Pod Insights The Vergecast Political advertising on social media, privacy and encryption legislation, broadband access in rural communities, and other tech policy in 2020 About this episode Verge policy reporter Makena Kelly chats with Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel about important points in US tech policy recently as we go into the 2020 presidential election.
Nilay and Makena get into the policy topics that The Verge will be covering heavily this year — including political advertising on social media, amendments to Section 230, encryption and privacy legislation, and broadband access in rural areas.
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Transcript 9,262 words · 13 speakers
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1:01 Nilay Patel? Hey, everybody. It's Ian from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, Verge Policy Reporter Makena Kelly joins me to talk about everything that's happening in tech policy as we go into the 2020 election. This episode's coming out on Super Tuesday. It's a big day in the Democratic primary. What better day to launch The Verge's election coverage for the year, which we did on the website? McKenna and I go through all of the big policy areas that we're covering, from political advertising on social networks, my Bloomberg is kind of breaking the whole system and revealing the fault lines. We talk about what is going on with Section 230, and then really what I think is one of the main things, McKenna's favorite, my favorite, broadband access in rural areas, which is a huge issue that is going undercover. All stuff we're going to cover, a lot this year. Check it out. It's Makena Kelly on The Vergecast.
1:44 Nilay Patel? Makena Kelly, Policy Reporter for Verge, welcome.
1:47 Speaker 03 Hey, good to be back.
1:48 Nilay Patel? How are you doing?
1:49 Speaker 03 I'm doing good. It's just kind of like a lot all of the time.
1:52 Nilay Patel? It is a lot all of the time. So this episode is going to come out on Tuesday, which is Super Tuesday.
1:58 Speaker 03 Super.
1:59 Nilay Patel? We're launching a lot of our election and policy coverage that same day. And I want to talk to you about the big issues that are already in the election, both in sort of the Democratic primary and then obviously what we're going to see in the general election and what we're going to track. And so right now, it seems like you are spending a lot of time asking big platforms what memes are allowed, because Bloomberg is spending an enormous amount of money and he's like pushing the boundaries of political advertising on the platforms. How's that going?
2:28 Speaker 03 Right. So it's split the platforms and how they enforce it firstly. But I think it's good to start off on like how this happened. So Bloomberg is a billionaire.
2:38 Nilay Patel? Mike Bloomberg.
2:39 Speaker 03 Mike Bloomberg. He likes to go by Mike and not Michael this time.
2:42 Nilay Patel? Okay.
2:42 Speaker 03 Um, but Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire.
2:44 Nilay Patel? Yes.
2:45 Speaker 03 Billions of dollars, um, about 60 billion net worth. And he is injecting basically all of that money into social platforms and cable television ads.
2:53 Speaker 04 Mike Bloomberg started as a middle-class kid who had to work his way through college. Mike Bloomberg knows the value of quality healthcare.
3:02 Speaker 03 If we get it done, Mike would get it done. It's pretty, it's a pretty simple strategy when you have a lot of money.
3:09 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
3:09 Speaker 03 So Bloomberg bought millions of ads. He buys millions of dollars of ads on Facebook and Google every day. But it's only so much money that you can throw into ads, right? So he's trying to find new ways to get his name out there. So The New York Times reported that the Michael Bloomberg campaign was working with Fuck Jerry, the Fire Festival people. It was basically sponsoring posts on popular meme pages. So once that was discovered, it basically started this whole new conversation about political advertising because social media has been filled with branded content for so long.
3:46 Nilay Patel? Yeah. So it's just, I just want to unpack everything you said.
3:49 Speaker 03 Right, yeah. It's a lot.
3:50 Nilay Patel? It's a lot. So first, there is the difference between buying an ad on Facebook and then getting some popular meme account to post something on their behalf.
3:59 Speaker 03 Right.
3:59 Nilay Patel? And sponsored content, that's what we branded content, is like, it's just a big business on platforms.
4:04 Speaker 03 Right. Every weight loss shake on Instagram is a branded content post.
4:08 Nilay Patel? Yeah. So influencers post hashtag ad. It's a big business for media companies. So BuzzFeed runs Tasty. It's a big foods, like, vertical. They post a lot of food videos everywhere. Heinz can be like, the best ketchup recipes. And they're like, buy it. And it's not an ad that you bought from Facebook. It's an ad that you bought from a media company. That then organically travels. So Bloomberg is doing both.
4:27 Speaker 03 Right, simultaneously.
4:28 Nilay Patel? Okay, I just don't think most people understand that like branded content ecosystem is huge.
4:33 Speaker 03 Right.
4:33 Nilay Patel? And there are entire companies like, they've actually rebranded, they're Jerry Media now, they're family friendly.
4:38 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
4:39 Nilay Patel? But I still think of them as fuck Jerry. But like there are companies that are big, like Jerry Media, that do nothing but branded influencer marketing of this kind. That's just the baseline.
4:49 Speaker 03 Mm hmm.
4:49 Nilay Patel? So then Bloomberg is like hacking democracy with his money with both ways, right?
4:53 Speaker 03 Right. So Facebook didn't have any rules about this because Facebook was operating like any other social platform. The money from branded content does not go to Facebook. I mean, you're talking about all these companies that take the money and it goes to influencers. So Facebook didn't really have to have new rules for political content because this wasn't really done before, or at least that we know of. Mike Bloomberg's campaign was pretty excited about this and was very happy to talk about it.
5:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they invented something.
5:19 Speaker 03 Right, they're like, look at us. So them being so vocal about this forced Facebook to kind of reckon with it.
5:25 Nilay Patel? The influencer marketing.
5:26 Speaker 03 Right.
5:27 Nilay Patel? And it's not like influencers have not had political stances before.
5:31 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, one of the influencers who I think of when it comes to like, they've endorsed candidates before. I mean, Joe Rogan just endorsed Bernie Sanders. Casey Neistat put out his video in support of Hillary Clinton and that a couple of years ago got a lot of flashbacks. So it's not like influencers have been apolitical.
5:46 Nilay Patel? Right. It's the idea that political advertising has come to the influencer marketing.
5:50 Speaker 03 Right, exactly. So Facebook decided, hey, yeah, we're going to allow this as long as influencers use their branded content tool, just like they would for weight loss shakes or things like that, and make sure that users know that it's an ad. So hashtag ad, hashtag sponsored by Mike Bloomberg. So they're letting it happen, which is really interesting and new.
6:11 Nilay Patel? But they don't have to make sure it's true. That's like, this is the heart of the debate.
6:14 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, so that's the same thing with Facebook's political ads rules in the first place. Facebook doesn't care what a politician says is true or not. That's just the way it's been since they had these rules.
6:24 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And so there's a controversy on the you're just buying regular Facebook ad side, or fact checking political advertising. And I think Elizabeth Warren has like made a lot of hay about this, like. You should have to. Facebook says, no, we shouldn't have to. Like, people can figure it out for themselves. And now that same policy is extended to influencer marketing.
6:44 Speaker 03 Right.
6:44 Nilay Patel? Which seems a little bit more problematic to me, but I think Facebook's position is like, it's all just advertising.
6:51 Speaker 03 Exactly. Right. These influencer posts could be fact-checked, but only if, and this is where the enforcement gets really fuzzy, is if Facebook determines that the ad is in the influencer's voice and not the voice of the candidate. So, the policy is unenforceable.
7:07 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
7:08 Speaker 03 Like, I like to say with a lot of policies. It is tremendously difficult to enforce a lot of these.
7:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
7:14 Speaker 03 So, it's like, are they meaningful at all? I mean, it raises these questions.
7:18 Nilay Patel? And so then you might as well not have a policy.
7:20 Speaker 03 Right.
7:20 Nilay Patel? Which is like, I think Facebook often comes up with policies that are so unenforceable that they fundamentally don't have a policy.
7:25 Speaker 03 Facebook, every social media platform, I mean.
7:28 Nilay Patel? Well, so, but Twitter is taking like, a different approach, right?
7:31 Speaker 03 Right. So, I mean, we have to like, kind of go back and look at this video that Mike Bloomberg posted on Twitter.
7:36 Speaker 05 I'm the only one here that I think has ever started a business. Is that fair? Okay.
7:45 Nilay Patel? It was after the Nevada debate, right?
7:46 Speaker 03 Right, yes. So, it was directly after, and Bloomberg, like, I like to say that he is starting to create content in the same way that the Trump campaign has. So, his video, if you're familiar with Carpe Donktum, but he is the Trump memer who-
8:03 Nilay Patel? You're so in it, Meketa. You're like, if you're familiar with-
8:05 Speaker 03 If you're familiar with the famous memer, Carpe Donktum, but he's making content very similar to how Trump has in the past. And that's, I think that's really important to note. But, the video itself is cut in a way that some people could say is deceptive, but it is a meme video, and it is a joke, and it's satire.
8:23 Nilay Patel? Right. So, in, this is a video where Bloomberg says, if any of you started a business before, and there's like, literally, he's added the sound of Crickets.
8:30 Speaker 03 Right.
8:30 Nilay Patel? I like to imagine that Bloomberg himself opened iMovie, and like, downloaded, like, crickets dot MP3.
8:35 Speaker 03 Well, that's the thing. Those, our videos are so easy to make, and we talk about deep fakes all the time, but those videos, I mean, the Nancy Pelosi video that we talked about last year.
8:44 Nilay Patel? Yeah, where they slow her down.
8:45 Speaker 03 She's slowed down, and it sounds like she's slurring.
8:49 Speaker 06 Long took no longer on the floor custody custody of the border. But the border.
8:55 Speaker 03 That wasn't AI.
8:57 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
8:57 Speaker 03 You know what I mean? Like, that was iMovie or that was Premiere Pro or like something, same thing with the Joe Biden video from a couple of weeks ago where people were mad that it was cut in a way to make him sound racist, like he was making white nationalist remarks, but he was actually playing the role of a racist. And then it was like, cut out. So the platforms have created their own policies to kind of tackle deep fakes, but it leaves all this room for this very easily accessible in media that people create to kind of just skate away. So Twitter has a policy that comes out in March. And basically, they're giving themselves a lot of room, like any platform does, to determine if something should be taken down, or if it's a deep fake, or what constitutes the type of media. But Twitter told me that this Bloomberg video would receive a new label.
9:42 Speaker 03 So the label would basically just have something on the post saying that this is manipulated media, which it is. It is manipulated.
9:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
9:49 Speaker 03 And Facebook, I reached out to Facebook, they have a deep fakes policy too, but they also leave themselves a lot of room for satire and parody videos. Facebook said it wouldn't take it down, and it wouldn't label it as misinformation either. So they're kind of split on the video part of this.
10:05 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Well, so that Twitter label, to me, like, everything is edited, everything is manipulated media, like, no candidate is putting out ads that are just like 24-hour live streams of them shaking hands or giving speeches. But what's the line there?
10:19 Speaker 03 So the line here with Facebook and with Twitter, it seems like it's not just they'll label manipulated media, but when it comes to taking things down, it has to be very deceptive or threaten serious harm to candidates or other people. So, I don't know, if we want to branch out of politics right now, I'm thinking of the only, like, thing that's like really dangerous, but like misinformation around the coronavirus, for example, and things like that. So if there's a manipulated media post there saying coronavirus is cool, catch it. They would probably take that down, you know?
10:51 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
10:52 Speaker 03 So, I mean, that's kind of where it stands, is like, there is some stuff that can really disrupt the political conversation that we're having. And the Bloomberg thing kind of stopped some of, you know, our colleagues to really discuss whether or not this should be taken down, or whether it's manipulated media and should receive a label. But it really comes down to whether or not it can cause groups of people, communities, harm.
11:13 Nilay Patel? I'm just thinking about, I don't know, reality shows.
11:16 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
11:16 Nilay Patel? Like, reality shows are famous for editing a narrative into a show that maybe wasn't there.
11:22 Speaker 03 Right.
11:23 Nilay Patel? And it feels like, that Bloomberg ad in particular, like, a Top Chef clip highlight, supercut of a season, is the same exact thing.
11:32 Speaker 03 Right.
11:32 Nilay Patel? Right? Does that fall under the rules? Like, how are you, is it just political ads that fall under these rules? Is it all of that kind of stuff that exists? Is it when we make funny jokes about Samsung events, does that fall into, like, that gets wider and wider and wider over time? And it feels like those kinds of videos in particular, where it's like a joke in a video, have been with us for so long, I don't know if people are that confused.
11:54 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, with politics now, and even with the 2016 election, lawmakers have been pushing for rules from Facebook and Twitter on this stuff. And I don't know if it's just because it's mostly coming from Democrats because of Trump and their disdain for Trump, and how he uses social media, but it is interesting because meme videos and these kind of jokes and recut kind of clips and stuff is such an integral part of the internet and the entertainment ecosystem now. Look back, Stephen Colbert, like, go back to television, they do this all the time on television, too.
12:26 Nilay Patel? The Daily Show, like, the Jon Stewart Daily Show in particular was, like, famous for this, right?
12:30 Speaker 03 Exactly. So, I mean, it's hard. But after 2016, I think there's this heightened sense amongst lawmakers and amongst politicians that a lot of this can get out of hand. So if you have the Nancy Pelosi video or something like that, maybe your average person wouldn't be deceived, but you could have bots that are blasting this video all across social media and all this. And it just causes problems, and maybe some problems that we haven't even really realized are problems yet.
12:58 Nilay Patel? So Twitter did take down some bots that seemed to be affiliated with the Bloomberg campaign.
13:02 Speaker 03 Right. So Twitter, Los Angeles Times reported a couple of days ago that through this, like, Outvote app... That the Bloomberg campaign uses, there was a lot of, they called it spam. They were basically acting as spam accounts, spamming positive remarks from Barbra Streisand about Mike Bloomberg.
13:20 Nilay Patel? That's, I mean, that's like the most Bloomberg. Like, I'm a billionaire, what am I spending it on? Fake Barbra Streisand quotes.
13:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, just to target the boomers. They'll love it. So, no, it's really interesting. So they removed about 70 of them. And it's really interesting, too, because when it comes to the Bloomberg stuff on Facebook, Facebook doesn't consider that these influencer posts or things coming from the Bloomberg campaign as coordinated inauthentic behavior. And it seems like, and when we talk about that, we think about Russians, Iranian foreign interference campaigns, when we think about inauthentic behavior. But it seems like Twitter is like, no, this is inauthentic behavior, too. So they took down those 70 accounts, and I'm sure there are a lot of these that are still out there.
14:05 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it just seems like a missed business opportunity. Like, I'm like, I should start a network of Twitter accounts, let people buy it.
14:10 Speaker 03 Right, I should just-
14:10 Nilay Patel? I'm American, for God's sake.
14:11 Speaker 03 I should make a network of accounts that are just like, McKenna's the best.
14:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah, like, what am I doing? Make it, that'd be 50 bucks?
14:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:16 Nilay Patel? Let's do it.
14:17 Speaker 03 McKenna's the best.
14:19 Nilay Patel? Well, it just seems like an obvious, sort of like, business opportunity. Like, there's an entire ecosystem of influencers and bots and, like, social reach companies that will do this stuff for you.
14:30 Speaker 03 Right.
14:31 Nilay Patel? And if you're Bloomberg and you're just, like, firehosing money into the ecosystem, it seems obvious that that will happen.
14:36 Speaker 03 Right, I mean, people hate it when influencers buy followers or, like, buy posts. But, I mean, it's not something that's, like, new.
14:43 Nilay Patel? Right.
14:43 Speaker 03 People are like, yeah, this is just part of the internet. But now, once we get politics involved with it, it, like, explodes into this mess of, like, anger and outrage over a system that's existed for years now.
14:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah, and so it seems like, we keep talking about Twitter and Facebook, they're finding different lines, they're making different rules, they're taking different approaches. That's because there's no overall law or regulation they have as a guide. They're just making it up as they go.
15:10 Speaker 03 Right, I mean, imagine asking lawmakers right now to regulate memes. It's hilarious.
15:15 Nilay Patel? I mean, I'm imagining it. I would like to see it happen.
15:18 Speaker 03 Right.
15:18 Nilay Patel? Like, just to see what that conversation would be like, just to see them explain memes to each other on the floor of the United States Congress. It'd be great. Yeah, that doesn't seem appropriate.
15:27 Speaker 03 No, at least not in the next 10 years.
15:29 Nilay Patel? Yeah, until like we become the members of Congress.
15:32 Speaker 03 Right, exactly.
15:33 Nilay Patel? Uh, that's my goal, is to run on a meme-only platform. It's gonna be great. So there's no overall regulation, so they're doing stuff on their own.
15:41 Speaker 03 Right.
15:41 Nilay Patel? Does one of them seem to be getting it more right than the other, Twitter and Facebook?
15:44 Speaker 03 Twitter, okay, this is really interesting. So Facebook comes out, it makes like its deep fixed policy, comes out with it earlier this year, and they get like a ton of criticism for it. Twitter announces its own, and it's like more of a good guy stance on like the deep fixed policy. It's really interesting. It seems like Twitter, now I don't know, I don't know what my opinion is, but it seems like Twitter is positioning itself as like the good guy platform for the election right now. They banned political ads entirely last year. It seems like they're really thinking about how to moderate the platform for political ads and campaigns and posts and stuff into the future. Facebook is still, and it's like very much like hands-off approach.
16:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
16:25 Speaker 03 Which still, you can trace back to Mark Zuckerberg's speeches over the past couple of years about free speech, and last thing we wanna, um, regulate on our platform is speech.
16:35 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I guess like both companies have said the political advertising is an inconsequential amount of money for the bigger businesses, which is in many ways like depressing.
16:45 Speaker 03 Right.
16:46 Nilay Patel? Right, like Bloomberg can spend all of his money and it's still like a drop in the bucket compared to all the advertising on, on Facebook. Although, we, we should ask them again, because I wonder, I wonder if the Bloomberg money has like changed the balance for them. But they've mostly said, this isn't a lot of money. Twitter's like, it's not a lot of money, it's too much like heartache, we're just gonna turn it off. Like, we don't need the money. Basically, it's like, we don't need the money, but we don't wanna, we don't wanna be involved in that way. We're gonna let it happen, here are some rules. But there's no, because there's no overall guideline, it's like we're watching this experiment play out.
17:15 Speaker 03 Right.
17:16 Nilay Patel? And it's very unclear to me which, which one is better. And that also sits right next to the candidates themselves, members of Congress right now, calling for moderation regulation for the platforms, calling for changes to 230 or whatever. Do you see that interaction happening, or is it just chaos?
17:34 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, no, this week, it was really interesting. David Cicilline, who was on the Vergecast. He talked about, it hasn't been introduced yet, but he's talking about a bill that would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a way that platforms wouldn't receive those really important protections unless they ensured that their platforms weren't running false political ads. So you're seeing these things engage in a really interesting way that we haven't seen before, but was definitely going to come.
18:07 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Well, 230 is, I mean, that's the next sort of big thing to talk about. There's the campaign and sort of like meme doctrine. I don't know what you would call it. The meme wars that are occurring.
18:18 Speaker 03 I can't wait to write that. That's my next piece, the meme doctrine.
18:20 Nilay Patel? It's real. I mean, it's, it is a thing that is happening right. Like platforms are figuring out how to deal with political memes in a way that they did not in 2016, didn't want to, and now they have to.
18:31 Speaker 03 Right.
18:31 Nilay Patel? So they're figuring that out now. Next to it is this other big policy issue that we've just been tracking forever, which is 230 and what protections the big platforms get for what their users publish on those platforms. It seems like everybody wants to like, it's, it's the gun. Like they're going to point the gun at of taking 230 away from you unless you do what they want. And so one of them is take political ads away. But there's a long list of other ones, right?
18:55 Speaker 03 I mean, Josh Hawley, the Republicans' major tech.
18:59 Nilay Patel? Our boy.
18:59 Speaker 03 Our boy. This was last year and we don't really hear about it much anymore, weirdly enough, but about conservative bias on social media platforms. It was really hot last year.
19:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
19:10 Speaker 03 And at like the height of its hotness, Josh Hawley put out a bill that was like, if you are biased against conservatives, then you lose 230 protections. And we've seen kind of bills jump on this kind of balancing act of 230 versus what I want you to do.
19:27 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
19:28 Speaker 03 Because 230 is like the greatest, you know what I mean? It's the, one of the most foundational parts of the internet. And it's like, if you just take that away, or you threaten to take it away, it's a very major threat when you're trying to get something out of a platform.
19:39 Nilay Patel? If YouTube has to be liable for everything, every person on YouTube.
19:42 Speaker 03 Right.
19:43 Nilay Patel? publishes, like their business goes away.
19:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, YouTube's deleted.
19:46 Nilay Patel? Yeah. I mean, but so is Instagram, so is Reddit, our comments. Like, I'm not going to be responsible for you putting Verge comments. I'm just telling you, it's just not going to happen. So we would just get rid of it. So that's it's this foundational thing. We've talked about it so much, but there are a lot of people trying to make a lot of trades against it. So Holly's one was he was gonna have like a committee of like six people who would weigh if you were neutral. There was five people. It was like.
20:10 Speaker 03 But it was they had to come to a consensus. You couldn't have a hung jury.
20:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it was like a unanimous vote of like Republicans and Democrats that he would just like select.
20:18 Speaker 03 Which would never happen.
20:20 Nilay Patel? This is crazy town. And then they would decide if Twitter was neutral enough to get its 230 protection. Fine. There is the Sislini bill that you're talking about, which seems like it's gonna come out, which is you have to have a political ads policy that I like. Or I'm taking your 230 away.
20:34 Speaker 03 Right. Beto O'Rourke, when he was still running for president, he's from El Paso, Texas. And after the El Paso shooting, he put out a presidential campaign proposal, basically saying that there can't be hate speech on platforms. Otherwise you lose your 230 protections. So we've seen it there. In the most dramatic like way, we've heard Joe Biden say, take away 230, totally. I hate it. Revoke it.
20:56 Nilay Patel? That's a very Biden move.
20:57 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, does he know what 230 is? Who knows?
21:00 Nilay Patel? I mean, that's, I mean, if I could get these candidates to show up, I would ask them very directly.
21:04 Speaker 03 He knows that he's not supposed to like it 100%. He just wants to get rid of it.
21:08 Nilay Patel? That's Biden. He's just like emotions. They're doing that because they can't propose these regulations directly, it seems. You can't write a law that demands Facebook have a political advertising policy because you would just run, you're the government, you would just run right into the First Amendment.
21:22 Speaker 03 Right.
21:22 Nilay Patel? So the dance here is the trade for do what I want or I'll take 230 because they can mess with 230.
21:27 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, they created 230.
21:29 Nilay Patel? It is a lot harder to carve out the First Amendment.
21:32 Speaker 03 Right.
21:33 Nilay Patel? So it's, so that's, that seems like the, the underlying 230 action is instead of doing something that might run afoul of the First Amendment. We'll just like hold this gun to your head and say, we'll take away 230 unless you do what I want. That is basically a speech. Regulation. Is that clear? Like, are people making that trade explicitly, or are they just kind of saying it should happen?
21:53 Speaker 03 I don't think anyone ever wants to talk about, you don't want to be the lawmaker who's like, "Yeah, I'm thinking about doing something with the First Amendment." Like, that's not a good way to get re-elected, you know?
22:02 Nilay Patel? Fair.
22:02 Speaker 03 So, I don't think a lot of people, a lot of lawmakers have brought that up explicitly. But, the idea of like, using 230 to wager what you want, is definitely, it's in the Senate, it's in the House, it's with Republicans, it's with Democrats, people are thinking about it. And I think if we see any changes to 230, it's gonna be with one of these hot-button issues, whether it's ads, or bias, or hate speech, maybe all of them in one, who knows?
22:29 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And so, the one that comes to mind is Bill Barr, who's the Attorney General, Lindsey Graham, they've got a bill that they're working on that actually trades 230 protections for encryption.
22:40 Speaker 03 Right.
22:40 Nilay Patel? Which seems like the other big thing this administration in particular wants is backdoors into encryption for Apple, Google, Facebook, whoever. And the sort of Barr, Graham, Bill, it feels like Bill Barr wrote it and Lindsey Graham put his name on it. That's just my, that's my feeling about it.
22:57 Speaker 03 I mean, cannot confirm. But, I mean, no, it's interesting. So, the argument over encryption and whether or not we should demand that Apple allow law enforcement to like, look into your messages if you're suspected of a crime has happened for so long.
23:10 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
23:11 Speaker 03 Like, so many years. But, I think Bill Barr and a lot of the Republicans have noted this 230 discussion, and saying, "Well, well, there's a lot of people wanting to regulate tech companies over 230, so maybe this is a way in for us." So, I mean, I would think that the two arguments, encryption has been happening for so long, and 230 is like, the perfect out for them to really try to hammer this through into law, finally.
23:34 Nilay Patel? So, they would say, "If you, if you don't give us a backdoor into your encrypted messaging apps, we will take away your 230 protection."
23:41 Speaker 03 You're gonna be sued into oblivion.
23:43 Nilay Patel? Tell the people what the bill is called.
23:45 Speaker 03 Oh, I love this. The Earn It Act. You gotta earn it. I mean, it's basically, it's basically the summary of all of these bills. It's like, if you want to have what you need, you gotta earn it.
23:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
23:56 Speaker 03 From me specifically, and what I want.
23:58 Nilay Patel? In my bill, about 230.
23:59 Speaker 03 Right.
24:00 Nilay Patel? But broadly, has encryption come up in the campaign? We've talked about it a lot on the show. It's, obviously, Apple is very strident about not breaking encryption. Facebook says it's going to reorient all of its messaging apps to be encrypted. There's a lot of back and forth about material that's abusive to minors on the platforms that maybe the cops can't see because it's all encrypted. There's a lot of just general conversation about it.
24:21 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
24:21 Nilay Patel? Costs and benefits. Is it part of the campaign yet?
24:24 Speaker 03 Not that I've seen. So there's a lot of issues that are like a big deal that haven't really made it into the broad political campaign discussion right now. And encryption hasn't really been one this year.
24:37 Nilay Patel? Does that seem like, because it's just not a winner to say, I support encryption?
24:40 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, I can't imagine my like 60-year-old mother being like, I'm not voting for Bernie Sanders because of his encryption stance. You know what I mean? It's like not as hot as like healthcare.
24:51 Nilay Patel? Yeah, not fair.
24:52 Speaker 03 So, I mean, like encryption definitely, I mean, the antitrust plan from Elizabeth Warren came at a really good time, too. But encryption has been around in the fight to get into people's locked phones by the government, has been a fight for a very long time. And it really hasn't had a moment. And I think if we ever had like an encryption moment, the campaigns would be forced to
25:13 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
25:14 Speaker 03 react to it.
25:14 Nilay Patel? And they, the government, various governments, the Obama administration tried, the Trump administration tried to create those moments with terrorists. So there'd be a shooting, and then we got to unlock the shooter's phone. Apple, won't you help us? Apple basically said no. And then, you know, some company shows up and has a way to unlock it, and the debate goes away. I think that's definitely shifted now to child abuse. That is the basis of the Earn It Act, actually, is based on abuse towards children. But that hasn't reached the campaign in any meaningful way either.
25:44 Speaker 03 Not yet, no.
25:45 Nilay Patel? It's just funny, because when I think of politicians, I always think of just like, think of the children.
25:49 Speaker 03 Right.
25:49 Nilay Patel? Messaging, and it seems like it's aligning, but it hasn't quite happened yet.
25:52 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
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26:58 Nilay Patel? This leads, I think, sort of the next one, which is like you've been tracking the progress towards a privacy bill?
27:02 Speaker 03 Right.
27:03 Nilay Patel? That doesn't seem to have come up in this election at all?
27:06 Speaker 03 Not really, no. Andrew Yang had a big plan. He wanted a data protection agency. He had some stuff, but now our boy's out.
27:14 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
27:15 Speaker 03 Less tech discussion for all of us on the debate stage, unfortunately. But no, it hasn't really made its way into the big political discussion, the same way that privacy wasn't really talked about in Congress until Cambridge Analytica.
27:27 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
27:28 Speaker 03 So, once again, we're waiting for another moment.
27:32 Nilay Patel? What's the status of the privacy bill in Congress? Because you have been tracking this very closely.
27:36 Speaker 03 Right. There's a lot of bills. We're waiting for the Senate Commerce Bill. For the Senate Commerce Republicans and Democrats to come together and put out one big bill that is the end-all, be-all, and it's what it's going to be. But... They're still fighting over some details about whether or not California can have its own bill, whether or not they should preempt that, or if we should be able to sue.
27:59 Nilay Patel? Individual consumers, you mean?
28:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, individual consumers should be able to sue when their privacy rights are violated by Facebook or Google or whatever. So they're still kind of hung up on some of these details.
28:09 Nilay Patel? Wait, walk me through that. Why wouldn't, shouldn't I be able to sue Google if it like does something bad with my data?
28:14 Speaker 03 Right. So Democrats agree. They're like, well, most Democrats agree. I hate to say all of them, but most Democrats agree that you should be able to sue if your rights with your data are violated, whatever those rights are in the privacy bill that we get. Because right now, we don't really have very many rights.
28:28 Nilay Patel? Right.
28:30 Speaker 03 Republicans, I mean, this happened with TCPA. So the law that allowed you to sue robocallers and like scammers and stuff, phone scammers, Republicans just don't like the idea of frivolous lawsuits. And they're afraid that if you allow consumers to sue Facebook or Google for these things, it would lead to like a firestorm of litigious people with no real claims that would like siphon these big companies with tons of money out of all of their money.
28:58 Nilay Patel? It's like, on the one hand, they're like, we'll take 230 away from you and create an existential threat to your business. But on the other hand, we don't want frivolous lawsuits to do that.
29:07 Speaker 03 Right. Exactly. No, it's weird.
29:09 Nilay Patel? Totally makes sense.
29:10 Speaker 03 We're not going to see a federal privacy bill in the next two to three years. I was optimistic, and now I am fully pessimistic.
29:17 Nilay Patel? Oh, no.
29:17 Speaker 03 About this. So it's not going to be in the next two to three years. It's probably going to be under a different administration. But we are seeing a lot of action from the states. New York is crafting its own privacy bill, California, the CCPA, Washington. There's a lot of momentum from the states to get some rules.
29:36 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And that creates like a fragmented marketplace for every company. So it feels like they're going to be annoyed with that enough to lobby their way into a federal bill.
29:46 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is already writing op-eds like, we need a federal law.
29:50 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And his law is like, all the stuff I'm doing would be great.
29:52 Speaker 03 Yep. Don't change anything I'm doing. Don't hurt me.
29:56 Nilay Patel? It just seems crazy that privacy, data privacy, again, right, there's healthcare, there's national security, there's the big topics. But it seems, it seems unlikely that none of the candidates would put forward a privacy plan, because everyone kind of understands it now. After Cambridge Analytica, ever like, there are lots of Amazon echoes in the world. It seems like very obvious to say, here's what, here's what we think Amazon should be allowed to do with their microphones in your house. And it just hasn't, no one's made that connection yet.
30:22 Speaker 03 No, not yet.
30:23 Nilay Patel? Right next to that is after Trump got elected and Ajit Pai takes over the FCC, and he immediately cancels the FCC's privacy rule for telecoms. So telecoms are way less regulated than they were before. There's no net neutrality, the states can't, they're not supposed to, there's a court fight over that, they can't impose their own net neutrality rules, there's no privacy rules. It just seems like the split between how much we care about tech companies and telecom companies is getting ever wider.
30:48 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, we were, this is really interesting, and I bring this up with a lot of the people that I talk to, but we're not going to see much momentum on federal privacy regulation until we have the same movement that folks like Free Press created with net neutrality. Like, you're not seeing people in the streets or websites shutting down because of privacy.
31:08 Nilay Patel? But there is, it does seem like it's more, I can't quantify it, it does seem like people are more aware of the privacy risks than ever before. It does seem like the split between GDPR in Europe and here is, made that more concrete. But you're saying that hasn't really turned into any action?
31:23 Speaker 03 No, it hasn't turned into like grassroots momentum or anything like that. And maybe it will in the future, but as of right now, it's not really a measurable effort, you know?
31:34 Nilay Patel? Yeah. The other piece of it, though, is how little we think about telecoms in these conversations. Like, we've talked a lot about 2:30 and speech and what Google can put into its algorithms, we do not talk about what AT&T can do with its network, at all, really, and they like own CNN. Does that come up anywhere in this conversation, or is that purely like, where's the internet going to be and who's going to have access to it?
31:55 Speaker 03 Right. No, I think that's basically it. When you talk about telecoms with candidates, their biggest telecom plans have to do with getting people access, because that's still a very big issue. So, last month, I went to Iowa and I drove over 800 miles. All across the street from Des Moines, like a metro area like Des Moines. I talked to folks who had spotty access and I went all the way up north, only a couple of miles from the Minnesota border and people who have absolutely no access. So it's those people that a lot of candidates really want to start reaching. So all the candidates, all of the major ones have big plans on how to expand rural broadband access and that's something that Trump promised and we still haven't gotten.
32:39 Speaker 03 So it's been something that's been in campaigns for a number of years, but something that we haven't seen a lot of momentum on from the executive branch. Except from the FCC, they like to create piles of money.
32:50 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
32:50 Speaker 03 And allocate that in the USDA too.
32:53 Nilay Patel? Why the USDA? And this was in your story, but explain to people.
32:56 Speaker 03 Right, no, so the USDA, there's a handful of grant programs that small providers or even like big telecom providers can get access to, to lay the fiber, to create the towers, to expand access in rural areas. Because I, when I was there, you could travel down a dirt road for a mile and you could only, if you laid fiber down for that, you would only connect maybe like one home.
33:20 Nilay Patel? Wow.
33:20 Speaker 03 It is, it is so unprofitable. So you need that grant money and it needs to come from a variety of different sources. So the USDA and the FCC has their own grant programs to get that money out. And that can be like millions of dollars, a couple hundred thousand dollars to just get the fiber laid or whatever solution is best for the community.
33:40 Nilay Patel? Right, so the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture is like, we also want you to have fiber because you're farmers?
33:47 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's basically any small provider who really needs the money can, they have to fill out, oh my god, it's such a horrible process.
33:57 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
33:58 Speaker 03 But and a lot of people hire consultants to like fire, to file these grants applications because they're so difficult to file. But yeah, so they just say, hello, we need help and these are all the reasons why we need help and how many farmers we're going to connect and how many small businesses we're going to connect and how many families and schoolchildren. And the USDA looks at that and decides whether or not they'll grant them the money.
34:18 Nilay Patel? Wow.
34:19 Speaker 03 Yeah. Same thing with the FCC, they've been doing that too. But the USDA reconnect program has been around since 2018, I think. So not, definitely not as long.
34:28 Nilay Patel? Yeah. So. There's a push to get access. Right now, what do the plans look like? What are the differences between the plans you're saying?
34:34 Speaker 03 Right. So you have some folks like Amy Klobuchar, who are like trillion-dollar infrastructure package. It's gonna happen. And we're gonna have a lot of money in there for broadband deployment, which makes grants more accessible and things like that. There's also, we are very familiar with this here at The Verge, but there are laws that ban communities from coming together and creating their own networks when AT&T or Verizon or whoever, A, won't lay down
35:03 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
35:04 Speaker 03 the infrastructure needed, or B, it's like too expensive because there's no competition in the area. There are laws in the books in many states that ban communities from doing that. So Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the more progressive-leaning candidates, want to author some kind of legislation once they're in office that would basically preempt all of those municipal laws.
35:26 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And these are like, they work in cities too. I think Comcast famously lobbied against like Philadelphia's citywide Wi-Fi system they wanted to build. Disclosure of Comcast through its NBC Universal arm is an investor of Fox Media. I assure you, they do not care for me. It's just a fact. But they've done it in smaller areas too, where you have a bunch of people in a small town. They're like, we're gonna build our own Wi-Fi network. The town is gonna pay for it. And there's like a state law usually that says you are not allowed to do that. Your small town is allowed to do that. So the idea here from Warren and Sanders is they would allow small communities to build their own networks?
35:59 Speaker 03 Right. I mean, to create more competition. Or just have them have access in the first place.
36:03 Nilay Patel? How is that received? It feels like the municipal broadband conversation just went away for a long time.
36:08 Speaker 03 Right. So I think when you have more progressive candidates coming in, you hear a lot more about publicly-owned utilities. So this publicly-owned utility conversation is like coming back, I wouldn't say in like full force, but definitely in a recognizable and important way.
36:22 Nilay Patel? How does that square with my favorite, which is the 5G rhetoric, which is, we don't need to do any of this. We're just gonna put 5G networks in there. It's just gonna get magically connected.
36:31 Speaker 03 It's really interesting because nobody knows what 5G is or why it's a race or any of this.
36:34 Nilay Patel? Yes.
36:35 Speaker 03 So it's really great to rely on that as your supplement for broadband.
36:40 Nilay Patel? But sort of the Trump FCC has, I mean, Ajit Pai, he consistently says he cares about rural broadband. He's consistently, he just put out a white space proposal, another thing that has historically not worked for a decade, but whatever, now here's a new proposal. He's committed to it in a sense that he talks about it a lot. Has that moved the ball forward at all?
37:00 Speaker 03 Right, so I mean, with 5G, I'm not entirely sure. He has the World Digital Opportunity Fund that just came out. Some Democratic commissioners have some beef with it. But it is $20 billion that gets into the hands of providers to connect people over the next 10 years, which is very valuable. With 5G, I don't know. I always think back, there was a hearing in Congress a couple of weeks ago with Gigi Sohn.
37:24 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
37:25 Speaker 03 And I always think about that quote because it's like, you're relying on a technology that hasn't proven itself yet for such a valuable part of our economy now and something for broadband access that could lift a lot of like people in rural communities out of poverty.
37:42 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
37:43 Speaker 03 And give them more opportunity. And too, I just think it's really hard to want to invest billions of dollars into a tech that just hasn't proved itself yet.
37:52 Nilay Patel? Yeah, and especially when AT&T and Verizon and now T-Mobile, the Sprint merger, they're committed to doing it.
37:59 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
38:00 Nilay Patel? So you could let that play out while you go build the proven network.
38:03 Speaker 03 Right.
38:03 Nilay Patel? And that just doesn't seem to be the case that's being made.
38:06 Speaker 03 I mean, it's the divide right now on the digital, unfortunately.
38:11 Nilay Patel? So you're saying the progressives want to say community networks. What are the more moderates on the Democratic side?
38:15 Speaker 03 I mean, most of it with Klobuchar, it's mostly money.
38:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
38:18 Speaker 03 If you get more money, money is the whole thing, keeping people from being connected. So the sums of money are vastly different from like $20 billion. Bernie's plan is like $150 billion, so. I don't know how any of this, it also comes back to, we've been trying to get an infrastructure package for so long.
38:40 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's infrastructure week.
38:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's infrastructure week every week and it never actually happens. So it's hard to decide or figure out or even imagine how much of that money would actually make its way through Congress.
38:54 Nilay Patel? Is there a split on sort of Republicans and Democrats in Congress? Because it, I mean, the more rural states are generally redder, right, they have more Republican representation, presumably those people would like better networks in their states. Is there, is there any movement on that side of the aisle?
39:09 Speaker 03 Right, it seems like it's a pretty bipartisan issue. If you look at the committees that handle this, for the most part, Republicans and Democrats agree that they need to do something. How they're going to do that, I think, is where they disagree. Like, even when it comes to, this is kind of wonky and excuse me.
39:25 Nilay Patel? I'm ready for it.
39:26 Speaker 03 But the broadband maps, right? So, right now telecoms create their own maps, basically. They send all the data back into the FCC and they craft the maps where people don't have access, based on data from the companies. And everyone is basically in agreement, Republicans and Democrats, that these maps are messed up and we need to figure them out, like, now, like, yesterday.
39:47 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
39:48 Speaker 03 But, and there's a couple of pieces of bipartisan legislation that are moving, but Congress is slow. Right now, we're just finished impeachment.
39:56 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
39:57 Speaker 03 And all this stuff. So, I mean, I could definitely see more momentum in the future, but when it comes to a big infrastructure package with all this money, I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.
40:05 Nilay Patel? Well, so this seems like kind of the big theme. We've talked about a lot of different issues. There's an election going on. It's an opportune time for these issues to come to the fore.
40:16 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
40:17 Nilay Patel? And there just seems to be a gap between, we're going to take away 2:30 and scream out Facebook political ads, and, hey, huge chunks of America don't have broadband and we don't even know where they are because the maps are bad. Like, that is an easy problem for people to understand. It's an easy problem where people agree that the solution is just figure out a way to connect them. We should know where the maps are. And yet, that's not being talked about at all. Why do you think that split exists?
40:43 Speaker 03 Right now, in between the campaigns and these issues?
40:45 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it just doesn't seem like it's... What's the most core tech policy issue? It's like, literally, the digital divide. Right. Like, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if Facebook's doing it, if you can't access Facebook at all.
40:55 Speaker 03 Right.
40:56 Nilay Patel? And it doesn't seem like that comes up as much as it should. Do you think there's a reason for that? Is it just not politically sexy enough? Or what is it?
41:03 Speaker 03 It might not be politically sexy enough, but I'm also thinking that when I was in Iowa and I was covering the caucus, people were shocked to have a tech reporter ask them questions. I mean, why just because we don't have enough tech people covering this stuff and asking those questions? It's really hard to tell, though. There also isn't a lot of party agreement on how to track these things. Like, if the Republicans were running for president right now, for the most part, we'd have the populist wing of the party, the Josh Hollies versus the libertarian wings of the parties. They can't come to an agreement on what tech policy looks like for them. And I think it's the same thing with the Democrats. You have progressives like Warren and Bernie and AOC, who talks for Bernie all the time, and they're like, "Yeah, break 'em up."
41:48 Speaker 03 But the more moderate wing of the party doesn't want to do that.
41:51 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
41:52 Speaker 03 So, I mean, maybe it's just because when it comes to tech policy, it's such an emerging issue, that there just isn't enough agreement in the parties to make it that much of a central issue.
42:03 Nilay Patel? Yeah, there's not even a clear enough split between the parties.
42:05 Speaker 03 Right.
42:06 Nilay Patel? Because a lot of the, like, the Josh Hawley proposals, he squint. It looked a lot like some of the more progressive proposals. Like, "I will take control of Facebook myself. I Josh Hawley. I will do it. Here's what I intend to do." And that doesn't seem like, like Bill Barr is like, "I'm gonna buy Nokia." It doesn't seem like your classic, small-government conservative proposal, but he's like, "That's how I'll fix the 5G encryption problem." So, I agree with you. Like, there's enough of a spread of ideas that they haven't coalesced into party identities yet.
42:37 Speaker 03 Right.
42:37 Nilay Patel? But at the same time, it just seems like... Well, we're gonna cover it. We're gonna keep sending you to places. It seems like it's at the top of mind for how, like, literally how democracy will function, because what we're fundamentally talking about is how information is distributed. Right? And who has access to it and who sees true things and fake things.
42:55 Speaker 03 Right.
42:56 Nilay Patel? And that, I don't think that we're taking that seriously enough, quite honestly.
43:00 Speaker 03 No, I totally agree. And it's, I mean, it is kind of, it feels, how much did we learn from 2016?
43:07 Nilay Patel? Not enough.
43:07 Speaker 03 Not enough.
43:08 Nilay Patel? The answer, yeah.
43:09 Speaker 03 No, not enough. The thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently is that in 2016, we came out of it terrified of foreign interference. And now in 2020, the emerging issue is interference from the candidates themselves with Bloomberg and fake, deep fake videos and things like that. And that's something that gets really closely tied to regulating speech in a way that we're very uncomfortable with, but in a way that is, we, it's a very important conversation that we need to have if these platforms are gonna be as important as they have been in democracy going forward.
43:44 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Well, the good news is you're on the podcast today, because we're launching a whole thing to do election coverage. You're gonna be, people are gonna see your name a lot, because you're covering it very closely. What's the next big thing that you think is your focus?
43:58 Speaker 03 So the things that I'm really interested in are, it may seem pretty minor, but I did a piece on just this random guy out in Washington who's running for Congress as a socialist on TikTok. So I'm very interested in how these emerging platforms are being used and really interested in how candidates, whether it's presidential candidates, congressional candidates, are using the internet to organize, because for a lot of these smaller campaigns, they're quickly becoming national campaigns.
44:28 Nilay Patel? Huh.
44:29 Speaker 03 Because if you're on TikTok and you're on everybody's for you page, or if you have a Discord server with people who support you all across the country, all of a sudden, your small little district in rural Washington or wherever becomes a national campaign.
44:44 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
44:44 Speaker 03 And that's something I think we're gonna see so much more of, and I think it's gonna be really important to dig into.
44:49 Nilay Patel? Is that a fundraising thing, or is that just a culture thing?
44:51 Speaker 03 It's fundraising. It's phone banking. It's text banking. Like, it's creating big national movements for small, little candidates, and I'm very excited to look more into that.
45:00 Nilay Patel? That seems really fun. All right, Mckenna, thank you so much for taking the time.
45:03 Speaker 03 No problem.
45:04 Nilay Patel? We'll have you back on soon.
45:04 Speaker 03 Definitely. Cool.
45:06 Nilay Patel? All right. My thanks to Makena Kelly for joining us on this interview episode. Like I said, we launched a big election coverage section of The Verge today. You can go check it out on the site. We're going to be updating those guides to policy issues all year as the election goes on. Obviously, Casey and Zoe are doing the interface or newsletter about social networks and democracy. There's just a lot of tech policy coverage to come. Check it out on the site. We'll be back on Friday with a chat show. Got to talk about that Mac Pro review. Tuesday with an interview and on, on we go. Please tweet at me. I'm Matt Reckless. I love hearing your feedback on the show and who you want me to talk to. We'll see you later.
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Previous Galaxy S20 Ultra's camera issues and Bob Iger steps down as Disney CEO Next Mac Pro and Pro Display review, TCL's folding phone concepts, and rumors of an iPad keyboard with a trackpad Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
