NBC "Meet the Press" - TRANSCRIPT Meet the Press - January 1, 2023
Interview
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CHUCK TODD:
When we come back, what can Congress do to regulate social media? Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin both have some ideas. And they're both here.
CHUCK TODD:
Though lawmakers in Washington have talked about a moment of truth to social media companies, they seem to have lacked some urgency. Each party is worried about a regulation hurting their side and benefiting the other. Joining me now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has introduced lots of legislation to attempt to regulate online political advertising, address problems in social media algorithms, and to restore competition online by reigning in big tech companies, and Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin. He recently introduced a bill to ban TikTok, which he calls, "digital fentanyl," due to its parent company's ties to the Chinese government. Welcome to both of you. Senator Klobuchar, I want to start with you. And I want to start with just how powerful the social media lobby is in this town. Look, I put up that list of legislation there. A week ago, you thought you had a bill that was at least designed to help journalistic organizations, both big and small, to get properly funded by Facebook and all that, a similar law to Australia. You thought it was a done deal and it was gone in 24 hours. How powerful was this tech lobby?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
So powerful that you literally can have a bill that got through the Judiciary Committee with strong bipartisan support, you can get promises from leaders that it's going to be a major end-of-year bill and then within 24 hours, it's gone. It's vanished. because of one company, two companies in this case; Facebook and Google - by the way, Google made $66 billion in one quarter in advertising while we are going to lose one third of the nation's newspapers by 2025. We had such strong support for this bill, but these guys just make a few calls and they just say, "Hey. You know, this is going to hurt us just like they did in Australia." The difference was in Australia, their government stood up and said, "No. We're going to do this and we're going to say, 'You've got to negotiate with these news organizations to get fair price for their content.'" And it happened. And they have a better system in place. Right now in the United States of America, these companies have basically started dominating our thought processes. And I think the work Frances has done is incredible. It is about going after these algorithms, making for them transparency. That's one of the bills we have. And it is about getting compensation for our news organizations. And then finally, it's about getting rid of archaic law, Section 230, that gives them immunity from lawsuits.
CHUCK TODD:
I want to talk about this. So Section 230, I'll put it up again here, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This law was passed in the '90s. This law was passed when it was message boards and it was forums. I was somebody that used to go on college sports forums. And, yeah, there was some crazy stuff in there. It makes sense for that. This was pre-algorithm. This was pre-iPhone. We didn't know what was coming. Can this be amended, rather than gotten rid of?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
Yes. You can amend it and focus on certain kinds of speech misinformation, disinformation. And all you're saying is, "We know people are going to put stuff on your alleged town square," which has become really a communications company. Your network, other news organizations, have limits in place and standards. And our argument's going to be: If you start making money off of it, if you amplify it, that's a whole different thing. Your angry emojis and all these things you're doing--
CHUCK TODD:
If you change this news feed,
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
-- is to make money.
CHUCK TODD:
your news feed versus my news feed, hasn't the company become a publisher?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
They are a publisher. And let's just start facing the facts and stop pretending they're some little company in a garage. Maybe one day, they were. But now, they are mega companies. And this is starting to happen all over the world. We are lagging behind and it is time for 2023, let it be our resolution, that we finally pass one of these bills. We have gotten through the committee some of the first bills, since the internet began, to finally take them on. And so it's not just that we've done nothing. We have gotten bipartisan agreements.
CHUCK TODD:
I understand that.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
We have pushed these bills onto the Senate floor.
CHUCK TODD:
But let me ask you about this issue of polarization. I mean, this seems to be what holds back a good bill in Congress is that a Democrat might think, "Hmm. Is this going to hurt our status online," and vice versa on the Republican side.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
It's actually even more insidious. When we had a bill that said you can't self-preference your own products, Amazon, at the top all the time over small businesses - support from small businesses all over the country for this - they ran over $150 million and much more in ads all across the country. So what that said to the members - there were Red-state ads, angry guys with pickup trucks. There were Blue-state ads. They ran these ads and it said to the members, "Hey. If you start getting on a bill like this--"
CHUCK TODD:
"We're going to make your life--"
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
"--or if you support it, we're going to come." This is kids stuff, compared to what you're going to do.
CHUCK TODD:
It's almost like you were being extorted?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
This is how it's working. And so it is only going to change - and I thought Frances's work on kids would change it; not yet with the children's privacy bill. It's only going to change if the people of this country say, "This is enough. This is corrupt. You've got to do something. Put some rules in place when it comes to social media." And they've got to be liable when you've got situations where literally deranged people are believing their stuff, and going in, and taking a hammer, and bludgeoning the husband of the speaker of the House, or hundreds of thousands of blog posts that are allowed to go through with maps of the Capitol that they use to create an insurrection. At some point, when they can't control their own platforms while they're making billions of dollars from the American people, and over, as you point out, two thirds of Americans say it's hurting our democracy, come on, Congress. Stop hiding behind this and get something done.
CHUCK TODD:
Look. Let's be realistic. The tobacco companies changed after being hit with hefty lawsuits, more than government regulation. After the lawsuits came more government regulation.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
Right.
CHUCK TODD:
Do you think if you opened these companies up to lawsuits; and by the way, Facebook is being sued overseas for its role in Ethiopian civil war and some other places; do you think their behavior would change?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
Yes, because then in order to continue, they have to put safety measures in place. Instead of sending out sweet little notes about all the good work they're doing, they would actually have to do something. And so that's why changing Section 230, which was developed for a whole different moment in the Internet, is an answer. The other is taking on monopolies so you can allow competitors to come into being that would have different bells and whistles, privacy and the like; regulating online political ads, which they're still escaping despite some weren't from the Federal Election Commission. This is a bill I had with Senator Lindsey Graham. There are many, many things we could do here. But we need more time, we need votes and people need to say where they are. Are they going to side with these companies or are they going to side with the people of this country?
CHUCK TODD:
Would you like to see a law that was similar to the EU's Digital Services Act, which would target online ads that basically say, "The companies cannot use online ads targeting ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation"?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
I would like to see major work. I'd want to look at that exact bill on ads.
CHUCK TODD:
Fair enough.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
And this bill that we have requires disclosures, disclaimers so you know who's paying for them, which is a major problem. But in this last election, and maybe this is going to help with my colleagues, over 30% of Americans said the number one reason they voted Democratic, including a whole bunch of Independents and moderate Republicans, was democracy. And it was voter suppression, yes, but was also about this kind of misinformation and just the fomenting of the lies on both sides sometimes that has caused people to do what they've done. And I just think it's a major issue. I'm not giving up. I'm not giving up. I'm going into 2023 ready to go.
CHUCK TODD:
I was just going to say your passion comes through in a big way. Senator Amy Klobuchar, thanks for coming on, and sharing this, and happy New Year.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR:
Thank you.
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