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of government. we're funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. >> comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> now now now a discussion on the risks social media could pose for democracy with former house majority leader richard gephardt. this is about 40 minutes.

>> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome alex phrasier, the honorable richard gephardt, farrow candice, eli frazier and nicole tisdale. >> just waiting on one more here. mic challenges. while water waiting, it's a pleasure to be with you, audience but for me personally, it's a true privilege to be with this panel, an incredible group of people, many whom i get to work with on a regular basis on the council for responsible social media. as i've sat here these last few days and listened to these conversations and grappled with the core of what we're trying to

do and understand, i've come to one central question, can our democracy survive if something isn't changed in our information environment? and of course at the core of that is social media, which is what we're here to talk about today, technology. and it's become the dominant form of communication. it's becoming the predominant way in which people get their information and news, particularly for young people. and what has this world resulted in today? very different conversation if we were having this conference 20 years ago. well, what it resulted in is mass spread of false information flooding the airwaves, creeping into our minds. it resulted in the worst mental health crisis ever for young people where we see 2/3 of young people saying they're anxious more than half of the time. self harm has increased

threefold for young girls. it's remarkable what happened to our democracy. we think where congressman gephardt served in the united states house of representatives. we find it hard to understand how these are the same institutions. you think of how fractious it is. we didn't have a speaker of the house for three weeks. bipartisanship seems to have died. so much more has changed in the era of social media, not to mention our foreign adversaries are licking their chops and using every opportunity they can to divide us further, to spread disinformation and so much more. so i paint this picture for you all because it's really important to understand what the center of this is, which is a broken business model we heard a lot about last night from cara swisher, which is about engagement, keeping your eyes on the platforms with the most powerful, addictive technologies ever created, sucking you in to they earn more money. and through those business models, we see then powerful

algorithms to keep us in information silos or worse, radicalized people in very profound ways. now we have to deal with degenerative a.i. and all that thrown in the mix of this cycle. i just painted a dreary picture for you. but i promise you this is the optimistic panel. we're here to tell you there's real genuine help because we cay day for the possibilities of change. with that i'm going to turn now to our distinguished panel and start with the issue of kids. many of you may have seen in january, the c.e.o.'s of the big tech companies came to washington and were dressed down universally across the aisle, so much so mark zuckerberg was compelled to apologize to grieving parents in the room. it was a rare moment of bipartisanship, a glimmer of hope there is possibility to do stuff with both parties. and that is best demonstrated by

the kids online safety act which has 60 co-sponsors in the senate, just introduced in the house this weekend, something we're working on very intensely. while we care about the future of our kids and the health of their mental state and so much more, it has profound effects for democracy and what we're talking about as well. my question, we'll start with congressman gephardt. outside of the immediate impact on our children and safety, why is kosa so important for our broader tech reform effort and how can it have a bigger impact on our information environment and democracy?

we believe cosm can be passed this year and sent to the president. it's a organization with 40-50 members and very diverse from all different selectors of this problem, and we're working top-down, a lot of the groups that are great that are here are working bottom-up to fix this problem. you need both top-down and bottom-up. and we go up on the hill and talk to republican members, democratic members, and i've never been more optimistic than i am today that we're going to get legislation done this year as the beginning of dealing with this problem.

alix: anyone else want to weigh in on the environment? >> having worked on the issue of young people getting radicalized for the last 20-plus years since 9/11 is that we learned a lot about the process of radicalization and how ideas can be weaponized. we have across the board, both from conservative and liberal entities, universities, as well as think tanks and nonprofit organizations done a lot of thinking around what we can be doing to be able to protect young people. farrah: what was just said about we need a win is extremely important because there's been so much failure along the way. we've failed our children and failed the future of the american leadership, whether or not they are going into the public sector or private sector, we're looking at generations of young people for whom these ideas are really compelling and

if we don't do more today to be able to build a safety net for our future generations of americans, what are we doing? so i couldn't agree more on the issue of we need a win. but i will also say that win can be backed up by data we didn't have 20 years ago and we have today. >> i really appreciate the optimism. and i think it speaks to there's kind of been a learned helplessness about this problem, that, like, we can't do anything about it. and i think that's pernicious and starting to change. and, you know, the conference has democracy in the title, but digitally we live essentially in kind of these autocracies. we operate in, you know, corporate environments that people have no say in, they have no rights in.

and i think shaking that office and starting to think about how do we as citizens govern our information environment is a really critical step that we need to kind of take. so this is a start to that. >> i'll add to what everyone is saying. but also, i want our optimism to be empowering. i always tell people these social media companies owe us, y'all. we use their the platform, they make money off of us, they operate in an open society. all of that is the foundation of a democracy. so while i'm very optimistic, i'm also really forceful about this is no longer we're asking you, we are demanding accountability and we're demanding transparency. nicole: we are demanding these social media companies do their part to uphold democracy.

i'm very forceful and passionate about that because i think that's also included in how we get the win. we stop asking and start demanding. alix: more claps. let's go now to national security and we're fortunate enough to have some real national security experts with us here onstage. russia, china, iran, and others regularly interfere in our elections, polarize us further, spread false information through disinformation campaigns and much more. the house recently passed a bill to essentially ban tiktok. it's taken up to the senate and president biden said he'll sign this bill into law. the reason for this is there are concerns about data, the c.c.p. is active to sensitive data and the ability to manipulate the algorithm advantageous to the communist party and not american policy. starting with you, does this

approach make sense and expanding that further, what else can congress and the u.s. government do to most effectively protect u.s. national security when it comes to foreign platforms like tiktok and our own companies domestically. farah: that's a real critical question you're asking and i want to scope out a bit before we get to the nitty-gritty and solutions because solutions are available and affordable right now. that's the headline. let's take a step back and think about what human aspects we have. outside of time, which is in fact the most precious asset that we have, our own human data and information is the next in line. and what we are talking about today in the world we have constructed, and it's not just america but around the world. that data has been used and it's part of our daily life. we can't live without sharing data and what food you eat or what clothes you buy, all this

stuff. it's part and parcel of how we live. but for the average american, we aren't -- they aren't waking up every day wondering what russia and china and other nonstate actors like an isis or hamas or a neo-nazi group might be thinking. for those of us who have been doing foreign policy, we think about those alongside what's happening domestically and that domestic piece for me is part of what i think is most compelling because we are not living in the

we the people have to build things bottom-up. as we always have. as we always have. that's what makes this country so fantastic. is that the people do things. i think the digital agency is a

real help. and i hope we can get something done on it. let me give you my wish list for legislation had that i hope we can get done in the next year or two. number one is cosa. we have to take care of our kids. lot of people out there dt know the dangers that come from the way social media operates. one of the mothers told me her story. she said, my son was 14, he came to me one day with his phone and said, look at this. this is funny. she said, what is it?

a fay days later she finds him hanging by a belt in the garage, dead. why did that happen? the media platforms, if i'm a youngster and asking questions about eating disorders or being depressed or cutting myself. the algorithms drag me into these challenges and i'm told there are 15 different challenges that all lead to the same results. and the people that run these platforms know what they're doing. this is immoral behavior. i'm sorry. so we need kosa. but the property that they use to make their money, is done, they know everything about you if you're on the platform.

everything. so they know to boost to you information to keep your attention on the platform so they make more money. legislation would help with national security and everything we're talking about. the third thing is section 230. and i don't want to go too long on this, but i voted for section 230 in 1994, whatever. and if you'd like to hear all my bad votes, kid spend all night. that was a bad vote but at the time the platforms came to us and said, you've got to make us immune from harm that would be caused by what's on our platform. if you don't, you'll never have an internet economy. these companies are little bitty companies then, right? and they second said, more importantly, we're just a dumb

pipe. we don't put any content on, the people put it on. so let them be sued but don't sue us. since then they've become the most intelligent pipe in human history. they know everything about me so they're boosting me information 24/7 to keep me angry and upset so they keep my attention. so we need that piece of legislation as well. maybe we can't rescind it. maybe we can amend it to make it safer so that they have to have accountability for the harm that they are affirmatively creating. one of our mothers tried to sue the platforms because of the harm that came from her son killing himself and the suit was thrown out because of section 230, immediately. force the digital agency. my wish list for top down, those

are the four things, and we're going to work our heads off to get those four done. >> for those who are not aware, section 230 isn't the act but essentially gives social media platforms and technology companies blanket immunity for lawsuits, for the harm they've caused. you want to jump in? >> may i say a couple things in response to the two wonderful comments that have been made? i want to pick up on this idea of who we are as americans. and who we've always been. i see a lack of imagination on these issues and surprises me because we don't have a lack of imagination in america. we figure out how to do things as americans. for some reason this is too hard, right? and i look at what we have decided is important to society,

the decisions that we are making as society about ourselves, and i shake my head because we see what's coming. we see the train that's coming, yet we aren't seeing anything to change behavior. what we said top-down, bottom-up, it's also circular. we have to look around to say where are the places? we have creativity and imagination we haven't thought about before? the digital agency is one exceptional and really smart idea. there are lots of smaller things that will nudge people in a direction that will change behavior. we did that when aids came in the 1980's and we never could say -- we couldn't talk about safe sex and we couldn't say the word condom outloud and we thought how could we get americans to change their behavior? years later we figured it out. there was a time in america, to say -- if a european looked at

an american, they would say they'll never recycle and change their behaviors, americans aren't like that, they're so wasteful and don't do what we do. well, over time we taught communities how to put plastic in this place and paper in another. so these kinds of behavioral changes can happen. the nudges that happen both in the private sector and public sector can develop itself in such a way that these protections that we are talking about, the safety component, but also the society component are there for the taking. and for me as i think about what you just said about who we are, we the people ought to be better at going forward in the way we know we've done for this magnificent country and think creatively about how to do this in a smart, effective, and try a little. not be so sure we're going to fail. i think that's part of the reason why we hit so many roadblocks, nobody wants to take the ownership over this.

they don't want it to be a disaster. we have to experiment the way we ought to in other fields. alix: we need to be better, i like that. and one thing on the wish list was state of privacy. i'd love for you to share with this audience here something that happened with respect to data privacy and anything else you'd like to add to the wish list of what we'd like to do to fix this legislatively. nicole: sure. so there's been a really important privacy bill that's been in congress on the house side we had really good movement, bipartisan support and it got held up in the senate. i'm trying not to use the members' names because i don't actually think it's important about who was supporting it and who was moving it. what has happened as of friday, is there is an agreement to get text done with the commitment to move it forward. and what i want people to pull from that is there is a commitment to do something. and so as we're talking about

the different legislative proposals, but also just some of the history of, like, societal changes in our country, it all comes from us doing something. so the privacy community, we're very excited about the possibility that there is going to be agreed upon legislation that will actually get a vote in the house and the senate. and i think as you're hearing about a lot of the proposals of how do we hold the social media platforms accountable, the most important thing to remember is we have to take a vote. so when you talk about voting on section 230 in 1994, i think that's too long a piece of legislation, not amended, not reformed, not just vote on it again. we don't see that in any other industry, and we don't see that with any other laws. we're talking about the post office and people have strong thoughts and opinions about the post office. you know what, the post office

gets re-authorized and we vote on that consistently. the postal service changes and the laws change with it. everything in our democracy and legislative process requires us to go back and make sure these laws are still pertinent for the time that we are in. it's insanity that this law was passed in 1994 andize hands off. i was 10 years old in 1994. we didn't have internet access in my home in 1994. it is fair to go back in and say we need to look at this. just today there's a really big sur veilance bill that failed in the house vote today. it was passed originally after 9/11 at a time we were really worried about kind of homegrown terrorism and trying to make sure we didn't have another 9/11. that is a really big piece of

legislation. and we knew it was important and congress said every five years we'll bring it up for a vote. every five years people fight over it and i hated it to be the vote working on congress. and it required so much. and you have members of congress on different sides. it doesn't matter what party they're in. that bill failed today because they are going to continue to debate on it. they're going to deliberate on it. the senate has an option, if they want to pass it, they can do it. but it's happening. it's action. and i think that's the most frustrating thing about section 230 or any kind of reform with the social media companies, we won't take the vote. i know there are a lot of grassroots people that are here and you're trying -- i would say you don't have to figure out where the commas go and the period goes and which proposal you like, demand a vote be taken on laws and provisions that were set up when these companies just didn't have access like they do

and they weren't so much of our life. >> i want to finish off with a teaser to other things besides legislation. there's a lot happening at the federal level that you're hearing about, optimism and other stuff you alluded to that people can do. problems start in the private sector. private sector entrepreneurs and individuals like those watching in the audience can do something. please, i'd love you to go back into this, eli, and expand what we can do as individuals to help protect our democracy. eli: you know, this in some ways links not only parts of this conversation together but parts of the conversation throughout the day. which is robert putnam wrote a book called "the upswing" and tracks this extraordinary birth and institutions in the early 1900's. these innovations as congressman gephardt says do often start

bottom-up. and i'm particularly taken with the story about public high school which was something that totally crazy idea for a while. and we are doing universal public good. the place i'm focused and which really, again, speaks to some of the focus on local journalism and news we had earlier is that where we're seeing emergent passes of social conversation in social media contact. and they are doing some of the job that some of the -- that are missing in the news desert. so i think there is an extraordinary opportunity to

think about, if we were to take apart the news media in the 20th century and rebuild it for the 21st. what does it look like? i don't think anybody knows yet. it's an exciting part of invention that a lot of people -- we're seeing tons of people experiment with this right now in vermont and in detroit and in brooklyn and all sorts of places around the country. people are experimenting with like, how do we build this in a way that doesn't lead to the awful incentives congressman gephardt talked about. there is a lot of destruction and harm but there's also a real opportunity, the kind of civic institutions we want to build and how do we do that not just true policy and true government. but how to get through this new

digital area we're here to explore. alix: on that note, we had a incredible conversation. i hope you left feeling more optimistic than you came in about the possibilities, but thank you very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] >> ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our afternoon program. thank you for coming. >> friday night, watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail. a weekly roundup of c-span's campaign coverage, providing a one-stop shop to discover what the candidates across the country are saying to voters along with firsthand accounts from political reporters, updated phone numbers, fundraising tata and campaign

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