The Daily Beast Podcast - How Twitter Hearing Turned into a Dumpster Fire for GOP

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Republicans on Capitol Hill last week were keen to score points against Democrats by pushing the narrative that the federal government was working with Twitter to censor a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Techdirt’s Mike Masnick tells Andy Levy why they conceded a spectacular own goal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new

abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special episode with Mike Masnick, who's the founder and editor of the blog Tecter and the CEO of the Copia Institute. And he's going to talk to us all about the Twitter hearings that were held in Congress this week. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Hell yeah. Clips, yeah. We're the Clint. All right, that's the enthusiasm I like to hear. Okay, so the kids like to use this term capping, like that they're, you know, giving some cover to say something nice about somebody. And one Tucker Carlson is going to do that for George Santos here. George Santos told other people out loud and CNN can exclusively confirm this, that he had a volleyball scholarship, perhaps the most coveted credential in collegiate sports. But he didn't. It was all of it. facade. It was a tissue of lies constructed to deceive the American people. There was no volleyball

scholarship. There was not a single dollar of volleyball scholarship. George Santos made it all up out of whole cloth, out of thin air. George Santos is an Ersatz volleyball player, a fraud, a ghoul. people voted for this man believing he had played collegiate volleyball on a scholarship and he hadn't. And yet tonight, ladies and gentlemen, this thief of volleyball glory strides the halls of the United States Congress unimpeded by law enforcement. It's like another insurrection. And by the way, we are hearing tonight, we can't confirm this, but we continue our investigation in George Santos. There are reports tonight that he did not actually work at Citibank. He did not work at Citibank.

No volleyball scholarship never worked at Citibank. What percentage of the people who voted for George Santos under false pretenses would have done so had they known? He never played volleyball and never worked at Citibank. We can only guess, obviously a very small percentage. Tucker Carlson, who I used to know and used to be kind of friendly with, is a giant piece of shit. And I don't really know how else to say it. Like, I don't, he just, he is literally one of the worst people in America. Like, there's no point even getting outraged about this because it's so stupid.

But the idea that like, he picks up on the volleyball thing and acts like that's what people care about that George Santos lied. I mean, it's so obvious the response to this that I don't even want to give it beyond that. But it's just, he's a giant piece of shit. I don't know what else to say about Tucker Carlson. Do you know those like memes that go around and they're like, if you could get rid of one person, right? And like all of, you know, their entire resume, their entire thing. So you have in the box, you put Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. You can only get rid of one, right?

Every single time I'm choosing Tucker Carlson. Because I think that he is more dangerous than any of those people. Why? Because he has the highest rated fucking show in his. his time block on Fox News. And it is amazing to me because I continue as I listen to his bullshit. I remember him when he used to wear his fucking bow ties. This is the guy that 60 some odd million people are listening to, right, that are thinking to themselves, oh yeah, what's the big deal about George Santos? Oh, I don't know. The fact that he's lied about everything, including where his campaign

financing was coming from. Yeah. Right? Including the fact that, you know, on one of our country's worst days, 9-11, that he used that, right, to pull at the heartstrings of his constituents. Oh, I lost my mother too, knowing how many people on Long Island lost someone. I'm just so fucking sick and tired of Tucker Carlson. I'm so fucking sick and tired of these people and their bullshit and their fucking like, like, he's more outraged about fucking M&Ms and their boots than he is about anything else. He is. He's a giant heaping, steaming piece of shit. Why do you do this to me, Jesse? Why? Why don't you like this? It's just going to get worse.

See, what I was going to say is like, whereas Andy was at a loss for words, and couldn't even name all the ways he's a piece of shit, whereas Tucker, the difference is, is that he knew there was a lot more of the story. He just obscures it intentionally to skew the facts. There's a difference, people. Learn your media. Yes. Okay, so we have a reoccurring segment on this show. It's called What the Fuck is Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana even fucking talking about? Well, what we're going to hear from the president tonight, Jesse, are words.

That's all they are words. Words on a teleprompter. As opposed to every other state of the union at the modern age. Wow. Wow. It's like Camelot all over again. As opposed to the words that he pulls out of thin air and. tries to string together in a fucking sentence.

That's some alchemy right there, Daniel. Don't mock it. Oh, my God. He's another one that is not a dumb guy. But, but, no, he has numerous decorated degrees, yes. He does not have an IQ of 60. He just pretends he has an IQ of 60, which is obviously far worse. Like, you can't help it if you have an IQ of 60.

To be a not dumb person and to be an educated person and to act like you are some kind of good old country boy for votes and for whatever is just he is just so pathetic. Like all these people are just so pathetic. He graduated Vanderbilt, Magna Cum Laude. Not a stupid person, but just plays one in Congress. Okay. So now we can have a tale of two Congress people. at the Twitter hearings. Up first, I'm going to bring us the worst. It's Marjorie Taylor Green by owning herself by spouting a whole bunch of conspiracy theories that's probably going to get her a slander

lawsuit. Mr. Roth, as the head and trust of safety at Twitter, your ability, or should I say inability to remove child porn. Now, here's something that disgust me about you. And your doctoral dissertation entitled gay data, you are, that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male gay hookup app. Minors? Really? You know, Alain Musk took over Twitter and he banned 44,000 accounts that were promoting child porn. You permanently banned my Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over Twitter. Twitter had become a platform, you said, connecting queer young adults. You also wrote on Twitter in 2010, can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?

In 2021, while you were the director of trust and safety on Twitter, an underage boy and his mother announced a lawsuit against Twitter because Twitter was benefiting from and refused to remove a lewd video featuring this boy and another minor. That is repulsive. Well, she makes a good case. If only If only any of that was true. True, yeah. Now, she is not playing a dumb person.

No, she just is. She just is. I pray to God that she gets sued. I really do. I know that there was a Republican. I forget the name who came out and apologized on her behalf, because apparently that's what Republicans do these days are apologized on behalf of Marjorie Taylor Green

for her behavior, for her underreact. researched self. I just wonder what it must be like to be on her staff. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I used to work on the hill and I'm just really curious as to what goes on behind those closed doors. Is QAnon the only thing allowed to pull up on their computers? I wonder. She's an embarrassment. I mean, she is. I just, I guess I just sort of assume that her staff are like mini hers. Yeah, I think that's who fed that to her sadly. Like, I get the fact that like there are staffers who work for Congress people who, you know, sit there and go like, oh, God, what, what is he saying now? Or what did she just do?

My guess is her staff is not like that. They probably think just like her. I don't, I could be wrong. I just, I don't know how you could work for someone that bad shit and not also be bad shit. Well, seeing as we recently learned that her quote unquote intern, Milo Yulinopoulos, uses her address as his address. I think we know some answers here. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Speaking of people who were pro underage sex. Almost like the gruber calls are coming from inside the house. It's almost. I wish somebody would pick up. Okay. Unlike usual, I'm going to play us out on a happy note. Here's one representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

absolutely just demolishing at that hearing. Navaroli, let's talk about something real. I'd like to show you a tweet posted by former President Trump about my colleagues and I on July 14, 2019. It says in part, quote, why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came? Then come back and show us how it's done. These places need your help badly.

You can't leave fast enough. I'm sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy as quickly to work out free travel arrangements. A day or two after that, Donald Trump publicly incited violence at a rally, targeting four congresswoman, including myself, saying, go back to where you came from. Ms. Navaroli, as I understand it, you were the most senior member of Twitter's content moderation team, or a senior member of Twitter's content moderation team when this was posted.

As part of your responsibilities, did you review this tweet? Yes, it was my team's responsibility to review these tweets. And what did you conclude? My team, Ray, made the recommendation that for the first time we find Donald Trump in violation of Twitter's policies and use the public interest interstitial. For the first time.

Yes. And at the time Twitter's policy included a specific example when it came to banned abuse against immigrants as they specifically included the phrase, go back to your country or go back to where you came from, correct? Yes, that was specifically included in the content moderation guidance as an example. You brought this up to the vice president of trust and safety, Del Harvey, correct? I did, yes. And she overrode your assessment, didn't she? Yes, she did. And something interesting happened after she overrode your assessment.

A day or two later, Twitter seemed to have changed their policies, didn't they? Yes, that trope, go back to where you came from, was removed from the content moderation guidance as an example. So Twitter changed their own policy after the president violated it in order to potentially accommodate his tweet? Yes. Thank you. So much for bias against right wing on Twitter. That was absolutely fantastic. And like I give her a lot of credit for remaining as calm as she did in the face of just this mass stupidity sitting around her.

And I honestly don't know how she did it. We don't give enough props to AOC. We don't give enough props to these very astute, very compassionate, passionate patriots who go into this job, every single day, surrounded by people who have incited violence, who they don't know, you know, what they will do, who have, they've had to hire, I mean, file a restraining order against, right? Like, she had to file a restraining order against Marjorie Taylor Green for stalking her around Congress.

But she continues to show up and work under duress, right? As many of the members of color and Democrats in general are doing. doing because of these Republicans. Bravo, AOC deserves every single bit of applause. She is a master's class in how to present during a hearing. And something she didn't say there, I know she's brought it up before. Trump saying that she and the others should go back to where they came from. She was born in the Bronx.

She was born 20 miles from the hospital he was born in. Let's just keep that in behind. Literally the same city as him. So it's just, it's unreal. And to your point, Danielle, Warren Bober went on a radio interview, quote, unquote, radio this week, and bragged that she's actually not allowed to take the elevator in Congress anymore because of how much she harassed on Omar, which is just fucking pathetic.

Yeah, that's what they are. It's fucking pathetic. House Republicans thought it was a great idea to hold hearings about Twitter this past week, thinking they would shock the world by showing how the social media company worked with Democrats and the deep state to conspired. against conservatives. But let's just say maybe didn't go as planned. Joining me now to discuss is Mike Baznick, founder and editor of the great techdirt blog at techdirt.com and CEO of the Copia Institute. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Always happy to talk to you. So I'm not sure I've seen something

backfire this spectacularly since I had a 1973 Plymouth Fury. How did this happen? This was supposed to be sweet revenge time for the new house majority. A lot of people seem to assume that the Twitter files revealed something that they very clearly did not and actually for the most part disproved. And therefore, they just kind of went with their belief that it must have said what it, what had said, and then decided to hold an entire hearing, assuming that it would confirm the thing that they thought it said, but which it actually disproved. And therefore, in the hearing, the witnesses were able to once again disprove the thing that the Twitter files disproved. It's sort of this weird cognitive dissonance.

something delusion. I'm not entirely sure how it's playing out in the minds of people. But the incredible thing is that I still see lots of people insisting that it did prove things. And people are expecting like criminal indictments to come down because of this. And everything about it was the opposite of what they seem to think, you know, happened. Yeah. You mentioned the Twitter files. And that was, of course, the various tranches of things that Elon Musk released to various I don't know if the word reporter is even accurate anymore for people like Matt Taibi and Barry Weiss. And that sought to prove that under the previous ownership, Twitter had done what the hearing was supposed to lay out, that the company worked with Democrats, worked with the FBI to sort of

conspire against Republicans and conservatives. But then, as you point out, what we learned in the hearing was that this was all done by Twitter in a very bipartisan manner. And for example, a fun thing that we learned, and that is now in the congressional record, is that when Chrissy Teigen put up a tweet calling Trump a pussy-ass bitch, the White House then contacted Twitter and asked them to take down the tweet because it was a derogatory statement directed at the president. This is, again, this is exactly the kind of things conservatives were braying about Democrats doing. And as you said, it was the sort of thing that Matt Taibi, in particular, tried to point out in the Twitter files that Democrats had been doing and working with Twitter to do. And all this showed was that

all of that stuff was totally incomplete. Yeah. In the very first Twitter files, Tebe had mentioned that the White House had sent requests to take down content. And a lot of people, including myself, had highlighted that particular tweet and then noted that he never in any of the, I don't know how many Twitter files there have been since 17, 20, 25, who knows, that they've never showed any examples of that. In fact, they've sort of very clearly cherry-picked only examples where Democrats sent in information. And here was a pretty clear example of not just, you know, a request for a take-town, but an obviously silly one. Like all of the examples that have been shown of requests for reviewing the content, not necessarily taking down, but reviewing the content

and has been things like Hunter Biden nude pictures, which there's a reason for that. Or like election misinformation where like people telling people to vote on the wrong day, after election day, for example. You know, things where there is an argument, whether or not the government should be doing that. That's a separate question, which we could discuss. But, you know, there is an element of reason behind why they would be sent.

And all of the examples shown so far have been basically like, you should look at these to see if they violate your policy. is not, you must take this down. Whereas the example of the Christy Teigen tweet was clearly just purely ego-driven by the president being upset about being called a pussy-ass bitch, which is. Right. I mean, that was just clearly, she's being mean to me. Yes. And of course, it started with him being mean to her. Right. That was a response tweet to him mocking John Legend and his potty-mouthed wife, which sort of begs for that kind of response.

Yes. Yeah, that's sort of a fuck around and find out situation. Yeah. And then so that's the thing. But, you know, how come the Twitter files never revealed that or any of the other examples of the Trump White House or of Republicans, you know, making similar requests to Twitter? You know, if it's really this thing that was happening across the board, which it appears to

be, like, let's talk about it, but let's have an accurate picture, not a cherry picked one. Yeah. And in fact, you know, Rolling Stone came out with a report like the day after the hearings. Quoting people are saying that, you know, the Chrissy Teigen thing wasn't an isolated incident that Twitter, in fact, had a huge file of requests for action from both Democrats and Republicans and a former Trump official told Rolling Stone, quote, it was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done

when Trump was in office. It was normal. Right. Like he literally said this was just business. as usual. Yes, yes. That part is incredible, too, because the people who were, you know, hosting this hearing had to know that, right? The Republicans who demanded this hearing and who held it, their names didn't pop up in the Rolling Stone report, but Kevin McCarthy did. Clearly, Republicans know that they've made these requests as well. And so to put this into a congressional

hearing and thinking that their own actions were not going to come out during the hearing just seems like they have just this weird blind spot to recognizing how their own actions are going to come back and play out for them. Yeah. And then, I mean, again, this was a hearing that was meant to be about Twitter conspiring against conservatives. And then another thing we learned, courtesy of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who questioned a former Twitter content moderator named Anika Koli, is that when President Trump literally violated Twitter rules by tweeting that AOC and others in the squad should go back where they came from, we learned that this language was actually in Twitter's content moderation guidelines as an example of something that is forbidden on Twitter. Navaroli testified that she assessed that the tweet was in violation, which seems like the easiest call in the world. and that Twitter then overrode her assessment and also within a few days took that phrase out of the guidance.

Yes. And again, this hearing was meant to be about Twitter conspiring against conservatives and here it is helping a Republican president. Yeah, bending over backwards to not only ignore its own rules, but to change the rules to make it look like they were playing by the rules in order to help the president insult a bunch of Democratic congressional representatives after. very obnoxiously in a clearly, you know, racist manner, telling them to go back to where they came from. Again, and there are many other examples of this, but this is one that happened to come out in the, in the hearing of Twitter absolutely bending over backwards to help conservatives, which is like the exact opposite of what the hearing and tons of people keep insisting was actually happening. And the incredible thing was, you know, you basically didn't have any

Republican even mentioned that after it came out. They just kept insisting. that this whole panel was proof of conspiring against Republicans. Yeah. And I always just like to point out that AOC was born in the Bronx. Not only is it, you know, a nasty, racist thing to say. It's not even factually accurate. To be fair, and I can't believe I'm about to do this. We'll edit this out. Don't worry. To be fair, there were people who, when Trump tweeted that, there were people who defended it as not racist because he was saying he meant that they should go back to their district. and fix them as opposed to the countries where he might have believed that they came from.

I don't know that that is true. I'm not even sure he knew what he was saying at the time. Yeah. But yes, there was clearly a very derogatory statement that he... Yeah. Famously, when you tell someone of Latin descent to go back where they came from or any person of color to go back where they came from, you mean their hometown in America. Yeah.

Historically, that has definitely been the meaning. The main focus of the hearing was supposed to be, like the thing that supposedly generated this hearing was Twitter's decision to take down the tweet from the New York Post that linked to its story about Hunter Biden's laptop. Right. And I guess in between people like Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Green whining about the treatment of their own stupid tweets, there were some actual questions about that. But I also feel like that didn't go any better than the other stuff. No.

Again, this was all clear if you actually read what. was in the Twitter files, like what was actually revealed by Taibi and some of the others, not their descriptions of it, which were incredibly misleading, was the sort of weird attempt at misdirection, and certainly not what a lot of people believe those files said, but what everything showed and what the Twitter executives, who were the witnesses for the panel, confirmed again and have said in the past, is that it was the wrong decision. They admitted that 24 hours after they made the decision. Yes. And that it was not driven by a push from the Biden campaign. It was not driven by a push from

the FBI. It was their own decision. It was mostly based on, you know, and this was sort of mentioned at the hearing, but they didn't go into detail on it. But when that New York Post story came out that morning, I remember certainly lots of people were coming out and saying, hey, this looks sketchy. There were all sorts of concerns. But that I remember like, you know, Thomas Ridd, who's a cybersecurity guy, wrote a whole long thread, sort of calling into question a whole bunch of things about it and why everybody should be pretty careful about it.

I'm sure there were some others who did that as well. And James Baker, who was the Deputy General Counsel, who was on the hearing, he was saying, you know, we just saw people on Twitter

calling out some inconsistencies. There were later stories that came out that certainly supported that where, you know, Fox News refused to run that story. They had it and they refused to run it. And some other publications also, I believe,

refused to run it until the New York posted it. The person who actually wrote the story claimed that he asked for his byline to be taken off of it because he didn't, he didn't even feel confident in it. I think the person whose byline was put on it was not a reporter even or like, it was like a former Hannity staff or something like that, I think. So there were all of these questions about it and basically, you know, exactly what you would expect happened, which was that, you know, Twitter started reviewing it. And what the Twitter files reveals, they had this sort of internal discussion about it with people arguing in both directions and saying, you know, does this really violate our policies? Should we do something

and going back and forth and nobody having a clear answer? And again, like, this is all in the heat of the moment. People have to make a decision relatively quickly. And eventually they just made a decision that like, we're going to put this into the HAC Materials policy. And then 24 hours later decided that was a mistake and reversed it. That is how content moderation works. Right. I mean, oftentimes you have to make a decision very quickly with, you know, limited information and you're sort of dealing with what you have. And eventually, you know, you might reverse that decision or change it as you get more information. There's a high profile situation, obviously, but it was one that it was totally understandable and had nothing to do with the government putting pressure or the Biden campaign putting pressure on it. This is all known. We've known this. We've known this for a long time. Right. And yet, you know, Republicans kept asking about it and they kept insisting that this was proof of some horrible conspiracy. It was just wrong. And so, you know, and the witnesses,

said what they've said all along. There was no surprises. They just repeated exactly what they said, which is, look, it was a tough call. It was a wrong call. We, you know, did it based on the information we had at the time. And that was it. And it had nothing to do with any outside influence. Yeah. You know, I remember when the Twitter files first came out and this part of it was out there. I remember thinking, and look, I wasn't alone in this. Many, many people said this. As you just said, this is what you want content moderation to look like. I was like, oh, they actually had a very serious discussion about this and and listen to arguments from both sides. And, you know, and as you said, they made a decision in the heat of the moment. And look, it's a tough job. And I see it every day on

Twitter, you know, someone will make a joke, but it has language that if it weren't a joke would look like it was encouraging suicide or self-harm or something. And they're like, I can't believe this joke got taken down. It's like, well, you know what? I get why it was taken down. Obviously, it should be put back up. And they, you know, this should be flagged. If you appear. it or whatever and they should be able to someone a human somewhere should be able to say okay yeah this had language similar to other stuff that we had to take down but in this case yes you're it's clearly you're not trying to get someone to kill themselves right or you're not interested in self-harm but yeah it's it's a tough job and twitter has cop to that as you said they have been consistent in the

years since this happened in saying yeah we made a mistake yeah and you know and it's it's even more than that right because the thing that people have a lot of trouble sort of comprehending, I think, is also sort of the scale of this. And the fact that you have, depending on the company, hundreds or thousands of people who have to make these decisions very, very quickly where they're getting tons of these things being reported every minute. People don't have time to sit there and read the tweet and understand the context. Is this person joking? You know, is this an in-group situation? Is there additional context? Are they quoting a movie? Are they quoting a song? There's all of these different things.

instead what you have to do because you have, you know, let's say a thousand moderators. I'm not even sure how many Twitter had at the time. You know, you have to write these kind of clear rules that can just be applied by people all over the world and that can say, here's a very clear rule. Here's how I apply it. And you don't have like, you have to investigate. Like, we're just a bunch of people joking. Exactly.

They don't have time to do that. They have however many, 30 seconds maybe to look at this. Does it violate a rule? Yes, go. You know, that's it. And so mistakes are. made, and most of those don't go up to the higher levels, right? It's only sort of the big serious situations that get escalated. So the Hunter Biden laptop story was one that did get escalated because

it was obviously kind of a serious issue, and they weren't letting that happen on the line. And then you had this discussion. And I think it's really important to note. I mean, you said that they had this sort of back and forth discussion. But the key thing that has come out is that not one bit of the discussion, not a single bit of the discussion suggests anything that was sort of politically motivated. Or the FBI. Right. There's no discussion of that. It was 100% like, you know, does this violate our rules? You know, is this like a Russian hack and leak kind of operation, which has happened and they're aware of it? And it's right before the election. Like, should we be aware of this? Should we be careful about it? It had nothing to do with like,

this will help one side. This will hurt another side. There was no political, it was a purely like, what is the right thing to do in this scenario kind of question. Yeah. And look, I'll move on, but I just want to say that I think airing on the side of caution is what you're always going to get from a company like Twitter. And then you can appeal and they can maybe in an appeal situation take a little more time to look at it, hopefully, and maybe glean some context that they couldn't the first time because as you said, there were maybe a thousand people as opposed to now when there's one person moderating content. So yeah, but yeah, I'll move on because I can talk about this all day. In terms of getting back to the hearing, I've got to be honest,

a certain point, I just kind of tune out the stupidity. But I know you are a serious journalist, like Maznick, and so you can answer this for me. Why did Lauren Bobert keep saying that Twitter had broken the law? There's something in her mind that there is this sort of conspiracy theory going around. And unfortunately, I just heard like a very famous venture capitalists say the same thing. I'm not even going to say who it is because it's so silly. There is this concept of like taking away someone's constitutional rights. It's deprivation of constitutional rights is this theory that that has made the rounds in some crazed circles, is the way I'll put it. This weird belief that an editorial decision is a deprivation of constitutional rights. That's wrong on so many levels

that we don't even need to get into. But she seems to have bought into that sort of conspiracy theory that this decision to do that. The other argument that some people make, and the federal Election Commission has already completely eviscerated this idea, is that it was like an in-kind contribution, not Bobert, but one of the other Republican questioners tried to make the argument that this was, you know, effectively a campaign contribution to the Biden campaign, that it was worth more than the maximum campaign contribution. You know, it was like asking, how much do you think it was worth to the Biden campaign to have this New York Post story censored? And again, like, You know, the evidence on that was that this whole, the whole controversy over this actually drove a lot more traffic to that New York Post story.

But all of this is, again, it's just wishful thinking. They've made up their interpretation of what happened. They've made up their interpretation of the laws. And they've decided that it must mean that that Twitter broke the law because Twitter engaged in it's very clearly, you know, First Amendment constitutionally protected editorial decision making. And Representative Raskin made that point at the end where he said, basically how would the Republicans feel if we did the same thing, if the Democrats did the same thing, and called Fox News for Fox News executives into a hearing and demanded to know their editorial process and who did they put on the air and who did they refuse to put on the air and how do they decide

what their lead stories are? Like everyone would see that as a very clear First Amendment problem because it's Congress interfering with, you know, the First Amendment editorial process of a private company. And yet that's what happened with this hearing. And by the way, as someone who used to work there, I can assure you that there's more fire in the Fox News thing than there was in the Twitter thing. I'm sure. So before I let you go, I want to switch parties for one section, because I hadn't heard this, but I read it in one of your pieces. Representative Cory Bush wants Twitter to be nationalized. It was a very, very strange thing. I mean, it was funny because like Raskin did a little bit of this, too. He didn't talk about nationalizing it, but Representative Bush, she didn't quite say nationalized,

but she did say, like, it should be like publicly owned and sort of publicly controlled or something along those lines. And then she talked about the same phrase that is used on the Republican side of, like, it is the new public square. And therefore, it should be publicly owned and it should be, you know, publicly, I forget the exact phrase, but it basically implied that Twitter or whatever is consider the public square should be nationalized in some form or another. It's just like, oh, that's just as bad. You can't. Of course, if that happened, it would create so many problems because then they couldn't do any moderation at all. Right. Right. Right. Has anyone thought through any of this? What a nightmare. I just, I want to let you know, I have the phrase new public square

muted on Twitter. Yes. That is, that is the correct thing to do. Yeah, I got really tired of people saying that. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Thanks for walking us through all of this. And again, I'll direct everyone over to techdirt.com for some of the best writing that you will find on issues like this. Mike, thanks so much. Yeah, thanks for having. It's always fun. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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