E23: E23: Robby Soave and Nate Hochman CLASH on big tech and the role of government in the 21st century

Right Now with Stephen Kent

It's a Republic if you can keep it. Not if Mark Zuckerberg can.
On a new "Right Now with Stephen Kent," Stephen sits down with Robby Soave of Reason magazine and writer Nate Hochman for a conversation about how much of a threat Facebook, Twitter, and Google pose to our democracy; if and how we should amend Section 230; the murky area of who gets to censor what on social media; if Donald Trump lost his influence after he was de-platformed; and whether big tech's influence on our day-to-day lives will worsen in the future.
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---- Content of This Episode ----
00:00 Episode start
00:05 Terms of Service
01:48 Welcome Robby Soave
03:20 Nate Hochman joins the fray
04:25 Robby wrote the book on Tech Panic
06:30 Nate’s concerned, but not panicking
11:51 Are social media companies publishers?
14:15 Proposals for Section 230 reforms
17:37 So what is censorship exactly?
19:45 The decider of who gets to say what
22:40 Bring back the Fairness Doctrine?
30:00 The slippery slope of social media regulation
34:30 Drawing the line on unchecked power
41:50 What the future holds
44:45 Good news on books, moving to The Swamp, and getting out of the house
---- Reading List ----
Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future By Robby Soave https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tech-Panic/Robby-Soave/9781982159597
Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/
Federal judge blocks Florida’s new social media law targeting ‘big tech’ companies (Miami Herald) https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article252492548.html
GOP-sponsored bill to stop Big Tech companies from censoring users dies (Austin Business Journal)
https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2021/06/03/tech-censorship-bill-in-texas-fails.html
Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans (The New York TImes)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/business/biden-antitrust-amazon-google.html
Trump's Class Action Lawsuit Against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Is an Absurd Farce (Reason)
https://reason.com/2021/07/07/trump-class-action-lawsuit-facebook-twitter-youtube/
The Government Should Stop Telling Facebook To Suppress COVID-19 'Misinformation' (Reason)
https://reason.com/2021/07/15/covid-19-vaccines-misinformation-jen-psaki-white-house-biden/
Conservative courts could rescue tech (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/conservative-courts-tech-antitrust-c9eab980-7f7d-4d78-81f9-2e60f606ba83.html
Right or Left, You Should Be Worried About Big Tech Censorship (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship
Top House antitrust Republican forms 'Freedom from Big Tech Caucus' (The Hill) https://thehill.com/policy/technology/563344-top-house-antitrust-republican-forms-freedom-from-big-tech-caucus
Facebook blocks woman’s ‘why are men so dumb’ comment as ‘hate speech’ (New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2021/07/26/facebook-blocks-womans-men-are-dumb-comment-as-hate-speech/
---- Plugs for our guests ----
Follow Robby Soave on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/robbysoave
Follow Nate Hochman on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/njhochman
Watch the latest episode of "Cancel This!", a new Right Now series:
https://youtu.be/-IMhg1A_Wd4
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