439: KOSA and the Fight for Anonymous Speech

[Music] Hello and welcome back to the Tech Policy Podcast. But wait a second, has Corbin Barthold undergone a voice change surgery? No, he has not. Sadly, Corbin has handed the reins over to me, Ari Kohn, free speech council at Tech Freedom, and this is my inaugural episode as the host. I have not yet developed all of the quirks and taglines that will make you come to love me if you don't already, and you should. So please bear with me, and I am super pleased to have with me for my very first guest. The one of the only Taylor the rents author of extremely online and the force behind user mag. Thanks so much for joining me Taylor. Thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here. So Taylor has the ultimate year to the ground on the the zeitgeist of Tech Policy, which is why I love talking to her. And we had a little bit of a development last sorry this week on Wednesday when the Senate Commerce Committee had a markup of a few bills. They did the kids online safety act, Kosa, which like the unit act is kind of a zombie at this point. It just keeps coming back and never dying when the screen act. So I don't know which one of those you want to tackle first Taylor. I'll leave it up to you. We can dig into Kosa. It really will never die. I feel like it's you know, it's eternal. It really is. It just it keeps popping back up. It keeps going nowhere. The last time around the Senate passed Kosa by a really overwhelming margin. We heard a couple of different vote counts at the markup on Wednesday, which was funny because nobody quite seemed to remember because it happened so long ago and it just keeps coming back. And then it's stalled in the house, which I'll get into in a second what exactly they're up to. But now it's back without really any changes. And I know what your take is Taylor. But I hate this law. I've been reporting on this law since it sort of came to fruition. They started working on it back in 2021 and it's first proposed in 2022. I was covering it for the Washington Post at the time. I did laugh when Marsha Blackburn during this session was saying, you know, oh, or you know, this law still hasn't passed because of the the money and efforts. Like there is so much money. I feel like that is keeping this zombie law alive. The amount of NGOs and activist groups and extremely well funded organizations that continue to not let this thing die is shocking. But yeah, I'm opposed. I'm a very opposed to the Senate version. And also opposed to the House version, which is slightly better, but we can get into that. But in my opinion, they're both bad. Yeah. And you know, to be clear, the blaming big tech lobbyists is a favorite tactic of both Blackburn and Senator Blumenthal who co-wrote the bill. But it's also just not true to freedom along with civil society groups from across the political spectrum had been warning about this bill since it came out, since it was first introduced about all of the problems with it, especially the free speech problems. And Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal simply didn't listen. They have changed the bill in some ways in what could only terribly be described as putting lipstick on a pig. They haven't fixed the problems. They've just tried to hide them under increasingly dense language. Yeah. And so the House of Representatives didn't pass it because they stated they had free speech concerns. This wasn't a big tech lobbyist money thing. This was a whole bunch of people really raising a stink about it because it has very obvious, very glaring problems. And I'm curious as to what's top of mind for you in terms of those issues. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth remembering that more than 90 human rights and LGBTQ groups signed a letter opposing COSA originally. These groups that have raised problems with the laws you said are not backed by big tech. They're actually quite opposed to big tech. I think their whole issue and mine as well is that like this doesn't regulate tech even. It really puts burdens on the users and it's resulting in sort of content restrictions. Yeah. There's serious speech concerns with this. I have a really strong issue with the duty of care, which is in the Senate version, which I think is the most problematic part of this bill. If you want to get into that effectively, it says that these companies have a duty of care to ensure that they're not harming minors. It's this deeply subjective ridiculous provision that I think the government will use to censor speech. Yeah. And you know, this is not just a use of position. In fact, we have judicial precedent on this because this is hardly the first form of media that has been sued in court. And you have things going back to broadcast television broadcasting, violent movies that kids then imitate. You have violent video games, which kids then play and then allegedly as a result commit mass shootings. You have dungeons and dragons and all things, which is apparently demonic and causes people to commit suicide. And in every single one of those cases, the courts have said a duty of care in this kind of situation is entirely and inherently unworkable. Nobody can know what kind of reaction every individual will have. And you can't account for every individual's reaction when you're talking about speech things. Even the same piece of content can really impact a user in drastically different ways, not just user to user, but like morning to morning, depending on what kind of day you're having, you can have a much different experience with content, let alone between say a 14-year-old who is in a troubled house whose parents are fighting or splitting up, who's undergoing a lot of emotional stress, and a 16-year-old in a wealthy suburb who has no life problems, what's so other than trying to navigate puberty or whatever. Those two kids have wildly different experiences online and trying to act in the best interests of both of them at once, really acts in the best interests of neither of them, let alone the resilience of other kids. So the courts have said, if you impose this duty of care, all it's going to do is make sure that you can't publish anything that's even remotely controversial or could impact the most sensitive or mentally unwell person in the universe because they're going to have some kind of reaction that you could not have predicted. And the work, you know, reasonable doesn't really do the work that the Bill sponsors want it to do because what is reasonable when it comes to how an idea impacts a human being? I just, for the life of me, it's beyond me. Yeah, well, I think it's worth remembering too that this was a couple years ago, but Marcia Blackburn said that we need to pass Kosa to protect children from the transgender in culture, something to that effect. You have Jonathan Height, who is sort of the spiritual leader of this movement of sort of protectionism, has promoted the conspiracy theory about trans contagion. The idea that the internet is turning kids trans, you know, these are not serious ideas. These are very debunked. This is nonsense. And I think what Marcia Blackburn and Jonathan Height might consider problematic content is radically different than what some progressive, mom and organ might consider different. And I think that this Bill strips away parental rights, it strips away adults' rights to receive different types of content because we know that these platforms don't ultimately delineate. If you tell them they have to block harmful content for minors and there's this super high barrier, they just start removing "harmful content and mass." And that's what these platforms have done over the past two years as well in response to just the threat of this legislation. We've seen them, according to the Repro Uncensored project, remove huge swaths of accounts that provide information about sexual health, reproductive rights, etc. And then, of course, we've seen the Massey platforming of LGBTQ people too. But you should care about this whether you're on the left or the right because I promise you, one person's definition of harmful content could just simply mean your political beliefs. Sure. And that's exactly one of the examples I bring up is if you're on the right, say, "Tis James, Attorney General of New York, who has made a big sink about going after platforms after the Buffalo top shooting," basically has said that "gun-related and hateful speech on social media is what caused this shooting." And nothing about the law, as it's written, really says, "Oh, well, it has to be a harm that comes from speech that a particular individual experienced, which would still be problematic." But it's even broad enough that if, say, a minor was involved in some kind of shooting event. Beep. and the political figure thinks that the gun related or, you know, hateful quote unquote speech on social media is what radicalized the shooter. It doesn't matter necessarily that the kid who was injured didn't actually encounter the content at all. What matters is the kid was injured and there is some weird nexus to online speech. It's a really broad remit. And you know, going back to Jonathan Height for a second, just a tangent, I find it interesting that he, 'cause I did see when he was talking about the trans contagion theory, but it doesn't seem to occur to him that maybe his social media is killing children, idea that is spread so rapidly is a similar kind of contagion. I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? I mean, it doesn't seem to occur to him. I mean, let alone the fact that he treated a while back that if we listen to him about what we need to do to restrict social media, humanity might survive. Can you talk about catastrophizing just a little bit, something that he argues against in other contents? I mean, no one should listen to this rhetoric. This is just ridiculous hyperbolic rhetoric aimed at playing up, you know, an emotional reaction and scaring people, frankly, into regulation that will ultimately infringe upon their rights. And it's so disturbing to see the amount of people, I mean, I'm a journalist, so I'm just so frustrated by the way the media has covered this as well, because I don't think the media has given enough credence to the very reasonable objections to this law. - Yeah, and one thing you said before is absolutely true, is that this doesn't just impact the content that children can see, because, you know, one of the things that Marshall Blackburn is super fond of saying is that, well, the platforms will only act if we make them by law and hurt their, you know, bottom line. Well, then they turn around and say, the other side of the mouth, well, this law doesn't actually require any kind of censorship, but the financial incentives here are massive towards not just cutting kids off from content, but disallowing a lot of different types of content at all. You can't say, on one hand, we need to pass this law because they only respond to financial incentives, and then ignore the financial incentives to censor when it suits you. I mean, that's just disingenuous, but that's what they've been doing for years on this bill now, and you know, it's troubling because platforms do their businesses. They do respond to financial incentives. Let's not sugarcoat that, and it's just the fact that the liability that could be imposed. And I guess if I had to find like one thing to give the sponsors a coast of credit for, it's at the very least they did remove this data attorney general enforcement. - Yes. - The duty of care, but they still leave it up to the FTC. This FTC, which has granted itself the authority to basically go after social media for not being the product, not that customers want and expect, but what the FTC thinks that customers should want and expect, they are insinuating themselves into the process as the consumer themselves, and then saying we can protect the consumer interests that we have defined that consumers should have. It's just, and you know, gone off and started, you know, doing things like suing a group of physicians who advocate for transgender care, medical care, and gender-affirming care. And like you can see just, and this will happen by the way, in any democratic administration too, you can just as easily weaponize the FTC with this kind of logic against any other kind of speech. It's just, this is what we have right now. This is what we're looking at, and it's very, very clear that, you know, if the Trump administration has done one thing for us, it has demonstrated the ease with which broad government power can be manipulated and twisted and weaponized against this favorite speech. - Yeah, and we've seen, especially under the Trump administration, such an effort to leverage the FTC to censor content and to shape our content ecosystem. I mean, you could just look at also the recent edict they put out on AI, and they're sort of fight against quote-unquote woke AI, trying to sort of shape the answers that AI can give, you know, to ensure that they're in line with the Trump administration's value. As you mentioned, these powers can just as easily be, you know, abused by Democrats. And I reported extensively on the Biden administration's efforts to censor speech. I bring this up frequently because it was one of the scariest moments, I think of terms of reporting, but I was at this event at the White House in 2024. August, it was August, September, 2024, when Nira Tandon got up, it was advocating hard for Kosa and was promising to remove anonymity from the internet and said that that is effectively what Kosa would lead to, and that's what we need to do to keep kids safe, et cetera. That's terrifying. Obviously that has broad implications for whistleblowers, journalists, activists, these anti-ice activists, and just political speech broadly. And so, you know, I think what scares me so much about Kosa is obviously I'm concerned that the Senate version would pass, but I think the fact that even without it passing, the threat of this type of law is enough to make these platforms overly censored. And in a lot of cases to me, that's even more dangerous 'cause that's not really anything we can challenge in court, that's not really anything we have transparency into. It's just sort of these platforms censoring speech in a way to make the current administration happy. And we see these platforms do that over and over, you know, whether it's Republican or Democrat in power. Yeah, and we've actually seen that in other media already, you know, the, say the FCC calling in ABC's license for early renewal. Well, they're just starting this process that will drag on forever to try and coerce the network into not airing speech it doesn't like. And really until you actually reach that final reviewable decision, it isn't challengeable in court. And in the meantime, you know, ABC standing up for itself in this case, bless them. They didn't sometimes earlier when there was government pressure. And you know, the problem there is if you have institutions, media institutions that aren't willing to stand up for themselves, and there is no way to challenge something in court because it's intentionally through a process that will take forever. And the FCC, frankly, could drag this on forever and never conclude the process if it feels like it. And just, you know, keep going. Then ultimately, it's not just ABC that's injured. It's the American public and the American public has absolutely no way to fight back against it other than waiting for another election. Which, you know, is not an insubstantial remedy, but also is pretty damn slow. Yeah, and I think that even in terms of elections, because these efforts around censorship and surveillance and kind of privacy violations, like these are ultimately bipartisan efforts. And so I'm not sure even who the public can sort of vote for to fight against this stuff aside from maybe a few, a few, you know, members of Congress that have opposed these laws. But I think it was, and you're right, I don't think they could get the numbers right in the beginning of the most recent committee hearing, but they were the markup or whatever. I don't know if is it markup called hearing? Yeah, it was, yeah, it was a mark. It was an executive business meeting, but they were marking up the bills. Okay, well, in the latest meeting in Congress, they were just touting again how bipartisan this bill is and how popular it is among, you know, members of both parties. Yeah, and that's the problem. It's kind of become something like a tough on a crime standpoint where like nobody ever lost an election for being called tough on crime, but plenty of people have lost elections being soft on crimes. There is literally no incentive to ever support like criminal justice reform if you're up for election because then you just get tagged as soft on crime and you don't suffer any electoral harm if you just don't do that. And it's a huge problem because you're right. I don't know who to vote for to stop this kind of stuff because we're in this, we're in the full rage of the moral panic right now. And everyone seems to just assume these things are foregone conclusions. Fortunately, there are people out there professional, mental health professionals like Candace Omters and Chris Ferguson who are out there doing good work trying to rebut on a scientific level, some of this stuff. And we actually just filed a brief basically with Chris Ferguson and some other mental health professionals arguing that, you know, in fact, the science is not show that social media is this malignant evil lurking under the beds of every child or whatever the hell it is. You know, the problem is that you're right. Jonathan Hyde got a huge head start on everybody here, wrote a book about it when I'm a huge speaking tour and convinced everyone before, you know, the other side got organized and started to actually write things the other way that this is the definitive case of how things are and that's not so true. I mean, I think of this great report that I send to people, a lot of the times where some of the top experts studying social media and mental health and children, including Alice Mara, Jacob Smith, Robin Kaplan, Mayor Wadahan. I'm gonna mispronounce her name, I'm sure. But these are people at Duke and UNC and elsewhere. They got together and they put together this huge, it's like an 80-page report on child online safety legislation, it's sort of an explanation of basically how the science doesn't support any of this. And these are academics being like, hey, here's an 80-page report with all the citations you could ever look for explaining that this is, they actually use the word moral panic, which if you know scientists is very rare, but they call it out in this report. And Duke promoted the report and everything. But it doesn't seem to have broken through. And that's why I wanted to kind of mention the money aspect again, because figures like Jonathan Hyde, I mean, these are figures that have an obscene amounts of money backing them. You also see groups like the Tech Oversight Project, which is funded by Pierre Omidiar, a billionaire who has put an inordinate amount of money towards pushing these initiatives. The parents that are on a national tour constantly, these parents are just flown across the country, these grieving parents who have a lot of grief because they've lost their children. I would argue not because of social media when you dig into a lot of these cases, it's a lot more complicated than Susie used Instagram and now she's dead. But these are grieving parents who's grief is being exploited to push this really dangerous sort of political agenda. And there is a lot of money behind that. And I think we talk so much about the money the big tech has for lobbying. And certainly, Metta and Google do their fair share of that. But I think we need to also talk about the money on the other side. And there's a significant amount of it. I mean, there's groups like Design It For Us, which purport to be these like Gen Z grassroots organizations that are funded by billionaires. And they just exist to prop up whatever rhetoric is convenient to the billionaires that are funding them. And it's quite frustrating. I know that's maybe seems naive to be like, gosh darn it, legislation is being shaped by money. In America, can you believe it? But there are a lot of interests at play here. And it's not so cut and dry as I think people like Blackburn would like you to believe. - Yeah, and I've often had that thought I've sat in hearing rooms testifying in Congress and across the country in state houses. And it strikes me how these parents grief, which is real and shouldn't be minimized. They've gone through something awful. And who knows? Social media could have played some role in some of it. And there might be real problems that we could, in a narrow sense, try if we had the wherewithal to actually address in a normal person way. But they are being flown around. They are being paraded. And it's not just happening organically, I get the sense. There is organizing factors behind it that those organizing factors are resourced. And again, yes, big surprise. Money is influencing politics here. - Yeah, but these parents have PR people at some of the top PR firms on retainer. Again, they're being flown out to I covered the social media addiction trial in Los Angeles where these parents were flown out and put up and we're holding press conferences, et cetera. And again, a lot of these parents I feel for them because they've lost a child. And I've covered like the anti-LGBTQ movement a lot. And they will also weaponize parents grief to say, you know, the reason your daughter was killed was because they were gay. Like all of these reactionary groups weaponize parents grief and I think it's really horrible. But I also don't think all parents are responsible and great. And I think when we look at something like the social media addiction trial in Los Angeles. - Oh yeah. - I mean, this is the mother in that case for people who don't know was abusive to the daughter. I mean, there was documented evidence of emotional abuse, physical abuse. They played videos of her abusing her daughter, which the daughter actually documented on Instagram. In court, this is a girl who was failed by the system. Her father abandoned her, her sister, I believe, tried to take her own life. Like this is a girl who had a very tough life, who for years and years and years was failed by the system. Whose mother, I mean, the way that the mother, the just abusive language that the mother used for the daughter alone I could imagine could cause mental health issues. So why are we putting Instagram on trial? You know, I think what, when I was in the courtroom watching those videos, I was thinking why, why aren't we fixing the systems that failed this child? - Right, and it kind of makes you wonder. Like the kid is obviously not to blame. The kid's not the one who engineered a lawsuit. It makes you wonder if the mother seeking reconciliation and a paid is, oh, we can get a whole bunch of money, how that affects our relationship. - Well, it's, yeah, the daughter was kicked out of the house. And of course, now she's back, living, I believe, again, with the mother. And the irony is this girl, her one sort of solace in her life was making sort of fan edits on social media and using the internet as an outlet to the point that that is actually currently what she does as a career. She's a social media manager now, as a profession. - Sounds like it might have been beneficial for me. - The irony, I know it's just, it's all, I think these complicated, you know, these cases are very complicated, but there's just so many emotions at play. And when you have a bunch of parents, again, it's the moral panic sort of tail as old as time, right? Like they always grow out, you know, they bring out the parents whose children were led astray by comic books or Ozzy Osborne music or video games. Et cetera, and it's just a very, I think it's a cheap tactic, honestly. - Yeah, and kind of on the, since we're talking about the social media trial, there's actually news out of New Mexico this week where a judge ordered met at a pay, $567 million, because it claims that its social media platforms are a public nuisance. And I just want to briefly talk about how dangerous of a proposition that is, I mean. - Can we, can we like also just discuss some of the details of how they conducted their like investigation? - What? - Are you aware of what the state resources were spent on? I mean, this is so crazy. And granted, I saw this originally from Metta's comms person, but it is true, but of course they're trying, they were trying to sort of argue, you know, Andy Stone is a self-interested party here, but the state attorney general's, or sorry, the state attorney general had his sort of minions steal real photos of children off the internet, real children, take their photos, use those photos to create fake profiles, lure them, lure predators, establish contact with predators, lure these predators in, not report the predators so that Metta could take action and delete those accounts, but then shut down, delete the phones, delete the accounts, and then say, oh, well, you know, Metta didn't immediately take action on these profiles that we didn't even bother reporting to them, so therefore it causes harm. Meanwhile, now you have permanently linked real children's photos to a predator network. You have exposed real children's images to online predators. This is crazy. And the children's photos who were stolen, I believe they're in Southeast Asia, somewhere outside of America. - Oh, were there any even more danger? - Which is just, it's just like, I'm sorry, I do those children not deserve protection. Also, I cannot take a state attorney general seriously, you know, talking about online harm. When New Mexico is, I believe, 48th or 49th in child welfare, you know, this is a state that is like children are suffering across the board, you can look up the stats for yourself, but are actually-- - They watched an episode of Catfish and said, that's a great idea. - Yes, and that is how they're conducting these ridiculous-- - No offense to never anything. - Investigations. Oh, yeah, here, also in New Mexico, I was looking into this last night when I was on the BBC talking about it, but more than 100,000 children in New Mexico grew up below the federal poverty line. It's much higher than average. And more than one in four children in New Mexico experiences basically a childhood adverse event, a serious childhood trauma, compared to with a much lower rate nationally. So kids in New Mexico are struggling. It does not have to do with social media. And your little catfish schemes are not evidence of anything except that you're wasting government resources, exactly, exactly. It's a publicity stunt. - It's also worth remembering that sometimes for those kids who are struggling, social media is the way out. First of all, when you have restrictions like in some state bills requiring parental consent, when you have kids who are struggling in households or the parents might be working three or four jobs, a parent might not have the time or inclination to sit there and approve social media account or approve every time the child wants to download an app. So that immediately risks cutting those kids off even more. But then on top of it, listen, I grew up in an insular orthodox Jewish community. We're in Chicago. I wasn't like, you know, we were miles around with nobody, but I didn't really know many non-Jewish people growing up. And I was, you know, a little 13 year old gay kid. And if I hadn't found people like me online, I would not have known they existed. And I might not be sitting here today. Think about how much, and I had some parents who are very supportive, who are educated, who are professionals. Imagine how much worse that is for a kid growing up where the parents never home, either because they're neglectful or abusive or they're working so many jobs, [BLANK_AUDIO] to just feed their children. Sometimes, you know, the connections that those kids can build online, who also might not necessarily have the social skills or confidence to make those connections say at school, you know, those things can be real life savers for these kids who are going through tough times. And the idea that, you know, social media is just all bad and we're going to cut them off for it. It just does so much more harm than good, especially to marginalize or under-privileged kids. Like that is, you're just compounding the damage that they are suffering on a daily basis. And it just, there doesn't seem to be much consideration for that. No, there's no consideration. And I think when they refuse to acknowledge the benefits, because they refuse to acknowledge that there is any benefit, right? Yeah, because that would be, you know, put a stake in their heart. Yeah. But, you know, when you don't acknowledge those benefits, you can't also ensure that those benefits are equally distributed. You can't ensure that kids have access to those benefits when you refuse to acknowledge that they exist. I think another problem with, you know, what's going on in New Mexico is number one, their definition of social media is quite broad. So what's app also fell under this case. And this is part of the reason why meta-rollback encryption is because, is because of the legal battles that are happening in New Mexico and the pressure that is being put on them. I would argue removing encryption from a communication is quite dangerous in itself, you know. And I think some of the design changes that they are mandating as well are really bad and dangerous. This is just going to make it harder for young people to use these platforms to navigate these platforms, you know, generally. Yeah. And, you know, the, one of the things that was said during the Senate hearing, I think some said, well, you know, the platforms will say, you know, we can't do feasibly do this. And we don't believe you. And it's like, okay, on what basis do you not believe them? Like, do you, do you have technical skill in this area? Or are you just saying nerd harder? Like, that's a real thing. I mean, it's preposterous that we have United States senators who will not listen to people with expertise in the field because their feelings about what is possible are more important to them than the reality of what is possible. That shows just a remarkable unwillingness to actually consider that their plan might have some kind of flaws. And that's not the kind of quality we should want in a legislator. I got to say, no, I mean, they're not interested in learning about technology. And I think that's why we have such bad tech policy here in the United States. It's, it's quite terrifying. I mean, you have people that can barely turn on their computer. I think of that famous Instagram hearing where one long maker was like, it was like, do you, do you run Finsta? Do you have a blue with all know less? I believe that was blue with all. I can never remember it's blue with all or Warner. There's so many of these people that, yeah. Do you commit to, would you commit to ending Finsta was one of the highlights of my life? Finsta, well, you can, I mean, it's none of these laws I also help consumers like none of these laws and we can get into the screen act as well in terms of like sort of mandating age verification, et cetera, aka identity verification. I think of that other famous moment when Zuckerberg was on the hill when he's explaining the business model of Facebook. I think this was back in 2018, maybe around Cambridge in a little code. He says Senator, you know, we sell ads, right? Or something to that effect. And that is a business model of big tech is harvesting data. We are now going to mandate that these platforms harvest even more data and data on children and a detailed biometric data on children. I thought you wanted to crack down on big tech like, you know, it's just. Yeah, they can't seem to make up their minds. It doesn't make any sense. It is worth reminding listeners that as with the social media addiction trial verdict, this New Mexico ruling is still early stage. Once you get to a jury verdict or a judge ordering, you know, damages be paid, there's still a long way to go. The constitutional issues that are given short shrift at the beginning will be raised on appeal. This is a long way from over people point to these rulings and verdicts and say, Oh, look, it must be true. A jury decided. First of all, that's not what a jury does. But more importantly, the jury and the trial judge do not have the last say in this stuff. There will be review from higher courts. So, you know, there's there's a long way to go on this and I suspect there will be 16,000 different horrifying twists and turns because that's the way things seem to go. So I just want to make that clear that these these things may have come down at the trial level, but they are in no sense final. Before we get to age verification, which is a real problem in COSA, I do want to talk about the differences with House COSA because House COSA, I affectionately call it the House remix. They they tried. I will say they tried. They really they acknowledged the problems with Senate COSA and they tried to do what they could to keep enough in there to placate people and see if they could work their way around the constitutional and free speech issues. And they didn't they didn't succeed. Say that. But you know what? I will give them points for recognizing that the duty of care is just a fantastically terrible idea. Incidentally, during this hearing, Senator Blackburn said that this Senate will never accept the House version because it doesn't have a duty of care, which frankly is great for me because I don't think the House is going to ever accept the Senate version for the opposite reason. So the the House version, if you want to talk about some of the differences that you think are notable, I'll go after you or I can go first. You can go first. At the duty of care is the most notable, I would say. Yeah, let's hear what you like. That's right from from my perspective too. So the House version replaces the duty of care with something that sounds different. And I'll give them another piece of credit here. Originally, it wasn't all that different and it literally just restated the duty of care with slightly different words. And I was like, okay, like you might not call it a duty of care, but that's still a duty of care when it comes down to it. But they did change it a bit. So right now I'm going to pull up the language. So the House version actually says explicitly, we are not imposing a duty of care, which is helpful. That's great. However, it then requires platforms to establish, implement, maintain, and enforce reasonable policies, practices, and procedures to address the list of enumerated harms found in the Senate, or a subset of them actually. Threats of physical violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, distribution, sale, or use of drugs, tobacco, cannabis, alcohol, and gambling. I don't know how you distribute gambling, but okay. And financial harms caused by deceptive practices. But what does it mean to establish and implement reasonable practices and procedures to address that? I mean, it's the same problem with the duty of care with maybe slightly less worry that it's going to be like, okay, well, some random kid had this issue and therefore you're liable, but it's still like on the whole, how do you, how do you quote unquote, address it? The word address is certainly better than preventing mitigate. It provides a wider birth for platform error, which is good because platforms are never going to get this right because it's impossible to get right. That's not to say they shouldn't try harder. They don't do a fantastic job in a lot of cases and they should do better. But preventing mitigates pretty strict terminology, whereas address gives them a little more leeway. So again, some credit for at least trying, that's more than the Senate has been willing to do. And I do believe in encouraging good legislative behavior when it appears. But again, I simply just don't know what it means to address those things, especially when you think about conversation, say around drugs, for instance, the legalization of drugs or the actions of law enforcement when they're enforcing drug laws are core political matters and speech on them is radically protected for minors and adults alike. And what are you going to, is talk about legalizing weed, for instance, does, do you have to quote unquote, address that because it deals with the distribution use of drugs? I mean, yes, probably. I think, the thing is, I think when we, I mean, I agree with you that it's slightly better, I guess. My concern is that these platforms in an effort to be compliant and to protect themselves from kind of a broad reading of these laws, they over-correct, right? We know that they do that. And so we should be, when we write these laws, we should be extra, extra precise and extra, extra clear, and not give these vague kind of edicts that the platforms themselves will just sort of over-regulate in order to be, you know, to ensure that they're not in violation. Yeah, and really, you could blame them, you know, when you're-- Looking at probably politicized enforcement actions here, you know, you're going to do the most restrictive thing possible to insulate yourself from as much potential liability as possible. And this will tag on to the age verification thing a little bit, but there are studies that say that teens are highly likely to seek out help for issues online like addiction issues or mental health issues, because they can retain some anonymity. It reduces fear of judgment and provides a safe space where they can speak candidly about these issues. And in the platform's view, they shouldn't be discussing the stuff at all because that might lead to some kind of government enforcement action. And that's a real big problem because sometimes a teen might not seek any help at all because they are fearful of judgment or ostracization or getting in trouble or whatever. I would so much rather have teens talk about their addiction struggles online with peers and anonymity than not talk to anyone at all about them. I think like on the scale of like which is worse like the winner is clear. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we know which is worse for right. I think it's also worth noting of sort of how kids use social media. You hear a lot of rhetoric. I mean, especially this was going on in the house where they talk about sort of addiction and kids are consuming this content. According to Adam, sorry, whose CEO of Instagram said this years ago, the primary way that young people use Instagram is actually direct messaging. And you can look at platforms like Snapchat, which are just messaging apps effectively the same like the way that kids socialize online is actually not consuming content, the way that adults think so, like adults are the ones watching the videos constantly and not to say that teens don't consume a lot of media online. They do, but they're primarily messaging with each other. And that's why these messaging apps are being rolled into this. And I just want people to really think about like, you know, even if you're fine with these regulations on Instagram because you think, OK, the kid can't watch a video about legalizing weed or something. You OK with your signal messages now being scanned for potential discussion of drug related activity, like, you know, this is these laws are quite invasive and and the way that the platforms respond to them is, is I think a lot, a lot more heavy handed than you probably would be comfortable with as an adult. Exactly. And again, this we will talk about this in just second, it comes age verification, but it's going to affect everyone, maybe not equally, but somewhere close to equally. It's a total aside, that's the thing that's reason to have to pause. I just moved and I've been doing a lot of I just built built ends for our master closet by myself and I've been watching like home improvement videos nonstop and now I've got like a big head about myself like, oh, yeah, I can fix anything which is going to get me in so much trouble one of these days, but you're right. It's me the 40 year old binge watching, you know, carpentry videos on YouTube, which, you know, that's speaks to my life is going, I guess. But a lot of content, you know, I've installed more like fixtures and I have not yet blown a fuse. So, you know what, I'm going to take that as a win from somebody who wants to build a TV stand upside down. But here's here's something, you know, I would say everything I'm very much on like construction Instagram as well, because I'm trying to become a certified home inspector right now, I'm very into like home stuff. But you a lot of the stuff doesn't seem sort of political or dangerous or whatever, but I would say is like a lot of people develop an audience because they start talking about one thing and then they sort of talk about something that's adjacent, you know, a lot of discussion around construction and new home builds, etc. It's tied in with environmental discussions, I, you know, a lot of these home builders have strong opinions on local laws or whatever there is political speech all over the internet and, you know, when we put these restrictions in place, I don't think that you're, you know, home fix it videos are going to be censored. I think that when we think about how the media is moving and this distributed media environment that that we're sort of moving into to put such heavy handed restrictions on harmful content, which often just means sort of politicized content. I will affect a lot more people and I think of this story that I did a couple of maybe a year or two ago, but I looked at all of these different accounts that were suddenly unavailable to people under the age of 18, they were automatically set to 18 plus this was like a change that Instagram rolled out again in response to this child safety stuff. Because people were not doing 18 plus content, it was random celebrities, it was random LGBTQ people, it was a lot of people that would just happen to talk about like some political issues on their profiles. And suddenly their accounts are being set to 18 plus so because some algorithm, you know, detected that maybe your content is sort of vulnerable. I just, you know, no, it reminds me of it reminds me of recipe websites where you get like seven life stories before they actually publish the recipe. Yeah, and that stuff is going to is going to get flagged sometimes, I'm sure. Yeah, you maybe you're talking about your immigrant story before you give, you know, a recipe for how you developed it when you were recovering from an eating disorder. Right, exactly. I just think like it's not like this content is siloed off and there is like, of course there is sort of like accounts that are solely harmful content and of course there, you know, there is some amount of that. But, but it's it's a very small sliver of content on the internet and most most content is a lot more broad. And well, you know, it's way worse than the content on social media that's intentionally harmful is the stuff kids will find if they go off of social media, which at least tries to websites that are dedicated to causing harm that are completely unmoderated. You're going to send kids there instead of social media where things might not be perfect, but at least it's not like the here's how you should commit suicide forum like. Which, by the way, exists and I just have to say something about those forums and I've covered 4chan for a long time and just speaking to the one of their lawyers about this recently. But for all of the moral panic about the likes, the endless algorithms, you know, they claim it has nothing to do with the content these lawsuits, these regulations have nothing to do with the content. It's all about design. Okay, 4chan has incorporated all of the design features that you've asked for 4chan does not have endless scroll 4chan does not have you know they have anonymity, but aside from that they they actually and the suicide forum as well, the pro suicide forum has does not have endless scroll does not have like counts does not have addictive algorithms it's simply a reverse crown. So, I guess those platforms are completely okay. I mean, this is this is the hypocrisy that you see when you just scratch the surface beneath beneath these laws in these bills and these nonsense campaigns and that's how you know, by the way that it and mic mastic is written beautifully about this that it is about the content it's always about the content. Nobody nobody is getting addicted to an algorithmically curated infinitely scrolling feed of beige paint drawing on the wall that addiction really is caused by content that people are interested in actually watching like there's nothing about the algorithm itself that like glues your eyeballs to it and says you must continue watching like the snake in the jungle book with the hypnotic eyes or whatever like that's just not how it works. Yeah, I think of this moment to when I was talking to an advocate on the side of the during this I think of this moment to when I was covering the social media addiction trial and I was speaking to a human rights advocate who brought up the point that I think about all the time because I published my podcast on Spotify. Spotify actually has significantly more addicting features than Instagram they have more likes they have more algorithmic feeds they deliver content that they claim in their marketing to be able to directly alter your mood. They know that you there's a great book called mood machine by Liz Kelly all about Spotify they harvest vast amounts of data and they use that data to suggest content to you that will affect your mood music that maybe makes you sad they can sense you know if you're going through a difficult time they might suggest a break up playlist right. Spotify is also now in the content game they have short form video they have long form video they have actually less content moderation than meta platforms due because it's RSS so and again I'm not arguing to regularly Spotify quite the opposite i'm just saying that this is a moral panic over a couple platforms. They have basically democratized help democratize the media and you if they were consistent at all they would be just as angry about you know other apps like Spotify etc etc and they're not because it's nonsense. Right and it that's not as sexy is going after you know the deep pocket social media platforms that are in the news every day like it's just it's. Unfortunately a lot of it is geared towards getting sound bites on television I mean that that's called what it is here it's not about substance it's not about being consistent it's about what can a what can I say to get myself on TV and be what can I do or say to tell my constituents who have been you know just went to a Jonathan height speech or whatever who are now banging on my door asking what I'm doing what can I do to convince them that I am quote unquote doing something. And you know the old saying something must be done this is. something. Therefore, we must do this. You know, it's been proven time and time again, and this is certainly no exception. Yeah. So, yeah, right? Exactly. The second bill that I wanted to talk about, we can cover this one very briefly, but we're going to roll it into the age verification conversation with COSA. And to be clear, I think both of our position here is at House COSA, while improved, also should not be passed. There's just no way to fix a bill that requires a platform to prevent harms caused by speech. It's unconstitutional, it's not possible, and all it does is lead to censorship. I think we're, uh, simpatic on that one, right? Yes. We're like. I would have been very surprised. You said no. Like super surprised. Um, so the screen act was, is a bill that is purportedly aimed at adult material. And it's modeled after some of the state bills that, you know, like the bill that was upheld by the Supreme Court in free speech coalition versus Paxton, which was wrongly decided, but it is what it is. Except there's one problem here. The Texas bill required that the service and question have 33.33% or more of sexually explicit material, which minors don't have a constitutional right to access, but adults do. The screen act doesn't have that limitations. So like any service that like there's like one naked picture on or something, oops, got to age verify everyone. Well, it's not even just a naked picture, right? I mean, the enforcement of the screen act also falls under the FTC. Um, we know Andrew Ferguson's comments about, um, the LGBTQ community, right? He has said that he's going to fight back against the trans agenda, et cetera. Um, so often these lawmakers deem any LGBTQ contents actually explicit, they deem reproductive health information as sexually explicit. Um, I mean, I was talking to a question fundamentalist group recently that, that was arguing that just sort of like, basically, like, such a broad variety of women just going out and, and doing daily activities is considered sexually explicit to some of these groups. And so I, I, I'm very concerned about these types of laws because you can put in some language around it, but, but effectively, um, it's, it's kind of quite radical people that are interpreting these laws and enforcing them. And, and I am concerned about how they would be enforced and the interpretation of some of these, um, delineations around sort of what's explicit material. Yeah, to drive that home, um, I recently published a piece about the house version of Kosa, which I will put the show notes for readers, in which I link to the instances where providing any information to youth about LGBTQ issues just generally is labeled sexual exploitation or abusive. Uh, Ken Paxton called, uh, gender affirming care, I believe child abuse. Uh, so, you know, there's, there are, there is precedent for this. We don't have to, we don't have to speculate, we don't have to wait and see, like, they're already doing it. Also, adults should be able to consume adult material anonymously without providing their government ID. That's the other issue here, right? Is that, why am I as an adult being forced to provide my driver's license view legal content? Uh, that, that's exactly right. And, you know, unfortunately, the Supreme Court was not very, um, receptive to that in Free Speech Coalition. Um, I know. You know, it's, it's a real hit to, you know, the rights of adults everywhere. But things are made way worse when you bring in content that isn't adult content. So let's talk about, first of all, how Kosa basically requires, uh, age verification. It is true whether it's House Kosa or Senate Kosa, because if you want, if you, if you want to treat minor users differently than adult users, you have to know which one is which. Exactly. And there's really very few ways to do that. I mean, there's, there's facial age estimation, which is like the only, like, non ID verification. First of all, that does, that's not real. That's, let's be, let's be real. That's not real. I'm giving it more credit than it deserves here. But it's also better than I can tell your age by how your finger moves, which is something I actually have heard. Yes. Uh, all of these things are ridiculous. You cannot tell your age that the reality is the biological reality as Brian Johnson, right? The longevity influencers will tell you is that humans don't age on a linear process. Humans don't all age the same way. There's no, there, you know, there are sort of broad changes that teens go through, but puberty specifically, uh, is sort of the time in, in a person's life when they will have the most biological changes to their body. So there is simply no way to determine a child who is, you know, 16 years old and 360 days versus like 17 years old, right? This is ridiculous. You don't go through a metamorphosis on your 16, the night of your 16th birthday or your 18th birthday. So I am a beautiful butterfly. So I did. The only, the only way to reliably verify someone's age is to verify their identity. And that is what these platforms do. That's what these age verification systems do. I just was at trust con recently, the trust and safety professionals conference that happens every year in San Francisco. There's all these, you know, identity verification vendors and it's, it's companies like persona. It's companies like even clearer, you know, there's other, um, I can't remember the third name of the, the main sponsor, but it's all these companies that are identity verification companies. They are know your customer. The next TSA precheck for the internet. I mean, that is effectively what these people want. That's what these lawmakers want to enact. Um, and it's, and it's worse than that too, because as we know with all the rise of sort of data profiling, et cetera, is that this data once it can be tied to you, it is, it is not, uh, it does not remain private or secure. Um, these, these platforms are constantly hacked. This data leaks. It makes its way into the commercially available, uh, to collect the better targets they are for, for the thieves. Yes. Exactly. So it's, it's just there's so many liabilities and problems with all of this. And I think far too many people, I'm trying to get the media generally and other reporters to stop using the term age verification and put the term identity verification in the headlines, which I've been very unsuccessful at. But like, I, because people don't want to, like identity verification means something when you say age verification for whatever reason, 99% of people in the public, they think it's something that's going to apply to children. Yeah. One, you know, here's the thing. I hear a lot of people saying, well, oh, we can do one of these new, fangled technological things where, oh, so, Yodi doesn't, the Facebook doesn't have the identity or the, you know, the age verification information. It's only that third party of the Yodi or, though, whoever whatever the vendor is. And they just send back a signal saying it's been verified. But people don't really think through how this worked. Because first of all, all that data simply must be retained because everyone has to be able to prove compliance. So you have to be able to prove that you did identity verification on this, on this particular account. And the signal came back, yes, and there has to be verification that that identity verification was performed properly. You can't just erase all the evidence that you did the thing that the law requires you to do unless the government is willing to accept, say, meta saying, here's the list of user accounts and it's a checkbox for everyone saying we did it. If they're not going to accept that, which of course they won't, then you need to be able to prove it. Furthermore, it doesn't fucking matter that it's two different parties that have the two pieces of information. It is trivially easy to connect to the two. And frankly, also at this point, to steal the two. And then come up with all the same information as if one party. Criminals, you know, they say, oh, they wouldn't be a criminal if they were smart. And that is just absolutely not true when it comes to cybercriminals. They're very, very smart and they're very good at this kind of stuff. And if that information exists and there is any possible way to link it, they will absolutely without question link it. Absolutely, with AI tools as well. Yeah, exactly. The skill set it takes to do it is decreasing, which is going to increase the number of people who are successful at doing it, which is a whole other issue. But it's just, there's no way to engineer around it because you have to be able to link this data. And once the data exists, it exists forever. And it doesn't go away. And it doesn't become unlinkable after, you know, five years or whatever. It's just always there sitting in the background lurking, waiting to make your life a living hell. Yeah. And I think it is very concerning to me that there is no conversation about protecting privacy and data privacy at a time. Oh, much of the problems people want to solve could actually be fixed with the data privacy law, but nobody's interested because it's not sexy and it, frankly, it's hard. It's really hard. Exactly. Exactly. But I think this is hard, which is bizarre. Well, it's not hard because you have a massive amount of money pushing it. You have this PR machine manufacturing consent. The public is just eating up whatever slop headlines about it that they get, you know, nobody has sort of a nuanced understanding of any of this. And I'm just really concerned. And especially as somebody that's covered it across like multiple administrations now, like I don't see any political faction that's really organized against it aside from like the libertarians, shout out to the libertarians who like are always kind of fighting these laws. But like aside from them, like the left is on board, the centrists are on board, and the right is on board. And all of those people just want to weaponize these laws and these government agencies and policies to censor each other. And nobody is fighting to protect our rights. And that's the terrifying sort of process. It's because none of them can conceive of a reality in which they are not in power, except including the ones who currently aren't in power somehow still can't imagine not being in power. I don't know how that works, but it seems to be endemic. It's really, really baffling how you have Democrats right now who want to give the government more power to do stuff like this. And it's like you're like living through the case study of the power that you give to the government will be used by your enemies. You are going through it right now and see how you are still blind to it. It doesn't make any sense to me. But again, it's because it's about a lot less than substance and a lot more about PR and media and emotion. Yeah, emotion and just sort of tapping into people's moral outrage and need to feel superior. People don't want to tell a nuanced story. They want to feel like they protected the kids. I was just dying at watching the meeting yesterday in the Senate when there just so much of it was just them sort of like congratulating each other and thanking each other and then thanking the parents and congratulating it was just like what is this circle jerk like get just do anything. Do you accomplish anything? Why are we paying you? Yeah, well, if for for the listening audience, if you couldn't hear my eyes rolling, they were rolling, but you might have heard it. But let's end with even the worst, like the worst part, then your date is out there and it's going to be stolen and your identity is fucked forever. And that is again, something we're living through a case study on. You have the government, CHS and ICE literally going after social media records to try to find people saying very not nice things about them on the internet and threatening them. And they're using grand jury subpoenas. There was just an article this past week from the Wall Street Journal, a big expose on this. And in February, ICE was busted subpoenaing Google for subscriber information and they're claiming, oh, it's to prevent agent doxing. Never mind the fact that ICE's version of doxing means saying the name of anyone who works for us, which to be clear is not doxing. You have a right to know who the government employs in public facing law enforcement. Sorry, ICE, but the identities of agents are not private information that would make a doxing. But to them, it is. And they're sitting here casting dragnets on social media, trying to find people who are saying or criticizing the government. And that's exactly the thing that I was warning about before this administration came along. I said, even like rogue government agents, you don't even have to have the whole government in on it. You have to have some guy at the FBI or the IRS who wants to go and find people that they don't like who are saying things they disagree with and try and make some trouble for them. But this is being weaponized by the full force of the federal government right now. And it's just a devastatingly clear picture of what happens when that identity information is mandated to be collected and then preserved is that the the government has a real easy way to find dissidents. And it happened before it's happening right now, and it will happen again. And they don't even have to use formal legal process. Sometimes the threat alone of what the government might do is enough to scare some people into handing over data. Maybe the biggest platforms can afford to fight it. But the smaller ones certainly can't. What if there's an anti-government web forum or something covered by one of these laws and it's run by, you know, Mimi dissident down in, you know, Oklahoma or something. I don't just made that up off top of my head. And all of a sudden, there's, you know, the government's calling saying we gotta have the list of all your users because people are quote unquote threatening ice by saying ice is bad. Well, the government is currently, I mean, the government is currently doing this New York Times reported months ago about the government sending hundreds of subpoenas a week to meta and Google to unmask anti-ice accounts. So yeah, once again, as you mentioned, we don't really have to imagine these violations happening. And the way this sort of ratchet works as well is that once the government has this power, they won't give it up. Once they establish these systems for surveilling social media, et cetera, they don't roll back those systems. And I think of countries like the UAE, right, which have extreme systems of policing speech and extreme surveillance mechanisms and that the government leverages to surreal online speech. And you have some of the architects of Kosa and these other bills actually praising the UAE for their speech laws and praising really bizarre countries like Malaysia, Indonesia. These are countries that jail journalists, right? Like, and this is who their unified human rights violators. So that actually brings us to another point because it's not bad enough that our own government can have access and collate all this data about us. But what happens? People are always worried about what China is going to do. What Russian hackers are going to do? What happens when the Chinese government wants that information about Americans as people scream during the TikTok fiasco that they were after on every single American, no matter how unimportant they were worried that TikTok is infecting the minds of kids or whatever and doing the Chinese Communist Party's bidding. However, you can do that by infecting the mind of a 12 year old. I don't know. I still don't quite understand that. But what happens when they want to go after all this user data, maybe for people who are politically connected or sensitive targets, or the social media platforms now have to maintain this data, they're going to get it. Trust me, China, Russia, North Korea, whoever they have sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities, they're going to be able to pull it off. Yeah, this is just going to give us more vulnerabilities to these systems. I mean, the frustrating thing about all of that and going back to the TikTok ban too is that if we actually cared about China not accessing our data, we would pass comprehensive data privacy reform. We would ensure that these apps actually can't collect the vast amounts of data that they do collect on us. Because you could ban TikTok. It could disappear tomorrow, right? And China can still get all the data they want from hacks, from leaks, from, you know, third party data brokers, which are maps of industry in which we know. Yeah, and also which we know, by the way, the DHS is also purchasing data from. So, you know, I think it's scary. What scares me the most is like these people really talk out of both sides of their mouths because in one sent, because on one hand, they're decrying China and Russia and saying, you know, look at these authoritarian countries, we have to protect Americans from. But then they also praise the regulatory structure of those companies and actually seek to imitate it and enact it here. I mean, we have Jonathan Hyde, obviously, one of the architects of, I would say the modern censorship movement online, praising countries like Malaysia and Indonesia that jail journalists, we had Macron, the French Prime Minister, praising the UAE. I mean, this is terrifying because these are people that are, I mean, obviously, Macron is abroad, but we have a lot of lawmakers here writing laws, listening to people and taking guidance from a lot of other sort of experts or other world leaders that seem totally comfortable with authoritarian control over online speech. And, you know, we also know how regular, we know also how Russia passed a lot of their internet censorship laws in the early 2010s. It was around 2013, I think that they passed a bunch of these online safety laws primarily aimed at censoring LGBTQ content off the internet, but it was all amidst a moral panic there as well. And so this is just how they prime the population to accept these draconian regulations. And fun fact, since we last spoke in our first recording, just this morning, we got news that France's constitutional authority blocked Macron's plan to ban under 15 from social media, so that's a fun little development. Bordeaux, you don't. Well, it's interesting that it seems like I guess teenagers in France have more first amendment rights than a lot of young people even here right now. Yeah, I mean, so you got to worry about thieves, identity thieves, criminals. You have to worry about our own government. You got to worry about adversaries unless you're going to start worrying about what your dog is cooking up on you, you know, we've pretty much covered all the bases here. You got to worry about everything. And that's all to say nothing about the fact that we have a constitutionally guaranteed right to speak anonymously. This is all been somewhat of a practical conversation. But we do, time after time, the government has tried to impose say restrictions on putting your name, you have to put your name on a political flyer or a leaflet. And the court said, and the Supreme Court has said over and over again, it doesn't matter if the government thinks that the electorate would find quote unquote additional information about who made the flyer useful. The government doesn't have any kind of legitimate interest in forcing political speakers to identify themselves before they are allowed to engage in civic conversation. Doesn't override your right to make your political views known and not necessarily tie your name to it, which is incredibly important when you think about the number of deeply unpopular ideas that have ultimately found their way into acceptance, but they never started out that way. They always started out the type of thing that, you know, got you ostracized at best and, you know, potentially far worse. You know, for all the talk of, quote unquote, heritage Americans or whatever the hell the people are saying these days. You know, there's not a lot of thought given to the fact that some of the very things this country was founded on and founded to protect are not just being tossed under the bus but tossed directly into the woodshipper and then the shavings are being retrieved and put through it one more time. Yeah, I mean, I just think the fact that so many people are against anonymous speech generally online today is concerning. I've brought this up many times, but I went to this event at the White House back in the end of summer, 2024. They had this big content creators day and they had Nira Tandon, a senior advisor to Biden up with all these content creators, you know, praising Kosa, talking about how they're going to remove anonymity from the internet and that's going to make everyone safer and he's, he had content creators are like cheering, you know, and you constantly hear this. I mean, I'm in very much like a lot of these sort of like online safety spaces and you'll hear, well, this is for safety. We need to remove anonymity from safety. We know that that it does not correlate to safety forcing people to speak under their own names does not make everyone safer. In fact, it silences a lot of people and yeah, I also worry about not just our anonymous speech online, but our ability to just consume information anonymously, which is being eroded. It's being eroded by this data broker industry. It's being eroded by the government. It seems like we have no one out there fighting for privacy rights. I mean, yeah, the, the right to consume information anonymously was dealt somewhat of a blow in for you speech coalition versus Paxton. Unfortunately, but that's only for adult content. You know, it's really important to be able to read deeply unpopular opinions and ideas without the government peaking over your shoulder. I mean, there are any number of countries in this world. Unfortunately, we're simply reading political dissident websites or LGBTQ websites can get you tossed in jail or worse. I mean, freedom to read is extraordinarily important. You can't have freedom of speech if you start curtailing freedom of read to read also. Like it's just the go hand in hand. Several justices have recognized that over the years. And, you know, it's just it portends a very dark future for us. Unfortunately, and, you know, hopefully we can stem the tide. Hopefully the the backlash to the tech lash. I don't know, whatever, whatever we'll come up with a snazzy name for it later. We need a better slow again. Do we ever we've needed a better slow slogan for years? I mean, this, the other side has got all kinds of fun for the kids stuff and we're stuck here saying free speech, you know, which is perfectly fine for me, but we need to be a little bit sexier, I guess. Well, I think about this conversation also that I had with the human rights person that runs a human rights group. And they said they don't even bring up the words free speech anymore in their marketing. It's actually really hard to get any one that is basically 30 and younger to care about this issue. A lot of these younger people don't actually believe in the value of free speech, which is I think really scary. That's terrifying. And that actually points to the need to highlight it more than ever, because it's all fun in games until you're the one with the unpopular opinion, right? And we need to do a better job of teaching young people why free speech matters, why it's not a journeyward. And frankly, to encourage them to not seed the free speech topic to people they disagree with because that's what they're doing. They're basically handing people that they don't like a big W there. I mean, it's, it's got to work for everyone who works for no one. And we've done a really bad job over the past couple of decades of teaching that. Civic's education is and my estimation really down the crapper. I think that's probably shared by a lot of people. But you know, it's really important to impress upon people why it matters even when they think that they are in the majority. And you know, it comes down to showing them. Again, I keep coming back to this, but like you can't live through this current moment in time and just not see it. It's right there in front of your face. Well, maybe just to start rubbing some people's noses in it. Yeah, I think a lot of people are just in their delusional, their delusional. They really do think that this system is only applied to baddies. People that have bad thoughts, right? And it will never be applied to them because they're good and they have good thoughts and they're not, you know, ever going to end up. Yeah, they're pure. And the leopards will never eat their face. Right. So I'm not very depressing note. As it's customary on the tech policy podcast, I want to give you the last word, anything you want to say, any work you're doing, anything you want to shamelessly plug, please have at it. Yes. Well, I'll plug my substack. It's at user mag.co. The best way to support my work is buying a subscription to my substack or my patreon. It's just at Taylor runs. I have a YouTube channel. So please subscribe. I have a series that Ari has been on many times. My podcast talking about freedom online and free speech issues and digital rights. So please subscribe to my YouTube. You can find me anywhere at Taylor runs. And thank you so much for having me on. And we will drop the links in the show notes. That's user mag.co.co.net.com. I do have a dot com and it redirects because I eventually got it. But yes, it's hard to me to get. Well, no, I guess no one else really cared about it. I shouldn't, I shouldn't honestly. I know I know I know I shouldn't reveal my, my, my, I shouldn't even whatever it's holding. Anyway, it's yes, it's user mag.co. Well, it's a phenomenal substack. I'm a regular reader and you should subscribe. Thank you so, so, so, so very much for being my first ever guest as a host. This is exciting. I always have a great time talking to you. And if you listeners out there enjoyed this conversation, if you want to see if you might enjoy future ones as I get the hang of this or if you want to watch me fail miserably and laugh as I continue to try to figure this out, please, please, please, go to your podcast platform of choice and leave us a review and a five star rating if you think we deserve it. While you do that, I will keep doing that digital thing I do and see you next time. The Tech Paul's podcast is produced and distributed by Tech Freedom, a nonpartisan nonprofit think tank in Washington DC. To learn more about artwork, make a tax deductible donation or find other episodes, find us online at techfreedom.org. [Music]