And gotten to the public where you see the hatred of our party, our people, our voice. And you say thats the collusion. Its a collusion between the democrats and the media, and social media and these platforms. Its a disgraceful thing. From july at the white houses social media summit, and that is our topic this week on the communicators. Conservatives and social media, and whether they are centered. Joining us to discuss this issue are two conservatives. Patrick hedger is with the competitive enterprise institute. And robert louis is with the Heritage Foundation. You were at that summit. Robert it was quite an event. A combination of a celebration of social media and the success he and other conservatives have had, taking their message to the american people. But it was also an opportunity to highlight areas hes being suppressed. Stood up andatives spoke about their own examples of bias or what they perceive as bias. Its a combination of those things and as the president is known to do, it went on for a sometime and there was entertainment mixed in. Peter this is a question for both of you, but are conservatives centered on social media . Patrick the social Media Companies say no. They are on that one side of it. We have personally experienced examples were content has been removed. When you go to a google or facebook or twitter and ask them why, it seems its because of their hate speech policy or Community Standards or other things that we see as just where, or a policy issue, they may tend to agree with us on. So in some cases, yes, i do think conservatives experience of bias or suppression because of the media values coming out of silicon valley. I dont have a infinitive study because there are other cases where liberals complain about bias. I think what it comes down to is social Media Companies over exerting, and if they let free speech take priority, we might be better off. Peter same question. Robert i think its impossible for any private entity to censor another entity. Action by government and the First Amendment is a restriction on government. Its not an entitlement upon other private actors. We are talking about systems crated by americans that have First Amendment protections and that includes freedom of association and freedom of speech. To the extent they are limiting, and i would agree that there is no general study thats looked at this and found any systemic examples of what they are referring to as censorship or suppression. To the extent that it is occurring, again, that is not a First Amendment violation. If there is a removal going on, this is private companies exerting their own First Amendment rights, saying they dont want to be affiliated with the messaging posting on our site. Peter but dont those social Media Companies have an outside influence, and have more of a responsibility to allow free speech . Patrick theres no size clause in the First Amendment. We have a responsibility to respect the speech rights and Association Rights of all americans, no matter how big or small their platform or their influence may be. Value, i thinka we as americans should respect the free speech rights of others. I agree with you completely. I do not 20 see the government step in. Unintendedave consequences if that were to happen. Demand that, we can if were going to be on that platform, they will respect our ability to communicate. We can take our message to a different platform but they are private companies and they get to set the rules. Robert and i think a lot of conservatives are ignoring the net positive we see from the advent of big tech. You have someone like Dennis Prager suing google over what he believes is suppression of his videos, videos that ive seen a lot of. I enjoy a lot of them, i have seen them, i think they are generally doing a pretty great job, i think the numbers speak for that fact. They have over one billion views. To me, it seems hard to levy an accusation that big tech is a net negative in any way, shape, or form to conservative speech when somebody like Dennis Prager is now getting a billion views on the products and videos he is putting out. Robert its true. Conservatives have had great success. The president himself is a clear example of this. In fact, the president addressed this question when he was asked, would you be in the white house if it were not for your use of social media . He says he would. I think what he was able to do on facebook in terms of targeting certain audiences that maybe were receptive to his message, his ability to bypass the National News media by going directly to twitter to make his announcements and some of his policy positions, those things were all significant factors in his ascension to the white house. And so there are plenty of other examples, the Heritage Foundation being some i know about firsthand, and the success weve had today is a direct result of social media. Peter when have you been censored or have you been censored on social media . Robert so, the Heritage Foundation, which is our news outlet, and the daily signal have experienced this problem. I have a colleague who was also censored for a period of time or was blocked from posting on twitter. His case involved an issue of misgendering. Some of these companies have a policy where if you use a wrong pronoun for a transgender individual, they will block you. And so my colleague found himself in that situation. He was off the platform about a week. We appealed. Twitter eventually apologized to him and restored his account. In the more notable examples for the Heritage Foundation and daily signal, we interviewed a pediatrician about the dangers of giving puberty blockers to young children. And this pediatricians video went viral. On facebook, it was taking off. It currently has 74 million views. When it got to about 70 million views, the video disappeared from the platform. We couldnt find it anymore, we contacted facebook, and facebook restored the video. Were currently in a dispute with google over the same videos removal from youtube. Youtube is currently blocking that video because they say it violates youtubes hate speech policy. In many cases, we try to resolve these with the company. Prager take a different course and decided to sue. Peter have you been blocked or censored . Patrick in my case, no. Nothing that ive seen. Just this week, we have an example of somebody on the far left saying that they have been blocked or censored. You have Tulsi Gabbard who is claiming, suing google, claiming censorship, as well. So, there are a lot of examples from both the left and the right about this perception of broadbased censorship or suppression and its important that we point out those examples on the left, but i do think conservatives tend to be a little louder on this issue because theres been that longstanding issue that in the conventional media that conservative voices have not been heard, so theyre vigilant about these rings. These things. There are plenty of cases where they said they violated Community Standard or terms of service and have been taken down that come from outlets such as the huffington post, which has had more videos put behind the same barrier that Dennis Prager is complaining about then he has. Peter why isnt there either a conservative or alleverything facebook type page out there, where everybody can post anything . Patrick well, i dont think a lot of people would like to use a product like that. If anybody can post anything on a platform like that, youre going to get a lot of spam. Youre going to get obscene images. Youre going to get a lot of hate speech. Its going to be a pretty nasty place to go. The laws that protect these companies ability to moderate content is what creates these platforms as people does places that people do like to go for the reliable information. Peter can you put anything you want on competitive enterprise institutes website . Patrick i cannot, no. I go through an editing process because we control what goes on our website, but i do believe we have a comments section, where instead of prescreening, people will leave comments. Of course, if something in there is a legal or a threat, then we take action. Peter why isnt there a conservative facebook . Robert there have been people who have tried. One of the other factors is that the reason facebook and twitter and other platforms are successful is because they dont just cater to a specific ideology or political party. They bring in diverse viewpoints. So, in many cases, they started out as an exchange between friends, or high school or college classmates, where people did not have monolithic political views. So, i think there are values that these social media platforms bring to the table. For instance, im able to keep in touch with my friends from back home in upstate new york, as well as hear perspectives from people at the competitive enterprise institute. You dont want to necessarily have a Walled Garden where you will have republicans or democrats talking. Then we get into this whole other issue about filter bubbles and whether or not people are exposed to different ideas. Im the biggest believer that you should subscribe to multiple news outlets and consume information from a wide variety of sources, because if youre just relying exclusively on one, say a republican or conservative social media platform, youre probably not going to get the full perspective. Patrick indeed, to get back to a distinction of a small website like ours versus facebook, which is a platform for third parties to post content, this really get gets at that a lot of the criticism that we see levy devotees book and some of these other platforms, that theyre acting like publishers. Theyre not. Most publishers are reading what goes on their page or into their newspaper or into their book before they decide to publish. If you were to apply that standard to facebook or google or amazon or etsy or ebay or some of these ecommerce platforms, they would cease to exist in the way that we know and enjoy them today because there are literally billions of different post going up on these websites at any given day and to expect them to prescreen all of these before they go live is completely unrealistic, and to be able to then say that they should be held accountable for what is really just a thirdparty creation from billions of different sources, is really going to undermine their ability to operate. And i think you would see a lot of them not accept that legal risk and end up shutting down and we would lose all of the benefits that come with having these platforms for decentralization. Robert and there already are Market Forces at work. If somebody goes on to a platform and they start bullying me or patrick, we have the ability to report that to these companies and they have antibullying policies in place. In order to flag comments like that and raise them to a certain attention. I think private individuals have certain protections in place where they can shield themselves from speech that they may find insights violence or whatever it may be. I think the other issue were talking about is we have a daily video we post on the platform and in some way, the policy we are talking about conflicts with the Community Standards, thats where you get into this gray area. While i dont want to see the government step in and regulate that in any way possible, i do think that the consumers should have the ability to push back and to raise awareness about this. And if so be it, take it to their own website or go to a competitor like youtube or another platform where maybe they allow more of that speech. Patrick whats so funny about this, as well, tragically funny, is that a lot of those kind of protections that the companies have put in place that do filter out content that folks may not want to see or find harmful, those programs that are part of these platforms are things that conservatives generally call for. They dont want their children to be able to go want to these platforms and be exposed to nudity or violence or other what in their view is unseen material. And then theyre now turning back and saying, well, these same things are what are causing the perceived censorship. So, i really they have to be careful what they are asking for here and realize that the same tools that these sites have to ensure that, in general, facebook and some of these other platforms, twitter, are places that are generally safe for people to go, where they wont be spammed or they wont see pornographic images, things like that, are the same things that conservatives believe is leading to the suppression of some of the content that they post, as well. Peter what do you think about twitters new rules with regard to socalled hate speech or Community Standards . By the way, is Community Standards a set Legal Definition or is it fuzzy . Patrick yeah, im not an attorney, so i cant speak to that. But i would say that i think, as with any other private area, its their expectations of here is what we expect from you in exchange for using our free service. Peter from twitter safety, which is a blog on twitter, defining Public Interest on twitter, they write that they will be using a notice if they find something that they consider to be hate speech, etc. , and they will put that notice on a tweet if its from a government or elected official , you have more than 100,000 followers, and are verified. So theyre going to start putting notices on tweets. Robert yeah, weve seen this with facebook, as well, in terms of its Fact Checking program. This mostly came into play when president trump, i think people think of him immediately and whether or not some of the things that he tweets would apply to this new policy that twitter has put in place on the flip side, weve seen it with facebook and its Fact Checking program. Facebook will put a label on certain news items that it may or the Fact Checkers they work with deem as false. Look, again, theyre private companies and theyre able to monitor this content however they want and if they want to put a label on it, i think they have every right to do so. Some people may disagree and challenge it. In the case of a daily signal article that we published shortly after the state of the union, we actually did publish the fact check and were able to address that matter headon. In other cases, smaller players might not have that same ability to do so. Patrick what i think this signals is something thats really important, the different platforms are experimenting with Different Things in order to keep their platforms as accessible as possible to the widest possible user base. And ultimately, that is something that goes against these claims that conservatives have that they are being broadly censored. I cant think of any company that bases their Business Model on having as many viewers as possible and wanting to censor half the country. We want to ensure that we have a competitive dynamic, were where facebook is trying one thing, twitter is trying another, and people will migrate. The market needs to be able to function and figure out this Fact Checking software or this label is the preferred solution that we have here for content that, you know, runs along that line for some people. The really dangerous thing that were staring downright now is the prospect of having a uniform set standard having handed down by government, and then there will be no experimentation and people wont be able to say this works better or this doesnt. Youll have the set rule imposed by government whether you like it or not and you will have to deal with her that, you wont be able to go to another site and work within their community that you may find to be better. Peter well, lets listen to a little bit more from the president from july 11. President trump today, im directing my administration to explore regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and free speech rights of all americans. Thats you people in this room and a lot of people out there, a lot of people. We hope to see transparency, more accountability, and more freedom. Thats on both sides. Peter patrick hedger, you heard the president. Patrick i think his heart is in the right place, but as soon as government gets involved in talking about protecting speech by interfering with the actions of other private individuals, thats when we actually start to have a First Amendment problem. Remember, the First Amendment is exclusively a restriction on government. It is not an obligation upon private citizens to provide a platform for all speech, no matter what. And so i get concerned when i start hearing about inserting government as a referee for speech, and i think conservatives should really take a step back and be careful what they wish for here. Because it was not five years ago that conservatives were explaining about bureaucrats at the irs using Law Enforcement and tax enforcement laws to try and silence conservative speech. So, to inject government as the answer to try to protect speech online really goes against everything that history tells us and it goes against this idea i wish more Tech Companies would say that its ok to be biased and we may not try to be biased, but everybody has a bias. Government agencies, and the people that run those, they have biases. I have a bias. Everyone has a bias. And to think that there is some perfectly neutral arbiter out there that can police content online, in government or one of these companies, is just a fallacy. Robert conservatives have overcome challenges like this in the past. Look at the National News media, for instance. The fairness doctrine or a government regulation like that. What did conser