January 29th special select board meeting the border with us tonight on my left is Flo Smith and Joe Staub. On my right is Tor Nelson and Karla Newiesel. This also is Caller Street or Town Treasurer by Brad Town and any additions to it? Yes we have two. First we do have warrants to be signed tonight and also I have a bunch of signatures. Public comment. Is this the only opportunity to comment on what? Oh I'll comment on everything now or? Oh you can if you want. Oh okay I don't want to jump the guns. No no. I'm reading this I have no problem with the 1% tax. Yeah. I didn't hear what he said. You still said 1% tax. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? Yeah I have I didn't hear what you said earlier about earlier. I just asked him about the what was on the for the special meeting for the hearing. Oh okay because when you set up public comment I don't know if this is the only opportunity to speak. No speak speak. Oh so just go ahead and speak. I don't want to jump the gun here. I don't know if Ross asked. I don't have a problem with the 1% tax and I'm looking I was reading the you were in the paper yesterday about the property taxes and trying to make cuts and everything and I can appreciate all property taxes and all all the things that you do I'm trying to keep that down. I have an issue that's a different concern though about this building that we're doing down at the town center. I have a question about that is it appropriate to ask about that now. Okay my concern is watching what's going on globally and watching the migration that's coming across the border and watching people being shipped here and there and everywhere and deals being cut to bring people into hotels and getting paid by the federal government. Is there anything that we can do proactively to prevent a situation where a deal will be cut if this building gets built down there at the town center so that we don't wind up in a situation where we have completely unvetted people coming into the town. Clarification the buildings in the town center are mostly commercial. The hotel that was talked about is over at Comfort Inn. Okay. They are going to add extended stay with a 90 rooms. 90 to 100 rooms of extended stay. I'm just talking about in general in terms of what I'm seeing going on globally with this situation with the migration where if you take a look at New York City and they're filling up all the hotels with illegal aliens who haven't been vetted. And my concern is that we're going to build up units that we're going to make for apartments. 30 units was it? Yes. That's why it's fine. Okay. My concern is that is there anything on any way of preventing a situation where a deal will be cut will be bringing in people who are coming across the border into tent, you know what I'm saying? Oh yeah. Because that will bring a problem. Yeah, we'll be making more taxes. We'll be bringing in more tax revenue if that building gets built. But we can have real big problems down the line. So that was a concern of mine. I totally agree with you on that. And I don't know what if anything we can really do proactively on that. But I, you know, I would look at the flip side is that affordable housing is, you know, such a critical, I don't know what I'm trying to say right now, need right now that I just don't have the opportunity to How is that? Yeah, I have no problem. Like if we're housing our own, you know what I'm saying? And we have a problem here that we have to solve. And the Fox Run is a product is a build of What's the organization? Down Street? Down Street Housing. And they typically, I don't think that they would, that's something that they typically would get involved in. I mean, I think it's really geared toward workforce housing. The hospital has expressed a huge need for housing located nearby because oftentimes the lower paying jobs can't afford housing and cars and that allows them the ability to walk to work if they need to. So the idea, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but based on the builder and the people that will operate the facility, I don't think that would be a concern. Down Street, I think is more interested in long term. Yes. Not short term. Yes. And meeting the needs of Vermonters I think is really a key thing for them. Yes, sir. What would be considered low income? This is a workforce housing. It's not like geared toward which is I think is different than some of the subsidized housing. I'm not an expert in this area. I don't pretend to be. But my understanding is what they're calling this is workforce. And there's some market rate housing in there, which means that they need to keep up the facility or the market rate units won't get market rate. Okay. Basically, from my own experience, when they do build low class housing, what they're doing is they're trying to change the workforce from the local and native to immigrants. My experience, they're working at a lower range. And that's something you have to watch out for. I mean, whoever shares in the companies that build this benefit from it, there's a lot of behind the scenes deal going on. Well, I think sometime along here, we'll have asked Down Street to come in and give us an update and we can express your concerns then. Well, I'm interested in basically people like shares companies we're talking about.  I don't know if it's a public, I don't know if it's a... I think it's not a, it's a Vermont. I haven't heard of it. I'm not sure what type of entity it is, I believe. I think they're not profit maybe. That's what I'm thinking, yeah. That's what you're not on stock exchange. No, I don't believe so either. Do you have anything else you want to add? I just wanted to come down and speak about my concern about the building and who's going to be coming into the town. You know, you want to bring in the tax revenue, but you don't want a problem. I don't want a downside that you're not looking at here, there's any way of preventing that. Any other public comment? If not, we'll move on to convening the charter change hearing. A motion? I make the motion to convene the charter change hearing at this time. A second. A discussion. Hearing none. We are now in the public hearing. Berlin is considering the following changes to its charter. Shall the Berlin Town Center be hereby amended as follows? Section 3-2, powers of the town addition paragraph D as follows. The town Berlin Select Board may assess a 1% sales tax. The town of Berlin Select Board may assess a 1% rooms tax. And the town of Berlin Select Board may assess a 1% meals and alcohol beverage tax. This tax be imposed on the authority. This section shall be collected and administered by the Department of Taxes in accordance with 24 BSA 138. Revenues received through this imposition of tax in this section shall be designed for capital projects within the town. Any comments? Any questions? I don't, you know, bring nothing online. I guess if I may, what we're looking at doing here for everybody's benefit is currently, you know, Berlin's population is around 2900. But during the day, our population swells to around 12,000 between all of the employers in town, the hospital and all the commercial enterprises and everything like that. All these, you know, out of town people are using the services of the town. We're having to maintain and plow the roads and, you know, provide a police force and everything like that. But they do not provide anything towards our property tax base. So all of the town expenses in which we're going to talk about later on tonight with the, you know, next year's budget is basically entirely borne by the property tax payers of the town. This, these three components of the options tax, the sales tax, meals tax and rooms and alcohol tax is an opportunity to get these out of town residents to contribute towards their requirements. They're required expenditures of the town. We're looking at, and this would provide, based on the state tax department, about $600,000 a year of additional revenue. And our proposal is to use this for, as the chair mentioned, capital projects, which is vehicle and heavy equipment. You know, the snow plow trucks, the police vehicles, the road graders and loaders and things like that. Paving out the roads, culvert maintenance, bridge maintenance, all sorts of things like that. Which typically we spend between $300,000 and $500,000 a year on, which is not enough to keep pace with the expenses that we should be to keeping these items in good condition. So we don't, not faced with a situation like the Lovers Lane Bridge where, you know, due to the deferred maintenance, it's now been closed for four or five years at this point and probably at least another year before it's reopened. So we can be more proactive in getting these needs taken care of. I was just sad that I think being proactive reduces the cost overall because when there's an emergency, like when the culvert fails, it's going to cost more than if it was done on a schedule. Here again, the State Tax Department estimates that between three quarters and 85% of this revenue would be paid by out-of-town residents. So we're, you know, so we're definitely looking to capitalize on that. Now keep in mind some things that are not included in this, which are not subject to the state sales tax are groceries, clothing and shoes, drugs and medical supplies, motor vehicles, gasoline and diesel fuel, and residential farm, residential and farm utilities. And probably the biggest, you know, question is, so we do implement this and we've got this additional revenue coming in. How can you be assured that we as a slick board are spending this money in a responsible manner? And keep in mind that any expenditures of these funds will still be, you know, vetted to you through the annual budget voted at the town meeting. So you still have the opportunity to weigh on those expenditures, including not making, you know, any or that much that year and saving it for additional rainy day fund.  You know, you're going to cook dinner for tonight, invite me over if you would please. You would pay nothing extra on that because those items are not taxed, you know, the sales tax that would not be subject to the local options tax.  And that could cost you $40. You would pay an additional 40 cents on that meal for the options tax. And if you do that once a week, every week for a year, we have a total of 21 additional dollars over the course of the year. You know, that's the power that this 1% can provide to the town over the course of a year. I do see a question in the chat. How do I... For my folks at the wayside restaurant, I would imagine it would be significantly more than 600,000. We would hope so. And with the, you know, growth coming into the town, we do expect that number to increase. But based on the numbers we're getting from the state tax department, that's what we've got so far. That's interesting because the wayside is in both towns. The restaurant part is in Berlin. The cat restaurant is in Berlin. The parking lot is in Montpelier, but the, even the so-called Montpelier side of the wayside is still in Berlin. I've been told. Now I do have a question for the wayside. I know you have a fundraiser coming on tomorrow night. If you wanted to jump on and say anything about that. That would be wonderful. I don't see, you're muted. Here you go. Sorry, I'm not very good in the Zoom. Yeah, we're working with Union Mutual. They have a Penguin plunge team for the raise money for the Special Olympics. We're working with them tomorrow night to donate a portion of the proceeds from the evening sales. Oh, nice. That's wonderful. So I'll throw it out right now. I'll pay $200 if I can pour a glass of ice on Alex's head. I would let you do that for free. I would be willing to pay you to do that. Oh, no. Anything else concerning the public hearing? If not, I'll entertain a motion to close it. I make the motion to close the hearing at this time. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Chatter change. Public hearings closed. Okay. Just the year 25 budget adoption. So we hammered a lot of things out last week. And the final numbers come in at $4,558,276. So I found an error in my spreadsheet. I got it corrected. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Appreciate your help. So you are, so really no changes to the budget itself from what we discussed last week, and I will make the motion to adopt. Your second? Second. Any further discussion? Yes. I just want to go on, Mark, as I know we have to cut and I'm not opposed to the cuts. I do, I did send an email that you all saw that I just had concerns that due to the uncertainty I thought might be worth considering financing a large purchase equipment as opposed to paying for it to provide flexibility in the budget. And I know I'm, this is new to me. I acknowledge that. But I felt like it would give us a little bit more flexibility. And so this is a precursor to my vote. Well, my, my counter to that is we do have the funds reserved for this piece of equipment. Preserved but not restricted. They are, they are restricted. They are restricted to highway equipment. So it's not, it's not restricted to the loader versus a grader or something on the road, but it is restricted for highway equipment. And how does that work? I didn't understand that. When, when you put forth a budget such as this one, once the town votes. So this was from before? Yeah, correct. The money is then locked into what is, what is. I was understanding it was being part of this new request. So I, I misunderstood that. Okay. So I thought, I thought it was money we were setting aside, new money that we were setting aside.  Right. And I recognize that, but I guess my thought was, you know, that can be, you know, assuming everything goes well, that can be paid.  It's not something that you're set, that's set in stone. So it was just, you know, I struggled with this all weekend because I was so traumatized by that last meeting. And I did still put my petition in, but. Anyway, so that was, that's my only comment. And if that's restricted then it is reserved by a previous vote and I will support the budget. Did you have a good chance to talk Connie Banks today or? I didn't hear back from her. Okay. So I even looked community because that's what we do most of the stuff and she was going to look into it but hadn't gotten back to me. So. Any other comments on this? So just to clarify the reserve is the 253,000? The 253,000 for the loader will come out of reserve, previously reserve funds, correct. And then the implication on the tax rate, then we've got ARPA funds and other things we'll be looking at as well. But, you know, that'd be a discussion on June. Exactly. Wonderful. Okay. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much. Thanks for all your efforts and all your thorough review and asking the question before. Thanks. No glad you put your petition in. Joe. Any other comments? No comment. I'm sick of looking at this. Hi. All in favor? Hi. I'm resounding on. Motion carries. March 24th, I mean March 2024, how meeting voting adoption? So, this is pretty straightforward compared to other, you know, based on other years. The article two is the budget we just adopted. Article three is the Charter Change Local Options Tax. Option, option. Article four is the, at this point, the appears to be a tentative agreement with Gary Hotels for the purchase of the 1.5 acres. Article five is authorization to borrow for flood repairs. For the coming year, it's just authorization. I mean, it's not a sure thing, but it's just a flexibility for the slipboard if we need it. Then our article six through 26 are the appropriations including article six to 424, 296 for the fire department. And these, and the above were all on Australian ballots. Voted on that Tuesday the fourth. And then starting with article 27 is the traditional floor vote for town meeting on Saturday, March 2nd. The moderator reports town officers. Article 29 is the quarterly payment of the property tax and should be noted on here that February, February 15th is actually a Saturday. But luckily at our last meeting, the chair asked our candidates if they'd be willing to work on a Saturday and they both said yes. I guess we wouldn't be having people here. Or the treasurer has stated that as long, anything that's in the lock box when she arrives, that Monday morning will be counted as on time. Then article 30 show the voters of the town of Berlin call upon the United States Postal Service to establish a post office in Zipco within the town to service its residents and businesses. So that's something new. And any other business that may legally become before the meeting. I don't know if our concert would like to have anything. I don't have an addition. Thank you for something that allots. That was perfect. Yeah. If you all agree to this, don't have any changes. I'd just be looking to get signatures today. And then we can order ballots. That's wonderful. Rachel, is there an absentee ballot? There is going to be. It hasn't been printed yet. So what we're going to have on hand right now is for the presidential primaries. So those are available for absentee right now. And then these should be done no later than February 14. Whether you're up to request them. Sorry. So moved. Second. I was just going to say, why did you have to request absentee ballots? Why? You can request them right up until 3.30 the day before. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And assistant treasurer appointment. If we care to go into executive session and come out and vote. I think it probably would be a good idea to go into executive session quickly. And I will make that motion. Good. In terms of executive session regarding the assistant treasurer appointment under 1VSA 313A3. And I do anticipate a decision tonight following this executive session. Any second? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We're in the executive session. We have an odd. We have a person or we have interviewed a person for a assistant town treasurer. And we would like to offer Shelly Rue the position of the assistant town treasurer to have a motion on that. I make the motion that we hire Shelly Rue for assistant town treasurer. No second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Yes, thank you. And let's see here. We've got warrants. I make the motion to approve payable warrant 24G17 with check number 23681 to 23690 in the amount of $75,529.05. Also payroll warrant 24-17. For payroll from January 14 to January 28, 2024, paid on January 31, 2024 in the amount of $67,910.56. And the Berlin volunteer fire department selections orders from November of 2023 as well. Second. Any discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And what was the other one? I have a lot of signatures I need from all of you on stuff that was previously approved. Not signed. Okay. And Mr. Chair, I did receive an email regarding the options tax during the meeting from Cedric Sanborn. Just as food for thought, the 1% sales tax will also be collected from each business in town as businesses pay the Vermont sales tax on both their electric bill and their heating bill oil slash propane. It's not just free money collected from out of town shoppers. Thank you, Rick Sanborn. So it's only residential and farm that's not collected on the electric? On the state thing you read it. Seems like it says something about electric and heating. That much is on residential. I'm going to say residential and agricultural utilities. This is yours. Thank you. Well, I'm assuming that the tax... Anybody who's using the purchase as an expense, like if you buy a gas for your business, it becomes the business expense. That's true. Right. So that would be the only reason that you would collect the tax on fuel, on heating fuels and whatnot. And don't we all feel good of everything that's been accomplished tonight? And everything leading up to it tour. I put in a lot of effort. What is here for you? I broke the bad news to Tom. About his family commission? Oops. I got to sign this from two places. So I take it tour. I sign it somewhere in here. Let me see if those were already all signed. I think they were. I don't see any place else. Oh, there was. I broke Pine Hill to three of my neighbors. They were unscathed. Then I asked to borrow the newspaper. We actually, we used to get the newspapers delivered and it just expired. And now there's an offer being made. My husband said we should get that started back up again. Yeah, I agree. Shelly was excited. We're still, we're still, we're still putting ink to paper. Still on the record. Okay. Anything else to come before the board tonight? Technically the, there is no German on the agenda. So I don't think we can adjourn. Well bet. Nice try. Entertain a motion to adjourn. I make the motion to adjourn tonight's select board meeting. I'll second that. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Both in carries.


During 10 days in October of 1983, when tensions in both Lebanon and Grenada erupted, the United States became involved in two major crises. Within hours of each, the military airlift command, along with guard and reservists, would be called upon to meet urgent airlift needs on opposite sides of the world. MAC regularly employs 65% of its aircraft to support its routine missions and exercises. During these 10 days, however, more than 80% of the command's resources would be activated, as MAC headed to the Middle East and the Caribbean, and continued full support of its day-to-day operations. During the time that the situations in Lebanon and Grenada were becoming increasingly volatile, MAC C-141s were airlifting more than 17,000 army troops, along with their gear and combat vehicles and equipment to the autumn forge exercises in Germany. Within hours of each departure, tons of cargo and hundreds of troops were offloaded in Germany, as MAC resupplied the American, Dutch, German and British troops taking part in reforger. Meanwhile, on the island of Diego Garcia, a MAC C-5 Galaxy touched down on a routine resupply mission. And in Cairo, another pulled in to offload under the glare of the Egyptian sun. Half the world away, a MAC C-141 approached the ice-coated strip at McMurdo Sound in support of operation Deep Freeze. As Marines continued their peacekeeping vigil in Beirut, Honduran troops jumped from MAC C-130s during the six-month combined U.S.-Honduran joint exercise Awas Karatou. And while a number of MAC crews and aircraft staged in and out of Honduras, a 12-ship C-130 mission landed in Spain for exercise criss-ex. But then, as MAC headed to Korea in support of full eagle, the leaders of six Caribbean nations urged the United States to move into Grenada, following the execution of that country's prime minister. As our political leaders evaluated their request, MAC continued to haul more than 27,000 people and 32 million pounds of cargo to Florida in support of bold eagle. Then at 06.20 on the morning of October 23rd, one of the crises literally exploded when the Marine headquarters in Beirut was blown apart with the force of approximately 5 tons of TNT. For MAC, the 10 days in October had begun. As President Reagan was awakened with the news of the fatal attack, MAC moved into action. Immediately a C-9 nightingale flying a routine mission from mine-mine to Turkey turned instead toward Lebanon. Within 90 minutes, 23 of the more seriously wounded Marines were loaded and on their way either to U.S. military hospitals in West Germany and Italy or to the British Royal Air Force Hospital in Cyprus. Throughout the day, as rescue teams in Beirut combed through the smoking rubble of the Marine headquarters, MAC aeromedical evacuation crews continued to move the dead and wounded from Lebanon. By nightfall, with 60 reported wounded and the death toll climbing to 147, the first of the nightingales had arrived back in Germany. Soon, each of the wounded would be transferred from the C-9s to Army helicopters for the short trip to the hospital at Beastrad. Throughout, MAC continued its crucial airlift from Lebanon. But during this day, MAC had also sustained its support of a number of ongoing worldwide missions and exercises. And so, as some MAC crews geared up for another day in the Middle East and Europe, others continued to train the Honduran military in airborne tactics. On day two, as the death toll in Beirut continued to rise, MAC C-141s and C-9s took off from Rhein-Main to pick up wounded Marines in Cyprus and Lebanon. Meanwhile, in Florida, the Gold Eagle exercises were still underway and still required full MAC involvement. Throughout these critical days, MAC AC-130 gunships could be seen over Eglin Air Force Base, providing the close air support and air base defense for Gold Eagle. But as the command continued to support these exercises and fly normal supply missions from bases such as Favis, McGuire and Norton, the U.S. government had come to its decision about the situation in the Caribbean. At 1800 on October 24, President Reagan signed the order for the rescue operation in Grenada, codenamed Urgent Fury. In a matter of hours, nearly every MAC wing in the United States, together with the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve, would become an integral part of the operation. It began in the early evening hours when U.S. Army Rangers at Hunter Army Airfield boarded MAC MC-130s and C-130s for the seven-hour flight to Grenada. At Pope Air Force Base, members of the 82nd Airborne boarded C-141s for the flight to Barbados, 115 miles from Grenada, and staging Area 4, Urgent Fury. MAC had acquired the Special Operations Mission only seven months earlier. Now in October, as the C-130s took off, loaded with Army Rangers and supporting forces, MAC MC and AC-130s joined the tactical airlifters in the command's first fully integrated combat force. By 0500, as MAC was moving southward from Hunter and Pope, 400 Marines left the USS Guam off the coast of Grenada to launch a helicopter attack on Pearl's airport. Moments after the Marine assault to the east, MC-130s and C-130s out of Hunter were flying through a hail of ground fire from small arms and add air-crafted machine guns as they carried the Rangers toward Point Salinas Airstrip to the south. Then, the jump light turned green and the first Rangers were out, jumping over the barricaded, uncompleted 10,000-foot strip. At once, Cuban ground fire shifted to the Rangers as they steered their shoots toward the airfield. Immediately, MAC-AC-130s gunships moved in to suppress the heavy defensive fire and silence the anti-aircraft guns. The Cubans drew closer to the airstrip, now skirting the Rangers' landing site in armored personnel carriers. Once again, the gunships moved in, surgically eliminating enemy defenses with minimal damage to non-combatant life and property. By 0750, only hours after the rescue operation had begun, the Marines encountered very little resistance and secured Pearl's airport. Soon, at Point Salinas, the Rangers had taken hundreds of Cubans into custody and had secured the island's only other airfield. At once, they began clearing the strip of rubble and construction equipment in preparation for the C-130s which had not air-dropped their troops and C-141s which were preparing to depart Pope. By 0850, the Rangers moved in to secure the medical school campus and ready the students for evacuation. While the Rangers assured the safety of the students, MAC began to bridge the gap between Barbados and Grenada. Every 20 minutes, another C-130 or C-141 hit the Cuban-built runway at Point Salinas as the airlifters moved more heavily equipped forces onto the island. By noon, members of the first Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron out of Pope Air Force Base had arrived to assist an Army medical team set up alongside the runway. Immediately, these MAC medical personnel unloaded supplies and picked up both U.S. and Cuban casualties being cared for in mobile staging facilities. Within four hours, the first of the U.S. wounded would be back home in Charleston. During this critical day, MAC had continued the airlift of Marines from Beirut and supported supply missions and exercises. But as night fell in Grenada, U.S. troops had yet to take firm control of the mission. Day four promised to demand the same high level of activity from MAC. Flying out of Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany, the command continued to demonstrate the rapid deployment of U.S. forces throughout Europe and the Middle East. Now, after the Beirut bombing, the transports assigned to Reforger began to crisscross the path of airlifters carrying Marine reinforcements back to Lebanon and those returning with the dead and wounded. As each of the 237 fatalities arrived at Rhein-Main, they were taken to a temporary mortuary set up and operated by MAC. Here, medical crews worked around the clock to complete positive identification of each individual and prepare their bodies for stateside transport. While MAC managed this mission, other crews moved 82nd Airborne troops and tons of equipment onto Grenada to reinforce the lightly equipped Rangers. As the 82nd continued to move from folk to Grenada, the first group of American medical students geared up to move out. Oh, one hell of a lot of thanks to these guys who went and got you out of there. By 0900, the students were boarding a Charleston-based C-141 for the first leg of their journey to Roosevelt Road, Puerto Rico. From there, they would be transferred to a C-141 for the trip home to Charleston. Their evacuation and all transport to and from Grenada during these days of October was handled out of the Airlift Control Center in Barbados. By the time the U.S. involvement in Grenada ended, this ALCC coordinated more than 750 MAC and Air Force Reserve missions. The center also processed the transport of 176,000 pounds of cargo, the evacuation of 622 American students, as well as the Airlift of some 18,000 passengers. Among those passengers were media representatives who, three times a day during the height of conflict, turned to MAC for a lift between Barbados and Grenada. Shortly after their arrival on Grenada, U.S. troops began to uncover evidence that as many as 700 Cubans had been on the island, many of them were there to construct the landing strip at Point Salinas. Everywhere, from locations along the end of the runway to inside the workers' barracks, signs pointed to the Cuban presence and to Soviet influence. By the time troops completed their search, they had found six warehouses north of Point Salinas airfield, fully stocked with both Cuban and Russian arms and ammunition. Then, with about 700 of these Cubans in the custody of U.S. and multinational peacekeeping forces, MAC made the arrangements to shuttle both them and the captured arms and ammunition off the island. With the command still entrenched in the Caribbean and in Lebanon, MAC crews in Christchurch, New Zealand packed fresh food and supplies for Airlift to American scientific laboratories in the South Pole. So, while some MAC crews continued to gear up for the evacuation of Cuban detainees and others carried wounded Marines home through Andrews, these Operation Deep Freeze crews would load their cargo and head out into the Antarctic night. By October 29, with Operation Deep Freeze, Reforger and Bold Eagles still demanding full support, MAC C-141s had started to bring our fallen Marines home. Over the next few days, as memorial services were held at Dover Air Force Base and throughout the country, MAC would also continue to support the return of the stabilized wounded to stateside hospitals. By the eighth day, the United States had achieved all its military objectives in Grenada and life on the island resumed its normal pace. At last, it was time for the U.S. to move out. And at Point Salinas, troops waited for the MAC transports that would take them off the island. Over the past nine days, MAC, along with the Reserve and Guard, had supplied the Airlift, Weather Services, Special Operations Support and the Aeromedical Evacuation for a mission that was now winding down. Now, as MAC brought the multinational peacekeeping forces on to the island, the transports continued to take the still remaining U.S. troops out. While most of our troops were headed home, MAC began to evacuate the Cuban detainees still in the custody of Army MPs. To conduct the transfer from Grenada to Barbados, MAC chose more than 200 security policemen from throughout the command. These newly assembled SPs became the 62nd Security Police Provisional Groups out of Pope Air Force Base. Most of the SPs had been handpicked for their facility with the language and familiarity with the background of the Cubans. In maintaining an orderly transfer, each detainee was personally escorted through the cordon of security policemen, checked off by international Red Cross personnel, and turned over to embassy authorities. Over the next few days, all the detainees, among them families of the Cuban Embassy officials, would be safely airlifted off the island. In 1983, in the midst of routine missions and worldwide exercises, the military airlift command managed the airlift for two crises on opposite sides of the world. Rarely had the unique capabilities and readiness posture of both the active and reserve forces been more clearly demonstrated. In just 10 days, more than 94,000 active duty personnel and more than 41,000 reservists flying over 1,000 aircraft had once again proven themselves to be the backbone of deterrence.


Okay, welcome to the Reason livestream. I'm Zach Weissmuller. I am here with my colleague, Nick Gillespie. And today we're gonna do something a little different. In the past, we've been bringing on a guest to talk through a topic today. It's just gonna be me and Nick and we're gonna go through some documents that have been the talk of the town, at least if you happen to be on Twitter. And those are what have become known as the Twitter files which were, the first installment was dropped on Twitter by Matt Taibbi, the independent journalist, formerly of Rolling Stone in the series and then a series of Twitter threads that amounted to internal documents from Twitter, particularly around the time of the suspension of Donald Trump, but also in the time of COVID things being labeled as medical misinformation. These documents just kind of give some insight as to what the internal decision-making processes were. So we're gonna go through some of those documents and just talk about what we think are important about them, what they might have to say about the state of free speech in America and online and just the future of social media. But before we get into that, it's probably worth talking just a little bit about why this is something even worth discussing.  It's fairly influential because it's a kind of nexus of political discourse. Famously, Donald Trump's Twitter was a place where he could get these unfiltered thoughts until he was taken down. But I'm curious to just throw that question to you first, Nick. Why does Twitter and what happens on it and who runs it and what rules govern it matter to us? Well, I think for over a dozen years now, Twitter has been like this massive supplemental space where a lot of really interesting stuff has gone on from the Arab Spring to kind of a... In its early years, Twitter was given a lot of credit for kind of revitalizing mass media because people would watch the Oscars or the Emmys or the Grammys or the NHL All-Star Game and simultaneously kind of critique it and have a running dialogue. It was really, Twitter is a great platform that I've spent way too much time on since it started or since I joined in January, 2009. But I do that because it's interesting and exciting. More specifically, Twitter in terms of politics in the US and media in the US especially is the place where politicians and journalists go in order to have their kind of circle jerks and things like that. So what's going on in Twitter matters a huge amount, but it's also, Twitter, it's not just got the little bird thing, but it's also kind of the canary in the coal mine of the coming restrictions and possible restrictions and regulations on all kinds of, I don't even wanna say social media anymore. I just wanna say like online platforms and things like that. Twitter is at the spear of the tip or the tip of the spear when it comes to wanting to get rid of section 230, et cetera. Elon Musk is also, and just to kind of get many of the grand themes we'll be talking about in the next hour out there. Elon Musk is the billionaire, he's not the billionaire we want maybe, but he's the billionaire we need with Donald Trump receding.  And it's Elon Musk. Right now what's going on in Twitter is, it's an important conversation. And then the other thing I'll shut up after this, what the Twitter files have shown so far, I think, and I know that you broadly agree with me, is they, we have to read them carefully. We have to understand that Elon Musk is releasing them to people that he picked, forcing them to talk about them on his platform, et cetera. You know, those are all caveats that are important to keep in mind, but they are also giving us an unprecedented glimpse into how media companies, social media companies operate with inside themselves, with political threats coming at them, et cetera. Like this, this is a tutorial in how social media and the internet, which is supposed to be free of all the kind of meat space encumbrances of old media and of political power. This is how it operates in kind of cyberspace. Here's a lot to talk about. Yeah, and what's interesting to me about Twitter in particular is that it is such, for a long time, it felt like a very unmediated space. You could go into the replies of some major celebrity and quote, unquote, ratio them with a witty comment. It's kind of like the democracy. It's a great leveler. Yeah, it turned everybody into Ozymandias. You know, however many years ago this was, I remember when Bill Cosby was mounting his comeback tour and his Twitter account said, hey, you know, like, I was famous for wearing sweaters on the Cosby show. Post your favorite member of me in a sweater on the Cosby show and it instantly got flooded with all the rape jokes, et cetera, so much so he closed his account. And that was a huge tipping point for him, like, you know, pulling out of a comeback and, you know, legal action starting against him. It's the great leveler. Yeah, it kind of exemplifies this idea that I put out kind of the dawn of the new decade. I did a kind of end of decade video called, it was a retrospective looking at the 2010s and I called it, you know, the 2010s, the death of the media gatekeepers. And that was about, you know, my thesis there, and I'll play just a short clip from that in a second, but my thesis there is that the kind of, one of the most important big picture takeaways from that decade was the fact that the old gatekeepers were losing their power and it's not that there's, you know, I think what we're seeing now is not necessarily that there's no gatekeepers, but there's new gatekeepers kind of jockeying to fill that position. So let me just play a clip from that and then we can talk about that big picture, some more of these, you know, big concepts and then drill down into the Twitter files. Great. What did the 2010s add up to? Media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who coined the axiom, the medium is the message, argued that history's prime mover isn't the great leader or great thinker, but ever changing communications technologies. In the 1960s, McLuhan identified our current epoch as the electric age, in which circuit-based media gave rise to what he termed the global village. For the first time in history, the entire world could follow a single event. McLuhan predicted that this electric global village would undo both the national homogeneity and personal individuality engendered by print, reviving our more fractured and tribal past. We're retribalizing. Involuntarily, we're getting rid of individualism. We're more concerned with what the group knows of feeling as it does, of acting with it. And as the electric age has evolved into the digital age with its cheap limitless replicability, this retribalization has accelerated in the 2010s, which is why the past decade has both created opportunities and dangers for the libertarian and liberal world views. So I don't know how you feel about Marshall McLuhan. I find him to be one of these thinkers who is fascinating, has a lot of great insights at times inscrutable, at other times seems to be exactly predicting some of what has unfolded. But I do think that what has happened here is that, and I bring up examples in the video of Obama being one example of some people might forget this, but he was not the establishment candidate. It was Hillary Clinton, and he was able to leverage social media to his advantage. That was a huge advantage for Obama. And then obviously Trump took it to a different level. We had disruptors like Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe who are kind of exemplars of the new media just like going gorilla style and posting stuff right on the internet that would go huge and disrupt the conversation. And so I think that happened and then kind of culminating in Donald Trump. And then there was a kind of reaction that is now happening to kind of try to reconstitute some semblance of what that disrupted. I mean, I think one of the ways I reach for this, and this actually is part of McLuhan's discourse. One of his early books was called The Gutenberg Galaxy. And it's about to have the printing press, obviously fundamentally change things, but the printing press allowed the reformation to happen for Martin Luther to get around the gatekeepers of the Catholic church. And what we're witnessing now, which is worth thinking about is a counter reformation. The Catholic church wasn't like, you know what, like people can print their own bibles with the books in their own order, leaving some things out, putting it in the vernacular of every language in Europe or on the planet. Well, we had a good run. Like no, they created the things like the Inquisition and the Jesuits and like they mounted a counter strike to try and claw back as much power and centralization as they could, semi successful Protestants in a tube.  You know, we're only, you know, 15, 20 years into this process.  And, you know, that's, I think is a good frame to think about what's going on. We are witnessing an attempt by old institutions, political, commercial, cultural to kind of gain power back, but we're also witnessing the morphing of social media, you know, because one of the things that is, I think, should be disturbing to people about the Twitter files, which are important. You know, we'll talk about people who wanna just say nothing's going on here, but it's showing how Twitter and, you know, new forms of media are also working to control the discourse in very specific, often, you know, kind of implicit ways. So. Yeah, and the, you know, you mentioned the idea that, you know, it's been somewhat dismissed by certain journalists and analysts as this doesn't really matter when we're, well, let me actually harken on one point you brought up there about, you know, this environment that we're in now, if we take the McLuhan frame seriously, you know, we moved from kind of spoken word to written word to printing press, which, you know, was enabled the Reformation and now we're moving into the digital age. We're in the digital age and- Yeah, we're even past it in a sense of, because everything is digitized and there is simultaneous, that real-time simultaneous multi-directional communication, the globe, you know, and it's interesting when you think about people like McLuhan, people like Stuart Brand, I mean, people who were conceptualizing the earth as a unit rather than talking about like warring factions on this planet or something. Now the planet is the unit, we're way past that, you know, because- Yeah, and it's, you know, if the medium is the message, you know, one of the messages of the digital media might be, you know, this kind of infinite, both replicability and customized ability. So in terms of gatekeepers, there's an ability to, for the individual to have a lot more say in selecting the gate, because you're still gonna wanna have someone, you know, nobody can deal with, you know, all the information that is out there. You need somebody to whittle it down for you, but there's just a lot more choice and optionality of who that's gonna be or what that's gonna be if you choose to go, say, you're gonna do it algorithmically or something like that. We'll probably get a little bit more into that later, but the gatekeepers that Elon Musk chose to release this information were Matt Taibbi and then Barry Weiss and Michael Schellenberger, who we've had on this stream before. And let's just go through some of the material here, kind of in the order it was released. This was December 2nd was the first kind of dump that Matt Taibbi made. And it focused largely on the Hunter Biden laptop, which Twitter throttled the, well, they actually just- Yeah, they didn't throttle it. They banned mentioning or linking to that, or I guess linking to that story. That's right. And they also froze the New York Posts account for more than a week, the outlet that originally reported on this. Of course, we all know the hacked material turned out to be legitimate. And what Matt Taibbi is putting forth here, based on what the material that he saw, is that both political parties had access to people within Twitter, where they could just send an email and say, hey, take a look at this thing, take a look at this tweet, it's misinformation or it's violating your terms of service. And there would be some sort of, it didn't guarantee that something was gonna get taken down, but it would kind of fast track getting something looked at. So both parties had this. He points out that when you look at the donor ship of Twitter staff, it skews almost exclusively Democrat. So that implies that this process is gonna kind of inherently favor one side over another, just because there's gonna be a lot more sympathy and points of contact. And he also points out, which I highlighted here, and I think is important for us to note is that there's no evidence that I've seen of any government involvement in the laptop story. So this was all internal decision-making, albeit there was input coming from political forces on the outside. It was made, the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but apparently without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey. And hacking was the initial excuse one employee told him, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn't gonna hold, but no one had the guts to reverse it. So what can we learn from kind of this first thread on the way the Hunter Biden story was handled within Twitter? I mean, a couple of things stand out. First, it's good that we, it isn't like the government said, don't do this. And they simply were reacting to a threat or a direct threat or request by the government, I suppose, or the federal government. But what's troubling is you recognize, and you know, as Zach years ago, we did a video together about Michelle Foucault and his thinking and you know, people like Foucault, people like John Stuart Mill and whatnot, you know, stress that like control doesn't operate at the point of, you know, a whip or a handcuff or a lashing or something like that, people internalize it. And what you see in, you know, in this spate of Twitter files, I think is partly mid-management or upper management at Twitter saying, you know, what we need to control this, like they're anticipating what might be asked of them or they're carrying government water, you know, in a sense or sensorial water buckets themselves. So that's disturbing. Company culture matters.  And this seems reminiscent of what a lot of people talk about at a lot of social media companies that whoever the founders are and whoever is technically in charge, there is a crop of people who actually run the company day to day who have a vision that might be very distinct from, you know, the free speech fantasies or the let it rip kind of libertarianism of somebody like a Jack Dorsey or a Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg, et cetera. Yeah, and I think that it's really important to mention or I think it's really important to acknowledge that the kind of maximalist version of like how nefarious this might have been is not true that there's not some sort of, you know, government led conspiracy to do this, but this was largely kind of the result of what looks to me like a flawed internal bureaucratic process. And that's the great thing about something like the Twitter files, you know, Elon Musk, the new management is kind of, you know, dumping this to make the old management look bad. But we, as a result, we, the consumers through Matt Taiibis work get some transparency in all this and that's good. We should be scrutinizing these companies, you know, that's supposed to be the role of the fourth estate. And also, just, you know, that's one of the promises. I'm old enough to, you know, I started at reason in 93 as the internet was really booming. And you know, this was one of the promises of digital culture, of cyberspace or whatever you wanted to call it was that transparency was coming, whether you liked it or not.  It is rarely transparency that is voluntarily enacted. You know, it's like we live in an age of transparency, but it's mostly forced. So that's another reason why I think this material is important.  Like Twitter said, you know, we're going to be doing this, et cetera. Like there, you know, there's nothing new here. There's not, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, no, seeing the specifics really matters. And the forced transparency often makes people uncomfortable. I think that's partly why there was, there's been this, there was a weird reaction when WikiLeaks first started doing this. I think people just weren't used to seeing that model here. You know, again, Elon Musk is allowing this stuff to come out and he has his own reasons to do that, but that doesn't mean that we can't look and be interested at the underlying material. I will be bringing up this one comment that from HiveG, the FBI was having daily meetings with Twitter and requested that it be taken down. I believe Zach hasn't seen all the evidence of this fact. I have seen all the evidence of this fact and I want to get to that, but it brings up one other point about the laptop situation I wanted to raise, which was that there were intelligence officials at the time assigning an open letter and saying like this is probably Russian discipline. No, not that it's probably, it is definitely. I mean, they were not leaving a lot of weasel room for that. So I found that was very creepy that that happened and that certainly I would think had an effect on their internal decision-making that you have these intelligence officials doing that. But we are gonna dig into that relationship as we get deeper into the Twitter files. But the next batch that was dropped here was from Barry Weiss, which she titles Twitter secret blacklists. And there's this concept of shadow banning that was rumored for a long time where you would get de-ranked, but nobody would tell you that your tweets were hidden or being throttled. Turns out that pretty much has been happening. And I think it's best exemplified by this tweet, Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya, whom we've both interviewed, who argued that the COVID lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a trends blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending. And you can see this screenshot, which is the Twitter backend and it shows that they have all these built-in tools and buttons that they can just press to say, like, okay, this person shouldn't be really seen anymore. What was your reaction to seeing someone like Bhattacharya subject to this? You know, again, this is fantastic information to have because we know Twitter introduced, originally it did not have a kind of ranking algorithm or anything, people's tweets just appeared chronologically depending on who you followed and things like that. And by the way, as a side note, it's fascinating to me how many people in the media that I've talked to who never even realized that Twitter had kind of changed or that you could go back to a chronological listing of tweets in your account or just go with the algorithm. And many people I know just trust the algorithm instead of doing a kind of chronological listing of the people you follow and whatnot. But I think this is really important because it's and it's not that Twitter shouldn't be doing this. I mean, I believe, you know, I believe two things and somebody like Mike Masnick, a tech dirt, you know, who's been critical, he was critical of me in a tweet when I was talking about how good the Twitter files were. He's like, come on, Nick, you're, you know, you're falling for this. You know, it's really important to see specific examples of how this content moderation works. Even as I acknowledge and, you know, welcome content moderation because I don't want to have to sift through everything. I want more filters.  Like it is not going to work very well. So I think seeing the specific tools and understanding that and looking at particular cases, which are also, you know, this is, this was about COVID and it's by a guy who is a, you know, I don't even want to say legitimate. I mean, but like Jay Bhattacharya is, you know, is somebody's whose voice should be heard in debates and discourse about things like COVID and pandemic policies. So, and in a lot of ways, I mean, I think everybody should be, you know, but, you know, that's a, that's a different measure, I'd like to see how these, what these tools are, how they're being enacted, what they do, and then like who's subject to them. It's fascinating. It is. And that the point about the impossibility or unfeasibility of content moderation at scale is something worth talking about a little bit more. And I think we will talk about it a little bit more when we start talking about, you know, what could alternatives to kind of the current assumptions look like, but with regards to what happened to Bhattacharya, I agree that, you know, transparency again is what I'm hoping comes out of this. That's kind of what Elon Musk has hinted at a little bit of like if we're going to de-rank, maybe we'll make it a little bit more clear. It's not entirely clear what Elon Musk wants, but we'll talk about that more later. But I think that the, that people that are downplaying this and saying, well, everyone already knew about it is a little bit of a rewriting of history. I mean, people have been sharing this article as a kind of rebuttal because this is from 2018. It's a slate article says, Twitter will start hiding tweets that quote, detract from the conversation. And Twitter had, you know, unrolled a policy saying that they were going to engage in this practice of hiding a user's tweets from search results and public conversations until the reputation improves and they won't know that they're being muted in this way. What people are pointing to this as evidence that, oh, this is nothing, everyone already knew this, are kind of missing is that the way Twitter was explaining this at the time, and it's in this article, says that less than 1% of accounts make up the majority of accounts reported for abuse. And so it's kind of framed as, you know, these are people that are throwing insults, racial slurs, stuff like that, not a Stanford economist and health professor or medical school professor talking about whether or not lockdowns are justified. So I think that at the very least we can all see there's been some significant mission creep. And to me, that's kind of the point of like why we should be skeptical of these tools is they always start off sounding like they're gonna go after this targeted group of people. This all started going, you know, after ISIS accounts and now it ends with taking J. Bodditaria, shadow banning J. Bodditaria.  And it's good, you know, they were open semi and saying that we're gonna be doing this, but you know, the real thing is like, what does that actually look like in real time and in real practice? And I think that's another reason why the Twitter files are really important to kind of look at and, you know, appreciate. This next section of the Twitter files gets into what's probably the most contentious issue surrounding Twitter for a lot of Americans, the removal of Donald Trump. And this was kind of spread across three different threads, one from Tyebe, one from Barry Weiss and one from Michael Schellenberger. And Tyebe kind of sets the stage here saying that, you know, even before January 6th happened, there was already a range of visible and invisible tools to rein in Trump's engagement. And so that's, you know, along the lines of what we just talked about with this kind of secret D ranking, that was being applied heavily to Trump and he provides lots of documentation of that, such as this internal communication about Twitter executives announcing a new L3D amplification tool that people might remember, you know, during the height of all this during the election, you would see, you know, every single Trump treat would get a label put on it.  And then the mechanics of like, why did Trump actually get de-platformed? And this is apparently the offending tweet, the 75 million great American patriots who voted for me will have a giant voice long into the future, tweeted Trump. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form. 75 million is rounding up a little bit on the vote totals there. Yeah, by about 800,000. But so less than, so Twitter employees determined that the tweet was not in violation of Twitter policy, but then Vigia Gatti, Twitter's head of legal policy and trust asked whether it could be coded incitement to further violence. And then that was kind of, there's discussions back and forth and they kind of decided, well, if you interpret the phrase American patriots to refer to the rioters who went into the Capitol on January 6th, then yeah, maybe this is like riling them up to try it again or something like that. So a pretty thin read to, I mean, my interpretation of this, this is just they wanted Trump off and it's kind of understandable why they would at that point and they just kind of groped for something that kind of made sense, but not really. Now, and it's to stick with kind of religious metaphors and that point to texts, in order to decide something, the books in the Bible that the Catholic Church uses to justify indulgences, which aren't in the Luther Bible or subsequent Protestant ones, but it's like when you read the phrase, you're like, what is that? Like it doesn't directly make any sense or make any real reference to purgatory and indulgences. This reminds me of that where it's like you will be searching for a long time to find the type of incitement to violence, like a real threat. So this is results-based kind of spelunking and exhalation of the texts. And again, that's why it's good to look at what's actually going on. And Twitter, obviously, Elon Musk is both hated and loved by certain elements in the company and in the media and all of that, but it's like, this is a public service to air this kind of laundry, I think, because it will help Twitter be better and it will help us be better, more critical consumers, as well as arguing more about like, what is good or bad policy? To me, it would almost be better if they just said it's bad for our business to have Trump on the platform, but it's bad and you can like it or not, but that's what we just, that almost seems to be what Elon Musk is doing at this point. He kicked yay off the platform for posting an image of a star of David with a swastika inside of it, which is horrible, but not a violation of what he's saying he wants, which is just totally unbridled free speech. He's not letting Alex Jones on there because he finds it disgusting that Alex Jones spread conspiracy theories. And so, I don't know, Elon Musk is not really putting forward any sort of like rigorous rules-based reason for a lot of his decisions, but there's almost something a little bit refreshing about. Yeah, I'm just saying like, I like it and I run Twitter. Maybe we've got like broad parameters, but then I'm the deciderer, and I'm just, depending on my blood sugar level and my mood or something, you're in or you're out, which is its own nightmare, kind of possible nightmare future, but yeah, it's better than being gaslit, right? Where it's like, oh, well, we have strict rules that we follow in a process and then you find out it's all being made up. Barry Weiss just to underscore the point about this being a little arbitrary if you try to apply any consistent standard to it, she posted screenshots from other leaders who had posted things that are much clearer, violent threats, you know, calling Israel a malignant cancerous tumor from Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. There's some other examples she threw up there. And then this, this from Tayyibi was the thing that I strongly agreed with. You know, he says that the company was engaged in an inherently insane slash impossible project trying to create an ever-expanding ostensibly rational set of rules to regulate every conceivable speech situation that might arise between humans. To me, that pretty much nails it. That's what has been bothering me about Twitter's approach, and not just Twitter, but kind of the big social media companies, after Trump's election, there was this turn and it became, there was like no end point in sight from my viewpoint. Like once you start down this path, how do you stop? And to me, that is a lot of what the Twitter files is revealing is there wasn't really a break or stopping point. And let me point to one of the questions or somebody who made a start comment. It's a Solidodge conspiracy that S-class suppress A team writes a two-part question. Do you think Twitter's testimony in Congress was inaccurate enough to qualify as lying under oath? And do you think Twitter's actions would qualify as violating terms of service on their end? You know, the answer to both of those questions, the first one is yes, because anytime you talk to Congress, you are lying. Like they can figure out a way to say that you're lying to them. So that's one of the reasons you should really never talk to Congress without a lawyer present and probably even then. But that's neither here nor there. And the same thing with the terms of service, maybe, but like, these are, we don't wanna become super legalistic on a certain level, but like, yeah, there's a lot to talk about here, for sure. I mean, the testimony before Congress was kind of a denial of the practice of shadow banning, which they justify by saying, well, shadow banning is actually making it so you can't see the person's tweets at, you know, they do get into this kind of legalistic defense because they're like- Well, they define it in a way where they're not doing that. There's no way you can see the tweets, but you actually see the tweets if you go to the person's profile and like scroll down and look for them. So, you know, the legal question, I think you're right on that, the kind of like sense that there was a strong misleading, I think that is unambiguously, yes, they- And I'm just gonna point out Kevin Kerr as who watches the watchers. And you know, that's like it's all of us.  You know, that's just the way it is. Yeah, and you know, there's that, the feature that we talked about with Ravi Suave when he was on here, formerly known as Birdwatch, now known as Community Notes. And that's kind of a shift towards, well, yeah, the crowd is gonna kind of watch the watchers. So when somebody puts up a tweet that is questionable in its veracity, then instead of having, you know, this kind of cabal of hand-picked institutions, fact-check it, you can have any number of this community jump in, write a fact-check, provide the sources, and then the community can, you know, the demos can vote on like, you know, how accurate was this fact-check? I find that, I find the crowd source stuff on Twitter, I find it really interesting and useful. I think it's a positive kind of development, but it is also funny, you know, Zach, like, I mean, you know, in the aughts, everybody was talking about the wisdom of crowds, you know, crowds were great betting markets were great. Anything that aggregated, you know, dispersed information, it was Hayek and it was beautiful. And now it's like, no, crowds are mobs, you know, that occasionally break into the capital or something. So we seem to be kind of off, you know, the wisdom of mobs right now. But that'll, you know, I'm sure this is cyclical and it will come back. Just wanted to point out Fist of Etiquette, who haunts all the dimensions of reason. Its president's online writes the lesson when launching your tech company, Bacon, some controls on mission creep from future functionaries. It's like, yeah, and- We're on the same wavelength there, yeah. Yeah, but it's like, you never know, you know, you never know what's coming down the pike in a lot of ways. Yeah, although, you know, this was kind of the insight of the Cypherpunks, which we can kind of get to a little bit later when we start talking about the Jack Dorsey vision of Twitter is that you have to actually design the tools with kind of the worst actors in mind so that they cannot be harnessed for those ends because if you design it where it can be controlled, eventually it's gonna be controlled by someone who really shouldn't be there. And I'm just running through another question that we had started in the backend of StreamYard, Ethan Wintercrest, is this any different than the world of newspaper supremacy in which the barons were happy to block stories for political friends? The rest of the internet is still there. You know, I think it's worth thinking about that. I mean, it's analogous. I think some of the things that are different is that, you know, if you take social media and kind of the people who launched these companies and launched these platforms at face value, they are saying, we are going to be different. We are not gonna be our parents or grandparents. We're gonna be more open. We're gonna be more transparent. You know, that's the coin of the realm. And so there's an extra charge of hypocrisy going on.   I'm being shadow banned. It might be, you're just not interesting anymore, but it would be nice to be able to know, you know, what's going on. And the fact that Twitter and other social media platforms hide that or obfuscate that is, you know, that's a black mark on their name. Yeah, and kind of back to what I was saying before about, you know, Elon Musk sometimes governing based just on what seems like his personal whim, that seems like kind of a throwback to what the commenter there is talking about where, you know, okay, yes, this barren with a certain agenda and point of view is running things, but we all know that and accept that and we can read the paper and kind of take that for what it's worth. And I think that's kind of what Twitter is going to transform into. It's not, you know, the perfect ideal situation, but maybe that is actually somewhat of an improvement upon what we've been dealing with. This is just another tweet from Michael Schellenberger on the Trump suspension. And I think this shows somebody sharing a screenshot of one of Trump's disallowed tweets and it's being critical of the screenshot saying, oh my God, even Twitter says this is inciting violence and the people, the Twitter employees are saying, well, the screenshot is banned. So we got to bounce this tweet off of the air. And then there's some more discussion about kind of the philosophy behind that. But I don't know, that was just kind of alarming to me just the fact that they're, you know, kind of in an automated way, monitoring like the sharing of screenshots and commentary on like real historical material like that you can't even have a discussion about things that we all agreed happen. That is just another example of kind of sliding down a slope that I think we should be trying to get off of as quickly as we can. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it points to that impossibility of content moderation and regulation.  Tayebe is here talking about, this gets into the issue that one of the commenters raised earlier about the relationship between federal law enforcement and Twitter. And clearly, Yol Roth, the head of trust and safety at Twitter was having these weekly meetings with the FBI here. He says, he's kind of jokingly saying, oh, I have a very boring business meeting that is definitely not about Trump. Definitely not meeting with FBI, I swear. There's evidence here that he was also meeting weekly with DHS and even the office of the director of national intelligence. And this kind of hearkens back to the topic that we covered with Robby Suave a couple of weeks ago about these, the intercept article that showed, you know, like Facebook, for instance, had created a special portal for law enforcement to go in and report stuff that it doesn't like. And so, yeah, there's clearly established at this point, to me, uncomfortably cozy relationship. And I can think that the keyword and the concept of this stream is like, well, transparency, we need to know about this stuff. Maybe there are times when there's a legitimate reason for the FBI to be alerting a social media company about something, but just having this kind of secret backdoor or these back channels where who knows what kind of de facto policies they're implementing makes me very uncomfortable and does not strike me as something that we want happening on our largest online discourse platforms.   I don't know how far I can take that argument. I apologize, I'm in New York and there's Siren in the background there, but. Well, there was like one solution that was proposed that I thought was interesting came from Alex Stamos, who's a former security officer, technology security officer at Facebook, now runs a kind of cyber security institute at Stanford. And he said, let's steal man Elon Musk's concern about political influence on content decisions on the major platforms. Here's some practical steps you could take. Commit to releasing all communications by global political actors related to content moderation. And that would include governments and also parties, political parties and candidates and organizations like the EU. All that, we should be able, it would make me as a consumer and someone who's interested in, you know, maintaining free discourse, that would put me much more at ease if there was a system to be able to see what's going on and scrutinize, like, are they taking things too far? But the problem is this has all been happening in the shadows kind of and only now really coming to light. I think, you know, there's also like a disclosure is great and everything, but then once you start to say, okay, disclosure is mandatory, you know, a couple of things happen. One, then you start penalizing people for not disclosing in the proper way.  But then the other thing is that you, you know, you lose information in a flurry of disclosures and, you know, the avalanche of stuff that you have to sift through. I don't disagree with the impulse for that, but I think, you know, in the end, and this is something I've been fairly consistent on, I think throughout the digital age, which is that, you know, in the end, we have to be, each individual reader has to be their own bullshit detecting unit. You know, and it's like every time you read, we have to radically up our game in terms of media literacy to constantly be factoring through this stuff. And then we also generate trusted sources, you know, and different people will trust different sources based on various criteria. Some people might use reason as their filter or their algorithm for what's important. Other people will use ProPublica, other people will use Wikipedia, you know, and that's actually not a bad thing to just have a proliferation of filters, but there's limits to, you know, what any policy or procedure can do because there's just so much information. If I may, I wanted to bring up, and I might have just lost him, but there was a critic of us in the, here's Jared Gorski, who was saying that, you know, we're going to start changing goal posts and stuff. I think it's a little bit related to this, where he's saying, you know, private companies can do what they want, which is an argument that a lot of reason people use, formerly deployed against people suspicious of government censorship by proxy, now completely abandoned in favor of Elon Musk is a newspaper baron. I think Jared Gorski is wrong. He's tormenting the things that you just said, but he's also like, I know I've been consistent of saying, private, you know, these platforms are private companies, they can do what they want with very broad impunity and legal immunity, but we also have the right to complain. You know, like this is, I remember talking about this early on in the recent round table a lot of like, we have a right of exit, which means if you don't like something, you just go somewhere else, but we also have a right of voice and it's really important that we do that. Like I like Twitter, I've spent a lot of time, I've helped Twitter, you know, grow because I spend a lot of amount of time, I create a lot of content there, I comment on things and it's like, if they were a restaurant and they stopped serving my favorite meal, I wouldn't just be like, oh well, you know, whatever.  So I don't think we're doing anything different. This is, you know, social media platforms are private platforms and they are open for critique. And like, you know, that's how a free and open society works. You know, people have exit, they have voice, they have also have loyalty if we're using Albert Hirschman's trifecta of the ways that you respond to organizations and decline in his book, Exit, Voice and Loyalty. But so Jared, thank you for commenting, but you're wrong. Absolutely. And I think he might actually be misinterpreting what I'm saying and you can feel free to comment again, Jared, if I'm getting this wrong. But I do believe private companies can do what they want, broadly speaking, as long as they're not, you know, violating other people's rights. And that includes, you know, not having a transparent system of their dealings with law enforcement. I think your point was a sound, Nick, that we don't want these things to be mandated. I think what Stamos was recommending earlier was, you know, voluntarily, Twitter voluntarily published this stuff. If we're gonna talk about mandates, I actually think it should be on the other side of the ledger that the FBI and DHS should have to publicly, you know, post any of these kind of interactions or requests that they make of social media companies. I think that would make more sense from a legal perspective, but then it completely abandoned in favor of Elon Musk as a newspaper baron. What I was saying is that, you know, to the degree he's acting like a newspaper baron or kind of like, you know, the emperor of Twitter, my word goes, I'm saying I'm okay with that. It's not ideal. It's not kind of the ultimate, you know, the apotheosis of what I would like to see social media become. But it is what it is. He's allowed to do that. He's allowed to make his own calls even when they don't necessarily make sense to me. And he is also, we're allowed to criticize him. He's allowed to get checked by his own community notes and to the degree that he is trying to, you know, institute some additional transparency, I think that's a good thing. But that might be a good point for us to start talking about, well, what might be some positive developments we would like to see in social media in the future that might be able to mitigate some of these concerns around centralized control of speech, whether that is the control exerted by the government or their influence on this bureaucracy or even, you know, the newspaper baron, the Twitter baron, Elon Musk. My, I create a video right after Trump's suspension from Twitter called How to Fight De-Platforming. We centralized. So let's play just an excerpt from that. And then we can kind of finish up our discussion on that topic. America need a reality czar. That was New York time. Yeah, reboot that. Does America need a reality czar? That was New York Times tech columnist Kevin Russo's suggestion for how the Biden administration could help solve the so-called reality crisis facing the country. The chaotic events of January 6th marked the beginning of a new era of online content moderation. Not only did every major social media company kick Trump off their platforms, but Amazon Web Services, which owns about a third of the global cloud storage market, evicted the Twitter competitor Parler and Apple and Google removed it. Both Democrats and Republicans want Washington to have more influence over how big tech companies operate. And there's a bipartisan push to repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act known as the internet's first amendment. That's a pretty foundational love of the modern, modernized internet. Exactly right. And it should be revoked. Which would give the government more power to hold social media companies liable for the content that appears on their platforms. But the great de-platforming of 2021 has also energized the movement to bring a new radically decentralized internet that would allow users to escape whatever form the reality czar takes. So this has been a drum that I've been beating for a while now is the need to kind of decentralize the very infrastructure that a lot of this is based upon so that we don't have to worry so much about these big bureaucratic institutions being swayed or co-opted by the government. I think that's a way to safeguard that. And a lot of that has really started to emerge. And I think it's also in line with what Twitter's founder himself wants. This blog post that Jack Dorsey posted, is kind of like his manifesto in a way. He calls for social media to be resilient to corporate and government control. Only the original author may remove content they produce and moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice. I know you read this entire post as well, Nick. What's your reaction to what Dorsey's putting forward? Yeah, I'll also add in that same essay, he talked about how his primary mistake when he was running Twitter was that he focused too much on creating tools for the Twitter bureaucracy to monitor and regulate content rather than giving it to end users to create the world, the feeds that they wanted. I wanna say something real quick about the whole realities are, like we need a realities are.  But the fact of the matter is like, we're living in a libertarian paradise in that we all have more power to define reality as we see it. And there's gonna be a lot of arguments about that because your and my realities are different. And you and I get along pretty much, probably 99% of the time, when you get more and more people and you have 330 million people who can start articulating and expressing their reality, that's such a win for human freedom and innovation and liberty and everything that you want. You don't wanna czar dictating what is reality and then shoving it down the throat of people who disagree. What you want is a political and cultural and economic system that allows for people who disagree to do so peacefully. I mean, that's the whole project of classical liberal and of certain kinds of enlightenment values where decisions get decentralized from the king or the supreme leader down to individuals who are given vast new abilities to kind of make choices about how they wanna live and what they think is important, do they wanna worship God, witch God, et cetera. So like this whole conversation in a way is screwed up because what we're trying to do is to take everything that is good and great about the current moment and pathologize it and say, we gotta rail it back. I think that's something we should think about. And then when you look at, what does that mean? I think Jack Dorsey is the most thoughtful and convincing and visionary of like the major tech CEOs. And I agree with him broadly. The one thing I would say, and to use that too, is we wanna decentralize, we wanna decentralize decision making.  That's great, that's an algorithmous choice that I think Dorsey is talking about. But when we get to decentralization, it's also true, there are costs to that, which means that it is harder for people to find your information. It is harder to build a community or grow a community. And that might be good. You want tighter communities where people really don't just opt in by clicking a button but actively help to construct and modify the meaning and the growth of a community. But Twitter is a mass medium in a lot of ways, even if there's a lot of individual choice that goes into it. And so decentralization is good. Centralization or a large audience has some real power to it. I know a lot of friends of mine who are liberal to progressive, who are hundreds of thousands of followers, if not over millions of followers, and they don't like Elon Musk, they wish they could leave Twitter, but they all say the same thing, which is I'm sticking here until the audience disappears. And it's gonna be hard to grow an audience of a million people, a million followers on Mastodon or on Mines or on various other more distributed kind of platforms. Yeah, I mean, I think that the network effects are powerful and there's always going to be that appeal of reaching that mass audience that something like Twitter may always play a role for. One important aspect of decentralization is really decentralizing, like online identity is a big part of it. Can, you have all these followers that you've accumulated on Twitter, but if Twitter nukes your account, then that's all gone. You got to start over on Mastodon or Mines or Parler or whatever, ideological like chamber you can like fit into. But if you can, what Jack Dorsey wants to do here is with this AT protocol is kind of like the culmination of this project that he started with Blue Sky is to allow your digital identity and all of the people who you've connected to with it to be portable and interoperable. And he wants it to make it an actual protocol of the internet that you can similar to email where once you have that it's connected, this is like the same argument that people make for Bitcoin is a sort of sovereignty over your own digital assets. So as long as I have the code to access my Bitcoin, that's mine, no central authority can do anything. They want to do the same thing with identity. And that is a vision while not fully realized at this point that is compelling to me, I will say. And there is an irony that Mastodon, which is trying to, I think, bootstrap that into existence is sort of getting a boost from Elon Musk taking over Twitter to try to make it a more of a free speech platform. But now all the people who think that Elon Musk is allowing all this garbage on the platform are the ones going over to Mastodon. And so it's this weird self-selected group. But the interesting concept about Mastodon is that it is you can choose kind of your own moderation from what I understand. I haven't joined Mastodon, but I believe you have what's your experience on there. I gotta tell you, and I'm like fairly tech forward. I'm not pretending I'm a genius computer engineer or anything, but I've been online for 30 plus years. And I like trying out new stuff. Mastodon is complicated and off-putting. And that's a problem. In the same way that when you try to mint or sell or buy an NFT on OpenSea, it hasn't reached a level of user friendliness yet that is going to really make it a math thing, which in some ways is the charm. There are lots of dispersed places to go to have audiences and create them. And there are Discord servers, there are Telegram and Signal and WhatsApp groups and even Facebook, which cracks down on groups. You can live in these, what used to be called temporary autonomous zones where nobody can stop you, nobody can watch you, et cetera. But temporary autonomous zones, which was a very popular concept in the 90s as the internet and cyberspace was being built out, it's important to recognize that they're temporary, that what you want at the beginning of something, what you want when you are creating a settlement on the frontier may not be what you want in 10 years when the population has grown by 50 times or something like that. So I think one of the other problems with a lot of our discourses that we expect each thing to be everything. And it's, and Dorsey two years ago at the Bitcoin conference in Miami, he said he wants Twitter to be one of, a hundred or an infinite number of social media platforms and messaging platforms. And some of those will be completely decentralized, other ones not, et cetera. But that's, like Twitter can't be all things to all people. And I think it serves a function, it has served a function, it's changing over time, but it's not gonna be everything. And for certain things, you're gonna wanna go to mastodon or to Kiwi farms or like some other kind of ultra message board. And recognizing that is helpful because you don't want all platforms to be governed by all the same rules. You want people to be able to invent whatever they want and use it in that way. I know you have to run soon, Nick. So let's finish up with this question I think can bring us into kind of a final topic. D. Unterreiner says, how do y'all feel about Musk kicking the guy who tracks his jet off Twitter?  My opinion about it is again, I'm totally fine with Elon Musk doing whatever he wants and feels comfortable with on Twitter. What I take exception to is trying to create some sort of universal rule out of it that really doesn't make that much sense. So like the rule that they tried to make because Elon Musk didn't like the guy tracking his jet on Twitter is that if someone shares an individual's live location, there's an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward will remove tweets that share this information and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else's live location will be suspended. And then he adds, you know, some caveats like if you share someone's past location, that's okay. Also information related to a public engagement or events like a concert or political event is also permitted. It just strikes me as, you know, you're creating a really broad rule that is almost certainly gonna have lots of unintended consequences to try to deal with this one account that you don't like. Like just some examples that come to mind as somebody who's covered live events before is like there's a protest that breaks out. It's not a planned political event or a public venue or anything, but it's a notable news event. You start filming it, taking pictures, posting to Twitter. Someone doesn't like how you're covering it. So they report the tweets to Twitter and you get them booted off. You know, just being out at a mall and seeing a celebrity or something and taking a picture. I mean, maybe that is bad that that goes on Twitter. Maybe celebrities deserve more privacy, but I don't like kind of trying the way Elon Musk is in this case, trying to shoehorn his own like discomfort into some like universal rule. Yeah, I agree completely. And this goes back to the earlier discussion of, you know, it's Musk's platform.  And to the extent that that keeps happening or it becomes larger and larger and it kind of nets more and more, catches more people in its net, it's gonna degrade the experience of Twitter in a really bad way. You know, at various points, Musk has talked about providing users on Twitter with an understanding of like if you get blocked or if you get de-prioritized, you will be told that and you will be given an appeals process. In a lot of ways, you know, I mean, that would be better than what we have. But again, like, you know, there are billions of users of Twitter, that's a lot of people.  Like then all you do is you spend doing that all the time. Like, and it's just not good.   You can do that on Twitter, you know, or you, I mean, you could do it now, but maybe if they made that more robust, that would be interesting. One final thing that kind of is related to this, I think, Zach, is, you know, Elizabeth Nolan-Brown of Reason has a cover story in the new issue is called In Defense of Algorithms. Part of what she talks about in our colleague, Robbie Suave, has also talked about this in his book, Tech Panic, you know, places like Twitter and Facebook and whatnot, who are accused of creating filter bubbles and of like putting people, you know, where people, you know, can withdraw from this supposed mass media world that we existed five minutes ago, where we were forced to engage people we didn't agree with. Like it turns out, you know, that Twitter and Facebook and most social media are platforms, you know, as they existed 15 minutes ago, facilitate a lot more crossover compared to traditional forms of media.  Yeah, we got a super chat here for $10. Thank you, tune in and drop out. Elon didn't remove the guy tracking his location until he started receiving death threats. And yeah, there was also an issue where someone showed up was like, I think followed one of his cars and his young daughter was in there. So yeah, I have no, you know, I certainly have sympathy for the idea that, you know, someone of that stature is having to deal with all sorts of stuff that none of us would want to deal with. And that, you know, there might be a reason he wouldn't want his own platform to have an account like that. My objection really is to, again, the idea that some sort of rule can be like rational rule. I mean, maybe a rule could be crafted around it that would make sense, but what he put forward, I don't think makes that much sense and is a little broad, but maybe that could bring us to our final points to make, because we need to wrap up here, which I think let's just talk about, you know, how do we feel about Elon Musk taking over Twitter? And I can start because I, when he first made the offer, I released a video called, Elon Musk is a wild card, good. And I still feel that way. I think that, you know, I have, there's a lot of uncertainty about what he's gonna do with Twitter. It's still not entirely clear to me what his motivations beyond, you know, turning a profit are for Twitter. But I think that the situation that has been further illuminated by the Twitter files was becoming untenable and that Twitter needed to shake up, it needed to reboot. I don't know if Elon Musk is going to, in fact, I would bet good money that he's not gonna take it in exactly the direction that I would want it to be taken, but just having it taken in a radically different direction having somebody who says, I don't want all of this waiting going on of certain political opinions over other political opinions. Even if it might be hard to implement his vision, the fact that he's gonna try, I think is a good thing. The fact that some people are migrating to mastodon and maybe that will give other social media sites a kick in the pants. I think that's a good thing. I think it was time for a shakeup. That's what's great about, you know, the digital age and about the age of social media is these things can be reinvented. New things can crop up despite what politicians on the left and right wanna tell you, these aren't immovable monopolies that need to be regulated or held liable for every little thing that goes on them. There can be disruption and we're seeing that right now and for that reason, I still am generally in favor of the Musk acquisition and I'm glad it happened.  I think he's phenomenal, some of the companies and some of the products and services he's created are fantastic.   I think it needed to be shaken up. I think one of my critiques of Musk, is it even anything like specific that he's doing? But Twitter definitely needs a full-time CEO. This is, you know, a service with billions of users and Twitter was dying on the vine for, I would say dying on the vine, you know, when Twitter bought Vine and kind of incorporated that as well as Periscope, even before that, a live streaming platform, like they have a track record of having bought really interesting or developed interesting services and then not done anything with them. I attribute that to the fact that Jack Dorsey, you know, who was out in them back in for a long time, his attention was very divided. Elon Musk's attention is very divided. So apart from anything else, I just wish Twitter would get a good CEO who would focus on it because it is a great platform. It's really interesting. It has given me and I think literally billions of other people over its lifetime, a lot of enjoyment, a lot of anger. It's done really good stuff. I don't think it's done particularly terrible things, you know, and so like it's a real asset and I want it to flourish, you know, and I think it'll flourish better under Musk than what it was, you know, six months ago, but that unless it has somebody's full attention, it's gonna kind of, it's not gonna reach its full potential. And an interesting aspect of kind of the corporate structure of Twitter is, you know, Jack Dorsey in that essay we referenced earlier talks about how once they went public and some activists, shareholders got involved, he really got sidelined in terms of implementing his vision. And so that's, you know, these, the way things, these deals are structured seems to have a huge effect on how it all plays out that maybe is underrated. And the fact that Elon Musk took it private has a lot more autonomy to do what he want. I mean, I take your point that his attention might be too divided, but maybe that alone will, you know, make a big difference in terms of being able to engage in some creative destruction that yields positive. I think you're right. And that's a great point, you know, to go back to your analogy of, you know, like the press barons or your invocation of them in the past of newspaper owners. There is, you know, in publishing, there is a critique of like billionaire owners that Jack Schaefer at Politica, the media critic there, has written about for, you know, going on 50 years now.  And then they get bored with it and they kind of cast it aside. This happened to the Atlantic, which went from David Bradley, who was big on something else.  This happens to a lot of publishing outlets, you know, whether they're old print magazines or, you know, online platforms. And I worry about that a little bit, but, you know, fundamentally, what's good is that disruption innovation change can happen. And I think you're right in focusing on, you know, whatever happens will probably, will almost certainly be better than the way the status quo was trending. So I think that's all good. Yeah, and whatever happens, I'll be there to see it. I'm on Twitter at the hip bridge, Zach. Nick is on Twitter at Nicolespi. Should follow both of us. And reason, at reason. And at reason. And yeah, the rumors of Twitter's imminent death were greatly exaggerated, it seems. I remain a skeptic that it's going down in flames anytime soon. But I want to thank Nick for the conversation. Thanks the commenters for the great input. And we will see you again next time.