Ep. 3 Free Speech: Echo Chambers

Romeo and Taye explore the impact of social media and platforms. Are we becoming more siloed between the echo chambers and bubbles? This episode includes conversations before and after the events of January 6 and centers around the very fractures that we no longer can turn away from. Have the questions changed or just become more urgent?

Full Transcript

Taye 0:11

I'm Taye Mohler. And this is Anatomy of Change a podcast series about the struggle and connection in making courageous change, in the systems and structures that thread our lives.

On this episode, we pick up where we left off, and we explore the impact of social media and platforms, are we becoming more siloed, between the echo chambers and bubbles, a portion of this episode was taped in December, and then January 6th happened with the insurrection at the Capitol. The conversation we had started centered around the very fractures that we no longer can turn away from, you'll hear the discussion of the before and after have the questions changed, or just become more urgent.

Romeo 1:10

I do believe that social media and these so called platforms are responsible for a lot of this segregation and divisiveness in the society today, by the nature of their algorithms and their growth objectives. They create these thought bubbles, and they create what we call echo chambers. And why is that? It's very simple. What is the number one objective of any commercial enterprise, you know, under a capitalist system is growth. What does growth mean? Growth means more subscribers, and you see that is the number one method 100 million new subscribers in, you know, past year, or in the case of Tiktok, hundreds of millions of subscribers in the past year.

You have the engagement metric, which has to do with how much time your subscribers are spending on your platform, and how do you increase that is by feeding people what they want to hear and content that agrees with their points of view already. Because if you had done the opposite, if you were feeding people, things that they're uncomfortable with, it's a natural tendency, it's a sort of a self coping mechanism, people will want to, you know, at first, you will want to shy away from that alternative viewpoint, right? So it doesn't help their engagement metric, and it doesn't help their growth metrics. So, so then what happens is that these platforms are going to curate content for you that, by and large agrees with your predefined notions about the world. And that's how echo chambers appear.

Divisiveness is promulgated by people not being aware of what happens outside of their bubble. And, you know, thinking that they are the owners of the universal truth. And you know, my bubble is how it is and nothing else matters and nothing else is true, right? So, so then you get into the extreme of people that have forgotten how to speak to each other, and they have forgotten how to carry a civil argument. And on top of that, you know, to add gasoline to the fire layer on these extreme radical activist groups, which are going to exacerbate this, this problem even more. So that is how we lose the ability to function as a society. That is how we lose the ability of thinking independently, because we're fed the constant diet of, you know, echo chambers and bubble thoughts we're not exposed to diversity of thought. It's all about diversity of image there has to be diversity of thought diversity of principles, as well, and we have become very afraid. So now you have business leaders, that at the slightest sign of controversy that would have the knee jerk reaction of moving away from something that they've proceeded can harm their image. We are not allowing government to censor speech. Why are we allowing corporations to do that?

Taye 5:07

One of the biggest questions it seems that draws so much confusion, is the definition of a platform. And the difference between a publisher an editor or a generator of content.

Romeo 5:19

In order to be a platform, you have to be a conduit. I mean, we have to agree on that that's, that's the definition of a platform, a platform is just a conduit. It's not a generator, Facebook and Twitter, they stayed away, no matter what, from generating their own content, because, you know, in doing so they would be immediately labeled, like content providers, or news or media organizations, and they would lose their their status of platforms, right? So so they recognize that the generators of content are the people, you know, which we know, in Facebook, or Twitter, the people generate that content, or other organizations that are on that platform, and you know, they generate content, and then that content is being distributed through this conduit of the platform. But it's the moment that they start to tinker with how that information flows, that we have to ask ourselves are they still platforms, if we have a pipe that carries water to let's say, villages, and you know, that's just it's just a neutral thing, you can look at it, this is the water pipe that's carrying water to villages or to communities, right? And then somebody comes in, from whoever might be the owner of the water pipe, it doesn't matter really, and then they tinker with that pipe, and they change the flow. And all of a sudden, you have one community, one village receiving 90% of the water and the other receiving 10%. Is that still neutral? Is it still a neutral pipe or a construct? Nope, no, it's not. Now we're taking sides. Okay, so when we're taking sides, and we are selectively editing and censoring content, in the pursuit of one point of view versus another, then we have ceased to be a neutral platform. And we have become the biased platform. And that is why you have people that are abandoning these platforms because they feel discriminated against. They are abandoning these platforms and moving to alternate outlets. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, the answer is it depends. If those alternate outlets are just going to be a replica of Facebook or Twitter, just on the other side of the political discourse. No, they're not any better, you know, they will be the same problem only flipped on its head. Okay, but if those other outlets will allow diversity of thought and diversity of principles and will allow debate and arguments and they will allow, you know, the bell curve of opinion, then they will be successful and they will thrive, otherwise, they will just be another echo chamber.

Taye 8:18

The First Amendment protects companies like Facebook, Twitter and Parlor, allowing them to moderate against illegal content and legal content that is abusive, such as terror propaganda. And that brings us to a startling reality right now. Facing impeachment, the President has been effectively canceled by corporate America, and those who have Facebook for Parlor have been dumped. As Amazon has walked away.

Romeo 8:44

It may seem like these actions taken by Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, you know, they were necessary and proportionate and good but guess what, if you created these mechanisms that can be weaponized at corporate level to shut down and censor parts of the society, you're gonna be on the receiving end of that when the political winds shift. The moment you start moderating, you open the door for people to complain about being moderated and other people to complain about not moderating enough so so it will never be good enough

Taye 9:22

And this brings us to the knowledge gaps. Internet companies do not have a common framework for how they protect against abuse, but not infringe upon freedom of expression. Tech is dynamic, and meeting the expectations of users to moderate just right, will be imperfect. Back in February of 2020, Facebook released a white paper, laying out an approach and questions to resolve for regulation. In it a call for common frameworks between internet companies for regulating harmful content by articulating clear, predictable and balanced ways for government, companies and civil society to share responsibilities and work together. Without these frameworks, what Romeo shares next is not hard to imagine that a growing number of Americans may draw the same conclusion.

Romeo 10:16

What is happening is that we have corporations substituting themselves for due process, they are clear that for the next four years, at least, they will be subject to regular scrutiny that is going to come from the Democratic Party and from the democratic house. So then they have preemptively positioned themselves as allies of that political party on the left by basically banning everyone else to the right, there has to be some limits, but they should be, you know, so uncontroversial that you know, no one can like you know, have a very, very small percentage. So if we only eliminate the 0.01% of at the extreme ends of the bell curve, that would be uncontroversial, right? But when you start to eliminating the 1%, or the 5%, it becomes very controversial.

I did say I'm more of a libertarian in my leanings. And what I say here will go against that there has to be an element of level playing field. A level playing field means not giving undue advantages or influence to one side versus the other. It's a slippery slope to start asking the platform's to do sense of things. Because the moment you start doing that, the sky's the limit, okay, we can start shutting down things that we are not comfortable with. And by virtue of the law, in virtue of the Constitution, the government cannot suppress free speech and they cannot suppress viewpoints, but you know, what they can do? They can use these platforms that to they have an outsized influence on speech, they can use these platforms is their arm length organization to do just that, there is an aspect of the online that should be subjected to the same principles of you know, freedom of assembly and, and freedom of speech. So, if today we do more of the assembly online than we do, then we do it in real life...

Taye 12:35

It is the public square now

Romeo 12:36

it has become the new public square, do you not think that it should be protected by the same type of amendments? I personally believe that those amendments and probably a US Supreme Court case is overdue. But I think that those amendments should be expanded on or elaborated on to, to clarify that they also apply to the new public speech was is the, online, in a sense, right?

Taye 13:03

Yeah, I think this is the conundrum.

So thinking about where we are now, what would you like to see differently?

Romeo 13:21

The ideal platform is the platform that allows all aspects of the bell curve with the good and the bad, the broad interpretation of the constitution that would be more updated to 21st century. I think it would be uncontroversially regarded as a bad act canceling you know, Trump and taking Parlor offline and so on, right and why I say that. So I'm going to direct listeners to a very instructive case, from the US Supreme Court, which is Marsh versus Alabama,

Taye 13:57

Marsh versus Alabama, 326 US 501 was a case decided in 1946 by the United States Supreme Court in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute cannot be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town.

Romeo 14:18

So the whole town was own built by the company or operated by the company managed and administered by the company. It was their property. And you know, it was to host people that worked for the company in that area and so on. So we had this person Marsh, she basically wanted to distribute, Jehovah's Witness, you know, literature in this town. The company argued that this was private property and you know, they could prevent this person from doing that on the grounds that the rights are not protected by the First Amendment. Well, the Supreme Court basically ruled that even though the town was owned by a private company, it was open for use by the public. And thus it became limited by the constitutional rights of the people that were using the town. In that sense, you know, the ruling was that where private property is used, you know, for public purposes, then, you know, constitutional rights will apply. So if we try to transpose this into the situation that we have right now, where, you know, freedom of assembly, in my opinion was infringed by taking Parlor down, because what what is Parlor in this new world that we're talking about, where, you know, the online is the new public square, Parlor is a way for people to assemble, and, you know, have belief systems and exchange their beliefs. And have, you know, political exchanges even. And you had a company like Amazon, that only unilaterally taken, took them out their property. So you tell me, how is this any different than the Supreme Court case?

Taye 16:22

We were talking about earlier, what are the considerations that we should be thinking about? In the business model itself,

Romeo 16:31

Advertising profiles, they're being used to curate content, I should have a say, in whether that type of curating and that type of shaping information is directed to me? Am I okay for that to happen to me, or am I not okay, we should allow people to make those decisions. It has been said time and time again, that it's not right for Facebook and Google, to to make money out of people's engagements with, let's say, a news media organization on the platform. Without that media actually making any money, or making very little money. In any case, now, from the content they themselves have generated, it goes back to the problem that we identified early on, when we said, news organizations nowadays, they do not have the financial muscle anymore, to be truly independent. So here's an easy fix, let's make sure that we quantify all this engagement that happens on social media, and has to do with our news, content and make, let's make sure we pay the true creators for that. So most of the money there should go to the actual content generator, so and then you will see that there is gonna be huge revenue streams that are to go to journalistic outlets, they don't have those revenue streams, today, they are deprived of them, you know, but but with a change like that, then they will have them and they will be in position to be independent, again, we should also give these platforms an opportunity to to grow and make money and turn a profit in a healthy way and in a moral way. So what I mean by that, too, today, we have this situation where everybody expects everything for 'free' air quotes. So we expect that we're gonna go there and create an account and we have access to all the services, and I'm not paying for that and it's all for free, right, so that that's a wrong expectation to be had. If we have that expectation, it's unfortunately, an expectation that these platforms have pushed on us. So if we have that expectation, then only follows that with such a business model, these platforms have to make their money elsewhere. And they will make their money by productizing, The People, that's a unfair business model, it's unfair to the people and it's unfair to the service providers themselves, if they had a different way to get revenue streams that would be based on just the pure service that they sell to the people and they would not have the same major incentive to get financial growth through these other means. Platforms like this, that have an outsized influence over the society at large, this type of business model is damaging. So how do we adjust and how do we allow these platforms to continue to flourish? Again, this is a concept of a level playing field it should be a level playing field for all actors.

Taye 19:48

And, then we discuss section 230 one of the foundational laws that enable the modern internet. Without it, companies could be held legally responsible for everything people say and is the full circle on this debate. Private companies can create rules to restrict speech if they so choose. This is why Facebook and Twitter ban hate speech, even though it is legally permitted in the United States, these moderation rules are protected by the First Amendment.

Romeo 20:16

My opinion 230 is a good thing. In the grand scheme of things for true platforms, they should be sheltered from liability for the things that their users do there. And of course, there's always limits to that. So, if somebody is advocating for, you know, criminal acts, but they should not be sheltered, if they cease to behave as platforms. Then if they become, you know, editors or publishers, then they should be treated as such. Section 230 should not be abrogated, it should actually be extended and clarified to mean that those protections only apply in the case of the platforms behaving as platforms, you know, so so we should articulate what that means. If we manage to redefine section 230, like that, you would see an instant stop, a hard stop to all the censoring of speech, you will see an instant stop to the deplatforming to the cancel culture, there will be no more incentive for any activist groups to pursue that.

Taye 21:26

What would you like to end with,

Romeo 21:27

It has become acceptable in the past 10 years, I would say, for these extreme forms of cancel culture and deplatforming and so on to take hold. So I think maybe we may have already lost the battle for some generations, but I don't think we have lost the battle for all generations. If we prioritize feelings, at the expense of facts and free speech, we're gonna end up with uneducated people, and they're not going to be able to have that critical thinking. When we abrogate that responsibility for ourselves, and we allow others to make decisions for us and allow others to think for us, that is, when that battle is lost. You have to be looking for alternate sources of information. And I know, you know, people that might be listening to this may right away, they, they will say, oh, here's another conspiracy theorist amongst us, when, you know, labels can be thrown around all day long. But the point is, when you rely on news that are curated for you, you lose the ability of critical thinking, people have to actively seek different viewpoints and different news sources and different media outlets. And sometimes it may even mean going to the propaganda arms of your enemies, you know, channels like Russia Today or you know, China Shaniqua Agency, because sometimes they will tell you about true facts, you know, it's their propaganda, yes you know, it is their propaganda, but you will learn about true facts that you are not getting anywhere else. The same way, we got true facts from Voice of America that we weren't getting from our own regime or government. So again, why people are losing this ability of critical thinking is because people are relying too much on media and news content that's curated for them.

Taye 23:31

Next time on Anatomy of Change. Do we want to go back to January 6, did the President incite violence?

Romeo 23:42

If you're telling someone day in day out you know, that the candidate they voted for is a Russian Stooge... how do you think they're going to take that, you know, they're basically going to become more radicalized and they're going to become more angry, and they're going to become more ready to do mayhem.

Ending Credits 24:10

Anatomy of Change is executive produced by Taye Mohler with post production editing and mixing by James Fleege. Special thanks to Romeo, TM and AT. The original series music titled Reborn was composed by Adrian Berenguer. Additional music featured in this episode by Kadir Demir, The David Roy Collective, Philip Daniel and James Fleege. Our website where you can listen to all episodes, music and artists featured and find companion content is anatomyofchange.org.