How to Bring Free Speech Back into Social Media
A preview of my thoughts for next week's Disruptive Technology Coalition event.
On June 22, I’ll be speaking at The Washington Times 40th Anniversary Celebration conference on Big Tech/Free Speech, hosted by the Disruptive Technology Coalition. Subheading: Conservative organizations address Censorship/ESG/Disinformation
If you’re in Washington, please join us. Registration is open and free.
Here’s a preview of the thoughts I plan to share:
I’d like to thank the organizers for inviting me to share my thoughts about big tech’s questionable record on promoting the free exchange of ideas, and in particular the restrictions it’s placed on many voices considered to be to the right of center. When they extended their invitation, they made me promise to focus on solutions, so that’s what I’m going to do.
For those of who don’t know me, I’ve built my career around methodologies. I’m basically a problem solver and a troubleshooter, albeit one with a background in tech, business, and law. I’ve spent many years studying the interplay among them. And there are certain principles I bring to the table with each new challenge. Two of them are particularly relevant today.
I believe strongly that:
1. If you ask the right questions, the answers tend to be obvious;
2. What was will be, what’s been done will be done, and there’s nothing new under the sun.
So as I set out to present some solutions, I will focus on the historical lessons I consider most useful in framing the question appropriately. Because once I’ve reframed the problem appropriately, without reference to politics or specifics, the solution will present itself.
Let’s start with a return to basics: People speak languages like English or Chinese. Computers know when voltage levels shift between low and high. The fundamental—perhaps the sole—challenge of computing is developing and improving communication between people and computers. That means that people must learn to think & speak a little more like computers; computers must “learn” to think & speak a little more like people.
The “state of information tech” at any point in time is defined by the interface between human and machine communications. Each new generation of information technology moves the interface closer to humans. Because each new generation also builds on all past generations, a predictable phenomenon occurs: Last generation’s interface becomes this generation’s platform. In other words, next-gen cutting edge applications always sit atop last gen’s cutting edge applications.
I first developed this characterization in the late 1990s, when the next gen cutting-edge applications were browsers sitting atop the desktop OS (mainly Windows), and search engines sitting atop browsers. I wrote about it in Digital Phoenix more than twenty years ago. And it’s as relevant today as it was then. Because social media networks have been at the interface for over a decade. They are now old, dated, last-gen applications overdue to become full-blown platforms. Next gen applications should sit on top of those platforms enhancing user experience.
Now let’s put that thought on hold for a minute and look at another predictable pattern. At any point in time, the folks who won the last-gen tech battle are powerful, wealthy incumbents. In the 1990s that was Microsoft. Today it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a couple of others. Meanwhile, scientific and technological innovation creates new business opportunities. Entrepreneurial business innovators seize upon those opportunities. When they succeed, they disrupt markets and expectations.
Now, powerful, wealthy incumbents do not like competition, innovation, new entrants, or any sort of disruption. They’ve been happy running the show and raking in profits. So what do they do? They fight back using all the weapons at their disposal. But…dominating innovation amidst an entrepreneurial onslaught is hard and uncertain. So they look for an edge.
They learn quickly that, as incumbents protecting expectations, they have a clear edge when it comes to litigation, regulation, influence, connections, and propaganda. They deploy them all. That deployment triggers a debate over policy, as insiders and outsiders debate the legal & regulatory reforms needed to move forward. Eventually the dust settles with a new round of legal & regulatory developments that define the playing field. Tech innovation then proceeds upon that new field. This pattern of tech innovation / business innovation / legal and regulatory backlash / policy debate / resolution / tech innovation can then repeat itself.
Now let’s put the pieces together. The social media model—people connecting, forming networks and sharing their thoughts—is already 10-15 years old. It’s last gen tech. Current gen tech involves enhancing the SM user experience. Curation, safety, sequencing, selection, direction, etc.
As with most new developments, that raises the question: Who should decide what curation or safety looks like? Should these enhancements be provided top-down (by the SM network owner) or bottom-up (by the SM network user). In a bottom-up model, individual users would set their own standards. Competitive entrants would provide them with different filtering, sequencing, searching, and presentation options. Users would determine which entrants succeed and which fail. Guess what? As long as the SM network owners—the powerful incumbents—get to decide who decides, the answer will always be top down. After all, why should they relinquish their very lucrative control?
That’s precisely where we are today: The SM network owners are working overtime—precisely as predicted—to retain their controlling position as the tech forefront moves from one generation to the next. The upshot is a set of local monopolies, within an oligopoly SM industry, controlling experiential enhancements.
Maintaining those local monopolies requires the SM incumbents to placate their cultural and political connections, specifically those positioned to alter law and regulation. That this business need driven by a desire to preserve control aligns with majority political preferences inside the industry is just gravy. It makes the necessity easily justifiable, enjoyable, affirming, and virtuous. But at its heart—and certainly for corporate leaders if not for rank-and-file tech workers—the business imperative of maintaining control is far more important than the feel-good work of throttling political opponents.
At least, it should be and would be more important if the leading SM companies are still profit-maximizing corporations. The possibility that they have become something else—deploying ESG to become moralizing ideologs—is a different story. We can get back to that later, and I understand that others are addressing it. But for the moment, let’s continue assuming that today’s tech giants are what corporations are supposed to be: profit-maximizing entities.
With that assumption in place, the drive to retain control explains everything we’re experiencing in today’s big tech communications environment.
Okay. We’ve finally gotten to the point where I’ve reframed the problem from discrimination against voices of the right to a desire to maintain control. What’s the now-obvious solution?
Easy. If controlling incumbents are the problem, competitive entry is the solution. We need to empower a competitive filtering industry forwarding multiple definitions of “safety” and “enjoyment.”
Elon Musk gets it. Look carefully at what he’s said he plans for Twitter—and these are great ideas whether or not the acquisition goes through and whether or not he actually puts them in place. Undoing high-profile bans, from Trump on down, gets the headlines. But, as always, the subtler stuff is more important.
Specifically, Musk has promised to open source Twitter’s algorithms in the name of “transparency.” Open sourcing and publishing APIs is how last gen’s application becomes the next gen platform. Musk has promised to abandon Twitter’s local monopoly & open his platform to competition—blowing open the entire industry. That’s why his acquisition is so feared.
I’ve written a couple of articles on this topic, and I’d be pleased to expand on it during the panel’s discussion, Q&A, or afterward with anyone who is interested. Suffice it to say that the proper stage for today’s tech industry should be one in which competing filters and algorithms help each user tailor the social media experience to taste. Shorn of their monopoly over presentation and control, big tech’s catering to the political preferences of the left will become far less problematic.
How do we get there if Musk doesn’t move forward? That’s a tougher problem—though again, one I’d be pleased to discuss later. Here’s a hint: Best bet involves CDA 230. For now, I’ll just turn things back to the panel and to the floor. Thank you.
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.