Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On Social Media The First Amendment 20240713

Georgetown university hosted this 90 minute event. [applause] thank you. We are very proud of our partnership with the night First Amendment institute of columbia. Startedus have projects by the Knight Foundation and now have other supporters as well. I want to pick up with the notion of the marketplace of ideas. I think that is what a lot of people think the internet was going to be, some people of believe it really is. Kara do you believe socialmedia is performing effectively as the market place of ideas . Kara no, i dont, all i read about is how it doesnt. It is a cesspool. Sanford i sort of knew what your answer would he. Kara it is not completely a cesspool, it is just the way it has evolved has created dust she brought up the idea of the Public Square present everybody thinks that twitter is a Public Square, or facebook is a Public Square, or reddit, or any of these sites. The fact of the matter is that both of them are Public Squares owned and to the benefit of millionaires. So it is not a Public Squares. We have deemed them the rights of a Public Square but they arent taking the responsibilities of any public space. The metaphor i tend to use, which i would love to know what you all think, is that you have built these great cities, which cities are wonderful and full of tolerance and diversity, they have built these cities which may run, etc. They havent provided police, fire, street signs, streets sanford trash collection kara trash collection. None of the functions of a major city. It is sort of like the purge every night. [laughter] and maybe will survive. At the same time, i dont know that there is responsibility. One, i dont think they are capable of it, two, i dont think they have the responsibility. Where has the federal government been in catching up to this medium and its impact on society . Sanford jeff, what is your view on how the marketplace of ideas is functioning online . Jeff i will take her metaphor and add to it and that is, first, i think it is correct that we are not policed by any services that were built with socialmedia. However, i think they are trying to build it now, and that is really hard, because of these services were built around the premise of not having a lot of these functions. I think it is complex in that they are trying, but i dont know how we solve the problem. What i would liken it to, is that the internet is like a house built without a basement, and that theyre trying to did the basement after they built the house. That happened on my street, and it didnt work out too well. Sanford how is it going . Jeff not too well, the house has been on the market of our five years. I dont think there are any perfect solutions, but i am glad you are at least having this discussion to come up with Better Solutions and to improve things. I think we have a long way to go. Jeff sarah jeong, your opinion on this . Sarah i will go with a different analogy. I think the marketplace of ideas is a good phrase for understanding what was going on with socialmedia right now, because, have you seen Online Marketplaces . If you are talking about the ebay of ideas, you already start to see the danger to read you are seeing all the problems of social media have a direct corollary to the literal financial marketplace on the internet. As human beings, especially organized through these algorithmically determined to marketplaces, we are susceptible to scams. Anything these giants have created, anything funded or motivated by taking personal information and reorganizing a page to attract as much attention as possible, you end up getting very perverse incentives that promote juice cleanses, weird teddy bears that advertise themselves as being 10 feet tall and just have legs that are seven feet tall and arms that are 1 foot. And you take a picture of it from a strange angle and it looks like a normal teddy bear that you would actually send to your loved one, but then they get it, and it is a monstrosity. Right . It is stuff like that that abounds on these marketplaces. That is what you get when you get that ebays and amazons of the world. We have a hard time wrapping ourselves around what is going on in social media, patrolling, the vast scope of terribleness. We are just getting scammed, in a different way. This is the canal street of ideas. It is just not working out, and theres a number of reasons why. Sanford katie, you brought a case against the president , not against twitter, right . Katie yes. At the knight First Amendment institute, we filed a case against President Trump and the white house director of socialmedia, who was his former golf caddy. We sued them both on behalf of seven individuals who were blocked by President Trump, because they replied directly to one of his tweets as Donald Trumps twitter account. A lot of people in their heard about our case, they figure the person who was blocked most of said something really terrible or vulgar, but all of our plaintiffs said things related to policies first of all, the president sometimes engages in vulgar commentary, but our plaintiffs were saying things like dust from the man who brought you covfefe, here is his latest terrible policy. Or at one point of the president tweeted something about winning the election, and one of the plaintiffs said to be fair, russia won it for you. We believe this is directly in the center of Public Discourse, which is at the heart of First Amendment. We filed the lawsuit, and our primary argument which now prevailed, is that when a public official, such as the president or any public official uses his social media account as part of their official role as a governing person, a person elected to office, and encourages the general public to speak in that forum in the context of the account, then it is a public forum subject to the First Amendment, and it has drawn on decades of sentiment from the Supreme Court that basically says, if the city council has an open meeting and allows everybody to come in and make a comment, you cant keep them out of the auditorium because you dont like what they say. Sanford and are you convinced that this argument is going to prevail at the Supreme Court . I hear the president is appealing. Katie right now, the president sanford actually, he is asking for the full Second Circuit katie threejudge panel from the Second Circuit held that the president violated the First Amendment when he blocked our plaintiffs from his twitter account, which, by the way, they have been unblocked, as did a number of other people who were also blocked. The government currently is asking for the full court in the Second Circuit to review and reverse the panels decision, then, depending on what happens with that, they could petition for cert to the Supreme Court. Sanford or you could. Katie yes, we could. I cant make a prediction about how the Supreme Court will come out on this. I do think that in this case and the Second Circuit that just rolled in our favor, if you look at the case, it is undisputed that the president blocked these people because of their viewpoints. That is almost of the central Cardinal Rule of First Amendment law, that the government may not censor speech because of someones viewpoint. So that is a really strong fact for us. So, what the government what trump has spent most of his time is arguing that because he is using his previously personal account, the realdonaldtrump account as an individual, it is not subject to his First Amendment. But he is governing by it . Katie that is our argument. In the First Circuit looked about and looked at how he uses it to make policy announcements, like the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, appointment of new cabinet members or the director of the fbis, the fact that the National Archives considers the president ial tweets to be president ial records, and a number of facts you are aware of, and the way that he has used it over the past couple of years . Guest lori, you are the only bona fide member of the socialmedia brave lori. Sanford i have to come back and ask, how is socialmedia functioning as a marketplace of ideas, and when you hear all this . What youve heard is not unusual, these things are said by a lot of people everyday. How do you react . Lori you are exactly right, these things are said by people everyday. But the opposite is also said by people everyday. We have people on the panel here this evening that feel like facebook and other social Media Companies are a world of smut, who are scamming people, but there are also people in this audience and maybe on this panel who think they are doing too much to censor users. The way we think about it is that we dont want to cast ourselves as the official Public Square, right . When you invite government regulation into that space, you only entrench the powers of that already exist in socialMedia Companies like ours. There doesnt mean there is for regulation, we have been open about privacy regulation and Election Integrity regulation, but here in the united states, we are big fans of the First Amendment. We have talked and sent about selfgovernance mechanisms that the industry could put on itself. At facebook, we talked about an Industry Standard board, we have an Oversight Board we are putting together. To go back to karas analogy of socialmedia, i would fight back and say that we are trying hard to have institutions that we think of as keeping communities space. At facebook, Free Expression is paramount, but you can only express yourself in a place where you feel safe. It is why we have Community Standards, why we have 30,000 content reviewers that we are bringing are those fulltime employees or contractors . Lori a lot of them were contractors. Sanford how do you organize 30,000 people to review i mean, where do they sit . [laughter] lori we have them around the world. It is really important to us but content is reviewed in a market where they can have the local context to know what a piece of content might mean. While our Community Standards are global, we make an effort to also have regional specialties like having the right language, the context, that is important to our reviewers. The content the review surfaces in a number of ways, whether it is Machine Learning, viewer reports, and the review. And there is difficulty, there are paths that they can escalate it upward, and that does take place with facebook employees. But going back to her metaphor, i would consider it like the police and the town. When there is a fivealarm fire escalation, the russian involvement in the 2016 election, viral misinformation, we are hiring people in trying to build systems that perfect our algorithms and Machine Learning so we can have a community where people feel safe to express themselves. For us, it is a marketplace of ideas. Sanford you are a company with 2 billion subscribers. Lori 2. 7 billion monthly active subscribers. Sanford 2. 7 billion. I will push back on that one. To push back on the push back, you are the dominant way most people get news, communicate, Everything Else. Contents moderators were just recently hired after a long time. Most of them are contractors. There were treated very different pieces by a journalist at the verge. Many of them, this piece she wrote, please look at it, they operate under companies that are not well monitored, i think they will be better monitored now that the piece was written. They operate in substandard conditions. Sanford and working conditions. They get paid not very much. They start at nine minutes a day for Mental Health, when these people are doing with pedophiles, child abuse, pet abuse, conspiracy theories. A lot of them have now started to believe conspiracy appears because they have been reading them for so long. It is a very fair piece that was written. What i came away with from it with was that there arent enough people it would change facebook judge economics drastically if they had to pay for the amount as jeff was talking about, if they had to actually police it, to me, it would be in the trillions. Let me not just pick on facebook, youtube is worse. So, they all employ contractors all around the world, whether it is the philippines or in tempe, arizona, it is always in someplace like about, or in florida, it is interesting where they place these people. And it is fascinating, what i thought when i read the piece, is that none of them are employees. Very few of them are employees. What i would like to see is all of them sitting in the middle of the facebook campus right there with mark zuckerberg. Sanford 30,000 . That is more people than in my hometown. Its like putting the toxic waste dump cleaners somewhere else and not giving them good seats. I think they are trying, it is just this task Machine Learning is not up to doing it yet, a. I. Will not solve all your problems and it will create a set of the problems. Secondly, to do this, given the massive virality of facebook it creates a situation that it is not too little too late, it just feels like almost too late to fix it. That it is fixable. That it is architected and correctly. A lot of the internet is architected for virality and speed and when you get that, you get hate speech, conspiracy. But without looking at the consequences of what you have made. Lori i would push back on the push back, first, when it comes to contractors, the allegations in the verge are things we take incredibly seriously. Working totantly improve our communication with the companies to work with. We are trying desperately hard to catch up with Machine Learning. That is why we are able to take isis content down as soon as it gets on the platform. We are trying to do with the problem in a way that doesnt necessarily have humans on the frontline line of the worst of the worst of the worst, but it doesnt change the fact that a lot of this stuff is contextual, particularly with issues like hate speech. However, yes, facebook is a gargantuan company, but there are others in the marketplace as well. There is reddit, where the tools are different, there is twitter, where the tools are different, so to say that anyone of these companies is a Public Square, i dont think is a fair comparison. Jeff building on that, when we talk about platforms and what theyre doing, i worry that we focus on facebook, twitter and youtube, because they are dominant in the marketplace, but to see different approaches i would look at some of the newer entrants like pinterest, twitch, who are doing innovative things because it have smaller staffs. We are a lot of innovative, not necessarily the costs associated with them. Even reddit, they have cleaned it up substantially. Jeff yes, they have like 10 people working on that. So there is a lot of hope for that. Sanford so there is hope for Smaller Companies, and the real problems we get to other big companies, is what you are suggesting . Jeff i think the Bigger Companies could learn a bit from what some of the Smaller Companies are doing. Sanford they usually just buy them. Jeff they do . No more. Sanford no more of that . No. Sanford why not . Because theyre in the middle of antitrust investigations. They are not going to be able to buy a sandwich soon. [laughter] they have nice sandwiches at facebook. Twitters are better. [laughter] sarah i actually disagree. The Smaller Companies, certainly may be the pinterests of the world, they have designed their products to be more limited in scope. The reason why facebook gets so much flack, is because facebook is big, and because facebook is so big, it has the resources to investigate internally. When you launch an investigation, you will find something. When you find something, someone leaks it, and eventually, it ends up on the front page of the new york times. Those Small Companies who are supposed to be doing so great, they probably have something similar going on inside, we dont know because they dont know, because they dont have the resources to look into it. May be pinterest doesnt, because it is not usable in the same way, but reddit, for instance, is a terrible example, because it relies very much on unpaid labor. All of the subreddits have their own moderators, but that is unpaid work. Is it much more ethical, unpaid labor, then someone making 40,000 a year in arizona who has nine minutes of Mental Health breaks every day . I am actually not sure. I think has anyone look at reddit in the lead up to the 2016 election, it was not a good place, it hasnt been a good place for many, many years. It was ground zero for the leaking of celebrity nudes, it has been a place that has encouraged Cyber Bullying on a scale that is quite terrible. I think that this problem extends everywhere. But i think facebook gets the most flack because it is the biggest. But maybe you should be busted up. But i dont think the future is the small platforms. I will say that to the extent that we are busted up, we will not have the resources to explore the problems effectively that we are discussing. One thing i think that gets lost in the conversation, outside human review and other tools we are using to make the platform safer, is that the internet is designed around virality, designed around edge content. That is something we are acutely aware of, and that is where we made changes to our algorithm, like last january, when we announced meaningful social interactions, and we acknowledge that by shifting what people saw in their newsfeed, the shifting our algorithm, it might decrease the amount of time people spent on our platform on a daily basis. And it did. They enjoyed the time more, more content from family and friends, it decreased the news content in your feed. As a result of that, users are reporting it to be a better experience. Because for us, it is a Foolish Company decision to think that we want to feed people something that they feel makes them feel unhealthy, because they will eventually quit that. Our goal is to have the best User Experience and that means, attacking click bait, attacking things that are viral and harmful. We try to do that in a variety of ways, even to the extent that it does hurt lining the pockets of our billionaires. Sanford katie, you are the practicing lawyer among the group. How do you assess the prospect of an antitrust case proceeding against social against some of these larger companies, socialmedia . Katie this is definitely not my area. I am not an antitrust lawyer, i think, obviously you have a number of attorneys general, and other Government Agencies looking into the social Media Companies and the Tech Companies. There is 48 of them 48 out of the 50 states. That is a lot of attorneys general. Sanford attorneys general . Katie yes, so from every corner, everyone is concerned about the power that these Tech Companies have. The question is, from my will perspective as a First Amendment lawyer, is, if these antitrust investigations are successful, what does that mean for free speech . Also, i know a lot of people have suggested that social Media Companies like facebook and others contribute to a bad environment for speech, but i guess the question is, in what way . I certainly hear criticisms from a lot of different corners, and it seems to me that the solutions that each corner wants may be at odds with the speech. For instance, more government regulation some people say, will they allow hate speech to proliferate . I do know that you will get a government regulation of hate speech, certainly not under the current First Amendment law, which the court has held is fully protected by the First Amendment. Kara i think the idea about antitrust, there are differences the right things facebook, twitter and google, not surfacing enough conservative content, the left thinks a lot of the hate speech is dangerous to people, and some of it is, some of it is just angry people talking to each other. They think the point of antitrust from my particular side and the people i interviewed, and i have interviewed a lot of people on this topic, is to break them up in order to allow more companies to thrive. So right now, some people, and i would tend to agree back in the day, it was microsoft, one company that was really dominating everybody for a long time you have probably 3, google, facebook and amazon. They are like semi trailers bearing down the highway where nobody can get past them. When you break them up, you will create much more innovation. So, say you pull youtube from google, youtube could go, maybe we should bill our self as a safe place, or maybe google will start a Video Network focused on safety, or instagram may do something else. What i think a lot of the antitrust people are thinking is that nobody is going to there is nobody today that is going to invest in a Search Engine. There is no way that you can in win. The has been a Search Engine since forever, 15 years. There hasnt been a new social media site, is significant one, there was peach for 15 seconds there, there hasnt been a new one since snapchat. Just today, snapchat was in the news because they have called facebook voldemort, and created a file to hurt them. There is no question of how much innovations facebook bars. Snapchat was the last social media that were created in 2011. There hasnt been an ad network created for 810 years, meaning google and facebook sped up the digital ad networks. There hasnt been a major commerce site. The idea is that once you start to split them up, you will get more innovation. And it has been some history of this, when you push microsoft back, google came back, at t, you have all of this incredible innovation, ibm, incredibly innovation. I think that is the focus. Katie it certainly makes sense but if you had a lot of social media sites that were competing, and if it was not just facebook or twitter, some could say, we have a Better Privacy policy, or a more restrictive content moderation for those who want more restrictive, and others might have a more laissezfaire approach. It is intuited that that would contribute to a better market visibility is due to the argument is, what creates competition . You could see some analogy to the f. C. C. Rules about the market. If you have the newspaper, radio and tv station, intuitively, it makes sense because there is not much diversity. Sanford there is great concentrations of newspapers now, especially smaller newspapers that have reemerged. But certainly in the past, antitrust action has been used when there was concentrations like this, going all the way back to breaking up the oil companies. Kara the f. C. C. Was founded about 100 years ago, right around those cases. That is the point, this is about an industry that is the most powerful. If you look at the top 10 most valuable companies, think seven of them are Tech Companies, and if you look at the top 10 most wanted people in the planet, i think six of them are in that area. Sanford there is a message there. Kara power in influence. Sanford jeff, you have paid attention to what is known as section 230 of the communications and decency act, which is generally regarded as the protective First Amendment umbrella over the social Media Companies. Can you explain how that came about . Jeff sure, i hope you have about 10 hours or so. I will keep it short. So there is a First Amendment, common law that has been on the books for decades that says if you are a distributor of someone elses content, you cant be held liable for it. This came up in bookstore cases, where bookstore owners were prosecuted for selling obscene books and magazines, and the Supreme Court said it would chill too much speech to hold the bookseller liable. We dont want to impose a duty to read every single book. That worked well for the next three decades or so. Then we get to the 1990s, and have Online Services like prodigy and compuserve, and they took different approaches to moderating content. Compuserve doesnt do any moderation, prodigy has moderators, and they both get sued for defamation based on their content. Compuserve gets the case dismissed, because the judge says, you are like a bookstore, you had no duty to read the book. Prodigy did not get the case dismissed and faced a 200 million libel suit, and the judge said, because you moderated content, you dont get any First Amendment, protection and we will hold you liable just like you printed it. So Congress Wants to address this in 1995 in the telecom act, the first major reform of telecommunications legislation. There is a senate proposal, which was blatantly unconstitutional, but did regulate his division of indecent content. The senate detaches that. The house attaches section 230, that says that no Interactive Computer Service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another content provider. A lot of words, a lot of people didnt know what it meant at the time, i call that in my book the 26 words that created the internet. It stands for the proposition that unless, the section applies we are not going to treat an Online Service to be the publisher or speaker, we will not hold them liable for content someone is has created. So if you go to facebook and post something defamatory, the person who posts it to you, if they sue facebook, that there will likely be a section 230 defense. So that is the heart of section 230. It was passed because there was concern at the time that prodigy and compuserve case law section 230 has a provision that says that if you exercise good efforts to moderate objectionable content, you will not lose. Ok, we will give you this protection, but we are doing it because we want you to give her to make responsible choices about user content. Sanford so, that is the will of the 30,000 content moderators, that is what protects facebook . Section 230 does protect facebook. It is a good law for internet companies. Sanford is it a good law for the public . Kara it is moderated. I was with someone from youtube and i said i just interviewed nancy pelosi, and she said, it is a gift to these people, maybe we will take away this gift. People on the right have said the same thing. The person on youtube literally that turned white. They said, we could be sued for every piece of content. We let everybody upload whatever they want. Sanford there is a moral especially by republicans in congress, to amend section 230. Kara i think josh holly wants to get rid of it. Yes, it has been chipped away at. It is like a straight up reversal. Kara it is ridiculous. He is a smart enough person to know what he is doing. It has been chipped away by over issues of sex trafficking and pornography, and slowly, it is getting stripped away. I think if it goes away, facebook will be sued out of existence presumably, and so will the other Online Services, because nobody will be able to afford the massive amount of legal the lawyers would just attack, which would not be good for the internet. But the question is, what is their responsibility, and what can government to regulate further versus taking away the immunity. Sanford what is facebook doing about this . Lori we did support the sex trafficking bill that kara is referencing, however, for us, it goes back to, if you continue to chip away at section 230, he eventually enter the world that she is talking about, where will have an academy hard time moderating content in a way that is effective. You can look at other countries around the world where we have to deal with different types of laws and the behaviors facebook engages in. Places in europe where certain content is illegal, we have to take down broad swathes of content. I think that is worth considering stateside when thinking about the solution, if you want the content off facebook. We were talking about whether it is creating an Industry Standard for it, we lack solutions that are processfocused, that say, are these companies, do they have a program in place, do they have a definition for these things, are you making a goodfaith effort while still allowing for competition amongst the sector . I think those for us are more ideal solutions than a government solution. Kara could you explain your Supreme Court thing you are doing, i volunteered to be on it, i am writing about it explain what youre are doing, because it is really important. It is a very interesting idea. Lori the Oversight Board is separate from our discussion on Industry Standards. There is a difference between the two. What we are doing with the external Oversight Board is assembling a team of external experts, not yet to be named, although we did announce as of last week a charter and more information about the membership selection process. The idea would be to have 40 global experts that have specialties in Free Expression, in online safety, that come from diverse backgrounds. We certainly want regional representation from everywhere. Sanford and they come from around the world . Lori around the world. What the Oversight Board would do is, right now, if you have a piece of content removed from facebook, and you disagree with our decision that it goes against Community Standards, you could appeal to facebook, and it would go to an additional reviewer. Sometimes it can get escalated quite far inside facebook when there are tricky calls on the line of our Community Standards, but in the end, it gets adjudicated one way or the other. What the Oversight Board would do is give you an ability to appeal to an external body was you had exhausted your appeals within facebook, and the extra nobody would decide cases the bylaws are still being written but the idea is that they would decide cases that would be a larger importance, in place is ready think facebook is getting it wrong, and in the end, a panel from that Oversight Board would hear the case. The panel would make a recommendation and facebook is bound to abide by that recommendation, even if it disagrees with something in our Community Standards. They are supposed to use our Community Standards as a baseline, so they can overturn our decisions and we are bound to adhere to that. Sanford who pays for this . Does facebook for the bill for the 40 people in the process . Lori the way we are talking about it now is that there would be a separate trust set up and facebook would put money into the trust, and the trust would oversee how the board is paid. We want to create as many layers of separation, because we really do want this to be something independent from the company, because at the end of the day, and we are at this panel because, it isnt wrong, we do have a responsibility as a company to millions of people around the world who want to say their piece on facebook. We are an important part of the internet, and we want to make sure people are heard in the right way. Sanford i want to ask the panelists if they are persuaded, this sounds like a step in the right direction. Sarah it sounds like a great step in the right direction, and i cannot wait to see how facebook will [beep] it up. You guys are so creative. [laughter] i am really excited. I am really excited to see. Putting Mark Zuckerbergs sister on it, for example. I dont know. Jeff i think it does sound like a step in the right direction, and i will reserve judgment until we see how it functions. Just to add a bit of color on the issue of where we are with section 230, that is the politics has shifted so dramatically with section 230, given in the past two years. It really was not the sex trafficking bill, that was kind of the model on how the industry should not handle section 230 issues, and just a caveat, i am not speaking for the u. S. Military, i am speaking for myself, but in the initial stages, there were concerns that people who work sex trafficking victims on backpage were trying to sue back page under a sex trafficking law and there werent able to bring their lawsuit because of section 230. So there was a really powerful documentary made about some of these victims, and it got the attention of congress. The First Response from the tech sector not all the Tech Companies, i am not sure what facebook said but some of the tech response initially was, this is bad, but these are frivolous lawsuit. That maybe for a Data Security issue, you could do that, but this was sex trafficking victims and it really did not set the right tone. And you compound that with, there was a long line of different Interest Groups who have a list of grievances with Tech Companies that have gone on for years, from hippa to all other things, and this was like an opportunity to get revenge. What we have seen it now is that the politics have changed dramatically, that the Tech Companies are no longer the wunderkind that can do no wrong. Sanford how did it come about that some powerful republican interests, i think, ted cruz for one, has received seemed to gain a lot of headway complaining that the internet is biased against republicans . To put it simply, i have heard him do it, and it is really impressive when he cites all his evidence of it. Does that lead to a groundswell for some kind of fairness doctrine the old fairness doctrine . Kara let me put it simply, ted cruz is an idiot on this topic. [laughter] it is not true, there is no proof whatsoever that this is happening. There are more people online who are more liberal, although i would argue, they are more libertarianlite than anything else. They are more liberal than conservative i guess. I would like him to show some actual proof. His proof is not proof in any way, it is this if it was proof, why is trump the most important twitter troll in history . Sanford that is an argument against kara no, i am saying, there are plenty of people allowed to voice their opinions on these platforms, and there is no pushback. Guess who gets pushback . Alex jones, who violated facebook guidelines, who violated tweet egregiously for the longest time. It took them forever to shut him down, in fact they give him more chances than that horrible human being deserves. They broke Community Guidelines over and over again. It is taking focus off what is really important, which is keeping more people safe online and encouraging these companies to do more safe things. It is a disservice to the real people online. Sarah to back kara up, it goes 20152016, there was a facebook trending topic on gizmodo. This article came out about how facebook training topics are curated by human beings, and how news articles listed first all tended to come from leftleaning outlets. The whistleblower who gave these examples turned out to be a conservative who was disgruntled, he loved breitbart, breitbart constantly lowranked and is upset about it. What you end up seeing is a pattern he described as leftleaning, you are just seeing institutional newspapers being ranked higher than really just not very good blogs. And this is counted as leftleaning bias. The headline on this, i forget exactly what it is, i think it was like facebook is suppressing conservative viewpoints, i believe. John cook of gawker, he writes that headline, and he has admitted, he said, i knew that drudge report would pick this up and we would do muster traffic because of it. And indeed, drudge report picked it up, and they did muster traffic on it. This is what has set the tone for the entire discussion, is a little piece of click bait that was written in a time of desperation for a news outlet that was about to get shattered. Ered. Likeo get shutt kara says, there is evidence. It is just this weird thing where, speaking of marketplace for ideas, what they want is affirmative action for conservative viewpoints on social media platforms. You dont get a quota system for your ideas, that is not how it works, like that is not how reality works. That is not how the marketplace of ideas works. Just speaking on that subject specifically, we look at what happened with the genocide in myanmar and fake accounts being generated by the military to promote antirohingya sentiment. You look at the history of that, and we are talking about the party in power using social media to promote viewpoints discriminatory towards a despised minority that is being denied citizenship and it turned into a refugee population, and you see facebook cracking down on the party in power. How would a fairness doctrine work in myanmar . What would the result be there . If you dont see a corollary, you are either stupid or a terrible human being. This concentration on 230 and the fairness doctrine and bias towards conservatives is taking the argument out of a reasonable place and into outer space. Jeff i would add in addition to those reasons, there is the First Amendment the fairness doctrine, there are constitutional issues associated with that, but the difference with broadcast, at least according to the Supreme Court, is that broadcast spectrum is scarce, so there could be more regulation. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the internet does not get the same regulatory scrutiny. We have not tested Something Like this for the internet, but i have serious doubts about whether you start getting into content regulation for the internet, whether that would ever survive. Kara facebook has made a lot of mess ups, but this is not one of them. The only mess up they did was acquiescing to the pressure of the group that came in. They kind of had to politically, but in this case, they are not guilty of this. Sanford we are going to take questions from the audience in a moment. Preference for Georgetown University students and other students who happen to be here this evening. If you want to come to the microphone while we are ready. Getting ready. Katie, where do you see all of this going . Do you worry about a fairness doctrine trying to be imposed . Does that become a legal issue . Katie i mean, i would have to see what is the exact proposal . He wants to rescind 230 and then kara my understanding of the latest iteration, although please forgive me if im off from where the proposal would be today, was that approval for section 230 would be conditional upon the ftc defining that you have been politically neutral. That seems highly problematic from a First Amendment standpoint, the idea that you are going to condition this government and if it about government benefit about whether you are compelled to speak in a certain way or pose speech in a certain way. That seems like it would be dead on arrival. Kara ted cruz should start a nonsocial network with one person on it. Lori i should say on behalf of facebook, you can find a lot of conservative content there. Conservative content does do very well. Prolife content did exceptionally well. There is analysis that shows top publishers on the platform. Top publishers frequently include conservative outlets i should say. However, that does not change the fact that we do take the bias accusations seriously. We try to take the accusations seriously as any group of users, as a platform dedicated to Free Expression and getting ideas out into the world. Our platform should be a venue for conservative views, for liberal views, for any views that dont violate the terms. Doesnt violate the Community Standards. Our standards are evolving. It is incumbent on us to ensure that in that process we are not letting unintentional bias in, whether it comes through Machine Learning or people writing the Community Standards or the enforcement thereof. Those are questions we take really seriously, and we take it seriously on behalf of all users. That is why we have the anticonservative bias assessment going with senator kyle. There are other endeavors inside the company that other groups have have raised with us. I just want to clarify that this is something we take seriously, and not just because of the political pressure, but because its what our mission is as a company. We take it seriously for everyone. I would push back and say there is a proconservative bias built into facebook on the basis that everything the president says is newsworthy. Therefore he is never going to get banned from these platforms. Hes never going to be deleted. Hes never going to be censored. No matter what he says, its newsworthy. No matter what he says, its political and must be protected, so he can cross every line. In fact, he has. There is a proconservative bent baked in. Anyone who mimics the things said, no matter how horrible, no matter whether they actually violate the Community Standards, even if this content would be policed differently in other countries, in the united states, because it is the united states, and because of where facebook is located in various geopolitical reasons, facebook is always going to have a conservative bent. But twitter is his medium of choice. Sarah but facebook has a lot of that. The question is when does it become not newsworthy . We had a really interesting discussion recently about say a president loses the election and that day he puts on twitter everything is rigged, its been stolen from me, everyone rise up or Something Like that. It seems crazy, but yesterdays tweet was insane, so you dont know whats going to happen. What would twitter do that day . This is really interesting. It is an interesting debate. Its super thorny and i dont think theres a clearcut answer. What im saying is the idea that there is anticonservative bias is absurd. There is this other bias we dont talk that much about and we should definitely be discussing it. It brings up some First Amendment complications for sure. Instead, we have the debate in outer space. Jeff we could say the same thing about Mainstream Media paying attention to everything the president says because it comes from the president. Lets not talk about cable. That is gone. Sanford we will go to questions. Rose. Rose i am a sophomore here at the school of Foreign Service and i am a Research Assistant with the freespeech project. I would like to bring up the development of social media platforms that claim to be freespeech utopias, for example, gab, which was recently blocked from google and apple app stores. There are people who believe that platforms should have as little censorship as possible. If the proverbial house we were discussing was built without the basement. Do you think there are any positives to platforms like this or do you think they will just become echo chambers for groups that feel they have been unfairly censored . There should be lots of them. Gab gets to exist. Alex jones still has a website. Maybe he cannot be on twitter or facebook, but he has a certain ability to be heard. I think they should exist. The question is, like recently with cloudflare when they removed i forget which horrible shooting they came off of, but other companies can decide not to help them. And they should be able to do that. That is the marketplace really talking. Jeff i would just add that the decision of other companies to decide not to help them is protected by section 230. I think there should be as many as possible, and that would be great. If there were more of them there , would be more diversity of thought. The problem is it coalesces around twitter and twitter is a very Small Company compared to facebook. Very small. Twitter, reddit, they tend to coalesce. Its really facebook, twitter, and youtube are the three ways that people use these things. I dont really think there is something as in anticensorship platform. You have principles in place that dictate how your community develops. You look at the most laissezfaire places on the internet, silk road, a massive drug marketplace. Even they had a prohibition on child pornography. They had a prohibition on nuclear weapons. Selling on selling nuclear weapons. No matter where you go, there are prohibitions. Went, becausean cloudflare stopped hosting them because of ddos attacks. That makes it unusable. There are certain types of interactions with websites that make them unusable that are not welcome. When you make those choices, you say who you are and who you welcome. I think saying you are anticensorship, you probably arent, you just have a different agenda from the sites you claim to differentiate yourself from. Thank you. Fascinating conversation. I was hoping you could elaborate more on the antitrust discussion you had earlier. In the case of at t, the reason that was successful was not just enforcement of antitrust, but the rise of fiberoptic cables, so folks could use alternative technology to provide a competitive product. Same in the microsoft situation. Google open source versus microsoft close to source. What other alternatives that might arise if these are to be enforced . Kara its really interesting. My partner and i do a pivot podcast. He is a professor at nyu. One of his arguments is that capitalism if you broke up instagram from facebook or youtube from google or aws from amazon those are the ones that are talked about you would create even more shareholders and more value for shareholders by breaking them up. I think people think it would be a valuable property. Aws would be one of the most valuable companies on the planet the minute it was pulled out of amazon. So, a lot of people, instead of making the argument that its punitive, its great for shareholders to keep new companies. Then they would do innovative things and be in competition. People dont remember, it used to be google video and youtube. At one point, google owned both of them. I think they closed down google video after the purchase. But thats one of the arguments is that it unlocks shareholder value and venture money toward investments. Again, try to get any venture capitalist to invest in a search company, even softbank isnt stupid enough these days to do that. [laughter] they did wework, softbank, which is in some trouble now. Thats an inside joke you wouldnt get. In Silicon Valley, they would be in hysterics right now. When facebook acquired have a plant didnt to monetize. Instagram is what it is today because of its incorporation into the facebook system. While yes we are proud that it is an incredibly lucrative company that many people around the world and joy, we feel there synergies with facebook that has turned it into the Success Story it is. When it comes to the broader antitrust conversation, what is really missing from all of this is an actual definition of the market. People talk about the social media market or the Search Market or the Online Retail market, but all of our Companies Offer a ton of individual services, and we compete incredibly fiercely whether it is ads where google is by far dominant. Facebook is second. But the Online Advertising space competes with the physical advertising space, with the broadcast advertising space, and soon it will compete with the internet of things advertising space. It was not that long ago that it there was a headline that said yahoo had won the search warrant. It was a long time ago. I wrote it. In the grand scheme of evolution, its not that long ago. And so we should be careful getting into that this time is different argument, given that there is still incredibly intense competition in this space. I think you should let that little bird out of the nest and let it fly, tiny little instagram. Its time. I am a firstyear phd student in psychology. I studied the impact of technology on peoples lives. There is a Community Standard set by each website and its kind of free reign from website to website. And i know there is a lot of effort to unite that into a common standard, but how do we deal with the fact that we have a president who moves away and breaches a lot of the standards, but we cannot do anything about it because now its news and now, all of a sudden, his breach allows other people to think they can breach that standard and cause kind of a cataclysm where we are making an exception to a rule but now it looks like it makes us a hypocrite for not doing it to other people. Yeah, it sucks. [laughter] i love blaming facebook for stuff. This one is on us. This is not a technology problem. This is a democracy problem. This is a situation we should not be in. Its so extraordinary that i dont think there is a tech fix for it. I think we screwed ourselves in other ways that had nothing to do with computers. Also, people do get kicked off of twitter, just not President Trump. Im just and that others do. A number of people have been pulled off the service, and very quickly. And i think the question is, which you struck on, is that each of these companies has different standards. Where is the common standard . Thats the difficulty. Its just these people in Silicon Valley for the most part, but they also have a big office here, and they dont pay you enough, as far as i can tell tonight. You should get a raise. They have different standards and its a Homogenous Group of people, let me just say. Its not the most Diverse Group of people on the planet, and so with a Homogeneous Group of people setting standards, that worries me. As much as they have tried to be diverse, they have failed on every measure, and they measure it themselves. So thats another part. Whose Community Standards . You know, it just goes on. Jeff having a number of different Community Standards is what section 230 drafters envisioned, different procedures, different policies. The idea is user empowerment. They will empower the users and they will choose the platform that best suits their needs. Obviously, getting into the antitrust issues discussed earlier, that might not work in the current environment, but at least in the vision for section 230 was that there would be a lot of different types of standards and not just one uniform standard. I would say from a Public Discourse standpoint, it would be bad if twitter or other kicked off President Trump. Its possible that, to the extent that he is offending the Community Standards, that is a product of democracy, but it would be bad to let a company decide to remove an important person to our society and Global Affairs from discourse. Could i ask you, what if you tweeted, my followers, i would like you to shoot blank . What if he did it one night . And just did it, and it came down. What would you do then . I am just curious. Now we are talking like brandenburg test. That is really, not even the aclu would defend Something Like that. Is the question what would twitter do . Yeah. I dont know that then removing him from twitter would result up problem that the statement he made. I think thats a bigger problem you should address in various ways. If hes making an actual threat that meets the brandenburg standard, well, i guess he cannot be indicted in office, so thats another pickle for us. Pickle. This is not a tech problem yeah, look at this world. This is not the computers. Computers did not do this to us. Something else did. Yes, the fact that people say terrible things, including, at times, maybe the president or other people, does not mean that taking it off this platform, or from the perspective of government censorship of speech, does not mean that speech does not exist. And so i think you need to try and address the problem, but censorship in one way or another has not been the solution. Think someday somebody is going to write a really interesting book or column saying there is no other platform to go on. Twitter is the perfect marriage. If you took him off twitter, he would have much less influence. It doesnt really work on facebook. It doesnt work on other platforms. That is kind of interesting. Where would you go . Gab . No one is going there. Everybody is on twitter. Twitch . No. I am going to play games and insult people at the same time. Katie, people have been saying terrible things for a long time, but they are diffused much more quickly and much more broadly today, i think. That is one of the impacts of the internet that we are faced with. And dont know how to deal with. They are amplified and weaponized. Right. Very quickly. Next. Can you identify yourself . I am ben, i am a junior at georgetown studying international politics. My question has to do with how effective Tech Companies are at removing isis related content. And was that just because of Machine Learning and technical and could thatt, be applied to other parts of which there is something specific about isis that got them removed . When it comes to terrorist content, we have an intraindustry partnership where we work with other Tech Companies and we share information about terrorist and extremist content. So if we see something on the facebook platform, we are able to share that broadly. It is something called hashing and mashing, where the content is able to go into the system so that our Automatic Systems can find it much faster. Automatic detection system can find it much faster. Our head of our content policy team testified and talked about that a little bit about it is a huge Success Story. To your second point about whether or not that type of thing is applicable in other places, the answer is it depends. So for things like nudity, right, images with nudity, that is something much easier for a computer to read, although we dont always get it right. There are notable press exceptions where something got categorized as nudity that wasnt. But at the end of the day, that is the type of content that is easier for our systems to detect automatically. When it comes to things like hate speech, it is so much harder because there is context of that matters. Machines learning language is much more difficult. So it is a place where we are constantly trying to improve, but we are further away than we would be on terrorist content or nudity. Im going to add that my understanding, and you can correct me, is with the isis content they are looking at discrete hashes of content that has already been flagged or reported as terrorist content. So this is similar to the child pornography system, you have a specific piece of content that people have already agreed is verboten and we dont want on the internet anymore. So there is an identified for that, of the system is able to match it because it is that piece of content, as opposed to the machine is somehow magically sensing terrorism, smelling terrorism in a video. Thats not whats going on. So you have to have a very sort of specific framework for the extending this kind of Machine Learning, this matching, to other types of things. The other thing i would add is im not sure how much it matters. I certainly respect what the platforms have done with content isis content over the years. They have gotten sophisticated with it, but i am not sure what the real world impact is given that that system started to ramp up just as isis started losing reallife battles. So im not sure what the link to reality is here. Sanford next question, please. Hi. I korea, studying journalism and am diplomacy. So you have discussed how domestic policy changes would apply as guidelines to the media, but i think social media is a Global Platform with global are International Institutions facebook and , youtube are International Institutions even if they are american companies. The focus is america because these are american companies, but should every country have to be addressing these problems . Actually, most of the activity has been in other countries. United states has been incredibly poor not and quickly poor, but has not regulated the internet at all. There is a book that talks about it quite a bit. For example, europe has been way ahead, and in some things have gone way too far. The right to be forgotten is a problematic thing. They have done more fines, more a lot ofcome in now stuff is being set. Facebook and others have to follow the global stuff, and therefore they do it here. Australia,and and other countries that have done a a lot, so they have to follow those structures. There is all kinds of interesting stuff going on, some not great, some great. So the u. S. Is quite far behind in a lot of this. Even in privacy, there is a privacy bill thats going to come online in 2020 in california, the first significant privacy bill that it is interesting, california is setting the tone for a lot of things. Andthing around employment so there is no National Privacy bill, but if the government ever does anything of substance, that will lead the way, presumably, for these companies. But right now, its coming from abroad. I actually think abroad is shaping policy here in the u. S. Much more than the other way around. I think it used to be that there was this almost american imperialism imposing american vice on speech and other countries. It is just who writes policy . It is american lawyers educated in american schools and american schools like the First Amendment, and so on and so forth. But i think what is happening now is a lot of resistance toward certain changing Community Standards a certain way or inviting regulation in a certain way is that companies are afraid of setting examples that allow more totalitarian, more questionable governments in , more corrupt governments in other countries, where the markets are expanding, leeway to come and meddle with how their product works, spy on users, sensor dissidents, so on and so forth. And i think that we are seeing that worried about the expanding marked echo on capitol hill rather than the other way around. I think those are all good points. Everyone is right that the rest of the world is leading the way in terms of what the regulatory landscape looks like. When it comes to content, we try to geo block things that are illegal in one country that might be legal in another. We think it is important as a platform dedicated to Free Expression not to block ideas that might be allowed in one country because they might be illegal in germany or singapore, and we have been clear about our desire to work with governments abroad that have ideas in this phase, because it is important they understand how our systems work, the world of the possible from the world of the impossible, and they have a grounded understanding as they develop legislation around our we have a partnership ongoing with the french government. The results are not all the way out yet, but just trying to make sure the governments are wellinformed as they tried to regulate speech on our platforms. But i mean if you are in the u. S. , we are fortunate to enjoy the First Amendment, to enjoy the protections of section 230, to be able to hold up those values. And it does obviously to some extent influence how we carry the company abroad, but we also do want to be respectful of local contexts in other countries. That means working with local governments. Britain has some interesting laws they are considering. Regulationhave any here, almost, except for current laws that apply to everybody, there isnt any specific internet regulation. Lets take a couple more quick questions. Yes . Good evening. I am a publicpolicy candidate. My question is, with regard to antisemitic comments and fascist comments that take place online, especially hate speech, and how they translate into the physical world and the real harm they have for example, in 2017 when a speaker was coming on campus, the Online Presence of hate speech and how it translates to the real world and leads to a lack of security and physical harm for people, what is your take on this issue . I think everybody realizes whats happening. The ability to speak to each other the way we speak to each other online bleeding into the real world. 100 years from now, there will be a fantastic book on what happened. We read about the salem witch trials now and think, these crazy people. Hey, guess what . Things like that happen. You look at things that happen, when with whatsapp, facebook limited the virality of it, it was for safety. Because what they had done originally, because some engineers on facebook and whatsapp, didnt even think about it, did not even imagine it would be used this way. Thats the problem. There is someone sitting in Mountain View making engineering decisions that affects other people that they would have no idea of the consequence. But there is no question that the tarnishing and the way it denigrates our offline life. Is very much affected by online. One of the things, i say this all the time, and i want to say it to as many people as possible, whenever i speak to groups of engineers that any company, i say imagine your product is a black mirror episode, and then dont make it. [laughter] just think about it, think about the worst thing that could happen. People dont think about as ituences as well should, but consequences are important. And the reason they dont is for a good reason. It messes up their jam. From move fastfast fro and break things. And now they want to move fast and build stable infrastructure. That makes me laugh. The consequence is what has to get through to people in tech, and i think they are getting the message. You can tell they are, for sure, not all of them, but a lot of them. Lori . This is the question we grapple with, particularly around the design of our Community Standards. Two weeks ago, we released the version of the values that guide our Community Standards. Free expression come again, was paramount, but the first caveat to that is safety. If you dont feel safe in a space, you are never going to come and express yourself there. I think we are well aware of the unintended consequences that the products we are developing can have, and that is why literally, i hope you read my bio, my title is external affairs. Right . These are not decisions guided by engineers in a black hole who think if they can just get the algorithm bright, human nature will go away. Thats not how our company operates. Our company is proud to work with Interest Groups from across the political spectrum, from countless communities, particularly at risk communities, because we are aware that whenever we build a product, it could be used in a way we are not thinking about. And so these are safeguards in our system we are building in and have built in that i hope will limit these negative outcomes in the future. But, i mean, obviously, at at the end of the day, if users dont feel safe, we wont have a user community. So it is what is most important. Yes, i think this will be the threell take questions of the people standing. I will make it as quick as possible. I am a student of the law center at georgetown law, interning at the federal trade commission. Get closer to the microphone. Hello. I am a student at the georgetown law center, interning at the federal trade commission. Something i have been particularly interested in is the world of sponsored content and paid advertising. Its not something we talked about yet but i came to the event interested in it. As far as i know, the fcc has issued guidelines, but they dont have the force of law, the are not a rule. In a marketplace of ideas rather it is also just a marketplace, and what happens when the users become advertisers . How does freespeech play a role or how is freespeech limited in this area . We can spread information, but we have to make sure the unboxing video is disclosed. It would be nice if they act in the honest ads congress, that kind of thing. This is our legislators having to really stop and start to agree on things like the honest ads act. That is a these companies cant really good way. These companies cant make these decisions. Its too important. Especially around political advertising. Katie . Yeah, i also worked at the federal trade commission, and i agree that in this issue and the area of privacy, that is a question for congress to answer. I mean, there are some tools the ftc has, whether its unfair trade practice, but if this does not rise to that level, its true. Its hard to get enforcement for these kinds of things. Jeff i understand the ftc has done its best at using section five unfair and deceptive trade practices, but it is so limited and i work in security and privacy, and so i would just agree, congress, this is something where we need specific legislation. I agree. With everyone else. But i am really glad you brought that up because we spent so much time talking about hate speech, and so on and so forth, but i think that can lead to more dangerous stuff. It is literally killing people. So, yeah, i think there are a lot of scams going on on social media that people are susceptible to. Very susceptible to. And some of it is relatively benign, only leads to minor health consequences. Some of it leaves you stranded in the bahamas with nothing but a sandwich with kraft cheese in the middle. But some of it is actually feeding people things that will kill them. And i do think this is a really important issue and Something Congress should step up to address. Just so you are aware, the federal trade commission has 1100 employees and a 300 million budget to monitor a lot of stuff. To say they do too much they are overwhelmed with what they have. Hi. My name is John Fernandez from university of california davis. Thank you panelist. I heard a lot of talk about technology, the intersection of technology, law, politics, and geopolitical issues, and i want to hear your views on what i should be doing and you should be doing and everybody in this room should be doing when they interact with the new social media freespeech space. Lori, you start. [laughter] you should be convening more panels like this. That is a really great question. It is so fascinating. As diverse as the issues we have discussed this evening, we are only scratching the surface of all of the questions that exist in this space. I think the biggest thing is frankly making sure people are better informed about how these companies actually work. It is in credit we hard for lawmakers and regulators. We want to take our part at facebook incredibly seriously and make sure people understand what is happening inside of our systems. But to the extent you can be a contributor and knowledgeable contributor to that conversation, we welcome more voices in the room because we know we dont have all the answers. Thats why mark has talked about the need for regulation, but we need that regulation to be wellinformed. And so, we would welcome more voices weighing in, adding to the marketplace of ideas, both to help us selfcorrect and to as a platform, and to help lawmakers understand the direction to go in. Sarah i think one of the most important things that people could be doing right now is expressing very clearly to their representatives how important privacy is to them. Think the moment for privacy legislation might be slipping away, comprehensive privacy legislation, but a lot of the stuff that we are talking about derives from some corrupt financial incentives that have really poisoned our democracy. Going to privacy, going to the ad ecosystem, trying to take apart those incentives to capture our attention and essentially buy and sell our minds, i think that goes to the core of a lot of what we are talking about. Is making it very loud and clear to your elected representatives that this is not a boring issue, this is something you actually care about. For those of you who will work in media, law, or policy, which i assume is a lot of you, take the time to read the laws. This is something we have had an issue with with section 230. I had to read a 100,000 word , which reallye explained how it works, because i cant tell you how much Bad Information is out there about what the law requires, with the law does and doesnt do, and im not just talking about with readers, but policymakers, counties. Sanford and that makes people vulnerable to allegations that , as we saw, dont stand up. Last question. Can i just answer that one . I just passed the 12th Ave Christian Church near where i live, and there was a thing on its board that said well, i can put it up. It says tweet others as you want to be tweeted. [laughter] and i thought, i have screwed that up, because i am real mean on twitter. But the point of the matter is, look, we all have a responsibility for this. First of all, this stuff is addictive, do not let anyone tell you different. Its like sugar. It is like other things, and they have have designed it to be a slot machine of attention. Everybody in Silicon Valley knows that and pretends otherwise, but fact of the matter is, we do have some selfcontrol over this stuff. And what is really important is to not just talk to your officials, but really demand as is better,hat it that it safer, that its done better, rather than just giving into the instant clicking of it. The other thing, when you are on the street, put away your phone and walk straight ahead. [laughter] i run up behind people in San Francisco when they are doing that and say hey put it down people, then they feel bad, they are just like, i am so sorry. To prevent that happening here in d. C. , please do that. [laughter] last question. I am a firstyear grad student. Im sorry mine is the last question because that was a much better question. But with the election of donald trump, a lot of social justice discourse has been talking about intersectionality and equality, and that directly translates into hate speech on social media and its offline effects which often leads to peoples death. Myanmar was mentioned. I am from india where there is plenty of violence against marginalized communities. I know it is not a tech problem. I know that structural inequality has been around for millennia and computers didnt cause it but when people die , because of a tweet, there has to be a Tech Solution. Expanding the marketplace of ideas is all well and good, but what happens when the power in the marketplace of ideas is not equitably distributed . Is there a Tech Solution to this . Is there any scope to solve it, or are we just going to be scrambling . I think its really telling that in the wake of these shootings, horribly, they all start to blur together. You see a lot of platforms limit their functionality, actively limit their functionality, become actively worse in order to prevent spreading panic or the viral idea of killing other people. Its one of those things i think is most telling, this idea that the core Business Model of Silicon Valley, that its built on, and you know, i think of you as a firefighter, but the fire has been going on for a decade, so you were kind of late to the scene. There is something at the foundation of these companies that is quite poisonous, something that feeds off how much human beings love to hate each other. And limiting that instinct instead of promoting it, i think there is a Tech Solution in that sense. That said, i dont know, there are bigger political, geopolitical things going on that i think we are all really afraid to talk about, and we would much rather talk about the tech stuff. Facebook did not start this way. I am old. I was there when it started. Stars meant to be like trek, very hopeful, very together. It surprises me how quickly it has degenerated. I think we have to demand from these companies, our legislatures, and ourselves that we dont give into the most base impulses of these technologies, which really are quite wonderful, right . They are in so many ways. Its like flying. You have to know about the wonder of it. Maybe revive that. I know that sounds very Silicon Valleyesque. It can be used in the most astonishing way and it has not been. We have to get back to that. What are the great things . If its ai, can we solve cancer, can we solve problems . I think the trillionaire on the planet will be the person who solves Climate Change with technology. That is something you have to hope for instead of where we are now. That said, it could get a lot worse. You have to wonder, what could we do Going Forward . Certainly ai, automation, Everything Else is problematic. We have to think really hard on these things that are much more important. Your only alternate is something that elon musk and many others think, that this is all a simulation. You dont exist. He blew everybodys mind in and interview i did with him. This is a game being played by people of the future and trump is proof of it. They are just having fun with us and seeing what we will do. Its an interesting concept. Maybe you are all a simulation and you dont exist, so i wouldnt worry about it whatsoever. [laughter] thank you. Sanford before we finish up, there is a reception downstairs, one flight down. Quick question. Is regulation of social media inevitable, having heard what we heard tonight . Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes and it will be bad. [laughter] yes. We agree. Lets go. Thank you all for coming. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. 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