On July 20, we hosted our 2022 Policy Summit at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington D.C. Thanks to all who attended or watched online. Our first post-pandemic live event connected some key themes in our work. Throughout the afternoon, experts discussed truth decay and misinformation, the collapse of trust in experts, and the future of free speech and social media. Corbin rounded out the day with a live podcast featuring the Brookings Institution’s Quinta Jurecic. Their discussion explored those themes through the lens of the January 6th hearings, the interplay between extremist groups and social media, and some of the emerging asymmetric threats to democracy. To watch all of the panels on our YouTube playlist, click here.
Panel 1: Truth, Misinformation, and the Role of Experts in an Era of Crisis:
Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), described “truth decay” as the diminishing role that facts and analysis increasingly play in our political and civil discourse—and in the policy making process. Check out her book here.
Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies Program, Brookings Institute, described “Constitution of Knowledge” as how individuals are bad at discerning truth based on the many cognitive social biases that we suffer from. And societies need some account of truth for public purposes. Check out his book here.
Gordon Crovitz, Co-Chief Executive Officer, NewsGuard, discusses how media sites are too dominated by the search for clicks and how choosing what to boost on social media can still make a difference in the overall information ecosystem.
Moderator: Berin Szóka, President, TechFreedom
Panel 2: Trust, Institutional Design, and the Future of the Administrative State:
Noah Phillips, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), discussed how the administrative agencies and the courts are now headed in fundamentally different directions: In West Virginia v. EPA and other recent cases, the Supreme Court has curbed sweeping inferences of administrative rulemaking power derived from vague statutory mandates. But the FTC and other agencies are contemplating more of exactly these sorts of regulations.
Michael C. Munger, Director of Undergraduate Studies (Political Science) and PPE program, Duke University, emphasized the role that online platforms can play in facilitating trust, which potentially leaves regulators with less work to do, and not more. Platforms’ size is helpful in their work here, and shouldn’t necessarily trigger antitrust actions.
Steven Teles, Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University; Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, discussed how our two big political parties have both grown more homogenous recently, which gives their leaders outsized power.
Larry Downes, author, The Laws of Disruption, and Internet industry analyst, noted that the FCC is relatively better at handling disruptive industries when compared to the FAA, partly because the latter hasn’t had as much experience with them.
Moderator: Corbin Barthold, Internet Policy Counsel, TechFreedom
Panel 3: Common Carriage, Social Media, Broadband & the First Amendment:
Blake Reid, Clinical Professor and Director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic (TLPC) at Colorado Law; Faculty Director of the Telecom and Platforms Initiative at the Silicon Flatirons Center, argued that common carriage has become a buzzword and that the term’s real history doesn’t match up very well with what its proponents hope to do under it today.
Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School; Senior Visiting Research Scholar, The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, emphasized that there is no existing common carrier regime that is free from complications; those looking for an easy fix will be disappointed.
Christopher Yoo, John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science at University of Pennsylvania Law School; Founding Director, Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, stressed that the state remedy to private censorship would be a cure worse than the disease.
Berin Szóka, President, TechFreedom
Moderator: Ari Cohn, Free Speech Counsel, TechFreedom
Panel 4: Live Podcast: Quinta Jurecic on Jan. 6, Social Media and the Great Rage
The summit concluded with a special live recording of the Tech Policy Podcast with guest Quinta Jurecic, Fellow in Governance Studies of the Brookings Institution. Moderated by Corbin, Quinta explored the same themes of our previous panels while discussing the January 6 Committee, Trump’s election “Big Lie,” the difficulty of combatting online extremism, the insanity that is Steve Bannon, and the fraying of American civic life. Tune in to the full episode here.