Speaker 1: This is what President Trump said in a video message
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. Mob violence goes against everything I believe in
Speaker 1: and everything our movement stands for. No true supporter of
Speaker 1: mind could ever endorse political violence. And this is what
Speaker 1: Trump said at a rally on January six, before a
Speaker 1: mob of pro Trump supporters stormed the capital. Our country
Speaker 1: has had enough. We will not take it anymore. And
Speaker 1: that's what this is all about. You. We're going to
Speaker 1: walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we're
Speaker 1: going to the Capitol because you'll never take back our
Speaker 1: country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you
Speaker 1: have to be strong. Can Trump be prosecuted for that
Speaker 1: inflammatory speech urging the crowd to go to the capital
Speaker 1: and demand legislator's address his baseless claims of voter fraud?
Speaker 1: Joining me as Sharene SNAr, a professor at for the
Speaker 1: Law School who studies the legal treatment of political violence,
Speaker 1: Let's start with the broad question first, Can President Trump
Speaker 1: be prosecuted for inciting the riot? So the standard for
Speaker 1: incitement is a high standard under criminal law. And you
Speaker 1: know the first thing I would say is that we
Speaker 1: should separate out the criminal prosecution question from the question
Speaker 1: of whether he incited the riot in a broader moral
Speaker 1: or political sense, or even in terms of the impeachment
Speaker 1: proceedings against him, but in terms of a criminal prosecution,
Speaker 1: because of a nine Supreme Court decision in a case
Speaker 1: called Brandenburg the Ohio, the standard for prosecuting somebody for
Speaker 1: advocacy of violence is high. You have to show both
Speaker 1: that their speech was intended to produce imminent lawless action
Speaker 1: and that it was likely to produce that kind of action.
Speaker 1: So there are questions about whether what the president said
Speaker 1: in the context in which he said it could meet
Speaker 1: that standard. So could a case be made out here?
Speaker 1: I think there's a case to be made, in part
Speaker 1: not just from the words, but also from the context
Speaker 1: in which he made the comments that he did at
Speaker 1: the rally immediately proceeding the invasion of the capital. And
Speaker 1: so it's not just the language is taking back our
Speaker 1: country strings and so forth, but also the fact that
Speaker 1: the crowd that he was speaking to were shouting fight
Speaker 1: for Trump, Fight for Trump at the time. But it
Speaker 1: will also rest on facts we don't fully know right now. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, the more it can be shown that the
Speaker 1: president had knowledge that groups were planning of an invasion
Speaker 1: of the capital in the days before the attack, or
Speaker 1: you know that they were already groups like the Proud
Speaker 1: Boys in DC they're fighting with police on the eve
Speaker 1: of the attacks, then it could strengthen the case that
Speaker 1: he intended violence to result from his remarks. In investigation,
Speaker 1: a grand jury could subpoena internal White House documents and
Speaker 1: even question White House aids to find out what Trump
Speaker 1: said or new prior to the riot. Would that help
Speaker 1: determine his intent? If it emerges from that that he
Speaker 1: had a strong knowledge of the plans of certain groups
Speaker 1: that we're coming to d C to be part of
Speaker 1: the protest, then that can help show that what he
Speaker 1: intended by, you know, asking followers to fight for him
Speaker 1: and to be strong, you know, with more than just
Speaker 1: people protests. How likely is it that a president or
Speaker 1: a former president, because we assume that this is going
Speaker 1: to be handled by the Justice Department under Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: that a former president would be prosecuted. That's hard to
Speaker 1: say because it is the unprecedented. But so much of
Speaker 1: what we are seeing now is is unprecedented, and there's
Speaker 1: not a pattern or historical example. I mean, recent times
Speaker 1: that we can draw, and so I think I'd rather
Speaker 1: not speculate about the likelihood of prosecution. Some of it
Speaker 1: turns on the decision making by his attorneys and turns
Speaker 1: on the political context. So there's a lot that could
Speaker 1: go into that kind of decision. Could some of the
Speaker 1: other speakers at the rally be prosecuted, for example, Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 1: Trump's personal attorney, let's have trial by combat. So the
Speaker 1: words of Giuliani that really stand out are the reference
Speaker 1: to trial by combat. He can still argue that what
Speaker 1: he meant by that, and in the context of the sentence,
Speaker 1: it's actually not entirely clear. He could argue that that
Speaker 1: was not a reference to literal physical combat, um, but
Speaker 1: a reference to combat in the same way that we
Speaker 1: often use the word fight to mean a struggle. You know,
Speaker 1: combat certainly does have a more militaristic connotation even than
Speaker 1: than fight. But there is a defense there that the
Speaker 1: intent was not literally in citing people to break down
Speaker 1: the doors of the capital. What did that charges of
Speaker 1: seditious conspiracy. Seditious conspiracy requires people agreeing either to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government or opposed federal authority by force, including preventing
Speaker 1: the execution of federal law. And so the argument I
Speaker 1: suppose would be that if the president agreed to use
Speaker 1: force to prevent a certification of the Electoral College votes,
Speaker 1: that would amount to interrupting a lawful federal process in
Speaker 1: terms of the statute. But you would have to show
Speaker 1: more than the fact that the president wanted the certification
Speaker 1: not to happen. You would have to show some agreement
Speaker 1: with others to impede that process through force. And so again,
Speaker 1: it's not just engaging in a series of actions to
Speaker 1: be legitimize the election, or even to invite right wing
Speaker 1: support right wing militants, but specifically to prevent a certification
Speaker 1: through force. So seditious conspiracy that might be a charge
Speaker 1: that's better suited to the rioters themselves. I think certainly
Speaker 1: the conduct of some of the rioters um falls within
Speaker 1: that description. But I also think we need to be
Speaker 1: careful of using seditious conspiracy charges. And um that's because
Speaker 1: we do have a long history of using sedition laws
Speaker 1: to suppress descent descent, and while the people who invaded
Speaker 1: a capital were not engaging in merely peaceful protests, we
Speaker 1: should be careful about normalizing a framework UM that is
Speaker 1: connected to the suppression of ideas and that um is
Speaker 1: likely to uh to perhaps have its strongest effect on
Speaker 1: on others. And you know, I would note in that
Speaker 1: context that it was just a few months back that
Speaker 1: the Attorney General was suggesting using sedition conspiracy charges against
Speaker 1: people in the police protests. UM. And you know, in
Speaker 1: the past, the successful uses of that charge have been
Speaker 1: against Puerto Rican nationalist, radical anarchists, Muslims. The government has
Speaker 1: tried to use that charge against white supremacists and at
Speaker 1: least a couple of high profile cases over the past
Speaker 1: thirty forty years UM, but UH, multiple prosecutions ended in
Speaker 1: dismissal of charges or acquittal. UM. So we do need
Speaker 1: to be careful about the the longer term and more
Speaker 1: systemic consequences of any expanded use of position charges. That
Speaker 1: brings me to the question of of domestic terrorism. And
Speaker 1: many people are saying, well, the FBI couldn't investigate here
Speaker 1: because they can investigate for domestic terrorism unless the case
Speaker 1: has been opened. So I think there's some misinformation about
Speaker 1: the scope of federal authority of including to to launch
Speaker 1: investigations and the FBI guideline for investigations, which is Essentially,
Speaker 1: the UM you know, the closest thing to a charter
Speaker 1: or framework for for their authority, UH, has a fairly
Speaker 1: low standard when it comes to initiating investigations UM. In
Speaker 1: the context of of speech. UM. So, for instance, the
Speaker 1: FBI can open an assessment into potential illegal activity without
Speaker 1: having to show any particular factual basis for suspicions. So,
Speaker 1: and that's assessment. That's a form of investigative authority that
Speaker 1: allows the FBI to look at social media posts and
Speaker 1: even send out informants um to to target particular individuals. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's the set of powers that is available to
Speaker 1: the FBI, even in the absence of a specific factual
Speaker 1: basis a predication we're thinking that an individual is about
Speaker 1: to engage in or in violence um. And Similarly, there
Speaker 1: is a restriction UM in the sense that the FBI
Speaker 1: is not supposed to engage investigations solely on account of speech.
Speaker 1: But the way that the FBI interprets that is it's
Speaker 1: not solely on account of speech if there is a
Speaker 1: concern that a group is interested in violence. So that UH,
Speaker 1: you know, those investigative authorities are already quite broad, and
Speaker 1: the lack of a domestic terrorism Uh, you know, process
Speaker 1: for designating organizations, you know as domestic charish organizations is
Speaker 1: not an impediment to that already very large authority. So
Speaker 1: is there a difference between the act itself, what we
Speaker 1: saw that he did, and whether or not the proof
Speaker 1: of intent is there? Yeah, Well, I think it's one
Speaker 1: thing to say that the president bears moral and political
Speaker 1: responsibility for instigating the violence. There's no question in my
Speaker 1: mind that the comments made not just at the day
Speaker 1: of the rally, but in the preceding months, and you know,
Speaker 1: for that matter, the entire campaign of delegitimizing the election.
Speaker 1: Um that the president bears responsibility for what unfolded. But
Speaker 1: that's a separate question from whether the intent required by this,
Speaker 1: you know, the constitutional tests of it isn't. The Senator
Speaker 1: Dick Durbin plans to reintroduce a domestic terrorism bill after
Speaker 1: the inauguration. Tell me what your opinion is of the
Speaker 1: need for domestic terrorism bill. I think if there's legislation
Speaker 1: that is intended to increase awareness and information as to
Speaker 1: how the government has responded domestic terrorism. So some of
Speaker 1: the bills are primarily about understanding the law enforcement response
Speaker 1: for example, UM. And so that's that's one thing. But
Speaker 1: if the bill is intended, and some of the bills,
Speaker 1: new domestic terrorism bills that have been introduced over the
Speaker 1: last year so are intended to create a new, broad,
Speaker 1: federal domestic terrorism criminal charge. And my view of that
Speaker 1: is both that the charge wouldn't be necessary because there
Speaker 1: are numerous uh criminal charges that can already be brought
Speaker 1: to prosecute domestic terrorism, but also that creating a new
Speaker 1: charge UM has problems. And you know, again the context
Speaker 1: here is that terrorism and security laws have you've been
Speaker 1: used most vigorously against people of color and those who
Speaker 1: challenge the prevailing racial and socio economic order. So you
Speaker 1: might think you're aiming at white supremacists by creating a
Speaker 1: new charge, UM, But that same charge ends up then
Speaker 1: being deployed against folks protesting police brutality, or indigenous protesters
Speaker 1: responding to oil pipeline in their communities and and things
Speaker 1: of that sort. So there's a danger in creating broad
Speaker 1: new terrorism charges. And if that's the nature of a
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism proposal, that's problematics. Do you think that the
Speaker 1: investigations into domestic terrorism since nine eleven to date, do
Speaker 1: you think a lot of them have gone too far
Speaker 1: or gone astray. Well, they're two separate but related issues.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, the FBI has not sufficiently
Speaker 1: prioritized investigations into white supremacists violence, and not just the FBI,
Speaker 1: but the security agencies more broadly failed to consider it
Speaker 1: a threat for a very long time, you know, when
Speaker 1: they sort of relatedly recognized it as a threat. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, as after years of some of these organizations
Speaker 1: UM already um, you know, working for many it's kind
Speaker 1: of below the radar. So there's been on the one hand,
Speaker 1: of failure to prioritize white supremacists violence. You know. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, we've seen that even with respect to
Speaker 1: domestic groups that have absolutely no international time UM, there
Speaker 1: have been concerns about intrusive FBI investigations. So in two
Speaker 1: thousands ten, the Justice Department Inspector General, which is a
Speaker 1: watchdog agency within the Department UH published a review where
Speaker 1: it looked at UH FBI investigations of anti war groups,
Speaker 1: of animals rights, environmental organizations, and other groups on the left,
Speaker 1: and it found that in some of those investigations there
Speaker 1: has been a very very thin basis for launching the investigation,
Speaker 1: and that those investigations continued, um, even when it became
Speaker 1: apparent that people were not planning any um, you know,
Speaker 1: anything illegal. Um. So there's good reason to be concerned
Speaker 1: about investigations. And and I don't think that that that's
Speaker 1: concerned uh to segregate domestic from international terrorism. In other words, Uh,
Speaker 1: the FBI's investigations have been broad, um and concerning with
Speaker 1: respect both too uh perceived Muslim threats as well as
Speaker 1: with respect to various left wings um you know stories.
Speaker 1: You know, the FBI you know investigative report on black
Speaker 1: identity extremists um from a couple of years ago being
Speaker 1: kind of one example of the very broad framing of
Speaker 1: protests and descent when it comes from say, racial sources protesters,
Speaker 1: um uh the you know. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: those concerns are paired with a concern that the FBI
Speaker 1: hasn't provided sufficient attention into white supremacists, which they now
Speaker 1: be lately recognized as the most significant threats domestically. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being on the Bloomberg Law Show. That's Sharene SNAr,
Speaker 1: professor at stamp In Law School who studies the legal
Speaker 1: treatment of political violence, even Before last week's violence at
Speaker 1: the Capitol, lawmakers and civil rights advocates had been pressuring
Speaker 1: social media platforms to crack down on posts that encourage
Speaker 1: violence or hatred. While regulators in Europe have passed laws
Speaker 1: finding companies that failed to act on hate speech, the
Speaker 1: US has largely left regulation to the companies. After the violence,
Speaker 1: Twitter suspended President Trump's account permanently due to the quote
Speaker 1: risk of further incitement of violence. Facebook and Instagram, which
Speaker 1: it owns, has suspended Trump until at least the January
Speaker 1: twenty inauguration of President elect Joe Biden, arguing that Trump
Speaker 1: intended to use his time left in office to undermine
Speaker 1: the peaceful transition of power. Joining me is Snanaorall, a
Speaker 1: professor at m I T and director of the m
Speaker 1: I T Initiative on the Digital Economy. His new book
Speaker 1: is called The Hype Machine. What did social media tell
Speaker 1: you about the Capital riots? Before last when day? Well,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of chatter on social media about
Speaker 1: you know, meeting for a march, about storming the Capitol.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of q and on chatter about
Speaker 1: taking the capital, about fighting. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is done in the form of allusion you alluding
Speaker 1: to violence. Sometimes it's quite explicit. Uh, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of violent chatter on parlor Um and even on
Speaker 1: other more mainstream social media. There was there were clear indications.
Speaker 1: Did the authorities just miss it or did they misinterpret it?
Speaker 1: It's a very good question. I think the question as
Speaker 1: to why the FBI, the Capitol Police, Homeland Security and
Speaker 1: so on, we're not more prepared on Wednesday is a
Speaker 1: very important open question because I think that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the signs were there in all of the
Speaker 1: known channels, and it would be it's very hard for
Speaker 1: me to believe that it was just missed, uh for
Speaker 1: some reason. There now appears to be some reports that
Speaker 1: the FBI did issue some warnings before the attack, right,
Speaker 1: So so it's hard for me to understand where the
Speaker 1: communication failure happened. Because there's also reports that the d
Speaker 1: D and other authorities in the National Guard offered assistance
Speaker 1: and it was declined multiple times. The information assistance in
Speaker 1: terms of saying, hey, we're seeing chatter, uh, you should
Speaker 1: be more prepared, and or the actual physical um, you know,
Speaker 1: assistance of of you know, more personnel, how that was
Speaker 1: lost in the channing communication. I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: think a full investigation is warranted because given the amount
Speaker 1: of chatter in advance, it was surprising to see the
Speaker 1: Capitol not prepared for what happened on Wednesday. Now we're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of warnings about what might happen on
Speaker 1: inauguration Day. What are you seeing now on social media? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that there are ample warnings that continue that
Speaker 1: things may happen on the on the and on the
Speaker 1: twentie and I would be very surprised if the inauguration
Speaker 1: we're not more prepared than the Capitol on Wednesday. Um,
Speaker 1: there is no excuse for not being prepared on inauguration
Speaker 1: Day and in fact in the next several days leading
Speaker 1: up to the inauguration. Given the amount of attention that
Speaker 1: has been brought to this, and given the amount of
Speaker 1: conversation that happens on social media about about this, I
Speaker 1: should add that there's also talk of additional uh. I
Speaker 1: guess you could call them threats against state capitals, and
Speaker 1: so this isn't limited to Washington, d C. But needs
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously across the country. Is it one group,
Speaker 1: is it a lot of groups? I mean, how many
Speaker 1: actors are there here? Well, I think that it's it's
Speaker 1: difficult to say. There are a lot of bill defined
Speaker 1: groups and or people who are unaffiliated that are privy
Speaker 1: to information that are being put out by groups. I
Speaker 1: think one group that obviously comes to mind is q
Speaker 1: and on. Obviously has been banned by Facebook, and Facebook
Speaker 1: started cleaning out to and on content prior even to
Speaker 1: the election, but they continue to have a voice on
Speaker 1: parlor and in other places. Before Parlor was a home
Speaker 1: for this kind of communications, four chan and eight chan
Speaker 1: were channels where you could find this type of content.
Speaker 1: So q and on is one loosely organized group UM
Speaker 1: that is not really a formal organization so much as
Speaker 1: a set of ideals and ideas that are spread on
Speaker 1: social media and elsewhere that have um gained a lot
Speaker 1: of traction in recent years. You've written that false news
Speaker 1: travels farther and faster and more broadly than the truth online.
Speaker 1: Explain what you mean by that. Yeah, So, we published
Speaker 1: a ten year study on the cover of Science magazine
Speaker 1: in March that studied all of the true and false
Speaker 1: verified news stories that had ever spread on Twitter in
Speaker 1: those ten years, and what we found was that the
Speaker 1: false news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than
Speaker 1: the truth in every category of information that we studied,
Speaker 1: and that false political news was especially viral. And so
Speaker 1: that presents an important challenge because false narratives can create
Speaker 1: false beliefs and people can act on those false beliefs
Speaker 1: uh and debunking of that falsity rarely catches up to
Speaker 1: the lie. And therefore, if you have false narratives, for instance,
Speaker 1: around election integrity or fraud during the election, uh, and
Speaker 1: if you use those narratives to convince people that the
Speaker 1: election was stolen and that they must quote unquote fight,
Speaker 1: that that can really rile people up and create the
Speaker 1: types of outcomes that we saw on Wednesday. Why does
Speaker 1: the false news travel so fast and is accepted so readily?
Speaker 1: So we had a number of hypotheses. At first, we
Speaker 1: thought that, well, maybe false news spreaders have more followers,
Speaker 1: or maybe they follow more people, or maybe there are
Speaker 1: more often verified accounts, or they've been on Twitter longer, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And we checked each one of these in turn, and
Speaker 1: the opposite was true. False news spreaters have fewer followers followed,
Speaker 1: fewer people, have been on Twitter for less time. Or
Speaker 1: less often verified and so on, and so we had
Speaker 1: to come up with other explanations. And what we looked
Speaker 1: at was the emotional content and the novelty of the information.
Speaker 1: And what we found was that false news is shocking,
Speaker 1: it's novel. And when you read the cognitive science literature,
Speaker 1: you find that human attention is drawn to novelty things
Speaker 1: that are new in the environment because that's what's going
Speaker 1: to update our beliefs about the state of the world.
Speaker 1: And when you read the sociology literature, what you find
Speaker 1: is that we gain in status when we share novel
Speaker 1: information because we're seen as being in the know or
Speaker 1: having access to inside information quote unquote, and so we
Speaker 1: tend to have And when we look that the emotions,
Speaker 1: we found that the false news was blood boiling, it
Speaker 1: was anger inducing, it was shocking, it was disgusting, stallacious,
Speaker 1: and that gets our attention and then we feel the
Speaker 1: knee jerk urge to share it, and that's what drives
Speaker 1: false news to be uh more viral. That's so interesting
Speaker 1: the social media platforms, what are they doing, if anything,
Speaker 1: to stop the false narratives? Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that you can see that in the last six months
Speaker 1: they have stepped up their efforts to address the spread
Speaker 1: of information. A year ago or so, Mark Zuckerberg gave
Speaker 1: a speech in sort of Georgetown at elector and he said,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be the arbiters of truth. We
Speaker 1: don't want to have any uh, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: role in that. But I think the pressure mounted and
Speaker 1: uh in the last six months or so leading up
Speaker 1: to the election, the social media platform began moderating content
Speaker 1: a lot more proactively and aggressively, and they implemented several
Speaker 1: different policies, including, for instance, Twitter forcing you to quote
Speaker 1: tweet instead of retweet without thinking, nudging you to read
Speaker 1: the article before you retweet it, m de emphasizing false
Speaker 1: misinformation public health misinformation in search results, demonetizing fake news
Speaker 1: on WhatsApp. Facebook limited the number of reshares of any
Speaker 1: type of information to try and blow all information down. First,
Speaker 1: they limited to five than one reshares. And so now
Speaker 1: what you see is them taking even more visible actions,
Speaker 1: which culminated in the banning of Donald Trump's account by
Speaker 1: uh not just Facebook and Twitter, but also Pinterest, snapchat,
Speaker 1: um and other places. And so it's sort of boiled
Speaker 1: to come to a head now I think I should
Speaker 1: point out that when Twitter band Donald Trump's account, UH,
Speaker 1: they used to tweets as a justification which were frankly,
Speaker 1: much more innocuous than the content he had put out beforehand,
Speaker 1: and because Twitter's policy was reactive instead of proactive, they
Speaker 1: were caught off guard banning the account on what some
Speaker 1: might argue was innocuous grounds. And so that provides UH
Speaker 1: fodder for the argument that this is censorship. Is absurd
Speaker 1: that you would ban on an account on these two tweets.
Speaker 1: But their argument is that in the content, in the
Speaker 1: broader context of all the content, the repeated misinformation, the
Speaker 1: repeated calls to violence, um, and UH incendiary content, that's
Speaker 1: the justification for the band. I think now what we
Speaker 1: have to be careful about is what has been termed
Speaker 1: the Splinternet, the sort of tearing a part of our
Speaker 1: human social network into different factions, where conservatives go to
Speaker 1: parlor and you know, liberals maybe go to other social networks.
Speaker 1: After the band, what you saw was Trump allies condemning
Speaker 1: the band and then saying, like for instance, Mark Levine
Speaker 1: rush Limbaugh Um, what some might call fringe conservatives who
Speaker 1: have a large following, saying I'm voluntarily suspending my account
Speaker 1: on Twitter, follow me on Parlor and rumble and let's
Speaker 1: have the conversation there. Uh. And so we have to
Speaker 1: be very careful about this splintering of our civil society
Speaker 1: because any student of negotiation knows that in order to
Speaker 1: achieve collaboration, cooperation, and even empathy, you have to have
Speaker 1: common ground. And if we split into these factions with
Speaker 1: different sets of information, uh, they're seeing completely different narratives
Speaker 1: and never talk think to each other, that empathy is
Speaker 1: hard to achieve. There was action taken against Parlor. Is
Speaker 1: that going to stop it being means of communication? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. So, you know, Amazon removed it from
Speaker 1: its hosting services. As soon as that happened, people said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is big tech, uh, controlling the Internet. And I
Speaker 1: predicted that they would get a new hosting service than
Speaker 1: they did. So they announced today that they've gotten a
Speaker 1: new hosting service, so they really weren't disrupted for that long.
Speaker 1: There's they're always going to be um, you know, hosting
Speaker 1: services that are willing to host services like Parlor. I
Speaker 1: think more dangerous than the shutting down of of Parlor
Speaker 1: is the bifurcation of civil society into completely unconnected UH factions.
Speaker 1: If you want to try to stop you know, these
Speaker 1: kinds of violent communications, and yet you don't want to
Speaker 1: bifurcate the communication lines. What you to do? Well? I
Speaker 1: think there are a number of things that we need
Speaker 1: to be doing. And by the way, you know, I
Speaker 1: write extensively in my book about how we UH sort
Speaker 1: of move forward to achieve the promise of social media
Speaker 1: and avoid the peril. There are so many important conversations
Speaker 1: that we need to be having about antitrust, federal privacy, legislation,
Speaker 1: election integrity, the spread of misinformation, UH and so on,
Speaker 1: all of which you know, I think are important parts
Speaker 1: of this conversation. But I think two things in particular
Speaker 1: relate to your specific question, And the first is that
Speaker 1: the platforms need to create UH comprehensive, systematic and transparent
Speaker 1: content moderation policies. So far, they've been quite reactive. I'll
Speaker 1: just point to the Hunter Biden email scandal and how
Speaker 1: Twitter handled that. They first they banned it, then they
Speaker 1: allowed it, then they changed their rules in order to
Speaker 1: justify the specific decisions that they had made. That's completely backwards.
Speaker 1: What the platforms need to do is to write down
Speaker 1: very specific, detailed, comprehensive and transparent content moderation policies UH,
Speaker 1: and they need to consult experts in writing those policies
Speaker 1: so that they can have a debate about the policies
Speaker 1: rather than the specific decisions on a given account or
Speaker 1: a given tweet or posts. UM. Secondly, I think that
Speaker 1: this UH magnifies to a great degree the need for
Speaker 1: interoperability between the networks. I argue very strongly for this
Speaker 1: in my book. And what I mean is that you
Speaker 1: take the anti trust case against Facebook. The argument there
Speaker 1: is that Facebook is a monopoly and we should break
Speaker 1: them up. But the social media economy runs on network effects,
Speaker 1: which means that the value of a platform is a
Speaker 1: function of the number of users that has and economies
Speaker 1: that run on network of facts tend toward market concentration.
Speaker 1: So if you break up the market leader, you're just
Speaker 1: going to tip the next Facebook like company into into
Speaker 1: market dominance. But what could achieve competition in the social
Speaker 1: media economy is UH interoperability and social network portability. So UH,
Speaker 1: when a o L merged with Time Warner, what we
Speaker 1: did was we required a o l's instant messenger to
Speaker 1: become interoperable with Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger and accept
Speaker 1: messages going across. That made their market share go down
Speaker 1: from six to fifty and then they seeded the entire
Speaker 1: market to New Entrance three years later. And interoperability therefore
Speaker 1: would help create competition in the social media economy, but
Speaker 1: it would also help stitch the networks together in a
Speaker 1: way that you could send messages from one network to
Speaker 1: another so they weren't completely bifurcated. So in this way,
Speaker 1: interoperability could not only help create structural reforms that create
Speaker 1: the competition we want to see in the social media economy,
Speaker 1: but they could also help mend the networks so that
Speaker 1: we remain connected in a world where people want to
Speaker 1: choose different services thanks to Non that's a Non, a
Speaker 1: royal professor at m I T. His book is called
Speaker 1: The Hype Machine. And that's it for the sedition of
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