 All right Hello, everybody. This is Nikolas be with reason. This is our weekly live stream. I'm joined by my colleague Zach Weismiller Zach hello, good to see you. Good to see you, too and we are joined today by the actor and Documentarian Alex winter whose new movie is the YouTube effect Alex. It's good to talk to you again It's always good to talk to both of you. We have been You have been directing for about 30 years, right? Didn't your first feature movie? I believe came out in 1993 that you directed and started Yeah, though I think it's scary to say my first professional directing job started in the mid 80s So it's getting close to 40, which maybe let's just stick with 30. Yeah, okay Well, it's a lot less. Yeah, it's you know, but in any case you have done documentaries in particular over the past 15 20 years downloaded which was a great study of Napster and unauthorized file sharing The deep web a look at Ross Ulbricht in the silk road Trust machine the Panama Papers and then I think most recently was Zappa, which came out about three years ago About Frank Zappa as a kind of ultra individualist free speech activist technological savant, etc We are now Talking about the YouTube effect your new movie that's out Zack let's play the trailer and then we're gonna come back and talk with Alex about what's in the movie Web giant Google will pay $1.6 billion to gobble up YouTube the making of YouTube There was no doubt in my mind that this was gonna be a huge trend of the future YouTube celebrities are laughing along with their fans all the way to the bank this kid Ryan and 22 million dollars this year They want growth growth growth. Everything's about growth. They are obligated to maximize shareholder value Add money that really affects the kind of content that you can make they're lost for hijacking people's attention You just have to get eyes on the video Everything on YouTube changed when the recommender algorithm was introduced It's not just algorithmic. It's very deliberate. I'm a weapon. I'm made to be thrown at you I think you took a very intimate format. You're watching one person talk to you When they start telling you about their beliefs and views that pack a real punch Now we're in this sort of misinformation apocalypse. I Don't agree that it is just reflection of society. It's changed society This is just made up by Bill Gates and them go online and look it up It's kind of dangerous how we are just waiting for there to be enough of these Digital car crashes and this digital intersection with no stoplight We don't figure out this problem. We're gonna lose what it means to be human All right, that's the trailer the movie is playing in select theaters around the country around the world and it's going on streaming services So you can watch it. I highly recommend that you do but Alex as a starting point What is the YouTube effect or what are the effects in particular that you're trying to bring attention to in the documentary? I Think it's the societal impact. I think that when I was Digging around in this community, which is now by far the largest online community on the planet by a lot a Lot bigger than anything that's in its rear view mirror I felt that there wasn't really a lot of Examination on Google and its media platform YouTube, which is what YouTube is. It's really Google's media front end and I Felt as if the the societal impact of that platform now that it's been around long enough, and it's so big and pervasive globally was really beginning to To attempt to unpack that they have a very close look at that and Gail and her the producer Had come to me and asked me if I was interested in collaborating with her on the story She had some access. She knew I would have access and it had obviously been on my mind for quite some time About my mind for probably a solid decade in terms of its significance and and its impact So it felt like a good time to jump in. Yeah, what you know, can you just very quickly sketch the? Well, actually Zach, why don't you run through some of the numbers because it's fascinating to think about You know what you said? Oh, I've been directing movies for 40 years. It's like I remember a time before I had a computer I realized I'm like, you know a mammoth or I guess a mastodon these days like a dying breed But the just to think about the world before YouTube is like a radically different place Zach. I'm sorry run through What's the reach of this? Yeah, you mentioned its tremendous growth? This is the first kind of slide that appears in your movie you mentioned December 2005 YouTube officially launches to over two million video views per day a month later That reaches 25 million views today. It has over 2.6 billion users worldwide It's the second most visited website by traffic in the world as of June 2023 right behind Google You described it as the front end of Google. So in a way, Google's got the one and two spots there It is the second most popular social network worldwide right behind Facebook Facebook at 2.9 billion users YouTube as we mentioned a little over 2.5 billion users And this data here is from kind of there one of their in recent internal reports Put together by Oxford economics that looks at the economic impact of YouTube and According to their internal report here Their creative ecosystem has contributed over thirty five billion dollars to US GDP in 2022 That's not counting kind of YouTube's parent company. That's just the platform the creators and then YouTube's creative ecosystem has supported they claim more than 390,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the US so, you know given that That meteoric rise that explosive growth I mean first of all, what do you think explains that how why did YouTube grow so quickly out of the gate? I Think there's a number of things at play and I think some of those are actually good things And I think to credit Susan Mazzischi all the way back in the day because she wasn't Obviously just the CEO of YouTube which she isn't now she was when we made the film She stepped step down subsequently, but she was also an instrumental part of the formulation of Google itself and a big part of how Google rose and very very smart and Very forward-thinking and I think that Susan saw in this fledgling little video platform What a lot of other people didn't which was to a degree the future? You know, we'd had Napster we'd we'd had a Sense by then that the world was moving online and that media was moving online and I think it was obvious to people like me I'm Napster in 1998 1999 So it would certainly have been obvious to anyone inside Silicon Valley if it wasn't obvious to most folks elsewhere And I think what what Susan saw and then what she subsequently had a hand in building with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley who were the two of the three founders of YouTube and then went on to run it for a while Was that this wouldn't just be a Facebook it wouldn't just be a Kind of a video jukebox of which there were many back in those days if you know like Nick and I are old So we remember what it was like to I still miss audio galaxy. I'm not gonna lie. There you go. Exactly and win app I'm gonna go So So there was a lot of these things floating around But nobody in those days the real the winners of the inner of the tech space We're gonna be those who figured out how to put their arms around most of these tools and then make them very easy for users to navigate and use Which is what YouTube was so it I think there was an understanding that it could become a video platform for for users to upload their own stuff a social media community Which is a component of that a place for entertainment for for visual and audio entertainment a place for creators It would then be monetized because they started monetizing their creators very early Smosh who were two of the first creators the fine brothers You know early on began to monetize almost immediately and in significant ways They were built, you know all four of these guys were teenagers practically and began to earn a very good living so I think that the that the vision for it was there and I think that the willingness to create an infrastructure that would that would equitably and fairly pay Content creators all over the world right of every color of every ethnicity of every type of gender It was really Radical what they set out to do in that way And what it has grown into Now is by far the largest media platform on the planet. Yeah, I think it would be well useful Especially for some of our younger viewers who might not remember those earliest days of YouTube to just glimpse back at a second As to what it used to look like it was very you know before monetization and professionalization It was very much just like your amateurs uploading just a dumb video you took and kind of the the primary I mean we can just look at the very first video that was put up That one of the founders kind of set the tone for early youtube. Uh, this is All right, so here we are one of the elephants Cool thing about these guys is that they have really Really really long From and that's that's cool And that's pretty much all I was to say So no no disinformation there. That is an absolute truth elephants do Absolutely, that's got a I think a couple hundred million views racked up by now, but um, you know, uh We wanted to talk about uh, you know before we get into some of the negatives that your documentary Raises could you talk a little bit about youtube's upsides? What are some of the the best contributions to our culture to Video and filmmaking that you think youtube has made over the years There are so many uh and google as well And I sort of mentioned them in the same breath because they really are one company even though there are elements to youtube that that are separate. Um They are really one company with with a with a single ethos and uh And a kind and I'd say the positives of that are a commitment to To innovation and kind of human evolution using the culture itself Uh as its primary product. Um, and I think a lot of that has been Extremely vitally important to global culture. Um, in in some ways so in such vast ways that it's almost Diminishes its power To start to break apart little things like oh, it's helpful to figure out how to put AAA batteries into the back of your radio It's like, you know, it gives you like mundane information Well, it's also the repository of basically all of visual human content that's ever existed Since the dawn of content being recorded in any form and even not recorded. Um, you know But re-implemented in some form another by the way of explainers. So it's it's our it is our library, alexandra I know that's a a terrifying concept, especially to librarians Because there is so much misinformation there, but it there were there were a lot of misinformation There was a lot of information in the library of alexandria too, right? There was and there's a lot of misinformation in your in your local public library So that's just and that's sort of my point is where I get kind of, you know, uh Disconcerted by the way we look at at the rise of new technology having been around these stories for a long time Is we other it right? It's this other thing, but it's not another thing. It's really a natural evolution of human Innovation and these are tools that that we have evolved to create Um, and they're just a part of the fabric of being humans. So youtube specifically I would credit them with as I said earlier with very specifically and intentionally monetizing The democratization of culture something that we saw happening with napster that the record industry I would argue still has not successfully done as well as youtube has done I would even argue that my industry which is on strike right now has not figured it out as well as youtube has You can you can create on youtube. You can be a trans You know african artist in a in a micro nation And make a crazy good living if you have access to these tools and can uh, you will get monetized You'll build an audience. You'll the gates are down. You're reaching people all over the world Um, and so that's an amazing thing that I think they did intentionally and very successfully I think the breadth of information is vitally important to have at the fingertips of anyone around the world It just removes gatekeeping and it removes. Uh, it democratizes information I mean unless you're in china where they can literally censor you right Uh, and I mean just to kind of build on that the you know, one of the early sensations on youtube was watching chinese kids Uh lip syncing to the backstreet boy songs and things like that and it created your gangman style the rise of k-pop Yeah, yeah, I mean it created a global village right that marshal mcclune could only kind of speculate about in the 60s And it built off of the you know those signal developments in the 90s that were a lot of it was around the internet but it was other, you know, just the decreasing price Of uh, technology so that you know the the cost produce and consume culture under whatever Circumstances you wanted whether it's authorized unauthorized legal illegal all became much cheaper I just you know part of the upside for us At reason was we went online uh with reason tv, uh, as it was called in to that october 2007 We've been on youtube since 2007 and we've had something like 255 million views of our over 3 000 videos that we've put up. We've only made about 500 000 dollars all told so it's not like we're making a living out of it But you know, it's better than zero But that idea that you can bring together Information shared and distributed and it might find a global market as humongous You know one of the kind of examples in this it seemed like it wasn't that long ago But it actually was kind of but cony 2012 is an example of a documentary which there's a lot of reasons to be You know critical of it, but it was about a warlord in africa who had a child army That became a massive global phenomenon in 2012 I had it kind of shows the power of youtube to Kind of galvanize people in ways good and bad. Um, the you know your, um Um, the the you know and you you touch on this the uh, youtube one of the most popular things on it are explainer videos and how to videos, you know, and that has gone massively large, but let's Talk a little bit about the negative sides that you roll out about youtube in this because this documentary Is not really a celebration of youtube as much as a critique of it So uh zach do you want to talk about? I mean, maybe we should start talking with about the rabbit hole problem This gentleman who I brought a slide up of is calib. He posted a video here called my descent into the alt-right pipeline He's a major character featured in your documentary What does calib's story exemplify for you? Well, it actually exemplifies that we're beyond the rabbit hole That there was a period when the youtube recommender algorithm, uh, was aggressively Propagandizing viewers because you could go on if you had a predilection to look at, you know A an influencer that had a certain type of rhetoric that was fairly benign You could very quickly get Recommended much more extreme Uh influencers and content that would that would as the term Illustrates would take you down a rabbit hole. It's very difficult to get rabbit hole today They did in in fairness to youtube do a lot of work on that algorithm In fact with calib kind of as a as a test case We didn't put this in the films or pointless But when I filmed him which was at the watergate hotel because we're we're cheeky like that We we did a a test with him where I had him go on his laptop and try to rabbit hole himself and he couldn't the algorithm just wasn't going to do that And so the reason I was interested in calib was calib, you know was already on his way to towards extremist views and YouTube and the influencers they had on there at the time, which were very aggressively extreme extremists Like stephan malinu who was a big part of the influence Of the the shooter and the in the christ church new zealand shooting was heavily influenced by stephan I got stephan deplatformed eventually um But it was really about where we are post this rabbit hole idea the whole idea that misinformation is so proliferant The monetization of propaganda is so proliferant Now um in our current culture that we're almost all being rabbit hole or almost all Sort of in a blasé way accepting of of misinformation or flat-out disinfo um And in calib's case he was kind of pulled out of that extremist thinking by another person on youtube Which was madly when uh, which we used to kind of prove a point that you know, the some of the harms are here But a lot of the antidote for those harms can be found in the same place can be found in youtube itself Yeah, at one point you actually quote calib is saying I wasn't radicalized by youtube I was already radicalized, but he was talking about that the videos that he was watching killed his empathy But then he comes across contra points As she is better known and it's kind of fascinating that you know To to see youtube is is not You know an engine of disaster or to the extent that it is it also becomes an agent of empathy as well Exactly, I think that that's really exemplifies the internet itself. It's the it's the whole spectrum of human Experience the the issues to focus on the harms And what I wanted to get at in the film was a I wanted to put a human face on all of these issues because I think that's important And that's what docs are very good at you can read a million articles about youtube and about social media and see a million documentaries that don't really Humanize a core cast of characters that give you an emotional understanding of the issues of play Um and so from the people who actually experienced it not like actors or reenactments or something so That was very important to me But I also wanted to get past this idea of the algorithm which in in my opinion is kind of a Diversion tactic by these monopolized tech companies to just flood you with confusing tech rhetoric That just makes the average person's eyes glaze over and then you never get into the details of how you can maybe make these places work better Um, and yes, there are algorithms and yes, there are a lot of engineers who need to be working on algorithms But most of us are not tech engineers Most of us are including the people who run google and youtube are just people with basic incentives Um, and there was these basic incentives that I was most interested in focusing on with this film Which in this case is their business model, which is an ad revenue based business model Which is attaches a dollar to content that holds you on platform And to them just like the yellow journalists of yesteryear Um, as we all know the most salacious type of content is normally the most Ad-friendly and that is the case with youtube in a way that I think is problematic So you mentioned that Now things have changed and you even tried to get k-lib to rabbit hole himself and could not Does that indicate to you that something has shifted in the The incentives, um, is that that the advertisers started to get uncomfortable with the Kind of press that youtube was getting and therefore they decided to shift the algorithm. I mean how How did the business model work to Sort correct itself in this case It's the opposite. Um, it's the opposite of of it getting better of there being less harmful information of advertisers getting wary What it what it was Was that the they don't need To rabbit hole you to get you to watch salacious content disinformation is now pervasive, right? I mean I have friends who are On all sides of the political aisle who flirt with extremely bananas uh theories of either flat earth or just very kakamani ideas about About the world that are not fact-based the sort of non fact-based Uh culture is pervasive. So you don't need there the incentives aren't there to to force you algorithmically Um into this kind towards this kind of content as joe politzer knew in the late 1800s. It's just human nature, right? You are you are pre You are pre wired to connect more intensely With hyperbolic angry negative content than you are with middle of the road fact-based content So it actually they don't need to do that. It's really a human issue It's the parasocial relationship of having someone looking into webcam like i'm looking at you guys and you're looking back at me It's that very human non algorithmic parasocial component that makes youtube so powerful And when you when you attach that to content then you can monetize that Yeah, when you say it's it's you know negative or you know in hyperbolic and things like that How does that explain? You know the emergence of somebody like mr. Beast on youtube who's one of the largest You know channels And characters and it's if anything it's relentlessly upbeat. It's like barny the dinosaur, you know post You know going through a puberty or something like that Um, is it actually is it negative like salacious negative hyperbolic? Is that the Is that how they keep people watching or is it More catering to what people are interested in? I think it's both I think that when you deal with with media a media platform as big as youtube of which there is no larger media platform Um, you are going to be targeting massively disparate demographics mr. Beast For instance my middle school kid loves mr. Beast and all of his friends in middle school of mr. Beast But yeah, I've never watched a single mr. Beast video in my entire life And neither have my two older children not one not a single one So, um, you're just talking about about demographics And I think that's where it's a business model problem Because two two advertisers are looking at a pie chart of numbers and they're not differentiating at all Between mr. Beast and Stephen Crowder, right? But of course there is a difference between mr. Beast and Stephen Crowder Because mr. Beast is like doing the kind of benign You know, whatever come in and earn a million dollars by jumping off this bridge And Stephen Crowder is calling for civil war after the FBI goes down to Mar-a-Lago to look at at trump's classified documents and And to to an advertiser It's just it's just data points. It's the same can I uh before Zach has a clip that he's going to run but just before we move on from the question of misinformation or disinformation I agree with you Absolutely that most of my friends believe things that are insane and not fact-based Sometimes they get support from books. Sometimes they get support You know from videos or you know, maybe even from reason articles or something like that But how do you define that? Um in a way that doesn't just become I don't agree with this and hence it is disinformation or it's misinformation or it's malinformation And needs to be called out There are very clear cut definitions to the difference between misinformation and disinformation that are generally used misinformation essentially refers to Information that is untrue, but maybe benign. It may be an accidental mistake. It may be A fact that is incorrect disinformation is ideologically manufactured To uh with an agenda So it is not so much that this is where I think it gets misconstrued by the public or when we get into like I would argue um kind of misunderstanding the first amendment or free speech issues Disinformation is intentionally targeted information that that is literally ideologically manufactured to create A response it is it is actually propaganda and a lot of the dark money Funded influencers on youtube that are pumping out disinformation Have very specific political ideologies that they are that they are servicing So it isn't accidental and it isn't something that ends up getting contextualized by the end user It is it is created intentionally for x effect. I think the crouter example is a good one I think that that inciting your you know four million viewers Uh to civil war uh based on a completely legal um and fairly casual Visit to our ex-president by an FBI member based on class of information Which is no different than they would do to a democratic president Or a different republican member That is a very good example of disinformation. That's harmful What I to return to the uh contra points natalie win example for a second because what what I find really interesting about that channel and about what natalie is doing there is She's kind of embracing This landscape that you're describing or just like this is she's just accepting like this is the water we're swimming in It's a very personal medium And um, she just directly engages with the culture war arguments Dissects the dishonest rhetoric and kind of jumps into the arena Instead of sitting on the sideline begging youtube to de-platform or demonetize people And does it in a very stylized way as we can see here? This is kind of the aesthetic established. Uh, that's designed to maximize engagement kind of Do what you need to do on youtube to Reach an audience and reach outside of an echo chamber and build a following and In this case, there's evidence that that approach is an effective tactic What is your takeaway from What's the contra points channel has done? My takeaways and I think this is natalie's having spoken to her about it is that you work with the tools you have Um, so I think when you have something that has forward. I mean youtube has four Point six or four point seven billion Video views per day So there's a lot of people who don't have the tools at natalie's disposal natalie's working with what natalie has Uh to be involved. I know that natalie that contra points is very Um supportive of civic engagement and civic response um So, you know, she has been able to build up a massive audience on youtube, which is extremely rare I would know I would also add Um, so there it is not by any means the only tool that people should be using carry goldberg is using the tools at her disposal as a lawyer to literally create Lawsuits and go after um for for very specific arms based on very specific Issues on platform. Um, so I think it's incumbent. I mean my general opinion is it's all hands on deck Um, I think that because and and to be fair to google Including google's hands on deck, right? Um and including fixes from within their own company Um, which are basic. I just think that we've never seen in human history Uh, this is this industrial revolution the digital technological industrial revolution that we're currently in has moved at an accelerated pace The likes of which we've never seen so we're all playing catch up a little bit And the yeah, you know youtube's uh CEO or I guess outgoing ceo susan wuchitski Last year was talking on all the this very topic In davos at the world economic forum, uh in 2022 I want to play a clip from that just to get a so everyone can get a sense of How youtube is thinking about this, you know from the top, uh, and then get your reaction to The proposals that are being laid out there Investing a huge amount to make sure that we're fighting misinformation and There are a number of different ways that we look at this So the first would be from a policy standpoint We would look at content that we would think about in terms of being violent of our policies So if you look at covid for example, we came up with 10 different policies that we said would be violent of like an example of that Would be saying that covid came from something other than a virus and we did see people Attacking 5g equipment for example because they thought that it was causing covid And the second one would be really raising up authoritative information so If you are dealing with a sensitive subject like news, uh, health Science, we are going to make sure that what we're recommending is coming from a trusted well-known Publisher that can be reliable if there's content that's borderline content That technically meets our policy but is lower quality that's content that we basically will not Recommend to our users our users could still access it and then lastly We're just really careful about what we monetize so we always want to make sure that there's no incentive So for example with regard to climate change, we don't monetize any kind of climate change material So there's no incentive for you to keep publishing that material that is propagating something that is generally understood as Uh, not accurate information So taking down really blatant, uh, this information like that 5g towers are call are causing COVID-19 You know de-ranking certain sources upranking authoritative sources and then demonetizing Controversial debates that she believes are spreading misinformation Is that an agenda that you think is a positive one for youtube to be pursuing? I think it would be great to see them do that So they're not they're not doing it. No, no, they're not doing that Like but here's my reaction to that because I I do think it's Totally understandable and appropriate for a company like youtube to not want videos about 5g conspiracies running rampant on a platform. I don't agree with that though. That's not true They're actually incentivized to have a lot of material like that In fact google came under fire over the last few weeks in terms of how it's it's spending their ad dollars and not spending them In areas that they told their advertisers they were spending them So no, I would actually argue that they that while philosophically they may not like the idea That they're monetizing this type of content. They are absolutely monetizing this type of content But they they have taken those that sort of stuff some of them You can find all that stuff. It's all that stuff is there on youtube all of it Is there one all of it the flip side to all this is that I've seen what happens When you know misinformation has become somewhat of a buzzword and I've seen what happens when the net Is cast too wide. I mean even reason tv we got a strike Or this was a video I produced. It was about these biohackers attempting to kind of create a knockoff Covid vaccine and was called medical misinformation I mean, I just happened to know in fact that this was not medical misinformation It was me reporting on something somebody was trying to do but it got caught and it was like Six seven months after it went up that it got caught in this dragnet. Yeah, and so that is That's the kind of impossible thing about regulating misinformation at scale You know, whether you're a government or a private company. How do you call it? I don't think that's true though I don't think impossible is the right word I think that it's early days and oftentimes because these companies aren't incentivized to police themselves They do it very badly and they do it with a with a blunt hammer as opposed to a scalpel And it is burly like because for sure zack. There are people who Create music on on youtube who get their own content flag Like really even beyond what the example you just gave like yeah really we we are constantly being accused of Infringing our own copyright for exactly that happens all the time now I will this we would need five hours for this conversation I will tell you and you know how I feel about this stuff. I made the napster movie Yeah, I will tell you that that using copyright and IP law In this area to try to rectify this stuff is generally disastrous, right? And I will and so I'm not like some big, you know Let's just come down on everyone with with harsh or copyright law It will generally hurt the folks that you're trying to help and help the folks that you're trying to to get protection from It's just the way those laws are constructed Um, so I'm not sitting here saying that stuff is easy, but I will tell you that it's a heck of a lot Simpler than people are making it out to be and you have to start somewhere So yes, a lot of the tools right now are very blunt, but they will definitely get less blunt as we go along And we certainly don't want to do nothing Well, can I ask? Yeah, can I ask about that because you know in in a way it seems like you're you want to bring back or maybe You know, I Realistically probably has never gone away But this idea that there's a guardian class that must control what people are exposed to because they really can't handle things They can't sort things out themselves And you know this goes back to when the novel was introduced when radio was introduced movies You know comic books etc rock music in particular, you know, and I think about You know your documentary on zappa, you know, this is redolent with there's certain types of material Which should not be permitted Um because it will have a negative effect on people who can't understand it or can't critique it Um, is there you know, is there a contradiction in what you're saying between? You know your earlier work and your kind of emphasis on people being allowed to express themselves No, because I think we're talking about there's an enormous enormous Spread there and I think that if you're disinformation Being information that is specifically created to cause harm Those are basic safeguards. I don't think there's a lot of that doesn't enter sort of free speech territory um, you know if Someone's being called upon to go kill trans people and someone goes and kills a trans person No, I think it you know, if it's I mean there's fighting words and true threats that are you know, have been worked through Yeah, and there's a lot of study showing Showing the impact of fighting words on actual fighting and I think that that is where The arguments for everything being fair game are not valid um So I mean and so like when steven krauters says we need a civil war because my You know god, you know boy god trump is being Uh investigated by the the fbi that that crosses a line that If somebody's saying, you know, well, we need a total reordering of society based on Recent political events that would be sure. I mean it's also intentionally being done and funded by by some By dark money interests that are trying to create these harms in this violence You know as we saw with the trump indictment From yesterday the intention with the january 6 insurrection was to kill the enemy It was actually to commit that violence more people Were radicalized to go to the january 6 insurrection by youtube than any other Internet-based platform that is a a study with actual numbers attached to it. So you've got to start somewhere There yeah, I'm not I'm not convinced of that. I mean january 6 was organized in you know, what's app groups facebook groups? I mean private, you know Encrypted communications the the people who shout out but the prolifer the proliferation of the ideology was proliferated by youtube I mean the bellicam studies is very comprehensive Uh, yeah you know that there there's um The near the end of the film you start introducing some possible policy prescriptions you bring up the Famous internet law or you know very kind of bedrock internet law section 230 of the communications and decency act and uh, that's uh is essentially says that Platforms are not liable for user-generated content on their platforms You know whether or not they moderate or don't moderate just you know getting involved with moderation does not mean you're suddenly Liable for every single thing that someone posts on your platform This has been something that's been attacked by both democrats and republicans and your film seems to also Uh call for some sort of reform needed around section 230 What is what is it that you would like to see changed about that that fundamental law of the internet? Um, actually it doesn't uh the film doesn't do that Um, in fact, I would argue that we that our general take Not that my take is that important because we're really just trying to show all sides around this debate But section 230 is an incredibly difficult Thing to reform and it is really what provides the safeguards for the internet period um and tampering with it in a In a blunt way would actually as I said before cause harm to the very people that That we that many people would be looking to protect and it would it would hyper empower the monopolies there's a reason why certain factions in extremist sides of political thinking want to abolish 230 because It would essentially Allow for an enormous amount of censorship And it would erase enormous amounts of content from the internet that is providing very important Views and and giving voice to people who need voice who would not have it without 230 So my general feeling on this stuff's 230 content moderation All of it just to be very clear is that none of this is easy or simple and there really isn't a there is not A clearly defined way forward to say police the internet or regulate the internet. There isn't one um my point is that The the impact of these platforms on society is inarguably huge That some of these farms are politically motivated and funded or just ideologically Motivated and funded and that should be called out and that we shouldn't as citizens sit on the sidelines And just throw up our hands and say well, this stuff's too complicated. We shouldn't do anything We should start to look at what we can do. What however that looks I'm not convinced that's why we're forming 230 personally But i'm also not i'm not the head of ethics at berkeley like honey ferrita's right who does believe there's a way You should ask honey, right, right, honey. How do you how do you look at the revelations of things like the twitter files? And and reason got a cache of documents from facebook where you know, this is also something Not quite new but it you know It became apparent that there was a huge amount of government censorship without calling it that where You know people in both the trump administration the biden administration We can certainly assume, you know, george w bush and obama as well saying to platforms. Hey De-prioritize that kill this don't push this um Does that change the complexity of the task that uh that is at hand that this idea that there is You know the private sector and the public sector Public speech private speech is kind of out the window now I think that it what it does which is good is it shows the specificity of it Which is something we're talking about in the film that there are ideologies at play There are political players at play. It isn't just the town square There are people with agendas that are funded funded agendas that are giving that are using this golly You was parasocial influencer to say very specific things or to attempt behind the scenes to curtail the saying of very specific things So I actually think it's important that we understand that politics and and certain Players are involved in trying to shape the language or curtail the language that's out there I think that's the look. These are the beginning of conversations that we need to have this way This is by no means the end of anything I've got a last question because I know you've got a run in a minute. Um, you directed another great documentary called deep web about the ross Obrex saga And as such, you know, I'm sure you're well aware of the that encrypted communication messengers and platforms and Decentralized alternatives to youtube have taken off. Um, as well as centralized competitors like rumble How does that change the situation in terms of how you think about these issues of radicalization and misinformation and free speech If there really is increasingly no central node to kind of enforce any of this I think that there is because I think at the end of the day the the large scale populace Is mostly on the put in the main platforms the the numbers of the of the platforms You just mentioned or or even silk road That was my problem with the way ross was being treated ross albricht in that instance because he was being called a kingpin Um, and you know, even the drugs that were being sold They were like the amount of money and that was like what you get on a street corner in Idaho, right? So they're actually fairly small Um the and I do worry about the breaking of encryption Around regulation which we're starting to see in the eu is a potential problem with the way they're coming at regulating the internet That um would also potentially destroy encryption, which would be incredibly dangerous for a lot of people who rely on encryption for their safety um, so I think that that uh I'm a big believer as you Both of you guys well know in um the innovation and the freedom of information and encryption and uh open source technology But I don't see that being I mean nor cannot be stopped, but I don't see it being stopped I just don't think that's the primary way that the average people get their information Alex, what is the best way to uh catch the youtube effect? Uh, well, we will be on digital on august 8th. So we'll really be everywhere especially I mean in any english-speaking country. I think we're hitting other places internationally a little later But uh, you'll be able to find us on sort of your usual platforms You can go to my website Alex winter dot com and find us, but we will be Very easy to see on august 8th right now. We're in select theaters final final question You you were talking briefly before about participatory culture essentially and this is there's a long arc Again as the production costs and consumption costs of media become cheaper We can look back at this for 500 years or 50 years or 10 years um Participatory culture seems to be the answer Make the final case like how should people get off the sidelines in order to Enter the scrum to fight for the world that they want is youtube the medium for that primarily or I think that you know, and this is maybe a it's not an intentionally provocative thing to say But I think people need to lean into these technologies and not away from them I think that they're a big part of our life and you have to get involved I know my kids are safe because i'm on youtube. I know who these people I know who the good apples are in the back. It's like that's parenting, right? It's just like I wouldn't send my kid into a neighborhood without knowing the neighborhood or let him be with someone that I didn't think was safe Um, I all three of my kids have been on youtube their entire life And not one of them got like black filled or red filled or whatever whatever it is the kids say, um So, uh, it's you know, I think leaning in Um, I think having an awareness that these technologies are not necessarily good or bad They are just a part of human evolution and innovation. So be part of them use them understand them be discerning Uh, so I think that you're in their participation Can come from wherever like you were saying about contra points again comes from wherever your strength is Um, and and and really understanding what's going on in the world in sort of a broad way Thank you so much. Alex winter the new movie is the youtube effect. Thanks again for talking to reason Yeah, it was great. As always you had great questions