Ever since the recent purge of multiple QAnon,
Stop the Steal and MAGA social media accounts,
as well as the permaban of former President Trump
– damn that feels good to say –
the right wing has been claiming
they’re living in an Orwellian hellscape.
It’s Orwellian.
The nonstop vilification, censorship,
Orwellian deprogramming...
This could not be more Orwellian.
I’ve read “1984,”
George Orwell’s book, a long time ago.
I don’t believe you.
Conservatives love to talk about
right-wing voices being censored on social media.
In fact,
those are some of their most popular posts
...on social media.
But,
the right wing may have accidentally stumbled
ass-backward into a legitimate concern:
Should a handful of tech CEOs have the power
to completely control the flow of news and discussion?
Hi, I’m Matt Lieb,
Francesca’s camera guy,
and today we are going to talk about how
tech CEOs’ absolute control over our news,
data and discourse is essentially giving them control
over our democracy.
And how maybe it’s time
for our democracy
to regain control over them.
[theme jingle]
Our years-long national nightmare is over, folks.
Trump has been removed from the feeds
– also, the White House
– but mostly the feeds.
Donald Trump is banned permanently from Twitter
because of concerns his tweets
could incite more violence.
Twitter, run by CEO Jack Dorsey,
saying, “After close review
of the president's recent tweets,
it banned him
due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Wow, so that’s all it took, huh?
I’d like to point out that I once got suspended
and I lost my blue checkmark
permanently
for just pretending to be The New York Times op-ed page.
It was worth it though.
It was a funny-ass tweet.
Like a true poster,
Trump then took to his alt-Twitter accounts
to complain about his “free speech” being taken away.
Soon those accounts were also banned,
and Trump had no place to go to whine about free speech
– other than
television
and
newspapers
and
other websites
– and the bully pulpit
of the American f[censored]king presidency.
It was the perfect distillation of a right-wing complaint
that’s been levied for years:
the idea that somehow tech platforms are silencing them,
despite all evidence to the contrary.
Facebook is – is...
...a problem.
I think that they are trying to intentionally
go against conservatives and silence voices.
The top performing post of the week
was this by Candance Owens,
a far right-wing commentator
and a favorite on Fox,
denigrating George Floyd.
Hmm, shocking.
You know,
the height of gaslighting is being told
that the right wing is being silenced on Facebook
by the very ghoul who has been redpilling
all of our mothers on Facebook.
As of July 2020, the top posts on Facebook included
three Fox News posts, three Ben Shapiro posts
and one from a guy
named Dan Bongino.
If you’re not familiar with Dan’s work...
You can take your mask mandate
and shove it right up your ass!
[laughter] Nah.
Dan. That’s not where masks go.
You put your mask on your face.
You’re confusing your face with your ass
which makes sense since you talk out of it.
But there is a piece of the right’s outrage
that does kinda hold water.
It is being carried out by big tech,
which I would argue has in many ways
become more powerful than the government.
Mmm.
Some real broken clock energy here.
But it’s true.
A small handful of tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg
have WAY too much power to decide
who gets a platform and who gets a ban.
Because while we might all relish in
Trump being absolutely owned by his favorite app,
it’s important to remember that it only happened
after it was clear that he wasn’t going to be president again
and AFTER the Capitol was stormed by people
trying to overturn the election.
Almost like they were like,
No, l-l-let's wait and see what happens
with this coup thing.
Listen, Trump deserved to be banned long ago.
From spreading fake news and conspiracies
downplaying COVID-19,
to inciting violence against Black Lives Matter protesters,
to the multiple atrocities he’s inflicted upon grammar,
Trump was practically begging to be banned.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they made all the money they could from him,
consequences to the republic be damned,
and then booted him at the last possible moment.
Because, at the end of the day,
tech conglomerates are motivated by power and profit,
and that will always take precedence over the public good.
When people say platform,
what they really mean is we’re a media company
but wanna operate in a neverland
of unprecedented multiples with no accountability.
When people say things like “impossible”
or “First Amendment”
or “we can’t be arbiters of truth,”
what they’re really saying is,
“We're not going to do anything that’s unprofitable.”
Yeah. And it makes sense.
I mean why would tech CEOs,
who are basically unelected business dictators,
care to protect democracy?
Nothing about their business structure or perspective is democratic.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple
have the highest market values of all public corporations in America.
And they didn’t get there by playing fairly,
but by buying out and crushing any competition.
Then they turn around and funnel millions of dollars a year
into lobbying the government to allow them to keep doing it.
And that’s to say nothing of that they don’t pay any taxes.
They’ve gotten as far as they have
because of their Julius Caesar complex,
and they embrace it.
How else can you explain Mark Zuckerberg’s haircut?
Come on, bro.
All you’re missing is a toga.
Not only are they not designed to protect the public good,
their profit model is actively in conflict with it.
Incendiary information gets the most clicks.
And by allowing our data to be bought and sold to nefarious actors
like Cambridge Analytica,
well they’re basically selling us back our drunken diary entries.
Just listen to Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie
explain how societal division helps the profit model.
We now live
– You know –
and get our news and get our information
and talk to people
using an environment that is mediated by
an algorithm that is trying to
put us into different groups,
simply so that we click on it more.
Yeah.
They’re making profit from polarization hand over fist.
And what they’re selling isn’t ads. They’re selling us.
We are the products.
And lemme tell you,
I’m a shitty product.
So what can we do to hold them accountable?
Well, one solution to the problem of tech CEO power
that was floated by the Trump administration
– and other Republicans –
was reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
This is the legislation that built the modern internet.
It makes it so that platforms aren’t liable
for the speech and actions of their users.
It’s the reason that social media
and other websites that host user-generated content
can exist at all.
If Section 230 were gone tomorrow,
websites that couldn’t afford constant litigation
would either be sued out of existence
or be forced to shut off all of their social aspects.
No more Reddit,
no more Quora,
no more wikiFeet,
no more Yahoo Answers,
no more wikiFeet,
no more Tumblr,
no more wikiFeet.
And while you might initially think,
Hey, all of those things you just listed kinda suck
and are filled with weirdos, maybe getting rid of Section 230
isn’t such a bad idea,
Well, it’s important to note that massive tech companies
like Facebook and Google
would actually become more powerful,
as they already are rich enough to be able to afford constant litigation.
In fact, some are actively lobbying for reforming Section 230.
Just look at the recent FOSTA-SESTA bill,
which made dating websites liable if users posted ads for sex workers.
Mere weeks after the president signed FOSTA,
multiple dating sites shut down, while at the exact same time
Facebook announced that it was entering the dating business.
Did you know
that one in three marriages
in the United States start online?
So today, we’re announcing a new set of features
coming soon
around dating.
[cheering]
Ugh.
Imagine meeting someone on Facebook and loving them.
Me and my wife, well we met at a Stop the Steal Facebook group,
and I remember the first time I saw her.
I saw her from across the room. Our eyes met while she was
taking a shit on Chuck Schumer’s desk.
And Democrats are also starting to play with the idea of getting rid of Section 230,
like Nancy Pelosi.
Tech giants are well aware that the U.S. government
is looking to take drastic action against them,
and they are doing their best to push them in the direction
of dismantling Section 230.
They’re doing the old Obi-Wan Kenobi trick
of putting awat their lightsaber, just hoping that the government will take a swing at them.
These nerds know full well that if you strike Section 230 down,
they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
That reference is for all you losers out there who use Facebook dating.
You know who you are.
No,
No, no.
I was strictly a Bumble guy.
I like when the woman messages first,
‘cause I’m a feminist.
Getting rid of Section 230 is a terrible idea,
not only because it would further consolidate power
into the hands of a few tech giants,
but because of its implications for actual free speech.
New, stricter constraints on speech would limit ideas
to ones that are approved by these tech giants,
and this would severely limit our ability to speak out
against these companies,
like I’m doing right now.
Like, we wouldn’t even be able to do this video.
The only way we’d be able to speak out is through like
2008 “I Can Has Cheezburger” memes
like coded messages,
and that's just...
...Those jokes suck now.
The ways that giant conglomerates can buy their way around things like Section 230
gets to the heart of the problem.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies
have a monopoly.
So what should we be doing?
Let’s ask someone who would know.
This is Chris Hughes, one of a handful of repentant co-founders of Facebook.
Ironically, this is one problem that Mark
Zuckerberg
cannot
solve.
It’s up to the government to come in,
break up the company
and set this baseline of standards.
Dang. A co-founder jumping off the Facebook gravy train
and calling for regulation?
that’s like if Winnie-the-Pooh was, like,
renouncing honey.
There’s too many calories in honey.
I’m an agave bear now.
Ooh, I’m Winnie-the-Pooh.
I don’t kn– I can’t do an impression of Winnie-the-f[censored]cking-Pooh.
[background laughter]
But he’s right.
Many have called for breaking up tech conglomerates
and requiring them to sell off their acquisitions,
like breaking up Facebook from Instagram and WhatsApp.
What this is about is about competition.
It’s about all those little businesses
and startup businesses and entrepreneurs
who want to put their products
on Amazon or on Google
and who are at an enormous
competitive disadvantage.
The bad news is regulation at this point might be more difficult than it seems.
These companies have been rapidly consolidating,
acquiring competitors and skirting antitrust laws for years.
Facebook has practically human- centipeded itself to Instagram,
and Twitter has gobbled up Periscope
and is currently digesting it and planning to crap it out as Twitter Live.
They’re becoming harder and harder to break up.
Another hurdle to regulation is that
Congress is full of mostly old people who don’t understand the technology.
Every time there’s a big tech hearing
it just sounds like an entire nursing home yelling at the IT guy.
Excuse me Mr. Zuckerberg,
I believe this entire hearing would like to know,
what is my password?
Diane Feinstein here.
Where is the internet?
The point is, they may already be too powerful for simple regulations.
It might be time to nationalize major tech companies.
Democratic ownership protects speech far better than private ownership
and allows for far more transparency
than you will ever get from private tech giants.
But, more importantly, nationalization
would completely remove the profit motive,
aka the root of the problem.
Simultaneously, it could allow for more capitalist enterprising
from regular people, more diverse range of options for consumers,
more diverse range of thought and opinion,
and a more flourishing democracy.
These tech companies are too big for their CEOs
to have dictatorial control of their content.
Because remember:
Their content is us.
It's our data, our minds, our memes,
our feet.
Twitter and Facebook have become de facto public squares,
and it’s time we started treating them as public goods
with democratically decided rules.
Sure the internet will continue to have hate speech
and conspiracy theories that could do possible harm.
But the pace and degree at which those things are amplified
will be greatly scaled back.
We can’t rely on the charity of billionaires in Silicon Valley
to act in the public's interest.
It just won't happen.
Sure, it was fun to watch Jack and Zuck own Donald Trump.
But maybe it’s time for the people to own Jack and Zuck.
Hey everyone. Thanks so much for watching.
Let us know in the comments what you think about
regulation vs. nationalization of these giant
media companies - You know,
Do you trust the government
to control speech better
than private corporations?
And please
follow and subscribe to AJ+.
And yeah, why don’t you follow me on Instagram,
@mattliebjokes.
See you next time.
Well, I won’t.
Francesca will. She'll -
She’s just, uh..
She's just
taking a sh*t.
[background] I'm right here!
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