All right, so let's talk about open source licensing and go to market for startups Brief introduction to myself. I'm a former developer who for the past 15 years has been doing sales and marketing for early stage developer focus startups and I've had a variety each of these companies that a variety of relationships with open source at Circle CI We were a completely closed-source company, but our two primary competitors Jenkins and Travis CI were open source Then I was at a company called serverless where we were in MIT licensed completely open source product called the serverless framework then courier where We had open source libraries SDKs We maintained the core product was closed and now I'm at a company called dragonfly where we are a business source license Also known as source available, so I'm going to talk about kind of these different Relationships with open sources strategies setbacks to these various approaches And I actually need a look up here a little bit because I don't can't sit on my computer But just a brief history. I'm a huge history fan love to kind of start with understanding the historical context of any topic story so software kind of began as a concept in the 50s and 60s and Initially, it was really part of academia and it was treated like any other academic research just like if you published a paper on Biology or sociology or history? It was open for anyone to analyze Utilize in their own research. That's kind of the place that that software started from and It was typically bundled with hardware. You would you'd get an IBM mainframe You get some sort of computer. It had software attached to it. And that's how you got access to the software in 1969 there was a landmark case US versus IBM which essentially said hey Packaging software with hardware is is anti competitive You need to let developers let engineers let end users put their own software on on the computers if they want And that's really what set the stage for there to be a commercial software industry for us as developers to be able to build Software sell it Microsoft was founded shortly after that in 1975 You kind of consider them the first software startup the original software startup And as a reaction to that in the 80s There was the GNU project as well as the free software foundation And this was kind of a pushback to say hey We want to have some safeguards some safe place for there still to be this free and open-source software We don't all software to be commercial And then you had the internet era in the late 90s where the amount of software being built Exploded the cost to build that software increased dramatically and you know on the commercial side You kind of had Oracle and a couple of closed systems And then you had what was like the lamp stack and then a few other CMSs and web frameworks based on those That developers really started flocking to that to say hey These are open frameworks that I can just grab off the shelf and start building really quickly and easily and I think That internet explosion and lamp stack was kind of the birth of of the open-source ecosystems as we think of them today Now to talk about commercial open-source specifically so businesses built around open-source That that really started in 1999 when red hat IPO that was the first Sign that hey, there's an industry Behind open source we can build businesses with open source at the core and red hat showed that that can be done with a dual Licensing model which dual licensing is basically saying hey we have one version of the product that is open-source license You can take it do whatever you want with it is free and open-source software And then we have a second product that has a commercial license You can pay us as the company behind it to install it on your own hardware And and run that for your business and you're going to get additional features security You know a variety of things that can be added into that second part of the product and This opened this opened a whole new set of investors coming on the scene after red hat saying hey We want to fund the next red hat, so roughly from 1999 through 2009 there was hundreds dozens if not hundreds of startups founded and Funded pursuing you know trying to be the next red hat Most of them fail like there's not a lot of successful open-source startups that came out of this period They're still trying to figure a lot of things out, but starting around 2009. You had MongoDB then Hashi corp elastic data bricks Confluent you started to have these startups founded that were able to repeat that dual licensing model that red hat was successful with and And and build really success successful sustainable businesses all all these companies up here I believe except for data bricks is not IPO'd yet all the other ones have IPO'd So then then comes the cloud platforms and this this changed the the equation of building an open source commercial startup quite a bit AWS launched in 2006, you know by the mid to 2014 2015 They had built a very lucrative business on taking open-source software Built by other venture funded commercial companies and offering them on on their global hardware, right? There's a variety of services listed up here that do that. This is not an exhaustive list And if you're AWS, this is great, right? You don't have to necessarily invest in all the R&D to build this software You can put it on on your infrastructure, which is larger scale than anyone else and you're not breaking any laws that the Licensing says you can do this and for for the companies that invested often hundreds of millions of dollars to develop this very Complex very powerful software it showed them two interesting things for the most part these companies were still Building their business with with a licensing model that said hey the dual licensing model, right? Their customers were still deploying their product on-premise on their own infrastructure AWS showed that hey the cloud distribution model is More effective quicker time to market higher margins that that's a that's a real model You should be pursuing But it also showed these open-source startups that hey, you're now competing against us with your own product We're taking your own product. We're competing against you and That's when the licensing story really changed for these companies. They decided hey the permissive open-source licensees We've been pursuing are no longer sustainable and that was when a new licensing model That's often referred to as source available emerged So what what is source available right? This is this is a topic that It's very heated on on hacker news is on github on Twitter Essentially what source available means is that the code is open and available just like with traditional open source You can go to github. You can look at the code. It's there It also still has the same frictionless developer adoption experience. You can download it You can run it on your own machine. You don't need to sign up. You don't need to opt into any terms of service It's it's it's frictionless to use But there are restrictions on on some usage Typically the restriction says you cannot take this software and run it as a cloud hosted service to compete with us You can put it in your SaaS product and sell another service that it's a component of but you cannot compete directly as us It's the company that's developing that software so What why did these emerge right we talked a little bit about the clouds coming and AWS in particular that was a primary reason the competitive threats there but But that the this this millions of dollars that was being invested from venture-backed Companies into developing the software simply was not going to continue to flow in less a new licensing model was figured out You're not you were no longer able to go raise money from VC saying hey And I experienced this in 2015 2014 with when I was at serverless We would get term sheets from VC saying hey You have an MIT licensed Piece of software take this money and just go get as much developer adoption as possible We'll figure out the monetization later. That was no longer really an option Because the competitive threat from the big clouds was simply too great So if you wanted to go and continue to raise money to to build this software You needed to come up with a different licensing model and I apologize to keep needing to look up I don't have the same thing on my computer Oh, and then yeah, finally The alternative was founders could just go build closed-source software right they could just say hey We're giving up on the whole open-source thing. We're just not going to have that But there's still a really strong desire from engineers and from developers to have their source code open So this business source license let them do that while protecting their business And and I really like this well analogy. I didn't I didn't invent this I've seen this other places, but you can kind of think of software as a well You can think of open-source developers as well diggers and you know Some wells have have really great fresh water at the bottom some have water that's that's not so tasty not so valuable and You know traditional permissive open source as hey We want any anyone can come drink this water and anyone can come package it and sell it We want full access for any use to this well Whereas business source essentially says hey you can come and drink the water But you can't bottle it and sell it and I think that's a really good way to think about the difference and mongo mongo Db was one of the first companies to adopt this license and I think you know every All the companies that have adopted this license have put out their own statements to say hey This is why we did it. I think mongo's is especially good You know they say the market is quickly trying to is is quickly moving to consume most software as a service This is a time of incredible opportunity for open-source projects with the potential to foster a new wave of great open-source server-side software the reality However, is that once an open-source project becomes interesting It is too easy for large cloud developers to capture all the value but contribute nothing back to the community Given the risk small companies are unwilling to make that bet bet so most software being written is closed sourced The community needs a new license that builds on the spirit of the APG a GPL But makes explicit the conditions for providing the software as a service and this is the same Minds that same thought process that most of those companies I listed earlier went through and This licensing change has evolved with the go-to-market which is to deliver Software via the cloud and you can look at these are the four four companies I was referencing earlier that have evolved IPO so was able to pull all this data from Quarterly reports and you can see you know when when they all started offering their cloud services, you know between 2016 and 2019 prior to that it was all on on premise installs When you know they adopted that their source available licenses, which for the most part was within a few years after that and Then I think what's really interesting to see is how Along with this their their revenue models are shifting to cloud services You can see, you know, Mongo in the last couple years went from 50% of their revenue on cloud to 70 elastic from 35 to 40 Confluent from 30 to 50 as Companies are shifting their distribution out of the cloud. They're having to evolve that licensing model as well So so for the next generation of open-source founders for the next set of companies, how should how should you think about? You know open-source and go-to-market, so I believe that traditional kind of open-source as a commercial strategy is really obsolete Especially if you're going to deliver via the cloud that's going to be your distribution model You need to figure out a model that fits that business if you want your source code to be open That probably means some some version of business source model of business source license the the the reason you're building a business is Is not to to fit the strict definitions of open source. It's not to make Anyone happy other than your customers right the purpose of building a business is to deliver value for your customers and you should choose the model that's going to accomplish that best and I think you know as you think about The essential pieces of go-to-market, which is your product your promotion your distribution and your price Each of those each of those should be thought through as you think for your licensing and they should they should make sense together And finally As I was mentioning earlier your licensing Strategy is going to have to be an essential part of your fundraising model when you if you have an open if you're lucky enough to have a Popular open-source project and you go to the venture community you go to investors to say hey I want to build a business around this They're going to ask you okay. What what why did you select this license? How is that going to impact your ability to monetize your product and build a business? Which surprisingly wasn't really the case, you know five seven years ago. They didn't ask these hard questions They just said hey you have an open-source project. That's popular developers. That's great. Here's a check Things have changed and you really are gonna have to have great answers to these questions So a few predictions that that I believe are going to play out as as we kind of evolve as as a commercial open-source industry I do think that source available is going to be the default license. I think it's the best thing available to us today Doesn't mean it will be forever I think that making code open is going to be an essential part of go-to-market It's going to be an essential part of getting developer adoption It's going to be essential a part of building trust and security and when you're selling to enterprise customers having them easily be able to review your code, but I think it's going to be less essential for most companies as a Ability as a way to develop their product, right? And I think you're already seeing that a lot of the popular business source licenses today They're not taking tons of external contributions. They're not even soliciting tons of external contributions. That's not the primary reason They're making their source code available I think components of the ecosystem I think you'll see companies where big components of the ecosystem are available and you're you're seeing this trend today with AI companies a Lot they might you know make some of their training data public Open source they might make some of the libraries and frameworks But the core product that they're selling they're keeping close and I think that's a trend You're gonna gonna start seeing a lot more and I think we'll continue to see innovation and licensing to figure out a better the best balance of Giving developers free and open access while protecting the business right because if we we can't figure that out What's going to happen is? VC money is gonna dry up from going into investing in open source We're gonna see a dramatic decline in the innovation that happens in the space and then finally today cloud is The primary distribution or the hottest distribution channel for software Whatever distribution model comes next is going to change the licensing story. It's gonna change the go-to-market story Everything here is going to be different. Whatever that next distribution model is so I'd love to Leave like have some some time for anyone here to ask questions have a discussion about this I know it can be a touchy touchy topic for some controversial You know, there's the religion wars on on Twitter and hacker news where people say hey, this isn't real open source We we don't recognize that as real open source But if there's any questions around the commercial aspect building a real a business around this Yeah, feel free to ask away Yeah, great question for anyone that couldn't hear his question was what happens in practice if somebody breaks your license It actually does build a competing service in practice the only companies that People are concerned with with those licenses for the most part is AWS and maybe Google and Azure and those companies are extremely conservative from a legal standpoint and They actually have rules where their developers are not even allowed to look at BSL licensed code. So I think it I'm not basically nothing's gone to trial that I know of there's never been any litigation around it It's basically a way to prevent those Hyperscale cloud providers from competing and I don't think there's actually been any any litigation that I'm aware of on that Any other questions? Yep. Oh, thanks That's dragonfly always been dual license or did you start fully open then transition into one of those like business? Licenses yeah, so dragonfly is a We just started the project under two years ago So it's up still are just about two years ago now So we started with BSL business source license from the very beginning And we had the luxury of hindsight and seeing what had happened with a lot of these other companies and be able to make that decision from the Beginning but obviously, you know mongo conflu and Hashi they these business force license didn't really exist when they were founded So they had to go through I think what you could label a pretty painful transition Period and changing that license, but for us we were always from the beginning of business source license Yeah, hi Are there boilerplate source available licenses like one around Apache and one around? GPL or whatever. Yeah, I find those. Yeah. Yeah, there are I think confluent cockroach Mongo, they've all shared theirs is kind of boilerplate in the two the two you see most common our business source which Basically says what I described and it it also has a provision in it You can set the amount of years, but after a certain amount of years the code does become open So like the version that's released today, for example will be fully open in four years And then there's the the other popular one is server-side public license Which basically says you actually can release a cloud service on it But you must open source every component API piece of that and again, you can basically call it like an anti AWS or Google because they will never do that, but those are the two main flavors And yeah, they there are templates you can you can find online for that Hi, I have a question on the legal implications of Open source available or source open I heard a lot of these things that companies especially large enterprises are not willing to implement source available software because They're just running the risk of going into some legal problems. And so the legal departments don't sign off the software and Especially I think one of the big stories of last year was hashy cop when they Decided to change the license and it kick starts the whole thing around open-to-full and everything. I just want to hear your Your opinion on this like where will this go? What's the current state around the acceptance of these licenses and enterprises? Yeah, yeah, great question So the question was around the hesitancy of certain enterprises to adopt source available licenses I can't speak for hashy corp and they're they're a bit different than than a lot of the other companies I've been talking about and that they're not a database or critical infrastructure. They're kind of a set of DevOps tools I can't speak for the customers that that I deal with at at dragonfly I've never had and you know We're our open-source version is implemented in dozens of fortune 500 companies and I've never had a company Not implemented because of that there has been some requests for more information and them wanting to learn about it It is relatively new, but once they understand what the implications of the license are I've never had that be a point of friction for adoption Yeah do you see any challenges regarding Community work or with partnerships in and selecting That type of license. Yeah Personally, I don't think so. I think the the one I think it actually opens up some opportunities for partnerships because So so I mentioned that the typical restriction is that you cannot launch a competing cloud service without permission. So a partnership Avenue or channel it does open is to say hey We would love like a company can come to dragonfly and say hey We would love to offer dragonfly as a cloud hosted service on our platform And then we're now we're discussing a licensing conversation Whereas you know you've heard several talks today of people saying oh all of a sudden I see somebody is using my open source as their own product or all of a sudden it's being used There has to be a licensing discussion there, but if they're not Wanting to offer it as a cloud solution. There's really no other restrictions on it. So I Personally haven't seen it block anything other than that and then it becomes a Partnership conversation with with a revenue share typically is typically how they're structured. I think we have time for one more question Hey, is it a provision for? Licensing certain features in an open source product Sorry, could you repeat that one more time? Yeah, is there a provision for licensing certain features in an open source product? Is it possible to open source certain features? No, is it possible to license certain features on an open source product? Possibly is it possible? Yeah, I mean that's that's typically the dual license model Where you have a subset of the product that is open source and available and then you sell Licensing for for additional features. So I think this is actually like probably one of the oldest models is to say Hey, here's here's some features you get an open source. Here's others The the typical model with these source available licenses is to say hey It's all open source and then us is the commercial company behind it. We are offering it as a cloud service Typically you we we don't hold back any features. It's just the control plane. It's just the cloud Platform that's offered on top of it Awesome. Well, yeah, if you have any additional questions loved it I love to talk about this stuff come visit the dragonfly booth L32 shoot me an email. Happy to chat more All right big round of applause


So, you have an 8-page paper due in an hour and you're totally f***ed, not a problem. Make a free account with OpenAI and from there you will have access to ChadGPT, which is basically your personal all-purpose life mentor. Think of Cortana from Halo, but in real life. Now if I go up and start a new chat and type in, hello, the chat will respond letting you know it's ready to help. From here, if you ask it to write a 5-page essay about why Super Smash Bros. Melee is still popular today, it will not write the essay for me, but it makes a pretty damn good outline. And what you can do is you can use the points in these outlines to start generating paragraphs to fill the meat of your essay. For example, it recommends I start my essay with a brief introduction over the game and a thesis outlining the main reasons for its popularity. And what we can do with that information is say, okay, can you give me a 5-sentence paragraph introduction for the beginning of an essay explaining why Super Smash Bros. Melee is still popular today. Press Enter and there you go. Now if you don't like what it gives you, you can always tell it to regenerate a response or you can give it new instructions to be more specific. And you yourself don't really have to be specific. You could just as easily say, can you explain Super Smash Bros. Melee to me in one paragraph? And it'll crank something out. And honestly, this is a pretty good intro, but it's kind of boring and it feels like a mundane presentation. And something that you can do is you can tell it to rewrite stuff in a way that people are more likely to find exciting. For example, if I then say, can you rewrite the paragraph in a way that will grab and retain the reader's attention in order for them to want to read the rest of the paper?  Jesus Christ. Imagine pitting your favorite Nintendo characters against each other in an epic battle to see who comes out on top. That is the premise of Super Smash Bros. Melee. A fighting game that has captivated players for over two decades. Are you ready to join the fray? Holy f***, bro. Yeah, this wasn't a thing when I was in college. This intro totally makes me want to read the rest of the essay. And you can change the size of the content as well. If I ask it to explain why Van Gogh's art style is so popular in a paragraph, it will do exactly that. But if I want to build off of it, I can say something like, can you expound that into three paragraphs? And it will beautifully follow your instructions perfectly.  That's too long. Can you summarize that into three sentences? And it will then compress the info exactly like you asked. And of course, you can use my favorite trick to rewrite it in a way that people will want to read the rest of the essay and bam. Now, one of the limitations I've noticed is if you ask it to cite the sources of your information so you can put them at the end of your essay's bibliography, it doesn't really like to do that. For example, if I ask it to explain the limitations of the speed of light in a paragraph and then ask it to give me the sources in MLA format, it will tell me no. But if I ask it to recommend me sources that are likely to have information containing the limitations of the speed of light, it has no problem coming up with the books to recommend. And from here, you can tell it great job. Now organize these into MLA format so that I can upload them into my bibliography and it will happily do that. So yeah, basically in 2023, chat can give you the structure for your essay. And once you have the structure, you can go through each point and tell it to expand those into paragraphs and keep doing that until you have as many pages as you want. Ask it to recommend the sources and obviously check the sources to make sure they line up with what you're trying to say. If they do, pump them out in MLA or APA or whatever format you want and you're done. Hope that helps, and as always, hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


The Smithsonian is proud to recognize the winners of the 22nd annual National Design Awards and to celebrate the power that design has to change the world. Cooper Hewitt is a testament to this power. This museum reminds me that design is so much more than style or beauty. We interact with design every day in ways large and small. Design shapes our experiences of the world around us. And in my decades at the Smithsonian, I have seen how central design is to our success as a cultural institution. Every year the National Design Awards embody the mission of Cooper Hewitt to educate, inspire and empower. This year's awardees do all that and much more. They challenge us to think differently. They prove that innovation and impact go hand in hand. They are designing a more just, more creative, more sustainable world. To the 2021 winners, let me say congratulations. We are in awe of what you've accomplished and we thank you. Congratulations to the 2021 National Design Award winners and a warm welcome to this year's outstanding group of designers to the NDA family. It's grown in size since the National Design Awards program was launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council. From community and future focused to socially responsible design, the 2021 winners fill us with an optimism for the future by demonstrating the transformative capacity of design. They challenge the boundaries of their feels and are initiating thoughtful conversations about the future of design and humanity. I'm deeply grateful to the National Design Awards jury who were so generous with their time and expertise in selecting this year's incredible cohort of winners. As America's Design Museum, we aim for everyone to discover the reach, relevance and profound impact of design on the world. The National Design Awards program is Cooper Hewitt's signature educational initiative with opportunities to celebrate design and learn from the best during National Design Month. We hope you'll make the most of the rich opportunities to connect with our award winners, learn about their paths, passions, processes and their bodies of work. These programs are made possible by our generous sponsors but also by design advocates like you. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to Cooper Hewitt. You can do so by clicking the Show Your Support link. Thank you for supporting Cooper Hewitt's Smithsonian Design Museum. It's your design museum.


The Japanese government is urging its young citizens to drink more alcohol. This seems kind of odd, even for Japan. But what's the real reason? Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. David, what's going on in Tokyo? Japan's national tax agency has launched a sake-viva campaign, Andrew, to try to get the young people of Japan to drink more so they can get more tax money, support the izakaya industry that's ailing and possibly even make more babies. What? All right, guys, we're going to go break this down from a micro-mid to a macro. If you're excited about this video, please do us a favor right now and hit that like button. And then after this, check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. But David, let's get into it. All right, let's look at it in the micro, Andrew. Basically, it's a campaign from the government. The government may potentially own a lot of shares in the alcohol industry, maybe in the cigarette industry, who knows? So there may be some double dipping going on, but they want the youth to drink because the alcohol consumption patterns from the younger generation, Andrew, from that like 80s and 90s stereotypical salaryman, dropped like 20, 30%. Exactly. Ever since 1995, actually, alcohol consumption has been slowly declining in Japan, you know, so nobody is drinking as much as the 50-year-olds, man. Those guys that were knocking out on the subway just like this, after throwing back shots of like 10 sake shots. Yeah, those days are like dwindling basically. But those guys were very hard-working and they did a lot for Japan, obviously, that whole workforce, right? Right. Well, I think the younger generations looking at it like, I don't want that. And then the older generation is like, I want you to get freaky with habiki. And please, drink more san tori, so your son is horny. And then I think like, it's funny because I look at America and I'm like, well, one, you would never have to convince kids in America to drink at a younger age. Oh, they already want it. Oh, they want that and more. They want everything. They're trying to drink at 12, all right? And then also, if anything was ever advertised by our IRS, we would totally do the exact opposite because we just hate the IRS. Hate the tax man. Yeah, their tax man is telling them to drink more alcohol, which, you know, anyways, that's a different dynamic. But yeah, I guess like the whole birth rate thing, like, was that even going to work?   I don't know if that's really the plan, because I don't think that would really affect birth rates as much as it would, like, lowering the cost of living in the city. I feel like that would do more for raising a family. Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. It sounds like almost like an old uncle from like 80 years ago's like idea, being like, hmm, make them drink more. Yes. The old like, yeah, coups up. Yes. The more the Japan has a problem, baby, so it's moving on. Andrew, point number two, why does Japan have a shrinking population? South Korea also has a shrinking population. China, surprisingly, even has a shrinking population. Yeah. I mean, actually this is happening in a lot of societies around the world. Even America, obviously, American families are getting married later. They're having less kids. More people are caught up in the lifestyle living in the big city. The kids will cramp their style. They cost a lot. You want a lot for your kids. Your standards are very high. Now you want to send them to private school, and then you got to do all this and that. I just think in the Confucian sort of like accomplishment accolades based culture, you're trying to send your kids to the best schools, make sure they get the best grades. If they do a sport or an instrument, they're like the first chair or a starter, so they're the best at that sport. It's just like a lot of pressure. And I think when you really compare it globally, it's just like it's not in a weird way. It sounds so stereotypical. It's not that fun to be an Asian parent. So we're growing up in a more westernized global society. We know what's fun and what's not fun, even though we still went through the non-fun way. But we can only imagine how not fun it'll be to enforce that non-fun high pressure childhood on a kid of our own. We didn't even like it, but we went through it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, why do you want it? Like it's almost like you're like, I know it's good because it makes other countries strong, but I don't want to do it. And if you have to do it to like more than two kids or three kids, man, it's just like you can't do that and eat a hundred nummy things from like a hundred different cultures and be a foodie at the same time. It's just too much commitment. You're splitting your focus pie too many ways. Not only that, of course, in China, they had a one-child policy for a long time, which really dropped their birth rate. Now it's back up to three-childs being allowed, but it hasn't really rebounded. Dude, I don't understand how they thought, hey, everybody, you can have three kids now. Where are the kids? Oh, yeah, I was so excited. I was just waiting like, God, it was that one, but I was waiting for you to change the rule. I have like two or three. The government's like, what happened to this baby boom that was supposed to happen in China? I thought, I thought we just opened up the floodgates and then people say, okay, we want the five kids. It doesn't work that way. Andrew, and the final macro point, I mean, what are some real solutions, man? How does Japan and obviously the rest of Asia, specifically Japan, fix all their issues that they want to fix? Because they don't want to open up the country because they're really strict on COVID. They're not generally too open to immigrants. These are not immigrant countries like the New World, for example. So Andrew, to bring it to the macro, what are the solutions? Man, these are really macro trends that I think are actually just across the globe kind of common. So it's hard to come up with solutions, but I do know Japan has to try things out. I think this, even though a sake viva campaign sounds kind of silly, I think it's just one of many campaigns that they're going to try. They got to try creative solutions. They might have to get some young people in charge to think of stuff or just make adjustments or just build a bunch of robots that could take care of the old people because you know, there's not going to be enough young people to take care of the old people. One of the top comments on Nexshark was, hey, just send a bunch of Koreans over there. Yeah, the Koreans will booey. Because obviously, if you look at the global rankings, Korea is the number one Asian country by drinking by far. It's not number one, though. Moldova is actually number one. Well, David, have you ever had a yogurt soju? Why wouldn't Koreans drink the most? It is so good. It is good. No, but honestly too, the Japanese, they're super old school with their sake. They just got like snow and like crystal dry and all that stuff. They're not really being on trend. Like the Koreans, where the Koreans, they'll mix soju with whatever that's like popping at the moment yogurt soju. You know, green tea soju, this soju, that's soju. They'll just make any soju to make it popping. But I feel like Japanese are still like, kind of like sushi. You know, they don't want to mess with it. They're being G-Roll like, they're being traditionalist. So I'm like, yo, maybe you need an update if you want the young people to drink more and make some cool drinking games, build the drinking game into the bottle, have the bottle with a little spinner, like abdomen unit. Who knows? But yeah, it's true. If they did import Koreans, it would work because I believe it goes like this, Andrew. It goes Korea, Japan, Vietnam, China. China actually drinks the least out of everybody. David, China drinks the least. I'm shocked. They have Baiju. That stuff is gross, man. Also a product in dire need of a modern update. My goodness. I actually have had one Baiju in my life that was kind of good, but everything else has been very, very hard. What do you think, Andrew? Do you think Japan should open up immigration, open up tourism? Like what can it do other than like having this 80-year-old uncle solution to like being like, everybody just take four more shots of sake? Yeah. I think Japan is going to try to figure it out on their own. If I know anything about the Japanese spirit, man, they feel like they can do it. It's an island country. Yeah. They feel like they can do it. And I think that there's a chance that, you know, it's just, man, it's going to be painful for a lot of people and a lot of governments and a lot of, I mean, America's going through some things right now that we got to figure out. So everybody's trying to figure stuff out. So this sake viva campaign is not even the craziest thing that's going to happen. Trust me. My overall takeaway, I'll end with this, is that I think a lot of the East Asian countries are going to, like you said, have in-house solutions at first. Whether those work or not, I'm a little bit more bearish on it. And then we'll need to see the ultra-traditional old-school attitudes, how they deal with being more like insular thinking. Like, do they accept immigration? What are their immigration policies? Do they put mad restrictions? I mean, if they're even like, if you're on letting tourism open up right now, immigration's like way down the line. I think with tourism, what they could do is like, maybe make sure people spend an extra amount of money or give them a discount if they preload 10 Gs on like a Japan tourism card. You don't basically use like the Disney methods of extracting monetization from like your fan base. Oh, give them free drink tickets when they land. Buy one, get two. Suntory. Hey, buy Ichi. Get that. And buy Ichi, get me. Japan Ichiban. Japan Ichiban. Hey, drink Suntory. Yeah, Andrew. I mean, you did just find a like Japanese song that is like one of your top play tracks right now. Shout out to Takayan too. All right, everybody. Let us know in the comments down below what you think this problem means for Japan and what do you think the possible solutions are? Because you know, a lot of societies and a lot of countries do look at Japan as almost like some type of glimpse into the future. So maybe these are things that other people are going to be dealing with in maybe a decade or two. Who knows? You think Shohei Otani could help? I don't even know if he drinks that much, but I don't know. Maybe Shohei, best baseball player right now. Looks like you'd pack a few beers. All right, everybody. Again, thank you so much for watching The Hop Hop Boys and until next time, we out. Peace. Arigato.


The Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center gives an opportunity to those who want to go to work every day and earn a living. Hedy Clodder tells us how one program is providing people with disabilities a new lease on life. When I started here I was other than adult but in a lot of ways still mentally a little kid. It's Tuesday afternoon and the room is filled with workers doing a variety of projects at the Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center. Some are shredding papers, exercising, or making fire starters. We're able to offer a variety of different job opportunities and training to set goals and help people achieve that goal if it's practical for them. But many of our clients like working in the DAC. It offers them an opportunity to learn and grow and to be with their peers. Lindsey Gooch is a prime example of that. Gooch has worked at barely used thrift stores since 2005 in many roles including as a cashier. Her dream job is working in retail. The program prepares Gooch to take that next step. You know what? I can work a competitive job and be happy. I just have to find the right fit. Most of the clients working for the DAC have developmental or pervasive mental disabilities such as autism. The program gives clients the skills they need to be the best version of themselves through work. I love coming to Hubbard Cafe Day. I'm a very experienced worker and I love my jobs very much. Richard Rait cuts out the wood to make sanding projects that in turn is sold in their partner stores. Clients do all types of projects from rugs made out of jeans to footstools that double as puzzles. Having a job gives clients confidence and purpose. They have fun in their work site. Even they just enjoy the value of a check. They get to go to the movies. They feel very productive. The DAC currently works with 100 clients and is people-centered. The time spent with the program varies. It can be a few months to several years. Each client decides how they want to spend their day and that gives them control of their life. We've had other clients who come in and are able to build their skills, build their confidence and then we can help them either work in a community job through us or part of an enclave which is a group of people who go work at a job or they can actually go out into the community and work on their own. Most clients typically work a six-hour day in Park Rapids, Haiti-Claude, Lakeland News. As part of the program, clients also work at Tin Ceiling and Selvage Depot. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


The indie music legend Morrissey has been cruelly and unfairly parodied by The Simpsons. What a shame it is that The Simpsons, one of the greatest TV shows, has now submitted to woke tyranny.  They've done this largely because of his vocal support for our party and as the press keep repeating for condemning Halal meat as evil. Halal meat is evil and it shows that Morrissey is in fact a man of principles who as an animal lover knows that Halal is evil. It's cruel, it's horrible, it's wrong and he's right to stand up and call it out for what it is. It'd be interesting to see The Simpsons discuss the realities of Halal. It'd be interesting to see what Lisa Simpson thought about the realities of Halal on stone slaughter which kills animals while they are awake and conscious.  Morrissey is right to call it evil. It's such a shame, isn't it, to see The Simpsons go down this road. We've recently had this ridiculous absurd display of Hank Azaria who plays Appu apologising for comedy. This is the ultimate wokeness and this is why Morrissey is being attacked in this way. He refuses to go along with woke tyranny like almost every other celebrity on the planet has done and like The Simpsons has done. But this is how woke tyranny works.  The press have been reporting on this and reporting on his support for our party. They're calling us far right as they always do. It doesn't matter that we completely reject that label. They call us far right for a couple of reasons. One, because we object to the horrors that we have imported into Western society. Horrors like FGM, Halal meat, child marriage, grooming gangs, outright misogyny and homophobia that we have imported. We object. So does Morrissey. It's not far right. As for immigration, between 70 and 80%, according to almost every poll, in this country want less immigration. Are they all far right? They're not far right. They just want to keep their country, their culture, their way of life. And they are tired, tired of being the least important people in their own lands. That's not far right either because almost every person on this planet wants their country, wants to keep their way of life, their culture, their heritage, their identity protected. Nothing far right about it. The press is poison. It is consistent in its condemnation of people without even listening to their point of view, without even trying to understand why they believe what they do, why we believe what we do. We don't have any kind of fair hearing from the press. Simply because we are against the woke tyranny and we won't go along with it. This is why we're attacked. That's why Morrissey was attacked. It's wrong, it's cruel, it's unfair and it's outright shoddy journalism and it's outright shoddiness from the Simpsons.  But we're very proud to have Morrissey on our side. He is, as I say, a man of principles. We are a party of principles. And no matter how many lies the press tells, no matter how much they pillory us, we will continue to stand up and tell the truth. We will continue to stand up for Britain, its culture, its values, its heritage, no matter what the press have to say about it. We're proud of that and we're proud to have Morrissey on our side.


with the news hour and working with us and making possible our arts coverage. We've given it a name, Canvas. It has enabled us to tell stories that really are the heart of people think of news as straight news, and yes it is, but if we couldn't tell the kinds of art stories that we are able to do, we wouldn't be telling the whole picture of America. And frankly, it also enables us in so many ways to get away from the coast, to get to the middle of the country, the heart of the country, and again to tell stories that are so important in our role as journalists. So I just have to say the thank you tonight as we begin this conversation. It is, thank you, it is, the title is Making Issues Move the Role of Data and Digital in Our Democracy. And you could not ask for two individuals who are better suited to talk about it than Teddy Goff and Ori Renaud. I think you have their bios. You know that Ori is at the White House heading up digital strategy there. Teddy Goff, of course, ran digital for the Obama campaign, has been very involved in governance and in digital on the political side. He now runs his own firm. But I want to start this conversation with kind of a personal question so that people know where the two of you are coming from. First of all, where did you grow up? Second of all, just to kind of place you generationally, may I ask how old you are? And third, how did you get news and information when you were becoming an adult? Teddy, I'm going to start with you. Sure. I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And I've moved four miles in my life. I'm 34 years old. So, you know, I was in college when I think I was one year behind Zuckerberg and his set. So I remember clearly when Facebook was coming along and then after it, Twitter and everything else. I was an avid reader of the New York Times as a kid. And I still am, but obviously the kind of form factor for the Times has changed. I'm a person who spends an embarrassing amount of time on Twitter. And I try to get, you know, credible news sources from it. But the discovery mechanism is Twitter these days. What about you, Ory? So I grew up in New York as well in Queens. I went to college in Manhattan. So we have a very New York-centric view here. I'm also in my early 30s. And I get a lot of news and got a lot of news growing up. I think online early on, I was that geeky kid who loved computers and loved the Internet. I think I'm less social-driven in how I get my news. I think that some of the really interesting things that have happened in the past couple of years are how news has been able to find platforms other than their own websites. I'm a big fan of Apple News, for example. So going beyond what some people might think, you look at Twitter and that's it. I think Twitter is a great place to hear a perspective on news from people you follow. It's not the best place to get the news on its own. So I want to add, and to both of you, Teddy, to both of you, do you think average Americans are better informed today than when you were growing up or not? I think it depends how you define better informed. But my answer is no, they're worse informed. I think they receive more content. There are more ways to receive a greater diversity of content and some of that's a good development. The last panel spoke about that very compellingly. I don't think that older, the days of the mainstream media that it's easy to be nostalgic about were perfect by any stretch and they left a whole lot of marginalized voices out of the discussion, of course. But they also made sure that everybody was reliant on essentially a single set of facts or maybe two sets of facts but not a hundred or a million sets of facts. And I think it's impossible to look at the dialogue today and conclude anything other than that it's utterly transformed to its own detriment by misinformation and confusion and that's a result of the media discovery ecosystem that we have today. How do you see it, Ori? I think people have the opportunity to be as informed as they ever have. And there's a responsibility as an American citizen to inform yourself as to what's really going on and I think today's information environment provides more opportunity to find information, to find facts, to learn the truth than ever before. There's responsibility that comes with that. There's challenges that comes with that. It's a more complex information environment. The gatekeepers that have traditionally been at the forefront of that information environment are changing. One thing we see a lot is people talk a lot about followership and reach and all that but when you think about engagement, who's actually driving reactions and engagement and interest online? Individuals drive far more engagement than brands. You look at this in media and you look at the engagement rates of a major publication versus some of its top journalists. You look at it in politics, in government, in consumer brands. Individuals are driving that engagement. People want to hear from other people they know and they trust and so that voicefulness becomes a key part of it. That presents challenges but it also presents a lot more avenues through which people can be informed. So does that mean you think on balance that people are better informed because of the influence of individuals more than ever? I think people can be better informed. They have the opportunity. So scenario, whether you're the President of the United States or somebody running for the Senate or you run a non-profit right now or you're in office or you are in a position where there's an issue that really matters to you whether it's the environment or you want to do something about tax cuts what's the best way to get that message across right now, Ori? So I think one thing to note that's important is digital has gotten a lot easier. It's not the secret sauce that you need a lot of expertise in anymore. The secret to digital is speak like a human being and be authentic. Create content people actually care about. So for those of you who are in this room working at community foundations a lot of these great organizations used to be that you needed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a website you needed a video production team or consultants that would charge you $30,000, $40,000 a video designers, creators, all this stuff. It's gotten a lot easier. iPhone videos are fine. There are tools out there that let you design graphics like Canva that are easy to use and simple. Digital has made it a lot easier for all kinds of groups to get messages out. And it's unfortunate that sometimes people get in their own way. We get in our own way. If you're on Twitter and you're looking to a PDF report are people really going to open that on their phones? If you're writing a press release that sounds like it was written for the board of your organization and with no other audience in mind is it really going to break through? So digital is easier than it's ever been. The bar for authenticity is higher, but that's a good thing. So you pretty much only touched on digital there. Does that mean that it's 100% digital or do you worry about the legacy media, old fashioned media? How do you think about how that message is going to reach many people you need to read? I've spent a lot of time thinking about that because one of the challenges coming in to a new administration and I think every administration faces this is where does digital fit? Digital in the White House has evolved going back to the Clinton years and the Bush years and the Obama years. And I think where we are right now is digital isn't this separate thing. It's part of everything. When you think about the New York Times article you just read. Yeah, you could have read it in print or maybe you heard the story on their podcast or maybe you saw one of their reporters in a clip online. More likely you saw an article on Twitter or you went on their website. Digital isn't a separate thing anymore. It's kind of a part of the entire information ecosystem. I'd say it's the overwhelming majority of the information ecosystem. So Teddy, does that sound like what you would do? Whether you were working in the Obama administration, working on that campaign, or for the kind of work you do right now? Yeah, I agree with most of what was just said. And I certainly think that there's digital in the so-called legacy media. I don't know why people call it that. The traditional media are interwoven. The New York Times subscription base is bigger than it's ever been during the rise of Twitter. The two can complement each other and support each other's growth. I believe that. And I think when you think about a media strategy you've got to think about how to get a message out everywhere. I guess I do think, and I presume we'll sort of get into this, it's important not to be too utopian though about how one finds an audience today or what it means to deliver a message that's interesting to people. A lot of messages aren't going to be that interesting to people, but they may still be important. A lot of messages may have difficulty finding a passionate audience. They may resonate broadly but shallowly. And I think that's part of the reason why we're seeing polarization in our politics is that these platforms obviously create an incentive for those who are yelling and screaming or talking to some community of passionate concern. That can feel great when it helps produce or accelerate the Arab Spring or when same-sex marriage, that movement moves so quickly because people are telling their stories and people are finding their community and everyone's retweeting each other. It doesn't feel so great when it has to do with hate, when it has to do with fear, when it has to do with grievance. I think a question that everybody in media and politics and tech is going to have to fight over and hopefully come to some non-dystopian resolution too is how do we continue to make sure that people can be well-served by content, can find the content they care about, can be well-served by politicians and media. They're giving them the kind of things they care about without playing to the absolute worst instincts in human nature. And that's a real challenge, I think, for people who are trying to get attention around a less sexy issue or something that's out of the news or something where you're urging moderation rather than something at the extremes. Don't worry. How do you do that? Let's just talk about it. There's a lot of discussion, there's a lot of criticism out there right now. Go ahead and respond. Well, I think you said something really interesting. You talked about interesting versus important. If it's important, we need to demonstrate why it's interesting. I'm thinking about a lot of the audience in this room. When you think about what your goals are, what your metrics of success are, if you're looking for the same level of engagement on a piece of content, on a piece of information that really kind of tugs at the heartstrings, that has that emotional pull, as you are on something, let's say, related to tax policy, which I love when people get less excited about, you're not going to get the same engagement. That's okay. But if it's important and not instinctively interesting, how are you demonstrating why it's important? How are you demonstrating the relevance to the audience you're trying to reach? At the White House, we make a lot of videos that explain policy. We make videos that really kind of dive into why are we doing this, why does it matter, and we make some funny videos. We know that the funny videos are going to do way better, but our metric of success is different. If we make an animated explainer video on a piece of policy and it does a million views, that's great. If we try to be really funny, we did this thing with, there was a video clip where some people heard Yanny and some people heard Laurel. It was this weird internet thing. We made a video on that. That did like 30 million views. Different measures of success, and that's okay. I'm as happy and as proud with the million views on the policy issue because it got through. We were able to talk about why it matters, why we're doing what we're doing to an audience that's engaged. And is there a limit to that? Is there a point where you say the entertainment piece of this, the humor piece of this is taking people's attention away from the point we're trying to make? I don't think so. I think there have been numerous examples of people in elected office being funny and being serious. I think President Obama was great at bringing pop culture into the White House. It was a great way to get people engaged. Once people are engaged, there are more opportunities to talk about policy. Eddie, what about that? You know, I think, you know, I guess to me to think about a funny video is almost the wrong example. You know, there's nothing wrong with a funny video. Funny videos are going to get views. I have no problem with politicians or media outlets or anybody else putting out funny videos. I guess to me the bigger concern is let's think about some other examples of what can draw an audience. So it's obvious that, you know, these are all kind of different examples, but the sort of freak show element of politics, you know, Speaker Pelosi ripping up a piece of paper is going to get more attention than an actual policy issue of concern to people's day-to-day lives. It's obvious that hate and vitriol get a lot of attention. It's obvious that, you know, whatever is in the Twitter, you know, news cycle of the day gets a lot of attention. So, you know, I think there's going to be nice examples where, you know, a serious policy explainer gets a decent amount of views and the goal wasn't virality and that's considered a success. There's going to be examples where funny video gets a lot of views and that's innocuous. I think if you look at the ecosystem as a whole, the incentive structures are badly misaligned and the whole system is built to monetize, you know, people's reactions to things that are, you know, sort of orthogonal to whether it's healthy to the discourse or productive to the actual policy outcome. Right. And that's my question. I think you said something really true there about incentives being misaligned, especially when we talk about media. So I come from a media and journalism and publishing background and I think one of the things that is great about government is we don't monetize our content. So it's not like there's an incentive to get more views versus less views. We can focus on the topics we want to be talking about. When you're in publishing and you're monetizing through display ads or through content recommendation engines, you are dependent on the amount of clicks you get for your lifeblood. If people aren't coming to your site and that's how you're monetizing, you're done. And so there's an incentive there to get people there regardless of the value or depth of the engagement that follows. I think the good news is a lot of people in media are starting to experiment with other avenues of monetization, with other incentive structures that provide different ways to look at it. So one of them is Quartz. It's a global business publication. It doesn't have any display ads. It's built around native content and therefore they're not in the business of chasing clicks for the purpose of monetizing display ads. When they first launched, they sold sponsorships on share voice. People, brands wanting to be a part of that particular content experience, be a part of that publishing ecosystem and not having to worry about how many times did this display ad load, and by the way, it probably loaded on the bottom of the site where nobody saw it anyway. So the incentives in that kind of legacy structure, again, legacy, I don't know if it's the right word, but they are misaligned. And for media, not just journalism, but media to do well, I think we need to have serious conversations about what engagements are of high value. If somebody loaded a pre-roll ad and watched the video for two seconds, was that worth it? How are we going to create mechanisms for people to be drawn in more deeply to long-form content? Sometimes people think the internet is snackable, short-form, punchy, pithy. There is room for long-form on the internet if you can demonstrate value. What's the incentive for anybody engaging in the internet, Teddy and then Ori, to think about the health of our democracy, which is what we're here to talk about, to think about where we're going as a country, to think about our values as Americans? I think the short answer is they're not provided that incentive. I mean, there's a narrow slice of people who care about that because they care about that and they may seek out content or conversations that get to what you're talking about. I've been thinking a lot, I'm sure we all have, about the politics of optimization and what that means. I used to be a lot more rosy about it, not just because I used to win elections and now we've lost some elections, but I think this has happened all over the world. I've said this a lot of times, but it's no coincidence that President Trump is considered good at Facebook and so is President Duterte and so is the Brexit movement, and so is the German far right and the French far right and President Erdogan and President Orban. Some of them may be Prime Minister. Sorry, I probably got that wrong, but I mean, these platforms serve to the advantage of these types of autocrats and I don't think that President Trump necessarily belongs in Lee with all of those people, but with some of them he does. And so I think it's a short, let's talk about a type of optimization that I think most of us would find innocuous. If you log into Facebook and if you have a friend who just got engaged to be married or just had a kid, that's probably going to be the first thing that comes up. And I think we all think, well, that makes sense. That's good news, that's much more interesting than most of the posts. Okay, I'm fine with that. I think it's a pretty short hop from there to let's serve ads to people who may care about health care, let's serve them ads about health care, people who care about immigration, let's serve them ads about immigration, and it's a pretty short hop from there to find pockets of people who are racist, people who are intolerant, people who are driven by grievance or fear of the other, fear of immigrants, fear of women, whatever it may be, and serve them content that's going to stoke that and mobilize them further, help them find each other and radicalize them each other even further. And so it's hard to really, I think everyone thinks, well, engagement photo on Facebook, why shouldn't I be served that? That's nice, that's a better experience for me, but it's a very short line I think from there to some of the much more malign effects that we see and it's the same kind of monetization mechanics and obviously the same technical mechanics that drive both. Ori, clearly a lot of what Teddy's describing is going on right now. How do you see that from where you sit? So I think you asked about the incentives online and I think when you think about the ways in which people organize, when you think about the financial incentives of media, when you think about the kind of civic society nature of information and media, digital isn't that fundamentally different in kind from any other form of media, it's different in scale, it's different in scope. And so before the era of, say, Facebook ads, as you were talking about, you could target a particular type of person by saying, I think they watch that kind of TV show. I'm going to buy ads on that kind of TV show. Now you can buy it by whatever particular interest area Facebook offers. The CDC, for example, we're working with them really closely running ads around the opioid issue. We built a website called Crisis Next Door where people could share stories about how they've been impacted and then we turned those into ads. The idea is to fight the stigma of opioid addiction and show how it's a crisis that touches every community. The targeting that we're able to do with those kinds of pieces of information is very valuable. It's not based on medical history or anything like that, but based on geographic areas where CDC is telling us there's a higher level of concern with the opioid crisis, things like that. That's a good thing. That increases the efficiency of the delivery of the message. It reduces waste. And so old media, new media, legacy media, digital media doesn't matter. It's all about how you use it. The tool itself, I don't think, is the evil part. And so let's talk about... I mean, let's talk about the political motivations here, the policy motivations, political motivations. They exist everywhere. And the motivations to stick to the facts, to stick to what's accurate. I mean, where are we? We are now in an environment where misinformation, disinformation is flying around. What is our responsibility? What's your responsibility at the White House? Teddy, how do you see... Teddy, how do you see the responsibility of folks, whether they are in public office or whether they work in public policy? And then, after this, I want to ask you about the role of the social media companies. Well, I was going to get to that, so I had to short circuit that, but I think it's impossible to answer the first question without getting to what it sounds like your follow-up is going to be. I mean, to me, it goes without saying that the press should report the truth is going to be debates about, you know, what's interpretation and what's truth. But, you know, I think reasonable people can agree most of the time on what truth is and the press should report that. It goes without saying the politicians should speak the truth and not originate or further disinformation. That's not the politics that we have right now, but it should be the politics, and I think it's hard to dispute that. You know, to me, the problem... And I think, you know, Ori said earlier, I agree, but more 30 years into the Internet age and 15 years into the Facebook age and people can educate themselves and learn how not to further disinformation and things like that. But I do think that the primary responsibility here has to rest with the platforms. That doesn't, by the way, make me particularly optimistic that we're going to get a solution anytime soon. But there's study after study after study that shows that if a person has been exposed to something that's false and then they're also exposed to a fact check or something that says this has been disputed and that's true, the damage is done. They are highly likely to remember, recall, and believe the thing that they said and in fact they're likely to distrust the fact checker. And that may actually just sort of make this vicious spiral get worse. So, you know, to me, the only possible solution is going to come when fewer people are exposed to less misinformation and there's no way to achieve that. I mean, again, we can all do our part, you know, individual people can do their best to be educated and not share misinformation. Politicians don't have to do it. The press can, you know, figure out ways to do it less, although I don't think they do it that much.  They have a purpose. They have a political bent. They may be trying to make money as well. You know, those campaigns need not to be able to spread their content on Facebook and elsewhere and have it achieve, you know, massive reach in part by way of an algorithm that is designed to make a handful of shareholders money. And there's no solution, I think, that doesn't, you know, sort of originate there. What about that? I mean, the obligation and responsibility to be accurate and to think about what it is that's either misinforming or disinforming the American people. So, I think, in our role at the White House, the thing we can do best and what we try to do is to share as much of the detail as possible to make the case but to share the why, to delve into that information and to, frankly, work across government, our sphere to make information more accessible. So and so says the budget increases funding for this and that's really bad. So and so says it cuts funding and that's really good. Okay. How do we make it so that to find the answer, people don't have to wade through a 600-page PDF? How do we surface that information to make it more accessible? And you're right. Some people are going to get the information that isn't true. Some people are going to believe it without digging in. I think in government, what we can do best is give people as much information as possible. It's their tax dollars. And in digital, what we need to be thinking through is how do we use the digital tools and resources that exist to make information more accessible than it's ever been before? There are going to be disagreements. We made a video explaining why pulling out of the Paris deal was a good idea. It talked through the lack of burden sharing, the lack of enforcement, the differentiation between levels of countries in terms of obligations and the French embassy in D.C. took the video, edited it, crossed out our words and put their own words into it. Okay, cool. They have a different perspective. They literally took our exact video file, manipulated it, not in a bad way. I think we need to be careful about how we use some of these words and some of the implications of them. And they made their case. And then people get to the side. And what is the role of ... I'm going to come back to this in a minute, the folks who are originating the material, but what is the role of our social media platforms? Facebook has made, Twitter, YouTube. What is the role of these incredibly powerful social media platforms? I don't think there's an easy answer there. And I think the answers also depend on what kind of problems and what kind of content we're talking about. These companies have started something called the Global Internet Forum to Counterterrorism. And it's actually an incredible effort they've put together where they're able to take down almost all terrorist content, about 98% of it, within two hours of posting, automatically without a human ever seeing it. They're doing something called hashing where if a video goes up on YouTube, an ISIS video goes up on YouTube, and YouTube takes it down, they'll add it to the hashing database, and when that video goes up on Facebook, doesn't matter if the file name's not exactly the same, doesn't matter if it's not the exact same length, Facebook will be able to take it down automatically because the digital signature that video is in their database. That's the kind of content moderation I think we all agree we want these companies doing. It's the kind of content moderation these companies feel comfortable doing. When we get into who gets to decide what's true and what's not, we get into much more complicated issues. In the life space, for example, there was a piece of content that was taken down. It was of a medical doctor saying that a late-term abortion is never medically necessary. It was ruled to be disinformation. There was a medical doctor who disagreed, and there was a big debate about that. Should Facebook be in the business of deciding that? Should a medical doctor be able to express an opinion contrary to that of the fact-checker? I think the toughest question here, I don't have the answer, the toughest question is who gets to decide what's true? Until we figure it out, my personal view is that government doesn't get to decide what's true and shouldn't get to decide what's true and that these platforms, to your point about incentives and shareholders, I don't know that they're going to get it exactly right. So I think temporarily we're going to continue to be talking through these questions, we're going to continue working through these issues, figuring out who is the arbiter of what's right and not. I think there's a lot of risk in getting it wrong. I think that if there are no rules and no police, then the advantage rests with the criminal and the advantage rests with the bad actor and that's the case in the offline world and that's the case in the online world. So I agree that there's going to be lots of areas where reasonable people can disagree and where whatever this governing body that I'm postulating is going to get it wrong and people are going to be very right to resent that their piece of content was taken down. That's the case in the real world is we have hundreds of thousands of people in prison for smoking marijuana and that shouldn't be illegal either. So I think the question is how do we, instead of doing nothing, do something? Something would be better than nothing and then as we do something, we could improve upon that something. I agree it shouldn't rest solely with the company and I agree it shouldn't rest solely with the government. Perhaps there's some way to have a coalition of government, the companies and third parties but I guess the thing that I want to point out is they're already in the business of moderating content and we use the word policing. Policing what content you see.  They have decided that you are more interested in that than in your other friends post about the sandwich you had for lunch. And by that same token, they have decided that nudity is not allowed on Facebook. Okay, seems reasonable. They've decided that photos of breastfeeding count as nudity so you'll never see a photo of breastfeeding on Facebook. Not sure I agree with that one but okay, I can see the logic there.  And so I guess what I think on that is neutrality is a choice. And if they're in the business of deciding that breastfeeding is inappropriate then it's not that they've decided not to get into the battle of hate speech.  They are proactively supporting hate speech. If they were a non-algorithmic platform if they were a non-algorithmic platform if it was the way that it once was on Twitter and Facebook that you log in and you see a chronological feed of whatever one you follow has said I think there could be a much more reasonable case to make but instead they are serving you the stuff that you think is most relevant and that feels innocuous when it's a baby photo or an engagement photo it's not innocuous when it's something that's hatred or misinformation or both. So Ori, why don't the platforms have more responsibility or maybe you think they do and do you have conversations with the president about what he writes on Twitter and his... There are two very different questions in there. Okay, I'm trying to bring you back about what he writes and the obligation he feels or doesn't feel to make sure that it's that it's accurate. So I think you mentioned what it would be like if the platforms had a chronological feed with no recommendation engine, no algorithm. From a purely digital perspective from a user experience perspective I personally love that and I think those platforms wouldn't be what they are today and we wouldn't be having this conversation. With the sheer amount of content what they've decided to do you could say had to do you could say all of us wanted them to do was provide experiences that are more relevant, that are easier to sort through but that was a decision and you know I think for those of us who spend most of our days online we wouldn't mind seeing everything in one place. There are ways to build those kinds of tools on Twitter especially TweetDeck, things like that. And so inherently those decisions are going to be made if these platforms are going to scale. I think my point isn't that there's no solution it's that I don't know what the solution is and that in every single situation you talk about there's going to be that risk of getting it wrong and we have to balance that risk versus kind of the reward. You talked about the analogy of crime and I think it's an interesting one what a lot of people in criminal justice will say better than one better than X number of guilty people should go free than one innocent person should be in jail the stakes aren't quite the same I think we disagree on who's innocent and who's guilty because I would agree with that I would just flip it as to who ought to be in jail who gets to decide, right? If government is it driven by politics is it driven by elections what is that due to democracy? It's a hard decision, I'll give you an example you were talking about not quite terrorist content but potentially harmful content Senator McConnell posted a video of protesters outside his house making violent threats Twitter took it down because it showed a violent threat in most cases when the victim or target of the threat puts up a piece of content saying hey this just happened to me that wouldn't come down Twitter made a decision in this case that it should there were a lot of reasons behind it they explained it, they talked about how it revealed personal information including where he lives okay in most cases they're comfortable revealing that information eventually they put it back up they said we got it wrong fine we'll work with you we put it back up these companies themselves will say we don't always get it right on the conservative side we talk a lot about how there's a disproportionate impact on conservatives when views are censored online some of the companies will say yeah that happens we're working on it some of the companies will say we got it wrong in all these cases we're sorry we know this happens we think it happens just as much on the left and we get it wrong about the same regardless or left or right okay that's another perspective what do you think I think when you get it wrong and you fix it three or four days later the moment's been missed conversations move quickly the news cycle has accelerated and so when somebody wants to weigh in on a policy debate and Twitter or Facebook or somebody incorrectly by their own standards takes down their post only to put it back up three or four days later the moment's been missed the damage is done it's not that it's repaired once it's put back on and I think the president is concerned about this for all Americans regardless of their political views we built a tool a couple of months back where people could share stories about how they've been impacted by whatever you want to call it censorship tech bias by online speech issues and the original kind of introductory text of the tool was conservatives are feeling this experience is happening whatever the president line edited it to say all Americans regardless of their political views and so I keep going back to there's no single person or entity organization or group of entities or organizations I trust to get it right and just quickly on that question earlier do you have conversations with the president about what he writes on Twitter we don't talk about the Twitter account ever here I'm not going to talk about the Twitter account and how it's managed and get into that issue so Teddy we're going to take questions from the audience in 30 seconds but what about you know this idea that that we really don't have a path a clear path forward for these social media platforms to figure out what their healthy role is in our democracy I think that nine times out of ten when people talk not just on this on any issue they say they fear the unintended consequences of making a change that's because they're fine with the status quo that's what that means and you know I think conservatives have very successfully argued that the tech companies are biased against them even though look at Facebook's most shared posts every single day eight, nine, or all ten of them are going to be Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire in places like that so you know there's no evidence to support you know to support that claim you said 30 seconds I'm going to go a little over sorry but you know I was in the Philippines a couple weeks ago it's a horrifying situation most people have a cell phone they may not have a TV they may not have a desktop most of the carriers have deals with Facebook where Facebook is free and the rest of the internet is not so if you log in to the internet that's Facebook you can read the headline you can't even click off of it because that's going to incur data charge so Facebook is the intermediary for an entire country of 100 million people's entire ability to access the news and there's a very weak mainstream media there there's essentially two mainstream media outlets one of which is very likely about to lose its license thanks to the Duterte government so misinformation is all you can find there how is this going to work and so we're worried about America as well we should be we should also worry about the rest of the world I think Ori is completely right that there aren't obvious solutions that no one should have all the power that there need to be appeals process transparency you know lots of stakeholder engagement and so forth but the answer can't be let's do nothing for fear of unintended consequences because the consequences we've got now are intended and pretty rotten we have time for two or three questions one back here one over here yes sir hi there Simon Galperin from the community info co-op this is a question for Ori and the night foundation given the Trump administration's role and dis dis and misinformation and rhetoric that has led to the death of journalists from Maryland to Turkey what are we supposed to think about you being here telling us about how we should be interacting with our communities and ways that protect democracy and uphold our values and to the night foundation what are we supposed to think about this conversation in juxtaposed to the conversation we were just having before about how important diversity equity inclusion is we use words like love we talked about Reiki and now we have an administration up on this stage that is actively working against everybody in this room so I'd like to ask Ori why you think you should be here and the night foundation why they think Ori should be here and deserves to speak to us well I would say before Ori answers I will say Ori was invited to provide a view from the White House where he could speak freely on what he could talk about and that that was not going to include regardless of who was in power speaking about certain topics and so I don't I'm going to let Ori answer that question in his own way I'm certainly not speaking for him but I will state on behalf I think of the night media forum and certainly myself who extended the invitation that I welcomed the fact that he was willing to come but what some might have considered was hostile territory so I am absolutely aligned with your commentary I understand where it comes from but not everything can be answered when you represent any political party so I'm going to ask Ori to answer what he can answer and I thank you very much for the question so I'm sure you can go back to something you said a couple minutes ago when you were talking about the Philippines there is a danger to only having one side of an issue to only seeing one perspective and to only being willing to listen to one perspective and in that particular example to only having one source of information the reason I have confidence in our country and in our democracy and in the American people to find the truth is because there is a multitude of sources of information there are a lot of examples abroad where really tragic violent incidents have happened because of disinformation in WhatsApp groups for example closed networks where other information isn't able to get in there and so I'm always happy to have conversations with folks who disagree with me I have a lot of liberal friends and I think we all have different perspectives if we're not able to talk about those perspectives we're going to get more and more into our silos have a harder time understanding many people who disagree with us and that's not good for the country thank you we have a question over here thank you thank you for being here my name is Rick Tims and I teach at Queens University of Charlotte and as I'm hearing you talk today about who can regulate the web and how or should it be done I'm thinking back to the earliest days of radio and the earliest days of radio weren't regulated until it became necessary and it actually was precipitated by the sinking of the Titanic where the radio operator couldn't get back to shore and so government intervened at that time and said there's a reason here for us to do something the same thing happened with television this of course is a different era and it's a different time but I'm curious to know what parallels you think there could be for where we are now to become some kind of a balance between the owners of the medium and government to regulate thank you that's an excellent question you know I was just talking to a media historian who said that with both radio and television it took about 30 years roughly from the advent of the technology to the settling down of both business and regulatory framework that became the common place of media I don't know if there's some magic to the idea of 30 years maybe with the internet it takes 40 years or 100 years but I do think that we are at an early stage of figuring out how this is all going to work these technologies they don't feel that new we've been living with them for a long time but they're relatively new and I do think there's a parallel people talk about censorship and so forth and I think part of that has to do with the fact that people perceive and rightly so or justifiably so anyway Facebook to be a platform rather than a publisher and that's a very obviously open debate that I'm sure many in this room have thoughts on you know when it comes to TV no one is guaranteed the right to a half hour daily news show on NBC and no one seems to think that's an injustice so there are gatekeepers there deciding what kinds of content you have access to and what kinds of content you don't have access to and I get why these are participatory platforms you're checking in with your grandkids and you're talking to your friends and you're posting photos from your birthday party there I do think that the word censorship is a bit of a boogeyman the idea of gatekeeping who's got access to mass media is something that we've all accepted and I think justifiably so I think some ideas have no business getting a platform and so that history with radio and TV is part of why I'm so enthusiastically in support of you know a more aggressive regulatory framework when it comes to social media Please join me in thanking this panel Thank you so much Judy Heavy, Ory