Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We are on vacation, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we don't have a great show for you Today.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Matthew O'Neill and Perry Pelts stop by to talk
Speaker 1: about their new documentary Can't Look Away, about Tech's stranglehold
Speaker 1: on Children. But first we have substax own Jacob Silverman
Speaker 1: on Trump's weird plan to make cities deregulated dystopias. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Jacob.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you here, and also I
Speaker 1: have so many things I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 1: The last time you were on I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember, but we at the end of the interview,
Speaker 1: I was like, so, basically bitcoin is just kind of
Speaker 1: a scam, and you were like, yeah, since that interview,
Speaker 1: it's probably about six months. I want you to talk
Speaker 1: about what is happening right now with the American economy
Speaker 1: and bitcoin and bitcoin's other you know, fake money, synthetic currencies.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Well, for those who don't know, the crypto industry was
Speaker 3: the biggest donor by industry in the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 3: This is not a very big or economically productive industry,
Speaker 3: but they have a lot of money to punch away
Speaker 3: above their weight. And the results of that has been,
Speaker 3: of course, that they helped elect Trump and a lot
Speaker 3: of pro crypto Republicans, and now they're starting to get
Speaker 3: their way with policy and personnel and across the board.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all happened very quickly. We've seen a
Speaker 3: lot of actions by Trump for basically remove a lot
Speaker 3: of the guardrails around the financial system and to dismantle
Speaker 3: all these different task forces and groups within various government
Speaker 3: agencies that were focusing on either cryptoregulation or prime related
Speaker 3: to cryptocurrency. And simultaneous to this, Trump up here as
Speaker 3: basically the country's most prominent crypto entrepreneur and who's done
Speaker 3: things that would be considered illegal under any normal regime
Speaker 3: or presidency, and is also not only is he the
Speaker 3: most prominent crypto entrepreneur, but he's really jumped in the
Speaker 3: deep end with the industry's shadiest characters, a lot of
Speaker 3: whom have had pardons or headed towards a pardon, or
Speaker 3: have had sec investigations against them dropped. And so now
Speaker 3: where we're headed is that with the Genius Act and
Speaker 3: some of the other regulation coming down the pike, the
Speaker 3: whole economy will kind of have to play by crypto's rules,
Speaker 3: or a kind of lack of rules. And what the
Speaker 3: crypto industry wants from people who are in the bitcoin
Speaker 3: on down is access to more mainstream financing, to Wall Street,
Speaker 3: to institutional money, and to be able to kind of
Speaker 3: create all these complex and definitely synthetic and artificial financial
Speaker 3: products on top of crypto, which itself arguably has no
Speaker 3: inherent value. With that comes a lot instability, a lot
Speaker 3: of risk, a lot of volatility, and I think if
Speaker 3: we have sort of a crypto driven economic crash, it's
Speaker 3: because the whole kind of economy will be forced to
Speaker 3: play by crypto's very dangerous set of rules.
Speaker 1: I laugh to keep from crying, but I also laugh
Speaker 1: because crypto doesn't want to be regulated, just like AI.
Speaker 1: There are so many parallels in my mind between crypto
Speaker 1: regulation and AI regulation, right, They're both These are both
Speaker 1: sort of these lobbies that have sprung up like tobacco
Speaker 1: and oil, both of which are desperate not to be
Speaker 1: regulated and are trying to circumvent any regulation, like by
Speaker 1: adding in that ridiculous that states cannot regulate AI for
Speaker 1: ten years, like that ridiculous little thing they put in
Speaker 1: the Republican BBB. But what I think is so hilarious
Speaker 1: about all of this is that in fact it's Congress,
Speaker 1: so they're not going to fucking regulate any They never
Speaker 1: regulated Facebook. You're really worried they're going to regulate you.
Speaker 1: All they do is not regulate discuss.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think this has been actually sort of an issue
Speaker 3: across tech for years now, is that they kind of
Speaker 3: don't realize how good that they have it, and that
Speaker 3: I mean, of course there's going to be lobbying and
Speaker 3: influenced peddling and stuff like that, but this is an
Speaker 3: industry that even under Biden did quite well, and the failures,
Speaker 3: so to speak of some things to take off like crypto,
Speaker 3: are kind of their own. And so that's actually one
Speaker 3: thing that I found puzzling or try to explain about,
Speaker 3: like the radicalization of a lot of tech leaders, you know,
Speaker 3: or like whenever markets, yeah, whenever Mark and Reason throws
Speaker 3: a fit, it's like, well you had it, so you
Speaker 3: are as rich as ever. You own six mansions your
Speaker 3: companies are flourishing. Maybe you haven't, you know, created God
Speaker 3: in a computer with artificial intelligence or whatever else, but
Speaker 3: you pretty much have all you want. But they they
Speaker 3: take any sort of criticism and now anything that kind
Speaker 3: of impedes them in any way, very personally, and I
Speaker 3: mean they're pretty soft in that way.
Speaker 1: I think tech bros Are fucking babies. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's the net net, right. They were so many.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I know one tech bro. They had
Speaker 1: ten million dollars at Silicon Valley Bank when it went under,
Speaker 1: and he was like started text me. He's like, you
Speaker 1: have to talk to Biden about bailing out Silicon Valley Bank.
Speaker 1: And I was like, first of all, it doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way with Democrats. It's not like if you write
Speaker 1: about politics that somehow you have a main line to
Speaker 1: the president and he does favors for you. Like, that's
Speaker 1: not how any of this supposed work. And also I
Speaker 1: was like, bail out your fucking bank, so you want
Speaker 1: to socialize the losses and privatize the games. Like I
Speaker 1: feel like there's such a disconnect here with tech bros.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's really important. They're fucking babies, right,
Speaker 1: these people Mark Andresen, he was offended. They were so
Speaker 1: offended by Lena Khan, by the mere existence of Lena
Speaker 1: Kon Linikon wasn't even able to do a lot of
Speaker 1: what she wanted to do, but the idea that there
Speaker 1: would be any kind of check on capitalism in any
Speaker 1: way was so offensive, And I wonder if you could
Speaker 1: sort of talk through We know about Andreasen and his
Speaker 1: funny shaped head and his love of fascism or of authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: We know about Elon because he tweeted before he got
Speaker 1: kicked out of the White House. We know that these
Speaker 1: people are just pretty excited. But the thing that I've
Speaker 1: been struck by is like Curtis jarviin the one sort
Speaker 1: of the intellectual ringleader of this crew, right, I think
Speaker 1: that article in The New Yorker really exposed him to
Speaker 1: be just a complete broad So I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could sort of talk to me about where this crew
Speaker 1: is now, knowing that they're basically sort of glorized Fox News.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because a few years ago, the new
Speaker 3: right or the neo reactionaryas that Curtis Jarvin represents, they
Speaker 3: try to present them cells as somehow countercultural or like
Speaker 3: the new counterculture was these right wingers who you know,
Speaker 3: believe in eugenics and all these other bad things.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: But now you know, the people they talk to or
Speaker 3: some of their friends are in power, and I think
Speaker 3: that changes things a little bit. And I think they've
Speaker 3: also made a lot of accommodations to sort of the
Speaker 3: cults of Trump or just you know, we've seen this
Speaker 3: even in the last couple of weeks, but people kind of
Speaker 3: bending over backwards to justify Trump's supposedly anti war, people
Speaker 3: on the right justifying Trump's attack on Iran. And you know,
Speaker 3: and Yarvin has also done this thing where sometimes he
Speaker 3: claims he doesn't have much influence, which I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it is debatable in some ways. He kind of
Speaker 3: he gets he certainly gets ritt about a lot. But
Speaker 3: they can only be sort of victims or people on
Speaker 3: the outside for so long because now their peers are
Speaker 3: in power and doing some of the things that they
Speaker 3: want to be done, like following out the Ministry of
Speaker 3: State and concentrating more power in the present. I think
Speaker 3: sometimes when you hear this stuff from someone like Jarvin,
Speaker 3: who speaks in these kind of goofy comic book villain terms.
Speaker 3: Almost it's hard to take seriously, but then you look
Speaker 3: at what's actually happening in the presidency or in the
Speaker 3: White House, and it's hard not to see a connection there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely true, and there clearly is a connection there. So
Speaker 1: Jesse really wants to talk about freedom cities. Oh, sure,
Speaker 1: you need to explain to our listeners. Though not everyone
Speaker 1: is as read in on freedom cities as Jesse is.
Speaker 1: I made him explain it to me yesterday. So explain
Speaker 1: what freedom cities are like, where they come from to
Speaker 1: I want where they come from.
Speaker 3: And this is probably a good example of kind of
Speaker 3: right wing Silicon Valley ideology finding common cause with just
Speaker 3: sort of maga trump Ism and finding something in common.
Speaker 3: Trump has talked about freedom cities like creating kind of
Speaker 3: cities out of whole cloth in parts of the United
Speaker 3: States or maybe Greenland one day, that are kind of
Speaker 3: supposed to be low regulation or none inherently somehow innovative.
Speaker 3: You're going to have hordes of tech companies going there
Speaker 3: to try things or do experiments that they're not allowed
Speaker 3: to do in normal law abiding communities. I mean, Trump
Speaker 3: sort of talks about it or has did talk about
Speaker 3: during his campaigns kind of returned to the frontier, and
Speaker 3: the tech industry has been trying to do this in
Speaker 3: the form of what they generally call charter cities for
Speaker 3: many years. Peter Teele famously funded seasteading and which is
Speaker 3: sort of these people who are going to live on
Speaker 3: ships or on these floating communities.
Speaker 1: They ever happened.
Speaker 3: Well, there's one example of a charter city really that
Speaker 3: I think deserves attention, and that's one in Honduras on
Speaker 3: the island of Roatan called Prospera, and it's been pretty
Speaker 3: well covered in the Times and other places. And basically
Speaker 3: what they did was they took this is a venture
Speaker 3: capitalist funded charter city that they basically made a deal
Speaker 3: with at the time, the right wing Honduran government to
Speaker 3: take over some land where they the basic criminal code
Speaker 3: would still cover them, but they could kind of do
Speaker 3: anything they wanted, and they started building a little bit
Speaker 3: and giving out citizenship to tech entrepreneurs want to come
Speaker 3: there to Again, it's a lot of people just awarding
Speaker 3: taxes or trying or claiming that they want to do
Speaker 3: medical experiments, biotech stuff that can't be done in the US.
Speaker 3: There's not much real activity there, and then there is
Speaker 3: a yeah, there are at least I mean, I've gotten
Speaker 3: varying numbers from a few dozen to a few hundred.
Speaker 3: They do have a sizeable chunk of land, and like
Speaker 3: real estate. They took over an old resort and there's
Speaker 3: been a lot of protests from locals, and so the
Speaker 3: National government of Honduras basically turned over, became more liberal
Speaker 3: left and said, we don't like this deal that was
Speaker 3: made with you guys to own this land. It's a
Speaker 3: long term lease, like ninety nine years or something like that.
Speaker 3: And they've now been fighting with them, and the people
Speaker 3: from Prospera are suing the Honduran government for an enormous
Speaker 3: number that's greater than the GDP of Houndurs. It's something
Speaker 3: like fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 4: So it's going, well, is what you're.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's the successful one. And I've seen all
Speaker 3: kinds of presentations and lectures from people who basically want
Speaker 3: to escape the strictures of the law. I mean, the
Speaker 3: popular term on the libertarian right is exit, but Peter
Speaker 3: Thiel has used this many times over the years, and
Speaker 3: the exiting society, exiting the strictures of the law. So
Speaker 3: when Trump start, you know, I don't playing the Trump
Speaker 3: understands with his time of when you start talking out
Speaker 3: something called freedom cities or building new communities from scratch,
Speaker 3: that is sort of a whistle for our dog whistle
Speaker 3: for tech people who when they hear that, they think, okay,
Speaker 3: no laws, no regulation, we could get land.
Speaker 2: Cheap and do what we want.
Speaker 3: And frankly, also some of the people behind this charter
Speaker 3: city stuff in right wing tech circles are really excited
Speaker 3: about taking over Greenland because that's they want to start
Speaker 3: a charter city there. I mean, all this stuff strikes
Speaker 3: me as very untenable. I think it's so they can
Speaker 3: have an authoritarian dictatorship basically, or you know, be totally
Speaker 3: in charge. Because it's like what you were talking on
Speaker 3: a few minutes ago with Andreesa and others. They can't
Speaker 3: really stand to be bound by others rules, right The
Speaker 3: entitlement is overwhelming, and they do think that they are elites,
Speaker 3: both genetic elites and cognitive elites who deserve to rule others.
Speaker 1: What I have been so st You know, I'm married
Speaker 1: to ed Tech VC and we've been married a long
Speaker 1: long time and so for a long time I thought
Speaker 1: that venture capitalists, because my father in law was a
Speaker 1: venture capitalist, I always thought they were very smart because
Speaker 1: they built all this businesses, they built, all this wealth,
Speaker 1: they built you know, so much of America was not
Speaker 1: you know, over the last fifty years, was built by
Speaker 1: you know, investing in small companies and helping them grow
Speaker 1: and creating these huge monopolies, which was not probably the point.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but when I am struck by when you
Speaker 1: got Elon on Twitter, what was so clear to me
Speaker 1: was this guy's not so smart. I mean, maybe he's
Speaker 1: good at building rockets, but his thinking is cooked. And
Speaker 1: when you and and Curtis is the same way, when
Speaker 1: you get Curtis going, he's just he's John pod Horz, right,
Speaker 1: He's not some genius. He's just a person who has
Speaker 1: a lot of discriminatory ideas about how the world works.
Speaker 1: So I just don't, you know, I just wonder where
Speaker 1: they think they're why they think they're so brilliant.
Speaker 4: It's just because they're rich, That's part of it.
Speaker 3: It's also I think because a lot of these guys
Speaker 3: don't do much reading, and I'm not that I expect
Speaker 3: them to be tearing through books all the time, but
Speaker 3: they kind of think that they've reasoned, they've come to
Speaker 3: first principles on their own. And you know, it's like
Speaker 3: there's a joke about how every couple of years some
Speaker 3: VC reinvents the bus by saying, like, you know, there's
Speaker 3: gonna be an uber van that stops at at regular locations.
Speaker 3: Like there's very low respect sort of for what comes before,
Speaker 3: whether it's businesses or institutions or ideas, and so they
Speaker 3: just I think you see that a lot with Musk
Speaker 3: and others who kind of make up solutions as they
Speaker 3: go along or propose things and you're like, well, there's
Speaker 3: already something that does that, or you know, this institution
Speaker 3: is supposed to do that, but they just don't seem
Speaker 3: to get it. You know, that becomes a real problem
Speaker 3: when the people acting like that, are speaking like that
Speaker 3: are billionaires with a huge amount of power, not just
Speaker 3: kind of idiots.
Speaker 1: On X and who are running the government. And yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Elon is clearly out right. He is no longer running
Speaker 1: the federal government. We don't really have the great details,
Speaker 1: but clearly he has just crossed Trump one too many times.
Speaker 1: So it seems like I know a big balls has
Speaker 1: left the government. I said that Wired piece yesterday.
Speaker 4: I mean, what is that?
Speaker 1: Who sort of are these people now leaving, what are
Speaker 1: they leaving with? And how have they fucked upths in
Speaker 1: federal government?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, some of that is is sort of TBD
Speaker 3: or a long term thing that we're going to find
Speaker 3: out as we go along. But you know, I think
Speaker 3: Musk and Xai probably got a tremendous amount of data.
Speaker 3: You know, these are things I think deserve more reporting
Speaker 3: and investigation. But when the Dose people showed up at
Speaker 3: the SEC one day earlier the spring, I got a
Speaker 3: message from a former SEC employee who said, you know,
Speaker 3: they're going to get their hands on so much sensitive
Speaker 3: market data because you know, the government, or especially agencies
Speaker 3: like the SEC, have has really important and kind of
Speaker 3: privileged and unique data about how Americans live, about the economy,
Speaker 3: about you know, and we're not even talking classified information,
Speaker 3: but just kind of everything around us, how our society functions.
Speaker 3: That could be enormously valuable, whether to train in an
Speaker 3: AI system like Xai's Grock, or to try to trade
Speaker 3: on or you know, do something more sinister with And
Speaker 3: I think the answer is that we don't really know
Speaker 3: exactly what they're leaving with, but they probably did leave
Speaker 3: with a lot of data. And then I think there
Speaker 3: was a pretty revealing comment kind of confirming a lot
Speaker 3: of us thought from Joe Lonsdale on X a few
Speaker 3: days ago, where he's part of kind of the raider
Speaker 3: Musk Orbit. He's adventure capitalist Peter Teal disciple, and he
Speaker 3: said a lot of our friends are still in DOGE
Speaker 3: and in the government pretty much paraphrasing here, and this
Speaker 3: is something he said publicly like so, and we can
Speaker 3: chart this too. Some of these people, at least a
Speaker 3: lot of the appointees who came from a sixteen Z
Speaker 3: or from mus crew at DOGE are still there. And
Speaker 3: you know, we have the prominent people like Moscow or
Speaker 3: nineteen year old big Balls leaving. But the things that
Speaker 3: they the processes they started, some of the things they
Speaker 3: put in place, I think are gonna be very significant,
Speaker 3: especially as AI systems start getting rolled out to more
Speaker 3: parts of government and start replacing more people, and I
Speaker 3: think it's going to be an ongoing disaster of one
Speaker 3: form or another.
Speaker 1: The thing I'm the most worried about is the AI stuff,
Speaker 1: because I'm just not convinced that anyone has thought this throw.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I've long argued, perhaps not a long yeah,
Speaker 3: I've argued that one of the problems with AI is
Speaker 3: not that it works, but that it kind of is
Speaker 3: seen as something that works or works well enough so that,
Speaker 3: you know, the fortune of five hundred CEOs and government
Speaker 3: officials say let's put this in everything because it kind
Speaker 3: of works well enough, and it saves on human labor,
Speaker 3: and it's also trendy and makes them kind of look
Speaker 3: up to speed. And I think a version of that
Speaker 3: is kind of happening right now in the federal government.
Speaker 3: I mean there have been you know, some very well
Speaker 3: meaning Democrats have written letters to DOGE and other agencies
Speaker 3: asking what are you doing with AI? But we don't
Speaker 3: really know. But we do know that these things don't
Speaker 3: work as well as Sam Altman and others say they
Speaker 3: do or must does, and they're tremendous problems have that
Speaker 3: we haven't even figured out yet.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't worry may as much as it working
Speaker 1: really well. If it doesn't work like we know what
Speaker 1: to do, which it doesn't work right, it might cause
Speaker 1: a kind of Chernobyl moment, which scary and socks. But
Speaker 1: like we can pull back from something that terrible. The
Speaker 1: question is what happens if it works as well as
Speaker 1: they say.
Speaker 3: It does, right, well, then I think you see kind
Speaker 3: of AI become one of the tools or handmaidens of
Speaker 3: more overt fascism, you know, like yeah, I mean we
Speaker 3: haven't mentioned pounds here, but you know the US government
Speaker 3: with pounds here, who's been being given contracts left and right,
Speaker 3: is assembling kind of unified databases of personal information about
Speaker 3: Americans that, for reasons legal and practical and to preserve
Speaker 3: our freedoms, have been separate for even through kind of
Speaker 3: the terrible Bush years. And so I think when you
Speaker 3: when you see that kind of authority developing and that empowerment,
Speaker 3: I mean that can only lead to some very dark places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really that's good. I have wasn't worried enough,
Speaker 1: So this is good. This was so interesting. I hope
Speaker 1: you will come back.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would love to thank you.
Speaker 1: Matthew O'Neil and Perry Pelts are the directors of Can't
Speaker 1: Look Away, which you can watch now on Jump.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Matt Harry, thanks for having us. We're glad to be here.
Speaker 6: So I want to start talking about how you guys
Speaker 6: decided to do this film. Whoever wants to start with that,
Speaker 6: but just explain to us how you got here.
Speaker 5: Sure, we've long admired the investigations that happen out of
Speaker 5: the Bloomberg newsroom and specifically out of Business Week, and
Speaker 5: we're talking with Bloomberg about the possibility of doing investigative
Speaker 5: documentaries because that's what we love to do as both
Speaker 5: filmmakers and journalists. And read the reporting of Olivia Carvil,
Speaker 5: who's a a Bloomberg investigative journalist who had been looking
Speaker 5: at these cases in the social media landscape, and we thought, wow,
Speaker 5: we know that social media is sort of vaguely bad
Speaker 5: or can be a time suck, or there's bullying, but
Speaker 5: she was uncovering these cases that showed the real extremes
Speaker 5: and depths of horror of what happens on TikTok and
Speaker 5: Snapchat and Instagram for children, and she introduced us to
Speaker 5: this incredible group of lawyers.
Speaker 4: Harry tell us about the lawyers. So, Molly, the lawyers
Speaker 4: are extraordinary. And if we just back up a second,
Speaker 4: it feels like when we look at this issue, we
Speaker 4: are living through what feels like the beginning of what
Speaker 4: could be one of the great public health crises of
Speaker 4: our time. And these platforms are built in a way
Speaker 4: that prioritizes engagement, and most specifically engagement by kids, and
Speaker 4: not safety. And that's not something that's incidental, it's actually
Speaker 4: what's part of the business plan. And that's where the
Speaker 4: lawyers come in because for so long and it continues
Speaker 4: to this day, Section two thirty protects all of these
Speaker 4: platforms and makes them impervious to legal action. So what's
Speaker 4: unique about these lawyers is they said, you know what,
Speaker 4: if Section two thirty is going to be the armor
Speaker 4: that protects these companies, we're going to figure out a
Speaker 4: way to still get at them. And that is where
Speaker 4: the lawyers come in. And they took this on as
Speaker 4: a matter of product liability and said, these platforms are
Speaker 4: actually faulty products and they're causing harm to our kids.
Speaker 4: And that's really where the legal start of this story is.
Speaker 6: It's funny because I really think of tech companies as
Speaker 6: sort of the same as oil company is the same
Speaker 6: as tobacco company is. These are real dangerous companies that
Speaker 6: have sort of been able to spurt regulation. Is that
Speaker 6: the sort of ETOs of the movie.
Speaker 5: The parallel between big tech and big tobacco is really
Speaker 5: really clear. You know, when you see in the film
Speaker 5: we all saw last year as the heads of meta, TikTok, etc.
Speaker 5: Were all called in front of Congress, and many of
Speaker 5: the families featured in our film were sitting in that
Speaker 5: audience holding pictures of their children who had died due
Speaker 5: to their engagement with social media. It was reminiscent of
Speaker 5: the nineteen nineties when the big tobacco executives were there.
Speaker 5: The biggest parallel is they know, and they knew the
Speaker 5: things that are happening to children on these social media
Speaker 5: platforms were known to the social media platforms, and as
Speaker 5: Whistleblower after Whistleblower comes out with more documentation, you see
Speaker 5: that children were being targeted and the companies knew of
Speaker 5: the social harms and the real harms that were happening
Speaker 5: to chill and chose time and again profit over the protection.
Speaker 5: And we want to be really specific here because we're
Speaker 5: not talking protection for every single user. We're talking protection
Speaker 5: for children.
Speaker 6: So talk to me about section two thirty and how
Speaker 6: that figures into this.
Speaker 4: Right now, Section two thirty let's just back up a
Speaker 4: little bit was written in nineteen ninety six. It shields
Speaker 4: tech companies from liability for what users post. And that
Speaker 4: made sense back in nineteen ninety six because what existed
Speaker 4: then were essentially bulletin boards, so the same thing as
Speaker 4: phone companies. That would phone companies be liable, And this
Speaker 4: is the argument that you see in the film the
Speaker 4: chat Lawyer make. Would AT and T be responsible if
Speaker 4: Matt called me and we made a drug deal over
Speaker 4: the use of their phone. No, they wouldn't be, because
Speaker 4: they are just what they would argue, sort of a pipeline.
Speaker 4: And what was typically said is that these platforms were
Speaker 4: bulletin boards. They can't be responsible for what people were posting.
Speaker 4: That has evolved a lot since nineteen ninety six, and
Speaker 4: right now these platforms and the algorithms they provide that
Speaker 4: has a real human touch. It's no longer a bulletin
Speaker 4: board or a pipeline. So Section two thirty has really
Speaker 4: failed to hold these companies accountable. And that's, you know,
Speaker 4: again circling back to why the lawyers are looking at
Speaker 4: this as a matter of product liability.
Speaker 5: And it's important to understand that these big tech companies
Speaker 5: are sort of using this federal statute from nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 5: When I remember that was written when Mark Zuckerberg was
Speaker 5: eleven years old. That's when for those of you listening,
Speaker 5: remember the sounds of the high pitched squeals and beeps
Speaker 5: as you logged into your AOL account through a phone line.
Speaker 5: It was a totally different world. And the sort of
Speaker 5: depths and breath and ambition of the internet and what
Speaker 5: might be possible, but also the threats that would come
Speaker 5: from social media we're frankly unimaginable.
Speaker 7: So with that evolution, I know a lot of people
Speaker 7: seem to say, like, you know, this is both one
Speaker 7: of the few issues that could be bipartisan, But I
Speaker 7: know the UK, they just are starting to have the
Speaker 7: biggest discussion after adolescence about what we should actually do
Speaker 7: about regulating I think it's because people have been scared
Speaker 7: about what could happen to kids.
Speaker 2: What do we see here? Do we see any roadmap
Speaker 2: for change or anything.
Speaker 5: Well, there's a lot of things happening at the federal level.
Speaker 5: There's a bill called the kid Is Online Safety Act
Speaker 5: that actually passed last year in the Senate with ninety
Speaker 5: three votes. So when you talk about bipartisan cooperation, it's
Speaker 5: one of the rare areas where you can get ninety
Speaker 5: three Senators to agree on anything. However, it got gummed
Speaker 5: up by Speaker Johnson in the House who did not
Speaker 5: bring it to a vote last year, and Senators Bloomenthal
Speaker 5: and Blackburn have re submitted that bill. But what is
Speaker 5: happening all around the country whereas the federal level it stalls,
Speaker 5: is that states are innovative. You have New York just
Speaker 5: past a bell to bell phone ban for schools, which
Speaker 5: bell to bell means from the first bell of the
Speaker 5: day to the last bell of the day, you're not
Speaker 5: allowed to have smartphones in schools. You have legislation in Vermont,
Speaker 5: in Colorado, in Utah, all different types of state based
Speaker 5: accountability programs for social media companies to protect children. And
Speaker 5: I think in this it's really important to clarify because
Speaker 5: I use Instagram. I'm actually still consume a great deal
Speaker 5: of news on X and social media can be a
Speaker 5: perfectly good, useful, additive thing in our world, can connect
Speaker 5: people across boundaries that were otherwise insurmountable. What we're talking
Speaker 5: about here is the responsibility when it comes to the
Speaker 5: youngest and most vulnerable users.
Speaker 4: Just something that I want to add into that Mali,
Speaker 4: because I think it really matters. Is a lot of
Speaker 4: people who are anti legislation will be very quick to
Speaker 4: say this is a parent's problem. This is something that
Speaker 4: should be moderated and mediated in the family. Parents need help.
Speaker 4: But right now it's like sending them into a war
Speaker 4: zone and they have no armor. This is not a
Speaker 4: fight that parents can take on. We don't ask parents
Speaker 4: to inspect playground equipment, we don't ask parents to inspect
Speaker 4: child safety seats. This it would be akin to doing
Speaker 4: the same thing there. So when people start to wag
Speaker 4: a finger and say, well, parents should be taking care
Speaker 4: of this, just want to point out what we're talking
Speaker 4: about and just how difficult that would be. Any parent
Speaker 4: right now who has a child who's dealing with this
Speaker 4: knows that if a child wants to use their devices,
Speaker 4: they're going to figure out a way to do it,
Speaker 4: whether or not you agree or like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 7: So my thing would be, so you're talking about state
Speaker 7: level stuff, but this is one of those issues that
Speaker 7: obviously we want to solve it across the entire country.
Speaker 7: It seems like democratic senators are a way it's this
Speaker 7: is there a reason, like Schumer? Are they not interested
Speaker 7: in it?
Speaker 2: Like? What does this look like? What I'm imagining in
Speaker 2: our audience right now is a lot.
Speaker 7: Of blood boiled parents that are not happy about this
Speaker 7: right now, and like they want to know what to
Speaker 7: do exactly.
Speaker 5: Well, the what to do is a really good question.
Speaker 5: And these things change in complicated ways. And if we
Speaker 5: go back to that parallel with cigarettes, it took a
Speaker 5: long time for legislation to be an acted and it'll
Speaker 5: took a long time for the litigation to go through
Speaker 5: the courts. What did happen with cigarettes was.
Speaker 2: A cultural shift.
Speaker 5: I think at height, almost like forty five percent of
Speaker 5: sixteen year olds we're using tobacco products in the nineteen
Speaker 5: nineties and now it's down to something like six or
Speaker 5: eight percent. And it happened precipitously. It was cool to
Speaker 5: smoke when I was sixteen. Ten years later, it was
Speaker 5: not cool to smoke. And you're seeing this change with kids.
Speaker 5: So talking about it with your children, talking about it
Speaker 5: with your trusted adult, and any younger person's life level
Speaker 5: with them. Ask what they're seeing on social media, like
Speaker 5: tell them that you understand and you're interested, because in
Speaker 5: the end, kids are smart and they don't like being
Speaker 5: taken advantage of. And when they learn about how the
Speaker 5: social media platforms work and this idea if you're not
Speaker 5: paying for the product, you are the product, they recoil
Speaker 5: and I think there's a cultural shift to foot it.
Speaker 4: Also, I think is really worthwhile to tell parents that
Speaker 4: you're not crazy, you're not alone. When you start to
Speaker 4: see mood changes and secrecy and all of these things.
Speaker 4: I think that we all do this, you know, you
Speaker 4: sort of say, well, is this just normal team stuff
Speaker 4: or is this on the extreme of normal?
Speaker 5: Like what is this?
Speaker 4: You don't know what to do? And I think that
Speaker 4: one of the messages of the movie is that these
Speaker 4: platforms are designed in many ways, as we said before,
Speaker 4: to prioritize engagement to keep your kids online, and that
Speaker 4: is part of the plant. Part of the plan is
Speaker 4: to actually get your child's brain really really focused on
Speaker 4: this material so that they can't look away from their devices.
Speaker 4: Thus the name of the film.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, one of the more impactful things I've
Speaker 7: seen recent times was that Social Studies documentary that showed
Speaker 7: what the children were reacting to on their phone and
Speaker 7: how their behavior changed. You mentioned though smoking, So the
Speaker 7: Truth Campaign was largely credited for this. That then made
Speaker 7: the lobbyists very scared. Can you talk to me about
Speaker 7: what the lobbyist structure looks like? This just feels like
Speaker 7: there's this barrier against the Senate and Congress. What does
Speaker 7: the lobbying structure look like? Who is the companies that
Speaker 7: are influencing the most in this structure?
Speaker 5: Speaking broadly, what you think about the size of the
Speaker 5: tech companies versus the size of big Tobacco. Big Tobacco
Speaker 5: just doesn't even look that big at its height compared
Speaker 5: to big Tech, who have an army of lobbyists across
Speaker 5: both parties. Like many big American industries, be it energy
Speaker 5: or tobacco or technology, this is a bipartisan feeding frenzy
Speaker 5: when it comes to both political donations and engaged lobbyists.
Speaker 5: So the backlash or the counter push is being led
Speaker 5: by community based organizations and activists and the parents you
Speaker 5: see in this film who are transforming personal tragedy into action,
Speaker 5: taking the most horrible things that can happen because their
Speaker 5: children couldn't look away from social media and transferring it
Speaker 5: into real push for change. And you have that with
Speaker 5: the Mothers Against Media Addiction group, you have it with
Speaker 5: Project Reset, you have it with the parents featured in
Speaker 5: our film Can't Look Away. We're going there.
Speaker 2: Can you give us color on what those two groups
Speaker 2: are pushing to do.
Speaker 5: Broadly, groups like Mothers Against Media Addiction and Project Reset
Speaker 5: and other people who are going to the hill but
Speaker 5: also to state legislative groups to push change are advocating
Speaker 5: for responsibility where the companies can be held liable, so
Speaker 5: that's a reform of Section thirty. They are in many
Speaker 5: cases pushing again and again so that the accountability lies
Speaker 5: not with parents or with children, but with the companies themselves.
Speaker 5: That's the critical difference. I think. Then that's where there's
Speaker 5: a certain amount of education and understanding. Is sometimes when
Speaker 5: you hear about these tragic cases, you think that, oh,
Speaker 5: it could be a bad kid or bad parenting. But
Speaker 5: when you meet the parents in this film and you
Speaker 5: meet the parents who are doing this work, you see
Speaker 5: that these are good parents and good kids, and the
Speaker 5: accountability lies with the product and the internet services, not
Speaker 5: with the users.
Speaker 7: So of the social media services, I know people like
Speaker 7: to pick and choose, like oh this is my good one. No,
Speaker 7: this is my happy place, this is the bad one.
Speaker 7: What do you guys see as the landscape you've really
Speaker 7: been in this Do you have any feelings of like, Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm not that scared of the one, this one's a
Speaker 7: little better, or is it really just we should be
Speaker 7: scared all around.
Speaker 4: It's a really good question, and I think rather than
Speaker 4: just point fingers individually, in general, the rule of thumb
Speaker 4: is the platforms that are using reward systems for young people.
Speaker 4: So in other words, if you go on Snap, there's
Speaker 4: the quick ad right so, and there's snapstreaks, and there's
Speaker 4: all sorts of things that are built in so that
Speaker 4: kids are getting instant hits of dopamine. The more that
Speaker 4: you see that design feature in a system, in a platform,
Speaker 4: typically the more addicting, the more compelling it is because
Speaker 4: you start to introduce, like I said, the dopamine sort
Speaker 4: of feedback system, but also on top of it, a
Speaker 4: competition with young people, and we know that competition is
Speaker 4: something that really drives usage as well. You go onto
Speaker 4: something like YouTube, there's nothing like that, there's no addictive
Speaker 4: power of that. That's really one of the things that's
Speaker 4: to look at to understand which ones are more complicated,
Speaker 4: more addicting than others.
Speaker 7: That's interesting. I guess my question to that though, that
Speaker 7: do we feel like the addiction in dopamine mechanism is
Speaker 7: really just the main thing that we should fear for
Speaker 7: attention spans.
Speaker 5: Less about attention spans, And I think what Perry's talking
Speaker 5: about is this gamification to sort of get the children
Speaker 5: into the social media platforms, but it's also about checks
Speaker 5: and balances on how the algorithms work. There are cases
Speaker 5: in Can't Look Away that feature young people who go
Speaker 5: onto TikTok searching for a young man in Arkansas, searching
Speaker 5: for solace after a breakup, and looking for creational videos.
Speaker 5: But the algorithms don't respond to what these children are
Speaker 5: looking for. It responds to what they linger on. And
Speaker 5: over the course of two weeks, he went from searching
Speaker 5: for inspirational videos to being fed a constant stream. And
Speaker 5: this is what I think might shock some of the listeners.
Speaker 5: It's not just sad content. It may start there, but
Speaker 5: he was receiving videos from TikTok that he did not
Speaker 5: search for, that that were being fed and pushed to him,
Speaker 5: that were explicitly telling him to harm himself and explicitly
Speaker 5: encouraging suicide to the point where the background of one
Speaker 5: of the videos says, you should blow your head off,
Speaker 5: And you know, just to put a point on that,
Speaker 5: they know what they're doing. The platforms know exactly what's happening.
Speaker 5: They know that predators are using their apps to target kids.
Speaker 5: They know that drug dealers are selling drugs, They know
Speaker 5: that algorithms push harmful content. That is one of the
Speaker 5: most you know, galling pieces of all of this. They
Speaker 5: do it anyway because it works and it keeps kids online,
Speaker 5: and that is ultimately what needs to be what needs
Speaker 5: to be changed and what needs to be fixed, and
Speaker 5: it can.
Speaker 2: Can you tell everybody where they could see.
Speaker 5: This, Can't look Away is on the streaming service Jult
Speaker 5: Jolt dot film. You can access it there and you
Speaker 5: can also find out more about the investigation on Bloomberg
Speaker 5: dot com. It's important, we think also for any parents listening.
Speaker 5: This is a film after you've watched it, that might
Speaker 5: be worth watching with your children and it can start
Speaker 5: a conversation. And there is a resource guide on Jault
Speaker 5: dot film that a companies Can't look Away so that
Speaker 5: you can use as a tool to have conversations with
Speaker 5: your children or other young people who trust you in
Speaker 5: your life about the real dangers of social media.
Speaker 2: Thank you both so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you Mollie. We really appreciate the time and the
Speaker 4: opportunity to talk about Can't look Away.
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