>> i'm very much the kind of person who believes you should say what you mean and mean what you say and take the consequences. >> c-span's online video library. first ladies, lady bird johnson, betty ford, carter, nancy reagan, hillary clinton, laura bush, michelle obama and melania trump. watch first ladies in their own words saturday's 2:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span2 or listen to the series as a podcast, c-span now free mobile app or whatever you get a podcast.te >> good afternoon, welcome to the cato institute. a continuing series of book forms, this together one i've been looking forward to it for many months because i knew about

the book for some time, i knew about the podcast that came first this is jacob free speech history of social media, available now and for a couple of weeks and getting strong appreciative audience in the united states and also with these issues, we thought it wase great, but that would be great to have a book form and who betterve to have a conversation, like-minded people and some differences than john carlstrom? the work of the people and by the way, i am john samples, the vice president of cato and i

thought he could tell us about the book and we can talk about the issues and turn the q and a in a little while. jacob is founder and executive director and host of the podcast clear and present danger history of free speech. i highly recommend that to you,v it's very interesting podcast series and is available still. he's writing on free speech in the washington post, foreign policy and other outlets around the world. he lives in denmark. john rauch is senior fellow and government studies program and offered eight books. it made me feel that. how do you do that? many articles, public policy, articles highly influential and may know. these publications include 2021

book the constitution acknowledge defense of truth as well as5 the 2015 book which i think more and more coming into its own politicalal realism, bak room deals can strengthen democracy and rights for the atlantic and the 2005 national magazine award. so i'm eager to get started here. jacob, can you tell us about the book, what led you to write it, also the podcast and themes you've found and i have to say, a striking effort that research. you really conquered a demanding, very broad set of issues and it's hard to work with, right?

>> thank you for hosting me, i really appreciate the opportunity. also almost exactly two years since i was in washington, i was speaking at0t cato, john, i thik we were having a dinner at a time where hindsight, it might not have been the most. >> it could have been a super spreader event. what led me to write the book, i was born in denmark and in my use, free speech was taken for granted, it was the air we breathe, and sort of in the 90s and early 2000's, i didn't really think about it. i think most people didn't because it was now under threat,

is just part of life. then it was kind of the epicenter over the relationship between free speech and religion when someone, a good friend of mine, the editor of the newspaper published cartoons, the prophet mohammed that led to a global crisis and many others have round-the-clock security but that forced many things and i think many in europe and maybe around the world, what is this principle and enlightenment value and the foundation of democracy, is it really that important? the cartoons are punching down minorities, this is what free speech was supposed to be about and that shocked me a little bit. what i also saw was generally

people on the right with free speechch absolutist, we had a number of governments who adopted restrictions on religious free speech target not formally but everyone knew it was targeted at muslims and limited free speech and i was sort of saying it goes against the principles we held up the cartoon, a lot of people on the right side free speech is important but in order safeguard our values, we have to limit the free speech of these particular areas and that sort of led me te try to investigate the whole history of free speech, what's at stake, what does it mean when society is free speech, is it really worth all the fuss? i found that it was but i think

looking at debates about free speech, you can have a more detached attitude rather than the cultural war tainting everything when you look at the prism of the task so the book i locate democracy 100 years ago they had free speech, being career the quality of speech in the assembly where citizens have a direct voice in debating laws but perhaps even more consequence was concept, something like a uninhibited speech that allowed a cultural tolerance and free speech so if you could set up an academy and basically teach philosophy that

was not what allowed you, you could have ones like aristotle and the tolerance worn thin, it could heckle people and roast them in the marketplace and i think they came up, and essence, you are free to criticize the constitution and create this but the bitter enemies, you can only have the constitution and i think that is really the litmus test of what we see, are you able to criticize the political system under which you live? so by our standards, it was not legal. but at the time itn very much ws

and i sort of contrast that the roman republic where there was a top-down approach to free speech we would have senators like cato believed in free speech but the roman citizens did not have the right to address them the way the citizens did and pleasere legal tearing free speech have been throughout the history of free speech especially when the public sphere has been extended either through technology press, radio, telegraph and social media or political developments so itld could democracy giving e vote to women and racial

minority, there's always been this elitist pushback and dread was unfit to be given access to information had to be filtered by the elite because otherwise everything would go to hell basically so that's a very important piece in the book. another one is related to that, i argue many today see free speech entrenching on equal power, i argue free speech may be the most powerful human equality humans have suffered upon and every oppressed group or minority has relied on free speech to further their course and equality and tolerance. in this country i spent a bit of time on how southern states in

the 1830s adopted the most draconian censorship laws in american history to counter abolitionist ideas so take6, virginia, in 1776, a bill of rights even before the declaration of independence the press freedom was liberty but in 1836, virginia passes a law that says something like a crime to deny the right for slaves in a crime for resistance of slavery among a laundry list of ways to counter abolitionist ideas. on the other hand you have abolitionists likela frederick douglass was born as a slave but argued for universalist idea of free speech which would basically destroy slavery and

argued free speech doesn't depend on this in light of free press and i would say another themel in the book staying in a hotel. they're very close to you and you see a number of women'sil rights advocate for burning like president woodrow wilson interested in the right to vote. i remember thinking about that in my family took my son and went outside, tens of thousands of facilities, nypd there to

guard you in terms that were probably and i thought that was a sign of how free speech further the right. john had written to me how that was the case for the gay rights movement so when you see huge increases in acceptance and gay marriage, i think that was not achieved through censorship and putting him in jail is a firsto amendment right to activism and appeal and so on last think i might want to highlight is i believe free speech help the free speech and any nation more on the culture of free speech then lost some of the first

amendment was ratified in 1791, it hasn't changed the wording for 1798 you could c go to jail for criticizing president john adams and that will be supported by people like hamilton and washington the federalist where jefferson and madison cawthorn on the other side of that are you going to miss his play and laws prohibiting business associate" one for the supreme court in 20 american involvement in world war i so on and you have to get into before free speech is consistently the threshold by the end of the 60s and the limiting and i

think the change norms among americans and you see that also in famous words is the stipend is about the censorship of magistrate and when society's tendency to impose the values is a danger to the. let's why i worry for the country because in my the night illegally into side but they are only the culture of speech in this major american politics i

seen on the subject and how it is in ten or 20 or 30 years. >> very comments? >> thank you, even though i think most of our viewers are online, it's nice to be in a room with actual human beings so thank you all, i feel good about that. john, the only thing i don't feel good about is in your introduction you didn't mention my first subject, 29 years old, the tax was published by who? >> there goes my performance review. the cato institute. it's even worse than that because second edition, john and i corresponded, i was a publisher for cato.

>> how could i forget that? >> and don't forget the audiobook by gillette. >> i can get a commercial publisher and here we are 30 years later, five years chicago. >> i thought i would say three things quickly, versus about the book in the second or we learned from the book and third is the environment. first thing about the book is get it, buy it, n read it. it's not only readable and comprehensive, it's the only thing like it unbelievably until this book came along, there's nothing to read that to get from the beginning right here and there were times where there were occasional outbursts, only

that these press, enlightenment, the history of rivalry better reappears again and again, it is a fantastic book, i can't say enough about it. it will be a touchstone for years, and a lot of fun. the second thing, what i learned from the book or we've learned from it maybe that idea is not only allow but actively protect speech and thought which is judicious, vulgar, offensive, wrongheaded, bigoted or just plain wrong, the idea that government should actually protect that is the most crazy counterintuitive wacky social idea bar none. if you talk to someone on the

street and say what is thet' matter with you is only that future, also the single most successful social idea of all-time, bar none. it gives us peace, freedom and the knowledge that builds this society but because it's so t deeply counterintuitive, it took 2500 years and will, is the environment in which the founders wrote the first amendment with much more restrictions. when i remind people of and what i hope they take away from the book is defending and protecting this proposition requires getting up every day explaining from scratch. our kids and theirir kids and grandkids, because the book

shows you, doing incredibly well when you take that away and compared to it for example my grandfather's son, the greatest novelist of the 20th century confiscated, it couldn't happen today. right up to the present, we have challenges, it's been this paradigm challenge for me and john and all of us, they are quite unconventional. free speech we areme used to thinking of as something that protect my sensors, primarily government. free speech we present in america right now than anywhere in the world, without be safe to say? >> very accurate and may be about to get stronger with the current supreme court. the challenges w' face don't

really fit that box. one is disinformation and the other is often cancel culture. it's not about censorship, tom's former advisor accurately put it, letting his own ship, putting out so many lies and half-truths in conspiracy theories and exaggerating, noor one knows which end is up and it turns out that forms like social media are tailor made, their business model is to maximize values and its attractive conspiracy theory which is addictive. we thought itbe would be in present form and this idea would rise, we didn't realize how easy it would to manipulate the environment to make it toxic and

it's now well-known, much faster and further online. that a is not a problem of traditional free speech. it does the opposite, weaponize as it and turns it into a weapon of mass confusion and destruction and chaos. jacob and i can talk about this but we may have what of a disagreement because i think he's kind of a purist in problems like facebook, essentially adopt moralities but not the law. things that is impractical, unsustainable and portrays the rest of their mission that has to do with being a community of business and a publisher so i think they have to be content moderation and a heart problem

but getting it right is a lot more complicated than just saying free speech online. the secondary that's important, cancel culture, weaponization social collision, it's been around, the u.s. in 1835, the biggest threat to liberty in america was not from the government, it was social collision, purity of the majority he called it. madison cawthorn worried about the same thing, john stuart mill worried about it, it turns outly it can be a minority, even relatively small groups of people ready to whack you online and demolish your reputation, go to the search engine so you are called racist, first thing any employers see, even small minorities of people and make life a living hell because a widespread chilling effect and at the moment two thirds of america say they are reluctant to say politics for fear of

social and professional consequences. two thirds, 60% of students on campus, is approximately four times the levels the best we can measure, four times the level of 1953, the height of the mccarthy eraou in the mccarthy era, there were a couple of things you couldn't do and you would be safe. in counseling, you don't know when you are safer when you're not, that's on purpose. they want to make us our own policeman, they are afraid we will set on a new land funds. this is both widespread chilling in disinformation problem stresses on the environment, ouo ability sort through paul said and they are not things within the traditional balance of free speech to the book in a way is a letter of to the next kind of conversations beginning.

>> interestingly, i want to go back to the disinformation issue which is also called disinformation, and called misinformation, sometimes called fake news and generally falls speech, wide range of historical background. i was listening to a seminar today and a scholar was talking about youtube and it was not sort of partisan differences related to speech or fax or whatever the insider outsider perspective. at the end, i think most scholars i think, at the end he posed a question, somewhat

nervous about posing, the category of disinformation a way to basically put down the uprising of the last few years. if that is true should we consider that might be that? if it is true, is that good? and is it possible? no one really engaged him but i do think john cox about the differences and it is a problem because there are differences private platforms and some is needed for business but is it normal for good? it just happens. we discuss and follow through

because i've had the feeling that i might be engaged in putting down and uprising. >> do you want to explain what the other is? >> i workts for facebook and directly. i have to say, i will quickly say -- that? inquisitive, yes. what i want to say, absolutely i don't have the evidence for anything that happened, anyone can see what facebook is doing, content moderation as a political effort for a political movement and i should also say i have inside knowledge, no evidence, a jihad against them, it's not there. however whenbo you think about e

big picture and beyond that which the caller was trying to force on us i think, it may not be possible even if we say we got to stop this, it may not be possible but your perspective is interesting. >> i think acknowledging free speech comes with cost is essential, the idea that free speech is good under all circumstances i think is not a persuasive idea. i think social media has amplified, i don't think it has generated the polarization, it has amplified this information and hate speech.

i think january 6 for instance, that probably could not have happened without osha media. conspiracy theories having been regurgitated on social media, i don't think it would have happened but on the other hand i more skeptical about share of disinformation, a number of studies show misinformation, which is how you define it in and of itself, not the narrative after the presidential election 2016 for they decided everything and people were manipulated into voting for trump. also those most likely persuaded by conspiracy theories are those already, if you are already somewhat, clinton and the

democrats and that front, you are much more likely to consume shared disinformation than someone who is independent or democrat so i think those are important but even if it's not as effective as we initially thought an absolute numbers if you convince two or 3000 e peope election was stolen and would help motivate them attack the transfer of democracy, it is a real problem. how do we handle it? this is where i think the european approach worse so the european approach is to say you have to remove illegal content or harmful content within say 24

hours or you risk a fine up to 15 million euros and the effect is basically we've done a number of studies that show russia, turkey, venezuela and these state copy and paste that approach do it in bad faith but we also see collateral damage and other speech is enormous so i think more in terms of technological development, i remember, i'm old enough to ckremember when it was not centralized platforms that were the frontier of the internett digital age but at the time no one really cared about content moderation even if a blockhead a million followers because it didn't really affect the entire ecosystem of information on the internet because there's b no single chokepoints were false

information in the platform so decentralized station is one potential remedy and that is the history of free speech so became the first freeec speech in euroe and a key reason was they didn't have a constitution or laws protecting free speech but weakd political center so they had a lot of autonomy so if one tried to censor, they could skip lines and set up shop elsewhere and it cultivated the cultural tolerance comparatively much more expensive than elsewhere on content. another thing is to provide users more control. over content

and it could be ngos to butti develop what we can use so the issue of anti-semitism, some people believe boycotting israel is among anti-semitism where it legitimate debates. facebook has to make the decision, should this constitute anti-semitism or not? that isth for everyone on the platform but it tends to promote expansive definition could develop a filter to use, you can shield yourself but it will affect everyone else. the same could be said with women, female journalists are flooded with misogyny that might not reach the threshold of illegal speech but creates a disincentive engaged social media so you can have a filter

that filteredte away misogynists termss but wouldn't affect everyone because they might be women who want to see what the bigots are saying and expose people. i think it's more of a solution than this approach where government stands but these companies navigate through the lens of stakeholder management, what we do to avoid for capitol hill every week and the outbreak of what i call speech in this for that food doesn't like but ultimately you could adapt pessimistic case, free speech and then in the 70s and uk

using free speech is a blowtorch to attack everyone and radicalize this. then they came to think of free speech as radical speech, ans abuse of free speech but more dangerous to allow the government to climb down and unavoidable cost of free speech son' that's how i look at it bui would certainly not say facebook and twitter should just be different for workers on but there's other solutions and content moderation we look at before we go down that road. >> i'll add a response to something you said and then expand to a question based on

what you just said. i think populism that this university professor asked, would it be appropriate more 15 years ago and now? what we have learned in the last few years is what we are not seeing is the voice of the public, what we discover is how easily manipulable these systems and platforms are by small numbers of dedicated actors, internet research agency in st. petersburg, anti- vaxing using trolls and search engine optimization to make a small number of activists look like a consensus online whether they are typically small numbers, ideological left-wing radicals protecting themselves. the reason we have a constitution of knowledge and i wrote a book about it and in

unstructured marketplace, it getting bigstead of conversation, you get manipulation by small groups using pools of information and that's why we go to so much trouble to develop the rules and norms and institutions like science and mainstream journalism, academia, law and a lot of government is set up the systems that require us to be on better behavior and exposed to people who don't agree with us and make it difficult for one to take over at the expense of others, all the things the u.s. constitution does, it's in the epidemic world so it's naïve to think about those roles the opposite is true. expanding that to a question for jacob, if it is the case there needs to be rules, and they shouldn't be government rules, i agree, i think it's too rigid

and top down and finding people for heaven's sake? i don't think that will work for is desirable. it seems like what facebook doing is the right approach, we've had earlier problems like this, the rise of offset printing and huge amounts of hyper- partisan news and media and others and we saw is the same way, it took a while building up contusions and norms, ethical norms and journalism and journalism schools have these things and wt seems to me like that's what facebook is doing, let's see if we can come up with frameworks and rules and guidelines tell people what they are. they will be voluntary in thewe sense that you don't need to be on facebook but if you are not that's what we expect, it w sees like that's what's worked, do you disagree with that? >> i don't think the degree of transparency on facebook, i

think it is extremely difficult to find out what is going on and i think one of the suggestions is that the terms youtube and others should be, they should be inspired, the only thing the approaches something is is always what i call the tierney of american, these are global platforms and what's at stake, the u.s. is not the same and russia are advanced for social media is the only way for the gander. what we argue at least on issues in the disinformation, inspired by international human rights, that is the limit they should

try that when we analyze content moderation, we find on hate speech, 1.1% violated this. we found what's kept up less than 0.006% designated as hate speech that dilated, those haresearch at it in that way isn important antidote, the message other european politicians pushing basically the platform with illegal content. it's very much but this is not

the case. with different models, if you were part of it, it would experience the. it's a more centralized model to be better and then you would have more experimentation by various platforms rather than having as dominant a platform is facebook which is a huge incentive to government and other axis to reflect our norms and values because it would give us the say on what is being allowed. >> there's a case for decentralization and the question is not meant to be a gotcha, it'sth curiosity driven where facebook has a large market share, would you rather the facebook oversight board take this orhi not? >> i think it is a good idea the oversight board exists.

the problem is i don't know how many decisions you've made so far but that amount and content moderation in the platform she and content moderation, and they reflect the oversight board. >> i want to go to what john said, i'm not going to defend in unstructured system the first amendment and public forum's structure. jacob mentioned a resistance to trump, police were there to protect the protesters, so you

have that structure. he also had perhaps not significant but there was speech not protected by the first amendment. the real question is with facebook but youtube is perhaps even moref important, you have a platform that is global with about 2 billion people every day, the numbers are immense. then you have things that are false speech so who is to judge what comes down? is it facebook or its contributed to maximizing shareholder value? the facebook answer has been to

send disputed posts to these groups that decide that. the various panels that look at the speech and decide whether it's disinformation. when mark zuckerberg became concerned about stuff, disinformation and misinformation and so on, he said things you don't want on the platform include, we don't want obvious hoaxes or conspiracy theories. i think thereo was an assumption on what that is, the american political system would just basically leave that to people, it is hard to prove. essentially returning over the question proof, the numbers of

determination facts. i hasten to add my impression is that is not the way it works because of what john mentioned, the problem of scale. he got 2 billion people, 100,000 disinformation posts, i small number. if you have a panel or an oversight board has to determine the truth of them, they are not going to get them. the one thing on social media that's in scale andnd the scale turns out to manage the system, we will see if we can manage that system. actually the algorithm that does levels make mistakes all the time, it is inevitable. you have to decide what mistakes

you want to make and what the costs are. i don't think she should, there has been struggling. finally what i would say, this is not about the current administration, it could be any administration. you have a president, an administration that will be running for reelection and concerns. those are known in and sometimes they want facebook or others to take down posts. we are going to call the police and make zuckerberg take post down but everyone knows facebook on tv askingon for regulations considered by a congress. he could prevent relation, he

could advance. this process, what truth in the government is realized. >> i'll mention a couple of things have gone by,y, areas of agreement important and are often missed in the conversation and something that's important and true, i spin it a little differently but as important as social media and facebook are, they are not chief status based on my reading of the literature of this information and disinformation, it's not clear they are even number two. am radio and cable news especially, especially on the right, the biggest spreader of misinformation is politician. they can use all kinds of

panels, it was accelerated by social media but when you have a former president of the united states plus is political party plus conservatives media plus dozens of lawsuits all pushing the lie, it's going to get through so i'm all for focusing on social media but i think at the moment there's this tendency to bring technology first when the principles of disinformation and misinformation apply on every channel and there are many channels so kudos for pointing that out, i agree. i agree the goal of disinformation, it doesn't succeed primarily in changing people's minds but that's not what is trying to do, it's primarily interested in polarizing and confusing edits good at that. second area of agreement, when we do get to search on media, i think it's an area of agreement, it's important to establish rules and boundaries and rules of conduct and recognize hard to

enforce, i think long run the larger solution to the crisis won't be the realm of policy design, it will be product design, figuring d out systems o slow people down, introduce action before they retweet or like n something. don't you want to read this before you retweet it? think a little harder, change the way algorithms work in terms of what's promoted and what's not and there are a lot of ideas about that. i think we are looking at systems designed for an age in which it's all about getting eyeballs and we've discovered the price is high and the systems are looking for ways to integrate more guidelines and guardrails into the user experience. we don't know what that will look like but i think we have general directions in fact where the bulk of the improvement will come from. >> i'm going to direct us away from america because i would love to say, one of the things

i've learned at facebook, hard for me working at d.c. is getting beyond, one thing i learned in our love your response to this, if i want to advance free-speech arguments, the worst thing i could do with my colleague would say the word first amendment or the united states because there is this response parochialism but also people if you go to the content of free speech rather than the american experience, it would be much more favorably. what's your general sense of side of europe and the united states? how is the free-speech story going? >> i agree with john, compared

to 50 to 100 years ago we are living in a golden age of free speech not only in terms of legal protections even outside the u.s. legal protection may not be as strong as under the first amendment, in their human rights that try to uphold and enforce these norms and they have to pay lip service to the idea of free speech norms. i would argue however, the golden age is probably declining so i wrote a piece about the free-speech recession so if you look at the numbers suggesting free-speech has been in decline more than a decade and when authoritarian states are on the rise, it's not a surprise because you learn all the way back to democracy, the first things they will do when they try to crush democracy is go

after free-speech, that is 101 trying too establish regime. what worries me more is liberal democracy use free-speech as a foundational value and a wave of repressive laws, one in the european union with a commission wants to define hate speech is a crime to allow the commission to define hate speech across all states and set minimum rules. that to me is a big flashing warning sign of how leading democracies are thinking about free speech.' unfortunately i don't see a lot of organizations in europe

pushing back against this. i argue in the book it's based on a term i borrowed from abu brilliant professor, i use it different than him and the idea is one that i hope we all share, we will never want to experience totalitarianism and industrial scale genocide in europe or hopefully anywhere again but the european idea is that you need basically democracy, this idea that professor who went to columbia and wrote articles on how democracies and confronted get tough and couldn't worry about free speech and had to clamp down but i tried to show in the book the republic even though it was liberal compared to the empire german

confederation, it was hostile to extreme speech and allowed laws and regulations that would never accept today, let me give you an example, german state could administer ban and a newspaper for eight weeks if they attack public officials were undermined the government so they started the newspaper basically to troll particularly a jewish high-ranking police officer, claim probably it was the most frequently banned newspaper in germany. the reason adolf hitler was banned from german states, the most depraved in history was probably editor, during the war

he explicitly did genocide but he was less explicitly, he did spread these issues about juice and he was convicted a number of times against religion including 1929 sentenced to months in prison shared by hundreds of supporters leaving the courtroom and less than ate year later increase the share of the vote. ... that the nazis basically used the provisions in law and the constitution of the weimar republic that was supposed to protect democracy they use that to abolish democracy and

that i think again is one of those warning signs that even for all those good intentions, if you adopt the laws that are restrictive of free speech, they might very well he used by enemies of democracy when they get into power and may not even be efficient at countering the rise of these. especially how far can you go in democracies if you want to counter especially in the digital age, how much censorship would it take to suppress anti-democratic voices in a way where you couldmigrate from facebook to telegram . >> that's to some extent why they're turning to disinformation . >> it's access to attention which you can sponsor. onthe international front , i think you'd agree with this jacob but a development that seems to be global very much happening in europe , very much in the us and it breaks my heart most aboutthis entire debate .

it's the widespread belief that free speech harms minorities. we see again and again on college campuses in the us and eu again and again the justification for various kinds of chilling censorship, investigations, punishment is where protecting minority groups from being traumatized . being injured, being made second-class citizens, being told they don't belong on the planet. and as someone who was born in a very different world in 1960 and worked for years for same-sex marriage we couldn't have done thatwithout free speech . as i said earlier i on this againand again . john lewis said it. mandela said it.

they all said without free speech as john lewis said the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings. i think that message is being lost. i think we're losing that battle . >> maybe especially in democracies unfortunately i think that in a lot of states where they face censorship and repression they intuitively get that free speech restrictions will harm the populace more than anyone else. but i think this idea is really prominent unfortunately and i don't know the best way to counter it. hopefully a historical approach and an awareness of what went before is part of the solution but i also note n look at europe. free speech restrictions in hungary and poland arebeing used against the lgbt plus communities . thatshould tell you something . so look at the history in the uk. when they first adopted the law to try to protect minorities from hatred,

incitement to hatred the first person who was convicted was a black briton who had said something about white people whereas the powerful white folks were not prosecuted so that created more discrepancies but uc davis score creek. are being ories protected and what you'll see is those groups will then use it as a weapon against each other so it could be the lgbt plus community using a speech against religious conservatives and vice versa and that really is dangerous r because that's ta road to the gutter. >> we're seeing the trans community using very censorious tactics in written and the us which breaks my heart. >> before we go let me askyou a follow-up . there's the international covenant of rights at the united states signed about 30 years after it was introduced

. the icc pr, international human rights laws main document contains two interesting parts that relate to freedomof speech. and this relates to the global element of free speech now. article 19 is very much like the first amendment . somewhat like the first amendment on the one hand. article 20 section 2 includes a part that requires the signatories to essentially ban hate speech. it mandates that they do so. that is and also speech fostering war, aggressive warfare. clearly there was a lot of debate about this particularly in the 60s but t currently you can see this in section article 20 came out of trying to not repeat the

national socialist experience in germany and so on. and yet there it is an international law both a strong statement of freedom of speech and a requirement for banning which by the way facebook has and others have strong community standards about hate speech. so looking back from your research, do you think what side of the international law is going towin out ? >> that's a good question and the interesting thing about this, i want to go down the rabbit hole but basically it's a provision that was advanced by the soviets. they tried to get a similar provision in the universal declaration of human rights. eleanor roosevelt fought vigorously against it and western states succeeded initially but lost the battle with on civil and political rights. and so basically it was based on a 1936 stalin and the

soviet union had in article 123 of the constitution and had an obligation to prohibit hate speech which tells you somethingabout the concept. i think stalin was not above using a speech himself . but so that has been a dangerous instrument but i would say that in the past 10 years or so, this provision has been interpreted very narrowly by a number of someone like david kane who is a us law professor but who was the special repertory for freedom of expression. and even the human rights committee, they had tried to narrow it. the reason they've done so is because in the un system it's so obvious that the number of states are trying to game the system and try to expand the interpretation of article 20 and the obligation to prohibit hate speech to allow

them to prohibit dissent which is exactly what eleanor roosevelt warned about in the 50s. but i'm more hopeful now that that loophole has been somewhat closed. the obama bladministration played a crucial role in that when they fought against the campaign by islamic state to adopt a band at the international level. the tprocess resulted in a more limited interpretation of that. but it's interesting for me as someone who's vigorously opposed to that fprovision that i rely on international human rights spaces for reasons when it comes to social media. this is the least bad option and then sort of having to rely on other provisions that werebasically proposed by the soviets . >> so we have a microphone here if you want to come down here and online so everyone can styour question, please do

so. when you come down before you answer that question, you have a choice of whether to reveal who you are or not. we preserved anonymity here to make sure hate speech is not chilled. >> it would be good to put my mask back on. i want to go back to something jacob said early on. that the culture of free speech is more important than the first amendment. i sort of pushed back on that. on the other hand it seems to me i see numerous instances in the past few years, maybe the past few months where english writers on free speech or on public intellectual generally have said about something going on in canada or britain or continental europe.

that wouldn't happen here because we have the first amendment. maybe there's question what is your relationship between the first amendment and a culture of free speech and if somehow you could get canada to make a first amendment with that change their culture? >> i think you're right. it's not a zero-sum game, that's a relationship. my point is if the culture of free speech, the culture of tolerance that underpins legal protections deteriorate the law is likely to follow ut behind that. but that doesn't mean that the first amendment is of no consequence. i think it's very much of consequence and i think particularly at this point in time in america without a strong protection of the first amendment i think you would see speech restrictions being westernized at various states, blue and red states in order to pound away at

those they deemed ideologically unsound. i think the critical race theory that we've seen a number of republicans face that are limited to education, they would probably be adopted at a much broader level. and you can see that when you ask democrats and republicans about the degree of tolerance for different kinds of speech you see huge partisan gaps. democrats very supportive of protests against racial justice in 2020 and republicans less so-so republicans very supportive of the first amendment extending even to misinformation and democrats are much less so. so i think the first amendment is really important . i just fear that the level of protection would erode if the culture of free speech is eroding. >> neil said something and i

hate to paraphrase but given the choice between strong speech, strong free-speech laws plus week free-speech culture versus week free-speech lawsand strong free-speech culture he would take the stronger culture as being the more important thing . >> i think it's in chapter 3. i'm sometimes asked how do i feel about holocaust denial in germany but i tell people i don't greally get my underwear in a knot about it because germany is a special case and what i worry more about is there's a culture of the country, does its environment support the values of free speech and if they do a fewlaws like that will do a great deal of harm. they won't be abused all that

much and it's the culture of free speech that is the first thing we have to defend in that situation . >> maybe jacob wouldn't agree. >> unfortunately germany has a course a culture of free speech but what i found in my book is the german culture of free speech is very much an elitist one and has been so, i will go down that rabbit hole either but the germans are concerned about the unwashed mob getting access to dangerous ideas. understandably given their history but i worry about the way they interpreted wrongly and an ammunition for nefarious forces with their approach to speech. >> i like to make a remark about mill here which goes to your earlier remarks . i think you'd probably use it to defend free-speech and in a global situation. the problem of course is he says this only applies to civilized countries. so then it's important when we can rescue them on

principle but it is important to note that otherwise think about if you're somewhere else other than europe or the united states. you come across that. areyou an advocate of free speech after that ? >> you have no reason to remember we met. and you come along way for congratulations . you also mentioned our mutual friend but what he said was ilhe's also at cato institute. my question, where was i?

oh, you're from denmark. every story seems to focus on publishing those eras that are upset. what they forget idand i don't mean you is actually, the danish through the first punch. it was the innocent danish like we all talk about educational children's books and they're about to educate them since they were coming into denmark. and freddy rose wasn't a party where he would say that the industry which got its name and withdrew himself

from making claims as we do in all kinds of books. then you get death threats and using all my god, do we really have a citizenship problem? the story was that the danish cartoon organization, half of them said no, we don't have to do it. half of them said okay, this is anti-muslim propaganda. but the ones that did didn't try to prove that we do not have this in denmark. but i'd really like to tell people that he was not the one that first through the first punch. >> i don't think cartoonists through the punch at all. what is it is is fleming road

and a quick piece accompanying thecartoon . he argued free-speech tolerate enlightenment and that no single group or individual could claim sort of special protection and in fact it was sort of a bigotry of lowered expectations safe to say that special rule should apply. they were going to be part of danish society and that it would have to apply on equal terms. if you ouhad someone like the germans famous author who was comparing fleming's speech in the cartoons. which i thought was despicable. and of course that the cartoon is also part and parcel of why there was an attack. it was one of very few magazines and we published the cartoons. >> i have to reveal that a

former colleague at orfacebook who worked on the orobama work at the united nations that you talk about about religious heresy and so on. and she and i were talking one day kiabout things and she said when we were going into those meetings and arguing for free speech, the one group you could always count on, the diplomats you could always have at your sidewhere the danes . i'll keep p testing this and someday i'll find an intolerant dane, and a liberal dane but that seems to be true so keep your eye out if you come across the danish person, see if they share your views. >> we were the first country in the world that formally abolished any and all censorship in 1770. it didn't go so well, the guy who did it who served at the power ofthe king was executed

and had his hands cut off in public .struck a blow for free speech. >> i do want to get to some online questions. many people are concerned about section 230 and section 230 this essentially the right to do all of this. outside the laws of libel and so on. but there were a couple occasions that i think are somewhat too complicated to get into if you have comments about it i'd be interested. but this whole question of culture . one person points out pan anonymous questionnaire that disinformation and so on and the problems online, if they didn't have people who wanted it and consumed it wouldn't exist and second then there's the traditional over the last few years response to what about education?

to what extent can education because the free-speech doctrine is based in the idea that ultimately we can exchange views, suppressing views creates distortion. and ultimately we can ll exchange views and it will be better. it may not be perfect but it will be better than it was going to be otherwise. and so education, the ability to critically think about these questionsis important . >> i'd be interested to hear john on that and then i can come back. >> there were two things, one was education and the other was demand. >> there's a very large important element of demand in the world of conspiracy theories and disinformation. it fills a gap in their lives and often gives them a sense

i have insider knowledge and purpose and of the lenses lay and all of that. the reason we have a constitution is because there's so many ways to manipulate it. and halogens provides no protection at all. there are dozens of causes of biases and social bias and it takes a lot of discipline to keep us away from those things. it's a collective action problem, maybe good for an individual or fun for an individual to consume and spread conspiracy theories but it doesn't take much of that to despoil the environment and that's why we have rules and structures throughout society not just throw outthe realm . the second point was the big one. >> education seems to have some benefits. >> that doesn't sound like a controversial phrase. but what i have in mind is i think a lot of the problems around social media have to do not just with the design of social media per se but

the environment in which they find themselves which was a population which had never been exposed was epistemically nacve about something like your professor friend who says it's going to be a lot of people doing it, it must be popular . and it seems to be helpful in countries that are doing it to do education on media literacy. actually, middle school and on into high school and critical thinking education n. better preparing ourselves for the pitfalls we encounter in this environment. so yes, i'm a fan of those kinds of measures. they're coming to the united states and i don't think they should be dictated by government but i do think we can that are prepare ourselves for encountering the environment where now in. i don't know jacob. >> one of the things that i regret not including in the book is what i see as the real problem with free speech

is that free-speech it doesn't provide a sense of meaning and purpose. it doesn't bind us together in the same way that a religion or national origin would. >> what it does in particular circumstances. so the fountain here, free speech and the opposition to british attempts to limit dissent would bind them together. they were advancing free-speech at the ballpark of liberty against british slavery. but when the revolutionary war had been one, free speech suddenly became a principal that amplified their political and philosophical differences and suddenly you had sort of quasi-civil war between the greatest generation of americans. you had alexander hamilton arguing that the sedition act

should be vigorously enforced against anyone slandering or using malicious propaganda against any government official should be prosecuted and those who were responsible should all of us should be thrown out of the us. where sort of madison rights are an eloquent defense. then what happens when jefferson wins the presidential election, in his inaugural address he gives a great unifying speech instead of owning the feds he sort of says we shouldn't prosecute each other with laws but in 1803 his name has been dragged hathrough the mud by the federalist press and he writes in his letters it might be a good idea to t prosecute some of these c federalists in state courts. but that shows that if even th jefferson is liable to

milton's curse, the unprincipled and selected defense of free speech, then that is something that all human beings are very vulnerable to so we come with sort of our original software that we resolved. its default mode is intolerance and we built this fragile patch on top of this which is tolerance and free speech but that constantly ul has to be updated and we have to build a firewall around it . and when that firewall fails all of our people will override it and we will be back to intolerance and i think in those circumstances sort of nationalism or religion will provide a sense of meaning and social creation and in those circumstances free-speech will suddenly be seen as a threat to that extent of social creation that binds us together and that is dangerous in times of uncertainty, of political polarization so more or less the times that we live in right now.

>> i would be remiss if i didn't speak up on behalf of my professor. i did i think he would probably agree to what john thinks about these matters. but he felt there was a normative, was normatively good to see that political movement and that you needed that argument .n john gives you one in his book but he raised the question of is it even possible to commit this kind of sedition and essentially prevent a political movement. and i would say that's an interesting question because it may be that you can suppress speech at scale but the problem with that is that you also inevitably suppress a lot of speech that is protected. this is a facebook problem, not going around and seeing something you say that's bad.

there's 2 billion people. you can't do that. you can't even, there's appeals processes. and those are hard to. >> i think this is a strawman question because no one believes, i don't think anyone believes you can suppress speech and the current environment. the reason i wrote the constitution of knowledge and the reason jacob is doing the work of this book is figuring out where the guidelines and guardrails go that we can incentivize our self in social ways. and humanities been doing that forever and that is not about suppression, it's not about rewiring some particular ipolitical outcome. it is figuring out how to be our better selves. >> i think there's interesting places to look for inspiration is taiwan i thinkis an interesting place . we have this sunflower movement which were these hackers basically who o squatted parliaments and one of them now is the minister

of technology. and they basically are working on sort of updating institutions for the digital age. and sort of trying to build institutions and technologies that will increase rather than decrease which will spur cooperation at a local level. it's been quite useful if you want to decide in a neighborhood should there be i don't know, a bike path . then this platform can sort of help people come together and decide on these issues. basically areas where people can be rather than helooking at disagreements or that. >> is an interesting one. newfield called tom commented immunology which is looking at can you create firewalls in communities to slow the bible spread of

misinformation? there's lots of interesting thinking but i'll correct something. no one thinks you can suppress speech or political movement in this environment. if someone does and ithink it's china. we haven't got to china yet but talk about the challenge to this paradigm . >> you can suppress speech' it's just that you get lots of false positives too. >> china is probably i would say the soviet union during stalin was probably the most censorious state at least in the 20th century. but china is probably current china is winning that contest because as you know he's used in such a way but the worrying thing is china is creating these digital spaces so it's exporting its technology and also, a leading quote is that that capital will send us the rope

with which we will hang him. i think that is a little whbit true with some western companies who are just going into china and building this great firewall. there is google working secretly to try and build a search engine that incorporates a dictator of the chinese communist party. so i think china, their ambition is that they will be able to control speech and almost every detail. the traditional censorship is really astounding but they have more devious ways from flooding online communities with propaganda to just having around-the-clock detailed surveillance which is much more probably effective way to control what people say. if you're being watched in real time all the time would you be , would you not be afraid to speak out and are

there social consequences if you lose the right to travel or lose the ability toget a promotion if you say something wrong ? but that is really i think a huge worry. >> i hope for the people online that remedy the questions i tried to go through. so please don't take offense if i didn't get quite to your question. as always there are more questions and cato is a private institution. but i think we got to the issues that were raised in these cases and it does show the importance of social media. the book is free-speech. the author is jacob and he's

been here at cato today. i hope we talk many times. our friend john around as also commented today. and thank you very much. both online and here in the auditorium, it's great to see people again. i agree with john aboutthat . and you can buy books outside too. >> at least six presidents recorded conversations in office. your many of those conversations on our new podcast presidential recordings. >> season one focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. you hear about the 1964 civil rights act, presidential campaign, goalof tonkin incident, march on selma and the war in vietnam . not everyone knew theywere being recorded . >> certainly johnson's secretaries new . because they were cast with transcribing many of those conversations.

in fact they were the ones who made sure that the conversations were take as johnson signaled to them through an open door between his office and there's. >> also your laptop. >> jim. i will report of the number of people assigned to kennedy the day he died and the number assigned to me now and if mine are not blessed i want them blessed right quick . i can't ever go to the bathroom i will go. i promise i won't go anywhere i'll stay behind these black gates . >> presidential recordings, getit wherever you get your podcast . >> c-span shop is our online store. browser our latest collection , apparel, books, home decor and accessories. there's something for every fan and every purchase helps