New York Times’ Ben Smith Talks Slack, Newsroom Politics, And Tech Regulation

As the Media Equation columnist at The New York Times, Ben Smith is covering an industry going through transformation and turbulence. And as the former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News — a place I worked until this June — he lived that change while managing a newsroom of reporters who lived online in a VC funded media company. In this week’s edition of the Big Technology Podcast, I caught up with Smith for a discussion focused on how tech is changing journalism, what media companies can do to connect with people that have shut them out, and where big tech regulation may lead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. Alex Kantrowitz here. Quick update on the audio you're about to hear. I did not plug in a cord that I needed to plug in, and the following podcast recorded almost entirely through my AirPods, which was obviously less than ideal. But I found this discussion with Ben Smith to be so fascinating that instead of scrapping it, I figured, let's just publish it. And I'll let you know in advance to please forgive me for the few times that it's going to sound like I'm underwater, but I hope you do enjoy. All right, let's get into it.

• 1:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a very special guest. It's Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, where I used to work, and current Media Equation columnist for The New York Times. Ben, welcome to the show.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me on.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I just wanted to start just to say thank you. You know, I guess we don't have opportunities like this too often, but you really helped me. You really gave me my career, really. I think you plucked me off the street. I was working in ad sales at the time and, you know, we met at a meetup in New York and you very quickly introduced me to your tech editor at the time. And I do a small stint at advertising age before coming over to work for you at BuzzFeed for five years. So I owe it to you.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  As I recall, there was a brief glitch where I somehow confused you with somebody who spoke Russian and called you up and tried to make you and asked you if you spoke Russian, then hung up on you and you said you didn't.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. In the middle of the interview process, we were already in reference checkpoint. So I thought it was good. I got a call from you on my phone and you go, "Hey Alex, do you speak Russian?" I was like, I thought this was the job offer here and I'm like panicked a little bit. Like I know a few words like, you know, "Spasiba", "Preved kak dila", "Havrosho", but I didn't know any enough Russian. And I think it was like during the time of the Boston bombing and I think you were probably looking for someone to scour VK. So I just kind of froze and I'm like, "Ah, I don't speak Russian." And you said, "Okay, bye." And I didn't get the job that time.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  But eventually it worked out. I think there was some good karma there. So it turned out okay.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  I always felt like I kind of, I always felt bad about that.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  When I actually got the job, then I had to retell the story in front of the whole newsroom. And honestly, it was just cool that it ended up working out, you know.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had a great run back when you were, you know, in normal journalism before this weird newsletter blog thing you're doing.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think, you know, hopefully we'll string one after the other. And, you know, I kind of liked, I mean, that was like one of the reasons, your philosophy towards building a newsroom was one of the reasons why I really wanted to go work for you. I felt that you just brought people from untraditional backgrounds into BuzzFeed and it just gave the newsroom like a really raw, upstart feel. And everyone sort of felt lucky to be there and we learned a ton from you. So I think. One day, you know, maybe already, but one day down the line, you'll probably look back and be be pretty proud of it. We owe you, a lot of us owe you a lot.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I am, I am very proud of what we did.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  So, yeah, and now you're a media columnist at the New York Times, um, which is, I'm sure, a very interesting job, especially after having been the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, interacting with all these folks, now you're covering them. Um, and so one of the things in your first column, you, you pretty astutely noted that like the Times is the journalism powerhouse now, while everyone else seems to be struggling or just getting along. It's much less of a wide open field now. You know, the New York Times possesses a lot of momentum and power in the journalism world. So I just wanted to start with a question about the Times to begin with, and then we can sort of broaden it out. And, and since this is a technology podcast, I think it would be cool to start with the software.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  So it's pretty clear from the outside, reading your columns and seeing people interact, that Times reporters are power users of Twitter and Slack. You know, I think these tools are good. They're helpful. They've made us more efficient. They've helped us source. Uh, but I also think that they can sometimes like show you how to think. You see a bunch of editors with the same viewpoint in a Slack room, and then you say, okay, well, this is sort of, you know, this is the way the publication thinks, and maybe you're a little bit nervous to, um, to share any other viewpoint or pitch stories that don't go along with that type of idea. So I wonder, you know, if you think these tools, Slack and Twitter, are increasing or in, or decreasing the range of ideas and perspectives uh, that show up in the Times. And I'm curious, like, what role do you think they play?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I think, you know, I mean, I think I, I agree with you. Like Twitter is the most incredible, fast, effective, centralized, public square there has ever been in the history of the world, like by far, and is, you know, kind of a dream for journalists in a lot of ways, just in that you, you find out the news really fast. And it also can really keep you honest, you know, you can't just go out there and bullshit the way you used to be able to. But as you say, there's also this incredible peer pressure and pressure for conformity that has always been, that has always, always been there in journalism, but it's just, is blunter and there's more enforcement of it now. And I think, you know, people can be afraid to get away from the pack when really like the best reporting usually is away from

• 6:28Speaker 02

  the pack. You know, there's a lot of different factors in that. I think Trump makes also like, there's a limit to how many counterintuitive takes Donald Trump really permits.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, we talked a little bit about Twitter, maybe we'll get back to it, but Slack especially.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Slack, I mean, the Times Slack is totally weird. I mean, I'm not the expert on it. In fact, basically tossed myself out of it so that, because I'm not, you know, I'm not a Times insider and I want to be able to report on the Times and I don't want people to feel like I'm like lurking around Slack's reporting on them. So I've mostly kicked myself out of New York Times Slack. But you know, BuzzFeed, I mean Slack, you know Slack can get kind of out of control and can really pick up the sort of tone and vibe of Twitter, like a bunch of strangers yelling at each other. And, and I think the thing is that BuzzFeed, you know, we all sort of like got onto it at the same time and I felt very comfortable on there. And if people were saying like mean stuff

• 7:27Speaker 02

  about me, I would come in and, you know, argue with them. Like, like there was sort of a sense, I think, at least I felt, that it was like, I felt comfortable having conversations there in a way that I think management at other places doesn't always. And it's sort of can be a place where, you know, that some groups inside the newsroom are more comfortable on Slack than others. And it, you can kind of get, and I think at the Times, you know, there's a generational divide. There's just like, there was a New York Times before there was Slack, right? There wasn't really a BuzzFeed before there was Slack. And so, I don't know, I think the sort of uneven adoption makes it kind of an odd place. And it's, and you know, you have these huge Slacks, 2,000 people on a channel. And, you know, what is that in a, in a news organization? Is that public? Is that private? Like, of course, it's not really private.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I just want to get back to the original point, which is that, you know, there are voices or there are people who believe that, you know, the Times's focus is narrowing or its perspective is narrowing, where it's only reflecting a small percentage of the population. You know, I'm thinking about, you know, the axes, for instance, that were reportedly put next to Barry Weiss's name. And, um, I just wonder if, if this is, you know, going, these tools will help accelerate, you know, narrowing the focus or, you know, a-

• 8:37Speaker 02

  I mean, brutal internal politics did not arrive with Slack, right? New York Times, I mean, the New York Times has had

• 8:45Speaker 02

  brutal internal politics for a long time. I'm not, and I think it's, and I don't know, I think it's easy to, and I think this is true. It's hard to disentangle the medium from the message. And I think there, it is certainly true that Slack can kind of accelerate and expose certain kinds of conversations that might have been happening anyway. And then on the other hand, you know, we live in this incredibly intense political moment and and that's not fundamentally because of Slack. But, but the same forces that are playing out everywhere else in the culture and the same arguments that are playing out everywhere else in the culture are playing out in the New York Times, which is just another institution full of human beings. And, and I'm not sure that,

• 9:29Speaker 02

  you know, that's, that's not, I mean, the sort, you know, those aren't solely technological things. I do think that there's something, you know, the sort of

• 9:38Speaker 02

  the knock on social media movements, or maybe not the knock, but the the, the analysis sort of after the Arab Spring in particular is that, you know, it's incredibly, these movements can rise incredibly fast and get, and accomplish really dramatic things fast. But they also, because there weren't years of building institutional structures and organizations, they sometimes lack staying power. And I think the question, you know, in all these institutions, these media institutions is, you know, is like, is about that, like, you know, and I think, you know, the unions certainly sort of want to occupy some of that space. But I think it'll be interesting to see what, kind of how that plays, how the sort of organizing inside the newsrooms plays out in the long term.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Do you think that organizing can end up shifting the editorial perspective or the way that stories are covered? I mean, I know you've touched on this a little bit.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that there are cultural shifts happening in newsrooms and the people who are now the outsiders complaining that the institution is too conservative in a generation will be the insiders running it, to some degree at least. Not entirely. And I think The Times, more than other places, actually has a sort of institutional perspective and is fundamentally a family-owned business where the family who owns it can do whatever they want.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Okay, so are you, do you feel more comfortable there than you did at BuzzFeed? What's the difference been like for you?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  No, I could not have felt more. No, of course not. I felt like, I mean BuzzFeed, I really, you know, was involved in creating and it was like this incredible place and had such a, such a like wonderful time there and really loved the people. And The Times is this giant institution where I barely know anybody and it's incredible, it's a very intimidating place. But really totally fascinating and has all this history. So there, it's hard to compare them from my perspective.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Basically, you started and we all went into lockdown. Has it been weird doing it from home?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  You know, I can't quite tell, right? Like, everything is so weird. Like, is my job weird? I don't know. It's the least of it.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had another work from home.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're so much of media is actually, you know, or the media industry is people getting together and, you know, having parties and stuff like that. And you've taken on, like, you've written some critical stories about some, you know, big figures in the industry, Troy Young and Ronan Farrow. Does the fact that we're all home, has that sort of helped you a little bit? Has that emboldened you because, like, you don't have to worry about any?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  No, I was never, I never, I know, I never had, I don't think I ever worried too much about being invited to parties. And people don't invite me that much because they don't like, they always worry that I'll, you know, write something.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Which God forbid.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  It's like the working from home thing. It seems like you're like totally physically removed. I mean, I know I use parties as a bit of a metaphor.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  I do think people feel safer, you know, talking about their institutions to reporters because their bosses aren't physically hanging around. Right? I mean, that's interesting. And at the same time, I do think that you can get to a kind of internal toxicity inside an institution faster and people, you know, it's just easier to manage and to relate, get along with your colleagues when you're not totally exhausted and when you can make eye contact. I mean, I do think it's this, you know, I just think it's wearing on everybody and makes it just, it makes a lot of the human relationships harder.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I feel like there's more leaking on the big technology companies in the past two or three months than I've seen in like a normal year. So definitely, I mean, for you, I mean, obviously like your, your stories are great. I mean, and it's just you've come out the door swinging so much. I'm not saying it was just work from home, but it's kind of interesting to see how that plays out into the reporting.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Okay, we'll take a quick break and be right back to talk a little bit more about what's going on in American newsrooms and what the future of that might look like here with Ben Smith on the Big Technology Podcast.

• 13:47Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 14:31Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 14:49Speaker 01

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with Ben Smith, former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, brought me into the publication. So it's great to be able to speak with you, Ben, and he's now writing the Media Equation column for the New York Times. Ben, you wrote this column, "Inside the Revolts Erupting in America's Big News Rooms." And I'm just going to quote from that story. You said, "Reporters more willing to speak what they see as the truth without worrying about alienating conservatives." And I think you took a stance on it at the end with this quote saying that, with the quote from a Washington Post reporter saying they want Wesley Lowery in that publication. But I also sort of wanted you to take a firmer

• 15:34Speaker 01

  stance on it. Is this good? Is this movement good?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Sorry. Ask me in 10 or 15 years and I'll tell you. I mean, honestly, I think different-

• 15:42Speaker 01

  So you're ambiguous on it. Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think that I don't know. I mean, I think, I guess what I really think is that different institutions and different journalists play different roles. And the idea that there is some single set of values, or that I, God forbid, or anyone, should be out there scolding people for diverging from those values is ridiculous, particularly in this moment where there are these very intense forces of change bearing down on everyone, which include this real recommending along the lines of race, which include the elevation of individuals against institutions. I mean, it's just, there's all these different things

• 16:24Speaker 02

  happening. And I don't know, and nobody's making, and all these decisions about what journalism is supposed to be are happening in the context of a lot of change. I mean, I do think specifically, there has historically been this tacit bargain between white-led newsrooms and black journalists that we'd love to have you and we want diversity, but the sort of, like, the bargain is that we want you to bite your tongue on issues of race and racism. And I think, you know, I think what's happening now is a lot of black journalists are tired of that and have rejected it. And the people running newsrooms, you know, black and white are sort

• 17:07Speaker 02

  of trying to, are sort of recognizing that if you want a more diverse newsroom, you're going to have wider differences of opinion inside it. You're not going to get a more diverse newsroom with, without widening the range of points of view inside your publication. And I don't really see a way around that.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  What about when it comes to like reporters talking more broadly about their political views? There's a few research that shows that I think the Times, when it comes to political and election news, is distrusted by 42% of Republicans and the Washington Post.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the Washington Post is distrusted by 39% of Republicans. And I wonder if like, a broader foregrounding of individual reporters, politics will continue to cause this divide.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  I think the Republican perceptions of the Republican, you know, numbers about Republican trust in journalism just have, I mean, are, you know, historically have been bad, but also, obviously, the main contributor to them is the leader of their party attacking journalism a lot. Like, you know, so, yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  And I definitely know that Donald Trump has, you know, obviously, if, unless you're sleeping under a rock, you've seen all the fake news. When we were at BuzzFeed, he called us a fake pile, was it a failing pile of garbage, something like that. So, so, so I definitely know there's this campaign there that exists. And I also wonder, okay, if we're going to look at a moment, or should we even be introspecting? But if we are going to look at a moment of introspection, you know, is there anything the press can do to bridge that disconnect? I don't know, I just.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  I think that's a, I think that is a, I think that's a great question. I mean, it's not the only disconnect, right? Like, I think a lot of poor people aren't really spoken to by the mainstream press. I think, like, there are lots of groups that are sort of left out. And I think the question of, does the press? You know, does the, and by the press, I mean, I guess we're saying, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, these big central institutions, do we think they go broader right now, that they, that they, they cast a wider cultural net? I mean, everything I see is that they are narrowing, but that there is space for kind of new institutions to speak to different groups of people, which I'm not sure is like, healthy for democratic society. I mean, you know, I mean, I think you sort of see this splintering continuing to happen. But, but I, yeah, but I think, but I think parts of that question don't

• 19:29Speaker 02

  totally make sense in the context of what's actually happening right now. That said, if you had a, you know, if you had a leader of the Republican Party who lied less and, and respected the media, I think he could, that person could probably, you know, change those numbers a bit, and that would be great.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Like I said, I, I mean, I would agree with your assessment that it's largely coming from the president, but I feel like there is, you know, I don't know, you can, the media should be able to look inside and say, hey, what are we doing? What can we do differently? Like, you mentioned there are different institutions that could come up and fill that void. I remember you did this tweet looking at the Substack leaderboard and saying, okay, you can look at the publications ranked here and say, you know, these are the areas that the mainstream media is missing. And I, I think about these new institutions, like, the Substack is, I think, a pretty good and constructive part, but then I'm looking at, you know, the conspiracy theorists and the, you know, the fringe news sites that have become these beacons for people who, I'm just gonna say, like, I don't know, maybe

• 20:27Speaker 01

  that they feel like the mainstream news organizations aren't speaking their language. So, so, like, where does that go? Like, can media get to the, to the root of that versus like, the manifestation of it? Like, I wonder if, you know, you get to the root as opposed to like, what's happening now in a lot of cases is just like, you know, reporters trying to get the, the information on those sites taken down.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, that, that there's always been a market for inflammatory lies and that, you know, it's, it's thriving out there and that there are these incredible distribution mechanisms for it on Facebook in particular.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So I don't, you know, but on the other hand, those aren't, those are not good businesses. They, they exist mostly because people are funding them for ideological reasons.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  You know, and not be good businesses because they're, they're, they're sort of programmatic digital advertising business.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I don't know if we agree, but it does seem like the media isn't heard by a good portion of the population. How, how does that change? Cause I mean, I don't think that this is something we're going to want to persist forever. Like it seems like a dark moment. I mean, you know, obviously there's a chief antagonist in the White House who's doing what he's doing for a reason. But how does the media, and I'm talking about the Times and Washington Post and even the Journal, get heard by that portion of the population that just doesn't want to hear or doesn't feel heard by it?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't, I, I, I don't anticipate dramatic changes there. These are all publications that are strengthening their paywalls that are, you know, that if they could get one or two percent of the American people to subscribe to them, that would be a huge triumph. But that, that's sort of where they're, they're trying to get to. You know, maybe three percent, four percent.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  And yeah, I guess I'm not sure there is a like unified media. I mean, Fox News speaks for a lot of people, CNN, you know, I mean, there's people get, and I, I guess I just don't really see a path toward like a recentralization here. I mean, maybe you do, but to me it's just obvious that you have these big institutions getting bigger, but still within the context of a subscription business that, you know, the Times, I think, let's say, well, 10 million subscribers, which is one in, one in 30 Americans. That would be like an incredibly, and that's, that's their, you know, structure. It's a very, very ambitious goal. And still leaves out, you know, the vast, vast majority of people.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  What does it mean for the future then? If, you know, you have these publications catering to a small, well, not small, but

• 22:58Speaker 02

  I mean, that's not that different from the past, by the way.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right. But I guess like the difference.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I mean, the, I mean, the thing that I think, I mean, the thing that, the main thing that no longer exists is the 6 p.m. evening news that everybody watched. But that hasn't existed since the 1950s. I mean, or 60s. We've been like, the, the world that we're complaining about in part is one we've been living in for quite a while.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  You know, people, instead of turning on that 6pm news are turning on Alex Jones. And I just wonder.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  I'm not sure about Alex Jones. I mean, it's interesting you mention that, right? Like, a lot fewer people are turning on Alex Jones since, since the platforms made it hard. And I do think that the only important, the, the, the important decisions that are being made are being made by executives at platforms with no real, as far as I can tell, based on pressure from the media, you know, without any real sense of what they're doing.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  No, I mean, there was that one moment where, like, you saw Apple take Alex Jones off, and then Facebook after, I mean, Twitter, after holding off for years, took him off, and then Facebook did. And it was just this cascade, and it sort of showed you, like, what, where the decision making.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I remember just a few months before, yeah, and a few months before that, I'd had this, I had a long conversation with a senior Google executive about how, what an important principle it was that Alex Jones not be taken off Google. And then, of course, they take him off when the pressure gets too much. I mean, you know, that's just how it works.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I, I seem to remember that you were kind of skeptical of the platforms using their power to end up, you know, taking people's verified badges away or taking them off. Did your perspective change on that? Like, what was your, you know, thought process?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I just think that, you know, I, I guess I basically think that any time that we are saying we want the platform, you know, any time that we're kind of running the journalists or politicians, I mean, when we're creating new powers to regulate speech from, at the, at the level of the platforms, I think ultimately, the government will wind up being the one who's able to exercise those powers. And so it's just worth thinking that through, and what that means.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Great segue, Ben. On the next segment, we'll just do a quick 10-minute segment when we come back, and then we'll let you get back to your day.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  If you've listened to this point, we appreciate it. One last segment, we're going to talk a little bit about tech and the way the government interacts with it. We've talked a little bit about the way they've acted on their own and the relationship in terms of the way that journalists and, you know, tech platforms interact and what they should be aiming for with their work in general. I just want to talk a little bit about what's happening now in the US. So, you know, there's been this huge tech clash and obviously the reports that have come out of news organizations has helped fuel a lot of the skepticism around these platforms that didn't exist before. And now we toss it to the government and the Department of Justice is going to look into Google.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And we already have Attorney General Barr, you know, rushing this thing and overruling career lawyers, according to the New York Times, and pushing it forward. And looking at how anti-trust here, I'll just read from the article at the Times that about it. Looking at how anti-trust laws could be used to keep companies from restricting the spread of conservative views, essentially kind of threatening them with revocation of, you know, their protected privileges in order to make sure that conservative voices spread. And, you know, it's interesting because there has been this intense amount of work that the press has done. And we talk about impact, you know, when there are articles that are big and they show wrongdoing. And I wonder, I mean, this is sort of, anyway, I'm just going to ask you.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Like, I wonder if this has backfired a little bit. Like, now you're going to have like a politically motivated inquiry into Google, which I think is like the most powerful company in the world. And was this, is this sort of like a, an end game that should have been anticipated? And is that something that journalists should be thinking about when they're, when they're working on this stuff?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  You know, I'm not sure it was, I mean, I just think that, that the only normal outcome is some kind of regulatory or legislative framework. Like, that's just how societies deal with extremely powerful institutions whose actions, you know, affect the public interest widely. I don't really, you know, and so I, but I, and I think that was always the end game. And it could take a while, but, um... You know, but the question of what is a platform liable for, you know, it was just a sort of arbitrary decision in the mid 90s. It's not written, carved into stone, section 230, it could be different.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I do think you see the right now, taking the language that journalists and other, and academics have used to criticize the platforms and sort of reusing it as, you know, to mean something almost entirely different, you know, around allowing often quite crazy and extreme speech. And, and also making, you know, making up, spreading kind of basically false stories about censorship.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  That's not, um, I mean, again, though, it's, it's, I mean, I do think it's complicated, right? Like, they are, they are not wrong to think that the people who run, I mean, Trump isn't wrong to think the people who run these Silicon Valleys, companies mostly hate him and are appalled by him and find a lot of the speech of his supporters appalling and would like to ban it. And so he's not totally crazy there, right? So I think it's a, I don't know, I think, I think, yeah, I think it's a complicated situation. And then these companies, of course, ultimately are companies that are trying to deal with regulators and make money. And, and that is a huge part of the whole situation.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  The regulation with the tech companies, let's talk about Google in particular, is so different from, you know, regulating an airline, for instance, or regulating food, or regulating, you know, a telephone company, because they are these great filters on what we see and do. Like, Google filters the information we see.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I actually totally disagree. I think that, I think that is a nonsense tech talking point, that they do something so complicated, so beyond the, you know, the frame of human understanding and of these sort of, you know, 97-year-old legislators, that it's just impossible to make laws that affect them. It's nonsense. Like, they're very, like, you know, like, I don't know, you know, it's a really complicated industry, like electricity production. Search, less so. It's much easier to explain. And I think if you look at, for instance, Australia and what they're doing, you know, it's really interesting. Rod Sims, the Australian competition regulator.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  He's just, he's a guy who spent his career essentially breaking up like port monopolies. And I think, and he's a, you know, he's in seventies and his view is like, oh, this is actually a lot like a train or a port. And what you do is you go in and you say, well, there's only one port. And so it can charge ships whatever they want. But let's imagine there were seven. If there were seven ports, how would that market work out? And then we're just going to simulate that and impose those terms on the, on the one port.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a very aggressive regulatory framework and one that gives regulators like him just a lot of power to impose solutions on companies. And Google and Facebook are throwing a huge fit and threatening to pull out. But what it isn't is complicated. Like he can, it's pretty easy to explain. It's going to be very expensive for them. It's going to make their lives a little more harder. But it's not like some, it's not like they're, Australia is planning to do something that's going to break, melt anybody's brain. It's just going to be expensive and annoying for these big companies.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Complicated is one thing that people have harped on. That wasn't really what I was going for on this one. I think that just like they're political tools and they're, you know, there are things that from now until the end of time, we're going to see political parties try to get their hands on and maneuver. Uh, and, and I think that might be what you're seeing with the Department of Justice. Do you think there's anything, any truth to that part?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the Department of Justice right now is just, is, is, you know, working the refs at kind of the highest and most threatening level on behalf of Trump in a very kind of blunt way.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  When stories like this come out, I mean, I know we've gone deep into the weeds on journalism, but do you think that's like, if, if this is, I mean, the Department of Justice is doing it one way. Who knows if the next, you know, administration or whatever comes after this will do it in another way. Uh, because liberals definitely have their attacks on the companies as well. You know, is that something that should, people should be keeping in mind in terms of when, when they look into these companies and write these stories and frame the way, you know, that they have their criticisms because their impact, yeah, go ahead.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  I do think that Trump is operating in a way that is really widely outside the norms of, um, you know, of American government, I think the TikToks, in terms of tech regulation, the TikTok story is by far sort of the clearest and kind of wildest example. And, you know, I think the question of if the next president also thinks that he can, or she, you know, in some future administration can.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Roll in and dismantle companies on a whim and hand off their assets to, you know, his political supporters. Doesn't seem to be quite working out, but that's, you know, that is how Saudi Arabia works, but not has not historically been how the United States works. And that's pretty, that is different from operating within the sort of normal, you know, kind of like regulatory framework that is theoretically at least not just aimed at enriching your friends and attacking and punishing your enemies.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Totally. Okay. So it sounds like you have faith like that there could be common sense regulation that restrains some of these, these companies' power while leaving the public in a good place, not influencing them.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and applies to all of them equally, right? I mean, that's sort of the craziness of the TikTok stuff. Like, you know, that you could imagine regulation on how these companies handle and collect and share data that applies to all of them.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I mean, there, there are legitimate concerns there in terms of what China might do in terms of looking at the data or influencing that algorithm, even though they don't, it's not a state-owned company.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  No, for, no, these are totally legitimate issues, but it's kind, but it's also, it's, it's not a, it's not, you know, it's something that could, that could have been dealt with in a way that wasn't, you know, pre-election pandering.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Before we go, one of my favorite things at BuzzFeed was to sit down with you or take a walk with you and ask you, you know, where you think the big stories are going to be next. I mean, obviously we know there's an election. We know the president has coronavirus. So those are going to be big ones. But what, what do you think people should be looking at, you know, both from a politics standpoint, also from a tech standpoint?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I, you know, I don't know when you're going to post this, but we're talking on the day Donald Trump got coronavirus and I haven't been this sort of just utterly riveted by a story for a while. And I don't really know, I don't know. I don't think there's anything happening other than the election for a little while now. And in fact, we're in that this very frustrating period for journalists when, you know, everything you write is sort of gonna be

• 34:25Speaker 02

  just sort of swept away in the noisy screaming craziness.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Sort of felt like the last four years, but just an extra dose of it. So, okay, well, I agree with you. It's a one story, one story moment. And man, it's gonna be an interesting couple of weeks. We'll see how it all plays out.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it will. Thanks for, uh, thank you so much for having me on. Congrats on your new thing.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Great to have you. I really appreciate it. I know we're a small shop, but the opportunity to speak with you is something I've been, I appreciate and I've been looking forward to, and I hope to have you on again sometime soon.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Well, you're already, you're already talking in the first person plural. So it seems like you've basically figured it out.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  The, I guess, the entry to the game. Now you figure out the rest.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  All right, everyone. Thank you for listening. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed the episode and are not a subscriber, if you hit subscribe, would love that. And make sure to get you some new episodes. And if you are subscribing and you like what you're hearing, if you could rate us, that would be terrific. And I promise not to speak in the first person plural anymore. Thanks for pointing that out, Ben. I'm now embarrassed. All right, everybody. Have a good week. We'll see you next week on Wednesday for a new episode. Take care.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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