The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Don’t fear the dominance of Big Tech in society

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Starting point is 00:00:40 information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. When you have monopolies, they have less of an incentive to develop the bells and whistles to protect people's privacy and to do something about misinformation. I'll just cut to the chase. Big tech's out to get conservatives. And Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

Starting point is 00:01:07 bear partial responsibility for Wednesday's events, period. I think we've seen examples of data breaches. We've seen the dissemination of patently false information that undermined our election in 2016. So I think people are beginning to understand that there are dangers out there because of this market power and this concentration. I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths.

Starting point is 00:01:31 It's one issue that has united warring liberals and conservatives against a common foe, the rise of big tech. in society. Antitrust experts warn that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft have all become too powerful, too fast. They control our data, our discourse, our politics. Their unmatched power is a threat to innovation, market competition, and maybe even our very democracy itself. I'm deeply concerned right now that the space around companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, is now referred to by venture capitalists as the kill zone. So my view is break those things apart and we will have a much more competitive, robust market in America.

Starting point is 00:02:22 That's how capitalism should work. That's Senator Elizabeth Warren. Critics of big tech argue that for the sake of our democracy and the dynamism of our economy, the days of big tech's unlimited expansion, privacy violations, and corporate mergers and acquisitions must come to an end. In the view of big tech's critics, it's past time to regulate these internet giants. The CEOs of these tech companies, however, are fighting back.

Starting point is 00:02:54 I believe that Facebook and the U.S. tech industry are a force for innovation and empowering people. Our services are about connection, and our business model is advertised. And we face intense competition in both. Mark Zuckerberg and his peers at Amazon, Apple, and Google argue that they have become an easy scapegoat for the pitfalls of a digital revolution no one could expect. In their view, there is no monopoly. Their companies face stiff competition from big players in the emerging technology space disruptors that are threatening their very business models.

Starting point is 00:03:31 They also argue that they've provided incredible life-changing operations. opportunities for consumers, communities, and social movements around the world. On this installment of the Monk Debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. Arguing for the motion is Ravi Suave, author of the new book, Tech Panic, Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future. Arguing against the motion is Taylor Owen. He's the Beaver Book chair, media, ethics, and democracy at McGill University and the host of the big tech podcast. Taylor, Robbie, welcome to the Monk Debates.

Starting point is 00:04:13 Hi, my God, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Guys, really looking forward to this conversation today. This is one of, you know, the big issues that we are debating in our society. It was a kind of urgent question before the pandemic. It's maybe only become more intense as a result of all of our deep immersion. in digital technology over the last 18 plus months. So the opportunity to have a thoughtful,

Starting point is 00:04:39 substantive debate with both of you on this issue is a privilege indeed. Our motion today, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. Robbie, you're speaking in favor of the resolution. I'm going to put a couple of minutes on the show clock and turn the program over to you. Thank you. That's right.

Starting point is 00:04:59 I think generally fears of big tech. text dominance are somewhat overstated and hyperbolic. You know, I think they they hearken back. We act as if everything is new, but there is such a long history of freaking out in the media, in society, about all sorts of innovations in the communication space. I mean, in my life, I'm 33. I've heard it all about, you know, violent video games and comic books further back. There's always some new scary thing that the kids are reading or doing and it's going to cause the collapse of society, that kind of stuff. And actually, if you go back even further in some of the research I did for my book on this subject, you can find editorials in the New York Times bemoaning radios, radios being added to cars, will people be distracted. They'll never interact with anyone again.

Starting point is 00:05:52 They'll never be listening. They won't be participating in society. If you go back further in ancient times, the written word was feared that. that it would make people forgetful and forget how to have conversation. So there's just a long, throughout our civilizations, we've always freaked out about new developments in the communication space. And I don't think those freakouts have borne out very well. So I'm automatically suspicious or skeptical going into any discussion of big tech,

Starting point is 00:06:20 that we've actually been down these roads before. And it turns out in the past the vast benefits of these new innovations, these new methods of communicating are forgotten or are overlooked. You know, it is broadly speaking a terrific thing that I can now easily interact with anyone all over the world. I can find new people to be friends with, to socialize with. I have access to a wider and more diverse array of information of different sources of information.

Starting point is 00:06:50 Over the course of my lifetime, the ability to engage in speech, in dialogue, in society has dramatically increased. There are some drawbacks to that, but there are also tremendous benefits. As a journalist, I don't have to, what, send a letter to the editor or write a dueling column or send a telegram to someone I want to have a conversation

Starting point is 00:07:11 with about public ideas. I just ping them on Twitter, and we have at it. I think that became only more evident during the pandemic during a time when we were, you know, literally forced to stay six feet away from all other people to be confined to our homes, to forego the kind of socialization that humans are so accustomed to

Starting point is 00:07:34 and crave and should have, thank goodness, we had these very powerful tools for continuing to engage in socialization and conversation and dialogue, for everything from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok to Skype and Zoom, to the technologies that made continuing with work possible. So there's so much to the good. Now, of course, there's some to the bad. You know, we hear concerns about misinformation relating to the pandemic, the integrity of our elections, the addictiveness of our

Starting point is 00:08:08 smartphones for kids, and so many other things, so many other reasons to be concerned about technology. And I'm not writing off all of those concerns, but I think if you look at each of them, there are ways in which they are overblown. There's a lot of thunderous denunciation. There's a lot of, you know, Big Tech is ruining society, is taking away our freedoms, is harming us in all these ways. And it doesn't, given the tremendous benefits and the overstatement of these harms, I actually don't think those conclusions hold up well. I certainly don't think many of the solutions on the table, the efforts to grapple with big tech, which are often actually paradoxically supported by Republicans and Democrats kind

Starting point is 00:08:51 of across the board. I think these solutions tend to be not very good. but part of the reason for that is that they're overstating this problem. Thank you, Robbie, for that opening statement in our debate on big tech today. Our resolution, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. Taylor, you're arguing against the resolution. Your opportunity, the same as Robbie, an opening statement to set this debate up for us. Please proceed.

Starting point is 00:09:19 Yeah, thanks so much. Look, so I'd be the first to champion all of the positive benefits of social media. the voices they've enabled, the power they've decentralized away from established institutions to new actors and new voices who were historically marginalized from society. I think that is the principal democratic benefit of this set of technologies that we've embedded in our lives over the last 20 years. But those technologies, like all industries, come with some downside risks, many of which were just mentioned, some of the amplifications of division in our society, the mental health

Starting point is 00:09:52 challenges, the challenges of reliable information, which we can talk more about the extent of that problem or not. But I would argue that those aren't problems in and of themselves. Those are problems that exist in society generally. The challenge that I face with some of these technologies, in particular the social media platforms, is that they aren't just mirrors of those problems, reflecting the problems that already existed in society. They actually can enhance or amplify them by the way they're designed. And if that's the case, then we need to look at the design of these companies

Starting point is 00:10:27 and of these technologies. And if it's the case that in addition to all of the benefits they provide to society, they're also creating some social or political or economic harm, then I think it's our right to interrogate whether those should be adjusted in some capacity. And I think the key way this happens,

Starting point is 00:10:45 the key way that the technology amplifies or creates some of these harms is through a business model. And it's a business model that takes the core asset that these companies own, which is data about users, which we have to remember, there was no real business model for the internet up until really Google and Facebook cracked it, which was to monetize these data in two ways. To allow content to be targeted at us via advertising and promoted content

Starting point is 00:11:16 in a largely opaque way that we can't see, and to keep us engaged on these sites for longer and longer, so that we see more ads. This occurred very quickly. I would argue transformed this space of free speech into something slightly different, something that's highly mitigated, mediated by these platforms themselves,

Starting point is 00:11:37 and has led or exacerbated some of these harms we're talking about. Now, that's the fear piece. That's what I'm concerned about these platforms. But the second part of the resolution is about dominance and whether the size of these platforms also matters. And I would argue it does for the simple reason that we know from history that publicly traded private monopolies do not self-regulate. There is no incentive to mitigate these harms when one is a publicly traded company

Starting point is 00:12:09 whose vast majority of profits come from a business model that arguably exacerbates this problem. And if that's the case, if we have a set of social harms and economic harms that aren't being self-regulated because of market concentration, we have a failed market that's leading to social and economic harms, that is precisely when we expect governments to correct the market failure, which is where I think our conversation now is. We are in a conversation in democracies around the world about whether there are things governments can do that can ensure the benefits of these platforms to free speech, to economic dynamism, to political activity and social activity,

Starting point is 00:12:51 while also mitigating against the downside risks and the harms. And I think there's ways we can do that. And I look forward to talking about them. Thank you, Taylor. I do too. So an opportunity for rebuttals now, there's a chance for both of you to react to what you've just heard from each other. So again, a couple minutes on the clock here for each participant, Robbie, you're up first. what do you want to pull out of Taylor's opening statement there that you'd take exception with? Sure. Well, obviously, I appreciate the agreement that there are upsides and the lack of a hyperbolic tone. Since Taylor went in the direction of, you know, talking about their collection of data and kind of the size of these companies, I guess I'll focus there. I think this process of social media sites collecting information on you and,

Starting point is 00:13:42 using that information to show you relevant content and advertisements is described or assumed to be nefarious when it isn't necessarily nefarious. It is not, I don't think, evil or wrong for a company that you're voluntarily using. There is no requirement that you be on Facebook. You don't have to have a Facebook account. There are tons of people who don't. You don't have to have an Instagram account or a Twitter account or anything else. But you have it, and you signal certain preferences that you have, and then the technology shows you more content that you might like to engage with and relevant advertisements to you.

Starting point is 00:14:25 They're helping you customize your own social media experience. Certainly there can be downsides to this, but it's not, the fact that they're doing this isn't evil of itself. It's how they make money, obviously. These are private companies, and they are trying to make money, and I don't, I mean, I'm not against a business providing you more of an experience you want to have in life better. And they're not even charging you the user of Facebook for it. They're profiting by selling ads here.

Starting point is 00:14:54 So it's not, and that gets into kind of the idea that they're a monopoly. You know, these platforms are competing with other platforms in a variety of ways depending on the function, you know, we're talking about. Facebook as a platform for dialogue about current events. obviously, you know, competes with Twitter, a smaller competitor, but a competitor nonetheless. It competes with Google in terms of the political advertisement space. Certainly, some of these companies, Facebook, Google, Amazon in some ways, you know, these are certainly large and influential and powerful companies. They do have a lot of power. I don't think anyone would deny that. There has been,

Starting point is 00:15:38 however tremendous, such tremendous chaos in the tech space in my lifetime. If you look at what the top web properties were 10 or 20 years ago, the board is entirely scrambled. Maybe it will be the case that Facebook is in Google and et cetera and these absolutely dominant positions and they could never be undermined by the market or by someone else coming along or just by developments or people not wanting to post all their pictures online anymore, I don't know, but I certainly think it's naive to think it's impossible that they could be disrupted by stagnating or for other reasons. And I'm just, I'm not, I'm not so terrified of the

Starting point is 00:16:21 power that they have at present. Again, we can, I'm sure we could find some things they're doing we don't like, but it's not, it doesn't strike me as the same thing as, you know, the government created telephone company monopoly, you know, owning all the like literal telephone wires and you having very little choice in the matter. I actually think the communication space is one in which maybe fears of monopolization or one large company have not actually panned out in the long term or the government's efforts to address them have made them worse. Thank you, Robbie. Similar opportunity now for you, Taylor, to weigh in with your rebuttal. You can reflect on Robbie's opening statement, what you've just heard now, what points of contention are you going to make?

Starting point is 00:17:09 I'd love to dive into that competition policy question a little bit further and perhaps we'll get more of a chance to, but I mean, competition policy is about a lot more than just pure monopoly and antitrust. So there's arguably a case that there have been anti-competitive behaviors by these companies that should be subject to various forms of oversight like any industry might be, and probably haven't been to date sufficiently, things like murders acquisitions, predatory acquisitions, potential data abuses, which are now being considered part of consumer harm in many jurisdictions around the world. I mean, there's a nuance to the antitrust debate and the monopoly debate that I fully agree isn't always reflected in the critics of these companies either. But competition

Starting point is 00:17:52 policy is probably somewhere where if we agree that the free market is a powerful force in society, we should be setting some rules and enforcing rules that allow that market to function as efficiently as possible. And then we can look at potential solutions to the harms that remain, that weren't self-regulated out of the market. But I want to pick up at one point around moral panics here about the historical precedent of this. And I have been the first to acknowledge that societies have reacted with concern and bewilderment and confusion when new communication technology. have been introduced, and I've worked a lot on that on some of these previous introduction of some of these previous technologies. But what often gets lost in that, I think, moral panic accusation is that each time these new communication technologies were introduced, there were tremendous

Starting point is 00:18:45 benefits, absolutely, but there were also new downside harms and risks. And as a society, we responded to those. We changed how we governed communication technologies at each instance. of their introduction because they were different, because they led to some transformative change about how we as a society communicated and in many ways organized ourselves that resulted in a change in governance approaches. And I think that's just exactly what we need here.

Starting point is 00:19:17 We've seen the introduction of this remarkably powerful technology, probably the most powerful communication technology in history. It is transformed society in some incredibly powerful and meaningful ways. and it has shown that our governance apparatus is totally out of step and incapable of doing the things that it was intended to do, mitigating my downside harm, ensuring economic innovation and dynamism in the free market, whatever they may be,

Starting point is 00:19:45 our certain set of rules aren't capable of doing that in the advent of this new technology, this new communication technology. Thank you, Taylor. My opportunity now to join the debate and think up some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And I want to kind of try to approach this debate by re-centering us back on the motion. We're doing a good job of that.

Starting point is 00:20:05 It's be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. So I think let's spend a little time on the fear part of the resolution and then more on the dominance part, where we can talk about some of these regulatory approaches and their merits or demerits. But, Robbie, come to you first on the fear part. I think there is an assumption, probably on the part of many people listening to this debate, that, you know, yes, the services provided to me for free. It serves up content to me that is curated by its algorithm. But that algorithm is not benign.

Starting point is 00:20:39 That algorithm's interests and my interests are not necessarily aligned. The algorithm's interests are to ensure that I stay on that site, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever it is, for as long as possible to see as many ads as they can possibly put in front of me. I'd like to hear a little bit more from you as to why you think that that bargain, that trade-off, that exchange, and the informational asymmetry between me as the consumer and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you name it, as the provider, isn't something that is cause for anxiety, if not fear in our society. The dominance of that informational asymmetry and its impact on us individually and then collectively in terms of our politics and society as a whole.

Starting point is 00:21:33 Sure. It's nothing to fear because it's nothing new or unique. Everything, every institution thing that is offering you information or perspective is trying to get you to engage with that longer. I mean, this is just, it's true of the mainstream media. This is a refrain I, you know, I turn too frequently. But I mean, the New York Times wants you to do. read the article and share the article and buy a newspaper and do all sorts of things. It wants to keep your eyeballs focused on its paper, and it makes all sorts of coverage choices, including, I think, very clearly through the duration of the pandemic, emphasizing negative news and doing its best to scare people into compliance at every turn.

Starting point is 00:22:19 This is just my opinion. There have been studies actually showing the mainstream coverage in U.S. markets of the pandemic has just been relentlessly negative, even when negativity was actually not necessarily merited by the direction the pandemic was taking, because negative news sells and scaring you cells. This has been true in radio, in local television coverage is some of the most sensational and bad kind of news coverage you can possibly find. So, I mean, forgive me for being overly worried that there's some of this going on on social media too. Yes, they want you to engage more, but that's the sort of business model of everyone who is

Starting point is 00:23:02 selling information or selling a perspective. It's just nothing new. It's not, and I don't buy the sort of more out there kind of social psychology claims and your brain is being rewired for addictiveness. That, you know, you hear that kind of stuff from time to time. None of that is, is very well supported at this point. Let's have Taylor come in on this point. So what's your view here?

Starting point is 00:23:25 Taylor, Robbie's saying, look, this is how media operates. People are intelligent. They make informed choices or not. We're rational, responsible adults. You know, don't paternalize us. Don't infantilize us in terms of assumptions about our experience of this technology and what it's supposedly doing to us. Yeah, I mean, look, I in principle agree with a lot of that.

Starting point is 00:23:51 But I think, again, it's important to understand. and to consider how these platforms might operate in a way that's slightly different than the way traditional media advertising is worked if we're taking the advertising point. So, for example, when we're saying data collection, well, data collection for most of these platforms is not just done on the things you do on the site, as they'd like us to believe, but actually collected from our behavior around the internet and provides incredibly detailed profiles of each of our users, sometimes in the tens of thousands of variables collected across our purchasing using our credit card data, our movement using our cell phone GPS signals, how we've behaved across other websites across the internet.

Starting point is 00:24:33 All of these are used in order to target content, not necessarily designed just to buy a product or whatever it might be, but to potentially have a slightly higher likelihood of nudging our behavior. And you can say that's, of course, what The York Times has always tried to do when they sold an ad in their newspaper. But I think it's worth questioning if we care about advertising as a form of speech in society at times like elections, for example. In Canada, we have very strict laws about what can and can't be said during an election and what can and can't be paid for in an election. And it's pretty clear that this kind of capability to target an individual based on a highly detailed set of data about their preferences and nudge them, say, for example, to not vote. or to dissuade them to vote at a particular moment or in particular direction is a new kind of capability that we might need to think about a bit differently. So how might we do that, right?

Starting point is 00:25:32 If we take a realistic view of how the technology works, it allows us to adjust the way we oversee these types of capabilities and sectors. So we might say, am I as a user of the Internet offering reasonable consent to a company to use data collected about me all over the internet in perpetuity. Maybe not. Maybe we need some slightly revised consent agreements. Do I have rights as an individual over the data that's collected on me?

Starting point is 00:26:01 Or should we have an updating of our privacy regimes that allow us for me as an individual, as a consumer, as a citizen, to have a bit more control over how data is aggregated and sold and bundled in a very opaque way in this data market that exists online? and me as a voter, for example, in an election, as a citizen in an election, should I be able to see the terms with which I was targeted for a targeted advertising? Should government authorities and regulators overseeing the election be able to see those data? And maybe we should be making that system a bit more transparent. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator.

Starting point is 00:26:42 I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly Monk Members Only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program.

Starting point is 00:27:31 So, Robbie, let me come back to you. We'll spend just one more pass here on the fear part of our resolution today, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. And the other kind of wrap that big tech is getting these days, it's simply about the supposed risk of the manipulation of individuals. It's about a perception that our disqualification. discourse in society has become dangerously polarized. And there are various social scientists, social psychologists, I think of Jonathan Haidt, as one who make the claim, make the argument

Starting point is 00:28:07 that you can kind of timestamp the explosion of polarization in our politics and in our culture to the arrival of these technologies at scale in our society. So I want to hear a bit from you, Robbie, because I think, you know, it's kind of hard to refute that we haven't experienced an explosion of polarization on cultural issues, on political issues. Why aren't critics right to align that social phenomenon with the emergence of big tech as our dominant means of communication? What big tech has allowed is for the conversation to be more, more, there's more viewpoints in the mix than ever before. Certainly some people who just want some kind of manufactured consensus from some illusory ruling regime are going to not like it, that now lots of people have all sorts of

Starting point is 00:29:00 different opinions, and you can see them, and you can share them, and you can engage with them. Gone are the days that there are just three news channels, and there's just your major newspaper, and these are the sources of information, and they often mostly agree. And I, that there were downsides to that. There were consequences for U.S. policy. That's the kind of unanimity in thought that creates, I think, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War. Now it's the gatekeeping, the stranglehold that this regime had overthought is gone. It's broken in a thousand different ways. And this can be messy. It can be, it can be unpleasant. There are certainly downsides to it. I don't like how nasty and tribalized our discourse has become, but some of that nastiness

Starting point is 00:29:53 and some of that tribalization is people getting to speak and to say things who wouldn't have been heard before. There are, you know, we talk about the siloing effect. Well, villages are silos. I mean, there are a lot of people throughout, throughout most of human history, throughout the recent history of our own country, people who wouldn't have encountered someone who looked and thought differently than them who had a different religion or a different sexual orientation or a different ethnicity and you just you talk to your neighbors and your family and you lived and you died near near where you had been born and now you can engage with everyone all over the place and it is messy and it can be painful but it can also be good it can also be productive there's a lot of ways

Starting point is 00:30:36 in which we say oh my god things are so bad right now this is so toxic this is so terrible actually It's been bad a lot of ways in the past and a lot of ways it was actually worse. So, Taylor, let's get your response to Robbie's rebuttal there of the contention, the argument that a lot of polarization that we're seeing in society can be laid at the feet of these platforms and maybe talk a little bit about the non-Western world because there are some pretty, you know, shocking allegations that have been made about the effects of platforms like Facebook in ethnically and racially polarized countries in the developing South. We tend to talk about these conversations in the context of democratic societies that have a

Starting point is 00:31:21 degree of oversight and how they regulate speech, but obviously they're used in vastly different ways in illiberal regimes and autocratic regimes. And I think there is likely evidence that some exposure to broader views can help push back against autocratic regimes. I think there's vastly more evidence that illiberal regimes have abused the filtering control, and their oversight over these platforms to curtail speech and political activity. I don't think there's a ton of debate there. On the domestic polarization front, I mean, this is a hotly contested issue in the research community.

Starting point is 00:31:54 It's a topic I do a lot of work in, both in Canada and the U.S., and absolutely there is debate about to what degree the nature of digital technologies increases or decreases polarization. A lot of people are right to argue that polarization is what often leads to social change and progressive change. Certain groups identify new issues and harms and become activist around them via sharing information and that polarization can lead to broader social change. One thing that has changed, though, and we can show this pretty clearly on platforms and the way in which platforms structure our conversation, our political conversation, is that effective polarization is way up.

Starting point is 00:32:38 And effective polarization isn't just that we all have different ideas. Of course we do. Or do we all want to engage with people who have broadly like-minded views. Of course we do. That's kind of a human trait. But effective polarization argues that this intrinsically means we actively dislike those with other views. And that is something that's getting worse. Thanks, Taylor.

Starting point is 00:33:01 Well, let's move on to the second part of our resolution today, the dominance word there that we have in our state. be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. And Robbie, let's hear a little bit more from you on that point and maybe why you have, what your theory of the case is, your thesis for why overregulation or a kind of a knee-jerk government reaction to, in your view, a series of misunderstandings about big tech's impact on society could have profound impacts for the, the economy, for democracy, for the ability of these platforms to fashion the public goods that people do consume in the hundreds of millions and billions around the world. Sure. I mean, I think the purported threat to democracy is a good example. So there's a category where I think the tech foe, the anti-Big Tech people, the people who say big tech is too dominant, too scary will say, look, you know, big tech malfeasance, election interference, was a massive problem for the U.S., again, it's opposite coalitions that made these claims from

Starting point is 00:34:13 2016 to 2020, which to my mind speaks to the weakness of the claim and it actually just being kind of sour grapes. The 2016 claim, right, was very dramatic. Well, a lot was taken very seriously in the mainstream media saying that big tech was, was marshaled by foreign actors, by Russian agents, to swing the election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. And everyone took that very seriously. That claim has not held up well whatsoever. The more it is examined, the more it is the case that we're talking a small number of fake Russian Facebook groups and users are now being accused of having had some massive effect, having changed the course of the election. I mean, the claim actually gets more and more ridiculous than what you think about it because

Starting point is 00:35:04 Trump wins this election, you know, by performing. better than expected among working class whites in Michigan, Pennsylvania, et cetera, a group of people who are less online than the average. These are people who are listening to the radio in their cars all day. Or maybe they're watching Fox News or CNN at night. All sources of information, by the way, that are far more partisan and far more relentlessly propagandistic than, you know, what you're going to necessarily encounter on social media,

Starting point is 00:35:44 which is filled with also just kind of your friend's pictures and posts about their day. I mean, the New York Times makes endorsements. It tells you exactly what it wants you to do, and this is never viewed as nefarious, but suddenly the idea that Facebook maybe allowed people on their platform who, in a bad or misleading way, maybe try to somehow experience people to, convince people to vote or not to vote. And that is some, and that is, that is dangerous because of their dominance.

Starting point is 00:36:12 It just, it's not a claim, I think, that holds up. And then again, it goes in the exact opposite direction in 2020 when they're being accused of, for instance, taking down the Hunter Biden story, the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's, you know, attempts to peddle influence. And they wrong, because later they admit they were wrong to take down the story. They said they claimed it was misinformation, but it seems like the, the factual basis of it held up pretty well, if not the, maybe not the loftier claims. I mean, I don't believe that this caused the election to go one way when it was going to go the other.

Starting point is 00:36:45 This is trying to blame problems on the newest and most readily available thing. Thanks, Robbie. So, Taylor, let's give you a kick at the can on this dominance piece. And, you know, I think people would want to hear, you know, well, how do you, how do you square circle. How do you regulate, you know, this massive industry in ways that don't lead to, potentially some pretty negative effects and consequences? I mean, these industries are now essential to a lot of our economic growth, our prosperity, let alone the extent to which, you know, people use them as some people as their kind of dominant means of communication and socialization, So paint a picture for us of why you can regulate with a scalpel as opposed to a meat clover, because the latter seems to be at least the sentiment behind a lot of the political rhetoric.

Starting point is 00:37:47 Let's whack these companies. Let's go after them. It's time for the equivalent of a standard oil approach in the 21st century. Look, I mean, I think the scalpel analogy is exactly right here. We need to think about how we are going to regulate these companies. And frankly, it's going to be different in every country because different countries regulate speech and economic activity differently. So you're right, there needs to be a scalpel. And I think the competition policy gets right at that as well, the space of competition policy. There is no question that these companies are different than traditional monopolies. They are different in that they do not charge for services. So you cannot, for example, take the definition of consumer harm that we've usually used,

Starting point is 00:38:32 which is financially harming the consumer by a price increases, you cannot apply that rule to platforms. Now, you can think that that rule, that the principle of the rule doesn't matter, right? We shouldn't matter to us as Democratic citizens in a free market that a company is able to jack up prices, for example, because of some sort of market aspect of market dominance. But if you agree in that principle,

Starting point is 00:38:59 you then have to apply it to this new business bottle, which means modernizing competition policies, perhaps to think of things like abuses of data as a form of consumer harm, which many countries in Europe are doing. But you also might need more nuance beyond kind of antitrust, full-on monopoly breakups, to things like interoperability. We've made platforms that become something like a public good. We have made them more interoperable in the past so that people can take their assets and use them with a different provider.

Starting point is 00:39:33 We've enforced financial transparency regulations on banks, for example. That is a form of competition policy. It's ensuring the market is functioning fairly. We've limited predatory mergers and acquisitions in all sorts of other sectors. Why wouldn't we do that in tech? Either we think the principle is right, wrong, or we figure out how to apply it in this new sector. It's really not websites. Thanks, Taylor.

Starting point is 00:39:56 Let's go to closing statements. We're going to wrap this debate up for our listeners with two succinct summaries for and against our motion today, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech and society. Taylor, you've been arguing against the motion. As per debate convention, we're going to have you go first and then give Robbie the last word. Yeah, thanks so much. I mean, look, I think while these technologies are new and pose a set of new challenges to democratic societies, the idea that some, new industry would change the way we communicate or change the way our market functions, and that we then need to react in some sort of reasonable response to that change is not a new

Starting point is 00:40:39 or complicated problem at all. To the point of the resolution, I think clearly there are some things, despite all of the benefits of these platforms, that we are right as democratic citizens to fear. If fear leads us to act and to support governments to respond in a responsible way, I think where the dominance comes into play is that many of these harms are embedded in the way these technologies are designed and in a way that supports their market power. And when you have a industrial sector or a company that is leading to negative economic, social, or political harms, as some have in the past, that are not able or they are willing or unable to self-regulate, as other companies have been unwilling to in the past, that is precisely when we exist.

Starting point is 00:41:28 expect governments to act in a way that maximizes the benefit of that industrial activity and minimizes the collective social, economic, and political harm. I think doing so, figuring out how to govern in that way in this sector will maximize the democratic benefits of these platforms, which are many, and minimize the harms. Thank you, Taylor. Robbie, the last word goes to you in our excellent debate today, be it resolved, don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. You've been arguing for the motion. Conclude this debate for us. Sure. I don't fear the dominance of big tech in society. I do fear, however, I fear the dominance of government in society, particularly any effort it might undertake

Starting point is 00:42:16 to fix some of these purported problems. I fear the government, we now have some evidence that, for instance, Facebook's COVID misinformation policy. is largely motivated. It was done at the behest of the White House of Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC. They wanted Facebook to outlaw any discussion of coronavirus's origins, any suggestion that the origin might have been anything other than natural, the so-called lab leak theory, which again, is certainly unproven. We don't know. More mainstream, the consensus seems to have shifted in that it was not so outlandish as we thought it was before, but discussion of this was prohibited on social media in large part because of the influences of the government and the traditional media,

Starting point is 00:43:05 the mainstream media, who didn't want you to discuss this. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of the government dictating the rules for what you're allowed to say, what they think you should be able to talk about on social media, not social media doing it. And in fact, the proposals on the table, one supported by everyone from, you know, Senator, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump himself to Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, is to get rid of Section 230. The federal statute that protects the tech companies from some liability for user-generated speech. So this is the major policy innovation to fix the dominance of big tech in society. Again, supported by well-liked people on both sides, not people who are liked by people on both sides, but the people who are liked on each side. And this policy would have the immediate effect of imposing a crippling liability burden on these companies that would prevent them from being able to let you post it will about anything. It would disrupt, it would harm the online conversation in such an obvious and across-the-board sort of way.

Starting point is 00:44:15 I don't know how anyone who's saying, you know, therefore democracy, therefore democratic participation in our society to think there should be a crippling liability burden imposed on these company so that you can no longer be able to share your views on these platforms at will. If that's the kind of answer to the dominance of big tech in society, then I'll take the so-called dominance of big tech in society, which has created an environment where we are all allowed to speak pretty much at will. It has its downsides, but it has not, these downsides have not actually translated to very widespread social harm or violence or stigmatization or demonization.

Starting point is 00:44:55 In fact, there are a lot of ways in which social media has obviously been beneficial to enhancing communication, to making us get to know each other better and even like each other better under certain circumstances. Not all the time, but enough of the time that I would say these are massively positive innovations and we risk harming them at our great peril. Thanks, Robbie. And thank you, Taylor, for a thoughtful, sophisticated, and civil debate on an urgent and important issue. I feel like I've learned so much. And Robbie, I give it a plug at the top of the program, but I know as a fellow author, you can never mention somebody's book too often.

Starting point is 00:45:34 So tell us again, what's the title of your new publication out? Yes, very relevant. It's called Tech Panic, why we shouldn't fear Facebook in the future. And it's available for pre-order, and we'll be out next month. And Taylor, what would you recommend that people read after listening to this debate if they want to take this conversation further?

Starting point is 00:45:53 Oh, man, that's a question. I mean, I think one place I would go is to look at David K's new book about free speech and free expression as it relates to platforms. I think he's someone who takes a real global look at this and engages seriously with how democratic countries and liberal regimes around the world are grappling with this set of new communication technologies. Thank you, Taylor. And thank you again, Robbie.

Starting point is 00:46:21 Guys, that wraps up our debate. Let's connect on this fascinating topic again soon. Thanks so much. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Robbie and Taylor, for an excellent conversation. Certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard,

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The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Don’t fear the dominance of Big Tech in society

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