Impacts much of Silicon Valley print our guest reporter is Emily Birnbaum of the protocol. Thank you both for being on the communicators this week. Thank you for having us. Host congressman, as the representative of Silicon Valley how would you describe the reputation of some of the Member Companies in your district right now in washington . Guest well, i think on one hand there is a lot of positiv positives. If you look at the polling the Tech Companies pull about 60, 70 of their approval and there is a sense that these are companies and some are working on vaccines and companies are working on antivirals and they are allowing for remote work, for remote calls that they are engaged in allowing us to have good medication in the time of a pandemic and allowing them to get groceries or information but that said there are a lot of other ethical issues in a sense of essential workers being paid appropriately and are these doing enough combat hate speech and Voter Suppression and are they doing enough to pay workers a living wage. It is a complex narrative. Host there has been talk on capitol hill of actually regulating the Tech Companies, Communications Companies a little more than they are now. Are you in favor of that . Guest i am as long as it is wellcrafted regulation paid if it is real regular and that we came up with in the internet bill of rights that regulation to protect privacy to foster competition such as being able to move your data and when you have friends on facebook you should be able to take them to a different platform so we can encourage competition if it is regulation to make sure that we have the wages being paid properly for independent contractors. There are a lot of good, sensible regulation but i dont think it should be a slight sledgehammer that curbs our innovation or consumers or job creation. Host left spring Emily Birnbaum of protocol into this conversation. Hello, congressman. Thanks so much for being here. Good to see you. So, we are coming up on an unprecedented hearing with jeff bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, they will appear before congress and appear before the House Judiciary Committee which you are not on but i wanted to ask you is this happening and if they will be asking them if they will about their market dominance and power . What do you hope lawmakers will ask during that hearing and what are you looking for from the company . I am looking to see what they are doing to make sure they dont have anticompetitive platform privileges, and other words, you should not be able to use their own platform to suppress competition and i think the question is how do we have a nuance conversation about not lets break up a company or a complete break up apple or but what can we do to make sure that other companies can compete that they arent targeted too much for the use of their own platforms that they are hurting competition and now we have a nuance framework emerging. Are you in favor of an update to our current antitrust laws . So what would that update look like and what does that nuance regulation . Guest i think we have to, in terms of updating, we have to look at consumer welfare and look at the jobs and look at the impact of suppressing competition and look at the impact on communities and so if there are large mergers those in need to be looked at with great scrutiny and in retrospect we should not have approved Facebook Comments ram merger or Facebook Whats app merger and there ought to be a much higher bar on future mergers being approved. I also think in terms of tech in particular we ought to look at what these companies are doing in terms of getting access to the platforms so in a competitors are they prioritizing their own products, their own search and making sure they are not doing that. So on the topic of mergers, during the pandemic we have seen these top Tech Companies become larger as a lot of startups have faltered so people say there will be a will acquisition will fall and uber just the other day announced they are going to be acquiring post mates and a couple of antitrust has said this raises concerns about monopoly in the food delivery business. Do you share those concerns and is this a merger that deserves an extra scrutiny . Guest i do. I do. It is our reason i have a concern with amazon merging with whole foods. These companies are so powerful and large that having them expand our footprint is problematic and puts pressure on the labor markets where workers dont have as many layers to go through so you see a decline in wages and puts pressure on the companies that in those fields and in those new sectors are very hard for them to compete. I really think that these Tech Companies should limit themselves to more or less organic growth and should not be trying to expand their footpri footprint. Just to switch topics a bit to focus on one of the companies. Facebook is currently facing this historic advertiser boycott with hundreds of companies have said im just not advertising on facebook, instagram and twitter has become a part of that. Have you spoken to the executives at facebook since the boycott began and if so, what advice are you giving them and do you think theyre doing enough . Guest as for the facebook executives, quite often, i dont remember what was last mitigated before or after the boycott but these issues have been salient and my view is we have to have a very thoughtful view of speech and even under the brandenburg standard which is the United States standard the view is you could have speech as long as it is not promoting unlawful conduct. That is similar to the International Human rights law in covenant 19 which says you cannot have speech that is an incitement to violence or incitement to hostility and discrimination. So what i would say is you cant just have a view that any speech goes, that is not the doctrine and we have to look at is speech suppressing the vote and is speech leading to violence and is speech making it harder for others to have equality on the platform and then regulating that speech and at least the amplifying that speech in terms of the promotion of it. Host right now, congressman, it seems that only on the conservative side is that speech be limited, is that a fair statement . Guest no, i dont think that is true at all. I think if you look at facebooks or twitter that they have taken down things on the left as well and they found those speech was harassing or if it was inciting violence or if it was unlawful. I do think there is a balance. When you have someone like donald trump totally agree with and im not saying it make sense to ban donald trump from social media platforms. He stilled the president of the United States and to me that would just be further inciting his supporters and his base but to i think that donald trump should use inflammatory tweets that incite violence and that tweet should be amplified . No. I think there are ways where we can allow for speech but not traffic in ways that are amplifying violence or hate in making others uncomfortable and participating with look, these are very complex issues and of course the Supreme Court is grappling with them for generations and i think the bigger issue is look, we cant trust zuckerberg or dorsey to come up with the right formulation of what is truth and what is proper deliberation of a democracy. You have [inaudible] writing philosophical treaties on these questions so what i hope is they consult a broad range of experts and think through what they are obligations should look like. Host but at the same time these are private companies and they dont have to put any speech on there if they dont want to, do they . Guest they dont. And you are right. Technically, of course they dont have to be governed by First Amendment principles and they could be making their own decisions but you really want that especially if you are liberal and you dont believe in Citizens United or corporation should have that kind of power, do you want facebook with twopoint to billion users to have the power to determine our speech in a democracy . My sense is you probably dont want that. My hope is that these companies will take their responsibility seriously and at the very latest may be one idea is why not have some vetted content like they are doing on covid and look right up top and here is the fact of the day or something you need to know so why not ask where you have thoughts and msnbc, wall street journal, abroad and then you have 30 minutes of here is the news of the date that goes in everyones feedback that is one idea but i do think they have to grapple with the responsibilities, especially if they dont its not like you and social Media Companies. That is an argument for competition but imagine if you just had one Walter Cronkite doing all of the news and i know Walter Cronkite was trusted but in my view its better than we have multiplicity of channels and so the question is then how do we create standards with the multiplicity of this. So, today facebook has heated some of what youre saying and they have brought on some civil rights experts to audit the company over issues like hate speech and some of what they said today in a very long report was that facebook in particular mishandled posts from donald trump, as you said before, if donald trump is inciting or people inciting violence then they shouldnt be allowed to do so on facebook. In particular facebook got a lot of criticism over the past couple of weeks for heating up a string of comments from donald trump and one of them they said was inciting violence and theyre talking about protesters in front of the white house and some about the election about voter fraud which ultimately experts say is not true producing facebook mishandled Donald Trumps post and up pretty Pivotal Moment . Guest i would have handled it differently and i dont think that is the main issue but the reality is jack dorsey saint donald trump is misleading posts of voter ballots and in doing that did not let the left people reading and more people reading so do i think dorsey took a better approach . Yes, but i think the question for facebook is on civil rights is not how they handle Donald Trumps speech but its more broad, how are they handling speech that is giving people false information about how to vote and anti speech that is intentionally designed and target Young AfricanAmerican Voters and suppress their vote and how are they targeting speech that could be harassing or intimidating and making women in particular uncomfortable. The un had a report about how they faced 2030 times the harassment and there was an excellent book by a professor who talks about harassment that people face. My view is the donald trump stuff gets the headline but there are far more systemic issues with social media in how do you balance the right to Free Expression with the right to equal participation and these are very difficult questions. All i would say is i dont think im qualified to make that decision and i dont think no one can make that decision and i certainly dont think Mark Zuckerberg to make that decision. The more he can get people like the professor to spend their life studying this on some board to help them make those decisions of the better. So, youre talking about these issues are systemic and wider. Most industries right now are undergoing some form of racial reckoning, specifically about their workforce. They are responding to the reinvigorated movement, tech is no exception. Doing soulsearching about the homogeneity of the workforce which is predominantly white males still with this pledge to make changes. Why has tech struggled so much to improve racial diversity and its workforce and are there legislative pathways to dealing with that . Guest yes, there has been legislative pathways. And they are underrepresented and their 1 or 3 lack women and latina entrepreneurs and initiative representative clyburn and i did zoom where they will partner with hpc use and hpc class in South Carolina to hire people coming out of that program to provide fellowships and its too diversified their workforce but i dont think we can leave it for private initiatives. We have to take action. There are a few things i would suggest grade look at californias law requiring a percentage of women on the board and lets make that national and have requirements of underrepresented groups like platted black and latin acts as well been Software Companies need to have more diversity and less provide hiring tax credits like [inaudible] from Rural America are hiring underrepresented groups. There are very concrete policy steps we can take to deal with the inequities and all of the studies shows that in the long term having worked diversity leads to increased profitability. More women and more black and brown people on executive and the problem is that the startup culture is so much focused into making it and surviving that they dont take the whole view so we need a legislative senate to help people take that longerterm view. Final point, since manufacturing has left our country in many ways and we still have to fight for manufacturing it has led to this increase in desert racial welfare, the wealth gap in the country has increased over the last three decades and William Joyce famously said [inaudible] and the reason it has increased is the inequity of the innovations that the Latin Community hasnt identified and we have to make sense. When you say fix that as emily mentioned the legislative response what is specifically what you do at this point . Guest i mentioned discussions requiring more representation and requiring federal contracts to be tied to the executive and tax incentives to higher underrepresented groups like they did in quebec. One other concrete idea is to have a foundation for university to have a tax incentive to invest their endowments or Pension Funds with funds that are investing in black or latin x or Women Entrepreneurs and that maybe would help give 1 of the Venture Capital into a black community in a latin x communities entrepreneurs but i think we need legislative structural change and we have seen this in some other countries where they have those kind of laws and let them more equity. Host i apologize, conversely, i should have asked this a different way but would you see these as standalone bills which you included in an infra structure bill that funds more broadband or how would you do that . Guest clybourn has a bill that is so powerful on getting everyone hooked up to the highspeed internet and i dont know why its 80 billion and help black americans as well as Rural Americans and we understand the exclusions of this country and William Julius wilson and [inaudible] are parallel books and they talk about the exclusion of jobs in black committees and brilliant disparities talk about the exclusion of jobs for white rural working class and how that lead to greater disparity. My view is there should be a Broad Coalition with republicans and democrats that they cant get universal broadband there and cant we get incentives to get Venture Capital there and can we get incentives and think about this, in manufacturing in this country in the 60s and 70s we were only in five cities. If we were in San Francisco or in detroit or cleveland it might have been spread out and we would never have robust [inaudible] and that is the situation with the innovation economy. It is excluded more large groups geographically, racially, gender wise and democratization of the innovation of economy is a big challenge. Host could use the social Media Companies and Broadband CompaniesTelecommunication Companies being considered as utilities and regulated as such . Guest i think that is a step too far. I would not trust regular regulators to understand the innovation that is required to make the next iphone and i think steve jobs would roll over in his grave if he thought that people would be in charge of figuring out what the next iphone should be or the next innovation should be but i do think we need smart regulation and the utilities is to guarantee greater profit. I dont want to entrance facebook but who knows there may be some entrepreneur out there that has a better social Media Network that is coming up and i am for competition and i am for innovation and entrepreneurship but not in an unregulated way. Right now we have led the Tech Companies basically, we let technology in this country develop with an invisible end and not thinking about the issue of equity and the impact its having on our democracy. So, right now there is some regulation coming down the pipe that Tech Companies pretty unanimously have said they are not comfortable with and they the [inaudible] act of moving to senate Judiciary Committee and this just past and altered form through the committee and they shifted the language to make it more similar which is a lot that i know you said you have long opposed. Do you have concerns about the earned act i