Social Media Companies ylan mui has more on the story reporter the dojs proposal strikes at the heart of the Business Model for platforms like facebook, google and twitter, section 230 of the communications ccc act the first is what theyre calling the bad samaritan bill, for platforms that facilitate or solicit illegal activity, and the second specific exemptions for child exploitation, and actual knowledge of elicit activity the doj cannot do this alone they would need congress to act to change the law. Big tech doesnt have a lot of friends on capitol hill these days just today, republican senator josh hawley unveiled a bill that would remove text Liability Protections unless the Companies Promise to act in good faith or pay a 5,000 fine to users if they dont meanwhile, democratic senator mark warner said that he believes section 230 has allowed companies to turn a blind eye to a host of ills, but melissa, he also said hes worried that the doj is using these tools as a way to get Big Tech Companies to cave in to President Trump back over to you what are the odds of anything p passing in congress. I understand its bipartisan but theres a lot of bipartisan things that dont pass. We have already seen legislation that speaks to this. Senator Lindsey Graham introduced the earn it act earlier this year. That has yet to get a mark up in committee. So what i think youre seeing is a lot of legislation just getting stalled because of the pandemic, because of the logistics of marking up bills these days, so i think that the odds of something happening before november are very small you will see a lot of rhetoric coming from both the administration and from capitol hill. Ylan, thank you, a dark washington, d. C. For us. So we dont know what form anything will take place in. Whether it be legislation or our targets, by regulators, but what we know is big tech has a target on its back. So dan nathan, how do you trade it, its remarkable that these stocks shrug everything off, at some point, i dont know, investors might have to actually grapple with this. Yeah, i mean, they might. Its not likely going to be in 2020 unless theres similar sort of issues that we saw in the 2016 election with these lar platforms by bad actors, the thing with the 230 rule here is like you said, its going to need some sort of bipartisan legislation. I dont really think this threat from the president with the executive order from a couple of weeks ago is really going to have the impact on a twitter, lets say, than he meant to be he does not like being edited on twitter. Therefore, he wanted to roll back protections they have as a platform, not as a publisher i think jack dorsey, the ceo of twitter has kind of stood thhis ground here and said were willing to have those protections rolled back because were not going to have our platform used this way for all intents and purposes, twitter stock has acted well on the flip side, regulation is going to be a very meaningful head wind for Companies Going forward. Obviously amazon has faced no shortage of issues, different than those of facebook and twitter. Amazon keeps working higher. That seems to be the one name, prepandemic, during the pandemic, postpandemic that the investor class is in universal agreement that everything is working in their favor tim yeah, dan brings up a point im not sure what the stocks are going to do in the short run remember, this pressure, and youre talking about, melissa, its not just the political pressure from doj, the ftc, almost a year ago when they teamed up and divvied up oversight on the ftc antitrust, so there is pressure, and i think theres a fair amount of political ill will, and i think this issue is a very interesting bipartisan issue i have to weigh in on that i think the irony is of course that if you frame this as trying to protect freedom of speech, youre really hindering it by harming the companies that actually give license to it, and therefore theyre not going to give freedom of speech at all. I think we are all aware of elicit activity and bad actors on the internet, and i think there are certain tvrlactivities that need to be monitored. Culpability is difficult to define, but back to what the stocks do, they continue to move higher, since may 29th, google, which was front and center on this, and certainly twitter was, google is up 3 in the last 13 sessions facebook, if anything, was we speculated, whether if they were siding with the administration or not, which of course, they have returned in the other direction, were they going to rerate based upon it, it looks like they were i think you have to hold before you really think this is a time to wholesale sell. I think you have Different Reasons to sell these companies that are valuation based than this right here and now. Joe biden has said that we should revoke section 230 of the Communications Decency act, and i bring this up, guy, because why is this different from the drug pricing issue during the past election when a single tweet would send the industry and the stocks in the industry just sort of reeling i mean, isnt this sort of the same this is an issue, big tech has been demonized, whether its valid or not, by both sides of the aisle here going into this very contentious political season i dont think there is a difference, mel, and i think to answer your question, the only difference is the markets become somewhat desensitized to the rhetoric that goes back and forth. There was a greauise and dustin. I believe it was called rain man man, as i recall, may 15th was a friday, and i mention that because that was the day around the time of our show coming out. The doj, state attorneys general said they were going to come after google, blah blah blah, as tim pointed out, the stock was trading at the time, 1370 it never flinched as we went into the next week, and my suspicion is theyre not going to flinch now. Theres a lot of reasons to dislike facebook, and i can rattle them all off, and you got to like the stock. Advertisers dont leave, and people dont leave, and thats a recipe for a stock that goes in the words of the great Dennis Gartman from the lower left to the upper right. Karen i agree and disagree with guy. I think it is different than drug pricing because drug pricing is pretty easy to get behind for anyone, and google and facebook, i mean, they offer Free Products that people like to use, and so i dont think it has the near universal, you know, disdain that Drug Companies that are hiking prices do so thats one difference, but in terms, i agree, it doesnt matter in the shortterm these are sort of longer term issues that take time to play out and this market is the near term focused market i think i recall maybe ever. So i just dont think it will matter in the shortterm, and also as we see the reopening, a little bumpier than maybe we had anticipated, faang stocks do well in that scenario. Thats what i think is going on. Google is my biggest position. And, you know, long facebook as well. And extended faang, and maybe thats the reason, for instance, apple in yesterdays session completely shrugs off the news that the eu is launching two investigations into its app store and apple pay. It doesnt matter whos going after big tech it doesnt matter what the fines or consequences could be, there is no alternative, and then plus people want to be in the five stocks, the biggest stocks in the market yeah, its kind of a funny, you know, kind of situation here these companies are such massive monopolies they have such massive motes, they have massive cash hordes. They can do whatever they want they have done a good job of trotting all over the globe, and cozying up to whoever it is they need to do to kind of keep their things in tact they kind of draw, they play the long game, with a lot of these issues that they have on the regulatory front and other parts of the world, and they end up just paying, you know, big fines, which end up being rounding errors. I feel like we have been talking about this for an awful long time if you think back to 20 years ago, microsoft had serious issues with regulatory bodies here in the u. S. , that was a defining, defining situation for that company i dont think were going to see that with any of these maga names right now. For more on the story, lets bring in gene munster, always great to speak with you. Do you think that the markets have it right in terms of basically shrugging off this news with section 230, i want to take a step back, and i think your astute panel has captured this well. These companies are the fabric of our lives, and because of that, were just going to continue to see different edges around that regarding more legislation, people being upset, Political Parties being upset about what happens on all of these platforms, competitors being upset about how one company may exert some market force. So we are going to have these continual waves, and the wave were talking about today is section 230, and the proposal is essentially to give Political Parties or give anyone an ability to sue a social Media Company for libel, basically if there was slander or censorship that was not appropriate the bottom line with that, and sticking to the topic of today with 230, that in fact is at the core of this topic you have discussed a lot about is the impossibility of legislating truth. That cannot happen, therefore, this essentially is going to go nowhere, and that is why investors shrug it off today i like where youre going with this, the bigger topic, the more important topic, what are the other waves ahead, the bigger potential threats of break up for some of these Tech Companies and how should investors navigate that, which undoubtedly will be top call in the next few years. In your view, what is the most pressing and realistic regulatory effort to reign in big tech in your view . I think the one biggest risk is relative to google, and how it ties. Google has 42 different products that are tied together they have a clear monopoly in global search, and for example, how Google Search impacts google maps, and the impact on local businesses i think thats something that were going to see more about. If you kind of work down the list with facebook, its around privacy, and some data sharing, which has been, i think, addressed, and then you get to amazon, with whats happening with aws to fund the retail approach, that seems like a distant argument and last is app and will are they exerting pressure on their developers, not treating them well in terms of some of the grades. You can debate whether they have actually a market share to demand so i think to answer your question, it is individual, theres not one sweeping legislation thats going to impact all Tech Companies. These regulators and politicians who are looking to gain goodwill will be taking rifle shots at these companies and i suspect with the exception of some changes that probably google will have to make, most of them will come out on the other side in this a couple of years, and i hope regulators, ultimately take a step back, and ive been a long time follower of tech i try to weigh both sides of all debates. But i think we have seen in the last few weeks, the importance of tech in terms of helping us move forward as a globe, and i hope that that gains some goodwill with regulators oh, you think that will make a difference a regulator who might want to go after an apple or might want to go after google and say, you know, what, i have been relying on gmail during this pandemic, oo im not going to go for it lets look at amazon and logistics and i think that there is a case that consumers view these products, if the goal of regulators is to protect consumer, i think theres a case that consumers have a greater dependency and affection towards these products today than they did four months ago. Good point. Gene, thank you, always good to speak with you i think thats an interesting point. Its an interesting point that these politicians are spending a lot of time discussing all of these issues surrounding big tech when consumers, for the most part, depend on big tech in their every day lives, guy yeah. 100 and lets not dance around this. I think, without being political, this is 100 political. I dont think theres any other way to address it. Ill say this about google my push back is google is not a monopoly the yankees arent a monopoly. There are dozens of teams that play Major League Baseball, the yankees do it better than anyone else and the same thing with google there are a lot of search engines. Google is the cream of the crop, and you can call it monopoly, i dont think its a monopoly in the true sense of the word, mel. Tim, quickly. Yeah, they havent done it better in Major League Baseball in how long, ten years i think i understand your m metaphor. Coming up, her chair is getting, what the company did in response to regulator push back. T. D a new season of fortnite is ou what does this mean for the gaming trade, all that and more coming up on fast money. The covid19 pandemic is creating Food Insecurity on a scale not seen in decades. An estimated 54 million americans will struggle with hunger. With 200 food banks and 60,000 meal programs, feeding america is the largest hungerrelief organization in the country. Join Morgan Stanley in supporting feeding america and your local Community Food bank. Welcome back to fast money, hertz scraping plans chairman jay clayton said earlier today on squawk on the street. This particular situation, we have let the company know that we have comments on their disclosure in most cases when you let a company know that the s. E. C. Has comments on their disclosure, they do not go forward until those comments are resolved. There are other processes here that companies have to follow, including if the shares are going to be listed, meaning continuing Listing Requirements for those shares, and there are professionals involved. Hertz has seen massive interest from Retail Investors shares jump when the latest news came out is there any reason here, karen, to take a look i mean, this whole story is absolutely crazy, i think. The whole story is absolutely crazy. I mean, i dont know, i sort of feel like good for hertz for giving it a go it was a creative way to think about how to bolster the Balance Sheet. One thing that was interesting that clay said from the ak that, hertz said this afternoon. It sounded to me like they started selling shares normally they dont go ahead with it, until the s. E. C. Comments and in the 8 k, they said they have suspended, so they might have already done some, which i dont think really changes the story dramatically, but its sort of interesting its just, you know, i cant understand the whole thing you have to really believe that this is going to this business is going to turn around dramatically, before they get out of bankruptcy, and the stock is going to have some equity, and have some equity value whats going on is totally unrelated to that, this trading, its absurd, if you look at Genius Brands or a bunch of others, i mean, you know, we talked about it with dave a lot. This is just a ridiculous game if you read the filing, if you read the s. E. C. Filing on hertz, in the stock options, they may be delisted the caveats on the stock sale are numerous, and yet it looked like people were willing to go in, tim. Well, if a bankrupt company can sell stock, they will, and this gets to the overall environment. They cant deceive the public, and their disclosures have to be accurate diskr disclaimers and caveats aside, the facts on the cash and the obligations of which there are many, and again, we have started to see through some of their filings, that ak gives a lotof information, theyre behind on payments from abs, theres a lot to do and an Equity Offering is not going to solve that. Heres another stock, pairing gains from earlier in the day after reports that its founder Trevor Milton exaggerated claims that the truck was drivable according to the report, the truck was missing key components including a fuel cell. A spokesperson for the company telling cnbc milton quote never deceived anyone. He was showing a demo prototype inside a warehouse parts were removed for safety. Nothing was exaggerated. Shares had been up as much as 9 earlier nz din the day guy, you know, i think this is interesting. This is sort of a trust, were working to change the world, trust me, were going to have this product out at a certain time, and when you hear a report like this, it sort of makes you think, i dont know. Yeah, but what does this remind you of, mel five years ago, this same probably conversations were having about tesla, quite frankly, so its just this year apparently potentially that type of story, but, you know, the two conversations we had, hertz speaks to basically what Jeremy Grantham was speaking to at large in the amazing interview at the end of the day. You should go back and listen to it if you have it. Hes speaking to some of the things we have been talking about for a while, and if you done, you know, if you think im a fool, which a lot of people do correctly, by the way, you should listen to what he says, because hes echoing a lot of the same things we have been saying now for the last couple of months. So this is clearly a buyer beware environment, and to the earlier point about hertz, karen breaks this down perfectly, but she would acknowledge, this comes down to a greater theory thing, hoping somebody buys it at a dollar and a half, and so and so on. That worked well for the lot of people. And of course we had Trevor Milton, the founder of nicola on fast money earlier this week, tim i dont know what you make of the company itself the model is different than tesla on some level, and obviously the fuel cells are a different approach the fact that they are outsourcing their production, the fact that they are teaming up in commercial right away, so not apples and oranges, but a different approach, and different innovation and its very exciting, what do you pay