CT. Tea.

Hi, everyone. I wanna start this speech by saying, I am suspicious of my own argument, and I'm skeptical of what I'm about to say. So during this speech, you think that guy's dumb. Know that there's a part inside of my head that also agrees with you completely. The argument I wanna make is that we need better arguments against censorship of speech. So if you don't know who I am, there's a reason for that. I'm just some dude who convinced a nonprofit in DC to make let me make videos on the Internet, and they did. And then I convinced the news website let me let me do it. I did not go to Jay's school. I did not produce videos, in college. My experience making videos is making really bad YouTube vlogs about coming out when I was in high school and college. Like, really bad that you can no longer find on the Internet. But the point is that my trajectory and the reason that I'm on this stage is a testament to how the low barrier to entry empowers a lot of voices and means that there are very few gatekeepers to people having, a voice in the public square. That is good because I think I'm a good person and I'm doing good things. The reality is that a lot of people have used that, to really destructive ends. And if you look at basically any major publishing platform online, there's this really bizarre debate about how do we deal with the fact that our pages are getting turned into white supremacist websites and we don't know how to control it. YouTube is dealing with it. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, basically every major publisher is dealing with this fight. And that should make you nervous. The alt right is, like, essentially a digital operation. It's like white supremacy and neo nazi if they knew how to use WordPress, which is very scary. The fact that there is scary speech that challenges our feelings about censorship is not new. What I think is new is that the digital era has made a lot of our best arguments against censorship not make that much sense anymore, or maybe be flat out wrong. Again, I I see angry stares. I know I could be wrong. I'm sorry. I just wanna, like, test this. I'm, like, pushing out my toddler to see if he can walk and he might fall, but, be generous with my toddler. So one argument we have against censorship is that, the marketplace of ideas naturally filters out, bad thought. That even if you're allowed to say awful things, that the audience will turn on you, you'll, like, lose your big news network platform, and that people will walk away. That seems to be not that true anymore, because the barrier to entry is so low that people who say really heinous stuff that would prevent them from getting booked on CNN have, like, hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube because all you need is a camera and a really authoritative voice or maybe a British accent helps. There really is no gatekeeper that stops you from monetizing hate speech on YouTube, and that is really scary. Also, you can publish a lot of that stuff anonymously, which is not new. But, I did a video, for Vox where I had to watch a lot of Tucker Carlson for a long time. And after a while, my YouTube page just became, like, really, really fringe alt right people because it kept getting recommended to me. And a lot of those people are doing it without showing their face and without using their name. And so there's, like, very little disincentive from them for them to stop using hate speech or to moderate in a way that you might expect in normal platforms where you thought, I'm not gonna get booked on CNN anymore. A second argument in defense of free speech is that the answer to bad ideas is good ideas. It's like this the best disinfectant is sunlight. If you have the marketplace, people will argue against it. And that's a very compelling argument. The problem with it is that I don't think it's true in practice. The nature of networks like YouTube and Facebook is that they're incentivized to make your viewpoint, be reflected in what you're looking at. They're naturally insular because there's no corporate or profit incentive to show you a countering view. If you were on YouTube and you were a Tucker Carlson fan and every time you went on, YouTube was recommending pro Islam videos, you would stop using YouTube. Or if your Facebook feed was just like, don't be awful. Diversity is good. You would stop using Facebook. And And so Facebook and YouTube's algorithms are incentivized to take you down the rabbit hole. And that was my experience researching Tucker Carlson. I was like, why is Richard Spencer in my recommended videos? Oh my god. No one can ever see this. And it's because there's a corporate incentive to not expose you to the marketplace, but rather to take you further and further into the fringe. Also the nature of these formats is that they're intrinsically authoritarian. YouTube videos are by their nature not democratic. It's a dude with a British accent talking to you for nine minutes with a lot of confidence and not including alternative views, which is not what happens on CNN. I can't believe I'm defending CNN, but it's a different format. So that exchange of ideas, the ability to be exposed to alternate viewpoints, doesn't happen. Also, I'm suspicious psychologically about that argument. There's, like, good social sign or psychological research that shows that just showing someone, contradictory evidence or corrective information does not actually change their minds, which is, like, so frustrating for free speech advocates because they wanna believe that just showing somebody a better argument will change their mind. In practice, most people tend to double down. Some people call it the backfire effect. That's like a debate about whether or not that's true. But it is very difficult to dislodge someone's idea once it's lodged in place because of the way the human brain works. So trying to correct someone's bad view on YouTube or Facebook is actually way harder than just prohibiting the bad view outright. And the third argument, I think, for the purpose of the speech is that if you shut down bad speech, it'll go underground and that makes it worse. Which is again super compelling, really hard to measure. It's also probably not true anymore because of the way that these platforms have become monopolized. If you lose access to YouTube, if you lose access to Facebook, you actually don't have many other places you can go to mount an effective response or get your message out there, which is why alt right YouTubers if you go to any alt right YouTuber's web page right now, almost assuredly, the last video they posted is YouTube is censoring me. YouTube is awful. They're freaking out about it because they recognize that a huge part of their reach does require access to those, low cost wide reach platforms. So theoretically, if you shut those down, you could actually have a big impact. That's the easy part of the speech. The tough part is, okay, so what? And this is the part where my inner skeptic is like, they're gonna bomb. The big government progressive in me is very worried about corporate censorship, is very scared of Facebook or YouTube telling me what is or is not an acceptable viewpoint. The, like, teenage anarcho feminist in me is very suspicious of government regulation of that speech. Does not want anyone in government power telling me what kind of speech works. And the good thing is that because the speech is short, I get to say, I don't have time to talk about solutions. I just wanted to ask questions. Which is true. I don't know the answer. And this is why I'm so anxious about making this argument is because, every path out looks wrong. I will say, to close, that one thing that every digital platform seems to have in common is that when they do measure what speech can or cannot be banned, there's this clear threshold that calls for violence are outside of the realm of acceptable speech. That if you call for violence in a YouTube video, we'll shut down your video. If you're calling for violence, on Twitter, we'll shut down your account. The reason why is because those platforms all agree that some speech is too threatening to the democratic system to tolerate, that we don't trust the marketplace of ideas to correct that or we don't wanna risk it. And so I wanna close by just saying that I think it's worth revisiting where we draw that line, why we draw that line, and whether or not our faith in the natural corrected power of the marketplace, is still true. If not, are we comfortable with the marketplace not correcting these ideas? And if we're not comfortable, what might those solutions look like? That's the end of my time, so I don't have an answer for that. But, thank you for listening.

Thank you. I want to thank CDT and CKI and Museum Institute and maybe other acronyms I'm forgetting for, having me here today. It's such a pleasure to speak to all of you. I will say that I did pick up on the guidance that we should think about the the future and what the future of speech online will look like, but not so much on the guidance that we were supposed to be inspirational. The assumption might have been, that I would come with a sunny a sunny disposition on those topics because I've long been an advocate and a champion for the Internet, and the Internet is a facilitator of, expanding the expression and the voices that are part of our conversation and our politics. But let me tell you a little bit of story about my journey. So I first discovered personally the power of the Internet for shifting the balance of political power Around 2001, 2002, it may have been sooner, but those are the years that I was kind of ending college, starting my career, and I knew I wanted to go into public service. I thought maybe journalism. And as a journalism student, the first day on a job covering, writing for a paper was so September 11. And I was also moonlighting as an intern at Congressional Quarterly, which then some of you many of you in the room may not even know what that is anymore. But it was a highly esteemed journal that was provided deep coverage of Capitol Hill lawmaking and other political topics. I was leaning away from pursuing a career in journalism because everyone kept telling me that there was a specific journey you had to take, and no matter what, you could not have an express an opinion. You had to be objective. And I thought, well, that's ridiculous because I do have an opinion, and I want to express it. And no one at the time seemed to guide me, unfortunately. It was just, like, a couple years too soon that, that, you know, I could actually pursue a career where I would be able to have an opinion and speak out even even online. But, anyway, in this congressional quarterly internship, one of the great things is that I was a basically a one person new media department, and I could pitch I was told I could pretty much pitch and write anything I wanted because nobody at the bureau really cared what was posted online. This is a dream for a 20 year old. I ended up diving into the true impact of the Patriot Act, the arguments for and against a fixed 435 person House of Representatives, and even the specific triggers for flying the flag at half staff at federal buildings. And guess what? People actually read these things. They cared my work mattered, and my bosses remained oblivious. So the next year, when I I went inside the belly of the legislative beast, I worked for a member of Congress. One of my tasks was to oversee our website and e newsletters. And I'll always remember the time when it hit me. I also handled all of the mail in the office. So it's Capitol Hill office. You manage many jobs. And, it really occurred to me at one point while redoing this site that we could better answer about 80% of the questions that came in if we just posted this information online. That many of these were duplicative. And that would make my job a lot easier, and it would serve our constituents better. And that if we went beyond that, that our online platforms could be redesigned to create a direct channel to the people. This would be very empowering for them. They might actually start to like congress. And so later and later when I led digital for a presidential campaign, I saw the power of organizing tens of thousands of people to host events on the same night across the country. This was 2004, the breakout year for political blogging and on and on. So why am I why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you all this because, my initially, you know, I really bought into this utopian idea of the Internet for good only, sure to solve the world's problems. And in my particular area of politics, what I saw was that it was only Luddites who were fearing this brave new world of unfiltered, unfettered speech, that we were the new guard on the cusp of a revolution with peeper people power politics that would flatten the playing field. All voices would be equal. No gate gatekeepers from the blogger in the basement to the real estate tycoon on Fifth Avenue. But idealism is a is a funny thing. So around 2009, the topics for the forums I participated in started to shift from how do we best use this awesome opportunity afforded to us on the Internet to elevate our voices and empower others. But is this not that that's the topic. That's the conversation that we were having. And then it shifted to, is social media ruining politics? This is a conversation many have today. This was about eight years ago. Some people starting to have this conversation. I think, as you know about this timing, this is when the platform started to really take over. And I know there's been a lot of discussion here today on that, so I'm not gonna go into that in great detail. But the other thing that happened is that as the majority of the American public actually started to engage online, the early adopters didn't like what they saw. As social media platforms and their mobile apps started to monopolize our online lives, the danger of these platforms came into focus. People seem to forget when they had this utopian view of the Internet that as long as something is used used by humans, that inherently there will be, you know, tension and perhaps hate speech and violence and, you know, all the bad things that have happened through the course of human history among humans when they get together in the same space. So I still bet on human nature and its ability to tackle new and unprecedented problems. And I have let's have little doubt that as long as humans are involved and we're not all just just robots, that we'll be overcome the challenges of today. But I do see more clearly than ever that the Internet has serious destructive potential. And adding artificial intelligence to the mix is only going to enhance that potential, that we can't take this space for free expression for granted or the idea that it's, not only only gonna do good, but it's mainly going to do good. And the worst part about this, and this is something that I focus on a lot more since the than the last election, is that this only really affects free this this effect is greater in free and open societies. Russia and China certainly aren't feeling anything from this wave of populism and and all the ugliness that comes with it that's sweeping democracies around the world. Their censorship laws and authoritarian systems eliminate the possibility that like minded individuals dissatisfied with the status quo will be able to find one another and organize to the same extent their counterparts in democratic societies can and do. Now representative government certainly requires robust public discourse and the free exchange of ideas. The problem is that we're now sharing this public space with everyone else on the Internet around the world. The public square encompasses the nation. And because we are free, and the Internet encompasses the world, we face the threats that we face today. We only recently saw that foreign interference in our democratic process was enthusiastically embraced by many participants in that process, something that would have been inconceivable in a pre Internet era. Filling up our information space with anger and divisive rhetoric has proven to be a useful political tool for demagogic politicians and foreign adversaries alike. Adding in the constant threat of bots and AI is only gonna add to the chaos and make it more difficult for the average person to operate independently in any online environment. And even here domestically, all of this great potential that I was so idealistic about, a little over a decade ago to empower a, unprecedented number of people and engage them in the process has instead is is more often used and seen for its power to exploit and manipulate, at least in a political context. So where's the inspiration in all of this? I I do think our our options are are limited because we're at a natural disadvantage against authoritarian governments, as I as I mentioned. And some of that, we're just gonna have to live with. Although, perhaps, it can be a point of pride if we're able to figure out how to communicate with one another and regain a sense of national cohesion even in the face of these efforts to divide us. Digital literacy is lacking. You know, we've long thought about the Internet as this wild, wild west. It was this free space and the first people that came, you know, settled up a an outpost here or an outpost there. There was very little rules of engagement, and that was incredibly exciting for the for and and advantageous for the people who were first movers. And then you start to come have the institutions that come in to control. Well, if you think about it in terms of, for example, how the country was founded or or any society, the the the institutions and the rules that have to go into place so that it's a safe place for us to, to operate may need to come into place here. I don't think we can fully fully resist that. As much as people lament, at times that they you know, rules coming into place like seat belts or as a mother of two, the requirement of car seats. And I think back to a day when I back to a time when people could just freely throw their kids in the back seat and take off and how easy that would be for travel and everything else. Most of us don't want to go back to the era of the wild, wild West. Most of us don't wanna go back to the nineteen fifties. And even for those who maybe say they do, when you challenge about what that actually means, they they change their mind. Global Internet governance is really the wild card. You know, many countries already severely limit and prosecute speech on the Internet. The transition of know, ICANN to an international group worries some people about the possibility of yielding governance to governments who are hostile to to speech. These are all issues that I'm sure you've been talking about today. And this global governance, you know, can be important. It has it is very important. It has an impact on the free speech of 80% of users. Many the great majority of whom will never have learn how to use a VPN, particularly because they don't have to do so many things on do things on their own anymore. But the remaining people who are tech savvy, who are simply looking for ways around regulation, will almost certainly create their own avenues for free speech protections. The Internet is not only danger. I see a lot of of good as well. And it's the same way that it's causing, it's being manipulated and exploited and causing some of the challenges we face today in our politics. I see expression and collaboration as the answer and our only way out. And without this technology, we would we would not be able to get there. It's the same way that it the business incentives feed hyper partisanship and extremism. They are also bringing movements together in the center to strengthen the center and fight back. I think about examples like, you know, the in the wake of the travel ban, and no matter what people think about that policy, people quickly being able to mobilize and organize to airports at the at the blink of an eye. I'm from Houston, and watching that community come together in the wake of the hurricane starts to feed some of that idealism, that optimism that I one once had. Same way the truth is being eroded. There's we've often talked about it as an assault on truth. Being able to access fact and truth is only accessible because of the the freedom of the Internet. People organizing to stand up for the infringement on basic rights and also the need for new leaders and movements that will continue to bring up candidates who represent communities that have often been underrepresented. All of these things can only happen if we continue to protect the Internet as a place for free speech and expression. So again, sure, I'm not that sunny idealist about the power and protect potential of technology to empower the world that I once was. But on balance, and as long as it's humans that still run the Internet, and humans have an intrinsic desire for freedom, liberty, and having a voice, I remain optimistic about our future. Thank you.

Hello.