Pivot - Facebook's oversight board takes on the Trump ban and Friend of Pivot Congressman Ro Khanna on what's ahead in Washington

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Kara and Scott talk about Facebook's oversight board are deciding whether to permanently ban Donald Trump from the platform and what that might mean for other world leaders. Then we are joined by Silicon Valley's representative and the Progressive Caucus Deputy Whip, Ro Khanna, to discuss the senate impeachment trial, tech regulations, and President Biden's first 100 days in office. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. I got a lot going on. Yeah, a lot going on. How about you? A lot going on, a lot. I'm doing a lot of podcasting. I just did a really good podcast with the CEO of Substack that posted today. Substack that should have never existed had Twitter not had its head up its ass? Yes, that company, yes. Twitter had captured a fraction of the value that they...

Oh, by the way, you know what? Twitter has launched the most popular platform in the world called TikTok. Oh, wait, that was Vine, which they decided to cancel. Yeah. Let me think. Yeah. Twitter is literally

the open garage that Steve Jobs dreamt of. In any case. Anyways, I'm sorry. What were we talking about? Substack. Substack. Yes, you're right.

That's a fair point. Substack, for those who don't know, is essentially an email operation, an email newsletter thing. Scott and I do not have one. Ours a fair point. Substack, for those who don't know, is essentially an email operation, an email newsletter thing. Scott and I do not have one. Ours would be called, you know, Trump supposedly might go on it. It's going to be called Covfefe. No, it's not.

He's not going on Substack. But I did have an interesting content moderation discussion with the CEO, which was sort of in the news these days. And we'll talk about that later, about the Facebook oversight board. But Snapchat's shares have more than doubled over the news these days. And we'll talk about that later about the Facebook oversight board. But Snapchat's shares have more than doubled over the past four months. Speaking of not Facebook, not Twitter, outshining Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, why is Snapchat outpacing everybody, Scott?

What do you think's going on there? Besides creativity on the part of its employees, which they are very creative. You got this one right and I got this one wrong. I thought Snap was going to get run over by Instagram. And you've always said that they're innovators. And I would argue that Facebook's primary innovation now is how to gloss over the damage they're doing and kind of entrench their monopoly.

I think they're the perfect example of how come monopolies stop innovating. We're going to talk about Facebook in a minute, but I want to talk about Snapchat. What do you think is happening there? I want you to reevaluate that I am correct, first of all. Thank you for acknowledging that. But it's not only Snap. Okay, so since Pinterest is way up, basically people have decided, well, you know, with this lie we've been told that the only way you can run an ad-driven platform is to traffic and hate. Both Snap and Pinterest are ad-based platforms, but their

algorithms have been taught to amplify not hate or anti-vax content, but to amplify people's interests and passions. And they do it really well and help people zero in on that soapstone kitchen counter that you want or help people. I mean, I personally think Snap and all social media should probably not be age-gated for people absolutely under the age of 16. I would vote for 18. But they have proven that social media can be kind of a net good, if you will. Just some stats. Just some stats.

Since going public, Snap is up 130%. Since in that same time, Google has quadrupled. The New York Times, since let's call it 2013, is up 300%. And Facebook, since they went public, is up sixfold. Quick fun fact, what is Twitter up since their IPO? Tell us, Scott. What are they up? 3%. 3%.

So anyways, good for Snap. I think they've done a really interesting, you know, you've always said this, that innovation, they are focused on innovation as opposed to protecting their monopoly position or putting lipstick on a pig and claiming that they are, you know, good for the world. Different business model, too. Different business model. What do you think? I think they're creative people. I think some of the stuff they're doing, they got a little TikTok'd. They should have been on that one, I think, a little more because their platform was much more TikTok-oriented, I think, among people, or creative. So we'll see.

We'll see where it goes. But they certainly have great ideas. They've been doing a whole range of new things. I'm going to check in with Evan Spiegel soon. But I've always thought, you know, no matter what Facebook stole from them, they never could do a good version of it, essentially. So I'm good. I'm very pleased that innovators do better. And it's a useful platform. It's also useful. And I think that's the thing. I watch my kids, and I don't want to use anecdotal, like I was in a cab and he said to me kind of thing, but my kids did not abandon it, and they certainly have abandoned Instagram and Facebook.

And my son now is into Twitter, although Louie is into Twitter because he likes news. Let's move on to big stories, Scott. Facebook's Oversight Board is taking on its first major case. It's been doing a couple of them, a bunch of them, but this is the big one. Last week, Facebook asked its recently formed Oversight Board to review the company's decision to suspend Donald Trump's account. The 20-person board will now decide whether to let Trump back on Facebook and Instagram after a suspension period. The oversight board is also being asked to consider a question

that goes far beyond Trump's account and look at their world leader policy in general. As a reminder, Facebook announced they'd be launching the Supreme Court in 2019. It is a star-studded panel of people. I've called the United Nations only less effective. It should be bigger than 20. It's just they haven't named everyone to it. I think it's supposed to be 40. I forget the amount. But it is funded by Facebook, but Facebook has no

control over it. It's an independent body. But they're going to take the big case because Mark can't make the decision himself, I guess, or take responsibility for it. So they're voicing it over. And Nick Clegg was doing, Ben Smith did a great column on this. And Nick Clegg is doing his fantastic song and dance

about how they need new solutions to these problems, which I call running your own company, but whatever. What do you think is at stake of letting Trump back on the platform? What do you think about this, Scott? Well, I find this nothing but delay and obfuscation and slow roll. And I mean, the notion that Facebook doesn't have power over it, Facebook could disband it tomorrow.

No, they can't. No, no, cannot. Okay, well, what decision? What teeth do they have in a dual-class shareholder? They have to adhere to it. They have to adhere to the decision. They have to adhere. You're incorrect about that.

Well, okay, how do you force a company with two classes of shares to adhere to any decision? They have agreed to do that. in their bylaws of this thing. Facebook has agreed. Once it's referred to and they make a decision, they have to adhere to it. Meaning they don't have to make the decision themselves, but they have to stick to whatever decision is made by this board. And then if Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like the decision, can't he create another board for resolution and appeals and just delay this into oblivion? No, no, no. No, come on.

He's not going to do that. He created this. It's separately. It's funded, and it's already been funded for like, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. It's an independent board. It's just made up of like Davos-going people who are like- So you think this entity, do you think this entity has actual teeth?

I think it's like the UN without affection. I think it's going to like not, but now it's got this big case. It's going to take 90 days to answer this question, by the way, 90 days. 90 days on whether to bring Trump back on the platform. Yeah. Right. 90 days. They're going to have five people go through it and make a little determination based on whatever.

They have five random people. One's going to be someone from the U.S. in this case because it's the U.S. company. And then they're going to, and it's a big U.S. election issue, and then five people from across the globe. And then the 20, I think, people they have now, they should have more, are going to all debate it and then make a determination. So let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they want to appeal to a wisdom of crowds. They want people who aren't, who are, I don't know, have global concerns at heart and other stakeholders, not just shareholders, and that they are going to, in fact, have some teeth. Whenever you create a board of eventually 40 people. Yeah.

And, I mean, the New York Times has an editorial board. They have a group of people. The Goldman Sachs has an investment committee that has to give the thumbs up or thumbs down on taking a company like Robinhood public, despite the CEO claiming he's worried about systemic risk in the market and he's taking them public. They all have decision-making authorities and boards that are supposed to help them get through tough issues. But when you create something like this, aren't you basically just slow rolling everything? Because a 40-person board is going to take 90 days to get back to you on the most difficult decisions. Well, they first have to rise up to the board. Actually, it takes a while to get up to the board itself. So it's this slow-moving train, essentially.

I mean, in concept, they were trying to think of any way to make these decisions that didn't suck Facebook management into a constant, persistent amount of fighting over. You know what I mean? Like this is, and then leaving it to essentially one person. And that's, that's what the issue is, I think here. I think that's more. Do you like this? What would you have done? I don't. Oh, you know, I wrote a whole, several, I've written like six times. I don't know. At first, I'm like, it's a laudable idea because there are no good decisions here. And then part of me is like, this isn't going to work. It's too unwieldy. Then I called it the United Nations without a slow United Nations,

which is, you know, how that goes. And so I have, I don't know. I feel like they should, they should be more companies so we don't have to have this situation that Facebook determines everything. I don't want to wait for Mark Zuckerberg to make the right decision and then people attack him for the wrong decision. So I don't know.

I honestly don't know. And I don't know if there's anything but just closing Facebook down. I just don't know. I just, you know, honestly, that's the one that, which is, it's really hard. And this kind of case is one that an oversight board might do better on,

but I kind of feel like Facebook let him go on and on for so long. Right. And that's my, this is, you know, one of the things that Nick Clegg, who runs, you know, one of the people who are one of the co-chairs of boards said, practically the only entities I trust less than companies would be government. So can this quasi-government that's sort of independent do a good job? So this is a quote from Nick Clegg in Ben Smith's column. Everybody is making the reasonable point when they say, I'm uneasy about this display of private corporate power over the public realm. It strikes the rawest of raw nerves, but he said, the company can't wait for democracy

to catch up and institute laws and norms around Facebook's behavior. Those norms don't exist. In the meantime, we can't duck making decisions in real time. And so I don't know what to say. I think they should be making decisions in real time, the executives themselves, and live with the consequences of what they created. And here they're sort of offshooting it off to an oversight board. It feels very— Isn't this—OK, so one of two things has happened. It feels very... Isn't this...

Okay, so one of two things has happened. They're either slow rolling and abdicating the same responsibility and difficult calls that every media company has to make themselves and every private company has to make themselves. And if it's impossible for them to do this in a thoughtful way that doesn't damage the Commonwealth, isn't that evidence that they should be regulated? Yeah, that's what I feel. I'm like, you know, it's really weird. It's weird. There's got to be, is there something between commercial incentives and the government? I don't know. Like, is this it? Like, is this, we have to, if they're utilities, govern them like utilities. Although then there's the First Amendment in the United States. It's not in other countries. This is a global company.

The whole thing is, you know, it just is, they can, if it had real power, this thing could actually determine super controversial issues. But it's like the Supreme Court, like today, the Supreme Court had a decision on this emoluments clause where, you know, Trump can't be prosecuted as president, but by the time it got to the Supreme Court, they're now making it moot. So the president can do crimes and take money in office now, apparently. Because they made, he can't be, they said it's moot now since he's not president. So why are we even trying it?

And that's sort of like, could you try a CEO after they were fired or left or what? The whole thing just doesn't make any sense. It's just the barn door horse, all that kind of stuff. That's what I feel like. I don't know what to do. But I've always, I think where we, our company a little bit is,

I've always thought that the claims of the complexity and the near impossibility of moderating these platforms that these companies throw up their arms and claim has always been overstated, as evidenced by the fact that when they took his account down, the levels of disinformation literally plummeted. And that they find that it's actually a small number of accounts that are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the misinformation.

So I think all of this is nothing but, quite frankly, a big rope-a-dope. I don't— I do, too. Look, if you can't figure this shit out on your own— and by the way, the notion that it's this difficult, what we're finding out is when you cancel, when you suspend the president's account 1,449 days into his 1,460-day tenure, that misinformation declines by 72% in less than four days. Doesn't that say something? Basically, something like 70%

of the links to websites that traffic in this misinformation are coming from a small number of accounts on Twitter and Facebook platforms. Yeah, I just had a discussion with Kevin Roos. I'm doing these bonus episodes after certain things. He's like, Trump might just be a one-off, right? There's a couple of one-offs every now and then in Alex Jones, Trump, whoever, you know, and just do the one-offs and shut up.

Just get rid of them. Do your job. Yeah, just take a stand like every other media company goes, okay, this is clearly bad for the Commonwealth. You're paid, these people are paid a lot of money. Move to do your job. Yeah, just take a stand like every other media company goes, okay, this is clearly bad for the Commonwealth. You're paid. These people are paid a lot of money. They have to make calls. And occasionally they're going to make shitty calls, and that's okay.

The board. They don't like their shitty calls. They don't like the left and right. And then some of these politicians threaten to hurt them if they make a call they don't like. And that's the problem. They don't want to be the ref here. Right. And so the players are controlling the game.

For God's sakes, they're the ultimate ref. They program their algorithms to amplify the most dangerous content in the world. They can change the algorithms. They absolutely can make it so it shows more trusted news sources. They can make it, you know what? This oversight, come on with the oversight board. That's enough. We're going to have a friend at Pivot who's going to talk about this, but these global

politicians from Ben Smith's column are complex and constantly shifting. The Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who built an opposition movement on social media, is among those who criticized Facebook's decision to remove Mr. Trump from the platform, fearing that governments like Russia would use the same logic to stifle dissenters like him. This is an age-old

problem, because on Friday, Mr. Clegg said the company was resisting Russian government demands to remove posts in support of him. So it's just, it's a complex issue. Essentially, they've been thrust into some really ugly situations. But hasn't this been the same for media all through its history? The New York Times deals with this every fucking day. And they figure it out. Broadcast networks. So, I mean, some people think they should bring back the fairness doctrine, which is weird. It couldn't be done on this platform.

I mean, these are just too many. But it does present an interesting challenge. It does. And, you know, and Mark is just shoving it right off his desk. That's, you know, essentially because he's unable to. The term you use is the exact right one. It's a slow roll. It's a slow roll. We are going to program, continue to program our algorithms such that they amplify

some of the most damaging, novel, controversial content in the world, which is damaging to the Commonwealth. But on big kind of high profile issues, we'll pretend that we're being thoughtful and slow roll because we're going to create an oversight board of 40 people. Boards of directors, boards of directors purposely, when we're on a board of director, we purposely have an odd number

of directors. You know why? What? So we can make a fucking decision. Yeah, I know, but they want to be global. They want to go

over every country in the world. I think it's like, it's literally a United Nations. That's what they're trying to do. You know,

like there's the ex, I think the- How do you even schedule a Zoom call with 40 people? How do you even do that? Well, they meet in groups of five. There's this whole thing I think the- How do you even schedule a Zoom call with 40 people? How do you even do that? Well, they meet in groups of five. There's this whole thing around some nipple issue

in Brazil they're adjudicating. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Nipple issue. There's always a nipple issue online, you know, about breast cancer and this and that. So, you know, and then they're gonna have to apply it to all of Facebook. What if they make a decision Mark doesn't like?

That's really gonna be interesting. He has to abide by it, apparently. I say, I don't buy Facebook. What if they make a decision Mark doesn't like? That's really going to be interesting. He has to abide by it, apparently. See, I don't buy that. Even if he doesn't. I don't buy that. He controls the company. He can decide. He can convince Nick Clegg.

He says it in the bylaws. He can convince Nick Clegg, who is paying $30 million a year, to come up with very thoughtful reasons for why they need an appeal board to their global board. And he could absolutely figure out a way to neuter this thing. It's the Supreme Court. Okay. But the Supreme Court can put people in prison.

Maybe he could have a coup. Maybe he could organize it on Facebook. By the way, we're going to talk to someone in a second as our friend to pivot about this because he was up on Capitol. He happens to be a congressman. But let me just say, if you looked at a lot of the recent filings

of the people who were the worst of the offenders at the Capitol, and believe me, I think everyone up there deserves a little time in jail, even if you're just taking photos and standing on statues, which is obnoxious. But this group that was really quite organized, this group of military people, ex-military people, they were literally communicating on Facebook. And they were doing things like, storm the Capitol, LOL. Like the whole thing was just, and literally it's like Facebook,

Facebook, Facebook used, you know, and I'm sure they were on Zello and MeWe or whatever you call it, all the different and all the different Telegram platforms, but they were definitely using Facebook messenger to talk to each other. And Facebook algorithms pick up incredibly joyfully pick up on that dialogue and start running ads for zip ties and military vests. But oh yeah, this board is going to help. This board is going to help. No, but it was like, you know,

Cheryl said they weren't being used. They totally were being used. Oh my God. Come on. Like, I get it. I'm not going to blame the telephone for using it, but the fact that they were organizing and then executing on this platform is just like, you know, they'll use the word just like the telephone, you know.

But you brought up one. Then let's legislate. You like telcos. Great. 100%. That sounds good. But you brought up something that is very disturbing, and that is 20% of the people who have been arrested for the insurrection and the mob are veterans. Yeah.

Whereas veterans are only 7% of our population. And we have to really do some soul searching around what is it that our veterans has led them to believe or made them subject to this sort of misinformation, or quite frankly, just made them so fucking angry when they should be the people that we are. Angry with guns that we train them to use. Yeah. Yeah, but there weren't, I would argue that most vets actually are really responsible gun owners. Certainly. Because they understand it.

But I'm just saying, just like an added plus. You know, when we see veterans, when we see a disproportionate number of veterans on the off-round or the on-round panhandling, when we see a disproportionate number of veterans in our mental health institutions, and we see a disproportionate number of veterans in our mental health institutions, and we see a disproportionate number of our veterans as part of an insurrection, it's like, okay, what is it about our country that is offending our veterans?

And both sides have to look at this. I was with my friend who won that Peel's Prize a couple of years ago about the Walter Reed Hospital abuses kind of thing about the patients there. She was a Washington Post reporter, one of the people who did that investigation. And we talked about it briefly.

I mean, it's just, that's the issue, is that these, that they're not, these people aren't getting the kind of respect they deserve. Yeah, we call them heroes and we treat them like chomps. And we, I'm sorry, we call them heroes and we treat them like chomps. Yep, 100%. I think that's part of it.

I think they really did feel like left out. And so they're very open to, you know, she voted for Obama, Biden in an election. She was a small business owner and something went very wrong there. And it's, this is, you know, this isn't tidy. There's some ugly things that we really gotta wrestle with here to try and understand how a key component of our society, our veterans are feeling more and more alienated.

Well, this and other questions we're going to ask our friend of Pivot. We're going to have a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk to friend of Pivot, Congressman Ro Khanna. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.

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ConstantContact.ca. trial. ConstantContact.ca. Scott, we are back. We have Congressman Ro Khanna with us. He represents Silicon Valley and is the Progressive Caucus Deputy Whip, which is a big deal, apparently. Thank you for coming, Congressman. Thank you for having me back. So we go back a long ways. And also I've known him since Silicon Valley and stuff like that. And we were just talking about what happened with Facebook's oversight board dealing with Donald Trump this week. Facebook has moved that decision of deplatforming him over to their oversight board, which is allegedly independent. I just want you to sort of give us, having been in Congress during this really turbulent

time and terrifying time, really, what it's like there now that you're moving into this impeachment hearing phase of the program and what it's like right now being in Congress. Well, it's like coming to a military base. I mean, you literally have a National Guard all around the Capitol. And it's unfortunate because Congress is supposed to be a place where anyone can walk in, where you can meet your member of Congress. That's not the case. And people are fearful. I mean, I'm personally not fearful, but I'm fearful for some of my colleagues, those who are particularly very highly high profile, women of color. There are a number of colleagues who have received multiple death threats. And

this has been going on for years. So I think January 6th was just this culmination of hate that had been building up in our country. So now you're there. How does it change now that it's a blue Congress? I want to focus in on tech because a lot of people have blamed, besides President Trump, who I think very clearly incited violence that day. You're moving into this impeachment part. The House delivered it today to the Senate.

It's going to be delayed for two weeks, I guess. Is that correct? Yes. But what changes now that is it a blue Congress, both in this case and also with this tech legislation you and I have talked about and all the different legislation that's going on? Well, what changes in terms of our pandemic plan and relief is we're finally going to get distribution funding out to the states. We're finally going to get distribution funding out to the states. We're finally going to get funding to the Defense Production Act to make more vaccines, to make

more testing equipment, and we're going to get more economic relief to people. So I think there's going to be bold changes that people are going to see in the next 30 to 60 days. On tech legislation, in the next 30 to 60 days. On tech legislation, what we need is a clear recognition that free speech does not mean speech that incites violence. This is not something that I came up with. This is Brandenburg. This is the Supreme Court. There's this false notion out there that just this country protects all kinds of speech. That's actually not true. Speech that is inciting violence, that is clearly inciting illegal conduct is not protected. There's also this naive view, I think,

in the internet world and Silicon Valley that just exposing people to multiculturalism and just exposing people to conversation is somehow going to bring peace. And it totally diminishes the role of culture and institutions and the quality of conversation. And, you know, I mean, it's, you know, people have dedicated their whole lives on Jürgen Habermas, the thinking about how we have proper conversation. And so the idea that you're just going to have techies come in and say, let's just have conversation and not give any thought to the structures of how that conversation needs to take place is naive.

That's what we're realizing. January 6th, obviously, was one of the consequences of it, but what we need is much more regulation on these platforms. Scott's going to have a question in a minute, but you and I talked a couple of years ago about this internet bill of rights, which was a series of laws. Which ones have a chance right now? One was a privacy bill, another was a hacking one. You wrote that for the speaker, Nancy Pelosi. So talk about where that is, and then Scott will jump in. Well, I think there are three things that are critical that could lead to more reform of the structure of social media. One is opt-in consent. We need people to be able to consent before their data is collected. In part, this would diminish the recommendation functions where Facebook and

other platforms were basically funneling information about QAnon and recommending groups. I mean, if people have to consent before their data is given, that makes a difference. We need strong antitrust enforcement so that other platforms can emerge. And then we need basic consumer safety protection that regulates against not just incitement of violence, but against advertising of harmful products. I think if you have those three reforms, you would have space for digital platforms to emerge that respect authentic human connection and don't just maximize based on attention and data and give it a space for more platforms to experiment and emerge.

platforms to experiment and emerge. Scott? So I hope we never get used to what happened on January 6th. And I would just like to take you back to that day. Can you describe how you felt? Did you fear for your physical safety? What was going through your mind? You represent 755,000 Americans. You show up for work. What happened? Well, Scott, my staff was actually anxious when I was coming to work and saying, be careful, be careful, get there really early. And so I did get there fairly early, around 10 o'clock, even though the proceedings were supposed to start at 1. And I went to my office in Cannon.

And then around 1130 or so so we had a notice to evacuate and the reason was that we now learned that there was a pipe bomb near the Cannon building so I like others left the Cannon building and started to head over to the Capitol thinking actually that would be the safest place to be when there's a bomb threat in the Cannon Building. Fortunately, right before I entered the Capitol, I had two members of my staff who were following all the events on television, and they're texting me saying, don't go into the Capitol. It's under siege.

Go back to your Cannon Office Building. Now, the interesting thing is we didn't have any notification from police or anything else. I just had some very competent staff folks who were looking at what was going on. And so I headed back with others to the Cannon building. It wasn't clear whether the Cannon building had been cleared of the bomb threats or not. We thought it had, but we were getting conflicting reports. But certainly that was better than being in the Capitol. And I locked the door and stayed there till the evening. So I was fortunate not to be in the Capitol. From colleagues who were actually in the Capitol, I know some of them genuinely feared for their life. But you felt the need to lock your door. Absolutely. I mean, I was concerned, as were others, that you could have some of these protesters roaming the halls and just looking for people to target. And in fact, I felt uncomfortable even going out or trying to leave the premises.

There were some people who wanted to come to my office to take shelter in my office, staff members for other members of Congress. And they were texting me and I was saying, come. And they were saying, okay, I can't come right now because this hallway looks like they still have people on there. So it was an anxious time and that you didn't know what the protesters were going to do or whether they were going to just stay in the Capitol. So my follow-up to that then is, do you think that colleagues in the House or members of Senate who it ends up may have encouraged this incursion, may have helped organize it, may have incited it based on misinformation they knew was not accurate? Do you think they should be investigated for sedition? Yes, I mean, they should be investigated for the incitement of violence, for breaking the law, and in some cases, sedition, because the plot was to prevent Vice President Pence from certifying

the election. Now, I make a distinction between those who were fist bumping the protesters and those who were giving information to the protesters and those who just voted against the certification of a particular state. I think those who voted against the certification of a particular state were appalling and they should be voted out, but they weren't actively participating in a criminal conspiracy, whereas those who were actually inciting violence and participating, I think, should be held criminally responsible. So let me ask you about the incitement, because obviously Trump is at the center of this, the nexus of this. But let me read you something I wrote in 2019 in the fall.

In recent weeks, including a fancy pants Washington dinner party this past week, and I've been testing my companions with this hypothetical scenario, my premise has been to ask what Twitter management should do if Mr. Trump loses the 2020 election and tweets inaccurately the next day and ensuing weeks that there had been widespread fraud and, moreover, that people should rise up in armed insurrections to keep him in office. This is in 2019. Most people I posed that question to have had the same response, throw Trump off Twitter for inciting violence. A few have said he should be only temporarily suspended in a quail and he unrest. Very few said he should be allowed to continue to use the service without repercussions if he was no longer the president. One high-level government official asked me what I would do. My answer is I

would never have let it get this bad to begin with. So pretty good guess of what would happen. How much do you blame social networks for this, and specifically Facebook and Twitter? They have blame. I mean, they're not as much blame as Parler because Parler didn't have any content moderation as the CEO admitted on your, one of your shows, but they have blame. I mean, if you look at the number of posts on Facebook or on Twitter that were organizing the march and that had clear incitement to violence on there. It's obvious that they should have removed much more of that content. They should have removed the content of certain speakers that were calling for violence, and they were amplifying it. So it's

not just that they live streamed Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump. And this is the important point. They were then broadcasting that to groups that they had helped create by recommending people to join those groups. So they obviously have a fair amount of blame in this. So what do you do? What is the mentality right now that it's sort of in this Biden administration? What's the mentality? And is there's sort of in this Biden administration? What's the mentality? And is there a bipartisan effort to figure out what to do? Do you think there's a chance here to regulate tech?

Something we've talked about for a long time. Absolutely. And the first thing I would say for tech is just to be honest. You know, I mean, instead of always starting a conversation with, well, we did everything we could, we don't tolerate violence, we are perfect actors as much as we can be, and this is just human nature that is taking place, they should say we have created something that has a lot of unintended consequences, and we don't understand all the unintended consequences. And no one would blame them for that. When the printing press was created, there were a lot of unintended consequences. There were actually wars over the printing press,

and it was human ingenuity. It took a lot of human creativity to build the institutions and the rules so that we didn't have that situation. And so what tech should be saying is we actually need these regulations because we've created a monster that we don't have that situation. And so what tech should be saying is we actually need these regulations because we've created a monster that we don't know how to control. And I think if they did that, they'd find a more sympathetic audience. And my sense is people in Congress now understand that something needs to be done, that the bill of rights, we need the internet bill of rights, we need to look at removing content. Let me give you one concrete example, which is shocking to me. Currently, if you have a court

order that speech violates the law, that speech incites violence, you go to a court, you get that order. Social media under Section 230 has no obligation to remove it, even with a court order. So one of the very simple reforms that Schatz has called for in the PACT Act is to say if you have a court order saying something is illegal, social media needs to remove it. So I'm curious, and I recognize that – well, let me – your district, a lot of companies and very wealthy people are leaving. What do you think? A, do you think it's a problem? And B, if it is a problem, what do you think needs to happen to maintain this, that incredible economic engine in your district? Well, I'm very bullish on Silicon Valley.

I mean, this happens often. People say the death of Silicon Valley or people are going to leave Silicon Valley. But, you know, you have Apple, you have Google, you have Stanford, you have Berkeley, you have leading institutions on artificial intelligence, and you still have 50% of the venture capital. If anything, it's good that more of it's being dispersed. The problem is it's still going largely to urban centers, to Austin or Boston. And what we really need is policies intentionally that will help black and brown communities participate in it, rural communities participate in it. I mean, you have this case of Clubhouse, which is going to have a billion dollar valuation popularized by black people.

And I'll be curious to see how many black people are actually part of the IPO or of the wealth. So to the extent that Silicon Valley disperses, I think that's a good thing. The challenge is, I mean, obviously we have our own challenges. We need to build more housing. We need to have more public transport. But I think what we really need is to be more integrated into the country. And across the country. So I'm going to get to one more topic, one or two more quick topics. Your thoughts on Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion economic relief plan. You're a huge backer of Bernie Sanders who wanted bigger checks. Any chance this is going to go through the Republican colleagues backing it? And do you think it's enough? I think it's a very good proposal. It would cut child poverty in half. I mean, the best part of this proposal is it gives $3,600 to families, low-income families

with children at $300 checks every month. It would massively expand the earned income tax credit for working families. It would give people finally paid sick leave. It would have a $15 minimum wage. So I'm actually, I mean, obviously it's not everything I would do, but it's a very, very solid proposal. If we could pass this, it would be a huge deal. And we ought to pass it. We ought to pass it in budget reconciliation if we need to.

And you could do this with 51 votes through budget reconciliation. So try for the 60 votes, but if you don't get it, get it through reconciliation. What about the filibuster? Do you actually see the end of it? This is like kind of, it seems like Mitch McConnell's still running Senate right now. Yeah, well, there are two things. I mean, I would be foreending the filibuster. There are two things to realize is these are not some hallowed constitutional principles that Madison and Jefferson came up with. The filibuster was the brainchild of Calhoun, who came up with it to literally protect slave states, the interests of slave states. The Byrd rule on reconciliation, which doesn't allow extraneous

things other than things related to spending or taxes was a creation of 1985 by Byrd who didn't want deficit, who cared about deficit spending. So why we should be governed in this country by something that Robert Byrd came up with in 1985, or Jim Calhoun came up in 1830, and has no bearing with our constitutional principles, makes absolutely no sense. I mean, we should have the boldness to govern our generation without being beholden to that kind of precedent. Scott? And I just want to acknowledge, I realize that you're a federal elected official, not a state, you're not running the state or responsible for the operations of the state,

but as someone who grew up in California, UCLA, undergrad, Berkeley grad, and absolutely has huge affection for the state, my sense is having not lived there for a while, and as an outsider, quite frankly, it's just really poorly run. That it's incredibly expensive to get anything done. There's incredible intransigence, and that the state is failing from a good government perspective. And that's one of the reasons that people are leaving. It's just gotten expensive, but bad. So, A, do you buy that thesis? And B, who do you think, or what are the solutions? My sense is California is really suffering and businesses and people have decided they've had enough and are leaving. Well, I don't fully agree with that. I actually think, I mean, we're 1.5, 15% of the

GDP. I think we're one of the most innovative economies in the world. And the exodus has not been that much. I mean, Oracle is not an innovation company. Most people in the Silicon Valley will say, who cares if Oracle's leaving? They basically have people locked in because of customer contacts, right? I mean, so you don't have Apple leaving, you don't have most of Sand Hill Road leaving, you don't have Google leaving, you don't have a lot of the venture capital leaving. And you still have a place which is leading in artificial intelligence and clean energy. You still have policy that is setting the standard. I mean, Biden is actually looking to a lot of California's government governance on clean energy, on issues of paid child leave,

on gun safety laws there. So, you know, when Tim Cook decides to leave, I'll be more concerned about the innovation. But what I do think- Don't they have more employees in China than they have in the Bay Area right now? Well, that's a challenge for our country. Agreed. I mean, that's a challenge of how we bring the manufacturing back. Agreed. I don't think that's a California challenge.

But I do think you're right that California has big challenges. We've made Silicon Valley sort of a moat. I mean, you can't get the jobs into Ohio or Pennsylvania. And then if you're in Ohio and Pennsylvania and want to come to Silicon Valley, you can't because you can't get an apartment for less than $2,500. So how do we get more affordable housing? I think that has been a failure of California policy. How do we make sure we have better public transportation? That has been a failure of California policy. But I just want to stop you there because I read somewhere that's half a million dollars to build a low-income housing unit.

It costs $200 million per mile for high-speed rail, whereas it's a fraction of those costs in other countries and other states. I mean, something's got to give here, right? It's gotten just too expensive to operate infrastructure in California, hasn't it? Well, I think that the high-speed rail was not well thought out. There's no doubt about that, that that was not well conceived. But in terms of the housing policy, the reason we're not building housing is that a lot of the local communities don't want zoning that would have more housing there. I don't think it would be that hard if you had better zoning laws to build more housing. But people don't want their aesthetics disrupted.

They don't want more crowding. And I think that that's absolutely a challenge. But, you know, look, you had Airbnb, actual IPO recently, DoorDash IPO. So you have an incredible wealth generation. So now this is the last question. I know you have to go, Representative Khanna, but what are you hoping to see Biden get done in the first 100 days? Make a very short list. You don't have to go into it a lot, but what are the five things you'd like to see him do in order? very short list. You don't have to go into it a lot, but what are the five things you'd like to

see him do in order? $2,000 checks for every American, $15 minimum wage, a massive infrastructure bill that's not just about roads and bridges, but the modern infrastructure, including universal broadband, progress towards building new factories for solar, electric vehicles, batteries, and then finally getting us out of some of these bad wars overseas. And so doing this impeachment, are you, I know a lot of the Republicans are saying we should be doing that, but this impeachment trial is going to suck up all the oxygen that Donald Trump has done for four years now. What's your answer to that? Well, there are two things we could do. We could

actually, under the 14th Amendment, Section 3, have a simple majority vote in the House and the Senate to prevent him from running again, and that was because he engaged in insurrection. I think that that would be one way to get broad-based support. Second, we have to hold him accountable, broad-based support. Second, we have to hold him accountable, but we don't have to dwell on it. So when I try going on podcasts or television, I talk about what we have to do for the American people. And ultimately, two years from now, we're going to be held accountable, not in how well we did in holding Donald Trump accountable, but whether we delivered and whether people's lives improved or not. And if they didn't, we would suffer, we'll suffer the consequences in 2022. All right. Representative Kana, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thanks for your good work, Representative. All right, Scott, he's a smart

one. I told you, our elected representatives are very smart. I don't like that. There's a lot of dumb ones. I agree. There's a lot of smart ones. Okay. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach,

what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea. Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start?

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built Clawed with an emphasis on safety. The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. Okay, Scott wins and fails. Go for it, Scott. I actually think this, I think we have to be careful with this additional stimulus package. And I don't want to call it a fail, but I think we have become, I think fiscal responsibility has just become so, such a distant memory.

And that everybody's decided that the way they flex a muscle is by making a stimulus package bigger. And it's easy to be generous with other people's money and be clear. We're not raising taxes. that everybody's decided that the way they flex a muscle is by making a stimulus package bigger. And it's easy to be generous with other people's money and be clear, we're not raising taxes. We're not cutting our expenses. We've decided to max out the credit card of the young and the unborn. And I don't think that any, you know, right now, if you have a household that makes $300,000,

you're gonna be eligible for stimulus. I don't think state and local governments should be bailed out. Bail out schools, vaccination. No one in this country should be homeless or hungry. But states have a reckoning coming. They have spent like drunken sailors and special interest groups are lining up.

This is- You worry. This is not monopoly money. This is not monopoly money. And all we're doing is borrowing. Money is the transfer of work and time from one entity to another. We are transferring time with loved ones. Is that your fail? That's your fail. I just think we've become totally drunk with spending other people's money. And I look 40 and our priorities seem fucked up. We're spending $1.9 trillion and we're doing 40

billion on vaccinations. No, it should be four. I just don't. Yeah. I think we have to be really- Flip the script. Anyways, that's my thought. My win is, and I'm being too political today. I think it's because I haven't had lunch

and I'm in a bad fucking mood. I see that. I think Senator Rob Portman from Ohio, I don't agree with a lot of his politics as a progressive, but this guy was a thoughtful moderate, and there is no place for moderates anymore. Yeah, he had to run over to Trump for a while, too. He was forced himself to do unnatural acts. Yeah, but he took to the Senate floor and said that this insurrection was unconstitutional.

He also said that I'm going to certify this vote and that the vote was not meant to be – it's not up to us to elect the president. The president's been elected. Why is he leaving then? He should let like the Ted Cruz and Josh Hawleys. So this is where we end up. all moderates who, in effect, are more representative of where our nation is than a Senator Ted Cruz who decides to, after clerking for a Supreme Court judge, knowingly refuses to certify an election, knowing there's no legitimacy for that to stand on because he's posing for the cameras in Iowa among the 22% of crazies he wants to pick up for Trump.

Or we have on the other side, Senator Kristen Gillibrand, who decides to disappear Al Franken so she can have a seven minute run for presidency. If we just end up with people on the polls, on the extremes, we're not gonna get anything done. And if our leaders don't like each other and think that both parties are, both entities are bad for each other,

and we don't have anyone in the middle to create bridges we need rank voting we need we need to redraw our congressional lines such that they represent america not just hardened districts but i think it's a real loss when people like senator portman who are moderates or considered moderates if there's any of them left in the republican party are driven from government i think it's very unhealthy anyways that's my that's my, that's my feeling. That is a very good thing. That is a very, I agree with you. I think that's true.

All the moderates are leaving. All of them did. A bunch of them already did. And so now we have Trump with his Patriots Party. What do you think of that one? That's going to be something else. Whatever. We'll see.

We'll see. All right, what's your win? I want you to leave on a high. What's your win? My win? Oh, my win was, my win was Oh, my win was Senator Portman. I think he's had a- Oh, okay.

I think he's a- Because that seemed rather low. Yeah, I apologize. I think he's a decent man. I think he's had a good career. I don't agree with his politics, but he's been a public servant from the great state of Ohio.

By the way, you know, I lived in Ohio for a couple summers. Columbus, Ohio, fireflies. You know who's going to run? Who's going to run? Jim Jordan is right in there. Jim Jordan? Yeah, there's another awful person.

There's two awful people on the list of people who might run into Ohio. Oh, the Hillbilly Elegy guy who's gotten super conservative. That guy. But that's who we end up with. And we'll end up with someone equally as wacky on the left side.

I don't, like, this is going off the rails in both directions. And anyways, but by the way, Jim Jordan, the only redeeming thing about Jim Jordan, actually, I don't know, there's probably a lot of redeeming things about him. But one of the redeeming things is he's a wrestler. I'm trying to get my youngest into wrestling. Oh, wait a minute. Careful where you go there. You know he's in trouble with. Yeah, I know.

I think that's a little, if you read that, I think that's a little, some of those accusations I think are a little bit ugly and a little bit. I've read a lot about it. He should have said something. He should have said something. Anyways, anyways. Might have. As a mother of sons, I wish she had said something. Well, as the father of sons who realizes that accusations aren't enough to ruin a person's career, that he didn't report stuff. I'm not going to get

into this with you. Let's just go with wrestling is a great sport. Wrestling is a great sport. I don't want my kids to wrestle. My kids play lacrosse. That's what my kids do. Oh, really? Well, it's likely they're not white and privileged. Lacrosse. You know what? It's fine. You're very down with the common people with your lacrosse. Lacrosse is played by lacrosse the globe. The mean streets of lacrosse. You know what? It's fine. You're very down with the common people with your lacrosse. The mean streets of lacrosse. You're not going to get me for this. It's a long time sport for many centuries

for all over the place, so I'm not even going to speak to you. They all end up on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. Oh, by the way, you don't need a lot of stuff for that. You just need to stick and that's it, and some shoes. That's the whole deal and a ball. That's the whole sport. My only athletic hero is Paul Rabel, who's a lacrosse player. That's exactly right. That's

who my kids love. Maybe they should take up swimming and go to TED. No, no. Could they be any wider? Have they thought about polo? Have they thought about polo? No, basketball. Basketball. My oldest son, my youngest son is very tall. He's very good at basketball. But really, you know what? Actually, my oldest son. My youngest son is very tall. He's very good at basketball. Yeah.

But really, you know what? Actually, my son today, I'm going to, here's my win, is my son, my youngest son, my both sons are amazing. And my youngest son has gotten very politically oriented and sort of reading everything. And this morning, he literally woke me up real mad about the filibuster. He was like, mom, this is just ridiculous. Then he had 900 arguments

and he has a sign. Against it or eliminating it or keeping it? He thinks they should keep it. Keep it. They should keep it. Why does he want to keep it? And does he want to eliminate it?

Whatever. In any case, he's mad about what Sounds like you're really in touch with those sons you love so much. I get confused. In any case, he has to write some poems this week,

and I advised him to write a poem about the filibuster. By the way, they're not into lacrosse. They're into the Lamaze. You just didn't hear them correctly. They're meditating. Yeah. Anyway, Mitch McConnell doesn't want to get rid of the filibuster, and therefore my son does.

So he wants to get rid of the filibuster, and he's on Ro Khanna's side on this. But I told him he could write a poem about the filibuster. What do you think? That's a page turner. You know what? It's going to be a beautiful poem. Okay. I'm just telling you. All right. That is my win. Amanda Gorman Swisher. I'll look forward to reading that poem. I will do a live reading of that poem. Why don't you live read? I will. Okay. Let me just tell you, why don't you stop live reading young people's poetry? Why am I so aggressive in such a bad mood today? Is it my tea therapy?

I'm on tea therapy. You need to eat something. I'm on tea therapy. You need to eat something. Anyway, your fail is you need to eat every morning. I had a delicious meal with my, that said son, anyway. All right, Scott, that's the show. That is the show, Cara.

We'll be back on. Oh, by the way, you forgot to talk about us. Who won iHeartRadio's best business and finance podcast? Us. Us. That's right. There's no living with us.

That's right. There's no... This is a bad time to be negotiating with Kara and Scott. We are just winning it, winning it, winning it. And that's to say, we're also so whorish, we're completely for sale. Is that correct? Would that be the correct way to put it? Oh, well, look, the bad news is we're whores. The good news is we're expensive whores. We're about to become expensive whores. We're expensive.

Yes, that's right. That's right. But nonetheless, bottom line whores. Anyway, go to NY... I like to think of us as sex workers. We're sex workers. There's not a sex worker. That sounds much more dramatic.

We're a sex positive pair. We are. There you go. All right. Especially when it comes to us. All right. NYMag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the pivot podcast. We love questions.

The link is also in our show notes. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Endretot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show,

please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you to Senator Portman for life of honorable service.

And thank you to Representative Ro Khanna for keeping us in the middle. And staying in there and not abandoning things like Rob Portman. Can't take a little heat, got to have a kitchen, Rob. That's what I say. Anyway. That hurts my feelings. I know.

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