 It is my honor to introduce this morning's keynote speaker, US Representative Peter Welch. Throughout his career, Congressman Welch has served the people of Vermont with distinction, both in the Vermont Senate and since 2006 in the US House of Representatives. Peter, I remember that race. And General James, a great story of my political education. Peter Welch was running for Congress. I was running for state's attorney, local county prosecutor. I didn't have a campaign to speak of, so I used to sneak into the Welch's events. And Peter was always so generous, would always introduce me to all his folks, and it's something that I've never forgotten. So Peter, thank you for your graciousness during that campaign. Congressman Welch serves on the House Subcommittee of Communications and Technology, and has offered bold ideas such as creating a new regulatory agency to oversee big tech. Representative Welch will offer his views on key technology issues and ways Congress can strike an appropriate balance between regulation and innovation. Please join me in welcoming Representative Peter Welch. Thank you very much. TJ, you're doing a great job, and I want to thank you for inviting me today. And I really am honored to be with Attorney Generals from around the region. I also want to acknowledge Bill Sorrell, who was our tremendous Attorney General for over 20 years. You know, and I also, I was a public defender for many years. That's how I got my start. A lot of folks who end up in my job started out as prosecutors, and I admire the prosecutors who are here. You know, as a legislator in Washington, we get the opportunity to advocate and hopefully legislate. You have an awesome responsibility because you prosecute and have the authority to make decisions that require great discretion and great judgment. I want to acknowledge the importance of what you do in standing up for the rule of law. Today we're here to talk about really our democracy. We're talking about social media and what its impact has been. And I am very pleased about the litigation that the Attorney Generals are supporting, led by Attorney General James, to address competition issues. And I want to applaud that, but I also want to talk about some of the other issues around social media and what social media is doing to our democracy. First of all, just put this in context because it's truly staggering. The New York Times was founded in 1851. It has a market cap of $8.7 billion. It has a monthly visitation of $84 million. Facebook was founded in 2004. It has a market capitalization of $940 billion and 2.8 billion monthly active users. The Washington Post was founded in 1877. It has a market capitalization of $3 billion and 79 million monthly visitation. Google was founded in 1998. $1.8 trillion market capitalization and $267 million. Just U.S. unique visitors and has a market share of 61%. Twitter founded in 2006. $50 billion market capitalization compared to CNN founded in 1980. $193 billion for all of U.S. and includes AT&T. So what you have obviously is this cataclysmic change that's happened in the last couple of decades in what is the media landscape. And it's had enormous impacts on our society, on our economy. But really what we're, I think, finally coming to reckon with, it's had an enormous impact on our democracy. The antitrust legislation that you're pursuing in litigation and that the House Judiciary Committee with David Cicillini is pursuing in the House is extraordinarily important because these huge companies that Market Cap I just gave you is an indication of the enormous success that our biggest players have had in consolidating market power to an extent that we have not seen in industries or competitive, so-called competitive sectors since the robber barons. And it was the response of Teddy Roosevelt in the trustbusters in the progressive era where there was a response against that monopoly power in certain sectors of our industry that now exist in big tech. And it has anti-competitive aspects that have to be challenged. So I'll keep it up. This litigation is very important, the legislation that's being considered in Congress. And by the way, with a lot of bipartisan support is really important. But I want to talk about some of the other issues that are really important to us and it's our democracy. And how is it that the dialogue that is essential to a democracy where there's a debate about issues, where there's some foundational facts that are accepted has so deteriorated and what does that mean to our democracy? When we live in an era which very much because of social media entitles almost any American citizen to believe whatever facts it is they want to believe. We now have these affinity groups that it doesn't matter what the engagement is on the facts. They're entitled to and do act on whatever it is that is perpetuated and amplified by social media. So some of the issues that have emerged. Let me just pause for one second. The competitive issues that you're addressing to some extent have been facilitated by Section 230 where the privilege that social media companies have where they do not bear any responsibility for what is put on their sites no matter how libelous, no matter how scandalous, no matter how damaging, no matter how anti-democratic they have the protection of Section 230. They're not the publisher. The New York Times, the Washington Post pick the Cincinnati Enquirer, take your pick. They do have libel restraint and what happened, of course, during the course before Section 230 anyone who was a publisher had to bear the responsibility of what they had as content on their site which was usually a newspaper or television. That's no longer there. The reason Congress did that and it worked was to try to create a positive environment for our social media companies to thrive and prosper and to lead the world. And that worked. Although now with the anti-competitive practices it's not working so much because we're seeing that in Europe, in other parts of the world, actually there's innovation there that we don't have here. So the competition matters. But the Section 230 which had good intentions has had bad outcomes. And some of the issues that Congress is wrestling with, and again on a bipartisan basis, beyond the antitrust is privacy and data security. Because what we know is the model for a Facebook, I'll use that because it's so popular these days, is about advertising. And advertising is about the number of clicks that happen on that website. And the number of clicks, it turns out, is generated and amplified by the design of the algorithm. And the algorithm is designed to create interest. And the algorithm understands that more interest is created, the more conflict is created. And the more conflict is created, the more clicks there are. And at the end of the day, the more advertising revenue that that social media platform gets. And that's regardless of the consequences. So those issues that have emerged, and have not been addressed by Congress, include privacy and data security. And my colleague, representatives Shikowsky, Eshoo and Lofgren are working on that. Very tough. How do we protect our privacy? And is privacy even of value anymore? I believe it should be, just for the integrity of our individual self. Public discourse and misinformation. Senator Klobuchar, Senator Markey and Senator Matsui are working on Health Misinformation Act. And the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Act. But the public discourse, for me, is one of the major questions that we have to address. Because when the news that we get is on sites that have no obligation for how libelous the content may be, how provocative it may be, then we're in the wild west and anything goes. And of course, we're seeing that played out ultimately with what happened on January 6th. We have the Algorithmic Amplification of Misinformation. And that goes back to what I was talking about with the design of the algorithms that are done by Facebook or other entities that has nothing to do with the well-being of our citizenry or the health of our kids. It has to do with that algorithm having as its ultimate goal the most clicks in the most advertising revenue. There's election interference. And we saw that in 2016 where the focus was on foreign interference. And the focus in horror of the idea that a foreign power would be influencing our elections was anathema to many of us. But in fact, that election misinformation is now a domestic concern because folks have figured out that they can say what they want to say, false as it may be, libelous as it may be, to ultimately try to achieve an outcome that they want regardless of any kind of truth. So there's an election interference issue. There's also local media deserts. You know, we don't have any strong, I shouldn't say that, but it's really tough for local media to exist because essentially all the advertising has migrated to the platforms and the local media's model, which is dependent on local advertising, doesn't exist. So the importance of local media is the importance of community. That's what it's about because there's an investment in that sense of place that local media has played a major role in. And that's been really challenged. It's under immense pressure, as we know as a result of the change in the model where that news is used on some of these platforms without any compensation to local media even if it was generated in a local newspaper. Now, one of the concerns that I have as well, and I think we all do, is the pressure on kids. You know, the Facebook whistleblower testified that on Instagram there was evidence that was known to Facebook that the suicidal thoughts that young girls had had increased about 13.5%. And, you know, this is shocking and it's not acceptable because all of us know that if we've had kids and we see the challenge that they go through, is they're trying to figure out their way in life? Is they're trying to get a sense of their own identity? Is they're trying to find a way to interact with other kids who are different and to resolve those things? That if they have this flood that is just in their face all the time without any regard to their well-being but total regard for the bottom line of the purveyor of this, that's a real threat to the health and safety of our kids. And, you know, you don't have to have kids. At one point, you were a kid. It was a long time ago, but I'll bet you if any of us think for a moment about some of those times that we had when we were trying to figure out who we were and the challenges of that that are real. And then it doesn't take much to have some empathy for the kids today who have to do that in a much more volatile, much more aggressive, much more corporate, energized approach. It's terrifying for parents. And what's the good of it? And who's made the decisions about how it is these things will be spread out into the ecosphere? It's not public policy people. It's not people who are elected. It's individuals who managed to ride through to the top of the social media ecosphere with the benefit of public policy, a free hand carte blanche with section 230, with relaxed enforcement of competition, so they were good at what they did. They created a media empire. They crushed the competition. They used practices of buying up and buying out potential competitors in order to basically continue to clear the field. And then with the benefit of section 230 we're left with that capacity to make decisions that affect our democracy, that affect the well-being of our kids, that affect the well-being of our interaction, that affect the well-being of what I think all of us really want to do in personal and public life. And that's help our family. It's help create a sense of community where we live. It's to help create bonds of trust rather than suspicion. And this is all being done, all being done without public authority to enforce competition rules which you're trying to change or ask the fundamental questions about what's at stake for our democracy and what steps can we take where the goal is to protect our democracy and not just enrich the folks who've made it to the top of this tech ladder. That's the question. So we've got in Congress right now the struggle to try to figure this out. And the issues are tough between privacy. There's always free speech issues. There's always election issues and free and fair debate. I mean these are genuinely difficult issues that we've got to wrestle with in Congress. But you know what? We should be wrestling with them in Congress, not just leaving it to the Zuckerbergs in the Dorses. It's not their right to make these decisions that are about our democracy. That's the right of the people that we represent. So in Congress, the variety of things that are being considered have to do with privacy, personal protection, competition, all of these issues. But my view is that we need something more than one-off legislative responses to the particular issues that are emerging. And it's time in my view that Congress creates an authority, a digital authority that has significant responsibility to make rules, to get access to information like algorithmic designs that has as its goal the protection of democratic values. There's a lot of legislation, but my experience in Congress is that the one-off legislation is difficult for Congress the way we operate to have a hearing and wrestle with these issues. What we have to do is I think what the trustbusters did, what the FDR administration did, and is acknowledge that we have to have an authority whose job it is to protect the public. And that has to be a balance of taking advantage of what tech has to offer, the contributions it has made to our society, how it's helped our economy. But we've got a clear-eyed view that it is not up to the owners of big tech to make decisions about how what they're doing is interfering with elections, how what they're doing is interfering with the well-being of our children, how what they're doing is interfering with free and fair debate. Those are serious issues that we've got to undertake. And in order for us to do that, I believe we need a digital authority that has the capacity that has the expert staff to get to the bottom of inquiries into algorithmic design that has the capacity to do rulemaking, that this would all be done, obviously, with the authority of Congress to set up an agency that has that capacity to do the rulemaking and they can make recommendations to Congress for congressional action. But on our own, it's essentially a continuation of the Wild West, and it's not good for our democracy. You know, I want to end with, I know we're all concerned about this, but I was in the Capitol on January 6th, and before I went over there to do what was essentially ministerial duty that any of us who are elected in Congress have to do, and that is to vote to certify the decision that the American people made as to who their president would be. It's not my decision. I have to do a ministerial act as the member of Congress from Vermont, along with Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders in the Senate. That's all it was. But I took a walk on the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, down to the Lincoln Memorial, and then back by the White House. And it was really scary and alarming to me, really, that there was so much anger out there, accusations about all those people down in the Capitol who were really bad, and I'm thinking in the Capitol, they're not just talking about Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. They're talking about these Capitol police officers who are there who drove two hours. A lot of those folks live a long way from the Capitol because it's so unaffordable to live in D.C. And that abstract anger applied to people that they didn't even know. And a lot of those folks believed it because social media had been designed to get that big lie that was essentially perpetuated by our then president, that the election was stolen and people believed it. They believed it. And then to be in the Capitol during that assault, when the woman about 20 feet from me was shot, when the mob was breaking down those doors, the iconic doors that the president of the United States enters to give the State of the Union address, and to see young officers come but concerned that they may actually have to fire their weapon. There was one next to me, and I could see totally in his eyes the last thing in the world he wanted to do. Last thing was pull that trigger, but his job was to protect me and others, and he'd do his job and have our citizens outside doing that to these innocent people, and they believed it. Social media played a big role in that. But then what is really a lament for me, because I've enjoyed my colleagues, including my Republican colleagues, all of us who are in public life, we enjoy the people. And over half of my colleagues on the Republican side voted against certifying the election of the president of the United States. And now I'm watching as the Republican candidates, and don't mean us to be partisan, but just telling you the facts, virtually every one of the 435 or so folks who've announced that they're running have embraced that the election was stolen. Our democracy is imperiled. It's a jump ball as to where we're going to end up. And if we're going to get to where we need to be and protect that democracy, get back to having common norms, whether you're a conservative or you're a liberal, and a common norm is the free transfer of power, free and peaceful transfer of power. It's the renunciation of violence. It means a political persuasion. If we're going to get back to that, we have to analyze what's happened. Social media is a big part of this. So your focus on competition has enormous consequence to our future. Because if you get competition, you're going to get competition on the models, where people are maybe going to have an option of choosing a better model that's less about division and more about unity. But it also means that we have to address these other issues where the algorithms are absolutely designed to create conflict, discord, division, anger. That is not an emotional formula for personal health or civic health. We've got to face it. The bottom line question to begin with is do we continue to give a free hand to the tech companies under the guise that those folks are better suited to make some of these very difficult and messy decisions than people who are elected by the voters of this country? So what you're doing, what we're all doing, the challenge we face, is really about saving our democracy. We've never had to worry about that. We've gone through incredibly difficult times, but a democracy does require that there's a common set of norms that are more important in many ways than the law itself. We just believe in free and fair elections. We just believe that dialogue, not violence, is the way to make progress. And that has to be across the board, whether we win the fight or we lose the fight. It's the way we're going to fight. So, you know, I started out by just acknowledging the important role that prosecutors play. And in many ways, the judgment that you have the authority to exercise is unique because you have the ability to file a lawsuit. And that decision is so consequential, whether the defendant is a company or it's an individual. And prosecutors have an awesome authority because what you do has such consequences to whoever it is you sue. And the quality that I've admired and prosecutors that I have admired is not that they have the power and they're not afraid to use it. It's they actually have restraint. They know that it's really consequential when they make that decision. And restraint is important in our democracy because it's about respecting people whose views you may disagree with, but you're willing to hear out and you're willing even to take into account their point of view. And in order for our society to get back to confidence in its own democracy, it has fundamentally, it has to have confidence in the rule of law. And that's, you're the custodians, the Attorney General, are the custodians of that sacred trust that we have in the rule of law. So I look forward to being your partner as a legislator. All of you who are here, I know your colleagues who are serving with me in Congress and I'm honored to do so. But this has got to be a partnership that we sustain. You on the competition, I think in Congress has to address some of these democratic threats, these threats to our democracy of the Section 230 unleashed, fully empowered tech giants. We've got to come to terms with this. So thank you very much for inviting me and thank you so much even more for the work that you do. Thank you, Representative Welch, for that incredibly powerful speech. I would dare say that this speech should be sent to our colleagues. It was excellent. And I can certainly speak for Vermont, but we support your call for a federal digital authority and certainly we'll reach out to our colleagues to support you in that endeavor.