Latest / The Real News Podcast / How Trump and Big Tech Are Gutting Free Speech: AI, Censorship, and Media Mergers

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How Trump and Big Tech Are Gutting Free Speech: AI, Censorship, and Media Mergers · The Real News Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hi, Mark.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Hi, good to see you man.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Good to see you Mark. I want to take us
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: for a moment someplace.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: So I'm standing on the edge of this three lane highway,
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: three lanes on each end. Cars are rolling back and forth.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful blue sky, chilly November morning. Leaves are
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: starting to turn crimson and golden.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm in the Bay area.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Just on the other side of the Dunbarton Bridge, which
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: rolls from the East Bay over to.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: The West Bay.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: So I'm just on the other side of this near
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: these kind of swampy wet lands on the edge of
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: the San Francisco Bay, and I'm standing in front of
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: a nondescript.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Intersection. But what's fascinating about this intersection is what it says.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: On one corner, there's a big sign with kind of
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: an a twisted infinity sign in blue, and underneath it
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: it says Meta one Hacker Way. Because in front of
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: me is the headquarters for Meta. Of course, Meta is
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and this
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: is its home. This is where, this is where it is.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: It's incredible, this is right here, this is in the
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: edge of Silicon Valley. You know, billions of people use
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: this company's tools, apps, websites each day, and it's incredible
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: to think of the role that this company has in
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: terms of the way that we communicate, how we communicate,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: what said, what isn't said, what should be said. I mean,
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I use WhatsApp all day long, and that is based
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: and housed right here. There's people taking a selfie in
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: front of the Meta sign literally right now, and it's
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: just incredible.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: To be here.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It's largely from what you can see from the road
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: are these three story pastel colored office buildings that roll
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: back to the wetlands, and it's just this massive campus.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Because this is one location, and you think of how
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: much power that Meta has, But then fifteen minutes away
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: is Google, twenty minutes away is Apple, and then not
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: to even think about all of the other startups and
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: all of the other massive tech companies, they're all located
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: in this one spot. And I've come here because I
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: feel like you cannot understand what communication means today and
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: free speech needs today without understanding this location, without understanding tech,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: social media, artificial intelligence. But also today they're deep, deep,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: deep ties to none other than President Donald Trump.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? You know, in the way that
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: we communicate, Mark, But what what does Silicon Valley mean
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to you?
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: Two different things here. I mean a I'm on social
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: media all the time and every and every level, in
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: every form, and so it is a boon to our
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: communications to be able to talk to people across the
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: planet at any given time, discussing ideas and and and
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: really pushing conversations forward. You couldn't do it without that technology.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: But I'm also very aware of what's bubbling below the
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: surface that actually controls what I'm using. And the question
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: always is what happens to our information? What happens to
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: what we talk about? Do they know who I am?
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: They know who they are? And the fact that it
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: is not some memorphous international agreement to let people communicate,
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: but it's as he's controlled by being are private corporations.
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: In some ways, it's worse than having controlled by the
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: federal government. That's so this combination of things. So I
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: use it all the time. I'm always on it, And look,
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: my kids are always on it. My kids range in
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: age by decades and whatever generation they're in, they're in
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: it all the time. That's how they communicate. That's how
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: they live.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I asked Todd Wolfson. Do you know
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Todd Wolfson.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: He's an associate professor of Department Journalism and Media Studies
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: at Rutgers University.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, he's been on the show before. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: So I asked him to kind of set the scene
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: for where Silicon Valley is and what it means.
• 4:46
  Speaker 6: Silicon Valley is south of San Francisco, and it's been
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: the head kind of like the center of technological development
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: and tech company in the US for the last forty
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: or fifty years.
• 5:03
  Speaker 7: It was a gambit that California made.
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: They heavily invested in it by creating like low tax,
• 5:11
  Speaker 6: high infrastructure sort of shells for people to build out
• 5:15
  Speaker 6: companies that were very business friendly. And many of the
• 5:18
  Speaker 6: companies that we know are headquartered somewhere in Silicon Valley.
• 5:23
  Speaker 6: And it's everything from big big companies like Google to
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: many many startups. Obviously, it's a huge engine of the
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: US economy and is probably the central engine of California economy.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: And I almost feel like Mark, there is no other
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: and this is where I want to go with this,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: or I want to begin this for today, I almost
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: feel like there's no other industry that's so intertwined and
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: so deeply intertwined with Trump and his politics today. And
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: let me just set this scene right January twentieth to
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: the twenty five Trump's inauguration. Trump is standing at the
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: podium and behind him, to the left and to the
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: right are many groups of people. Now, traditionally you see
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of senators up there, politicians, people that are
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: important maybe for Trump. But what you have is the
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: heads of all these Silicon Valley tech firms that are
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: just off to his left right. So you've got Meta
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sunderpitchai,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Google co founder Sergei Brynn, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk. Were you watching this
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: moment mark his Trump's inauguration, Like, how unprecedented is it
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: that you have, Like basically the barons of the tech
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: industry of Silicon Valley are who are there? It's just
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: just right beside Trump as he's speaking at his podium.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: It's not uncommon for the powers of industry to be
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: in places like that. What it says is that there
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: is a new sheriff in town, in our economic town,
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: in our future, and that's why they're there. And I
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: think that, well, let's say a step back and asking
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: this question. First, your subtech seemed to be the danger
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: of the power that resides in those men and their companies.
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: So I mean, go there for a minute, and why
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: that becomes potentially very onerous.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean the danger of the power of
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: these men, and also the connections of these men to
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Trump and his SA and his administration. For instance, you
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: had Elon Musk, who of course ran the DOGE, the
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Department of Government Efficiency the first one hundred and thirty
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: days of Trump's White House, right and then worked as
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: kind of a White White House advisor. September twenty twenty five,
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: you had Trump.
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: Thank you very much, everybody, It's an honor to be
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: here with this group of people.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Who hosted thirty three top CEOs of Silicon Valley teens
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: firms at the White House, and they said they were
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: grateful for her support. Of course, Saffra Katz, who's the
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: CEO of Oracle, which is a tech company based in
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley, one of the twenty largest companies in the world,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: and She told him that I think this is the
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: most exciting time in America ever ever.
• 8:18
  Speaker 8: At least that I remember.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: So thank you, thank you for everything you're doing. Trump
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: had this to say, this is taking our country.
• 8:29
  Speaker 7: To a new level. We're leading the world. We're leading China,
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: but we're leading the world by a.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Lot, and we're leading it because of the people around
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: the table.
• 8:36
  Speaker 7: And all I can do is implement and make it
• 8:39
  Speaker 7: a lot.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Easier for you, and I'll be doing that one hundred percent.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: So I just want to thank you all.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: So Trump's deep connections to Silicon Valley and the tech
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: billionaires are really concerning. And I think this is the
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: point though, Mark, that I want to get to. Social
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: media is how people are getting their information. It's how
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: we communicate today. Eighty six percent of Americans get news
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: from either a phone, a tablet, or a computer. Over
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: half of Americans get news from social media, over half,
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: according to a Pew Research Center study published in twenty
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: twenty five. So there's this intertwining and intermeshing. So on
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: the one hand, that's where people are getting there news
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: and information is from these these social media sites that
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: are run by these billionaires who are incohoots are in
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: the pockets of Trump. And there's this incredible insight mark
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: that I heard actually from a college student in the
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Bay Area who I interviewed the same day I drove
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: down to Silicon Valley. He's a second year economics student
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: at UC Berkeley.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: His name is Semuel Mendoza.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: And he said first that there's always a time when
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: free speech is under attack.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: I think that like now is no different, and so well,
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: we got to make sure that people know that free
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: speech is like something that we like is a human
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: right that we all have.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: But he said he is concerned about the role of
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: social media on our free speech today.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: I think that social media definitely adds like a new
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: playing field, and so it's important to keep in mind
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: that like even though like sure the freedom of speech
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: like is like allowed for in public, like, at the
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: end of the day, social media is like you know,
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: managed by these huge corporations and so they have like
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: a lot of censorship and a lot of power over it.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: So it's important to remember, like to keep that in
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: mind when you know, like talking about free speech.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: In other words, there's this idea out there that speech
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: online or over social media is free, freer than ever
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: that you can say whatever you want. But the question
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: is who owns that space and whose voice is people
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: actually hear. That is the question that we'll be tackling today.
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: I want to introduce you all and say welcome to
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: this continuing series that Michael Fox and I are producing
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: for the Real News.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Is our battle for the freedom of speech.
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: It's the right to speak one's mind. It's the cornerstone
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: of our democratic principles in this country. This is who
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: we are to what we were founded upon. This precious
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: freedom is under assault. How we're going to explore that
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: from what we just said and where we're going to
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: take that conversation for you and for all of us,
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: this is the battle.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: For free speech.
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: It's part of a new multipart narrative series, and you're
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: in it now, and we're in it now, and Mike
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: Fox is here.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: In the first episode, we looked at the attacks.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: On our free speech rights from the Trump administration, people
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: being silence fired, or even jailed from voicing their opinions
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: or their views. In the last episode, we looked at
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: the history how movements and organizers in the United States
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: have stood up and spoken out fearlessly going back centuries
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: demanding that their voices be heard.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: Today, we walk back into the presence where media consolidation,
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: social media and AI are shifting the battle over free
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: speech in really concerning ways for all of us.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: This is where we're heading today.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: And Mike, I think you wanted to start here in
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: the marketplace of ideas and what that means exactly.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: So I feel like we can't talk about free speech
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: without mentioning this. And we're three episodes in, so it's
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: about time. I kind of like to use this metaphor
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: of a medieval square. You know, people are selling things
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: from all sorts of different stalls. People are walking around shopping,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: maybe a minstrel is playing in the background. The ideas
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: everyone shares their ideas. The best, more truthful ideas outpace
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: the rest or rise to the surface. Kind of have
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: this back and forth discussion right in community, and we're
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: trying to come together to you know, to make decisions
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: what democracy should be. Right, it's this beautiful idea, it's
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: this great image, and it's the roots of really free
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: speech ideas and culture and law going back in many
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: ways a century. So the first and the reason why
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about this today is that the
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: first reference of this marketplace of ideas in this sense
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: comes from a dissenting opinion from Supreme Court Justice Oliver
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: Wendell Holmes Junior, nineteen nineteen.
• 13:16
  Speaker 9: Oh yay, oh yay, oh yay.
• 13:20
  Speaker 10: Our persons having business before the Honorable the Supreme Court
• 13:24
  Speaker 10: of the United States are admonished.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: And other podcasts have really done a great job on
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: this radio lab more perfect I've done a really good
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: job about talking about this time of Oliver Wendell Holmes
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: and what it meant for free speech. But basically our
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: understanding of free speech today and this marketplace of ideas
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: comes from the Supreme Court case Abrams versus the United
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: States Right nineteen nineteen, where a group of anarchists in
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: New York are arrested for spreading flyers against sending US
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War. So they're
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: convicted under the nineteen eighteen Sedition Act. Five defendants appealed
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: on free speech grounds, and the Supreme Court actually upheld
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the conviction, saying their actions could cause a clear and
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: present danger. But Oliver Wendell Holmes he dissents, and he
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: wrote that quote, the best test of truth in the
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: power of the thought to get it self accepted in
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: the competition of the market, and that truth is the
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: So this would later become the basis of future Supreme
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Court free speech rulings, including from the nineteen sixties on.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It's this beautiful idea.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: The idea is that, like, let's bring all these ideas
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: together and let's debate them in the market.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But there's a bit of a problem.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: And I've been speaking with several people about the idea
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: of the market, the marketplace of ideas, and I want
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: to bring one of them in now.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: His name is Fara de Boivla.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: He's a history professor at Princeton University, the author of
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: the twenty twenty five book What Is Respeaks The History
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: of a Dangerous Idea. And we'll hear from him more
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: in the next episode in a little bit later today.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: But I really appreciate his kind of analysis about this.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: He says, look, the marketplace of idea. This is a
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: great idea, but what would this really mean?
• 15:15
  Speaker 11: It would mean that each of us is independently able
• 15:20
  Speaker 11: to walk around a marketplace where all ideas are given
• 15:24
  Speaker 11: equal weight and airing that we are all equally reasonable
• 15:30
  Speaker 11: in our approach, and are we equally able to judge
• 15:34
  Speaker 11: truth and against falsehood somehow intrinsically, and that we're all
• 15:39
  Speaker 11: doing so in good faith, and that all the arguments
• 15:43
  Speaker 11: being put to us are being put in good faith.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: What we're actually have, however, is the exact opposite of that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Today.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Sarah actually calls it a ship filled sewer of public
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: discourse online social media, right, which I think is such
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: a great quote.
• 15:59
  Speaker 11: No one has an intri ability to judge the truth.
• 16:01
  Speaker 11: That's a presumption that is there in many free speech doctrines,
• 16:06
  Speaker 11: but is actually conclusively depunked by history and by science.
• 16:13
  Speaker 11: What we require is attention to how as a society
• 16:18
  Speaker 11: might create a better marketplace of ideas. And I'm afraid
• 16:22
  Speaker 11: just throwing everything into the jumble of social media and
• 16:26
  Speaker 11: allowing private companies basically to determine how they can best
• 16:31
  Speaker 11: keep people hooked on their platforms is not the best
• 16:34
  Speaker 11: way of creating, especially a political sphere of debate.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Mary Ann Franks is someone else who I spoke to
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: about this, and if you remember, she's the legal scholar
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: from the George Washington University Law School, who I spoke
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: in the last episode, and she says she actually used
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: to criticize the idea of the marketplace of ideas.
• 17:00
  Speaker 12: Because I thought, well, what a horrible metaphor that is.
• 17:02
  Speaker 12: We don't that shouldn't be the way that we look
• 17:03
  Speaker 12: at speech. And now I've come to the point of saying,
• 17:07
  Speaker 12: it's not that it's a horrible metaphor, it's that it's
• 17:09
  Speaker 12: entirely accurate, because this is something I've noticed about the
• 17:13
  Speaker 12: strange convergence between civil libertarians and economic libertarians, right, which
• 17:19
  Speaker 12: is this idea that the market somehow is good, the
• 17:21
  Speaker 12: presumption that markets are good and that markets work, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 12: that the best way to have a functioning market is
• 17:28
  Speaker 12: to never regulate it.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Just leave the market alone, let the invisible hand of
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: the market, you know, work its magic. But the problem
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: is that in a deregulated market, that just leads to
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: more asymmetries, right, where people the powerful gobble up the small,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: where we have monopolies. And so every market, every economy,
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: actually has regulations for exactly this reason, right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: And I have to remember that the free hand of
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: the market is a puppeteerup on top exactly exactly. It's
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: manipually in that free hand, the alleged free hand, exactly.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: And so she says, actually that it works the same
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: way with the marketplace of ideas.
• 18:05
  Speaker 12: And that's really what we are doing with our free
• 18:07
  Speaker 12: speech discourse. We are saying, whatever the status quo is,
• 18:11
  Speaker 12: just don't touch it, right, We just shouldn't.
• 18:13
  Speaker 8: I mean, we've got enough laws.
• 18:14
  Speaker 12: We can't possibly come up with anything now that would
• 18:16
  Speaker 12: be wise, and.
• 18:17
  Speaker 8: So just leave it alone.
• 18:18
  Speaker 12: And that's ridiculous. And I think most people who would
• 18:22
  Speaker 12: hear that about the market, the actual economic market, would
• 18:24
  Speaker 12: understand that's a crazy thing to say that you're going
• 18:27
  Speaker 12: to get the best possible outcome by just letting the
• 18:30
  Speaker 12: status quro flourish. And so I would just suggest that
• 18:33
  Speaker 12: we'd be as critical about the marketplace of ideas as
• 18:36
  Speaker 12: we ought to be critical about economic inequality and distorted
• 18:40
  Speaker 12: markets and monopolies and all the things that we should
• 18:42
  Speaker 12: recognize our bad things when they happen economically, and are
• 18:45
  Speaker 12: really bad when they come to ideology as well.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: So her like her analysis like flips everything on its head.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: And I think it's really important that that it makes
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: us reconsider this kind of ideal that's been the supposed
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: basis of free speech and First Amendment law in the
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: United States. And of course that's coming from someone who's
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: literally teaching this law. And I wanted to start this
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: episode with that understanding of of like, let's let let's
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: put the marketplace of ideas on the table.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: If we live in.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Societies where we're all working together to try and make
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: decisions and really come together with debate and democracy, that's
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: that's what it should be, but it's not how it
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: works now, and what we have instead is insanely consolidated
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: media market.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: Let's let's talk about about where you think the state
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: of the state of that is at the moment and
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: what we face. I think we still live under the
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: illusion that free speech is in control of our democracy.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: And if you look at the latest statements that you
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: talked about earlier from Trump, from some of the others,
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: it's under assault. It's not as obvious how it's under assault,
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: and and and it needs to be kind of thrown
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: out there and expos about how under assault and what
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: we have to do to retain that retain that power
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: and actually do more with it.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. I think this.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I think this is such an important point, Mark, And
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: and it's so key for this for this podcast series,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: because there is a discourse out there that is pushed
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: again and again by Trump, by the leaders of social media,
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: by large multimedia, billion dollar conglomerates that says, you know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: we are the leaders of free speech.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: We are the ones showing you the way. And uh
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and in.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Reality, they're they're they're censoring free speech in the name.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Of free speech.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Right, That's what That's what we're seeing time and time again,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: which is which is just terrifying, but it's true. And
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: and Mark, I think this is a perfect moment to
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: start to transition into this discussion around the consolidation of
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: the of the media sphere, because you you did an
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: episode last year titled Jimmy Kimmel's Back, but Trump's war
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: on free speech is just beginning. You spoke to Jeff Cohen,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: he's a founder of the media watchdog group fair Fairness
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: and Accuracy and Reporting.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And I think this episode.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Really underlined Mary Anne's point of how the media landscape
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: has been consolidated to fewer and fewer hands. Powerful companies
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: bought up media markets over the last few decades. Just
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: the latest was this Tegna Nextstar merger right approved by FCC.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: In March twenty twenty six.
• 21:35
  Speaker 13: ABC ten News at five starts with breaking news Nextstar
• 21:38
  Speaker 13: Media Group has officially closed its multi billion dollar acquisition
• 21:42
  Speaker 13: of ABC ten's parent company, Tegna, creating the largest local
• 21:45
  Speaker 13: broadcast television company in the country.
• 21:48
  Speaker 14: So it's been happening decade after decade, but it's never
• 21:51
  Speaker 14: been worse than now because the conglomerates are bigger than
• 21:54
  Speaker 14: they ever were, and we have the Trump team.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: This is where it's gone from. Nineteen eighty three, ninety
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: of all American companies in media were owned by fifty companies.
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: Today it's six Comcast, Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Paramount, Skydaance, Sony,
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: and Amazon.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's seven.
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: The SEC allowed the merger of Paramount Global and Skydams
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: Media last year and CBSLD for sixteen million dollars. The
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: lawsuit filed by Trump over editing is two twenty four,
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty four interview with Kamala Harris.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: And what does that mean for our what does that
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: mean for our voice? What does that mean for our
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: ability to communicate? And where we're getting news from is
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: that less and less are we do we have a
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: diverse market sphere of everyone hearing from different points of
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: views and more and more it's where it's top down, right,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: and Mark, you've covered this for a really long time,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: that the consolidation of the medium market a lot of
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: time right all the way back to like the nineteen nineties.
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: Right, yes, since nineteen nineties, since ninety three as a
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: matter of fact, But we're in a moment that is
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: akin to the early twentieth century in breaking up the
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: huge monopolies in America, because the new monopolies is in media,
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: in control of our information, control of what we see
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: and hear and even how we think. So I think
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: that part of what we're facing this is one of
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: the reasons that they call Teder Roosevelt are progressive turned
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: because you.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Went after them as president.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: And I think that that's what America needs now to
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: really go after these things, force them, the breakup, to
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: diversify and make our media more democratic, which in some
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: ways it was before, maybe not perfect. But here in Baltimore,
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: you had the Baltimore Sun, you had the News American,
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: two major papers for the city. For the whole community.
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: They were owned by local people and uh and then
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: we had our own free press when we produce our
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: underground newspapers like the South Baltimore Voice, which is a
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: working class paper. Uh and and so that they released
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: a lot of people and we've been we've been all
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: pushed out by these conglomerates controlling what they want the world.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: To think is the truth? What is the real news?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: But we are at the real news. I'm just kidding something,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: but what you know, So what is real news? You
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: know what I'm saying.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: I think that that that that we are. We are
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: at the moment on a precipice, a really dangerous precipice
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: that we don't see, and we see it because that's
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: what we do every day.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: You know, when you spoke with with Jeff Cohen, I
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: felt he said something that I think that was really
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: important and he kind of laid out this process of
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: consolidation of the consolidation of the media market where he
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: said that for decades, one individual or one com and
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: he could only own in the whole country seven television,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: seven AM radio stations in seven FM radio stations, and
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: you couldn't own two in the same market.
• 25:10
  Speaker 14: When Reagan took over Fowler, his FCC chair got it changed,
• 25:15
  Speaker 14: so it was twelve twelve twelve. That's how it stood
• 25:19
  Speaker 14: until the point you want me to talk about, which
• 25:21
  Speaker 14: is nineteen ninety six, when there was this corrupt law
• 25:26
  Speaker 14: written by the telecommunications and media company lobbyists that sort
• 25:32
  Speaker 14: of divided up the media pie among fewer companies that
• 25:38
  Speaker 14: were going to allow to get bigger because the caps
• 25:40
  Speaker 14: were relaxed. So instead of being able to own twelve
• 25:45
  Speaker 14: TV stations, now you could own hundreds.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: So just just one example, Sinclair Broadcast Group only owned
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: twelve in nineteen ninety six. Today they owned two hundred stations.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: That was illegal in nineteen ninety five.
• 26:06
  Speaker 14: Other things that happened Murdoch because of the nineteen ninety
• 26:10
  Speaker 14: six bill, he was able to build his Fox Empire.
• 26:15
  Speaker 14: Clear Channel, a right wing radio company out of Texas
• 26:20
  Speaker 14: closely allied with George W. Bush. Prior to the Telecommunications Act,
• 26:26
  Speaker 14: they owned fifty radio stations. Within two years they owned
• 26:31
  Speaker 14: about twelve hundred radio stations.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: And it's only gotten worse, which is what's so shocking
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: to me is that it only increases. And you know
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: what's crazy when you.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Spoke with Jeff Cohen.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: It was right after Jimmy Kimming, right after he was
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: fired and then rehired, right right as.
• 26:52
  Speaker 8: I was saying before I was interrupted.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Both you and Jeff were talking about how in large
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: he was fired because of the fact that I'm happy
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: to be here. You know, the company that fired him
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: wanted to merger with another company, and so they wanted
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: to get on Trump's good side.
• 27:11
  Speaker 14: You have all of these companies doing somersaults to please Trump,
• 27:17
  Speaker 14: especially if they have merger business before the Federal Communications Commission.
• 27:23
  Speaker 14: The reason that Colbert was terminated, many of us believe,
• 27:29
  Speaker 14: is because Paramount needed to merge with Skydance, and the
• 27:33
  Speaker 14: merger could not go through until sixty minutes had been squeezed.
• 27:38
  Speaker 14: The executive producer sixty minutes left in protest, as did
• 27:43
  Speaker 14: his boss. So now we come to Kimmel and it's
• 27:46
  Speaker 14: the same thing. Disney had merger business before the Federal
• 27:52
  Speaker 14: Communications Commission. Disney already owns Hulu, the streaming service, and
• 27:59
  Speaker 14: they wanted to get Fuball, and that needs federal approval.
• 28:03
  Speaker 14: It's currently at the Justice Department. Trump's Justice Department.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: The Trump agenda is being pushed in order for you
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: to get what you want, then you have to play
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: the game right. And and you know you just mentioned it, Mark,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: how we're on this dangerous precipice.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Where the right wing governments are in power.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: And I don't think that people understand what a danger
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: this is because you know, you still here's the.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: It's the Washington Post.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: I got the Washington Posts, like at the New York Times.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: You still have your newspapers there. But it's about who's
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: controlling these newspapers or where we're getting your information. This
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's it's a terrifying moment.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And questions I have and time we have today together. A.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: Talking about the deregulation of the industry that was that
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: was regulated it so monopolies could not happen, it's being
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: lost and b R and not just complaining about it.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: What can we do about it? Where's the resistance?
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: I think that part of the reason that we don't
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: have an organized resistance. These people don't see it because
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: there's no reason to see it. And I think that,
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: but those two things have to be answered.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: And it's hard because, particularly today, when you think of
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: our means of communication are all controlled by people who
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: are backed or supporting Trump, or who are afraid to
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: speak out. So even over social media, our means, as
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: we'll look in further today, are our means of getting
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: that message out is even harder and harder to be
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: heard because if you aren't speaking what Trump and his
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: billionaire friends would like you to say, well, then the
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: algorithm simply isn't going to allow your voice to be carried.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: And this is I think this is the challenge that
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: we have today. Uh, And why today is so is
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: so complicated or and so hard, right, But it doesn't
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that we can stop, but that it
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: is it is a this is it's it's it's a
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: I think it's a massive, a massive, massive challenge for today.
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: And I did a lot of work on the early
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: twentieth century because my childhood hero is Teddy Roosevelt as
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: a kid. Then I learned a little bit more, but
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: he was my hero as a kid.
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: And uh, And part of it was.
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: He took on he took on big business, and he
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: took on the monopolies that the trust that controlled this country.
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: And I think that's the movement that has to begin
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: here now. If we're gonna start. We're going to save
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: what's left for this democracy A and be not to
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: allow these few people to control all the information that
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: we hear and see. And I think that that is
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: a struggle that has to be built. And I think
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: that the the the the problem is it's not in
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: front of as I said earlier, I think it's not
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: something that's in your face.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: You don't see it.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seeps in.
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: Nobody knows who owns our local stations, or how they're
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: connected to another local station, how they control what kind
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: of news is read, what kind of letters from from
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: listeners and viewers are being read on the air. And
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: I think that that that it behooves us to do
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: that organizing and boo whose groups like the Real News
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: where we where we were broadcast from, are part of that,
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: part of that getting it out there to say we
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: have to come together to save our democracy, and part
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: of that is saving our free press.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, because and I think this is the I
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: think this is part of the question mark because these
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: realities like like someone might say, oh, with you know,
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: a billionaire owns something, you know, let's say owns this newspaper,
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: owns all of these newspapers. Are they really having an impact?
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: What difference does it actually make? But they do have
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: an impact. You know, Jeff brought this up in his
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: conversation with you about when he was talking about how
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: billionaires control the media and that they're all sitting in
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: the front row at Trump's inauguration and how this would
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: have been impossible just a couple of decades ago, and
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: how they've actually pushed people out. You know, those billionaires
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: have pushed people out. And this brings back another question
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: mark or another moment that I think is really important
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: to highlight that I've been thinking a ton about lately,
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: is how these newspaper owners, and the owners of television
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: and the owners of social media are feeling more empowered
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: than ever by Trump to push their agenda and only
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: publish the voices they like. There's just one tremendous example
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: of this, yeah, please, and that is late February twenty
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: twenty five.
• 32:56
  Speaker 15: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is implementing major changes to
• 33:00
  Speaker 15: the outlet's opinion pages, adjusting what columnists can and cannot
• 33:03
  Speaker 15: write about.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: He wrote a decision first to The Washington Post to
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: employees there, and then he tweeted this out over X
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: and he said he would only publish opinion articles defending quote,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: personal liberties and free markets.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: So for always, the.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Washington Post was always this bastion of you know, it
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: wasn't always you know, super progressive, but you had a
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: variety of opinions. And suddenly Jeff Bezos, who is again
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: he's the owner of Amazon, so powerful, powerful person. He says, no,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: I'm only going to publish opinion articles in pro of
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: free markets.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: And he wrote over X that quote.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: There was a time when a newspaper, especially one with
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: the internet does that job.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: Whoa, it's just an Internet may allow it, but it
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: doesn't do that job.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: Exactly exactly like it may allow can't it can't.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: It can't.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: It can't. And particularly now as we see more and
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: more those spaces over social media and over the Internet
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: are being tapped down, they're being suffocated. And we got
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: into this a little bit at the top of the episode,
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: in that there's this myth being pushed by Trump and
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the tech giants that Internet and social media are the
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: new bastion of free speech, unregulated, completely free, and it's
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: just not true. But Mark, do you like, I just
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: want to take this back, like for a moment, to
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: transport ourselves twenty years into the past.
• 34:49
  Speaker 16: Every business, no matter how large and no matter how small,
• 34:52
  Speaker 16: we'll be on the internet in the year two thousand, Mark,
• 34:55
  Speaker 16: what was your.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Feeling about the Internet late nineties, early two thousands, you
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: got Mayo when suddenly this is becoming a space where
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: you know, you always had your radio show, it was
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: on radio, and suddenly wow, there's this, there's this whole
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: new world. You know, there's indie media, there's blogging, and
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: it offered this kind of democratic promise right right to
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: like talk to me about what what?
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: What did it mean back then?
• 35:22
  Speaker 14: What?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: What did you what did you feel in those moments?
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: This is Mark Steiner from the Center for Emerging Media
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: and welcome to our podcast, All Free at Last. What
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: you're about to hear is a dramatic I started my
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: radio show in ninety three and a place where all
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: voices could be heard, even once I despised, and also
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: to give voices.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: To to every community in America.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: So not just white people had a voice. That was
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: a big part about We also did any rate the
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: Internet when it started. I remember we said, okay, we
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: got to get on the answer that we got to
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: use the internet for our program. We got to bring
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: in questions that way, we got to put out ideas
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: that way, because we saw the Internet then and I'm
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: not a free marketeer, but as a free market of ideas.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Where people could could could.
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: Learn a lot, dialogue with each other, get facts they
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: didn't know about, and really kind of opened people's minds.
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: And it was like that at the beginning in many ways.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: I remember the couple of few programs we did a
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: bunch of programs about why the Internet should be a
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: public trust.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: And not a private enterprise, to keep it from allowing
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: to be oppressed and suppressed and voices be oppressed and suppressed.
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: And now that it was also the entrepreneurs of that day,
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: as the ones you mentioned, Bezos and the rest, saw
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: this gigantic opportunity is void that they could fill and
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: control and make more money on and uh and also
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: then to control who could say what and where that's right,
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Uh, So they can't control at all.
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: I mean there are people on radio and TV have
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: an Internet presence, but it's not. But it's so diverse,
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: there's so much of it, people don't even know where
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: to turn.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I spoke with Todd Wolfson about some
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: of this. Again, he's the author of Digital Rebellion, The
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: Birth of the Cyber Left, and and he also mentioned how, like,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: you know, in those early days, it was this moment
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: of excitement, of possibility, of of of democratic promise. But
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: then I asked him to kind of fast forward till today.
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: So like, if you go on Twitter, it's like, you know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: just accesspool of fascist, white supremacist, white Christian nationalist hatred
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: on that on that site, and that's lift it up
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: by Elon Musk and by the algorithm that he has
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: instituted based on his own ideological matrix.
• 38:08
  Speaker 7: No one is able to question the matrix.
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: He uses in order to develop the algorithm that that
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: organization or company uses, and no one's even allowed to
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: see what it looks like. And so no, that's not free.
• 38:20
  Speaker 6: It's not free if you can speak, but no one's
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: going to hear you. But then Nick Flints, avowed Nazi
• 38:25
  Speaker 6: speaks and a million people hear what he says at
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: the drop of a hat, like, obviously the left or
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: democratic center have created other spaces, but they're nowhere where
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: near the size and capability of the spaces that the
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: oligarchs that have aligned themselves with fascism control. And so
• 38:48
  Speaker 6: it's created you know, one, it made it's really moving
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: forward fascist ideology in America. But two, it's created really
• 38:58
  Speaker 6: toxic environments for people like uh to speak out, and
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: if you speak out, they like throw you up on
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: Twitter and they just like beat you to death. I mean,
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: I don't have any like deep philosophical take here. It's
• 39:16
  Speaker 6: controlled by techno fascists who have an agenda and are
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: using that these platforms to move their agenda forward.
• 39:25
  Speaker 9: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, mister Elon Musk.
• 39:35
  Speaker 9: But I'm super fired up for the for the for
• 39:38
  Speaker 9: the future. It's gonna be very exciting. As the President said,
• 39:42
  Speaker 9: We're gonna.
• 39:42
  Speaker 8: Have a Golden Age.
• 39:44
  Speaker 9: It's gonna be fantastic. And one of the fundamental things
• 39:48
  Speaker 9: that one of the most American values that that I
• 39:50
  Speaker 9: love is optimism and and and this feeling like we're
• 39:53
  Speaker 9: gonna we're gonna make the future good.
• 39:56
  Speaker 8: We're gonna make it good.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: I spoke mark with with Todd Wolfson a little bit.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I asked him to dig a little bit.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: More into this the question of Silicon Valley and who
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: these people are and how much and again these like
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: the connections and the ties with with Trump and the
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Trump administration and and and you know, he talked a
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: little bit about Peter Teel, you know, the CEO of
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: PayPal and the software company pall and Teer, which of
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: course ICE is using with their AI surveillance to do
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: their their crackdown against immigrants across the United States. Peter
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: Teele famously wrote just a few years ago, quote I
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. Uh.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: And in fact, Curtis Jarvin, who's a far right software
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: engineer and blogger who has basically become the philosophical guru
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: of Silicon Valley, and Peter Teel, you know, he basically
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: says he doesn't want democracy anymore.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: He wants a monarchy.
• 40:55
  Speaker 6: I mean, the thing about it is they have so
• 40:56
  Speaker 6: much power, and they have very very strange and backward ideology.
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: The other thing that's most scary about, like I think
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: these oligarchs is that they think we're overpopulated, and so
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: they're thinking like that means and what we do about
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: overpopulation on the planet. And they're not accountable to anyone,
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: So Peter Teal and Elon Musk get to decide that
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: we should get rid of two billion humans. Those are
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: the kinds of conversations they're having. Tallenteer, which is Teal's
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: company got a huge contract under Trump to do like
• 41:33
  Speaker 6: the security work for the administration. Obviously we know what
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: we saw Musks relationship to Trump in those which has
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: fractured to some degree, but I think it's still you know,
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: behind the scenes operative like and then Curtis Jarvin again,
• 41:50
  Speaker 6: Teal's like ideological mentor. It is an ideological men mentor
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: of jd Vance And and Teal is jd Vance is
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: like a he funded him for the longest time and
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: supported political career. So like there's a like like a
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: real it's not like like they're open about their relationships.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: So all of these things are kind of intertwined. They're
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: and they're all but they're all out in the open.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: And and it is this this this crazy, crazy moment,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: and you're totally right Mark where we need to be
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: thinking about, Uh, you know how to create not just
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: alternative spaces, but how to actually push back on this,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: how to create a movement to really push back on this.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: In the beginning, when the Internet.
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: Again and the digital economy started erupting on the planet,
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: people saw it as a liberatory technology. People saw it
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: the people who ran it and started it as people
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: who believed in freedom and really wanted to extend it.
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: And in many ways that might have been true. But
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: the teals of the world, playing with the trumps of
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: the world are taking it in a different direction. I mean,
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: everything could have been a liberatory technology, a liberatory world,
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: but the powers to be see that as well, and
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: they can and they took that in using it in
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: very dangerous ways. And I think that that is what
• 43:20
  Speaker 5: needs to be exposed. People, as I said earlier, don't
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: see it because it's hidden. It's below the surface, it's
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: not obvious. And I think that that there is There
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: are a lot of good people in this industry and
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: in this world that need to be brought in with
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: others who are doing other kind of work and to
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: really push it, I mean, they have to be regulated,
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: they have to be stopped, and it has to be
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: become technology for the community, for the people, for the nation,
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: and not just for billionnaires to use with people like
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: Trump and with agencies that want to know who we
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: are and what we're doing.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: That's the battle we're.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: In, absolutely, Mark, I want to talk about algorithms.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Have you used that word a lot as even? Yes?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Ahead, let me tell you what an algorithm is.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you, I was going to
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: describe that. There you go.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, for me, a.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: First off, it's like it almost reminds me of Star Wars,
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: Like it's supposed to be this like force that like
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: decides what we see online.
• 44:23
  Speaker 11: Remember a Jedi can feel the falls flowing through.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Him, governs our lives online. It tells us what posts
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: we can, what can view, what we can't view. But
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: I wanted to get a deeper sense of this, so
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I spoke with Professor Ramesh Shrinivasan.
• 44:38
  Speaker 8: I'm a professor at UCLA.
• 44:40
  Speaker 10: I write and have written several books about how technology
• 44:44
  Speaker 10: is impacting societies and cultures around the planet.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: But he said, it's actually algorithm. It's it's not actually
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: nestly itself a bad term, but.
• 44:55
  Speaker 10: An algorithm is a is a very old term. You know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 10: fifteen hundred plus years old. It's actually a term that
• 45:02
  Speaker 10: derives from central As and far see Persian mathematics, and
• 45:06
  Speaker 10: it's merely meant to be mean rules applied to a
• 45:10
  Speaker 10: body of data. So it's not inherently the term algorithm
• 45:13
  Speaker 10: itself is not inherently like a Leviathan or the know
• 45:16
  Speaker 10: a demon. The problem is is the algorithms have now
• 45:19
  Speaker 10: come to stand in for their signifiers for the profound
• 45:25
  Speaker 10: dysfunction that we're living through that is directly tied to
• 45:28
  Speaker 10: big tech, which is incredibly ironic because there would be
• 45:31
  Speaker 10: no Internet without public investment, and there would be no
• 45:34
  Speaker 10: AI or pretty much anything else without all our data.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: He kind of turns the algorithm on its head.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: So usually when I think of an algorithm, I think
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: of an algorithm as giving me things like I'm on Facebook,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: it's going to tell me that I want to see.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: It's instead of giving posts of some of my friends
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: that I might really want to see, it's going to
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: give me posts from somebody else that don't care about
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: in a bunch of ads.
• 45:59
  Speaker 14: Right.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: But Romes says it's not just used to send me
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: things or allow me to see certain things online.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: He said it's the opposite.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: It's a process of surveillance by these big tech firms
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: to extract data from us. So one of the phrases
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: he used, which I think is really powerful in our conversation,
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: was we are being googled, Mark, far more than we're googling.
• 46:23
  Speaker 10: So it's come to stand in for this process of
• 46:26
  Speaker 10: extraction and surveillance from our lives, where the data goes somewhere.
• 46:30
  Speaker 10: We don't know what's being collected us, by whom, for
• 46:32
  Speaker 10: how long, how long it's retained for, if that data
• 46:35
  Speaker 10: is being aggregated, and all of that's being put into
• 46:38
  Speaker 10: these you know, very very you know, complex and disastrously
• 46:43
  Speaker 10: energy consuming data centers and so on, to order the world,
• 46:47
  Speaker 10: to order our lives. What an ad algorithm now stands
• 46:52
  Speaker 10: in for is a process of extraction to then feedback
• 46:56
  Speaker 10: into essentially influencing our thoughts, our behaviors, and even our desires.
• 47:04
  Speaker 8: Mark.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: Have you noticed on Facebook how it's harder and harder
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: to see a post from a friend, for instance. Yeah,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: So all of this is, this is the algorithm giving
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: you what it wants you to see.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: And that's not by accident. It's not giving you what
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: it thinks you might want to see.
• 47:20
  Speaker 10: Like, imagine having a boyfriend or a girlfriend who's just
• 47:24
  Speaker 10: constantly spying on everything and anything you do and then
• 47:28
  Speaker 10: figures out ways to essentially manipulate your behavior and your desire.
• 47:31
  Speaker 10: I think most of us will call that an abusive relationship.
• 47:33
  Speaker 10: That's the relationship that big tech has with us. It's
• 47:36
  Speaker 10: a relationship of abuse.
• 47:38
  Speaker 15: You may be taking a break from TikTok or Twitch
• 47:40
  Speaker 15: to watch CBS News twenty four to seven right now. Well,
• 47:43
  Speaker 15: the new report from the Federal Trade Commission finds that
• 47:46
  Speaker 15: many major social media platforms are collecting and sharing more
• 47:50
  Speaker 15: personal data than most users realize. Over the past four years,
• 47:54
  Speaker 15: the FTC examined how nine videos.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: I don't think we understand it at that.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think people understand.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: What an algorithm actually is or understand what's actually doing
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: to us.
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: You know, No, I agree, because it's it's just not obvious.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: It's hidden, it's subterranean. And I think that's that's the insidious,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: insidiousness of it all and the danger it has.
• 48:20
  Speaker 11: First of all, these media companies, the online media companies,
• 48:24
  Speaker 11: are the most powerful publishers the world has ever seen.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: You know, Faarah du boiv Love has had a lot
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: to say about this and what it means for free speech.
• 48:33
  Speaker 11: But they're not treated as publishers. No one thinks of
• 48:36
  Speaker 11: them as publishers. Governments fail to think of them as publishers.
• 48:40
  Speaker 11: They are publishers, and they are constantly censoring discourse. Their
• 48:44
  Speaker 11: algorithms amplify certain voices and certain messages, and they suppress
• 48:49
  Speaker 11: and silence others. That's what publishers do. They make judgments
• 48:53
  Speaker 11: automatically otherwise about what they want to people to people
• 48:58
  Speaker 11: to see.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: But then Paris is without any regulation. Anything goes, and
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: lies and truth are shoved.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Out into a world without any accountability.
• 49:07
  Speaker 11: The moment that we're in is really very dangerous political
• 49:11
  Speaker 11: moment because of the ways in which social media on
• 49:19
  Speaker 11: social media is really an old fashioned, an achronistic term
• 49:23
  Speaker 11: for the mass media of our age. It's not social,
• 49:26
  Speaker 11: it's political discourse and every other kind of discourse. The
• 49:31
  Speaker 11: difficulty with that is really manifold one is as that
• 49:38
  Speaker 11: nomenclature already indicates we've now shifted to a moment where
• 49:42
  Speaker 11: all discourse happens in the same medium on the same level.
• 49:48
  Speaker 11: So pictures of cats, jokes, serious political debate all happening
• 49:55
  Speaker 11: in the same sewer, and that muddels the rules and
• 50:09
  Speaker 11: how the audience understands what's going on, and it makes
• 50:12
  Speaker 11: it much easier for untruth to spread, for you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 11: sloganeering to take over from fact based, evidence based argument.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: And this is I.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Think, you know, part of this question of where things
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: get into into real danger is this question of disinformation
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: and fake news.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: There was a time.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: It seems like a long time ago, but there was
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: a time. Do you remember Mark when when Trump was
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: suspended from from Twitter.
• 50:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah, we will stop the steal.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: January eighth, twenty twenty one, two days after the January
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: sixth capital invasion of Washington, and they basically said, look,
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: we have to stop from trying to spew more hatred
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: and violence online and that you could encourage.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: More violent acts.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: And so your band and Trump just responded to that
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: by creating through social you know, the next year, right
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: at the same time, we've seen this massive shift away
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: from fact checking.
• 51:19
  Speaker 11: Of course, all of these companies are rolling all that
• 51:22
  Speaker 11: back and hiding behind the slogan of free speech to
• 51:24
  Speaker 11: moderate as little as possible, because again it's politically inconvenient,
• 51:28
  Speaker 11: it's also expensive. They never put a huge amount of
• 51:31
  Speaker 11: effort into it. They always try to get away with
• 51:34
  Speaker 11: as little as possible. It plays into a political discourse
• 51:38
  Speaker 11: which is increasingly dominated by populist rebel rousing. And you
• 51:44
  Speaker 11: know that there's an understanding that this is good politics
• 51:50
  Speaker 11: on the part of the right wing politicians that chimes
• 51:52
  Speaker 11: with good business model of just allowing anything to go.
• 51:57
  Speaker 17: I want to talk about something important today because it's
• 51:59
  Speaker 17: time to get back to our roots around free expression
• 52:02
  Speaker 17: on Facebook and Instagram. First, we're going to get rid
• 52:05
  Speaker 17: of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar
• 52:09
  Speaker 17: to x.
• 52:09
  Speaker 16: Zuckerberg said, Meta is ending fact checking on Facebook, Instagram
• 52:13
  Speaker 16: and threads. He pointed to the election as a major
• 52:16
  Speaker 16: influence on the decision and a desire to embrace free speech.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: So Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, officially
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: stopped fact checking twenty twenty five, the same thing from
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: most of the social media firms. But here's the thing,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: this is the one I want to get into. All
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: of this is really important for us because fake news,
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: we know it travels faster than truth.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Right, it goes viral faster.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: So there was a study released by MIT researchers that
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: found that fake news travels seventy percent faster at the
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: time on Twitter.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: This was a twenty eighteen study.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: In twenty twenty two study, you found that fake news
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: traveled more than five times.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Faster than real news.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: And it's very possible the new algorithms are making fake
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: news travel.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Even faster than that.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: Right So it's a it's a really really crazy time
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: when these tech platforms are like pushing their agenda in
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: line with Trump and nothing is there to contain the
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: spread of misinformation, misinformation that is then being pushed by
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: Trump himself. You know, Todd Wolfson, he told me something
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: about how what we need to be doing Mark right
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: now is the clawback objective truth.
• 53:36
  Speaker 7: There are some things that are real.
• 53:38
  Speaker 14: You know.
• 53:39
  Speaker 7: The sky is right.
• 53:40
  Speaker 6: I'm looking at a sky that's not pink right now,
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: and like that's real, you.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Know, like there is objective truth out there, even though
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: we're so divided right now, the sky is blue, you know,
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: when it's raining, it's raining. But it seems like when
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: the minute you publish something, if Trump doesn't like what
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: you're saying, you know, then he just sues.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: You for it.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: If you're a media outlet, you know, one hundred million
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: suit and then people kind of to try and bully
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: people in submission, right, and then that becomes the norm,
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: creating this climate of fear right and backlash. You you
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: also mentioned something that I think is really important. Mark
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: In in other episodes you talked about how this moment
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: is reminiscent of nineteen thirties Germany and and how dangerous
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: that is of where we are now.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: And Todd, you.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: Know, he he referenced Joseph Goebels when he said that
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: it seems like the Trump administration has really embraced, you know,
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Hitler's Nazi propagandist Goebels, when he preached, if you tell
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: eventually come to believe it exactly right, and it.
• 54:53
  Speaker 7: Does become true for a large part of our population.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you how do you you see that? How
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: do you see all this?
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: The lies being spread, the disinformation, the fake news without
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: any check and even being pushed further with Trump.
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: I mean Joseph Girls, he would have loved to have
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: the Internet. I should say, not everyone in it, but
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: a large um percentage of people who are involved in communications,
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: digital communications and on the Internet a right wing people
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: thought of it in the beginning to progressive open you know, No,
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: that's not where we are. And I think controlling their billions,
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: if that means working with Trump and allies to control society,
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: that's what they're going to do.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: And that's and that's the danger we face. Yeah, and
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure that the moderate liberal left Democrats are
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: up to the task of building a campaign to say
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: we have to we can allow them to control our lives.
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: I can see the media camp paying now if they
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: would do it, you know.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: And I think that it's a question of organizing and.
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: Media campaigns to make people aware of what we face
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: because people don't think. Why would people even think about
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: they don't, there's no reason to, you know. The digital
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: world is nothing but a tool for people to stay
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: in touch with people. They love to look to read
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: the news, what's left of the news on the digital world.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: So I think that it's a step.
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: In the struggle like organizing unions was in the twenties,
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: thirties and forties, in fifties, but now we're facing a
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: different monster that has to be organizing controlled. And that's
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: what I think that idea is not getting out there.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's one more place I want. I want to
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: take us mark before we go, and that's back to
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. I'm on Highway one oh one, so I'm
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: driving north from Meta headquarters and downwhere Meta and Google
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: and Apple are up north towards San Francisco, and just
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: all these billboards either have to do with AI or technology.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is like, this is the industry.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: Here, you know, like this one planet scale inference together
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: Dot AI, the AI natives say cloud and then has
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: a bunch of names of different I guess startup AI
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: companies AI for everything after code Harness that sup must
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: to be another company AI runs better on us Nebius
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: another AI company. Are all massive billboards as we're as
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: we're rolling north towards San Francisco, through and out of
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. I mean, just that in and among itself
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: gives you a sense of the direction that this region
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: is headed at least, and it got me thinking and
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: remembering about you know what this place meant Silicon Valley
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: of course, you know, birth computers, the computer revolution, Internet,
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: social media, and now it's and now it's AI. That
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: same region has become you know, artificial intelligence. This is
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: this is the home of artificial intelligence in the region,
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: being embraced of course by all these other tech companies,
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: but it's really we we can't talk about free speech
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: today without mentioning AI because it's increasingly going to occupy
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: an outstretched role in our lives. And there's so little accountability.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Even when you go online, for instance, now and you
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: google something, you don't get the links that pop up.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: The very first thing that on the top of Google
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: is an AI summary. I mean, it might send you back.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: If you go search for where that data comes from,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: you might be able to find it. But there's very
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: little accountability. When AI is telling you something or Jack
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: chetp or whatever else, it's just lumping a bunch of
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: information at you and saying this is the truth because
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: we've said it, you know. And so again I went
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: back and this is one of the questions I really
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: wanted to talk with Ramesh about, you know, this professor
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: from UCLA, and I asked them, what does this mean
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: for free speech? Is what does the AI revolution mean
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: for you know, our freedom of speech today? And he
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: says it means that now speech is being created by
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: these technologies that mimic our behaviors and our express.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 8: So now we're not sure where our speech matters.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 10: We already didn't know that because I could say something
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 10: and write something on Blue Sky or Twitter, but I
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 10: don't know if anyone's going to see it. Those are
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 10: all determined by these algorithms. But in AI, systems can
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 10: dynamically create content designed to go viral that might be
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 10: next to impossible for us to tell whether it's human
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 10: created or not. That's why it's critical at the bare
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 10: minimum that every every AI created piece of content, especially
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 10: one that's going to go viral, should be watermarked at
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 10: the minimum.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 8: At this point, so he takes.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: It to this other level.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: He says, if remember Cambridge Analytical, you know back, yes,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: almost a decade ago, there was.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: This whole big scandal.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: About collecting all of our data. Well, he says, right
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: now it's so much worth with WAI because now in
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: real time data can be gathered about us. AI systems
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: can create new content for us in real time.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 10: It's very similar to you know, Alice Huxley and and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 10: Soma in Brave New World. That's something that Alice Huxley
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 10: warned people about toward the end of his life when
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 10: he did an interview with Mike Wallace.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: Ceremony believing I'm Mike Wallace, Tonight's guest.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 10: Altus Huxley is a man of letters as disturbing as
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 10: he is distinguished, and he read an esty of the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 10: Enemies of Freedom of freedom where he says, on a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 10: subconscious level, the technologies can become so intimate to make
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 10: us love our own slavery.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 18: I mean, I think this is the danger that actually
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 18: people may be in some ways happy under the new regime,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 18: but there will be happy in situation where they often.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: To be happy.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 18: But let me ask you this.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 10: We believe anyway that we live in democracy here in
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 10: the United States.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: Do you believe with this.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 10: Brave new world that you talk about, could.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: Let's say, in the next quarter century, the next century,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: could come here to our shores.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 18: I think it could. I mean, that's why I feel
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 18: it's so extremely important here and now to start thinking
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 18: about these problems, not to let us ourselves be taken
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 18: by surprise by the new advances in technology.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: You know, we may have had other ideas for what
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: AI is, but now it's actually being created to replace us.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: It's the first time a technology that we have created
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: in our life, in the history of the human race,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: all the technologies up until now have been created in
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: order for us to use them and to improve our
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: use of them, and to prove our needs and whatever
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: we can achieve with them. And now this is the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: first time we're actually being AI is being created to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: actually replace us. On the positive side, he says, there
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: is hope. You know, he does a Utopia's podcast mark,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: And so I asked him.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, what hope is out there, what we.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: Could see, and he says, look, we remember how good,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: how exciting then was Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: how important the Internet was for all these things. We
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: need to get away from the social media platforms, the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: tech industry, which are just trying to dumb us down
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: to numb us. And we can create our own technologies,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: use our own technologies.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 10: But what we can't do is how it be like
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 10: this kind of place where we just kind of spit
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 10: into the wind or talking to the wind and then
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 10: just hope some you know, we're actually changing anything, or
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 10: influencing anything, or actually being.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: Heard at all.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 10: So I've seen numerous examples of that. I've seen true
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 10: ingenuity and action right, So, and he gave a.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Couple of really interesting examples.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: Mark he talked about like community radio and indigenous communities
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: in Bolivia and Mexico. He talked about folks in East
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: East Africa who for instance, are now using their cell
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: phones to invent a new type of currency because they
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: they didn't have a solid currency where they were. He
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: talked about in Kenya, people who have been diving for
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: plastic trash who are then converting that and using it
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: for their three D printers that they're making themselves like
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: homemade three D printers. They can print microscopes. So we
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: need to be like creators. We need to be inventors,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: true innovators.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 10: Who innovator a meaning resourceful here, not the bullshit term
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 10: that circulates out of Silicon Valley where you think iPhone sixteen,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 10: iPhone seventeen is the definition of innovation, Like when we
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 10: don't even know what the difference between any.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 8: Of these things are, really innovator.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 10: So I've seen resourcefulness in action, and so what I
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 10: just want to say is that what we have as
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 10: human beings, which these technologies never will have, are two
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 10: very important capacities.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 8: The capacity to care, to.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 10: Care and love and imagine and idate in a way
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 10: that far transcends the algorithmic walls and silos and the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 10: reduction of life to numbers, which is what these technologies
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 10: are doing.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 8: That's one. The second is creativity, and we.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: Can do in tremendous and insane things, but we have
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: to come together and maybe put our screens down and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: maybe read a book and maybe go for a walk
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: and reconnect and organize. That is that is not just
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: organizing on longline, you know, over social media or making
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: some clicks or likes, because our entire conversation, our communication
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: mark has been reduced to like something, or follow something
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: or comment here, and that only helps the algorithm more.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: It only tells the algorithm. We're literally giving away our data.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: We're producing videos and content for these massive companies and
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: they just.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Take it and they don't give anything back, you know.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: And so we need to understand what this all means
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: for kind of free speech and if we lose free speech,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: this like the basis of what it means to be America. Rightly,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: you've talked about so much, and what these platforms are
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: doing is actually reducing it. They're actually destroying our free speech.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: They're regulating their censoring, and we need to understand that
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: first of all, because most people don't understand that, and
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: we need to move beyond it.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: You know, very well said I think that gives us
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: maybe some infetus for the next program.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: I just want to close with something that Mary Anne
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Frank's told me because it fits perfectly. It kind of
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: really summarizes these questions that we've been talking about, but
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: also how they fit in with the Trump administration.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: It's attack on free speech rights.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 12: We have an administration that does not believe that it
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 12: is constrained by the law. I don't think we've ever
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 12: seen that in the United States and at least in
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 12: modern history. And so it's not just the free speech question.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 12: But again, the free speech question is hugely important, but
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 12: this is a government that is in fact declared and
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 12: all that assault on on all speech that does not
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 12: conform to what Trump says it should conform to. And
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 12: so we're being attacked on every side. It's universities, it's
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 12: social media, it's mass media, it's newspapers. And it's not
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 12: just through we're going to throw you all in jail
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 12: or we're going to send armed soldiers towards you. Although
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 12: that's a huge part of it. It's also because of
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 12: the marketplace, the literal marketplace where Jeff Bezos owns the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 12: Washington Post and Amazon and the gazillion other things, and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 12: Elon Musk has all this power to use x as
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 12: a propaganda channel for his own views, for Donald Trump
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 12: to be able to get personal enrichment from True Social
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 12: as his propaganda channel. It is the conglomeration, all the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 12: consolidation we're seeing around mainstream media as well, the fact
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 12: that we've got like one handful of corporations that are
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 12: controlling all the ways that we get information, exchange information.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 12: This is a real problem, and the Trump administration didn't
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 12: create it, but it's been going. They are making such
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 12: good use of the fact that there are our entire
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 12: information ecosystem is essentially dominated by six men. Right, So
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 12: that is something that we should all be terrified by
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 12: because it is the government acting with its powers to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 12: hurt people, to deport people, to kidnap people, to torture people.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 12: There's no way that we can have free speech under
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 12: that kind of regime, and we know that when we
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 12: look at other countries. But also unprecedented levels of entanglement
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 12: between the government and all forms of media communications, social media, media,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 12: other forms, so they're also controlling the kind of output
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 12: as well as the input. It's all under this kind
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 12: of frankly fascistic control, and it's what I've called a
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 12: techno fascist control because the intertwining of these industries has
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 12: meant we have a kind of a fully surveillance society
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 12: where the capacity for the government to control what we're saying,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 12: or try to control what we're saying is it's like
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 12: nothing we've ever seen before.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: Hi, folks, thanks for listening. If you enjoy today's podcast
• 1:09:15
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• 1:09:18
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• 1:09:26
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• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: state of free speech in the United States today. You
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• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: in the show notes. If you'd like to find out
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: more about the stories we talked about today in this episode.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: We've added some links in the show notes there as well.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: The Battle for Free Speech is a production of the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: Real News.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, See you next time.