joe biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the united states and promises to end the civil war between republicans and democrats. leaves the white house over the massive security operation of the ocean in washington. the powerful blast ripped through a residential building in madrid killing at least 4 people gas leak suspected. should private social media companies have so much power or is it time to rein in big tech. in a few moments time neil harvey will be right here in the studio with you don't know it's time to get one of those speeds on the morning news headlines want to get that

. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered social media platforms today function as the public square they were key to almost everything we do in society the same platforms can ban you would be platform you essentially disappear you should private companies have that kind of power is it time to rein in big tech. discuss these issues and more i'm joined by my guest lionel in new york he is

a legal in media analyst we have geoffrey carr he is author of inside cyber warfare mapping the cyber underworld as well most owner of the suits and cyber security conference and in los angeles we crossed. elwood he is a regular on the jimmy door show is almost host of the political management here on you tube hi julie cross micros and i think that means you can jump in anytime you want but i always appreciate it but i was going to lionel in new york i mean with this flurry of events around big tech the the banning of parlourmaid parlor appears to have reappeared beastly donald trump has been banned from most of these platforms and there are a lot of complaints that a lot of other conservatives are being treated the same way essential the question that is before us right now is should these big tech companies define what speech is defined what it is and indirectly what dissent is and should they have the right to. arrange and define what the public sphere is lionel well the 1st thing is i've

always believed in my line of law which means that people always like behind technology the 1st thing is we have to understand these are not private organizations or private companies social media is not some quirky little thing we talk to grandma about her favorite cappie oka recipes these are you chiles this is the phone company this is f.c.c. this these are t.v. waves this is whatever analogy you want over the line and they're not legally bound i mean i think they should become utilities because what i'm saying is they function as utility that's what i'm saying that we have to change that this idea forget section $230.00 and all this kind of but we have to realize that when 90 percent plus of a country of a group of a world uses these people to cook to cooperate it's like trying to regulate oxygen and air in the atmosphere this notion of social media platforms are going to change this and what you're doing is they're throwing everything they can to see how much

resistance to receive how much center shift people will tolerate so it has to be done right now and the 1st thing is for going to 30 which is a big deal section to 30 we have to recalibrate reframe. these people as utilities imagine your phone company all missing your phone call dropping because it doesn't like what you're saying about whatever you wouldn't tolerate same should go for social media. jeffrey can you weigh in on that i mean i'm i'm really quite adamant that they do function as a public sphere and they do behave as utilities i mean where do we go from here because i just don't think you know that well why should mark zuckerberg jack dorsey tell me what i can say and what i can say go ahead so yeah there's a difference between the utility in the platform so i agree that the utility there is a utility aspect but it now doesn't lie in facebook that it lies in you know my provider wave broadband they're the ones giving me access to the internet that's the utility

facebook needs to be. facebook needs competition facebook is dominant so it requires competition so that maybe antitrust action against facebook the sort that you've got more you know more options right more options and then regarding 230. i think they i don't think there's any. intention to deny free speech i think the the problem is is that there has been 0 constraint on speech published on facebook twitter and so on because of a kind of an oven of a concept in the law that by that that i think new york courts were responsible for that if if an internet provider like facebook were to attempt to regulate speech then they would lose their section to 30 protections. there that it's all screwed

up or it really does it really does need to be changed so that so that facebook is operates more like the newspaper you know you if you want to publish up it in the newspaper you have to meet certain guidelines you just can't make up whatever you want and have it published but in a facebook today and on twitter you can do that so that's ron i think that's that's where we're having so much trouble we don't know how to categorize facebook you know is it he tell it is it a is it a is it is it more like a publisher. to me that's really what it is they are publishers so they should be operating under the same restraints that all publishers have to operate under some responsibility for their content ok well finally i think at least we can all agree they need to be responsible ok and not make decisions on a whim you know graham i mean it it's these pine crumbs they choose winners and losers i mean i mean a good part of our life is played out i'm using these plant forms directly and

indirectly and if they don't like what you're doing or what you're saying they can disappear you i mean that is a major impediment to being a functioning person in society. yeah i mean it's i i totally agree it's absolutely they should be public utilities in the problem or happening is they are just you know unelected tech billionaires who are just making decisions what can be said and what can't be said and that's that's the real scary thing and they're using the events of the capital i mean the commander in chief advocating violence and neo nazis showing up with guns and that's bad thing that that needs to be addressed but just facebook is such a great example of how they arbitrarily you know they'll they'll pull down anything that's pro palestinian but they'll leave up they've left up all right posts and stuff like that and for them to just. decide what we can and cannot say i mean i've been thwarted just as a comedian as a as an independent you tube or because they don't i'm pushing an antiwar message

so that way that's offensive now and they're going to just use any anybody can be called a domestic terrorist so now is the sunrise movement going to be called domestic terrorism they have a peaceful sit in because they want to stop climate change i mean where does it end and the fact that we know this thanks to julian assange and wiki leaks that you know google and many of these other companies have been working hand in glove with the intelligence community so it's not even about that they're monitoring everything want to control every aspect of our lives and tell us what we can and cannot do and that's that's real scary to me what's really scary i mean you brought up such a wonderful point i mean if you're pro war you're never to get. in trouble ok medibank you'll probably be reach wheat or whatever reposed and all over the place if you're anti-war no no no that's i think that that's a suggestion is behavior in speech here i mean that it's the hypocrisy is just so glaring you know one of the things is that you know when you think about you know

we always talk about the terms of their services ok facebook and twitter and twitter i mean particularly 100 by story you know jack dorsey the most you know these are anti hacking. procedures but even though it wasn't happy they didn't apply to that story whatsoever here so i mean are these terms of conditions for these a plot form superseding the constitution well these are yes well he here is our problem the constitution applies to government state action let me try this one my short of why did you wait to get my friends who are on this all. to explain this and naginata and i and we had newspapers now you imagine and i happen to have the perfect ink that is used by 95 percent own as it's my private patent and already yours everybody. healers knit and everybody uses it and i'm fine one day i get a hair somewhere and i just i don't like the washington post i'm telling them you

can't buy mine can borrow i'm exercising my right and i don't like your company so i'm going to sell you my eat next thing you know i can shut down the ability for people to read newspapers because i exercise this terms of my my ink you don't go make build your own ink company or i think it's this missed balls in the cracks what we're having right now is another the republican you're having people who are advocating like on c.n.n. there's a company called newsmax and it's a it's a competitor to to fox c.n.n. we are basically having people who say that their key ball cable subscriptions cable providers should cut them because here's the best part all right right wing. neal a snake of nothing that you have to come up with a good label that people are saying. i won't say no more and that's it new ways to

shut everything down don't fall under usually prescribed avenues of jurisdiction in jeopardy i mean the line brings up a really good point there because women the cover story as i would call it is that you know these other platforms promote hate speech if it's a place for. neo nazis or fascists or something like that but if we look at the case of parlor i mean you know that was just getting rid of your competition ok because the it was obviously understood that with trump being thrown off of twitter that he would migrate to another platform with his $80000000.00 followers and essentially that was what was going to happen and then they say well you know because they're promoting hate speech with any of the any and all the hate speech you can find on parlor you can find on twitter and facebook as well so i mean this was just a market grab ok these are monopolists ok i find i'm so insulted that they would use as moral high ground because they're just greedy. well.

parlor. rather wasn't. it in my opinion parlor simply did not exercise any any restraint over what was published and what was said and and it was it was becoming a gathering space for acts of violence against the government and not only against the federal government but again state and local governments so i felt like there are significant you know practical reasons for taking action against against partly the people but if i have utilized that should make the people that utilize the government take action to get over your competition take action team that's a different thing you competition ok i am not going to deny what you just said ok i'm not on parlor i didn't see it ok but it seems to me that be the people that you know turn off the val it's your competitors it's not the government. so

so the. so you facebook had nothing to do with parlor i mean par parlor was removed from the google app store from the apple app store from the amazon. store and from us. on web services or hosting service so so facebook had nothing to do with parlor needed to twit. so also that you know the people that migrated there they had the ability to do whatever to say whatever they liked on twitter on facebook anywhere they wanted to they just happened to like there the fact that everybody who thought like them were all in one place this one place and parlor so you know when when it came crashing down it had a it had a massive effect on that group of people. the the i don't believe that i do really that facebook doesn't want competition purely you know for 5 purely financial reasons. the short of that i don't think that i've read that

they have like either a pro conservative or pro liberal point of view you know i haven't really noticed it personally i know that i have i have there are groups that are very conservative than there are groups that are very liberal you just choose which group you want to go to isn't it me in a rapidly i don't have an i want to go back to grammy or i think graham and i mean during during all of the events going on i'm accountable and accusing the president of incitement we can discuss that separately and if they think it was a hash tag paying a pence and out of that that trended for a long time ok i mean so i mean they don't care about that ok because it suits their political agenda and the people they're acolytes in the media which apparently is so important to them to me but i'm just saying is that in trying to avoid these arbitrary standards so you won't have double standards go ahead graham before we go to break yeah it's an excellent point because you. you know again like

you know if you're going to say you can't abrogate violence then that like it should be done by the letter of the law and even though going back to your point about parlor yes they didn't do it but google and amazon other huge tech giant to great i'm all down thought we're going to go to a short break and after that short break and continue our discussion on what to do with big tech mccarty. right now. overweight or obese it's profitable to self. and sugary insulting and addictive it's not at the individual level it's not individual willpower and if we go on believing that never change this obesity epidemic that industry has been influencing very

deeply the medical and scientific establishment. what's driving the obesity epidemic it's corporate profit. some rumors assumed. you may be. those who just came up with a ticket in your show that. antarctica is a very international community a. media used to try to flee. you just. need to eat. those who pushed them that they were used to the business. so there

are new calls for cooperation in antarctica is everything because he was the leader with the one time cd with any of the media. time they have and would have acted all day but they decided not to take its life. with my goddamn tell you that. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest on the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm purell about to remind you we're discussing what to do with big tech.

ok let's go back to grammy in los angeles sorry my friend we had to go to a quick break there you want to finish your thought go ahead yeah we're talking about you know if we're going to do it then it needs to be done under some sort of a legal what what are the laws say like if i advocate violence publicly tell me what that law is and that how how my opinion housing should be regulated right now we have these massive companies as you talked about are basically going after competitors and on the again on the elected tech millionaires are determining what we can and cannot say and i just have a hard time with that specially when there's a guy i used to be in in british intelligence that's an executive at twitter and it's all about data likes and i just don't trust these tech companies at all to tell me what i can and cannot say what their what their real reasons are you know who i don't like and so i think probably the big fundamental problem that we're dealing with here is because traditionally up until recently when we thought some

about censorship we thought about censorship coming from the government made and so and this is one of the this is how a lot of these people in big we go out and say well we're not government we're just a private company here ok but i keep going back to my mantra the disses the public square i think this is where we need to go we have to look at 230 i think that has to be adjusted i mean the profit margins of these people are so it's so amazing ok you know you'd have to spend more money to have to have real fact checkers and and based on law and not your terms of service headline. let's try to stop our theoretical speech for just one second and really call it the way it is on crosstalk if there was no donald trump you wouldn't have any and we wouldn't even be talking about this other b.l.f. group here in a great mood because there's always been the client or the area the ranch or whatever it is but big is basically was designed or or turn into

an empty trump movement it'll come up with excuses understand this is violence be yeah yeah yeah please go back and turn and try to remove trump from the equation for one minute we'd be talking about this do you think that jap dorsey or zuckerberg or anybody would beat what even be discussing shutting down a platform if it was a drunk trunk was the reason for this there's always been the let me also season hate is guaranteed speech so long as i don't act i get beat broccoli and he terrorist i did meet the it doesn't matter we've extrapolated this into this man began the heavy vanilla world where we can see bad things here's another one for you white supremacy i don't even understand what that means but if somebody were to explain what you believe in white people being supreme so what we

have lost the concept of what many of these actual thoughts were incitement force and vision or insurrection or plan the anything other than a bunch of blowhards saying about just of it nobody cared about in the 1st you know bit you know you're lying about. you're absolutely right but you know and but that's a very theoretical discussion and i'm talking about real world. events that really your problem is right that hurt people here if you know you're an expert on these things here how did this all happen because you know i remember you know the advent of the internet and i was told it would be a even playing field that was the most democratic thing ever conceived where everyone would be able to participate and now we're having a conversation on this program is that all the different strategies to shut people out in shut people up i mean is it just because is it just power and money or was

it somehow corrupted or maybe it was a corrupt idea in the 1st place going. well but i disagree that that that's what's happening. again i want to emphasize i think we've always had proud of the internet the only way you could could there was no public square you know effectively there's no real public square. that you may be really going to go to your local park and maybe a dozen people will listen to you that's ok well i guess technically i don't know that i did but in reality noted there was a public square the concept it weren't new concept exists for a reason it wasn't made up and public square has been in existence for hundreds of years actually ok keep oh i'm speaking practically practically speaking if you want your voice to to extend beyond your neighborhood you need to go to it before the internet you need to go to a newspaper and if you went to the newspaper you had rules you had to follow certain rules to get your content published it had a past fact checks it had to it had to be not not create liability for the

newspaper and so whatever they were and facebook is a publisher they may not like it they don't want to call it that that's a problem with section $230.00 platforms in order to be exempt from liability for what's carried on them they cannot be publishers but they are publishers so they are responsible so so. that's what's happening here you can't just make up and pardon me for using that 4 letter word and throw it out there for the world to see you could never do that with a newspaper and you shouldn't be able to do it with facebook you can't say that you know it. whatever you like free speech has always been a myth well i mean yeah i mean we recently went through 4 years of the russian gay hoax ok a.j. you can't make stuff up but apparently stuff is made up all of the time or whether it's a nasty distraction or you know the financial crisis i mean everything is made up because no one is ever held accountable when things go terribly wrong rahm my

daughter's been with me graham is 8 is a far left winger i'm a conservative but you know the more we talk the more we find common ground on these things because we're looking at what abel's society ok we may differ on how to solve those problems go ahead well yeah i mean i just used to be a very that with respect to what lionel was saying about trouble i think i agree that a lot of it was just oh we don't like trump but there there needs to be a clear distinction here when the commander in chief advocates for going to the capitol building and people showing up with their fifteen's and camp auschwitz shirts and and commit violence and people die because manner in chief is different so in that that that needs to be that needs to be addressed and that's not a small thing that's all we can do on manby pamby we don't like trump that was that that was a really awful thing and you talk that it looked like germany and the you know late twenty's early thirty's now. what the problem is is that they're going to use that for any excuse so now somebody says well i will you know i'm organizing

a strike because amazon doesn't have union labor all the hate speech you're out there you're if you're going to hurt jeff bezos you know trillion dollars or whatever that's where it gets real murky and that's where they're using this to in whatever manner shape they form they can and they can just say as they did after $911.00 ok what happened on $911.00 was awful there's dangerous terrorists out there but then they just wrote the patriot act where a friend of mine who was writing antiwar cartoons against bush was put on the no fly list so that's where it gets real dangerous for me and that they're just going to arbitrarily anyone's a domestic terrorist now and when big massive corporations that are unregulated by nothing they pay no taxes they get tax breaks are doing whatever they want and effectively taking away that the town square as you put it and that that's what's that's what's bad for me well it's actually going well it's a worse in many ways and one of the things that's happened in the last few days is

that we're focusing on should big tech be reined in and i think all of us agree with that it should be done maybe in different ways over a different time scale and things like that how much government involvement it should be again these things are all debated and should be debated but where we have coming out of particularly a o c and people like that that we need there needs to be a federal commission to regulate and investigate media when that's even more chilling ok because it least these platforms are a patchwork of distributing what media reports and some of it is just awful ok nonsense it is some people do dissent from ation that's what they're at their intent is do is it just inform the public and then there's a lot of other good stuff out there but when i hear someone might we not need to start regulating the media well that's making it even far worse lionel. we are losing this it isn't separate from this this idea of free speech should be

dangerous pledge free speech it is something that i can say that might make you lose your mind now there's a difference between standing up and saying i don't we're going to parse what trump said but i disagree mentally i know that he said that he says he is extremely reckless and he's extremely a childes but that's he's gone it doesn't matter but there's a difference between saying i want us and. we went from a 10 we love the year by george carlin's 7 dirty words the brandenburg cases supreme court said you can say the whole awful and terrible things but there's as incitement a clear and present danger test we are becoming more and more immune to any in your ring to the notion of we were the center you can't say that you might say something what if you said what if something that was. what if he went in and that newspaper and said you know what. the response i mean we have become so prickly

so so what are we going to i don't want anything that gets out of control what's what so it was so do disappointing and it actually terrifying is that there are so many people and i'm sorry on the left at this point in time then when they want more censorship shut him down shut them down ok you know it's because they don't have an argument or don't want to engage in a debate and that's we need to debate now more than ever let me let me go to jeff here because i kind of extrapolated something that line and just said here popular speech doesn't need any protections because it's popular all right fine but it's unpopular speech that need protections here and that and that tests you know are our most important notion of our public existence and that is freedom of speech here and you know this is centuries in the making i mean there are still mitt many people around the world that we just envy the kind. speech privileges and rights that we have now and i'm just i'm so disappointed that so many people want to shut

so many people down. i think that i want to i want to just get to the heart of really maybe the heart of the problem and address in this question about technology the problem with technology is that they have that that because of. because of ad advertising technology and the way that that your truck and the amount of data that's known about you it's possible to create news and and content that you are going to be interested in and to control your feed so that you see more and more and more of what you already believe what you want to see there is no there is no you know i and my feet i may never see graham or peter or michael if they have if they say things that are different from what i believe and that's not by choice that's facebook's algorithm sending the read foreseen

information that's what that's a problem behind these big tech platforms that's what has never it's never existed before because we've never been at the technological point that we are today where we can feed and inflame groups of people with information that is not true at all and a good point we've run out of time here but you know what we have in this day and age is that we're all the products ok and that's a very good bet it thanks that's all the time we have want to thank my guests in new york city bank and in los angeles i want to thank our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. next time remember rolls. so we were in this news in tennessee.