 We are all here. I'm Nick Gillespie with Reason. I'm an editor-at-large there and today I'm joined by my Reason colleagues Zach Weismuller who is a video producer I think he's a senior producer or an obscene your producer and Robbie Swabe who is a senior editor at Reason magazine and also co-hosts rising on the Hill Website and YouTube channel every day gents. Thanks for joining me Good to see Nick hi and What we are talking about today in this Reason livestream is recent revelations about the inter-relationship between the DHS and other aspects of the federal government and Social media platforms like Twitter or like YouTube like Facebook Let's get right to it. Robbie. What did we learn this week that prompted this very conversation? Sure, so there was a new report from the publication the Intercept about efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to Surveil police, etc. Misinformation of conversations about social media platforms about Content on them that the government thinks is misinformation some of this honestly frankly is not as Earth-shattering or new if you've been kind of paying attention to these issues I still think it was very helpful story in in kind of Elucidating the relationship between national security officials and platform content moderation Really what the article does a good job of is is showing how the mission the mission creep of the Department of Homeland Security Which is you know a Bush era? Terrorism fighting that's ostensibly what its purpose is is to oppose violence and terrorism Into Concerns about pure speech and in this my the just the thing I wanted to read from this is that according to the most Recent Homeland Security review that the Intercept obtained They're in the department plans to target inaccurate information on topics such as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic Racial justice the US withdrawal from Afghanistan the efficacy of COVID vaccines and the nature of US support to Ukraine All of those things being policy topics on which it is absolutely I think legitimate to express a range of views. I think social media Ideally is a place to discuss those issues and we're learning that so many of the questionable moderation decisions We've seen on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and other places over the last few years Are actually not being freely and independently chosen by those platforms But are being pushed on them by the government by law enforcement. Do we worried about yeah? I mean and I might my job here today is as kind of moderator is to kind of push you guys on your knee jerk libertarian responses But you know Robbie briefly Can you talk a little bit about how you know? Is it you know it how exactly are these decisions forced on Facebook or you know YouTube Google Twitter? Or is it more like you know what like hey? Here's a bad thing. That's going around You know you guys should be aware of that Look some of this stuff falls into a gray middle zone I don't I think in many cases the government is not explicitly violating for instance the first amendment They're not passing a law that says Facebook has to take down discussion of the lab leak theory What they're doing instead is Arguably legal and constitutional maybe but they are their agents Including not even in DHS but in the White House itself. We've now seen the emails, etc The constant conversations between government officials and they'll say things like we're really concerned about this content We think you should do something about it You know be aware of this and then the backdrop is we're gonna haul your CEO before Congress next week and have him yelled at and We're gonna raise the prospect of antitrust and we do all these things section 230 might be up for grabs So it's a kind of soft pressure that the Kato Institute for instance is calling jaw boning I like this term a great deal I think we should get used to using it where it's it's it's a it's a pressure campaign And then sure you could say that well some of this content is bad fine. It's not all bad some there are legitimate things that have been discussions that have been shut down on COVID topics and on obviously the the the laptop the hunter-biden laptop story we can talk about that if you want There are legitimate conversations being chilled at the behest of the federal government It's very clear that's happening, but we don't know that the hunter laptop the hunter-biden laptop We don't know that it was the government that said hey You know if this is a bad story to be running a couple weeks before the 2020 election And and I mean I guess what I'm getting at here. I share all of your fears But why wouldn't we expect the people you know the kind souls at Facebook or Twitter to be like You know what this stuff is fucked up. We should we should deemphasize this or ban it completely On the hunter-biden story specifically I actually I disagree I think it was very much a part of a soft pressure campaign I mean I've spoken to people for my book on social media moderation I spoke to people at Facebook and I said what goes into a decision like that one to turn down that story out of fear That it is misleading and they said they rely on cues from the mainstream media and from law enforcement So the fact that And some of that is just the mainstream media, but the fact that 50 or however many top Law enforcement FBI NSA Warmer and current people sign a letter and say this has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign And they've already been in conversation with Facebook saying you got to really look out for Facebook worked at DHS and vice versa. There's a revolving door Of course Facebook and we saw this and we'll get to this in a second Mark Zuckerberg Was kind of suggesting that oh, well, you know the FBI told them You know a couple days before or you know a couple weeks before the election now There's weird stuff coming be on the lookout for of course Facebook isn't going to take responsibility for You know tramp tamping down on that story, you know I mean, but aren't these companies run by people who hate Everything that the hunter-biden laptop story and the New York Post stand for so I mean it's I guess what I'm asking is like how do we parse out and maybe it doesn't matter the blame-shifting that goes on Well, certainly there's blame-shifting going on But my my suspicion my hunch my I really do think that if you had less if you didn't have as much bad direction from the DHS CDC FBI agents you would not have had as much bad moderation of those subjects on social media And I think we will agree that the hunter-biden laptop story being spiked at At Twitter where you could not even reference it or link to it or anything That is proud. That's the most egregious Example of you know kind of social media De-platforming and then it was also that its reach was heavily reduced at Facebook But that's not the only thing we're talking about in a lot of ways that maybe we talk we might talk about that too much Because it's this every day kind of throttling of content that is probably in the end more influential Yeah, and also, I mean that it's very clear that for instance Alex Barenson who is someone I Strongly disagree with on a lot of COVID related topics But he was specifically singled out and you can you know, you can see the emails the documentation Singled out by the White House saying things like why is this still guy still allowed on the platforms for for again? Many of his statements about vaccines I think are totally wrong But one of the things they made him get taken down for was saying that like the vaccines are not gonna work to stop The spread of COVID which now you're allowed to say because now everyone can concede that while they're still preventing Severe infection and death. They're a great idea, particularly if you're an at-risk category, you know, don't mistake me I'm not saying anything of that nature But I think he should have been allowed to say what he was saying and and Twitter did not free They didn't it wasn't over their own volition They were they were jaw-boned into doing it if you look at the documentation. Yeah, well, let's let's go to Zach You know, I guess Zach, where do you stand on this jaw-boning issue? Is it? you have Back in 2018 you you wrote a piece about kind of the unholy alliance between government pressure and social media platforms and they're they're seemingly Self-generated actions and things like that Where where are you on, you know, kind of jaw-boning because why? You know, is that a bad thing the the government does not have any statutory Control over Facebook Twitter social media in the way that the FCC does have statutory authority to regulate content on Broadcast and you know network broadcast radio and TV, you know, why should we care? I mean why should of course the government is going to do this the real issue is how weak the social media companies are when it comes to Free speech and heterodox thought Yeah, my my interest in this really intensified around 2017-2018 when a lot of the discussion About what social media should be started to shift very dramatically after basically after Trump won the election there was all this talk of Russian disinformation and suddenly the found the founders and the CEOs of the social media companies who had previously Talked a pretty good game about we want this to be a fairly free marketplace of ideas that that that entire notion of you know kind of like what the the early internet was Started to be challenged and I think Robbie's right to really frame this in terms of mission creep And that that's one thing that I thought the intercept article did a really good job with was they took this back to back when DHS partnered with Twitter and other social media companies to de-platform Isis and so that's like an example of like, okay We can all kind of agree that Isis being on American social media is a bad thing But this is like exactly how mission classic mission creep. Yeah You start with the terrorists then usually it's like some sort of you know illegal immigrants or very unpopular domestic groups and then it just continually expands to more and more categories and I think that's what We're seeing now and what really Grabs my interest about this particular This this particular branch of DHS that we're talking about was Earlier this year they put out this memo about miss dis and mal information And there's one item on there, which I've highlighted here that caught my attention It's a DHS is working with public and private sector platforms as well as foreign counterparts to identify and evaluate MDM including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and so I was I've been very curious about what is the nature of that collaboration because The intercept article is you know, it sheds some light on that But I think there's still more to be found and hopefully more documents Will be forthcoming but it's hard to answer some of these questions about you know, how far over the line is the government stepping because What we do know is so much of this has happened through kind of back channels and that is kind of the the fundamental root of my problem here is the the lack of Transparency and the way that this jaw-boning kind of inherently works is it it's meant to skirt all these legal issues and kind of Push aside any like robust public debate about it And I'm hoping that maybe this moment will be the beginning of that much-needed conversation And well, you know, we'll talk a little bit in a bit about Elon Musk coming in at Twitter because that has revived a lot of You know some optimism and a lot of the worst elements of the way the media as well as government officials talk about this kind of stuff Zach, why don't you run the clips that we have or the clip we have of Jen Pesachie who the late lamented I mean, she's still alive, but she's no longer on TV every day. So she might as well be dead, right Robbie But Jen Pesachie talking from is this from 2021 or is it from earlier this year? Yeah, go to this question of of okay, what is what's the exact relationship like and I'll mention To you guys you I think this was before you were at reason it might have been before you were born, but salon magazine or salon website years ago did a They had this great expose about how the parts of the federal government was the drugs are his office was Working its way into writers rooms on TV shows sitcoms and dramas too, you know Let's have some let's have some storylines about how fucking awful drugs are, you know in, you know, Doogie Houser MD and you know Hill Street Blues and things like that and shows of that nature and one of the things that blew people's minds was The fact that this was happening, but even more than that that it was hidden So do your points act that I think we all know of course the government is going to do this and all sorts of kind of You know soft power is going to be pushed but understanding that and to get to this clip one of the things that's interesting is you know, so it's from a year ago and Jen Pesachie is talking like openly about this. So why don't we run that actions Alex that? We have taken or we're working to take I should say from the federal government We've increased Disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General's office. We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook That's spread this information I would say first it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're in regular touch with social media platforms Just like we're in regular touch with all of you and your media outlets about areas where we have concern Information that might be useful information that may or may not be interesting to your viewers You all make decisions just like the social media platforms make decisions even though they're a private sector company and different But just as an example So we're made regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives Dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans seeing are seeing across all of social and traditional Media and we work to engage with them to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies All right, so in a way the the the intercept story doesn't really advance that Understanding it gives us a few more details, but it's good to be reminded of this, right? Yeah, and this is like the kind of I get I don't know if you call it plausible Denyability or just like the fine line that they're walking here is there always All the documentation has come forward so far There's they've been very careful to you know put little disclaimers at the bottom of the emails saying like we are not Requiring that you do this or these are just you know strong suggestions But part of the problem for me is that is backed by an underlying threat that Is hanging over the heads of the tech companies and that both parties are responsible for hanging over their heads namely the threat to revoke Section 230 protections and just to remind everyone that is the liability protection that that kind of makes Facebook and Twitter possible where just because some person Posts something crazy on their network they are not held responsible for that and There's kind of a long paper trail of politicians of Both parties saying you know you better kind of like March to the tune we're playing or We could always yank this you know and so that is why this this entire situation Makes me very uncomfortable and hopefully we you know we can talk about some potential solutions to that That would be amenable to libertarian But I laid a little bit on on the section 230 question But then you know and and also we can talk about the lawsuit that has also helped to push the intercept article That was launched by Missouri Attorney General and Senate candidate Matt Schmidt who is You know effectively an ambulance chaser. He's he's introduced something like 25 lawsuits against the Biden administration in 20 months of you know You know, Biden is him and whatnot But Robbie is it really right to say oh well, you know because politicians talk about getting rid of section 230 Which is a law or changing the law that should they not ever talk about what happens on social media? I mean that seems ridiculous to me from and again I'm trying to steal man the argument here of like it is a it's a wrong form of government power for People in the Senate or the house to say you know what like section 230 should be yanked Yeah, well a lot to get into there I so I don't I think it would be a mistake to change section 230 from a just from a pure I want more speech on the internet and the and no one in the like Republican University or Democratic University everyone who's mad about section 230 wants it revoked No one has been able to explain how that would help the climate of free speech because it obviously Transparently would not if you make the come the platforms more liable for the speech They're gonna restrict more of it and that's the exact thing Republicans are trying to avoid they claim so I don't know I don't get it that said I look I understand a little bit So I don't favor changing it for that reason. I do understand I think the the more thoughtful criticism of it is that here's a shield for liability that online platforms are enjoying the traditional media companies are not enjoying and so there is a kind of So anyway, you could I do when they're online in their online component, but you know, yeah misinformation is more Self-policing or policing via the kind of tort system for Simon and Schuster or the Atlantic for their fit for their physical Editions in a way that it's not self-policing on Twitter or on Facebook because they have this greater protection So I understand that honestly if I was to try to make this consistent I would be more inclined to just extend the liability protections to all traditional publishers in a you know What is isn't defamation in some sense a an assaults on the on the concept of free speech? I would be more inclined to fix things that way then then cause there to be where were you when Alex Jones needed you most I know I was sitting right in here, but let's Just run through a couple of quick questions We're trying to involve the audience as much as possible and I want to thank Chuck E cheese You know the wonderful children's pizza and beer I was gonna say wonderful children's pizza and beer restaurant Obviously for the parents He says I think the only question was how much and how direct was the control of the platforms Benjamin Dover says Jack Dorsey has a new project called blue sky that may be the way forward and Mott's Bure Which I feel like is a dick hurts in a in a Nordic language that I'm not getting most governments in the world and especially in the Western world are actively reviewing how to regulate the toxicity of disinformation and Misinformation on social media. This is a global problem Zach, why don't we start with that? You know with Chuck E cheese's Inquiry of the question is how much and how direct do you you know? Do you have a sense of that or is this? You know and and how much does that kind of worry you when we're talking about this sort of topic? Yeah, I mean that is the the crux of the issue is It's still in that gray area that we're we're trying to grapple with I mean one thing that I Think of sometimes when I'm thinking about this is I did a video In LA about a burger joint that was Being threatened because in LA they just declare that your business is a nuisance if it attracts You know riff-raff or something and basically the police are like well if you pay it install the security system and like lie You know Stream all the footage to our headquarters Then maybe we won't hit you with this nuisance abatement charge and shut down your business This is kind of like a similar dynamic. I feel where What they're doing may be technically legal and I'm sure they're you know They have teams of attorneys that are you know tiptoeing up to the line to make sure they don't violate the First Amendment but So far I don't think that the the intercept story has really Shown anything that's quite Stepped over that line. I mean the most one most disturbing details to me there was like this That Facebook set up a special content Removal portal. So this is just for government agents to log in Flag things that they think should be removed and then you know Facebook decides what to do from there it's just kind of Creating that special relationship Everyone has the opportunity to flag things that they are they think are bad or misinformation or abusive or whatever But just setting up that system setting up the closed circuit Surveillance system that goes directly to police headquarters and then like you know partnering in in this way to police speech In a way that we saw when I think terribly awry in several respects over the past couple years Needs like we need to question that Relationship how that relationship came to be and what if anything can be done? to restrain law enforcement or even roll back the Scope that some of these agencies have to even weigh in on these questions What's your best example Zach of? You know of an instance where government jaw-boning or kind of strong-arming or DHS in particular really Shutdown conversation that should have been happening Well, you know, I I do think that the the hunter-biden laptop is the kind of strongest example But right there's also I but also the most obvious right because we all knew about that So but but this like I said this this stretches Way back Like what might help actually would be to play a clip that clip from my documentary from 2018 right now Because this shows kind of the exact dynamic. I'm talking about Yeah, let's do that and you also you get a royalty every time we play this So you get like three-quarters of a penny. So let's let's do that Before has emerged information warfare This activity by the Russians is gonna go down in history as the greatest covert action campaign in the history of Mother Russia So-called fake news can have real-world consequences. It's a danger that must be addressed And you have to be the ones to do something about it or we will Last October both Houses of Congress grilled the attorneys for the tech giants Facebook Twitter and Google about Russian meddling and so-called fake news You have been identified as the major distributors of fake news We are not gonna go away gentlemen Their strategy is to take a crack in our society and turn it into a chasm And it's not just foreign misinformation Some lawmakers want better policing of sites like info wars the Austin, Texas based conspiracy site run by Alex Jones Well short time ago on Twitter if you clicked on the hashtag NYC terrorists attack the top tweet links to an info wars story with the headline a mom I warned de Blasio about New York City of terror. He was too busy bashing Trump Do you have a responsibility to flag? Something as this was fake news. We see our users do that a lot We're an open public platform with you must feel like you have some responsibility We are we are deeply concerned about that and figuring out ways we can do it with the right balance While Democrats seem concerned that tech companies don't do enough to police content on their platforms Republicans and conservatives have expressed concern that they do too much to cultivate their users newsfeeds your power Sometimes scares me. Do you consider your sites to be neutral public for? Google should be regulated like the public utility it is because customers can always log off these companies already have strong Incentives to keep their platforms relatively free of bots and trolls and to improve the user experience through actively curating content What we're trying to do actually is provide Each user a personalized news feed that will be the content. That's most interesting to that user treating social media as some sort of public utility is quite simply a power grab that all but guarantees Politicians and unelected bureaucrats will decide what information should appear in Americans news feeds and would likely grant the government Even greater access to our private communications than it already has Are you intending to turn over to the committee any kind of direct messaging that went on among the different accounts? Direct messages are the private communication between our users and so we take that Privacy right and responsibility very seriously. We don't want to put ourselves in the position of being the arbiter of Truth, we don't think that's a tenable position for any company or industry It's probably true that Facebook Twitter and Google aren't in a great position to be the arbiters of truth But the government is in an even worse position It was just really striking to me that that last line where you know the Facebook Representative saying we don't want to be the arbiter of truth And this was just four years ago, and I feel like that entire attitude has just been you know relegated to the dustbin of history or something But the point I wanted to you know make and showing that was just that there is a definite pressure campaign that you see They're on on these companies and they're you know cowering before the the senators and the the representatives And and that's you know all fine. That's that's all part of the political process But once you have law enforcement Kind of making these suggestions with that as the background That it that is what's concerning to me And you know where they went into some examples with info wars and stuff like this is all there's like a thousand small Examples like that so it's hard to just like you know pick one that we keep going back to the Hunter Biden one Because that's that's the biggest one that everyone remembers, but it's affecting a whole giant Ecosystem well, let's you know, let's talk about info wars And you know for a couple of reasons one is you know Alex Jones has basically been banned from every platform And he recently had a massive nearly billion dollar default or a defamation settlement leveled against him with more cases to come Robbie, you know looking at those clips. It's funny because like I'm kind of like hey You know I like the fact that Facebook and Twitter People are saying hey, you know, we're not going to be in charge of stuff and there are private communications that take place I mean I was maybe you know They had at least had a couple of teeth left in them when they were talking 2018 do you think the situation has degraded since then and Why if so what? Yeah, it's certainly degraded and the pandemic is part of that the the social media sites handling of Covid was really really really bad. I think to sum it up I mean the fact that you could not Facebook would not let you discuss the lab leak theory I would very brazen take downs of any discussion of the idea that Covid's origins are that Wuhan lab And and I think we're still learning the extent to which that was another example of jaw boning I would like to see more documentation there before I conclusively state they did this because you know Here's the official at the CDC who told them Yeah, it could be just that there were people in charge of Facebook who are like I fucking hate the lab leak theory I think that's you know Trump derangement syndrome or something so we're gonna can't yeah I mean they clearly though aren't they're they're inspired to do that by the I mean look at the commentary in the mainstream media Right though with the Washington Post says that theory is a racist conspiracy theory Certainly the social media companies just respond to that and that's obviously that's not jaw boning because those are other media companies Etc. Yeah, that can manufacture consensus in a bad way, but it's not really a government category But it would it would shock me if we never find a you know an email from the CDC or whoever saying like hey We were really concerned about the level of lab leak discourse on this platform I bet we'll see that eventually and and to be clear that is a really egregious example of a bad content moderation call Now you are free to talk about it because there is now enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that it is as Likely an origin for the pandemic. I personally think it is the more likely origin You know we'll still be learning for years, but that was bad and then so many other COVID topics, right? And I you know I understand that the certain I we wanted to feel the certainty for vaccines and for other things I and again I do think the vaccines do a lot we have a lot of evidence for their efficacy in terms of severe disease and death But but on vaccines and masks when when claims didn't you know, then they got changed eventually finally even health Mainstream health people like Liana when and like Rochelle Walensky You know are now saying things about these these efforts that you were not allowed to say on social media a year ago And part of that is is a changing scientific consensus But then it's like well if we don't if the scientific consensus doesn't know yet You get to cut off the discussion here and again these are private platforms. Yes They can do that, but you know what was the government telling them and it what we've been able to see so far Is it's just very and it's so far outside of the of the law enforcement or national security justification? That's the really scary thing, but yeah, this is not During World War two, right? movements or something this is You know Zach, let's talk about the lawsuit that the Missouri AG has Has launched and talk a little bit about some of his you know co plaintiffs And Robbie this is like I'm sure you're on top of this too But like what's amazing is the collection of people who are involved in this suit and they all are you know They all hate section 230 230 is part of the thing that has to go based on this Missouri lawsuit, but Zach why don't you talk a little bit about that? This is just the the opening page of the lawsuit You can see some of the parties listed the state of Missouri a state of Louisiana Dr. Bhattacharya who we've interviewed before and who was the subject of a kind of one of these behind-the-scenes campaigns where Like people like Francis Collins were saying anyone affiliated with the Great Barrington Declaration They were sending you know out to media sources saying we need or they were there kind of just privately talking saying we need to Kind of discredit this on a massive scale that is not really exactly what I'm talking about But I assume I I mean they're they're not good Yeah, but they're in their attachment to the suit is really I think they're claiming that you know Their posts were de-ranked as part of like a sustained effort Will remind us who remind us who Jim hoft is though what what great patriot and you know galaxy brain is Jim hoff The yeah, I mean I'm not that familiar with the Gateway pundit I just know him as a kind of like right-wing blog that is very Trump-friendly and you know puts out and is Wrong, you know, and I'm speaking figuratively here But he is almost always wrong and he just puts out kind of horseshit, you know What are they hoping to do with this lawsuit? Yeah, and so they're going up against Biden the press secretary the surgeon general The Department of Health and Human Services head and they're claiming here that it is that the social media and Government or that the government is engaged in a First Amendment violation Because the government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly So they're taking things, you know kind of a step further than what we're saying here They claim to believe that or that they believe that this is actually stepping over the line That this constitutes coercion and censorship they mentioned section 230 which they are clearly Against for some reason, but also they think that section the what I was talking about earlier The idea of taking section 230 is the threat that the government is using to pressure the Tech companies which I agree with But I think that the answer to that is is probably to protect and fort, you know fortify section 230 expand its protections like Robbie was saying not to gut it right and then they have a kind of a list of different threats that politicians have made here about revoking section 230 Which we kind of saw some of that in the clip that I played earlier. So that's the substance of the lawsuit What do we make of the fact that? You know both Republicans and Democrats conservatives and liberals Libertarians and progressives We see all coming together to say, you know section 230 is problematic is that a sign that Regulation is coming. Is it a sign that these once great giants of post industrial America Facebook Twitter, etc Are now kind of useless and then they're open to you know, they're open to being regulated I mean that was one of the big things in 2018 was to see people like Mark Zuckerberg say hey It's a good idea for us to be regulated. We'll help you write the regulation Robbie, what do you what do we take from? Yeah, they said that With full knowledge that it would hurt Twitter more than it would hurt Facebook because Twitter is a smaller more upstart company They cannot necessarily afford the level of moderation that would be required if you got rid of section 230 Which tells you you know the kind of cronyest impulses here I guess I don't so I right like Zach totally disagree with the section 230 element of this lawsuit I don't mind as much given that the lawsuit is is directed at government officials And this is the direction I want to move the conversation far too many Conservatives and Republicans have directed their fire at social media companies for bad moderation decisions We are learning for various reasons that a lot of this is coming is being done at the behest of the government in some way Or another let's direct our fire at the government when when Facebook takes, you know We have Twitter kicks someone off for COVID misinformation instead of saying Boohoo Twitter censorship we should do something to hurt Twitter Which would just be like shooting ourselves in the book in the foot because overall social media is good for spreading provocative and contrarian and libertarian views Let's not like do that instead Can we do something to like stop the CDC from doing that like the the thing we have control over? Technically in a democracy and like we have some ostensible control right over the federal agencies and the people who staff them So let's let's yeah sue them if there's something to sue them over or come up with some or or You know vote them out replace them support candidates who want to put a muzzle on You know Dr. Fauci's enforcers or something. I am far more in favor of that Don't like that the social media companies are the victims to some extent and conservatives have really abdicated their role as like defenders of Like free marketplaces or you know limited government right? Yeah, I mean they've obviously abdicated their defenses Would it be helpful if we as libertarians stop talking about the government as if you know the CDC the FCC the DHS and The Senate and the House of Representatives are all the same thing because in fact, you know Does it matter if it's DHS or the CDC or? Executive branch agencies that are pushing things versus legislators. Yeah, well it doesn't matter Yeah, we'll go well and also it matters from again DHS if DHS is using that extra Facebook link That portal to flag right here is ISIS here is a militia group here Look, I think there's a legitimate government's only purpose is Legitimately deterring violence national security, etc. I don't have a problem with them doing that if it's you know narrowly on actually Flagging and taking down Organized violence sure fine. Yeah, that's DHS's role But with the CDC they don't have they absolutely do not should not have the authority to dictate Social media companies what you're allowed to say about COVID mitigation efforts. They've gone so far It's really the COVID stuff for me at least that they have gone so far overboard With that that that I'm very wary and it and then it's been wrong so many times so that so yeah If you want to start, you know pulling things apart That's where we should really focus a lot of our outrage in my view Zach What do you think about that generally and then also this these topics are Epistemological categories of misinformation disinformation mal information They get talked about as if they are self-evident and we all agree on you know, this is misinformation. That's disinformation This is mal information Is that part of the craziness here? Which is you know what in a world in a country of 330 billion people You know your misinformation might be my mal information or simply my Absolutely obvious truth. Yeah, this is where I think we've gone way off course because you know this this Branch of the DHS that is responsible for a lot of this CISA, which was created by the Trump administration And in Congress, I mean the law that you know the law that put it into being was a Republican-controlled Congress in The the the cyber infrastructure security agency and The point of that agency was national security national defense some big firms had gotten hacked There's foreign governments behind some of these major data breaches. So, you know, it sounds reasonable But in there their man, they put out Pretty soon after the Biden administration came into power, they started putting out these documents Saying well actually disinformation Misinformation mal information, which is true information that is you know harmful to people things like revenge porn These are also Rats to land these are threats to national security and therefore this is within our purview and That to me is the problem that this mission creep has now We the federal government has taken it for granted that this is their job And the social media companies have been forced to capitulate to that and the kind of action that I would like to see I'm not a legislator so I legislator so I don't know what the exact law should be but something to restrain the scope of action of these kinds of agencies and restrain their ability To have these kind of conversations, you know, if the CDC wants to put out guidance and then Facebook or YouTube want to abide by CDC guidance in terms of how they allow what's on their platform That's one thing but to have this special relationship That is something that I feel that our Lawmakers could actually tackle and I'm not optimistic that it's going to solve the whole problem ultimately I think technological solutions are the only like true safeguard here But I would still like to see it attempted Could you talk just briefly about and then Robbie? I'll come to you to ask about media literacy as another way of dealing with this rather than government control or even Corporate control. What are some of the technological advances Zach that you think would change this discussion or Make this kind of question just go away Yeah, so I'm going to pull up one of the questions that you went to earlier Jack Dorsey has a new project called blue sky that may be the way forward from Benjamin Dover and Blue sky was basically before Jack headed for the exit He set up this team to try to decentralize Twitter's protocol So that Twitter the the idea was eventually Twitter could become interoperable with other social networks So your data would kind of be portable and if you don't like what Twitter's doing You can still keep all your followers You can still kind of keep that network and your history intact But you know take it elsewhere and I think Jack is Kind of a visionary in that sense That might be why he got out because he saw it wasn't going in the direction He wanted to go that he was hoping would go maybe things will change with a new captain at Twitter But there's also, you know the rise of these You know encrypted networks like signal and telegram which got a huge influx of users after what we call the great deep platform of 2021 which You know when Trump was kicked off, but also he was kind of the big kahuna But then a bunch of other people got booted at that time and everyone You know these these encrypted platforms started getting a lot more users and you know They're not as big as Twitter, but I think of these these platforms that are kind of designed to be harder to control as Safety valves that we want to always have so they might be more chaotic They might have more nasty stuff on them They might not be where you want to even hang out most of the time, but they exist just in case Things, you know get bad and so that that's what I mean I say that the technological solutions are really the the kind of final bulwark there, you know, I will Recommend to everybody who's listening to this to read Arthur E. Kirch is the decline of American liberalism a book that was originally published in the 50s, but it's a libertarian classical reading of American history as always a kind of battle between forces of Centralization and decentralization and you know just you go through eras where things are getting more centralized and then things are getting more disperse and The internet, you know, Lord love it as a major medium really only dates back to the mid 90s Maybe some people would even say in the early 2000s, but you know, we've gone through these cycles of Centralization and decentralization or dispersion and centralization Bellagies You're in a boss and talks about this in the network state quite a bit and we're clearly You know, we've gone through a decade or more of centralization and it seems like people are interested in a Dispersion effect. So, you know, you see a lot of that Robbie So, you know part of that is technological like how do you know, you it's hard to shut down Conversations that are happening on, you know, what's app groups or, you know, telegram or signal But it also means that the groups are going to be smaller We saw this with Facebook face group Facebook groups, which were kind of private can be, you know, just Destroyed overnight if Facebook chooses to that's it. That's a technological issue And I think most libertarians would be like, yeah Yeah, we want to have lots of different Solar systems out there that you can travel among in between some of them are going to be bigger and more centralized I'm not but let's talk about media literacy as a function here of like You know, would it be better if we were while we're looking at legal things to say the government can't do these certain types of things And we're looking at technological fixes, you know Dorsey's been talking about blue sky for a number of years now. Let's finally see it. Okay But then this question of the end user you me zack everybody else like how do we need to change how we consume and produce Media whether it's on a social media platform or the internet So that we stop having this horrible stupid conversation about what is and is not allowable speech well, I mean the The media the mainstream media is sort of obsession with misinformation and disinformation Has given me a lot of pause about enforcement or fact-checking of the whole concept because I have I cannot notice any Everyone who purports to have some expertise in this and it like I'm is a is a misinformation beat reporter For let's say the washington post of the new york times or someone else They seem No more likely to they seem just as likely as anyone else to fall for misinformation I mean like this was the this was the whole criticism of nina jankowitz The person who was briefly put in charge of this homeland security disinformation board And you know she was one of those voices saying the hunter biden laptop is russian disinformation And so and so and you know with with no later confession that oops I really got that a very important story wrong so A whole host of people in the government But you know including like the fbi and whatnot but also in the media Who were like no there's no question that putin was calling the shots for trump The whole russia gets to worry or narrative. Whatever you want to call it. It's just bullshit In the way that is presented at absolute unimpeachable fact Right It was a bunch of facebook groups and that like a small fraction of users saw it Like the way they talk about the russian Uh what happened in 2016 as is it's as if russia was like Had hacked the the the voting machines and changed the outcome But but back to you know jankowitz. So that was I think a legitimate criticism of her that she you know She's not even handed. She had missed this really she got in this really important story wrong And then right everybody gets very upset about them. They shut it down and then that what you just put up on screen Uh that was my response to the washington post article You know lamenting how unfairly this woman's life had been ruined her your dream shattered. Oh no And the washington post write up You know done by uh again someone who's like an expert in the tech space Proportedly an expert in the tech space in the misinformation space That article did not once mention the chief criticism of nina jankowitz Which which was that her judgment is suspect because she screwed up on a couple subjects most notably hunter biden There are so many examples of so with the the the the guard the guardians the people who want to keep you safe For misinformation have this totally paranoid and conspiratorial view of it Like it's a virus. You're in danger of catching unless they stamp it out I would and actually they they they overlap substantially with like the most pro lockdown Where you know, we're a long coveted disabling This is the mandarin class right to be educated and know well and are anointed by Whatever, you know, they get it wrong all the time. They get it wrong all the time And so I don't want to I don't want them to police. I don't think they should be policing our Our discourse, how do individuals though guard themselves against being suckers for the dumbest theory That seems pretty good because a lot of you know, a lot of conspiracy I mean, you know, there's one thing there's conspiracy theories But then there are these, you know sober analytical understandings of science or of history or of Communications, um, you know How do how do we how do we force the Fact-checking mechanism down to the individual user in a more effective way so that they stop saying You have to believe what I believe otherwise, you know, you have to be silent I wish more people would subscribe to reason magazine, but uh, only uh 1997 for 11 issues or the online version And then it's a little bit more you can have both But I think people back to 1968 Should get used I think it's useful to consume many different media. I mean there's studies showing, you know, that when people Because there's the topic selection and topic bias like if you're only watching fox or you're only watching cnn It's not so if you're only watching cnn and then you start watching fox I think you're not likely to change your mind on very many things But you're going to be aware aware of topics of stories of things other people care about that you had no idea Because you'll you'll have you might have no idea that crime in philadelphia is out of freaking Right now if you're only watching msnbc You might think, you know drag queens are sexually assaulting every child on earth if you're only watching fox You like the the oh, it's helpful to get your news from a variety of sources. I mean I was I got really Really testy with a lot of this right wing conspiracy about the paul polosi story It was totally based in nonsense. This is an elderly man who is the victim of a really terrifying home invasion In the By a mentally homeless person and conservatives are I think not wrongly concerned about The mental illness in in our streets and so I live in a city that has been clearly affected by um mentally ill people and homelessness and Concerns are very worried about this and I think maybe rightly impugning not always but sometimes some democratic policy choices on this And then they're gonna turn around we have a clear example of it and they turn around and pretend First there's no information now. There is information absolutely confirming that a crazy homeless person came in and attacked this man And and there you have donald trump and donald trump jr. And other right wing figures Putting out like utterly unfounded Funny to them ideas about it. It's it's really it's despicable and irresponsible and and that if you are only getting your news From one ideological source or another you're gonna fall prey to more of these things zack We also saw the new owner of twitter elan musk and it's been almost a week You know, so we know exactly how all of this is gonna play out and twitter went from being a shining city on the hill You know on the cyber hill to being an absolute health skate that uh, we've never seen the likes of before He shared the story that first put into play Uh from the san uh, it's a website based in san amonica california Paul plus this was a a homosexual pickup gone wrong um Are you do you think do you think elan musk's twitter? Is this more of the same kind of just fucking annoying story or is this maybe the beginning of a new day that um You know for social media where big social media companies are going to be like fuck you We are actually going to be Uh staging free speech Rather than i'll say i'm cautiously hopeful That that might be the case and you know the fact that elan musk shared this kind of bullshit story And then it got wide circulation in part because of that um, it's kind of an example of how this stuff can just work itself out in a way like Most like yes, there's always going to be the echo chambers where people aren't going to ever let go of that narrative, but It's like, okay That's that rumor swirled for a while and now most like level-headed people realize what actually happened um, and we can get back to talking about all the uh vote mules that dinesh desu's up brought to our attention a couple months ago thousand counter It's kind of embarrassing for elan musk, but he can embarrass himself on his own platform now. That's that's kind of great too um, and you know Living room in his, you know, $50,000 prefab house in the texas desert It's so nice I think it's gonna be a real test because I think he does seem to want to take a much more laissez faire approach At least that's what he says he wants to do We'll see how the implementation goes and that's what we want as a remedy to all these problems is more competition different approaches But the more that the government is able to job-own these companies The less we're going to be able to see that kind of competition play out, you know, the media literacy problem Is a tough one. We're all coping with, you know, digital media and trying to figure out how to deal with the information overload um, and it's just going to be a process and governments by trying to um, like gate keep that too aggressively is I think is only going to slow that process down And really undermine it from happening in a real way because once you start aggressively Um, reigning in what can be talked about then Even the kind of craziest theories get this like forbidden Uh aura attached to them as opposed to the paul pelosi story Which most most of us just look out this like goofy thing that was my presumption is kind of now that uh, You know that anything I see and particularly video or audio that confirms what I want in my darkest heart of heart to be true Anything that confirms that I assume it's a deep fake and you know, I mean We're in an age now where I think you should be skeptical of everything and the question then is How do you how do you remain skeptical in a positive? Optimistic way without becoming a nihilist, you know and just becoming totally cynical about everything Robbie of our uh, our social media maven Best buyers has asked a question that I think is worth Kind of thinking about she asks is it possible for tech companies to ever regain public trust after working with the government to suppress COVID hunter's laptop Etc and there's a lot packed in there But you know it it's going to be hard for the government to win certainly to win over libertarians, right? I mean because you know that that's oil and water But what are the ways that you know, what would what should elan must do? What should mark zuckerberg? You know other than like leaving facebook behind and you know going into a Virtual world where you know, you don't have legs yet, but they're coming You know what what can major platforms do or or platforms in cyberspace and in social media due to actually carry Trust among their users Well, it will be hard for a lot of these platforms to regain trust with certain segments of the population you know competition is always a Thing here. There's going to be I don't think facebook will ever have the relevance Politically socially that it had in 2017 ever again. I just don't expect it to regain that in 2010 right or 2012 Yeah It had a great run Do we lose robbie that I think uh robbie maybe uh zack, do you want to kind of finish his thought? Yes Yeah, um, so I just I thought I think that um was that the vaccine the vaccine was getting in the way of you having decent audio I assume. Yeah, I just had I just had to get my 80th jab, you know Hunt me down. Um the uh like like tiktok is a new you know new platform that has different strengths and weaknesses I think it solves some of the instagram Negative body image issues that instagram has I think are much better on tiktok because it's a more collaborative artistic platform But then it has other because of the china component and there are other issues with it Um, I the number one thing I would tell elon to do with twitter is to let's devolve moderation two users as much as possible If you should have you should have been able to check settings Maybe you want the moderation equivalent of whatever the most like I don't know resistance liberal has where you don't have to see anything Brooklyn dad you want brooklyn dad's fee. Yes, exactly Well, then check that setting and then those of us who want a more are not as afraid of of contrasting views can have a different setting Let it let the users pick it instead of having it Voiced it on them and and have that be true of have that just be true of the of the fact-checking experience as much as possible twitter's fact-checking program that it has piloted and is rolling out as we speak A bird watch which allows you it functions more like wikipedia users add content notes And then users can check those content notes say well I like this because it has a high quality link to Trust where the article it has the facts in it and etc You can have all that stuff happen and that is so much better than what facebook has done Which is to deputize a handful of ideological extremists Who who are just wrong all the time on covet issues on climate issues? They've falsely fact-checked me and then I've complained and then they've said oh just kidding Sorry, we got that wrong. They did that to john stossel. They they they're they are so bad I cannot say enough bad things about them twitter is is doing something that's close to wikipedia That is the model let users let the people decide democratize it marketize it Move in that direction one of the things that I imagine like with the bird watch Thing is interesting too because you could imagine these kind of like competing gangs of fact-checkers and you kind of just subscribe subscribe to the fact-checking service that Tends to get it right more often than not instead of like you said that the kind of top down deputization of the people who Have connections with facebook or twitter What what kind of amazes me and zach maybe you can speak to this is the idea that you know social media companies We've talked about this a little bit They are taking cues from not only the government, you know in that like okay Well the government you know they've you know they you know when the government comes in And they lean over your desk and make sure you see the gun that's in the waistband So that's one thing But they're taking their cues from places like the washington post or cnn or the new york times and it's like You know you guys are kind of competitors like why would you do? What a you know 150 year old media? A medium is doing as opposed to Kind of going your own way and offering something unique and different that's of the moment Do you think I mean is there a kind of ideological capture or Or kind of like commercial capture of new media now that it's been around for you know 10 or 15 years I mean, I think so you can just go back to the new york post story again to see that I mean this is I believe our nation's oldest newspaper and uh, you know twitter kind of like Bigfooted them using other their competitors And possibly some sort of faulty intel that was being fed to them to squash them Or you know suspend their account for A long time. I think it was over a week So yeah, it's It's kind of the wrong way to go about it. I think it's The going towards a more crowd sourced version And you know not picking your own facts, but at least being able to kind of select from a menu of fact checkers That over time will prove themselves trustworthy Robbie, do you think is this a symmetrical conversation that we're having about you know facticity? Or factfulness whatever you want to call it Because you know, there's there's no question that like democrats believe Or liberals or progressives whatever you want to call people that are you know from the center to the left Believe some crazy stuff But donald trump and the era of public discourse right wing discourse that he initiated is You know really off the charts in terms of that guy I mean he has not even conceded the 2016 election which he won Because he says there were so many stolen votes. He would have had a majority of the popular vote I mean this guy is a fucking liar, you know Every morning he gets up and before he has breakfast He's told a dozen lies and i'm not saying anything about that. I'm that's like just descriptive Is that part of the problem though that you know one side in particular is just totally uninterested In anything that might approach, uh, you know objective fact Yeah, I I don't have anything Positive to say about donald trump's contributions to the dialogue or the any and also the you know the The content moderation decision that he's at the center of the decision to take him off social media I don't I certainly think you can construct a defense of it in the moment. It happened I don't know about keeping him off forever, but I absolutely and and I would argue this To anyone anywhere, um, I do hold him responsible for what happened at the capital There is no question that the things he was saying at the time Actually, not things he was saying on social media which makes it interesting the decision to take him off It's not because he was saying crazy things on twitter people the people who marched to the capital, you know smat broke all the windows Uh clash with police officers did it because of the things he was saying like they're on site or down, you know down the street He's absolutely responsible for it. It was not I don't think it was illegal incitement. I think it was absolutely should have been held responsible in the constitutional sense Should have been impeached and removed from office, but you know, he was acquitted didn't happen That's it. You know, you sometimes people are acquitted and you don't like it, but it's over. There's nothing more we can do um from a legal standpoint a constitutional standpoint except people, uh, can hopefully vote to not have him be a factor in in the dialogue anymore it's clear that Smart republicans republican leaders know that it is better for the party if he's not on social media And uh and are not I think are probably not actually putting major pressure on elan to do anything about that on twitter um, but like I take your your point, uh, there's a lot of Bad stuff uh going on in in conservative media and dialogue although you do get Yeah, but then you also get um Some some good pushback to mainstream narratives in alternative places Yeah, I think we at reason try to model thoughtful, uh pushback From an alternative perspective without you know without assuming well, of course paul palos was part of some gay orgy um, we we you know, we want to talk about Uh, a lot of how covet has gone wrong a lot of like right public is right now Our cap I think are capitalizing on actual dissatisfaction among people with our ukraine strategy, right? There's no it's it's incredible But there is very little opposition within democrats the democratic circles to a blank check We're going to give ukraine as much money for as long as possible without making any sort of like hey We will cut this off eventually if you don't have some sort of negotiation with with putin There were 30 democrats who tentatively put out a letter to that effect and then were forced Ashamedly to walk it back, but some republicans are charting a different course So I would never say that but it's just not true that well democrats are You know, they're maybe they're misguided, but they're getting things right where republicans are just, you know, so reprehensible Both sides are are You don't want to say both sides, but it is true that they are on different issues Getting things wrong reprehensibly ruining this country Look at our debt look at our our whole system broken because these two factions just keep You know, they have the wheel and then they crash the car And then the other person takes the the wheel and they drive it into the sea and then the other person takes the wheel and I don't know they cause a comet to hit her. It's like Selma and louise the ending, but like they never hit bottom. It's just oh, selma. I'm driving No louise. I'm driving and it's yeah You know zack, we're gonna we're gonna shut down in a couple minutes here, but You know Legislatively, you know, there are two, you know laws that were passed You know that really deal directly with the regulation of social media platforms in texas and in florida They've both been held in abeyance because of court rulings, but You know, and they're both the product of conservative legislatures and conservative governors Greg Abbott and ron de santis Is that the biggest threat facing us right now the kind of legislative attempts to wrestle Corporate entities into some kind of political, you know, choke hold or is it the ongoing? You know kind of pipeline between dhs, you know and dhs exists whether it's a republican or a democrat And they seem to always be Kind of talking with the powers that be at social media platforms where how do you rank order these kinds of threats? I think these threats are actually related I I saw a question here that caught my eye. That's kind of along those lines This john funk said I understand that as quote libertarians You can't quote like republican policies or democratic policies It seems the republican move to strip section 230 projections from platforms That are actively curating content publishing would be far preferable To the democratic policy of allowing encouraging insisting on censoring of misinformation a subjective term So this is like the bills that you're talking about I'm more familiar with the florida one because i'm a florida man, but uh, where They're it basically trying uh, de santis was trying to take away the liability protections in florida For everyone except for uh, walt disney corporation, which he he came around to deal with Yeah So the problem The the big mistake that republicans uh and conservatives have made here and we saw it earlier in that montage Where tucker carlson says these need to be regulated like public utilities Is you are now trying to lock in the monopolies like Look at what just has happened to meta in the past year. It's collapsing It it's us user base started collapsing four years ago when these conversations were happening And that's why zuckerberg was writing letters saying please regulate me because he wanted to be one of the protected members of the cartel and republicans um are shooting themselves in the foot by By pushing this forward. We we want competition to alleviate these problems, you know, uh, whether it is um, you know, elan taking over twitter or trump starting truth social um these these things exist, uh, and you can support them or not support them But they're not going to exist. Uh, if you get rid of Something like section 230 because then truth social with all the bullshit. I'm sure is floating around there We'll get sued out of existence immediately. So if you want your kind of Crazy unhinged um social media site, which I agree should exist You don't want to go down this path and that that is where I think that Conservatives and especially kind of the this populist wing has totally Misrepresented what has actually been happening Uh with social media and um, it's just been offering terrible policy prescriptions um that would hurt all of us, but Well, and to and to me Yeah, robby, why don't you robby robby take us home? Okay, you you'll get the last word here just and just to be clear Like that question that person who asked that question that framing is just not correct because it's not just the republican proposal to do that Democrats support that democrats want to strip section 230 Elizabeth warren supports doing that bernie sanders supports doing that Joe biden supports doing that. How is it good for how could it? Imagine a universe where Elizabeth warren wants to do something that will end up being good for conservatives online I don't believe that I believe she is a very savvy political operative who wants to harm Non-progressive speech online and knows that getting rid of section 230 will accomplish that because it would for the reasons zack just outlined so it's again, it's a non-starter for me because the result would of Imposing on platforms more liability to speech will be less of my speech less of your speech less conservative speech I'm sure there will be provocative lefty type people will also be punished anti-war people etc The mainstream consensus of the new york times and the mainstream media and cnn is reinforced By imposing guardrails on everyone else social media is a great competitor to the mainstream media It's been a great gift to alternative perspectives and we risk we do not want to go back to an era before it Let's talk about how to improve it. Let's talk about other opportunities But let's but destroying it is a is a gift to the new york times and it's a It's a it's based in a fantasy. It's a fantasy because their fantasy is that we just need to get republicans in power I guess forever use section 230 to force the social media platforms to Apply the first amendment to make their platforms neutral or something like that And then hope that Democrats never take power again And then use it for their own ends to shape the platforms to have content moderation policies They like like it makes no sense. Um, if you think about it for more than 10 seconds We're not going to give gondor the weapon of the enemy We are going to throw the ring in the fucking volcano that this is honestly always recombined But you know, I was thinking as we were talking about this and as the intercept story came out About a week ago or so. Lucy Ann Goldberg died She is the mother of Jonah Goldberg who was the editor-in-chief of national review online, which was the first kind of fully formed website for a magazine really a political magazine in the late 90s and but Lucy Ann Goldberg was Central to destroying old gatekeeper news stuff in the 90s having to do with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and I'm also founded Lucy Ann comm in the late 90s, which was this Interesting, you know kind of user-based thing. It was social media before there was social media Obviously, this is the COVID place coming to get me my apartment But it was You know, it's kind of timely Because it seems to me in a very real way what some things that are going on now is we're trying to get back to Or reinvigorate an earlier model of what internet culture was all about which was about Distributed power distributed information and the users Determining what their experience of the network was not the people, you know, not the broadcasters Not the people with the command towers, but rather, you know, it's it's all of us You know in our little cubby holes our spider holes or you know, our laptops doing stuff So hopefully we'll get there Robbie Swabby, thank you so much Where's the best place to watch rising every morning that you it's on youtube You can head over to the hills youtube channel. It's there and yeah, check it out. Thank you and uh, zack my co-host On uh reason live streams. What do you have? Coming out soon. I had reason to be I just put out some uh misinformation this morning about the lab leak theory It's an interview with the health reporter who sketches out the time that early timeline kind of what anthony fouchy and his little team of Public health officials were saying amongst themselves and how that contrasts to the message That they were broadcasting to the public All right. Well, we'll look for that That's all at reason.com follow all of us at reason.com go to reasons youtube channel our facebook feed our twitter feed Our instagram feed and our tiktok Which is becoming more and more electrifying with every day So thank you all uh for uh participating and watching the reason live stream Thanks, nick. Thank you