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Detected language: English
[00:00.000 --> 00:02.200]  I'm Dave Champion.
[00:02.200 --> 00:09.440]  I recently started reading this book, Anti-Social Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and The
[00:09.440 --> 00:14.280]  Hijacking of the American Conversation by Andrew Marantz.
[00:14.280 --> 00:20.940]  And the way my brain works is you start me down the road and my mind goes all sorts of
[00:20.940 --> 00:27.740]  places and that's led me to some thoughts about social media, which I'd like to share
[00:27.740 --> 00:28.740]  with you.
[00:28.740 --> 00:38.940]  Perhaps I shouldn't have said social media.
[00:38.940 --> 00:41.560]  Perhaps I should have said media.
[00:41.560 --> 00:46.340]  Because it's all media, I want to distinguish for the purpose of my remarks the difference
[00:46.340 --> 00:53.440]  between what I consider, again with the construct of this presentation, the legacy media versus
[00:53.440 --> 00:54.440]  social media.
[00:54.620 --> 01:02.220]  What I mean by legacy media here today is media as it existed, we could say before the
[01:02.220 --> 01:04.340]  internet was a thing.
[01:04.340 --> 01:13.620]  That would be like NBC, ABC, CBS, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, the New York Times,
[01:13.620 --> 01:15.700]  the Los Angeles Times.
[01:15.700 --> 01:20.420]  These were all what they call the fourth estate.
[01:21.000 --> 01:26.020]  However, I think the fourth estate is an inapt characterization.
[01:26.020 --> 01:33.560]  We have the judicial branch of government, the executive branch, the legislative branch,
[01:33.560 --> 01:35.400]  so those are the three branches of government.
[01:35.400 --> 01:41.560]  So I think the media all too often should be referred to as the fourth branch of government,
[01:41.560 --> 01:42.560]  not the fourth estate.
[01:42.560 --> 01:48.320]  The reason I say that is as I look back, and I'm old enough to look back to the days before
[01:48.320 --> 01:53.300]  the internet was a thing and look at television media and print media as it existed before
[01:53.300 --> 02:02.660]  the internet was a thing, and recognize that nothing, nothing came out of the media that
[02:02.660 --> 02:09.140]  was adverse to the establishment's message, very, very, very rare.
[02:09.140 --> 02:12.780]  There was also sort of an unspoken censorship.
[02:12.780 --> 02:18.140]  While all these companies are private enterprises, there was still nevertheless whether you want
[02:18.140 --> 02:23.420]  to call it government-inspired or some other facet, there was still the characteristic
[02:23.420 --> 02:33.560]  that if there was a point of view that was considered unpleasant or disreputable, you
[02:33.560 --> 02:36.120]  certainly were never going to hear that.
[02:36.120 --> 02:42.700]  So let's say for the sake of this illustration that eight or nine or 10% of the nation held
[02:43.020 --> 02:53.340]  view that the other 90 or 92% of the population did find distasteful and unpleasant or inappropriate.
[02:53.340 --> 03:00.500]  The minority's view was virtually never addressed through the legacy media.
[03:00.500 --> 03:07.980]  So now we fast forward to today and social media and social media companies.
[03:07.980 --> 03:15.500]  And it seems to me they're now fulfilling the same role—people are going to argue
[03:15.500 --> 03:18.260]  about this, but I'm just going to use for simplicity and the sake of this presentation
[03:18.260 --> 03:26.660]  the word censorship—it appears that social media companies are applying the same kind
[03:26.660 --> 03:31.860]  of censorship as did the legacy media back in the day.
[03:31.860 --> 03:38.900]  If something is considered just not reputable or in some way just unpleasant or disgusting
[03:38.900 --> 03:46.980]  or whatever the critical analysis of these people's point of view is, just like the
[03:46.980 --> 03:53.140]  legacy media, which was the only place to get information back then, simply would not
[03:53.140 --> 03:54.620]  talk about it.
[03:54.620 --> 03:59.140]  Now social media companies are making sure you can't hear about it.
[03:59.140 --> 04:04.740]  Now the big difference here is whether the communication back with the legacy media,
[04:04.740 --> 04:05.740]  it was a downward communication.
[04:05.740 --> 04:08.740]  You had government, you had the media companies, and then the public.
[04:08.740 --> 04:12.180]  So all communications were downward.
[04:12.180 --> 04:19.100]  Social media changed that so that the exchange of views was horizontal, which was a pretty
[04:19.100 --> 04:27.780]  cool idea to begin with, that we can receive information, perhaps news, points of view
[04:27.980 --> 04:30.220]  that we may not have considered.
[04:30.220 --> 04:34.260]  Instead of receiving it downward, we can now receive it horizontally.
[04:34.260 --> 04:43.440]  That's a pretty cool concept until social media companies decided not if we don't like
[04:43.440 --> 04:46.540]  the information that's moving horizontally.
[04:46.540 --> 04:50.360]  If we don't like that information, here's this horizontal stream going back and forth
[04:50.360 --> 04:51.740]  between members of the public.
[04:51.740 --> 04:56.340]  If we don't like something, we're going to slap it right out of that stream.
[04:56.340 --> 04:57.420]  That's out of the stream.
[04:57.420 --> 04:58.900]  That's out of the stream.
[04:58.900 --> 05:05.380]  So that yeah, you can keep sharing things horizontally as long as we approve of it.
[05:05.380 --> 05:12.100]  So essentially the way I see it is while we have this new media, which encompasses more
[05:12.100 --> 05:15.420]  than social media, but nevertheless social media is the largest component of the new
[05:15.420 --> 05:21.100]  media, it's really in my view no different now.
[05:21.100 --> 05:24.900]  There was a period of time when I think there was some real freedom there, but right now
[05:24.940 --> 05:30.860]  I think it's no different than the legacy media, where what the establishment wants
[05:30.860 --> 05:36.380]  to allow, wants to permit to be discussed will be discussed.
[05:36.380 --> 05:38.820]  That's how legacy media operated.
[05:38.820 --> 05:47.520]  And now it's the way social media is ensuring social media, horizontal information operates.
[05:47.520 --> 05:53.140]  Feel free to communicate horizontally all you want as long as the establishment's views
[05:53.140 --> 05:54.740]  are protected.
[05:54.740 --> 06:00.140]  And anything, especially if it's credible or viable, that challenges the establishment's
[06:00.140 --> 06:08.580]  viewpoints, those things have to be dropped out of that horizontal flow of information.
[06:08.580 --> 06:11.860]  The new boss, just like the old boss.