hello and welcome to worlds apart the departure of donald trump from the white house twitter and many other social media platforms has left many americans ecstatic but astonished many more of just how much power of the big tech companies have accumulated over our lives love or hate trump isn't his gag order executed at such a politically opportune moment a warning shot for all of us not only in america but everywhere in the world well to discuss that i'm now joined by ramesh 3 of us and a professor of information studies at the university of california los angeles professor it's good to talk to you thank you very much for your time it's nice to meet you thank you for having me i know that you fully support removing trunk from

social media platforms and yet you also find twitter is and the other big tech companies decision to suspend his accounts somewhat problematic why is that you wouldn't quite say that i support sort of the banning of trump per se i think long before we reach this point there should have been enough there should have been a set of guidelines and rules everybody technology platform followed around specific kinds of keesters by which people might be maybe not deep platforms take into steps they're on the way to there and that is not what happens and i think those cases and just a kind of weird out should be for folks for individuals who have huge viral it meaning what they say what they share can go very viral. it's for those kinds of individuals if they are stating information that is going viral that is obviously false and or heedful it is by these

algorithms that are influencing the visibility of content that is heat fall and viral in those cases we need to intervene 1st process a and i'm sure you know better than i do that obviously false and hateful and very very subjective definitions in this day and age and i speak to you from russia i have covered a number of wars and hurricane leftwards before and i can tell you that you know. there is almost never an agreement on what is good and what is bad when it comes to highly politically sensitive issue is why are you comfortable with all your criticism of the big tech companies and we will go into more details later but with all your criticism of the big tech companies why you're comfortable giving them this right to decide what's good and what's bad what's right and what's wrong oh no no no that's actually the complete opposite of what i'm saying i think we need 3rd

party regulatory systems in place i mean of course in the big if the tech companies themselves who are going to make decisions and disclose them to the public and we can all be on the same page and we can trust them and will do the right thing then so be it i mean that would obviously be ideal to be more collaborative and co-operative i don't believe in inherently trying to be imposition all however to the earlier point you need a. president trying to use twitter and other mechanisms as loughlin mechanisms as well to incite a riot that took over the capitol building and killed multiple people ok and so sir it's these kinds of conditions that we have to be extremely careful about and that's not just anybody i'm all for the unit be supporting free speech that is the foundation of our country actually just one sect it's also the dition of the country and the best parts of the country and it's the foundation of the internet

its content directly leads to violence that is likely to go viral which are clearly is where we need sincerity but professor you know that the united states has a pretty soul it legal system this is one thing that many countries out of me and your definition of hate speech is also. very well tested and there have been legal precedents before and i think if you actually study those legal precedents i'm absolutely sure i mean like oh pretty confident at least that. comments could not be qualified as hate speech and that's that's that and that would be a decision harts up to him in legal means don't you think that it's a big dangerous substituting the law with twitter's own guidelines let them see you trying to lead them find him liable for what he did and then proceed wouldn't that be a better course you know my put my point really is is is that in cases where the content

is likely to go viral and i understand he speech is an interpretive act and anyway these 3rd party these are private corporate platforms they're not government they don't have to necessarily completely follow these free speech guidelines because of section $230.00 which is part of the name of the communications decency i just want everybody to understand this it basically allows these tech companies to not be liable for content that might be full or or are false and i don't have an issue with that necessarily i just think in certain cases we're content is going to have real world effects that lead to violence we need to have some sort of system of governance or collaboration that's what i'm getting at but i think a much larger point which we agree on is that you know you can't just you can't just accept that private companies are just going to magically do the right thing i think what we're talking about are private companies and their decisions that are

now when we look at their ratings and the profits other half are they don't i think it's a good it's very clear that trump and the media have benefited lastly from one another this isley because as you often talk about that and your interview as many media business models based are precisely on amplifying the conflict what i don't understand is how taking somebody off especially somebody with such a huge following not. in the united states but around the world how is that going to solve or even reduce the problem and yeah i mean i don't think that i don't think our long term solution to these issues are about the platforming or censoring i'm not we're not actually in much disagreement on this i think the much larger issue is that we have a parasitic system a system that is very dysfunctional for democracy or the health of any society anywhere including in russia and that system is one and this is not just social

media this is also our television networks as well there is a relationship between. you know whoever can get people kind of going crazy in their mind get their attention it's all you have already received yes absolutely but and if x. is noam chomsky's authorship and manufacturing consents which basically makes the argument now our media networks are governed by corporate private agendas so my point is that my point isn't the isn't to negate that existence but to realize that there has to be a public private balance in every system and mediation or one thing suffers versus the other professor when you agree with everything he says that this is essentially a parasitic system that. uses. the public for its own commercial interest and perhaps even ideological interest and to get you support

you know cases when it does it for its own purposes like when it's epper diplomat from somebody like donald trump because it feels you don't really write wait he does you think that it makes the system even more parasitic i mean like it's it doesn't i double of the car my position is that there is a much larger parasitic system at play here and that is the system that we need to have some balance within it in a vacuum the platforming trump this point i guess is is is the right thing to do i think that there should have been practices that were in place long before we reach this point and here's an opportunity here's the i'm going to tell you the optimistic vision around the us there's a huge opportunity i believe right now for us to get these things in a more balanced relationship so i don't you know it was pretty irrelevant at the point when trump was deep platforms i mean it was like the last few days of his presidency and sarah there was

a risk that equally symbiotic relationship between. twitter and trump that's it and the media more generally. now 2 you said that it's pretty much irrelevant because he is on his way out he is out actually but there are lots and lots of people here not if they 74000000 in fact who have voted for him and. you've cited communications are also started communications in the united states i found that we may grieve that they will be for him not because of his great task admittedly grotesque style but probably because of some of the issues that he represents and let's be you know honest in terms of political science here he has raised some of the issues that they at least have never at times before him d. d. industrialization of the economy the loss of jobs the ever growing monopoly of the big tech companies aren't you concerned that diplomat for it depart from him at this point of time will also silence those very very important things yes i mean

you're right the resolution to the to the challenges that you're raising which i completely agree with you around which led to the rise of president trump does not come from the part for a minute this point or another point that's just like you know like a little ants on an elephants or something like that it's not not the real issue and present it very effectively gave voice to people sense of alienation and in a classic neo-fascist playbook he played the race card in combination with people's notions of economic and other forms of socially an issue because quite honestly you are correct. people aren't really needed because they're i mean look at this country right now the life expectancy is decreasing. the this generation in this country for the 1st time in history makes less than its parents and there are a lot of things we can do about it trump gave voice to that but his resolute his solution to that was to pass the biggest tax cut in the history of this country for

billionaires. i worked directly and was honored to floor senator bernie sanders there is a whole other vision in there and the one thing i'm very grateful about and i'm an optimist and progressive optimist is that we are seeing movement already on day one from president biden. that resonates with some aspects of what our champion was about and. let me also ask you have about president biden because one thing that i was pretty surprised by is the softening of the tone bible trump and biden towards one another trying to wishing bin your administration all the success by then acknowledging that he received a very gracious and general letter by trump and what it suggests to me at least is that there may be some. efforts to reach out behind the scenes. because i think biden thousands and distaff that if they really want to bring

together the country as they have promised trump could aid them in this regard and i think jumble also understands that if he wants to stay politically active or politically alive he needs biden not to go after him with the you supported this unholy alliance of biden and trying for the sake of yet uniting the country and what do you have that support reinstating the social media comes because he still has these immense influence within the. aggrieved parts of the country this illusion will never be to permanently the platform anyone including trump that's never the solution as far as the this sort of trump biden thing as we both know. says and soap opera. as far as some factions trump an ministration or maybe even trying consult having back channel conversations with president biden and his administration that's entirely possible

but to me the resolution of the issues that led to trump. and are and based upon the experience of ilion nation working people in this country those are issues that president biden must take extremely seriously and i believe he will be let's see what happens and i believe he will be because i think he recognizes that this is a different time in 2008 when president obama was elected people know better people no doubt you know promises by elites corporate elites liberal elites neo liberal elites. you know can often be hollow and you know as and so the real question for me is will try and do things that are actually needed to how to choose to help people feel less alienated professor string of us and we have to take a very short break right now that people go back in just a few moments stage and. nuclear

power plants are become a battleground in the u.s. government people are demanding the shut down of a local plant some like is right now my focus because it's a very dangerous no care power plant the. or is attempting to run the reactor beyond its operational limits this case just sort of puts a magnifying glass on where's the power in this country where's it going is it moving more towards corporate interests or is it more in the idea of a traditional participatory democracy as are power lie with the people this case demonstrates that struggle in very real ways our struggle.

joined me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back to worlds apart a bit of that and ash that any of us and a professor of information studies at the university of california los angeles professor you'll probably call before for a regulatory intervention and perhaps even transformation of those big tech companies what's the best possible way to do that as far as we are concerned thank you for asking that question we have bipartisan agreement actually and for his own reasons president trump himself supported doing something about the oversized

outside of our big tax there are many do like the way he is one of the very few high ranking officials who actually ties that age. which is highly highly ironic given that his entire brands and in many ways his entire popularity and his hijacking of our journalistic system and his attacks on journalism were partly pre-condition based upon his social media presence so you know that they mean it's really remarkable right now is we have bipartisan we have spent 70 percent of americans who support some sort of some forms of reform we have $47.00 i believe out of 50 state attorney general is looking at regulatory issues involving the with the trumps department of justice was investigating antitrust issues and the federal trade commission and i as a as a registered democrat and a progressive have many many. folks in congress and their staff members contacted me about various bills that they have so what i think we need to do is is

a couple there are 3 major planks to this we need to think about how economic livelihoods in this country are being affected as you pointed out very well with the so-called post industrial economy which is increasingly data and digitally oriented so we need to ensure that jobs and. labor and economic issues are protected because it's incredibly unequal in our world today and in this country you know 3 people with equal and look at what happened during this pandemic all this money and he said that politics has only become sharper and has be acknowledged glad that it's happened you mentioned that you've been talking to people in power on this issue but what they really are chances of any of these reforms being passed by the new administration reach is clearly supported by the big temper but it's not all the ideologically but also in terms of campaign contributions do you buy it and administration really has an awful motivation to go against its corporate sponsors that's

a really good question so i just want to just lay out the other 2 components just just so i finish what i was saying we have to think about economic issues if you think about political dissent from mission and the polarization issues we discussed earlier and we have to think about personal privacy issues as well ok so those are the 3 as united as a station absent any of the you know you know you know question. i don't think they have any choice i don't think they're not there i don't i don't think so because i think that right now there is such a groundswell of attention and energy around these issues that i think some steps will be taken but this completely depends i'm who the advisors are in the federal communications commission who just you know where the office of science and technology policy which was just named its top directors a couple of days ago where where where they stand i will say this because i can say this now publicly i was part of the biden heris innovation policy committee on

a people on it. but i do know that that there was a common interest in our act so you always start with what you people say you're an army each other our 1st school will all. b. to think about a real collaboration can interest you can you trust me we start there we don't start by by demonizing vilifying or ilya maybe that's a very naive california and like it be progressive way of looking at it but you know there's a hammer you have every living thing of confusing people and corporations when it comes to campaign contributions but it's not the dollar trust professor really it's not about trust it's about going against very very powerful multi-trillion dollar financial issues and i think donald trump had you know even though like much bigger problems when he tried to challenge much smaller interest do you

think that the biden harris ticket is really up for that. cynthia and i very much i very much agree with you that the real power is image is entrenched you know multi-trillion dollar kind of corporations i don't think they issued a larger issue of corporate governance over all aspects of our lives are going to be resolved immediately or by the will power somehow of this administration magically this is a neo liberal system we live under the question is whether social movements whether organizations whether advocacy can move the needle you know we don't we don't we can move from the status quo to some to some sort of ideal like equal system but we have to kind of move things i mean this is the reformist perspective but it's a real reformist perspective i agree you can't just magically think that things are going to change through good will there are entrenched political interests and just give you one example that people don't realize for example mark zuckerberg people

say that the shareholders of. facebook could choose to remove. a man is the surly supporting that that's actually impossible because of the dual class share structure zuckerberg has a different class an act when he shares in facebook where he actually can't be removed he has total authority now a professor make me hat and me ask you a question that is very close to my heart as a professor of information that is i'm sure you are fully of aware of my channel's reputation in the united states and that's what i saw grateful to you for at appearing on my show but i think that reputation is driven by real philosophical ontological differences big thing here liberal globalist world view and many tech companies happen to support that will be and the they also happen to be very very aggressive towards people or companies entities who do not

support that that and it's not just about trying to jump is just the most vivid example but there are many. many efforts you suppress channels like mine and many others who do not subscribe to the globalist agenda and you concerned that this term misinformation or dissent from nations that by then paris administration uses a lot of it in because their nations being applied very liberally pun intended here all as they. term gets thrown around without the analytical rigor around what that means and i think that the be often in the room all was is that is that is the outsized power of private so-called liberal interests over the over 99 percent of people especially around the world and definitely in the united states so you know you will have no disagreement from me on that all of us are compromised in some manner or another i you know and

compromise demand we not like and like a lot not a political issue or something but i have a car that uses fossil fuel i have a facebook account i have what's right so you know we're all imbedded with in particular systems that are neoliberal so well for our team and you i see you as a legitimate journalist asking great questions i know other people on our team who are also very much like that and i'm open to having conversations you know does r t take money from the russian state which has which is problematic in many ways of course is the united states problematic and says that that's problematic but. as far as i'm concerned that's not me i'll turn into a business model to you. there one that we discussed earlier amplifying the conflict there is pretty much she ended up going to europe. there is there is i mean look at what happened with their with the sanders campaign we raise way more money than anyone else giving 20 bucks 10 bucks 17 but not all but we are talking

about media and you cannot have a media with a global outreach. going to cover u.s. led war if you're not supported by the state because it's simply impossible to do that by corporate means you can't if you can a big profit driven but. i was joined by your colleague chris angeles on democracy now last week it's not it's not funded by the u.s. state department or the government and certainly not by big private corporations that it's very it's out of reach is also quite limited i'm not saying down here and no exceptions but i think in generally speaking you could be ugly green that it's. in the in those are the 2 predominant business models for the media as far as the international outreach is concerned if you want to do interviews on let's say be a zoom that's possible but if you want to go to libya and syria and see what the reader revolutions look like beer and let me tell you i mean they have events on capitol hill would look like a child

a child's play compared to what happened in benghazi where people who were hanged on lamp post and 3 there wasn't suspending them back then so i guess. i was actually in egypt 10 years ago reading about the arab spring and i drove around 0 which is funded by the qatari state so my point again is that they're all war they're all sorts of they're all was a lie and says that may not be pure or ideal and i'm and we're all in that world and all we can do is do the best we can to support the values not really but i guess what i want to ask is you mentioned before before that regardless of where we are in the world we are all using that infrastructure but most of those companies are privately owned and the u.s. based and they have ties perhaps unofficial ties to the american government assume for the sake of argument if you guys figure out how to regulate those big tech companies within the united states what about the rest of us how much they should be have you know how those platforms operate and what they consider to be

appropriate. are inappropriate but the rest of do well and love that question thank you for asking it absolutely did it like the state the russian state the state of sri lanka the state of the philippines the state of my own market where facebook has has created all sorts of problems for people in my big distorting reality which leads to violence and actual attacks against. you know and in many cases muslim minorities like it for example we saw it in my own mark. and we saw it in sri lanka right because facebook misrepresented the reality because they didn't know any better so the goal so any form of mediation any network or social media system or technology system has to be kind of immediate it through the prism. of a state or a regulatory apparatus i mean i do a client and i'm friends with some people who wrote the general data protection

regulations for the european union you can't just trust a private tech company whose goal is to keep you on their stuff all the time who monitors you even if you never created in the account you monitors even if you're not online you know and where it's known in right there in moscow has made the point that these things are recording us even when their own airplane mode he's right he's right so like we can't be naive about this but you know this is we're going to have a counterpoint when these type of infrastructure will be consider it public good. i wish specially because i the internet was you know i'm not saying it's the same thing that it is today but it was initially obviously funded by united states taxpayers ironically enough kind of be arpanet and the cold war and all this nonsense right by like the it was it was set up that way but you know we have a real big problem in this country where all the costs get borne onto the 99

percent socialist and all the profits and now these days we're talking about valuation it's not even profits anymore who were doesn't make any money is not profitable worth hundreds of billions of dollars a great example this is what you need to verify because the greek minister a former greek parliamentarian caused the zombification of capital you know so yeah i mean this is this is a huge huge issue and challenge i come alive. i want to share your optimism that they knew of ministration will privately address it i have my doubts but anyway we have to leave it there professor it's been great to talk to you and very much for sharing. that was so much time thank you thank you for having me today and thank you for watching come to syria again next week on a world apart. hi. thanks .

for. joining me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. right now there are 1000000 people who are overweight or obese it's profitable to self. and sugary and salty 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. so what's driving the obesity epidemic it's corporate profit. a towering figure in broadcasting for more than 6 decades legendary interviewer larry king parents died at the age of $87.00. also major muslim federations in france reject emmanuel micrometer anti extremism charter designed to combat radical islam the president of the paris islamic confederation tells us why. draw many paragraphs anyway asking muslims explicitly to clarify their position the subject of this subject through they have responded put years and years and so the protesters take to the streets of moscow and across russia demanding the release of crime.