Podcast: Kara Swisher on Big Tech's Big Problem

TRANSCRIPT: Kara Swisher on Big Tech's Big Problem

Kara Swisher:

What he kept doing is sort of one upping Twitter in terms of what awful things he could say, especially at a really tense time. And so I think they really bred him to behave like this. It's sort of like having a kid and giving him endless sugar and then wondering why your kid is diabetic and crazy.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. Here you'll find extended versions of the interviews from my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer and today there are big controversies brewing for big tech and social media companies in particular.

Following a violent attack on the US Capitol incited in part by Donald Trump's rhetoric and lies about the 2020 election results. He was banned for life from Twitter, Facebook, even Pinterest. But the move has sparked a debate about censorship and the power of these huge companies that will continue well into President Biden's term.

I've got the perfect guest to talk about that and more, Kara Swisher, one of the best known tech reporters in the business, opinion writer for the New York Times, and host of the podcast Sway. Let's get right to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

And I'm delighted to be with Kara Swisher, someone I really want to talk to today. Thanks so Much for joining GZERO World.

Kara Swisher:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

Let's start with the big ban. Trump, the President of the United States, taken off of major social media, they say for life, they say permanently. You say, "Right move, and in fact, they waited too long." Why?

Kara Swisher:

Well, I actually didn't want him taken off originally because I thought they had the right attitude that he was newsworthy even though he violated the rules pretty regularly and that other people would've gotten suspended or kicked off. Most of the stuff was, even if offensive, was not rule breaking. But then he started really badly to break the rules in the last year. And then of course right after the election where he really was causing a lot of problems.

And so what he kept doing is sort of one upping Twitter in terms of what awful things he could say. And causing problems, doing lies, and especially at a really tense time. And they should have expected it is what I think is that they sort of bred him to behave like this. It's having a kid and giving him endless sugar and then wondering why your kid is diabetic and crazy.

Ian Bremmer:

And bouncing off walls, but never gave him a suspension. It went from having some comments underneath post to you're gone for life. That's zero to a 100. Is that appropriate?

Kara Swisher:

I don't know. It was at a very tense time right in the middle of these riots that were happening at the Capitol. And so he was, I think a lot of people feel, and as more evidence is beginning to show up, the danger that the people inside the capitol were actually in and his tweets were fomenting that.

So I think probably they, to cover themselves, especially at that moment of crisis, probably they have a good excuse to do so. I think the big question is not so much the ban because he did deserve it. He did break the rules over and over and over again. And other people have been kicked off for much less. So that's sort of the justice system too. Some people get one sentence, another person gets a different one.

And so what was really the issue is what they did before and how long it took. And also, I think more importantly, why are these systems built this way so someone like President Trump can abuse them in such a fashion? And in fact not abusing them, using them exactly as they're built. And so that is the bigger question is, this is the group that got us into the mess. And now they of course had to clean it up. But I think, let's not forget the first part, which is they got us into this mess.

Ian Bremmer:

What was the first time you saw a post from the president and you said, "Okay, this is not on. This is not acceptable in this environment?"

Kara Swisher:

I don't even remember. There's so many of them. I think when he was talking about insurrection, it was a similar kind of thing when he was sort of tweeting about insurrection. I wrote a whole column about it saying, "Wow, he's really getting right to the edge of this." And I can't remember what it was, but it was about insurrection and maybe it's a good idea, which was unusual coming from the president.

Now again, people have their rights to say these things, but on Twitter you often get, if you incite violence, there's two bright lines for these sites, which one is child pornography and terrorism, I guess there's three. And then incitement to violence, which is right next to terrorism. And so he really did cross that line, I thought, a while back a couple of times, very closely at least. And then this time I think he really did incite violence. And so they were within their rights to do something.

The fact that Mike Pence was in such danger while Trump was tweeting these sort of angry tweets at him, is really problematic for the president. Now, different sites, Facebook suspended him indefinitely, which is probably permanent, would be my guess. But everybody did a different thing. And the whole issue is we're sort of at the mercy of these basically two people, Jack Dorsey, who runs Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Facebook.

Ian Bremmer:

And what's the logic of taking him off of Pinterest?

Kara Swisher:

Well, they don't a lot of hate speech on there. I think that's, Pinterest has been trying to push back on a lot of hates. All these sites do. Even TikTok has an issue with it. What happens is whatever site is available, these groups, and not just hate groups, not just white supremacist groups, but right now anti-vax is a big concern of mine, anti-vax people.

They just move to whatever platform is available to them and start to spew their endless nonsense, and some of it very dangerous information. And so they were doing it on Pinterest too, and the Trump campaign was doing some stuff on Pinterest that Pinterest didn't like. And I think a lot of people was sort of run for cover. Why not? It's the moment to kick him off. So we wanted to anyway, so let's all just do it and use this insurrection as an excuse.

And I don't mean the insurrection is an excuse. It's a good reason, but why not do it now? And so it happened with Alex Jones. A very similar thing happened with Alex Jones. Apple moved to push him off the sites and then everybody else followed in quick succession. And just weeks before, I had done an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where he said he absolutely wasn't going to take Alex Jones off.

Ian Bremmer:

And then he did. Yeah. So now of course there are other leaders, world leaders, that use these sites to directly incite violence. Certainly some of what I've seen from Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei against Israel.

I'm sure you remember the post from Prime Minister Mahathir inciting violence against Christians in France. And they're still up. And I'm not suggesting that undermines your argument, but I am interested in what that means for the kind of standards you think these sites need to have. And is it okay for them to have double standards since they're American companies and they're talking about American leaders?

Kara Swisher:

I think I've always written their arbitrary. One of my issues is the arbitrary enforcement is a problem. I have no problem removing them too, if they are violating the rules that Twitter has set up. I think the issue is these companies, not just Twitter, because it's much smaller. Facebook really is the center of all this. Everybody sort of focuses on Twitter, because the media is on Twitter and the politicians are on Twitter. But in terms of size and impact, Facebook really is the whole game across the globe. Especially globally.

I think they arbitrary nature of how they do this random, they sometimes enforce rules. They sometimes don't. It's largely because this is a small company really, which is trying to enforce standards across the world. And so the issue is how these things is the architecture of these sites.

They're all built for arrangement. They're all built for aggression. They're all built for addiction. And so people get sucked up into them, whatever site they're on. And one of the things that was really remarkable watching and listening to the people at the Capitol is they truly believe the nonsense they were spewing. They truly believe it. And it's because they've been... We talk about radicalization with terrorists in the Middle East. These are radicalized people who've been radicalized by lies on these sites. That's what I'd like to focus on is how this happens. And a lot of people have focused on it.

Ian Bremmer:

Talk about what the fixes need to be, aside from clearer, less arbitrary lines for what is and what is not acceptable to post on a social media site?

Kara Swisher:

Well, I don't know. That's the issue. I don't know how you fix an architecture of a building that is just purposely dangerous for everybody. It's really difficult. I think it's about power. I think one of the things that drives me crazy is the GOP talking about being unnecessarily targeted on these sites. Conservative bias against conservatives.

This is another evidence free claim by most of these people. There is no bias that has been able to be shown, it's just that they get kicked off more. Maybe they violate more, I don't know. But there is no actual evidence about this. But they do have a point that this is about power. That the power is in the hands of a very small group of people. So the way you solve that is you have more companies. And so we've allowed these legislators and our regulators have allowed these companies to get enormously big in the way we used to allow the oil companies or the telephone companies or whatever, we are going to break up. We have experience in this area as Americans over our long history.

And so these three or four companies control everything. And so that's really the issue. And it's not so much what they do because in some cases they do the right thing. In some cases they do the wrong thing. But the fact that there is not enough companies and choice that people can go to all kinds of places or there can be other voices or other versions of technology. So it's not so concentrated in one place.

Ian Bremmer:

If the business model is driven by advertising dollars and sucking up as much data as humanly possible and pretending it's a much bigger site than it actually is. If you have 10 or 15 companies as opposed to four, how does that deal with these structural problems of what the companies are?

Kara Swisher:

Well, there are business incentives that are really problematic, absolutely. There's no question. But my point is that when we go to make these decisions, when we give one or two companies where everybody coalesces in one place, as if it's a public square, as if it's a national public square, when it is in fact a private square owned by billionaires, owned by the richest people on Earth, you're going to have problems. Look what happened with Parler. I'm the one who did the interview that got him in trouble.

Ian Bremmer:

I saw that with the CEO of Parler.

Kara Swisher:

Well, he was just the quintessence of all this carelessness, really. And he sort of expressed himself in an arrogant, and yet I would say, superficial way about the problems that were occurring right then. But I think he's just, I don't want to call him a scapegoat because I think he walked himself into it and the way they've conducted that company has problems. But it's the idea of moderation. How do you do it correctly? Is it even possible? And if you create private squares, what's your legal responsibility?

And some people think a lot of these companies should have legal responsibility. It's certainly something we should debate and that hasn't been under debate. Instead, it's get rid of section 230, which is this law that provides broad immunity instead of, "Okay, we're not going to get rid of it because it could hurt a lot of companies. What can we do to reform it to protect us against giant companies that have unlimited and unfettered power?"

And so there's a discussion that needs to be had after all this time that the internet has impacted us to what kind of internet do we want in a democracy? And that's okay to have that discussion about power of companies when one company like Google 90% of search. Come on. Maybe they're good, maybe they're bad, but I don't know. But I think 90% is the only number I want to look at. And same thing with Facebook. There's been no new social network created in a very long time, there's no significant one. There's been no significant search service. There's been no significant e-commerce effort. So you have to just look around.

There's only two app developers in the terms of, not app developers. There's lots of app developers, there's only two app stores, Google and Apple. So these are the kind of things we need to talk about as a country and as legislators. And they have not done their job in privacy legislation, in fines, in enforcement, or anything else that could sort of reign in the power of these giants.

Ian Bremmer:

I've spoken with senior executives in the industry who have told me that if the Republicans had won the Senate, Parler would not have been de-platformed because of the blow back that would've come on the legislative side. What do you think about the fact that, "Okay, they've gotten rid of Trump, they've gotten rid of Parler, they've gotten rid of Stop the Steal as a hashtag," but the Democrats now run the Senate and the House and the Executive. And so they're going to be in a sense, the power's on their side now. What do we do with that dynamic going forward?

Kara Swisher:

Well, I think they don't have the full power, by the way. It's a very tight, both in the House and the Senate. No one's going to be anything very much. They're not going to run wild.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, there's not going to be a lot of legislation generally, I agree with that. Sure.

Kara Swisher:

But it's an opportunity to do very bipartisan legislation around things that concern us all, which is what is the reform of section 230? What should it be? Now we can have an actual cogent discussion without all the screaming on one side or the other.

I think it's very important to have a privacy legislation, which we do not have a national privacy bill. Every other country does. There's the number of them in states, I think enforcement by the FTC around antitrust and the Justice Department in a way that treats big tech, not like a monolith, but individual cases. That start to bring more innovation. One thing the FTC was looking into was all the small purchases that these big companies do. Because what they do is they kill a lot of companies in the cradle or they buy them. It's some of the terrible expression kill acquisition or something like that.

So these companies which could maybe challenge these companies someday don't get to exist. And so that's the kind of thing we need to be looking at.

Ian Bremmer:

The other side of that argument of course, is that what you're talking about in the United States is not true globally. There are other massive companies in this space. They're Chinese. And so no, only that if you're talking about global power, there's a lot of people that are saying actually these American companies are national champions and need to be stronger because otherwise China dominates the space globally.

Kara Swisher:

Mark Zuckerberg says it, he said it to me in an interview two years ago, actually, clearly, and that's the sort of the trope from Silicon Valley. That's the idea is, "We need to be big in order to beat the Chi-" That's sort of a fear mongering way to look at it. The reason U.S. companies are so good is because they don't have a top down situation like in China.

Innovation comes from the bottom. It does not come from the top. And that's the way a free internet has to be. A free internet is not about top-down government controlled innovation. And as someone who's been very concerned about the Chinese, the way to beat the Chinese is through bottom-up innovation, which is the way we do it in this country. It's capitalism. It's how we create new companies. Right now we have three companies that are driving down the information superhighway, blocking everybody and so...

Ian Bremmer:

Does Mark know what he's doing and not care? Is the ideology, "I just need to ensure that I protect my power and my dominant position no matter what and that's my superpower. That's what I'm going to be good at?"

Kara Swisher:

No, I think it's too much for anybody to have the power he has, it's too much. You could say, "Is he smart enough?" Nobody is. I'm not smart enough. You're not smart enough. This is unlimited unfettered power by one person. And it's lucky he's not a certain kind of person. We know what this is, and it is unfettered, unregulated power that can make decisions. Sometimes they make good decisions. In the case of Trump, they made a good decision, but I don't know who's going to run them. I don't feel like we need power concentrated in a small group of people. It just never turns out well.

Ian Bremmer:

So one thing I've noticed since the de platforming of Trump is all of these people that are now moving and downloading these encrypted apps, moving to Telegram, moving to Signal, what are the implications of that in your view?

Kara Swisher:

I think they were already there. I don't think this is a typical story to write for reporters. Now, "They're going underground." They were underground, then they came out of the ground and used the mainstream services. And you know what? It's funny, a lot of it I find a lot, especially the white supremacist stuff. It's like mold. It's thrived in the light, actually. You know what I mean? The light was good for white supremacists, unfortunately.

And so they're always going to be underground. And by the way, they were always there. This is the lie we tell ourselves as Americans that this stuff, "Where did this come from?" It's been there forever. It's always been there. And now it emerged and organized online and they're going to organize no matter what. And I think giving them more tools to publicly organize radicalizes people. I do. I think underground it's a different story.

And then our government should monitor the dangerous ones. Let the others spew all they want about make America great again or whatever they want to spew. Even though it QAnon people, it's madness, the stuff they say, but we monitor them until, and if they become dangerous, we take action.

If they cross a line just like the mob did at the Capitol, that's when we take action. Until then, they can spew all the nonsense they want, anywhere they want. I don't think that's just the way it's going to be.

Ian Bremmer:

You've seen Angela Merkel come out and oppose the decision by Twitter. And of course part of the reason she opposes it is because the government in Germany actually has much stricter regulations about what kinds of free speech are actually not permitted. Do you think that's necessary in the United States?

Kara Swisher:

No, we have the First Amendment. That was rich for me because I'm like, "Wow, you can't do hardly anything." There was lots of cases of internet companies being prosecuted in Germany for all kinds of stuff like that. So that was a little bit ironic I thought or not. She's usually on point. I often find her on point.

They have a system where that allows that. We have the First Amendment, and so, "Government shall make no law." That's the most fascinating thing, what I love when I'm listening to this is so many people don't know the First Amendment. And I was talking to one of the representatives and they were going on about, "This is the First Amendment violation." I said, "It's not. Do you know the First Amendment? It's really short and it's the first so you could find it pretty easily." But I was like, "It says Congress shall make no law. It doesn't say Twitter, Facebook, Google, whatever." We have the first amendment here. No, we should not abandon that.

Ian Bremmer:

So we now have President Biden and his administration. You've seen the appointments that he's made so far. What are a couple of steps you think that the incoming administration can credibly do in the near term that would give you a little more cause for optimism, Kara?

Kara Swisher:

Well, big and little things. Some of these bills that have been stuck in Congress, especially the Senate because of Mitch McConnell can go through these advertising. There's a number of really interesting privacy in advertising bills that should just sail right through. And a national advertising, sort of an internet bill of rights idea, which is many, many bills. It's not one thing. But the ideas around privacy, around advertising, around targeting, around data that people have, I think absolutely should go through as fast as possible.

I think we should probably call together a bipartisan group of people to talk about Section 230 and what to do about immunity. I think we need to figure out a way that the government can really spur innovation. The government did invent the internet, so what is the next thing and where is the research going? That's really been ignored in the Trump administration.

I think a focus on STEM is still important for people getting more people in there. If we want to beat the Chinese, like you talk about, we need more people in this country to be involved in that. It's not the only thing people should be studying, but certainly, especially among more diverse group of people, if we're developing AI and different things like that, it can't be one group of people that's designing it. I think that's critically important.

I think a less friendly relationship with tech would be great by some of these officials. I don't think President Biden has a whole lot of, he talks about it but doesn't seem to know a lot about it. That's fine. Kamala Harris would be a more interesting person to be spearheading this. When she was attorney general. She did a lot of things around privacy that I thought were interesting. At the same time, she was somewhat a little more cozy with tech than probably she should be. And so that's an issue.

So bring Elizabeth Warren in. She seems to scare everybody in tech. Let her be part of it. Just to focus in on the fact that we want innovation to thrive and we want enforcement of current laws. And then lastly, and I think it's the last goal, would be antitrust, is to really press what's already been started under the Trump administration is a thorough investigation into antitrust issues and possible breakup of some of these companies. Not all of them.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, if we can't actually do the fixes you're talking about, would we be better off without them? If you had a switch and you could actually say, we can end these companies right now, would you rather do that?

Kara Swisher:

I think so. Some days I do. I started creeping the internet and I've been doing it for three decades because when I saw it, I was like, "The possibilities for," I'm a Star Trek person. You're either a Star Trek or a Star Wars person in this world, I think, if I want to be really geeky about it, you either believe in the hope for humanity and the great, "Let's look and find people and solve problems." Or you're a Star Wars where even the heroes are troubled, the villains are complex. Nobody ends up well in the end of that movie. I sure like the internet though. I sure do like it still.

Ian Bremmer:

Pleasure to be with you.

Kara Swisher:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

Thanks so much.

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast, like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzerimedia.com and sign up for our newsletter signal, Sigma.

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