's jump right in with Tom. Tom as the chairman of a sector specific regulator. How did that experience shape your thoughts around the need for another sector specific regulator for digital platforms. You're on mute Tom. We want to catch it all. There. There you go. You know it's that's that's the expression of the 21st century. You're on mute. But thank you, Prince. Thank you, public knowledge to to Harold fell the Dean of such activities. I want to describe you as that your book as a tour de force, not the tour de France. However, keeping up with you is like beating in a bicycle race. And so I think Prince is absolutely spot on in in his description, but thanks for the invitation. Thank you especially to Congressman Welsh and Senator Bennett. Thank you for your leadership on this important issue. It would have been an idea, just cooking around if they hadn't actually birthed it with Megan and Vivek's strong efforts. So you asked the question of how did my experience as a regulator affect this. I mean 110% is how it affected. Because I saw firsthand the need for an expert agency to deal with specific issues you know we have always as new issues come along had expert agencies and let me just make one thing clear. This, you know, hooray for the Federal Trade Commission. And the Pentagon and the wonderful staff at the FTC, but they are challenged when it comes to being the principal agency dealing with the issues raised by the dominant digital platforms. They're limited mostly to ex post activities they have limited rulemaking authority, and they have an incredibly broad scope of responsibility over the entire economy which seems to keep getting broader as everybody wants to add new things or expect new trust enforcements from the FTC and and we need a an agency with technical expertise that isn't torn by its other priorities and you know it's interesting that that both Senator Bennett and Congressman Welch reference the Securities and Exchange Commission is an example of an expert agency. I don't think any of us can imagine the SEC or the financial markets without the SEC's oversight. And the SEC used to be the function used to be in the FTC until it was spun off to create this kind of a focused agency. And I think that's what we're talking about now. So, so while the headline of this discussion and the, and the legislation may be the creation of a new digital platform commission. You ask about my experience and how it shaped the recommendation that Phil Revere and and Gene Kimmelman and I collectively put together up at Harvard. And that is that we also need not just a new commission but we need new oversight processes that you know the company is complaining about the rigidity of regulation. In the last few years the regulatory model was built in the industrial era when things moved a bit more slowly. And when the legislators in looking at how they're going to structure these agencies looked to the management of the industrial sector and cloned it. And what was industrial management like? It was based on what was called Taylorism, Frederick W. Taylor's model, which was a very much command and control rigid system. No company today operates like that. And regulators who are overseeing Agile management digital companies also need to be practicing Agile management, Agile regulatory management. And the conclusion to answer your question specifically, Prince, the conclusion that my experience as a specialized agency regulator says is one, we need experts with focused responsibility. We need new procedures that involve the companies in a different way in the development of that oversight to adopt a kind of Agile regulation that mirrors the Agile management that has delivered these wondrous new products and services. Thank you, Tom. And you're right, it is, Harold's book really is a tour de force in this space, along with your work. Harold, you have a new nickname, the Dean of this field. Tom has just made the case for a sector specific regulator, but why should Congress make a brand new agency? Why not a bureau, kind of like as Tom mentioned as the SEC once was. Talk us through your calculus of why not a bureau, but let's just start with a new agency with the urgency of now. Yes, and I did want to emphasize one of the points that Tom raised, which is industry always says it's the wrong time to regulate. It's too soon, it's too soon, and now it's too late, you know, turned out Tuesday at 3am was the one time you could have passed, you know, effective legislation, but you know who knew at the time. So we need to recognize that absolutely the time is now it is neither too soon nor too late to pass legislation to create a sector specific regulator here now. Now, why a sector specific regulator, why not start with a bureau at the Federal Trade Commission. We have had that experience in the past where, you know, the, the telephone element of the FCC started as part of the Interstate Commerce Commission. SEC started as part of the Federal Trade Commission, but there are times when the technology in question is both so radically new that it requires separate and specialized expertise, and also so critical to the economy that you need to construct a new agency in order to provide the proper oversight the food and drug administration was an excellent example of that. As we moved into the age of modern medicine, we found an industrialized food production technologies that simply hadn't existed before and in a very short time became central to the economy and to people's lives. We discovered okay, we can't just put this as part of somewhere else it needs to stand on its own two feet, it has to have its own special mission from the get go it has to have its own set of experts. The same thing with the Federal Radio Commission, which was the predecessor to the one of the predecessors to the Federal Communications Commission radio in the course of just two decades went from being a hobbyist activity among what we now would call ham radio operators to the electronic voice of news and public opinion in every local community, having enormous and outsized potential influence on our democracy. So, we did not try to to create some kind of little agency or sub Bureau first we went right to the Federal Radio Commission because it was that important, and so highly technical that we needed to stand up an expert agency immediately. But we have the same issue here, the experience of the Federal Trade Commission, as kind of the general cop on the beat, which has tried to police these companies with highly inadequate tools does not have the highly specialized expertise that is needed to understand the federal platforms and that's not just me saying that that's Francis, how then the most famous of the Facebook whistleblowers. It's other folks who have studied this as well. These industries have rapidly morphed into something that is very different from the types of businesses with which the FTC has had to has had to regulate in the past. Now, again, this is not a knock on the FTC, but if we were to try to make the FTC into the the enforcer here we would either have to do what some legislation that's been proposed now that doesn't want to take this step in other areas, such as the the draft privacy legislation which unlike the legislation that had been proposed by an issue, which was to create a separate agency this is taking a what seems to be the frankly more timid approach of well let's expand out the FTC, but it creates what essentially amounts to a sub agency within the FTC. We've seen other countries that have been looking at this and have been tentatively approaching this space have again essentially created United Kingdom did this created what essentially amounts to a sort of group agency among the very among the multiple countries that each have a piece of this sector if you looked at it in the terms of traditional jurisdictions. So, we need, you know, this is, we, we should not be timid. It's a good cause to move forward in creating an independent agency, and we should do so now, rather than take a timid approach and have, you know, perhaps 10 or 15 years of ineffective regulation as a sub agency tries to do the job of a full agency and move ahead as we need to do. Thank you Harold for explaining why we need to start with an agency right now. Megan at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on extremism and misinformation last March and 2021 Congressman Welsh was the first member of Congress to ask the big tech companies for their thoughts on a digital regulator. What inspired his question and what has driven the congressman's vision for a dedicated digital regulator to bring to life what Harold and Tom have really discussed as as the need. Thank you so much for the recognition of the congressman's early advocacy for it. I was in preparation for this panel I was looking through to see the history, and I started work on this from an email from him in October of 2020. We've been in conversations with Chairman Wheeler, and with others, and he'd sat in, you know, many energy and commerce committee hearings, many house intelligence oversight hearings. And it was the same problem being raised all the time and people, you know, saying we need to do something about childhood safety we need to do something about algorithms and we need, but everything was very siloed. And through his conversations with Mr Wheeler he was able to take a step back and really see the value of creating a new agency that has broad regulatory authority, and most important, the ability to create robust rules for everybody within this sector, with technologists who understand the technology that they're regulating and I think that's a really critical thing that we need to think about, you know, as everybody said everybody on this panel are incredible advocates for our federal workers at the Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, but they don't have the resources necessary to tackle the problem that we see with these companies that are impacting every single one of our communities, our family members, our children. So that's when we really dug into the issue and we were able to have these great conversations with folks from professors, we've spoken to the technology companies, public advocates, and worked through the details to think about what the problems were. In March of 2020 at that hearing he released a memo to all of the committee members and said, Here's the problem that we're facing. Come join me. And we had a lot of people say yeah that's a great idea. Have fun. We'll see you, we'll see you later. I understand that you know it's it's a hard issue to tackle but you know Congressman Welch doesn't shy away from those kind of problems he likes to have dig into the policies and have these intellectual conversations, and this is the start of the conversation and we are kicking off the DCP day and saying, Okay, we've put out a proposal. Let's talk through the details let's keep going forward. And so that's how he views it is this the marker for the start of the conversation, and we're really excited about the engagement that we're getting so far. In the wake, Senator Bennett has also led the charge in the Senate for regulating digital platforms that have quote amassed extraordinary power over our economy, society and democracy, as Harold and Tom really laid out. In the in his Senate video as well he acknowledged that you know Congress can't write all the rules for the sector, but you know he also doesn't believe that Congress has to leave it to the companies to write their own rules. So tell us how does Senator Bennett envision a regulator fitting in the middle of that dichotomy over time. And I also just want to echo with Senator Bennett said at the beginning in his video which is huge gratitude to public knowledge Harold held chairman Wheeler and Congressman Welch for all their leadership and partnership on this, you know what we think is a historic and you know I think, like Megan said we view this very much as the start of the conversation, because this is a very ambitious idea about a complicated and far reaching subject. And you know we welcome everybody's views about how to make it better because we certainly don't believe we have a monopoly on wisdom but to your question Harold. I think you know when we were considering this, the framing idea was who, you know, it's not it's completely unsustainable for us to live in a world where there are no rules for some of the largest companies and most powerful companies, not only in our economy but in human history, if you actually think about it. And then the question is who gets to write the rules. And right now the companies themselves, for the most part are writing their own rules. And we've seen how that's gone. You know, as Senator Bennett said, where they get it right, it's fine but we're basically entirely relying on their goodwill and their willingness to act in good faith which in some cases they are but oftentimes, you know they're breaking down and asking for forgiveness later and whether it's team mental health or the effects on small businesses or the effects on our democracy I mean we're going to go living through the January six hearings, right now in the house. And you know there is a direct relationship between the way that, you know, crazy ideologies, sorry disinformation often abetted by foreign disinformation campaign spins people up, and then we see it manifest in real harm in the real So we can't let these companies write their own rules and the question is, just Congress write the rules or do we hand it to a group of experts and I think if you think about Congress as an institution it becomes immediately clear that there would be huge problems with just leaving this entirely up to And we have, I mean as Senator Bennett has said before the average age at least in the Senate is about a million years old so these, you know, this is a, this is a hundred group of people who most of them probably wouldn't be able to describe what an algorithm is let alone regulate it, just to be blunt. And, you know, and in the same way would be ludicrous for us to expect the United States Congress, even when it worked, let alone the Congress that we have today to approve pharmaceutical drugs or to write safety standards for airplanes or cars I mean nobody would even imagine that that would make sense today. And yet that's essentially what we've expected them to do for a sector that's frankly moving faster than any of the sectors that I just mentioned. So, I think that's where he comes down on it and also just to think about Congress as an institution I mean you have staff that are turning over constantly. You have, you know, not all the staffers impressive as Megan, who have the expertise here a lot of them are young there's huge information asymmetries when lobbyists know the groups come in here and they say, you know, they just know a lot more. And that is a form of, you know, that is a huge problem for this institution's ability to regulate an extremely complicated sector and so, you know, and also just in some ways by nature of the digital platforms and how they've affected our political discourse, you know, we very much chase the shiny objects not we as an office but as an institution we chase the shiny objects. So, as Megan mentioned, you know, there's a bit, you know, there's a bad headline and a controversy about privacy or teen mental health or small businesses and then a week or two later you see a very narrow bill about that thing that by the way usually goes nowhere. And Lou of what is required which is a comprehensive approach so that's why Senator Bennett and I think Congressman Welch has been sounding the alarm on this for long for a long time came to this issue so we think experts who can sit in an agency for a while to develop the expertise to come with expertise who can write, who can take the longer view who are frankly getting paid at a level where they're not going to be intended to just become a lobbyist after working here for a couple of years. You know, I think it's a superior long term approach and one that is not new it's something that we've done many times in our history as Tom Harold Megan and others have said. Thank you Vivek, you know I'm also thinking about, you know, airplane and airplane standards as an example of needed regulation in the role of the FAA among our litany of examples of how regulation is good but Tom. Some people don't like regulation right on they say regulations stifles innovation, but given your experience as both an entrepreneur and helping entrepreneurs. Can you explain how the digital platform Commission can support innovation, how would the agency actually help companies of all sizes. Well thanks Prince let me let me go back and build on something that Vic and mega just said though. who ray for Senator Bennett, who ray for Congressman Welch, they took the leadership, but let's not kid ourselves. When the rubber meets the road, it falls to folks like Megan and Vivek to be able to bring that to reality. And so, thank you to them for what they did to make this happen. Second point. You know, Adam Smith is the father of the invisible hand of the marketplace and they say fair. And even Adam Smith said you need to have rules. That the marketplace cannot operate without rules. You know, I love this point that you you asked about that you know the companies go around and say, Oh, innovation and investment is going to be destroyed as a result of regulation. In my experience, it's the first refuge of those who don't want any rules and want the ability to make the rules themselves to benefit themselves. And you hear it time and time and time again. You know, when we heard it in net neutrality it was going to be the end of broadband investment and low and behold in the three years that net neutrality was in effect. The investment by the broadband companies was greater than the three years before when it wasn't. You know, we heard the companies say as a one of the rationale for for the Trump tax cuts. Oh, you give us these tax cuts and we'll invest it what they do they turn it around, and they spend it on stock buybacks. And just the other day, I saw, I saw a Bloomberg piece, Facebook fought rules that could have exposed fake, fake Russian ads. And you go into what Facebook was saying in 2017 on the question of whether or not they needed to reveal who was sponsoring ads. And they said, Oh, you can't do that, because that would be standing in the way of innovation. And I love what Vivek has been saying about how it's, it's break things and then beg for forgiveness. We need to be out front on that we need to recognize that the, Oh, this is going to hurt innovation and investment is an old war horse. We need to be mighty tired. You know, when when I was chairman of the FCC was constantly being told regulation is too rigid and stifling. So in several areas, we created agile situational rules, such as the general conduct standard for net neutrality. And was, Oh, that's regulatory uncertainty, because we don't know what the rules are. Well, wait a minute, you can't turn around and say regulation stifles innovation and investment. And then when you don't have regulation but still have expectations, say, Oh, that's regulatory uncertainty, you cannot argue both sides what it really means is we want no public interest oversight. Let us make the rules to favor ourselves. And go back to Adam Smith, even Adam Smith says we need rules. Last point, competition drives innovation. Protecting the ability to compete, which starts with protecting the public interest in consumers. Protecting the ability to compete drives the ability to attract capital. And that drives innovation. So the impact on innovation, the impact on investment, like I say is a tired war or horse. And, and what it really means is that it's only us who should be making the rules. It's only us who should be allowed to innovate and keep the public interest out of it. And we need to pierce the veil of that incredibly misleading and incredibly hypocritical concept. Thank you Tom. Wow, even Adam said wanted rules on that. That's going to be my tweet after this. Megan and Vivek, right, we're talking about rules of the road, right, as Tom is mentioning. And the regulator that you know the senator and the congressman have envisioned is one with broad jurisdiction over the sector, but it imposes special rules for systemically important digital platforms. Why is that important I'll take Megan first and then Vivek. Yeah, thank you so much. I think what's important and we all have seen examples of this of a company that is critical for technology but might not hold the size standard that you know of an apple of an Amazon, but still needs special rules and special consideration. And for example if it's a technology that's serving a special specialized population and needs to have some special consideration, that's really what was driving a lot of our thinking on it, and I'm happy to defer to Vivek next. No, I think I think Megan, Megan covered a lot of it I think it's a simple idea if we kind of borrowed from, you know, you guys remember the Dodd-Frank regulation the financial sector I mean it's not exactly comparable, you know, with the idea of too big to fail there were some institutions that had achieved such extraordinary influence in that case there was a question of moral hazard which is not totally the equivalent in this case but the point being that, you know, some of these largest digital platforms, because of that outside influence on our economy and our society they should be subject to a higher level of scrutiny and that just means that, you know whether it comes to making sure that the platforms are having public risk assessments for what's swirling around on their feeds or making sure that the platforms are transparent or safe or, you know, making sure that they're accessible to a range of you know populations whether you know they're hearing or impaired or otherwise so I think, you know, it's a pretty consistent view of this with other forms of regulation like we've seen the financial sector and I think a point that Prince mentioned I think is worth reiterating is, you know, a lot of bills in Congress focus only on the biggest platforms and you can see why they are the ones that drive the headlines, but there is a much broader ecosystem of digital platforms that often fly into the radar of these bills that are also the source of many of our challenges whether it's Gab or parlor or 4chan and, you know, content that germates on these platforms often breaks into the mainstream gets on, you know, not even just social media but broadcast television and you know I think it would be a mistake to only focus on the biggest platforms even though we acknowledge the bill that it is a particular scrutiny. So that's it but thank you. Yeah, no and I'll just build on that point because I think the other important component is we see the bills that have very specific parameters of what should be regulated it should be a company of XYZ size, and as the marketplace changes then you have to go back to Congress and seek permission for a change. What's innovative and smart about our bill if I would say so ourselves is that we give this agency the flexibility to adjust to the marketplace as it changes, which is critical for any futuristic view of what is needed in this in this sector. Both for those answers kind of building on each other and speaking to each other and the ways in which the legislative texts do. Um, you know Harold this kind of reminds me of conversations we have around the office right about size, and the role that history really plays in helping us decide what to do today. It is once been said there's nothing new under the sun. And there's a lot I think we could learn from like the AT&T example that many of us talk about often. So what important lessons can Congress and a dedicated regulator learn from the consumer protection and the antitrust actions taken against the legacy company. Yeah, and, and this is a great point, especially since the AT&T breakup is often held up as one of the most successful and important breakups of the 20th century. John Oliver pointed it out, just this past week in an episode everybody should see but and our own Al, 16 was Al Kramer I'm sorry Al Kramer, you know just wrote a paper on it. And what's important here is to understand the interplay of different agencies for one thing and what they each do well. The Department of Justice does antitrust real well that's why the pending antitrust package which needs to which is, you know pending now needs to go through this bill is not a substitute for that. This is additive which is what the AT&T shows when we talked about the expertise that the FTC doesn't have for digital platforms the XB the expertise that they do have is in competition and antitrust and so expanding their authority there and giving them tools to deal with this unique environment is critically important but at the same time, the effects of the AT&T breakup would have been incomplete and transitory without the Federal Communications Commission to provide necessary regulation. And these things worked with each other we talk about how the break up of AT&T was important to the development of the internet, but so were the FCC computer proceedings which created the regulations that were ultimately incorporated into the final judgment. We talk about the things like when we broke up AT&T one of the things the FCC did that was critically important was to create rules for how new companies would be able to come in to these markets it wasn't enough to just take a very complicated market where the company that had been in position for 100 years break it up into one dominant long distance firm and a bunch of little local monopolies and say, okay, let competition flourish and let innovation happen. It was necessary for an expert agency to be there both before and after and say, yeah well you know what, these are rules we're going to have in place that will allow new competitors to enter the market. And that is that we're going to prevent the dominant company from using its existing dominance from suppressing these new competitors. We are going to decide when it's okay for the dominant company to pick up the innovations because we don't want that company to become an ineffective the company we want every as I like to say I'm a consumer advocate my my response to all these companies is compete for my love compete for my love. So, the important lesson here from history is that any trust is critically important, and that's where the expert competition agencies come in. They have the experience, they know where the dotted lines are where you have to cut these things in order to, to create the new marketplace. The expert agency needs to make sure that we don't see these dominant firms come back together and regrow. And the other sad lesson from the last 20 years of regulation in the communication space has been when the expert agency sleeps. When we remove the safeguards that were in there, whether it was the spectrum cap that kept wireless companies competing whether it was, you know, the the things that prevented the the local telephone monopolies from keeping their monopolies on special access or, you know, the access to the data long haul, letting cable keep its access to the set top box. All of these things, when the regulator fell down. We saw dominance reemerge. And that's why we need a, you know, to have both of these, the, the antitrust and the regulator and yes, sometimes the regulator will fall down but you know what, it's better to have a regulator that can actually get back up to them once it has fallen down them and what Tom did with the FCC, to promote competition is a excellent example of that. Then it is to just not have an agency at all and let the companies dictate what they're going to do on their own. Yeah, thank you Harold and also thank you for highlighting the work of former FTC competition Bureau director and PK's own beloved senior fellow Al Kramer in explaining about this history. I also have to remark Harold, the second tweet of the hour is compete for my love so thank you Harold. I do want to pick back up on kind of something that Harold is saying about the role of history, right and not only just legacy large companies, but legacy regulators right and how those conflicts were resolved. So, Megan, I know representative Welsh was definitely inspired by the FCC's organization and mandate, you know it's evident in section for the establishment section, section six on organization in general power section seven on functioning commission. Why did the congressman use the FCC as the basis for really building an agency that can regulate this new sector. Thank you. I think when we looked and surveyed what currently exists and you know trying to create an agency out of whole cloth is you know incredibly difficult as everybody can attest, but we thought about, we wanted to look at the agencies that currently exist and what which of the agencies were doing the good job. The FCC has the structure that allows for robust rulemaking robust dialogue between technologists and those that they're regulating which we think is a really important component to any work that an agency does. It also has the history to show, you know where it needs areas of improvement for regulation and, you know, as we create the founding documents, what things can be improved and then lessons learned so we can make sure to include any corrections. So that's really what was our focus and you know we think it came together really well we think it provides a very strong structure to grow from. Thank you Megan. We may go over just one or two minutes because we got to catch all these nuggets of wisdom that are here right now. So my next question, the vague, as you know, a key feature of Senator Bennett's draft is section eight, the Code Council. How does the Code Council resolve, perhaps conflicting approaches to resolving social issues or societal issues with platforms. And then Tom I'd love to hear your thoughts as well after Vivek on the Code Council and how it might be able to help innovation. Well, you can be to it because I was going to, I was going to invite Tom to chime in because he, you know, he was the one we worked with the most closely on this particular provision of the Digital Platform Commission Act. And I mean, I think the logic for it is fairly straightforward. It's, you know, as much as we look to past regulatory approaches for inspiration, how to deal with a basically unregulated and very powerful sector of the economy. We also know that the old way of doing things is not compatible with the 21st century information economy that we live in today. We need a faster and more nimble regulatory approach as Tom referenced. I think at the top of this discussion. And, you know, and I think one of the ways it's easier said than done, of course, I mean, one of the ways we thought about embedding that within the text of the bill is essentially creating a kitchen cabinet, which is what this Code Council is, that would have a seat at the table for industry because, you know, they, they do have insight that needs to be accounted for about their businesses. A seat at the table for civil society, you know, advocates from whether civil rights groups or privacy groups. And to the table for, you know, data scientists and computer scientists. And so giving them the opportunity to sit together and probably go into a greater level of depth than one of five commissioners that has probably a lot of other things on their, you know, agenda to deal and to, you know, work together to recommend specific behavioral codes or technical standards that the commission, you know, and if there are disagreements among the group, I think maybe that's what you're hinting at. For instance, with your question, they would decide by majority vote, but I think in, you know, to make a recommendation. And I think the important point, though, is that nothing in the Code Council is binding, right, it is, they can offer recommendation of the commission, that the commission can ignore or act upon. It's basically an in-house resource for them that they can use. And I think it's one of the ways that we're just trying to innovate in terms and update traditional approaches to regulation. But Tom, why don't you clean up anything that I screwed up? Well, there's nothing to clean up there. I mean, that's terrific. That's spot on. Look, the old regulatory model, as I said a minute ago, was based on old corporate management concepts, strong top down. Today, we have agile management. Let me give you an example. How did we get from 1G to 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G? And now we're working on 6G wireless technology. The industry came together and said we're going to create standards, technical standards. And they use that when they are consumers. They say, when we're consuming the product, we want to have standards that identify what practices will be and anticipate and mitigate what problems might be. But when we're selling to consumers, oh no, we don't want any of that. So what we were saying is, let's take the proven and successful standard setting technique that works for technology and apply it to behaviors. And let's make sure that those companies, as Avak just said, are at the table. But let's also make sure that we're not getting pretty PowerPoint presentations as a result. And that the agency has the approval to say, has the ability to say, first of all, this is what we want you to look at. Second of all, has a seat at the table to say, no, let's get real about this. Thirdly, has the ability then to say up or down on whether the standard that came out of the code council, the code that came out of the code council really was meaningful. And then the agency enforces that code. And so all we're trying to do is exactly the same kind of model that was done in the 19th century that and 20th century that doesn't work anymore but say, what are the systems that work for the companies, and how do we make it work for government. Thank you Tom. And you've actually given me our third quote, so we can close it now my third tweet is when companies are consumers they want rules, but when companies are providers they tend to not want rules. Thank you for that wisdom Tom and first I just want to congratulate Senator Bennett as well as Congressman Welsh for bringing a comprehensive solution to the digital platform space. Thank you Vivek and Megan for joining us today on their behalf. I want to thank Tom and Harold for your wisdom and experience and expertise, serving as our conversations foundation today. And I also want to thank our event logistics team, especially Michelle Abadiang for and the interns for all of their hard work in bringing this event together today so I must also lastly thank the audience the staffers from the Hill members of the general public for joining us from all around the world. Thank you everyone, and happy Juneteenth. And thank you to our master's ceremonies. Thank you Greg and to Prince here thank you very much. Yeah, thanks to print. Great job, Greg public knowledge.