Good afternoon.  Good afternoon. There we go. I'm going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. But I will make a confession that it's not near and dear to my heart because I was good at it. It was near and dear to my heart because I was so terrible at it. I am the embodiment of what you think about as an academic who studies the thing they are worst at. And so I used to be someone who avoided conflict, who tried to go along to get along and discovered quite a while ago, because I've been at this for a long time, that that didn't work out so well. That avoiding conflict really does not bode well for my ability to have influence and to have an impact in the world. And so what I started studying was negotiation. And I have been studying negotiation for a very long time now with the intent of trying to figure out how to be more effective, how to help people get more of what they want from their negotiated interactions. And there are a couple of things that I've learned along the way I want to pass on to you. And the first thing I want to talk about is that one of the biggest challenges people face when they think about negotiation is that they view negotiation as a battle. And that when we're thinking about engaging in a negotiation, we're already putting on the battle armor. And that battle has the following characteristics. I'm going to try to get stuff from you you don't want me to have. And I'm going to try to keep you from getting my stuff. And as soon as I walk into an interaction with another human being like that, with that mindset, with that battle armor on, then we are preparing because they're going to do exactly the same thing. They're seeing I'm prepared for a fight. They're going to get ready for a fight and we have a battle. And oftentimes when we confront that kind of interaction, it becomes more important for us to win than really what it is over which we are negotiating. So we privilege winning beyond what it is we might walk away with. But what that battle mentality also does is it limits what we negotiate because for so many of us, the challenge of negotiating is that because we have to get into a battle, there are so many people with whom we don't want to pick a fight. I mean, it's pretty hard for me to negotiate with my dean if what I have to do in that process is pick a fight with him. Why would I want to do that? So what I want to suggest is that there is actually a better way. And what I first want you to do is I want you to broaden your definition about what is negotiation to move from this relatively narrow definition of negotiation as battle to process where two or more parties decide what each will give and hope to get in their interaction. And this next clause is really important. And through a process of mutual influence and persuasion, there is no command and control in negotiation. I cannot force you to say yes. All I can do is present proposals to you where you believe it is in your interest to say yes, which means I really need to understand you, your interest, your preferences, what makes you willing to walk down that path of agreement with me. Now this definition is relatively broad. It can span negotiations that we typically think about as structurally adversarial to ones that most of you probably don't even think about as negotiations. So that structurally adversarial one a couple of months ago in response to my giving in to my addictions, I like horses so I bought another one. Yes, and now it was up to five. I have a trailer that holds five horses so we could all get together and drive places, but unfortunately my truck was not big enough to haul the trailer and five horses so I need to get a new truck. And those of you who are not particularly knowledgeable about trucks, I went from a 2,500 GMC to a 3,500 Dooley. But I had to negotiate, somebody knows right, I had to negotiate the price of that Dooley and it turns out that is a structurally adversarial interaction because the truck dealer wanted to basically sell me the most stripped down model for the most amount of money and I wanted the most tricked out model for the least amount of money and we had a negotiation. But this definition also includes the meeting I had this morning with my doctoral students because with the research meeting and while the content of the meeting was about the research project the context of the meeting was which of my scarce resources will I contribute to this ongoing interaction because truthfully I call that meeting and I call those students to that meeting because they have resources both tangible and intangible to which I wish to access and they showed up to the meeting because I have resources that they wish access to. And so while we talked about the research we're also contemplating what do I contribute and what do I hope to get and all of us are doing that. So if you think about negotiation you can really distill it down to a very simple equation negotiation equals influence and if you're going to make changes in the world you have to be able to influence therefore you have to be able to negotiate. Now one of the things that happens is as you reframe your perspective from negotiation moving away from that battle mentality to one that I think will actually resonate much more so with you and that is that negotiation rather than being a battle should be collaborative problem-solving but before you take you sort of lead yourselves down a path of oh right I've heard about this that's that win-win kumbaya everybody feels good about this kind of interaction that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is a solution you're looking at problem-solving solution is one that makes you better off better off than your status quo better off than your alternatives better off than had you not negotiated. Now you're probably thinking that's a pretty low bar why would I negotiate to be worse off but don't think too hard you'll have to think back in your own history and I suspect you will find without much difficulty a situation where you voluntarily agreed to an outcome that made you worse off nobody had a gun to your head you said sure you privileged agreement over the quality of the deal so it turns out it's actually a relatively high standard I want to be better off than had I not negotiated but because there is no command and control and negotiation I've got to find a solution that not only makes me better off but at least keeps my counterpart whole because otherwise there is no reason for them to walk the path of agreement with me now if you move from a battle mentality to a problem-solving orientation what happens is so many more things become negotiable because now you don't have to worry about picking a fight with the person across the table and so what I want you to think about are all the situations on a daily basis that you could try you basically create an influence attempt because you understand how to be able to propose solutions to the problems that your counterparts face that make you better off and that is sort of this that's the summary statement of what we're trying to find when we negotiate and it turns out that there are lots of situations where with a little creativity you can figure out solutions and frame them if you understand your counterpart and what they care about when I interviewed here at Stanford for my position I talked to a lot of faculty a lot of senior staff and the deans and I listened very carefully to the challenges and the opportunities they were describing they were here at Stanford and they eventually decided to make me an offer which I appreciate and when we had a conversation about with my dean about the compensation package I used all that information that I had gained during the interviews to frame my asks in terms of solutions to the problems and challenges at Stanford faced how could I with my skills and ability and the resources that would be entailed in my compensation package help me help Stanford a problem solving orientation not solving my problem but solving the problem of my counterpart now what that means is that we need to develop fluency we need to think about the broad topic of negotiation and how understanding this problem solving orientation can open so many more avenues for negotiation for us getting more of what we want and developing fluency means I need to understand that there's more nuances in how to negotiate than simply coming there with a battle mentality now one of the challenges that I face when I talk about negotiations is that so many people have drunk the Kool-Aid that the goal of a negotiation is to get a deal the goal of a negotiation is not to get a deal the goal of a negotiation is not to get to yes regardless of what some other people have said the goal of negotiation is to get a good deal and sometimes the best deal that's available to you is the one you had before you started the negotiation so what you need to understand is what is a good deal and not privilege agreement over the quality of the deal so let me suggest that you need at least three parameters that you need to have clear in your mind before you initiate a negotiation and the first parameter is what are your alternatives if no deal were reached what happens to you if there is an impasse this is a critical piece of information because it turns out that he or she in this case you have to do this in this audience I can just say she that's so rare anyway she who has the best alternatives gets more in the negotiation and why is that what do you think this is not a hypothetical what do you think what makes why would you have really good alternatives will you get more in the negotiation you can walk away exactly and all of you should know this from your current or past history in the dating world right you know when you've got that you know you're in that period of your life where you're really popular and then somebody wants to spend some time with you and you like you have like 20 questions like where are we going what are we going to do why should I go out with you but if you're in that period of time where it's been like a really dry spell and somebody asks you out you don't have 20 questions you have an answer yes that sounds good to me this is exactly the same way as alternatives work when I have good alternatives I can command more from the interaction because it's easier for me to walk away and if you and I are negotiating and I have a really good set of alternatives and you want a deal you have to pay me to stay in the game now when you think about your alternatives there's an analogy I want you to think about too many of us look at our alternatives and say and that we use it as a judgment about what is an acceptable level of performance so if I can just get above this I'm doing okay I want you to think about your alternatives as a safety net and I think this is a really important analogy I thought how long and hard about this because if you think about them as a standard for performance so anything above that alternative is good what you have just done is severely limited the upside of your negotiation so think about your alternatives as a safety net much like you would think about a safety net if you were a trapeze artist if you're a trapeze artist and you're trying to have a good performance ending up in the safety net is not acceptable right that is not a good performance however if you end up in the safety net you're really glad it's there but it's not something that you aspire to it's not something you want you want a better outcome than that and that's how you should think about your alternatives there your safety net to protect you from the impasse but they are not a standard to judge acceptability of an outcome however your alternatives are outside the negotiation so if you and I are negotiating our alternatives are what happens with perhaps the other parties with whom we could negotiate or the other options that I might have if we cannot come to a deal but they affect how we negotiate because they affect where I set my reservation price or my bottom line my reservation price is a bright line standard that I do not violate it is the worst possible deal that I would be willing to accept it is that tipping point between a yes and a no that was pretty easy to say it's really hard to do because we human beings are incredibly smart and what we want if we want a privilege getting a deal a yes and our reservation price is such that we can't quite exceed our reservation price we come up with all sorts of excuses why that reservation price was bad and why we didn't do a very good job at setting it and how really we should just say yes anyway because of course the future may be more important than the present and so what I suggest to you is that you really think very hard about what that bottom line is and you do it in advance of your negotiation and then you use a strategy to help you solidify that the strategy that I use I have a person actually my co-author on this book who if I'm really concerned that I'm going to be too committed to getting a yes and not getting a good deal I tell him what my bottom line is and I would rather there are a lot of things I'd rather have than have him realize that I violated my reservation price so I use him as my disciplining mechanism so it's a very useful strategy but you've got to be careful because people are so quick and for those of you who've been out in the world for a while you know you have done this time and again the best example I have is residential real estate sales anybody ever buy a house and did you before you begin that process think about what you could pay what would be reasonable what would be the top end and then as you began the process you looked at those houses that fit that criteria and they all suck and then you look to the houses that were a little bit more than you should be doing it was a little bit of it was a maybe a big stretch especially here in Silicon Valley a really big stretch and you decided to go for it right you don't need that coffee or that food you don't need insurance you know you don't need to have a savings account let's just put everything into the house you've all violated your reservation prices it's a very difficult strategy to be committed to have the discipline because we so want a deal now if all you pay attention to are these two parameters you will systematically underperform in your negotiations and you will underperform because of a very powerful psychological process which can be described in three words expectations drive behaviors your alternative is your safety net your reservation price is that point of indifference the worst possible deal that you would say yes to and if that's where your head is that's where you will end up what you must also do is understanding that psychological process about expectations use that psychological process to leverage up your expectations and this is one of the things that I think so few people do in negotiations even those who might think about what their alternatives are and what their reservation prices are what they may also ignore is how powerful setting an aspiration is an optimistic assessment of what you could achieve in this negotiation notice those words optimistic and assessment you have thought about this negotiation and your counterpart and what what would happen what could you achieve if things went your way in this negotiation because you need to leverage up your expectations about what is possible and let me tell you how powerful that is this is a study that was done by some colleagues of mine I want you to first look at the blue bars in the blue bars we have on the on the on the left hand side aspiration on the right hand side alternative negotiators in this situation were asked either focus on their aspiration or they were asked to focus on their alternatives as you see and you would expect given what I just said when people focus on their aspirations they do better right you can sort of see that bars much higher up there and when they focus on alternatives they do worse but here's the paradox the researchers ask a second question how satisfied were you with the outcome in your negotiation and do you see the weird result folks who got more were less satisfied those who got less were more satisfied this should provide two insights to you one very scary how do most of us decide how well we did in negotiation we think about how we felt about it let me just suggest to you that's a really bad metric right because we get less but we feel better we get more but we feel worse why how could this be true what do you think how do you explain this guilt hmm that's I haven't heard that one before have we got another path of hypothesis expectation gap exactly with my alternative I exceed my alternative so I feel pretty good about that I don't meet my aspiration and I don't feel so good about it but on average I get more so at least you should have the discipline to realize that if you have an aspiration and you focus on your aspiration you're probably gonna feel worse about your negotiation right but you're gonna be you're gonna get more of whatever it is you're negotiating over but here's the second piece of insight that this study provides us while I am going to have the discipline to focus on my aspiration I'm gonna talk to my counterpart in terms of their alternative because what's gonna happen they're gonna probably exceed their alternative they're gonna feel really good and because I'm negotiating with them they're gonna feel really good about negotiating with me and that which bodes well for future interactions so two pieces of very important data here number one set an aspiration understand that you will be disappointed in your performance that's okay suck it up number two highlight to your counterpart that if we don't get a deal then they will be relying on their alternative let them focus on their alternative and when we do get a deal they'll feel much more satisfied about the outcome and about negotiating with me so useful piece of advice here so is this enough can we stop here and the answer is no because especially as women we face a challenge and I want to highlight this challenge by a study that was done this was actually published I think in 2012 yep so it's not like 100 years old it's like you know four years ago and what the study was is that the researcher went to a very large organization and got supervisors and asked put them into one of two groups there were 140 184 managers they were asked to allocate a fixed pool of resources to their subordinates who were equally performing and equally responsible okay so males and females and so the managers were in one of two conditions in the first condition they were told well you have a fixed pool of resources we'd like you to allocate raises to your male and female subordinates and those male and female subordinates were equally responsible and well performing once you allocate the monies there is nothing left to do people get their raises they move on okay when in that condition the managers gave equal raises to the men and to the women that should not surprise anybody that's how it should be right equally performing equally responsible equal raises in the other condition the managers were told you've got a fixed pool of resources you're going to allocate them to your subordinates however once you give the allocation to your subordinates they can ask you why you did what you did they can attempt to negotiate and the results were quite a bit different when they were in that condition they allocated two and a half times the raises to the men than they did to the women why why did that condition of what what were they afraid of they didn't expect the women to push back but they expected the men to push back but not all men we give them enough money they can we can placate them right so they took from Kathy and gave to Bill in order to keep Bill out of their offices because they knew Kathy wouldn't come anyway this is why you need to negotiate because Kathy was at a disadvantage before she even said a word now why don't you negotiate well there are a lot of reasons but let's talk about the two big reasons first is you don't even see it as an option you're in a situation the possibility of negotiation doesn't even cross your mind and probably doesn't cross your mind because you're uncomfortable with negotiation so you really don't want to see situations as negotiable let me give you an example and this is a silly little example how many of you um have ever been to a Nordstrom's I know it's like what what's you talk about no seriously how many of you been there how many bought something how many negotiated the purchase price of the items they bought wow that doesn't very many people I is anybody seriously why not what stopped you from negotiating at Nordstrom's there's a price there's a fixed price on it and that goes on sale so if you want to get it less you just wait for the sale right no author who has no authority how do you know that ah well you could have tried sometimes but what most people do is they say I don't think the sales person has the authority therefore I don't want to embarrass him or her so what I'm going to do is just not ask have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy more importantly have you ever been in a situation where you're about to purchase something and the sales person says to you stop you're paying too much let's negotiate really so if you're the buyer in a Nordstrom's type situation who's going to have to initiate the negotiation you are the sales clerk is not going to say hey but here's the problem also let me just suggest there's a couple of other reasons here's one I don't want people to think I'm poor did ever that cost anybody's mind you know because a lot of people like you know if I if I negotiate then people will think I can't afford it except we have actually done that study so what do you think the correlation is between socioeconomic status and initiation of negotiation is it positive high status people are more likely to initiate negotiations are negative low status poor people are likely to initiate negotiations more sure wealthy people are like I could pay for this I don't choose to right so what can you do so if you want to appear wealthy negotiate but others of you are probably concerned that people might think that I am just socially clueless I mean after all if you want to get a lower price wait for the sale but I'm pretty sure in fact I haven't seen an example of this but maybe you have that Nord at Nordstrom certainly if you try to negotiate and you are even if you're unsuccessful they don't take a picture of you and post it over the cash register going she can't come in here again bad behavior right so what happens is we have all of these rules that stop us we don't even consider the possibility and therefore they become true because we don't even consider them to be possible so here's homework for you there's a Nordstrom's not too far away I want you to go out I want you to find something that's a little expensive something that you want but it's a little expensive and I want you to try to negotiate the price I suspect that not all of you will succeed but I suspect that if you actually did this and we did an assessment you would be surprised at how many people do succeed and so one of the challenges is and I think this is actually really important is if you're going to be a good negotiator you've got to practice and where better to practice than Nordstrom's because you might get cool stuff in the end right a little motivation all right now motivated misperception we don't even think of as an option there's another big reason why that is there's a situation where I know other people negotiate so it's not that I'm confused here I know other people negotiate but I am so uncomfortable with negotiating because I'm concerned first I don't want to pick a fight but more importantly I don't want them to think that I am greedy or demanding are not nice so as the following thought our series of thoughts ever crossed your mind let's say you just got a job offer or a promotion and you say to yourself I know other people negotiate here but I'm concerned about being perceived as greedy demanding or not nice and so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to take that job I'm going to take that promotion and I'm going to do really good work and they will see my good work and then they will reward me you ever thought about that anybody ever go through that mind game right there how'd it work for you yeah not so good my dean I think actually likes the fact that I'm on faculty here at the GSP at Stanford there are times I even do things that make him proud that I'm on the faculty but I can tell you even at those times when I do that when he's thinking wow I'm really glad she's on the faculty here at the GSP I'm pretty sure the next clause in his thought is not are we paying her enough no he's an economist so he assumes if I'm here I must be paid enough because otherwise I'd be elsewhere right so it's not happening it is the case that the standard for what is greedy demanding and not nice behavior for women is more extreme than the what is the standard for what is greedy behavior for men so there is a little bit of truth to this but it turns out that it's not just negotiating per se it's negotiating the wrong way so let's talk about this because one of the things that I think is important is for us to understand first how important actually negotiating can be for us and the way I want to do this is I want to first refer to work that Linda Babcock did Linda Babcock was a associate dean at Carnegie Mellon University she's also the co-author of the book women don't ask some of you may have heard of that book if not you probably should read it with a lot of wine it's very sad and depressing but anyway she what she did was when she was in the dean's office at the in the MBA program at Carnegie Mellon she did an exit survey of the MBA students which is we all do that Stanford does it Harvard does it MIT does it everybody does it and she found out that the starting salaries of the male MBAs who were graduating from Carnegie that year were on average 7.6 percent higher than the graduating females starting salaries were and you can kind of look at this and go oh yeah well you kind of expect that we can think about comparable worth we can think about institutionalized sexism all sorts of things but actually Linda asked a second question she said when you got your offer did you attempt to negotiate the terms of your employment contract and she found a huge disparity only seven percent of the women while 57 percent of the men attempted to negotiate the terms of their employment contract she wasn't done yet she asked another question if you attempted to negotiate what happened and what she found was no difference in success by gender those who initiated negotiations on average earned about seven percent increases in their compensation so at this point my my female MBA students sometimes push back and they say to me professor kneel they're very polite professor kneel let's say i'm making i'm being offered a hundred thousand dollars is seven thousand dollars really worth the reputational risk and i am so disappointed in that question when it comes and maybe not for the reason you think but let's see if you do any better let's do a little thought experiment here so suppose at age 30 two equally qualified applicants chris and frazier get job offers from the same company for a hundred thousand dollars a year okay now chris negotiates and gets a salary increase of seven point six percent so chris starts out at a hundred seven six frazier says yes to the hundred thousand dollars okay now we're going to make two heroic assumptions number one chris and frazier stay at the company for the next 35 years so we can see what happens and number two the company treats them identically that is every year chris and frazier get the same five percent raise fast forward 35 years chris says i'm done i'm retiring at 65 how much longer do you think that frazier will have to work in order to be as wealthy as chris when chris retires i want it in years how many years longer does frazier have to work five ten oh no not yet it's eight years so i look at my mba students and say okay seven thousand dollars is not worth it to you what about eight years of your life how's that is that worth it kind of changes the discussion because this is the correct and by the way this is a very conservative estimate because it could only get worse watch this chris and frazier they start off pretty close to each other right over the ensuing 35 years this difference becomes wow becomes over a hundred thousand dollars a year difference how does chris and frazier's salary difference how is that explained by the company does anybody say oh you remember 35 years ago chris negotiated but frazier didn't is that what they think what do they think chris is more valuable to the company we're not going to give chris that stinking five percent raise we're going to give over the 35 years we're giving chris five and a half now you wouldn't even notice that okay five and a half percent well now one percent with a half a percent difference how much longer now yeah you wouldn't even notice that for half percent but okay one more what about if we made chris a six percent raise and frazier gets five percent over those ensuing years now how many more years does frazier have to work 47 years frazier cannot live long enough so the cost of not successfully negotiating your starting salary anywhere between i don't know eight and 47 years of additional work is it worth it hmm maybe but if you don't and you've done the calculations correctly if you decide it's still too too painful to negotiate then i hope you like your job because you're going to be working there for a lot longer for a lot less all right expectations drive behavior one of the challenges is historically that women have had lower expectations so you can couple lower expectations with this differential metric for what is a greedy aggressive behavior and you see why women don't negotiate but let me just tell you that it really is all about expectations researchers did a study where they actually had two different groups in the first group both males and females were asked to negotiate and they were told the following behaviors i have a i have a label negative male stereotype they were told the following information negotiators who display the following behaviors tend to perform worse they have a high regard for their personal interests they depend on assertive behaviors they rely on on rational analysis and they have limited displays of motion those people do worse they never said negative male stereotype they just gave that description in the other group both males and females they gave a different description they said negotiators who display the following behaviors tend to perform worse they are passive or reactive and expressing their interest they depend on their own listening skills they rely on intuition and they're willing to share those emotions those people do worse then each group was asked please tell us your aspiration what is an optimistic assessment of what you could achieve in this interaction and here's what we found if you look at the dark red versus the orange the dark red or the females the orange is the males when they got the negative male information the females had higher aspirations in their male counterparts when they got the negative female information the males had higher aspirations than their female counterparts but this is aspirations nobody's negotiated what happens when they negotiated and what you see here is expectations drive behavior when I believe that people like me do badly I perform worse in the negotiation when I got the negative female information the women underperformed their male counterparts but when the information was the negative male stereotypes the males underperformed their female counterparts expectations drive behaviors why is it that women don't ask I can tell you one big reason why women don't ask because women get punished get backlash when they negotiate for raises single issue raises I want to get more money right from male evaluators in ways that the males evaluators do not penalize male negotiators but there's a little good news here if you're a evaluator your supervisor is a woman she penalizes both so at least the playing feels level right it's like yeah whatever so what caused this penalty was perceptions of being demanding and not nice so now what is a woman to do well you need to ask differently you need to pair your ask with a communal concern for your counterpart let me restate this you need to use a problem solving perspective you need to find a way that your what you want to achieve in this negotiation solves your counterparts problems that's what you're looking for and that works especially good for women because think about this if your concerns being perceived as greedy demanding are not nice how hard is it for someone to think that you are greedy or demanding are not nice when you are helping them solve their problems does it take a little more effort yes it does it's worth the effort you need to when you prepare for your negotiation think hard about the challenges your counterpart faces and how your solutions can be answers to his or her problems and this to me seems so obvious but sometimes the obvious is the most poignant if you don't ask for what you want how will anybody know what it is you want if you just hope that they will read your mind you're going to be disappointed human beings are notoriously bad mind readers so you need to ask for what it is you want and what i suspect you will when you start asking for what you want you will be surprised at how often people will accommodate your request one of the things that might have a colleague by the name of frank flin who does research on gifts and reciprocity and what he finds is we way underestimate how willing people are to accommodate our requests and so the first thing you need to do is you need to ask but here is the bright here's the bright ray of sun here because some of this is pretty depressing if i am male and i negotiate for myself systematically empirically i do better than my female counterpart negotiating for herself but if i am negotiating for another that is a representational negotiation women outperform men in representational negotiations between 14 and 22 percent this is why i'm telling you it's all about expectations you see there's no penalty there's no social penalty if i'm negotiating for others there's only penalty if i'm being greedy or demanding or not nice but there's no penalty i can negotiate like a lion for my counterparts or my team and i do so let me just tell you one solution what one behavioral implication of this hire women lawyers seriously they're less likely to negotiate for themselves they're more likely to do a better job for you why would you not hire women lawyers okay i just don't understand this so closing thoughts you need to ask yourself this data is i mean this is a very powerful piece of data and result so you need to ask yourself for whom are you negotiating maybe you're negotiating for your team maybe you're negotiating for your organization maybe you're negotiating for a better environment a sustainable world maybe you're negotiating for all those women who come after you who people expect will not negotiate and so they take from them and give to the guys maybe that's who you negotiate for there are lots of opportunities for you to negotiate for the greater good and so the question is for whom do you negotiate i use this all the time when i negotiate it turns out that i have five horses three dogs 13 chickens and a husband i'm the only one working in that group okay i am responsible for all of those mouths so that's who i negotiate for and if what you are concerned about is being perceived as nice is being perceived as likable let me just i'm going to give you a little bit of bad news here the further you move up in organizations the further you move up in the hierarchy of your organizations what you will find is the less people will like you because when you are a leader you change things you change things for the better from your perspective and when you change things you upset the status quo and it makes people uncomfortable so if you really need to be liked i have a solution i've been married to my husband same guy not just married but married to the same guy for 30 it'll be 36 years in november okay and i can be gone i could be on i can be on road trips i can be gone for weeks or a day i can be gone this afternoon like i am and i come home and he goes how was your day and i go fine my three dogs i can be gone for 15 minutes a week right an afternoon and i come back and they're like thank you we thought you were gone forever and our lives were dull and gray and we just sat down and laid down and just were sad because you weren't here and when you came back you made our day we are so glad you were here my husband of 36 years has never said those words to me so if you want to think about being strategic in how you ask and willing to understand that being an effective leader requires negotiation but being an effective leader means you may not be the most liked person in the world get a dog or better yet get a rescue thank you i've got a couple of suggestions here there's some books there's the linda babcock and sarah lashavir book ask for it um robert cheldini's book on influence you have my book getting more of what you want and i've given you also my website uh for getting more of what you want dot com which there's lots of video clips uh blogs there's even a french language thing for those of you who want to practice your french all sorts of stuff on negotiation so check it out there um and i think we have about three minutes and 36 seconds for questions so anybody have a question they want to ask because that's where we are now okay you have to speak up or somebody is running multiple people are running to you with microphones i was hoping you could give us a example of how we could pair our ask with something that helps our boss the sales clerk at Nordstrom's whoever we're negotiating well i'm not so i don't want to spend a lot of time with the sales clerk at Nordstrom's because one of the benefits for them is they get a sale that turns out to be a real positive for them right but part of what i do when i negotiate is i think about what my counterpart is concerned about and for example what the dean was concerned about when i was interviewing here because that's what that was i don't take a lot of jobs so i have only a few examples of this but what the the concern was is that they had some problems teaching negotiation and they had some problems with their doctoral student placement here at the GSB and so what i said to him here are the resources i need for my doctoral students to be successful which of course will make the doctoral student program more successful here at Stanford which will improve all of our reputations and here are the resources i need in order to be able to teach negotiation by the way i needed to have a reasonable salary because silicon valley is very expensive that all got put in there one of the things i want to highlight is that you most folks will want to negotiate every one issue at a time and if i had more time what i would have said to you is negotiate at a package level because one issue at a time begs a fight and you want to be able to put things in a package that you can craft to be able to find a solution that reflects the unique contributions of both you and your counterpart other questions there got some more over here i love the runners this is great i'm an ambassador at one point i was a senior vp of a company lisa new york stock exchange they paid for me to go to this class negotiation and influence strategies graduate school of business at stanford and we um 125 million dollars is three-year negotiation so thank you it was a great class everyone should take it yay come on clap any more yeah there's one over there raise your hand again so that so the microphone person so can i ask a question first because i have the mic sure where are you i'm here oh okay so that was amazing um my question is i think a lot of times we need to negotiate with the same person over and over again so that's a repetitive game yes um i wonder do you have any specific suggestions if it is we need to frequently negotiate with the same person like in my case i'm a grass student so i'm actually negotiating with my advisor on a daily basis and maybe in the future i'm going to negotiate with my employer on a regular basis too do you have any specific strategy if it is like repetitive game absolutely let me just tell you problem solving orientation you know when i went when i go to my dean to ask him for stuff or to negotiate with him you can imagine that me personally i have a really high hurdle because i write books on negotiation i teach negotiation you know i give talks on negotiation and so whenever i open my mouth the first hypothesis is is she negotiating with us and then they put on the battle armor right so what i do is i focus on let's try to find a solution to this problem because and whether that's i'm working with my doctoral students on that or i'm working with my dean so depending on where the it's like i'm still using the same strategy if you move beyond negotiation is battle to negotiation is problem solving so much changes and especially when you have a future because the last thing as i said that i want to do is pick a fight with my dean and so what i have to be able to do is problem solve and it's worked well and empirically it works well but also anecdotally it works well thank you very much


What are you thinking? I knew I was in bad shape, you know when the the guy fell on me, you know, I felt some bad things happen I'm in my ankle and Went to the sideline in the tent and they're like all right. We need to get x-rays you know you're fearing the worst and went in got the x-rays they're like well nothing's broken and And it's like all right. Well tape it up and let's see what I can do Came up short, but had a had a good run there at the end to get a two-minute drive to go take the lead you know with the with not too much time left and You know something I was the last game I played last year at what point do you have to draw the line and say I can do this I can get this out. It's gonna be okay, and There's no chance. It's a fine line That has to go pretty far for me to be able to cross that line But being a quarterback you're able to maybe play with a little bit more a little bit Further injuries than you would at some other positions just because you're not you know getting contacted every play You're not having someone push on you every play things like that But you just be able to move a little bit and be able to protect yourself fresh start in 2023 for a lot of different reasons One of them is new offensive coordinator Tim Kelly, what do you like about him and his style? Oh, I love working with him. He's he's straightforward You know he has a lot of energy up in front of the room, which is great I think he works to engage the room He has a great mind is a lot of great thoughts a lot of new thoughts that we haven't had here or haven't had here in the past and New ways to attack the defense so excited to put those apart How important is it for you and him to kind of be on the same page and to really establish some chemistry early? Oh, it's huge, you know, I think that's one of the most important things is for a quarterback an offensive coordinator to see things the same way whether it's you know knowing what a play caller wants to get out of a certain play, you know, there's certain concepts where Depending on what the play caller wants you can you can look at a couple different ways Is he trying to get a shot? Is he trying to just get a completion and get us back on track and just be able to talk those things out with him Make sure that they were both on the same page when when a play call comes in I know okay. Hey, he just wants to get this thing back on track wants to get a completion or a Similar play call might come like alright. He's trying to take a shot here. It's not there and then we can check it down You know, so it's a lot of nuanced type things if you look at the play on paper It might look very similar, but by the play call, you know, you're able to know that There's a new wide receiver in the room Deondre Hopkins And I've got to ask you about them because I know there's a lot of talent on this Titans team But he comes in with a bit of a reputation Spreading out to the right looking firing down field Inside the 25 yard line They will spot it at the 24. He goes out of bounds. Yeah, it's been fun You know, I I didn't really know what to expect that on the field. He's at as advertised You know, he's being able to consistently make those plays for us and just getting used to his body language It's been a lot of fun for me and and where can I throw balls where only he can get it What are you most looking forward to in the 2023 season get back out there? You know, I think it's a It's a great opportunity for this team this organization to go out and have a great 2023 Season, you know, it's a lot of work that's going to go into it but excited about the opportunity to hand


Good afternoon, everyone. It is 2 o'clock Eastern time here in the Washington DC area. And my name is Chris Lewis. I'm the president's CEO here at Public Knowledge. And I want to welcome you to a wonderful discussion that we're going to have today on the public interest values that shape a better internet. And we thought this would be an interesting conversation to have given today's anniversary, 10-year anniversary, of the internet blackouts that marked the height of the SOPA-PIPA fight here in Washington, DC, a policy fight about the future of the internet, policy fight about what internet governance should look like here in Washington. And we want to do it a little differently. So I want to welcome everyone who's joining us here on Zoom. Also, if you're watching live on our YouTube channel, we encourage you to engage in the conversation, to take advantage of the Q&A function, and we hope to take some of your questions from the Q&A. So please feel free as we go to collect questions for us there, and I'll hopefully go to pull some for our panelists. But we do have a fantastic group of experts with us today to really take this anniversary and try to learn from it and look forward to what kind of internet do we want to have in the future and why. Let me introduce our panelists, and then I'll introduce the topic. But joining me today is a fantastic group. First, from Creative Commons, their CEO, Katherine Stiller, is with us. Also joining us is April Glazer, who is a fellow from the Technology and Social Change Project at the Shorenstein Center up at Harvard University. Also with us is Akriti Gaur, who's a resident fellow at Yale Information Society Project. And then finally, our good old friend Spencer Overton, who is a law professor, but also the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. A fantastic group. Thank you all for being with us today. And really to kick off the conversation, let me just set the table because we've hit this 10-year anniversary of the SOPA Pip-A-Fight, the Black Hapt happened today, January 18, 2012. This was before I was at public knowledge. And I've been here almost a decade now. But it was a seminal fight for the public interest community where we banded together. The public interest community, I think, looked a little different then. Certainly, it was not as diverse as it is today. And it was smaller than it is today. But still, the groups that were around banded together because of what was viewed as, and we still believe at public knowledge, a serious threat to whether the internet would function. A Congress was looking at copyright laws and the concerns of piracy of copyrighted material. And so in order to get that, they proposed two versions of the same law, SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate, in order to try and stop online piracy by allowing internet service providers to actually block websites using what is known as blocking of DNS servers. This is the guts of how the internet works and how websites are sent to each other. This would really have shut down, in our opinion, would have shut down traffic and websites that were important for building up for expression, democratic speech online, the things that we love about the internet without any real due process and based on just a few violations, but not necessarily to get at the violators themselves. And so many of us stood up at that time to oppose the proposals. And we ended up winning. And it's something we often return to and look at. And there are a number of us who were in that fight a decade ago who are having all sorts of events looking back at that fight this year. Like I said, we wanted to do something a bit different because the internet has changed so much in that last decade. We want to learn from this fight. We want also, because we have so much work to do to make the internet the best place it can be, we wanted to learn from it and also look forward to see how technology has changed and how we want to build a better internet today. So I've introduced our panelists. Let me turn to one of them now. Catherine, let me start with you. You at Creative Commons, you guys have always fought for free expression and an open internet. How would you react to and how do you think back on that SOPA-PIPA fight? Am I describing it accurately? And really, what do you think you learned from that fight that's relevant to how we should guide policymaking and technology today? Well, thanks, Chris, for organizing this event. And thanks for the question. If I am honest, I was not the CEO of Creative Commons 10 years ago, and so my reflections have to be caveated with that. But I think when you think about it, I think the first thing that's striking is the coalition of support that was brought together and that it was more than just what was on paper. It was something bigger that people could understand and coalesce around in terms of what was at stake. And I think that the success of it was really broadly down to that ability to work in a nonpartisan way, to work across a spectrum of different voices and different organizations to be able to achieve what was achieved 10 years ago. I think that the learning from it, I guess, today is that we still have copyright fights to fight. Maybe it's not caveated with the privacy, sorry, with the piracy angle, but now we're thinking about different challenges around privacy, around misinformation, around the different challenges that we look at. And as someone advocates for open access of knowledge and culture and sharing and how we do that together, then how we can do that in a better way. How can we make sure that open access to knowledge and culture for everyone, everywhere, wherever you are in the world is possible is something that is still as relevant today as it was when Creative Commons created 20 years ago, but also when the debates were going on 10 years ago. So lots to learn, lots to reflect on, but I think that we still have so many challenges and they might be slightly different, but we still have the challenges today in terms of anyone that's interested in public interests, technology or public interest, full stop. Thanks, Catherine. Like I said, Creative Commons was around, Public Knowledge was around back then. The Joint Center of Political Economics Studies was around them, but you guys really hadn't really focused on technology policy at that time. So maybe Spencer and then April and actually T, I'd love you to jump in. How do you think about looking back at that fight and what do you think you learned from looking at it? Yeah, you remember Horgan, John Horgan and the Colterner Lee were doing our technology work. I think they focused a lot on broadband access. I don't know how involved we were in this fight. I think it's different. I have a different orientation with this in part because I came to take policy differently. My problems involved Facebook, for example, saying that they're not responsible for housing or employment ads being delivered or targeted or delivered to whites and not to African-Americans or Latinos. And my problems have to do with the Russians basically suppressing black votes by creating these imposter accounts. So I haven't necessarily looked, I think that a lot of folks looked at platforms as allies to a certain extent against the Motion Picture Association of America and you had this kind of corporate, public interest connection and everything was good. And your all's question was, how do we keep government out to a certain degree? And my question really is, what is the role of government with regard to these platforms as opposed to just trying to stop government? So I kind of come at it, I think in a different way than many of you all who were leaders in the SOPA fight. April? Yeah, if I could speak to that, hi everyone. Thanks so much for having us. It's so great to be on this panel on the internet about the internet. But yeah, I think what Spencer's talking about is really important because at that time in 2012, 2011, when this was happening, a lot of the groups that were mobilizing civil society around protecting the internet, even then we're really kind of foundationally grounded in the idea of protecting people's constitutional rights online and not necessarily protecting communities. Now when it came to organizing around SOPA and PIPA, because not everybody gets constitutional rights or gets their rights kind of protected in the same way as when like the rubber hits the road, especially when we see things like privacy and police surveillance or things like that. But with SOPA and PIPA, what we saw was really almost like a amazing mechanics of the internet, right? Like we saw the people able to mobilize in just tremendous ways to fight something that is a really complicated kind of tech policy idea. And what it really showed is that, using the benefit of the internet, so you're fighting the thing that you're using to organize with, people could really understand complex things, could understand these kind of like complex tech policy debates and get engaged with them and mobilize to really make political change online in ways that we hadn't seen before. So when I looked at SOPA and PIPA, I mean, it's great that those were stopped because they were draconian bills, they were poorly worded, it would have been bad for free expression. All of that internet companies really get behind that. We saw civil society really get behind it. We saw a unified message and the ability to mobilize quickly to stop something. And that was just like kind of in the mechanics of the act, so incredibly impressive. But the values behind it were, and are good, are really, really important about protecting free speech, right? About making sure that we can continue to use the internet in an unfettered way. But I think what Spencer's getting to is that there's another side of that. I mean, it's also about making sure that people aren't getting hurt online as well, right? Or through like not seeing companies regulated. And SOPA and PIPA really, I think was just so impressive and so obviously not, I think, I know, so important. But then when we think about how that kind of extended into the next 10 years of internet advocacy, one thing that really stayed, I think, was the centrality or their priority on civil liberties. The look at how communities are interacting online, how communities are being harmed or discriminated against. So it's really such an important turning point to look at both in terms of the political value focus, but then also just like, wow, look at how the internet mobilized and how- Well, I'm gonna keep going. If the rest of you not, if you're also seeing April freeze up, April froze a bit. All right. Oh, I'm so sorry. Okay. Sorry, April, do you wanna finish your last thought there or we may have missed out on it? Oh, I'm sorry. I was saying, and my tech froze up a little bit, go figure, because of access issues, right? I'm in a very rural place with very kind of low socioeconomic kind of baseline when it comes to people's, like just the poor area. So we don't have really great access internet out here. But what I was saying is that, you know, SOPA FIPPLE was just such an impressive, fascinating turning point in terms of seeing the mechanics of how people organize online and what's possible with that and then how people picked up that torch and ran with it was so many issue areas. But it also kind of represented a kind of a path that was broken in terms of focusing on civil liberties as like the essential kind of value rubric or compass rose for what a healthy internet looks like. And that's only part of it because when we see civil liberties protected without adjacent calls for social and economic justice, we see those values begin to collapse, right? So we end up seeing neo-Nazis having free speech rallies, right? We end up seeing as Spencer was saying, you know, discriminatory housing ads and these kinds of civil rights issues begin to percolate online because it's not just about free speech, we also need to protect communities. And so, you know, it's just such an important point to look at and examine where we went from there, both in really positive ways and perhaps limited ways as well. Great, thank you. Actually, see your research and your study, your academic work has been a globe from a global perspective. Do you feel like the conversation is the same and do folks have the same sort of reaction to what was, you know, a US-centric discussion? Thanks for the question, Chris. And thank you very much for having me as a part of the panel today.  I think what I want to say about the SOPA-PIPA fight and, you know, the sort of activism that followed after, it makes me optimistic because, you know, that was a moment where there was a lot of global collectivism, collective action and collaboration to come together because, I mean, at the end of the day, the internet, it's the same. It's homogenous. But I think what we also need to sort of be thinking about because, you know, it's been a long time. It's been 10 years. The internet has progressed in so many ways in so many countries of the world is that, I mean, while the services, the platforms remain the same and their affordances are very similar to each of us, the laws and the cultures and the people that they impact are quite fragmented. And I think that's where there needs to be some sort of a common ground when it comes to understanding what shared global challenges are, what particular cultural contexts are. And as Spencer said, I mean, that was a time when platforms were sort of allies. There was a public interest value in working alongside. And now the picture is quite different. I mean, not just in the US, but we all are aware of the big tech damages that are happening in various contexts in the world. To add to that, I think one difference that I see, especially in countries like India, is that it's not just platforms which aren't allies anymore. It's also the government which needs a lot of oversight, which needs a lot of responsible functioning. And I feel like those are some of the sort of considerations that we ought to have. And just to give you an example, of course, misinformation, hate speech, electoral interference, there are so many ways in which platforms are affecting our daily lives. But a lot of the sort of movements, for instance, the stop hate for profit campaign that started in the US around the elections, there haven't been many similar or of equal magnitude. There haven't been sort of movements like that in other parts of the world, which are equally forceful. And I think those are some of the areas which need more collective thinking and work. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, so if folks who are tuning in hadn't seen, I had actually put out a blog post last week, really started some of my thinking on this. And I know I shared it with the panelists, but it did reflect on just the turning point in power for the public interest community that SOPA PIPA represented to have that sort of victory against what have been long-time powerful interests in Washington, especially medicine, the MPAA and others. So it was a fantastic victory and it certainly did happen in partnership with a lot of major tech companies. Tech companies big and small, actually. I think the driving force behind the blackout was Wikimedia and so many people use Wikipedia for their own research and looking up information today. And so hopefully folks will check out that blog post, but as we think about the values that drove that fight and then the values that are driving the newer challenge and you guys have started to name some of them already, let me ask the group here, are there changes to technology that have driven the addition of new values and what values do you think are most important when you think about how an internet needs to grow and change to be better today? Or is it something other than that? Is it the change in the perspective of the companies and the power that they have? Or is it something else? But I'd love to focus in on what values you think are key public interest values as we look forward to a better internet. I didn't point to anyone, but Catherine- I'll jump in first. I mean, clearly for Creative Commons it's still about access to knowledge and culture and we still see so many things hidden behind key walls and even with what we've seen with the research for vaccines in the pandemic and all of those things, there's still so much that we don't have access to which is in the public interest and which is not accessible. And so how do we get that balance right? Because it is about how do we share better? How can we make a difference with this and how can we ensure that when we're thinking about the public interest, we're thinking about that common good, that public domain that we have that front and center and sometimes when I'm looking at as a former policy maker and looking at how regulation is headed, it seems to me that civil society in the public interest is often an afterthought and that those that have power and have a voice are very much heard and often unintended consequences of regulation which we may see this decade could have a detrimental impact on access to knowledge and culture for everyone everywhere. And so those are the things that I keep thinking about public interest, about how we can better shape that and part of Creative Commons new strategy is about thinking about better sharing, what that looks like, what that means. And that is really very timely for a discussion about what is a better internet too. So Catherine just mentioned free expression and access to information. What other values do you guys think must be lifted up? Yeah, well, I wanna get to this value. Some folks would call it equality, inclusion, et cetera. But you made this point in your PSU identified a harm in terms of misinformation, disinformation. We talk about ad targeting, hate speech in terms of communities. And one quick note here, Chris, is that this isn't just discrimination by third party players against other folks, right? This isn't just sometimes we collapse concepts like the First Amendment Free Speech and 230 and kind of look at it all the same like 230 is the First Amendment or something, right? Basically the law is not neutral. And a Facebook is basically saying even though another company may have to go in to court and defend itself and make an argument, we just don't because of 230, even though we may be making a material contribution in terms of the distribution of those ads or whatever. And so the law not being neutral and us not simply saying if it's laissez faire, it's First Amendment in terms of a special exemption here, right? I think another big point that you made in terms of your piece was just this notion of, what are the values in terms of us being affirmative as we think about the role of government in terms of public policy and the internet? And I just really looked back to past innovations in terms of myself and I've mentioned this before in terms of cotton and this great industry here that brings all this wealth to the United States and basically the United States is suddenly a competitor with the UK in terms of global capitalism, but there are these real costs in terms of externalizing these costs in terms of system of slavery, which we continue to pay for in terms of externalizing those costs. We think about global warming that came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution here and the fact that those costs, great economic growth, great things came from it, we've all benefited, but there are some real costs that we're dealing with now. And so a question here is as opposed to just looking at this as kind of a libertarian government, no government almost overly simplistic ideological approach to this, right? Like how do we really grapple with these costs and figure out ways for innovators to internalize their costs as opposed to externalizing their costs? So yeah, definitely equality in those values, but this fundamental question about what is the role of law and government and also the transnational aspect of that with regard to the internet and public policy. Particularly expensive and things are free. And I think that what you're saying about costs is so different from, I think that's a real challenge. And that free piece here, Chris also touched on that in terms of the privacy issue.  So, what is the role of government in terms of navigating the relationship or dictating the relationship between consumers, companies, the government, et cetera? On that, I just wanna add that, I don't know like the original question, Chris, about harms and values. I would say that since more people are online now, then worth it that the harms are amplified and I'm sorry if I'm freezing, that the harms are amplified and more people are online and seeing them and more felt. And I really agree with what you say, going back to the past values, I mean, it's true that under section 230 from 1996, with the Communications Decency Act, we don't see online platforms have the liability kind of mechanism that other industries are subject to that kind of helped to right wrongs and forced corporate responsibility. And then going even further back, like this concept of public interest is actually one of the oldest and most debated concepts in the history of telecommunications in the United States period, right? Going back to the 1920s or 1912 even if you wanna go that far to the idea is this technology, this broadcasting technology being used in the public interest and necessity, right? Is it hurting people? Is it benefiting society? Is it harming society? And those laws were very much tethered to the idea that there's a limited amount of spectrum and only a few people get licenses and therefore they have fiduciary responsibility to the public to be serving the public interest by getting this kind of free license allowing them to kind of print money essentially or to have access to all these people. But this has been debated since it was deregulated out of existence since public interest laws kind of were deregulated out of existence in the 80s. But the concept of the public interest wasn't about protecting the sanctity of the electromagnetic spectrum, right? It wasn't about protecting the values of radio broadcasting it was about protecting democracy. And I think it's really, really important to understand that like, yeah, we really need to look up back at, I believe we need to look back at the Communications Decency Act and see if that liability is still the right structuring now in terms of like that legal liability is still the immunity rather still the right structuring now in terms of how users interact with the internet and the harms and the inability to get right wrongs if that's really serving people. But I also wanna return to the idea that the public interest and when it comes to telecom and broadcasting functions is about making sure that we can continue to have the information that we need to meaningfully participate in democracy. And we need to think about what those laws look like in our current telecommunications environment which is the internet, which isn't tethered to a limited resource of broadcast but still is allowing one person to reach millions of people and can have really deleterious effects on how our politics function. We've seen that through all kinds of misinformation campaigns hates and also targeted advertising and the real harms that that could have particularly invulnerable groups. It's interesting as well, April just now you talk about that about the history of public broadcasting in the United Kingdom just now the BBC is being threatened by the UK government. And so you've got these contradictions, don't we? Because here's a really important part certainly in the United Kingdom in terms of public interest being under pressure and being threatened at a time where we should be promoted. And so it's real challenges in terms of how we protect democracy. Yeah, people frame public interest. I'm sorry, I just want to, people frame public interest as if it's this extreme concept or the idea of like regulating internet companies in the public and just going back to the broadcasting as if that was like some far end but that was actually the cornerstone bedrock kind of thinking behind the vast majority of US telecom policy and the fact that we don't have any sort of values thinking behind our policy now in the same way is really a stark moment. So it's not like an extreme idea but it's often labeled as an extreme idea and it's in the idea of the public interest. Akriti, I wanted to get you in here, you've been patient, yeah. No, I just wanted to, I think April, you made such a great point about the section 230 debate and the sort of internet regulation that's emanated from the US. And I think I just want to add to that and say that there has been this trend in the past 10, 15 years where global internet laws whether it's intermediary liability or governing platforms have tend to take the structure on from Western countries. So we can get into a debate about 230 but there are laws which now, we think require a relook or we think require reconsideration is probably but they're already being reproduced and implemented in so many countries across the world which sort of brings me to my, like the value that I think merits some consideration is to sort of relook internet governance law especially in the non-Western countries, even the Western countries and see how they align with global human rights norms because that's a very big missing piece especially if you look at the Germany, the Network Enforcement Act or even the Indian Intermediary Liability Rules which were inactive recently. So they're big threats to privacy and free speech. The second value, I mean, if I can just add that because this is, I mean, this sort of ties into my point on looking or thinking about the socio-political cultural aspects of technology and which makes me feel that at a global level perhaps a one-size-fits-all approach that may, may not work for so many countries, just the way misinformation affects communities in India versus another community in Australia. There are so many differences that, I can't even begin to unpack right now in the few seconds I have and but yeah, happy to discuss that more as well. Wonderful. Just a reminder to help me mark folks who are tuning in, if you're with us on Zoom, you can write in your questions in the Q&A section and I'm happy to then read some of those out for our panelists to answer. And if you're on YouTube, you try to find a way to send it to us as well. I see my tech team in the background did have a question from YouTube. I'm not sure how that question got asked, but if there's a way to do it, we'd love to have you guys spit with the questions as well. So thank you. But let me ask one more before I look to see what we've got coming in from the Q&A. And really, you guys have already started to highlight that there may be differences of opinion based on not only how folks approach some of the different harms we're now seeing, especially that you raise or even competing values that different public interest groups may bring a different perspective on. So as we think about the power that the public interest community can have in shaping technology and shaping the laws around technology, how should we think as a community about best dealing with when we disagree? Priming something you guys raised, section 230, something that public knowledge is traditionally defended. And yet, there's an active conversation right now about should there be adjustments to that law? So how do we deal with when values or perspectives of public interest community rub up against each other? I think having a debate, I mean, actually talking about the challenges because we had the same issue in when I was working on copyright reform in the European Union around platform liability and how you get that balance right. And we can see in the EU that the balance of using filtering technology is not getting that balance, right? And yet we're coming forward with more regulation which is not going to get a decent balance that is necessary. And these issues are complex and there's no getting around it. And we will have different opinions but unless we talk about it in a very measured informed way and trying to put it on the table, then we will not find solutions to this. And I think having honest conversations around it which I think in the copyright debate we try to have that back in the day in the EU but that was sadly we failed in some respects. So it's a good question Chris and it's one where I think there's going to be more of trying to get it right. But this comes back to how do we produce regulation that is ahead of the technology changes and so much of what we're regulating just now is not going to solve the future problems the solving past problems and even then it's not solving the problem at all. So this starter. Maybe I'll add is it possible to keep up with the pace of technology changes that we're seeing in regulation but others as well. Yeah. Yeah, just building off from Catherine's point I think obviously we've got to work through and grapple with and put these on the table and have real discussion, right? And we got to figure out a way to deal with evolving challenges, right? Now what is one of the prerequisites I would pose of that is that we need philanthropy and others to invest in infrastructure so that different communities can participate in the discussion in a meaningful way, right? If I'm going to, you know, CVT to get my talkers in terms of how I talk to Catherine, I don't have agency, right? Like the black think tank needs its own capacity and some other communities do. Also when we talk about the global south being able to participate where there's gonna be the most economic growth over the next 50 years if folks aren't a part of this conversation in a meaningful way and that really involves capacity it's not a situation where a problem comes up five years from now and then we can go out and hire the person and then get up to speed, et cetera. We need capacity now and start to build capacity so that we can have those conversations in an intelligent way and a real discussion so that we can both understand where we're aligned in terms of public interest values and also where we may differ with one another here. So I just think that that infrastructure and building that infrastructure not just in one organization but kind of across the board is important so that communities have agency to participate in the debate in a thoughtful way because it's part of the issue is the tech but part of the issue is just the facts and the changing world. So there's notion where you have two kind of evolving issues and you got to get up to speed it just requires concerted and focused energy effort and attention. Akriti. Thanks. I think I just want to take forward the points Catherine and Spencer made because when we look at the trends in global internet regulation and to answer the question whether the law can even keep up with tech I think it's so important to look at the ecosystems in which these laws are being made.  The conversations there are very adversarial and I think that's the problem. It's a state versus platform debate in many instances neither of them is right in a lot of instances. In many cases there is state platform collusion. So there are so many questions about who should regulate platforms? How should they be regulated? I feel one major sort of focal point when it comes to global sort of activism or acknowledgement when we come together and talk about this is that to avoid an adversarial scenario it's important for platforms and the state to sort of be in the table together because what happens otherwise is that in a rush to sort of defend rights of users or rights of communities governments are passing very difficult very problematic laws. And I think to avoid that as in taking forward the point of infrastructure and community representation is really important. No, April, let me ask you then based on what I created you just said really interesting point so much of the debate is about how the power of government can impact the power of tech companies. And I had attempted to point out just the importance of us continuing to center public interest values that public interest values are not neither about the power of government nor the power of industry. We're a 20 year old organization and often or not often sometimes folks have said that we came out of kind of this utopian thinking is that utopian to think that we can do something other than put the power in the hands of industry or put the power in the hands of the state? Is that possible? Is that pie in the sky? Well, I absolutely think it's possible I'm not a pessimist or try not to be a pessimist but when I guess one thing I wanna say here is the centrality of technology to all processes of political justice or social change, social change, political justice everyone wanna put it means that there are so many groups that need a functioning internet and need not just a functioning internet but one that where people have access to it I think over 20% of Americans still lack reliable access to broadband here in the United States, not on phones and that number is not even a good number because we haven't even been studying it that well in the United States. We can't even pass basic laws right now or like we've seen politicians try around election integrity when it comes to just who bought a political ad there have been so many attempts to have these kinds of ad transparency laws that we have for every other medium but when it comes to the internet we've been unable to do it. There are so many groups that would benefit from just small like regulations that would make our internet better, safer less harmful to our elections and our politics and need of working internet to function but we're not seeing a lot of the advocacy cross currents fully like we did I guess with silver people we saw a lot of groups jump on so I guess, you know, people who specialize in digital rights and technology advocacy understand how to communicate the goals of a healthy internet to millions of people like what we saw with net neutrality over 20 million people are not many of those were fake commented to the FCC we know how to communicate complex things in a way that the public grasps onto and cares about we know the public cares about technology policy and we know so many groups care about it but we're not seeing a lot of the communication kind of cross pollinate into different issue areas to see the unification to have a working communications infrastructure in the US in the public interest and it's interesting to me to like why are we seeing such an action why aren't we unable to get anything past and I'm curious if it has to do with the fact that we haven't done a good enough job with these issues with the current issues that are facing us like misinformation whatever it may be election integrity people not getting scammed online if we're not doing good enough job communicating what that means to the public into different groups and expanding that fight because we know how to do this but for some reason there's a real reticence in the digital rights community to do what I would consider to be that really like ground-based coalition building not just with companies but with the Murad of issue areas like the AARP when it comes to online scams you know what like let's get all of these different groups together to make a healthy internet but we're not seeing that as much as being getting involved with tech policy recently and we've certainly been talking to them I wanted to go to the questions coming in from the chat but Spencer did you have something to add? Yeah I was just gonna make a quick note that yeah civil society definitely has a big big role play and it needs to be healthy I don't think though that we should give up on the ability of government to reflect the public interest and I don't think our skepticism of big institutions should basically just say yield and say hey it's gonna be captured or it's just it can never keep up obviously FDR and others created a lot of regulatory agencies to deal with industry and keep up with innovation and there are definitely some changes that need to be made in terms of the role of government and technology but I don't think we should assume oh we're so advanced and innovation is so far ahead that democracy just can't keep up and can't do anything effective I think that's our challenge as a public interest community in terms of how can you ensure a solid, uncorrupted and competent government response to innovation in the tech sector. Great thank you. So it's interesting some of the questions coming in over the chat and over the Q and A. One person in fact the question came from YouTube I'm not sure how they did it but they asked how have our approaches to partnership and alliance building changed in recent years and this is another question in the chat also talks about do you see a strategy of importance of outside the Beltway versus inside the Beltway strategy going forward and let me ask the group how do you think about alliance building and partnership and what do you think about that dichotomy that was raised inside and outside the Beltway as well? Well I'll just say that we definitely see politicians trying to do things we see bills being written we just don't see them passing or going very far people have been trying to pass private legislation forever but we're not getting that wind behind the sails that we saw with soap and pimple when there was just such a snowball effect and they went from 31 people opposed to 101 people overnight in the house just wild turnover and so yeah how do we get that type of energy behind getting these internet companies or whatever regulations are required back to protect our communications platforms? Yeah, April I always worry that it feels easier to stop something like we did with soap and pimple than it is to proactively create protections. Well with net neutrality, I mean yeah we were kind of stopping something bad and then pushing for something better that was very complex and that's totally true but even if we stopped something I mean yeah it's easier to stop a bad bill than it is to write a good bill, that's for sure but it's just where we're at now so I'd like mobilization. Do others have thoughts on approaches to smart partnerships and alliances?  I was just gonna say about communication and about how a lion's building is we need to build partnerships that's how you're more effective, that's how but the communication part to that I think is really, really critical to getting that message across and bringing people on board and if we are really gonna reflect the public interest we need to think about where the public are at and where we want to position in terms of the change that we can actually make and so I think that so much boils down to healthy communication and understanding and being really in touch with where the public's interest rests with some of this and I think it sometimes can be different from what we think is the public's interest which was actually the public interest so I think there's a lot of work in that space but that can be done through partnership and alliance building and I think that's where you can make a change and not be, as you said it's easier to be opposed something than to build and create and that takes energy and time and a lot of not for profits in terms of where civil society rests are all with grappling for funding and for having I think Spencer, you mentioned that having that stability to be able to build and to be able to make the change is really important as we think about the future. Yeah, just quickly, real relationship outside of the Beltway with organizations where we learn and informed is not like it's just disseminating talkers or information to other folks so like real relationship I think is important. I also think that real relationship with membership organizations where we're being informed by them where we're sharing info with them I think that is important and that these membership organizations can do a lot of things that public interest organizations that are solely focused on policy just cannot do can't move, right? One of the fascinating things with SOPA and PIPA is that how industry got involved, right? And so, Google's homepage Wikipedia not industry amazing nonprofit group but Reddit, right? These private companies were aligned on this. The problem now is that we're kind of I think public interest policy is not going to be as aligned with the values of the corporate actors here and so because of that, we're not going to have that huge push with the they're very monopolized websites and platforms also urging people to take action on this. And so it's going to take a lot more coalition across issue areas, right? Which I think both Spencer and Catherine have spoken to real relationship building but this is just that this is a very different era of what's being asked for and the power dynamics behind it. Then the point you make about relationship building maybe being a global pandemic where it's been very difficult as well to build those connections which we had normally done in person too and I hope that in 2022 maybe we'll have more opportunity to build those kind of relationships because it does take time and it also is about building trust with different cultures and different organizations and different perspectives even as we've been saying about the definition of public interest that need different things even in a small group. Hi Krithi. Yeah, I think I just like to add to that when we're thinking about future approaches of global activism and public interest advocacy I think we need to maybe also think about how past movements have been successful of course the net neutrality movement in the US and even in India as in the Facebook free basics movement failed because there was so many of us and so many organizations and people who led that movement and while we haven't seen such a movement of that magnitude in the last couple of years I would also like to stress on the fact that it's numbers and markets or the geopolitics of the country which determines a lot of these things. So free basics, I mean Facebook did manage to roll out a lot of these things in other countries I think there's 70 other countries the last time I looked which have that and these are countries which don't have enough either user numbers or markets or political influence to change platform behavior and I think maybe we can consider focusing on such nations, such user bases as well when we think about orienting future approaches. Just taking personal privilege here I wanna go back to Spencer, you made a great point about not giving up on government as a way to vocalize and enact the public interest is I guess my way of saying what you said I hope that's not putting words in your mouth because I know I didn't say it exactly the way you did and I completely agree with that. I do worry in the global perspective but even here in the US as we start to see cracks in some of the foundations of our democracy how do we ensure that government is acting on behalf of what the public and a democratic society wants and it's a real challenge and so I start to wonder these days if as technology public interest groups where or when is it important that we speak up for democratic values and democratic institutions so that we can have conversations about what our communications networks for the public look like. And I think that's gonna be a challenge we continue to face. I did an interview this week where public knowledge we've always advocated for free expression online and advocated for diverse voices including voices we just agree with to have outlets but we've been questioning why we came out against direct TV carrying the one American network it was because of how they were tearing down and challenging our institutions of democracy in the United States with their disinformation and their lies about the recent election. That's not a tech policy issue but we felt the need to take that stand and so when those meld it's a challenge I think we're gonna face as a sector because of how foundational is to then be able to have the conversation about technology policy. We've got a few minutes left you guys have been fantastic. I know I asked you guys to stay high level and think about values and think about harms think about how the technologies change our questioners really can't avoid asking about policy questions so I'm really quickly lightning round style there's a couple have been out here one person asked do you think breaking up Facebook and implementing strong anti-trust laws has a role to play in this conversation? Anyone have a quick response to that that might be a whole other panel on its own because we certainly work on that issue here. You know I would just say the competition is obviously important in protecting consumers is very, very important but I do also think that we should recognize there are other challenges I'll just say racial discrimination, et cetera and we have to recognize those other challenges as well. I know that there are a lot of people who almost have like if you have a hammer like everything is a nail and would use one tool to try to deal with a variety of problems and I would just say there are a variety of problems and obviously again competition is important consumers are important even in a unique world where a product is given out for free. Okay. And one of the, April did you want to jump in? Oh, just that, you know if the FTC is able to find harms there are a lot of different things that that agency can do whether it's discriminatory harms or whatever that could be and one of the tools available in the United States to kind of rein in corporate power that's harming people is through legislation or make them less smaller, right? Through antitrust. So I think it's definitely, you know an avenue to consider when we're talking about just making the internet a better place if these companies are unable to regulate themselves. And I think this is happening across the world antitrust debate is not just in the US it's certainly in the UK and in the EU. And I think that's really an important factor. Fantastic. Another kind of combination of questions we're seeing one person asked how can we maintain public interest in terms of making sure everyone has free and easy access to information while making sure journalists and creators are getting necessary payment or credit. Another person talked differently about why are online publishers not liable for the content the same way that print publishers are. Again, I think those are things we can have whole conversations about here but is there, let me just say as the technology of the internet grows and changes and moves so quickly where it is so difficult to moderate content the same way that a print publisher would or it is shareable at such a speed or a scope that folks may be worried about it being shared but not getting credit. The speed and scope of the internet is just something that requires a public interest value created around it to get at some of these policy questions or is there a give and take with a technology like this that is so powerful in those ways? Akriti? So I mean, I don't think I have the answer to the whole question but I would also like to just point to the fact that there is a definite threat that there is to access to information that a lot of especially when it comes to the future of the newspaper or future of news gathering and sustainability of journalism. There's a real threat that you can see in even in countries like India and even in the US I think two or one or two bills which have been suggested on sort of gaining temporary competition protections to protect newspaper groups. So there's definitely a lot of activism and movement to make sure that there are temporary or permanent protections which are given to news gathering and journalism. And I think one of the public interest values around that would be sustainability of authentic authenticity of news because that's not only core value of society but that's also a tool that we can use to fight speech harms which is misinformation, hate speech, et cetera. And right now with news aggregators with these big tech intermediaries a lot of that is under threat. You know, just quick, go, I'm sorry, go ahead, Katharine. Go ahead Spencer, it's okay. Okay. Right, so just, yeah. Yeah, just quickly. You know, it is incumbent upon us to devise institutions that address these problems. I mean, again, folks in the past have created institutions to deal with emerging problems. This is what is incumbent upon us. And again, these problems aren't just the problems we're seeing today like, you know, the local newspaper dying, right? You know, I just read this piece, you know avatars are being priced differently on the metaverse based on the perceived race of the avatar here, right?  Audie Cornish on NPR asked Meta's VP, you know if you can't handle comments on Instagram, you know how can you handle the t-shirt that has hate speech or the hate rally that happens in the metaverse or the racialized assault? And, you know, when we talk about a concept like, you know Web 3, how does an increasingly decentralized web allow for, you know, law or policy to prevent racial harassment or discrimination here, right? So I just think that we've got to continuously focus on the emerging issues and come up with solutions and not kill ourselves for not having the silver bullet solution like this is the process. It's always been the process in terms of innovation causes new challenges and public interest folks figure out solutions and that's what we do. It's well put, Spencer. I think this is why PK, we've argued for a regulator, a digital platform, saying we had regulated for communications networks. We've argued at least that's necessary in addition to antitrust laws and other existing laws in order to move with the pace of change of technology, great point to the metaverse, no one knows what it's going to look like and how do we govern it? No one knows that yet, but that's something, you know that coming in the future, perhaps we need to make sure we don't wait until we see harms to question what those harms may be. So folks, we're running out of time.  So I really appreciate you guys participating in it. Participating in it is a little different than what we normally do where we usually zoom in on clear policy questions, but I really firmly believe that a lot of the questions that you guys were raising or the values that you were lifting up are going to guide the policy answers we're looking at as technology develops. So again, I really appreciate you all of you tuning in as we have more of these conversations, continue to follow public knowledge or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can find us at publicknowledge.org and please support our friends across the public interest community, check out the work they're doing at Creative Commons at the Shorenstein Center, at the Joint Center at Gail, ISP and all our other allies so that you can see the breadth and scope of the work that we're doing in the public interest community and how we're all trying to shape the future of technology. So thank you for joining us today and we'll see you next time. Thank you, thanks Chris. Thanks guys. Thank you, thanks Chris.