Who Will Censure the Censors?
2019-06-20 · Guest: Frank Buckley (American Spectator and New York Post) · 50:50
Government regulation of social media censorship
Bob Zadek and Professor Frank Buckley discuss the growing calls for government regulation of social media censorship following high-profile “de-platforming” incidents. They critique Senator Josh Hawley’s proposed legislation as a “regulatory shakedown” and explore Buckley’s alternative proposal for a disclosure-based commission to provide transparency without granting the government enforcement power.
Topics: Social Media Censorship, Section 230, Anti-trust Law, Josh Hawley, FTC, First Amendment, Free Speech
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Frank Buckley, Caller (Charlie)
Introduction and the Crowder-Maza Incident [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. Thanks so much for listening this summer Sunday morning.
A couple of years ago, during the “libertarian moment,” as it was called in the media, Senator Rand Paul made it to the cover of Time Magazine. Time Magazine introduced its story about Senator Paul by calling him the most interesting politician, I believe they used, the most interesting man in America. Well, Time Magazine was wrong. For sure, Senator Paul was and is quite interesting, and I find myself in sync with him almost all the time, but they unfairly deprived the label of the most interesting man in America from the true man who deserves that label, and that is this morning’s guest.
I’m happy to welcome back to the show Professor Frank Buckley. Frank is a senior editor at the American Spectator, he’s a columnist for the New York Post, and his New York Post writing will be the subject of this morning’s show. He’s written for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, US News, and every publication worth its salt in America. He has written a number of books, and each time Frank writes a book, the second it hits the street, I have to invite him on my show. Frank has been a guest many times before.
This morning’s topic is the censorship of social media. What is in store for social media? Is it going to be censored? More importantly, should it be censored? This morning’s topic is a result of a very recent New York Post column that Frank wrote, “How to Stop the Woke Social Media Censors.” So Frank, as he will explain, is understandably, as I would be, opposed to any form of censorship. But Frank’s solution—well, we’ll discuss it this morning and you can decide for yourself. Frank uncharacteristically concludes that, “Aha, I get it,” says Frank, “what we need is one more government agency. We are just short one government agency, so let’s fix the problem of censorship in social media by creating another government agency.”
Here to explain his point of view and to discuss the censorship, the need or not the need of social media, I’m happy to welcome back to the show Frank Buckley. Frank, good morning.
Frank Buckley: Hey, good morning to you. Thanks so much.
Bob Zadek: Now Frank, social media—Facebook, Instagram, blah, blah, blah, Twitter, YouTube, and the like—are all, and maybe I’ll say somewhat cynically, so far, businesses that operate in the freedom of American business. So long as they don’t break any law, they’re allowed to do what they want, have their own policies, have their own publishing standards, allow people to be members at the people’s choice, allow people to post at the people’s choice or not. Facebook has, as a matter of contract or as a matter of right, the right to delete and de-platform those it doesn’t want. So right now, the environment is social media is given maximum, I’ll call it editorial freedom. They can accept or not accept any postings they want. Is that a fair summary of our starting point this morning?
Frank Buckley: Yeah, it is. And I think you’ll agree with me, it’s not that we’re opposed to all censorship. We don’t mind private censorship. In other words, if Facebook wants to delete the account of a neo-Nazi, I don’t have a problem with that. The problem arose when Facebook deleted the account of somebody who wasn’t a neo-Nazi, but was simply a kind of a loud and maybe slightly obnoxious conservative—a comedian, in fact, somebody who told jokes. And you know, that’s a good way to get into trouble these days, right? Tell a joke.
Bob Zadek: Tell a joke and get into trouble has a rich history in our country. Remember Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, and the like? They were arrested for telling a joke. So we have a history of censorship of sorts in our country. And Crowder was just along in the, if you will, Lenny Bruce vein of telling a joke and getting into trouble. Not criminal law trouble, at least not yet, not criminal law trouble, but trouble in the sense that he lost his rights to publish on YouTube.
Frank Buckley: Well, right. And you know, comedians are generally today complaining about political correctness, how they can’t go to campuses and tell jokes. And the difference is, you know, fine, they don’t go to a campus, that’s not a problem for the campus mostly. The difference is we’re talking about social media. And social media is undoubtedly really, really important in terms of the way people share ideas. So people say, “Wait a minute, there’s a political issue here.” And you know, what I find to be really problematical is the number of really dumb ideas that have come out to try to correct it. So people say, “Oh, you know, these behemoths, you know, Facebook and all, they’re just too darn big, so let’s break them up.” And that’s just, you know, beyond stupid. And I’ll give you an example.
The Legal Shield of Section 230 [07:30]
Bob Zadek: So what we have—go ahead, sorry Frank. Go ahead. What we have in this country right now, we have the large platforms—there are many smaller ones—we have the large platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. And they initially, they were kind of laissez-faire and allowed people to publish what they want. And that got them to be quite unpopular in some pockets of public conversation and also in Washington. So tell us the history of how we came to be discussing this on a Sunday morning. What is the recent history of the open forum which Facebook et al was before it started getting attention?
Frank Buckley: Something called the Decency in Communications Act was passed 20-odd years back. And it had a section, a famous Section 230, which exempted social media from having to worry about the content. So think of it in terms of you’ve got a yard and you’ve got a fence, and somebody posts something on your fence, okay, a billboard. And the thing is, you’re not responsible for it, number one. And number two, if you take it down, you’re not responsible for that either. So it’s pure private property. So Facebook’s a private company. You know, your prior should be, I think, it’s a private company, it’s like the billboard in my fence. I mean, it can post whatever it wants, it can not post whatever it wants. So you know, that’s sort of how you begin with all of this stuff.
The difference is we’re not talking about a yard and a fence, we’re talking about social media, which is important to how we trade messages with one another. And conservatives in particular now are saying, “Wait a minute, we’re being discriminated by a bunch of ultra-liberals in Silicon Valley.” And I think there’s a bit of truth to that. But you know, that doesn’t mean that you go crazy with solutions that are worse than the disease, okay? Cures that are worse than the disease.
The Flaws in the Anti-Trust Solution [13:21]
Bob Zadek: What has happened is there was, in the first instance, there was the suggestion—and let’s accept the fact that there’s at least a bit of truth in it, maybe it’s wholly true—that Facebook, which as a matter of corporate policy, as is true for much of Silicon Valley, tends to be left-leaning, to say the least, in its worldview. And Facebook, in furtherance of its general left-leaning view, started to, in a way that they did not publicize, but nevertheless they did it, they started to make right-wing postings less available, perhaps not available at all—so-called de-platforming, where somebody from the right could post something to his friends or post something on Facebook—and by the way, I’m using Facebook as a surrogate for all of the social media, I’m not fingering Facebook in particular, although for sure it applies to Facebook. Facebook would make that posting not available. So you thought you were posting it to the Facebook community at large, but in reality, whatever you posted was only read by your son, and no one else could read it. But you didn’t know that, you had no way to know that.
So that started to get the attention of the public. But also in the broader sense, there was, as you mentioned, used the word “decency.” There was starting to be a bit of an uproar, not unlike what’s happening on campus, where the public at large was in general said, “This is kind of offensive and it shouldn’t be allowed.” So tell us—it started with political postings, but it got in a scary way broader than that. Again, reminiscent of the 50s and Lenny Bruce et al. So tell us where decency fits in, because we have very modest regulation of the decency of laws. We have obscenity laws, but they’re not very significant. So tell us where decency fits in.
Frank Buckley: Well, the act in question has been amended to block sites—and I’m blanking on names—that carried listings for prostitutes. Okay, so you know, the sort of sexual decency part of it preceded the political concern. So the sexual decency stuff—well, you know, I think all that happened, by the way, is some of these sites moved offshore, you know, and once they’re in Holland or whatever, you can’t do much about them. So that didn’t really do a heck of a lot, I don’t think.
But now we’re talking about moving from, you know, prostitution and the like to things like political content. And it’s given rise among people on the right, people not well-informed about economics and not without a great deal of common sense, they’re proposing: break them up. Okay, split them up. And that’s nonsense, and I’ll tell you why it’s nonsense. Take Facebook, for example. If they wanted to split it up, they’d have to split it up by friends, by people on Facebook. So you know, what would you do? I mean, would this be like the gas lines in the 1970s, where it’s a matter of, you know, how does your social security end with a, you know, an even or an odd number? So, and if they did that, imagine losing half your friends because their social security number ends in a zero and not a one. And you’d instantly, you know, so now you have two Facebooks, you’d instantly try to rejoin the Facebooks, right? I mean, there’s only room for one of them, so really it’s natural that there’s only one. You can’t split it up. It’ll immediately reunite.
Bob Zadek: And what’s interesting is—I’m sorry, continue Frank, please.
Frank Buckley: Yeah, the other thing about this is, you know, Facebook is kind of self-policing. I forget who it was, I think it was either Gary Becker or Milton Friedman had something about free markets and racial prejudice. And what he said, which I think is correct, is that free markets tend to dissolve racial prejudice because if you’re really prejudiced, you’ll bear an economic cost to satisfy your prejudice. And the same thing works for Facebook. So if Facebook saw that it was in danger of splitting up, it would police, you know, the ultra-liberals working in the basements of Facebook who are getting their jollies by purging conservatives. The thing is, Facebook is really two companies. I mean, most of my friends share my political views on Facebook, so it really wouldn’t be all that hard to create a new Facebook just for people, you know, conservatives. So you could end up—if Facebook really pushed this, Facebook would split apart, you’d have two Facebooks, one for liberals, one for conservatives. And Facebook, I think, recognizes this. So Facebook has the market incentive to ensure that it doesn’t do crazy stuff to conservatives, even as, you know, the firm that wants to discriminate against African Americans, for example, would pay so much for that that it’d go out of business.
Bob Zadek: And what’s interesting is those who say “split them up” are applying a strange body of law—well, the law isn’t strange, but the application is strange—which is anti-trust legislation, legislation designed to protect consumers from the adverse effects of a monopoly: the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust Acts. And of course, how can consumers complain when the product is free? So consumers are getting a free product, access to Facebook. So how in the world can you apply anti-trust legislation to protect consumers when they are not paying anything for the product? So it’s a total perversion of anti-trust laws. And the “break them up” is an anti-trust concept. It’s not a concept to punish anybody; it’s to accomplish a certain economic goal: protect consumers who do not need protection.
So we have now this—the public is grumpy. The public is complaining that Facebook and other social media sites are allowing indecent posting, which after all you don’t have to read, you don’t have to watch them. But the complaint is that Facebook et al is tipping the political scales because if you’re allowed your postings to get through on Facebook and you are a progressive, then the progressive movement has to that extent a decided advantage, and Facebook is using its market power to influence elections.
So we have—and what’s interesting, Frank, as I’ll ask you to explain, this is an issue when conservatives are complaining about behavior of Facebook and liberals are complaining about the behavior of Facebook. And when conservatives and liberals are both complaining about something, that means for sure the something they’re complaining about probably should remain. But Frank, tell us what the conservatives are complaining about and what the liberals are complaining about.
Frank Buckley: Well, we’re talking about a number of different things. But let’s say one of your listeners is a conservative and thinks, “God, there’s just too much porn,” and he’s presented with a button. And the idea is if you could press that button, you’d get rid of all the porn being carried by American platforms. And the question is, would you push the button? And my answer is: don’t bother. And the reason is because if you push the button, all you’re doing is you’re taking those platforms and you’re moving them offshore to other countries where they can exist nicely. So I don’t think that’s feasible.
But on your point about anti-trust, I want to make the point that, you know, we’re not talking merely about craziness, but it’s craziness squared because the anti-trust vehicle—well, first of all, you know, I think anti-trust by itself harms consumers. Anti-trust laws, we’d be better off without them, period. But if we have them, the rationale is to protect consumers in their pocketbooks. Only as you say, this stuff is free, right? You don’t pay to get onto Facebook. So it’s a free service. So it’s not about saving money for anybody. It’s about making money for Facebook through ads and the like, right? But it’s not about protecting consumers. It’s about something very different, which is the world of politics and debate.
So does Facebook et al need to be regulated that way? Well, you know, I’ve explained that there are self-interested reasons why Facebook doesn’t want to go crazy about this stuff. And the other assumption that’s really nuts about all of this is, you know, these social media behemoths, they’re going to be with us to the end of time. And we’ve been there before. We were there 20 years back with Microsoft. And back in the 90s, there was anti-trust litigation to split up Microsoft. Bill Gates came to town, and he was basically the face of high-tech at the time, still is for many people. And he came across as a supercilious punk, truthfully. And he really teed off the judge in question, Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ordered that Microsoft be split up. And everybody thought, “This is wonderful. Yes, break them up.” Okay, because, you know, Microsoft was so big it was going to threaten democracy. Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times that Gates was an egomaniacal dangerous—or Microsoft was a dangerous giant that has cut off the air supply of competitors in a bid to control cyberspace. Okay, 1998.
Well, you know, 20 years later, all that happened is we more or less expelled Bill Gates from running Microsoft, made him a philanthropy figure. Microsoft hasn’t had too many brilliant ideas since then, actually. And what we’ve learned is that, you know, all these behemoths tend to disappear in time. You pick up a copy of Life Magazine from the 50s, you know, and you look at the dominant businesses from back then, and where are they now? Right? They’re in the graveyard, many of them. So, you know, don’t assume that market processes can’t cure these kinds of problems. And I explained how it could if Facebook tried to become ultra-politically correct, it would be cutting its own throat. So, you know, breaking up the media giants is nuts. I mean, anti-trust is nuts. Right?
Senator Josh Hawley’s Proposed Shakedown [20:01]
Bob Zadek: So now we have social media now is in the crosshairs. They’re in the crosshairs of the politicians. They’re in the crosshairs of the left, the extreme left, the extreme right. And they are getting a lot of attention. And what that means is many people are saying we have a problem. Much like the Music Man, there is a problem in River City and it’s playing pool, and he stirs up everybody into town. And the solution, of course, to pool is to buy musical instruments. Well, just as bizarre as that solution was—solve the non-problem of pool by buying trumpets and trombones—well, now the American public and even far worse, the legislature, is now trying to solve the non-problem in America, which is the freedom of Facebook to do what it wishes with legislation.
And now we come to the next scary chapter in this conversation of the censorship or non-censorship of media with federal legislation, which is quite scary and as Frank will explain after we come back from our very brief 30-second break, counterproductive and sponsored by Senator Hawley. We will discuss the Hawley bill when we come back. You may remember Senator Hawley. Senator Hawley beat Austin Petersen, a libertarian, in the primary in Missouri. Austin was on my show a number of years ago. He then defeated Claire McCaskill in Missouri. He became a sweetheart of the right because he bumped off a Democratic senator. And now he has rewarded us with some obnoxious legislation, scary legislation, which Frank will explain when we come back from our 30-second break. Please stay tuned. Lots more to follow. Censorship is fun.
[Sponsor Break]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show always of ideas, never ever, not once, the show of attitude. Thanks so much for listening this Sunday morning. We are speaking with Frank Buckley. Frank has written a wonderful article in the New York Post that caught my attention: “How to Stop the Woke Social Media Censors.” We are discussing the need or not the need to censor the large social media platforms. We feel threatened politically. Remember Russian interference? We’ll discuss that before the end of the hour. We are at great risk to losing all that we value in our country unless we take control of Facebook. Still, the future of our country hangs in the balance of what Frank and I and you decide this morning.
So Frank, we have censorship, we have the bad behavior in quotes of Facebook et al, a private company. And now we have first-term Senator Josh Hawley to the rescue. What has Josh Hawley concocted and why is it bad or why is it good? The second is easy, the first requires some conversation. So tell us about Hawley’s solution to Facebook.
Frank Buckley: Well, Hawley is, as you noted, promoted himself as kind of the social conservative guy on the Hill. His bill introduced last week is called Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act. I think the real title is the Social Media Shakedown Bill. And it’s really, the way it’s drafted, it’s really pretty extreme. What happens is we refer to Section 230 of the ‘96 Act, which means that the Facebooks and Twitters of the world aren’t responsible for the content, can’t be sued for dumb stuff, libelous stuff said on their platform. The bill would remove that unless the company in question proves beyond a reasonable doubt in the eyes of four out of five members of the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, that it doesn’t discriminate on the basis of political viewpoints. Right? So you know, the standard is you have to prove to the commission by clear and convincing evidence that you haven’t discriminated on the basis of viewpoints. So you have to prove a negative.
The Weaponization of the FTC [27:31]
Frank Buckley: And you have to prove to people—and really the way it’s structured is roughly one political party can block this. So you need—the FTC is a five-member commission. No more than three members can be a member of one party. So three Dems, one Republican, okay, and you need four to approve the waiver of Section 230. So one party could block it, and that would basically kill Facebook, okay? So and you have to come up every two years.
So let me go back to Microsoft and what happened in Microsoft’s case in ‘98. The reason Bill Gates seemed arrogant is he really was arrogant. I mean, his attitude is: look, I made Microsoft, I am so much more important than you guys, I’m a master of the universe. And that’s what teed off the judge and gave rise to the breakup order, which was reversed by the Court of Appeals. Okay. The lobbyist employed by Microsoft at the time was in the suburbs, it was like a lone guy in the suburbs in the second-floor walk-up of a strip mall. Okay. Since then, Microsoft has become just about the biggest player in town in terms of lobbyists.
So what’s it like if every two years you’re looking at the death of your company? What it means is you’re going to have to invest big, big time in money for political parties to make sure that doesn’t happen. The other weird thing about all of this is this is going to be decided by the FTC. And up to now, the FTC has been kind of non-political. I mean, I know people have been members. They’re anti-trust lawyers. Now they’re going to become politicians. They don’t know a bean about any of this stuff, just no more than the rest of us. They’re trained as anti-trust lawyers in DC law firms. They’re going to become the biggest players in town, right? And the political parties that nominate them are going to be ultra-sure that they nominate people who are basically going to keep these companies alive, right? So tons of money—it’s like Microsoft—tons of money will now flow into the pockets of lobbyists in DC exclusively concerned with protecting the Googles and the Twitters and the Facebooks and the like of the world. You know, getting four out of five commissioners to agree, it’s extraordinarily difficult. You’ll have to have a really plugged-in political apparatus to make this work so things don’t get shut down.
Bob Zadek: Now, what’s interesting is the Congress has discovered a very clever, but perhaps a better label is sinister trick. This issue of proving you don’t discriminate is insanely expensive. It’s sort of like disparate effect when the claim is that your employment practices are prejudicial to a protected class: sex, minority, national origins, religion, and the like. If the government determines that statistically, whatever you’re doing, the result is you’re discriminating, even if you’re not doing so consciously, you have to prove you’re not—an almost impossible task. And remember just recently, Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she proposed a bill to protect women—no, it was Elizabeth Warren who proposed a bill to protect women where large American businesses have to prove they’re not discriminating against women, which just means a massive expense.
So be alert, my listeners know to do that. Be alert to those kinds of bills. They’re just shakedowns described as good government legislation. Now Frank, I’d like to digress for a moment. Do you think—let us assume that Facebook does discriminate, which it is allowed to do, and does have their algorithm, does have a left bias. Let’s assume that to be the case.
Does Social Media Bias Actually Matter? [33:31]
Bob Zadek: How does that harm the country? I’m a libertarian. I have countless ways to acquire information and to read postings by people I respect or don’t like and to acquire information. So the fact that Facebook may have a bias in its posting, does it really—is there any indication that that really has any effect whatsoever on political life in America? And should we even care? After all, they don’t have a monopoly. There are plenty of platforms that I read every day where I get all the information that I want. So if you could, Frank, your opinion: is it a problem to begin with that deserves any attention, whether—and we’ll get to your proposal in a moment—whether it’s your proposal in the New York Post or Hawley or some other proposal? Is there a problem that needs a solution before we discuss the solutions?
Frank Buckley: Well, let me tell you why I think people begin now to think there’s a problem. Compare Facebook to the Washington Post, which I get in the mornings, which is, you know, like a lot of newspapers, it’s all about, you know, the horrors of Donald Trump. You know, it’s in every part of the paper. It’s in the weather section, it’s in the sports news, I mean, it’s in everything. But that’s, you know, that’s the Post. And if I want to get something a different voice, I’ll get on a platform like you and I’ll look at another site. I might get onto Reason, for example, okay? So but I can choose.
Now, what’s happened with Facebook is we used to think that Facebook and Twitter were politically neutral, that they weren’t like the Post, they weren’t like an organization with a definite view, which, you know, which we could filter out if we like. We used to think that it wasn’t like that at all, that this was purely objective stuff. We were getting the raw data from our friends and the like. And then it seemed to people that it wasn’t like that at all, that some voices were being suppressed. And so we have to adjust our thinking right now. If that’s the case, we have to adjust our thinking. We can think of Facebook like the Washington Post, and they’ve got their opinions, you know, God love them, they can do whatever they want, it’s a private company. Or we can think, “No, this is more like a public utility.” Okay, and you know, the public utility model is the one that finds favor with people who thought that this really was—the social media giants really were politically neutral, and now we feel betrayed. Okay, we had expected political neutrality and we’re not getting it, and these guys are important.
The Russian Interference Narrative [36:51]
Frank Buckley: And all of this, moreover, occurs in the context of stories which I think absurd, and I think you agree, about the Russians destroying elections. You know, they spent a hundred million bucks on Facebook ads, you know, which is basically nothing, and that turned the election, right? I mean, that got Donald Trump elected. And there’s no evidence of this, but we’re told we have to prove the contrary, which one never can. So in the context of the Russian scare, quote-unquote, the Facebook wars began to take on an added life. You have that, and you also have the complaints of conservatives.
And maybe there’s a third thing. This is about the Facebook—this is what the algorithms on social media—you know how it works? You know, you get a story and you’re invited to share it. And what you tend to share tends to be the weird, extreme stuff. So there’s a bias towards extremism left and right on social media. That is, you don’t share the boring stuff everybody knows. You share, “Hey, this is new. This is weird.” Right? So, you know, it’s made for the Alex Joneses of the world, in short. There’s a bias towards extremism. So that’s going on as well. And you know, add all those three things together, and now you’ve got people saying, “Holy moly, we better do something.” And that’s why I came out with what I thought.
Bob Zadek: Now Frank, do you—so you have described a dynamic: the sharing of extreme articles, and of course that goes on, that’s what gets the attention, that’s what people watch. They watch the two-headed tiger and all this weird stuff. That’s how they get their jollies. That’s fine. The question is, is that a problem, or is that just the way it is?
You mentioned Russian—the alleged scare about Russian intervention. And I’d like to pick up on that just for a moment. We may remember that the claim is that Russia in a skillful—that’s in big quotes—in a skillful manner attempted to interfere with our election. And they invested—well, the number we don’t know, somewhere between 50 and 100 million dollars, some number like that. And they threatened, if you read the hyperbole, they threatened the whole democratic process and they put our democracy at risk. My friends, if Russia could do that with 100 million dollars, there are maybe 5,000 humans on this planet, putting aside companies and countries, who could easily spend 100 million dollars and not notice it. Which means, why do we have an army if we’re at risk from anybody with 100 million that they don’t need? If they can destroy democracy in America, pack it in, we’re done. So that’s utterly absurd. And I say the Russian scare is utterly absurd because there’s no way they could affect anything, and there’s no proof no matter how much they spent they can affect the outcome. Yeah, they can attempt it and we’re offended by it, but we have been doing it for about half a century with other countries, so that’s okay. So the whole Russian scare, which caught a lot of attention to Facebook—Facebook should have kept them out—utterly absurd. We are behaving like babies. There is no risk of anybody messing with our democracy.
Buckley’s Proposal: Sunlight as a Disinfectant [40:01]
Bob Zadek: So Frank, we have—maybe we have what I believe strongly is not a problem. So we have the Hawley suggestion, which as you pointed out, just means send checks to Washington if you’re a social media company in the hopes that they don’t close you up. On the other hand, we have your idea, Frank, which you have suggested in a recent New York Post posting of a couple of weeks ago. Tell us the Buckley solution to what I think is not a problem at all, but okay, Frank, if you have the time to solve things that aren’t problems, it’s a relatively free country, so have at it.
We have in this country freedom of the press. It is embodied in the First Amendment. And that concept is really misunderstood. We take freedom of the press to mean newspapers initially and now extended out to all media. But that’s not what the founders had in mind. At the time of the founding, all of the—almost every single one of the broadsheets and every single one of the media was biased. We had no objective media whatsoever. In the election of 1800, every newspaper had a profound bias and they were paid by government to have that bias. So the founders were not preserving freedom of the media alone; press meant the printing press. And the founders knew we had to preserve everybody’s right to speak out and we could not have prior censorship, we could not have prior restraint. So the founders knew that even though some of what might be published would be harmful to the citizenry, they knew we had to allow the human mind to have access to the widest range of information. That’s what a functioning free society requires. So tell us about, Frank, your proposal, why it is better than Hawley and other proposals, and equally importantly, why it is better than the Zadek proposal, which is to do absolutely nothing because there’s no problem.
Frank Buckley: Well, I think that the problem with what you call a Zadek solution is that people think it is a problem and there’s a demand to do something. And what I proposed was, I think, the least intrusive thing you could do, which is employ more lawyers and set up a commission not composed of anti-trust experts, but simply composed of people who are charged with investigating how social media might possibly abuse its position for political reasons. And I think once you’ve done that, basically just by doing that, if there were a problem, you’ve solved it because the media giants having to share information with this commission would be adequately policed by themselves. In other words, if you came up—if this commission investigating the algorithms of Facebook and the like, if it discovered an effort to subvert one particular viewpoint, which is a legitimate one, that would itself suffice to police them.
And I mean, this goes back to our kind of early ways of thinking about regulation. You know, in securities law, there was something called merit regulation in state securities law where you would police speculative investments. And on that basis, three states decided not to permit Apple to sell its shares in 1977. Tells you about stupidity. So as opposed to that, the other philosophy is disclosure, sunlight, you know, shine a flashlight on it. Electric light is the most efficient policeman. So if we’ve got a problem, if people are upset right now, it’s because they think something secret is happening. Well, let’s shine some light on it. And that’s, that’s if you want to do something, that’s the max you should do.
Bob Zadek: So your agency, your federal agency, would do nothing other than tell people what’s going on in the world of alleged bias. It wouldn’t have any enforcement powers.
Frank Buckley: Exactly. No police powers, no breakup powers, merely: “Hey guys, here’s what we found.” And probably, frankly, they’d be reporting nothing and we could all relax.
Caller Segment: Project Veritas and the Administrative State [46:51]
Bob Zadek: Now, interesting, would your federal agency, which does nothing other than say, “Facebook is biased,” that’s what they would say, would they also do the same for mainstream media? Would they also study MSNBC and conclude—and then of course that would take a lot of work to conclude that, we know that, it would take a massive back office—but would they also advise us that MSNBC or Fox is biased? And if not, why separate the two? And if so, aren’t they just telling us the obvious and what’s gained by it?
Frank Buckley: Well, you know, you hold out the specter of what used to be called the Fairness Doctrine, which was abolished in 1988, which required both sides to be presented on talk radio. And it was only after that that you and Rush Limbaugh got started. The thing is, you’re asking me to distinguish, say, the Washington Post from Facebook, and here’s my answer. The difference is we all know about Washington Post, right? I mean, we all know that it’s got its own political biases and, you know, if you get the Post, that’s just what you’re getting. The difference with Facebook is, as I described, there’s now a sense that while we thought it was politically neutral, in fact it’s not. So it’s a question of our expectations being dashed about what we thought was something apolitical. If it’s not that, I guess we’ll find out about it. If indeed Facebook wanted to say, “Well, the hell with our customers, we are going to be the Washington Post,” let them do that and court a private breakup. I don’t think they would. I think the main effect of what I’m suggesting, number one, wouldn’t affect MSNBC, wouldn’t affect the Post, they’re not in play, we all know where they’re coming from. It’s about organizations that we had thought were important and were politically neutral and we’re getting the suspicion they’re not.
Bob Zadek: Frank, we have a caller. Charlie, good morning. Welcome to the show.
Caller (Charlie): Thanks for taking my call, Bob. Frank, I have a question. First is just a quick observation about a group that might be performing a similar function to the social media commission, and that’s James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, where I see he’s gone undercover into the big tech companies and sort of interviewed people who talk about how some of these algorithms might work. So I guess the question there is, could there be a private solution? And then my other question is, you’ve written a lot about kind of the administrative state and the dangers of growing executive authority. How does this kind of play into the risks of adding another agency to the alphabet soup?
Frank Buckley: Well, number one, I love O’Keefe. And number two, I like the idea of not just my but other commissions being toothless, you know, shining a light on them. That’s it.
Bob Zadek: So the difference is that other administrative agencies, as I have discussed many times on my show with wonderful guests, are that the administrative agencies such as the SEC, they are both the cops, they enforce it, they are judges, they decide, and they are the legislature, they draft rules. Frank’s proposal is simply like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, or perhaps Consumer Reports, where you go and you determine whether or not the social media you participate in has a bias or not. And then you make a marketing decision based upon that.
I would, of course—we’re running out of time—and Frank, the best thing about what you said—it’s all excellent, but the point I choose to close with is the fact is that Facebook, if Facebook makes a marketing decision to be biased, that is an economic decision. It doesn’t threaten the country. They are making a business decision, a decision that probably—well, if they make a decision so that they only want to appeal to certain groups, well, then they lose others as a market decision. Fox and MSNBC make a marketing decision they will appeal to a subset and they decided that’s an appropriate business model. That’s their decision to make rather than be like C-SPAN, which is unbiased and just provides information.
Now Frank, so what do you think—we have about a minute left—if nothing is done, if the Hawley bill doesn’t pass and if people don’t adopt the Buckley commission, what is the future of social media with their bias? We have about a minute left, Frank.
Frank Buckley: I think markets tend to be self-correcting, and I think it would be like a company deciding to discriminate against Chinese people or African Americans, they go out of business. I think the self-correcting tendencies of the market would tend to cure things. But let’s, let’s get some light on it.
Bob Zadek: I agree. Frank, I can live with your solution, much as I hate governmental commissions, so long as every other alphabet agency in Washington also has no enforcement powers, then Frank, I am all in. I’m with you 100%. Frank, thanks so much for a wonderful hour of conversation. We hope you create a groundswell of support for your proposal. And thanks to all my friends out there for giving us an hour of your valuable time this morning. Have a nice Sunday.
Frank Buckley: Okay, thank you Bob, and you too, dear friends. Bye.
Bob Zadek: Thank you, Frank.