well, congressman, it's a pleasure to be with you today. thank you so much for. taking the time, i'd like to ask you start by asking just a broad question about this book. what is the message of this book? what's the one thing you're trying to get across? well, ryan, thank you for reading the book, first of all. and being willing to host this this program. and i have tell you the motivation for writing this book and the message that i want to get across are one and the same. and that is that allowing for amazon, apple, facebook and google to control all the flow of information in a is dangerous to the democracy. it is dangerous whether you're on the right, whether you're on the left. and it is something we all need to be very aware of and take

action to make sure that we are protecting our elections and our system of government government. when i look forward to getting into a number of aspects of that point. let me start though, with how you came to this. you're a conservative republican. how did you come to this issue and this perspective? well, i was the in the last congress, the 117th congress, i was the ranking republican on the antitrust subcommittee of judiciary committee. and having on the antitrust subcommittee, the previous congress, we started an investigation of these tech companies during the last congress, we offered legislation and during that whole process. i learned a lot about monopoly, antitrust law, competition

policy and all of that led me to the conclusion there's a real danger. you write in the book about i don't know if you'd call it epiphany, but but sort of a moment where you were in your home state and this issue was kind of driven home for you and issue was kind of driven home for you as something that was important to focus on. tell me about that. yeah. so we had a field hearing which is basically a hearing that's outside of washington, d.c. and it was in boulder, university of colorado law school in colorado. we refer to boulder as 28 square miles surrounded by reality. so i wasn't real excited to go to boulder. it was a cold morning in the winter and i wasn't excited. did go out in that morning in that weather, but i went to this this hearing.

i also felt like i knew what the answer was, that the free market would deal this issue involving. and so for all those reasons it just wasn't something i was more motivated to go do. and i was the only republic and that was going to be at this hearing. i went and listened to the testimony of the witnesses and we had a lunch where we heard informally from some other companies who are competitors with these companies. and my conclusion was that the market wasn't going to take care of this issue, that these companies were so big, so powerful, and so anti-competitive that it would be decades before startups, before there would be disruptors in this industry that would change the situation. and so that was really the the moment that i embraced this antitrust solution to what i saw as a a very serious problem. and you're right that afterwards

you were actually excited to come to washington, for one, which i guess tells us a little bit about what it's like to be a congressman from day to day. but why were you excited? well, i was excited to get back dc and start working on something that was really important and get together with colleagues. i visited more than 80 republican congressmen, talk to them about this issue and why these bills, the bills that we eventually up with are so important. let's come back to that because i want to hear how these ideas are being received in congress. i want to hear about how you're doing on this on this journey. but before we do, let's describe the problem here and what i found interesting is you're you're trying to connect sort of these this idea, the free market and and the market in which most businesses operate to this concept of the marketplace of ideas and, you know, if we think about each of the companies that you mentioned or sort of in the

book, google, facebook, amazon and apple, and we think about free speech for in the cases of google and facebook, i think people wouldn't understand, you know, facebook there's a lot of speech on facebook, google owned youtube. and so there's a tremendous amount of speech happening on youtube. but to connect to that idea of the marketplace ideas to the free market, let's talk about amazon and apple for a minute. what you see as the competition with amazon and does that relate to excuse me, the competition problem with amazon and how does that relate to free speech? sure. so amazon obviously has amazon videos and there have been, as i point out in the book, a number of examples where amazon took videos off during certain time periods because it didn't fit with their narrative and the idea that amazon is acting in a way in terms of retailing, i give an example of their

predatory pricing with another product. i think it was the diaper market and how the their their actions in the market in the business marketplace, they were able to suppress the competition in that marketplace and also how they suppressed viewpoints in the in the marketplace of ideas on their video side. so isn't as direct a link obviously with with google you've got a company that controls the search and their their algorithm can yield results that we know that in for example june of 2020 the google changed algorithm and it benefited joe biden and a disadvantaged donald trump. that of direct link isn't there with amazon but their business

practice of finding a competitor and crushing that to make sure that they have this and oftentimes with illegal conduct in my view. so that they have this they maintain their monopolies. they use that same. strategy when it comes to competing viewpoints that they don't like in with their and in their book sales for example, they have shadow banned a number of books. ryan anderson's book on on transgender issues is one that that they i think it's when i forget the name of the book but it is their their their dominance in the bookselling marketplace and willingness to not sell or shadow banned

certain books is is an example of how they influence that marketplace of ideas. and how about apple what what are the competition problems you see there and how does it relate to the bigger theme that you're bringing up? well, in apple, i give a couple of examples of how they acted in china. but i think apple in there was a an app hk dot map, which was a a map or an app allowed the protesters in china to identify where the police were so that they could go someplace and protest. and the chinese government, the chinese communist government told apple to take the app off and they took the app off. they told them to take the bible app off and they took the bible app off. they told them to take the koran app off and they did. and so in in certainly in china, it's obvious that chinese

communist party is able to influence speech through apple's app store in this country. what we saw with parler right after the january six riots in the u.s. capitol, we saw that apple was the first to move and took parler off of its app store. now we know that that some of the rioters were using parler. we also know that some of the rioters are using facebook and twitter twitter and facebook didn't suffer any of the repercussions that parler suffered. and soon after parler acted. amazon web services acted also to take down parler. and parler was a conservative alternative to quit to twitter. and i should state since the companies aren't on here, that know from their perspective, they say that they don't operate based on political bias. and and i think they would, you know portray themselves as

corporations who are sort of doing their best to operate within the rules of the jurisdictions where they are based and where they're operating. but let me let me ask you about your solutions here. so the primary legislative solution, do you see and that you're advocating for on hill, neil, there's really a package, ryan, that i think are important to look at and any one of them doesn't necessarily get the job done. but combined, i think they're important. so we know for example, with google that google controls the buy side of digital advertising, the sell side of the driver type thing, and they bought a company called doubleclick that is the auction house digital advertising. so they they control the whole area of digital advertising. that revenue stream and that control gives them the ability to do affect speech in this country. and i think it's and senator lee offered the bill with with

senator klobuchar in the senate. i have the bill with senator or congressman delaney, the house. and what we're what we would the bill in the solution really is that a company the size of google can engage on the buy side or the sell side or it can operate the auction house but it can't do more than one of those and that same legislation would apply to a company the size of facebook. so it would immediately bring competition into that area of the marketplace that has huge that would have a impact on small town newspapers and other. other sources other products that are offered on google that that would be important that those those products get some of

the revenue from reading what they read after they search on on google. another one of the bills that i think is really important, i call it the nondiscrimination. it is in senate, i think referred to as the klobuchar grassley bill and in is basically a bill that that apple can't charge. spotify, 30% surcharge on its app store just because spotify competes with apple music apple can't charge and can't discriminate for against apps that are competitive with any of their products it would say to amazon and restrict amazon from finding a product that is selling well on the amazon platform. amazon then goes out and replicate the product and sells that product and benefits its product by putting it at the top of the search and putting the product that they have entered

into a contract with to sell on their platform and putting that product on page two or three of the search. so they you can't discriminate once you have a monopoly platform like these four companies have, you can't against the other products that are on your platform and that second bill that you mentioned was one that last year, 2022 was, you know, at least at the forefront of a lot of these debates on capitol hill. and i gather that you were writing the book while that was still being debated year. we got to the end of the year and it didn't pass. what happened? well, it passed the the house judiciary committee and sent to the floor, and it was never called up on the floor by speaker pelosi for a vote. i believe it, passed the senate judiciary committee. i'm not sure about that. but again, it wasn't called by senator schumer for a vote on

the floor. so think we have a good bipartisan coalition of members who recognize the role of antitrust law. it isn't the only solution, but it is part of the solution for this this problem. and the leadership in the democrat party on both sides refused to call bills that would have been part of that solution. now, see, with a republican controlled house, this congress, whether we are calling up some of those bills to be considered or not, what was your what was the recs or what is the reaction that you get when you speak to conservative and republicans about this issue? you know, at first it is it is a fairly technical issue. we're talking about the sherman act that was passed the 1800s, the clayton act passed in 1913, and of the case law that has

been generated since that time interpreting this. and then a new economy, obviously our founders didn't anticipate, nor did the writers of the sherman act and clayton act anticipate e-commerce and social media. and so we have a new economy. we're trying to old law and what i have to explain to people is it's not court's job to make this adjustment it. it is our job under article one of the constitution to legislate and we should be legislating an update of these laws to apply to a completely different of economy. and as i explain that as well as the purpose of these bills as well as give examples of how these companies have discriminated and really unfairly and i believe illegally discriminated against their competitors, then the light goes off at that point and all we want as conservatives and i think the same true on the other

side of the aisle is competition. i don't want to punish big, big, bad. to me, big is successful or big is a genius and people that have together a product that attracts consumers and all for that that that market driven success. what i'm opposed are these companies making sure the next generation of success is is not allowed and that's where i think my fellow republicans and conservatives look at this and say, yeah, if we're going to compete with china in the next decade or two, we've got to make sure. we we continue to innovate. and innovation is america's strength. and if we continue to innovate, we will be leaders. but we're never going to have a lower cost of labor, lower environmental or other other issues that they have in china.

so the only way for us to compete, to innovate, and if we allow these companies to crush innovation, we won't be getting there. and how is that message received when you talk to colleagues? i think it's received well. you know, we were able to get 39 votes on a three procedural antitrust bills that that are important. they're not the substantive bills that i talked about in the digital market or the nondiscrimination area but they were important and we were able to get 39 republicans on board. i think we probably had 50 votes before. some of the people who were opposed to these bills got into the whipping process. so i think there are probably. 50 to 80 republicans who would embrace some of these other bills. why is antitrust solution here?

let me explain that question a little bit. some of the issues that you write about have to do, for example, with, you know, someone posting something on facebook and then having that taken or censored by the company. and when you talk about a bill that would deal with self preferencing a company's products, it that may not necessarily directly apply a situation like that with facebook even though the concerns content moderation and how these companies you do or don't treat a given piece of content is a big driver of concerns about big tech in general. so why do you think antitrust is the right answer here in of a policy prescription for these concerns about big tech. so i think antitrust is one of three policies and areas that we need to move forward on. when you talk about facebook taking down content, i think

looking at section 230, also in that area and i think we're also looking at privacy issues. and so antitrust and to throw in privacy, we really need to come together to address these problems. but specifically, the facebook issue that you mentioned, if facebook gets a call from the white house and they're told we don't like what this person is saying about vaccine and we don't like what this person saying about masks. we don't like what this person is saying about some other area and facebook acts on that information. you now have government in the marketplace of ideas. you've got government determining or having speech taken down that they couldn't take down directly. and that's really the fear here is that government is acting indirectly in an area that it couldn't act directly if if, for example, the. the white house called the company who prints the wall street journal, distributes the

wall street journal and says, you know, there's a story coming out tomorrow that we didn't like that don't like we want you to not distribute disinformation. that's scary. and it's it goes so far against what we believe in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, that it offends us now tech is doing that and yet it is really you know, we don't put it in the category of speech or press because it's a private company if it's influenced by government, it is acting in its stead. and i think the law applies in that way thank you for that. and let's come back to that issue. the government getting involved in content. i want to ask one question before we do that. so you about free speech and when we are all of going about our business on a daily, we obviously have the first amendment to protect us when we

say thingor write things, publish things, but that freedom isn't unlimited. there's you know, there's certain that's considered harmful, you know, obvious answer or the obvious example or is yelling fire in a theater or something along lines. so it is it is some speech online harmful or are you saying that you believe speech ought to be allowed? no so so, you know, let's go back to the time the internet was was and congress came together and had to grapple with the idea just how much how much freedom, how much, how little regulation are we going to in this area. and they came up with a i think, a reasonable definition. they were concerned child -- being on the internet and their about terrorists recruiting on

the internet. they were concerned about deals on the internet. and so they they came up with a a standard in section 230 that immunize these platforms because the platforms don't create speech, they're just really the board, the public square where the speech is allowed to be voiced. and so they had a standard of of, you know, danger. is there a danger in in this area? and if there is a danger, facebook, others can that speech down without being sued they have a they have an immunity from from but then congress went too and they put in the term otherwise which is objectionable and that's where i think conservatives really have the problem and we need to make sure that what is objective to a liberal or business executive and silicon valley may not be to

farmer in rural colorado and and to take down that speech inhibits the the ability of americans to interact and grow we should be challenging the efficacy of vaccines and masks. that doesn't mean to say we should be putting false information out it doesn't mean to say that we should be putting people in jeopardy if rely on something they. but americans have to make sure. they consider various sources and then make a decision. we be in the role of determining what sources of information an american should receive. so sounds like you do agree there is a there be some content moderation. it's not sort of a total free for all where anyone can say anything online and if there is a line and somebody's got to set that line, the current we have now is it's the companies that go on a daily basis are are the

ones who ultimately make the decision where that line is want someone to always screaming at you, you know, i mean, if you you might, these are judgment calls. what's false and true, what's harmful and what isn't in other words, how do you solve this problem when it may just always isn't there always going to be this problem? i think there will be around the edges. the problem grown so large now with with the otherwise objectionable term that, you can drive a mack truck through objectionable. we've got to have a very narrowly defined set of dangers oh, you can't have child -- on the internet in if it's taken down. the company is immunized from putting that on the internet or taking it down from the internet. you can't have, you know, recruiting terrorists. we have to have a narrowly area the rest is up to speech.

if people disagree about masks let's have that debate in this we're a better country because of that debate than are you know you know another is whether kids under the age of 12 should be getting vaccines and that was a huge debate whether we should force servicemembers out of the military because refuse to get a vaccine. those issues that we should be debating and issues that should be open to the free for all of free speech. is there a difference your mind between freedom of speech and? freedom of speech? you know, i didn't invent that distinction, but it is one that people bring up in this context. in other words, facebook might allow someone to post something, but decide not not to promote that of content to others. and it sounds like you think conservatives of get the short end of the stick on both those

scores. but isn't it ultimately decision what it's going to promote. well, it's facebook's decision. the problem we have is only one facebook. if there were eight facebooks, we could go to fox news and newsmax or we could go to cnn and msnbc c and we could get a variety of opinions. and those companies determine what they promote and consumer is determine what they choose when no choice because there's only one facebook and they dominate the social media space we a problem and so my answer to tell facebook this you have to promote or you can't promote this my my solution is there should be five facebooks there should be seven googles, there should be enough choice for consumers that we don't allow a company to control the flow of information the speech that is heard in this country. i want to bring up one of the

arguments that that the companies we're talking about make against your bill here. oh, for one thing, they don't they are monopolies. you know, facebook for example would point and say, well, look at tik this is a competitor to us that's grown and now has a huge user user base. well why are they monopolies in your view and what do you think of their argument that there is in this industry? that's nonsense. when you look at facebook, we have an email, mark zuckerberg, where he said we need to take instagram out. we need to buy instagram. it doesn't matter what the cost is they could become a competitor to us if we don't buy them. they know exactly what need to do to maintain their monopoly status, the business marketplace. and they've done it and. nobody is suggesting that that google search engine isn't a monopoly. no one is suggesting that what is doing with digital advertising isn't monopoly. they can make that argument and,

you know, people can say, well, a competitor will rise not when you've got the the situation that you have where they identify future disruptors and go in and they buy them, oftentimes just putting on the show, there were 750 mergers that had occurred in the tech area during the obama administration. not one of them. not one of them was challenged. and that's unacceptable. and they in that process created monopolies and you write in the book about this this idea, you quote president who said the business of america is business or something along those lines. but you think that quote was taken out of context, a bit. can talk more about that. sure i you know what? i believe president coolidge was was talking about is how the business in america is the innovation that we've got is the growth that we have, because of

our free markets, is the it's not that we find a business. i can remember when i was growing in the seventies and people would say what's good for general motors is good for america, well you know, it turned out that there were a whole lot of competition from around the world came in because general got big and fat and slow. and we need to make sure that we have that competition in this marketplace so that we don't lose the artificial intelligence area that we don't lose in the new technologies that are evolving will. you received a lot of pushback on legislation as you were trying to advance it. can you give us a window into what that was like? what kind of pushback did you hear about it? and, you know, take us behind the scenes if you can. sure. well, these companies didn't darken my doorstep. i didn't hear from these companies directly met. they may have met with a few members on occasion. and but for the most part, they

met with the individuals were considering supporting this anti-trust legislation and they spent a lot of. in one month. i think the total was somewhere around $36 million that they spent members districts with commercials that would you know encourage the viewers call your congressman tell your congressman, you know, they shouldn't vote for this antitrust legislation is against business. it hurts the economy all hard workers that it will put out of business and you'll these great services that you that you now have and so they have spent they're actually the second largest contributor in a political realm after big pharma. and they've spent of millions of dollars over the years on oppose

this antitrust legislation because they don't competition in the marketplace but what they've also done that's really interesting is they have hired the children of members of and it's a it's a dangerous obviously it's there's no law ethics rule against it. but the process of hiring the children of members raises questions about whether they these companies are trying receive some kind of influence that that is beyond the pale beyond typical and political activity. do you think it should be legal to do something like that, well, i think what? so i think that the children of members should free to get jobs. what i think is the real problem is the issue of communication between. a child and a parent who's a member of congress in a particular area.

so, you know, at what point do you cut it off? obviously, a, i'm in favor of not allowing to buy individual stocks or the spouses of members, not to buy individual stocks, but how far do you exposed expand that kind rule? i think the better answer to make sure that we're exposing the relationships and allowing the voters to make decision about whether it's important not and whether people should get reelected if they engage in this kind of conduct well. well, let's talk about the politics of this issue a little. so you were a district in, colorado? i was looking at a map of it before we came in, before we started today. and it borders kansas and nebraska, aka the eastern part of state. where does this issue rank for your constituents versus some of

the other things they may be concerned about? well, so it's important that my feel really strongly about the issue of free speech, and they feel really strongly about and fair elections. and so being able to talk to my constituents about antitrust in that context is is relevant and and they are about the issue it's also important because i have a very rural district and. rural newspapers have been really by the business practices of google, facebook and one of the bills that that we have proposed is a bill would help rural newspapers and allow them to come together and negotiate with these huge monopolies so that they could get some of their the revenue that the lost

over that over this slower last period of time. and probably probably a 12 year period of time. that they have lost a lot of revenue. but the so so, again when you're talking about a small town newspaper, you're talking about the newspaper who covers that covers the the high school football that talks about the july 4th parade that they really communicates the essence of of of the activities in the small community. and that that is those newspapers are central to the how how small communities thrive. so i that while it isn't as in some areas it is certainly is in the speech and newspaper industry. well one thing that there are some conservatives obviously are opposed to some of your proposals here. and, you know, i wonder if this

comes up in your district or not, you know, i think i saw you one by a 60% or you got about 60% of the vote or so in the last election, it was like a fairly conservative district. and in your book, you you write, for example that you want government to be more like attack and you know, often we associate conservatives with being worried about government using its power excessively. so it's interesting to see a conservative right that sentence sentence. what do you think what do you say to conservatives who would be skeptical of these ideas because they worry that your your the solution to your proposal are giving more power to government? well, ryan, i with you first of all, i think conservatives feel really strongly about the fbi acting as attack dogs in the

area of bank robbery or counterterrorism or counterintelligence and obviously i think the the folks feel very strongly about the driving force when administration acting as attack dogs. i think that when you talk about government function, that is, you know, enumerated in the constitution or is a traditional government function that the supreme court has found appropriate. we want efficiency government as conservatives. we want government agencies do their job, enforce the law fairly freely, impartially. but act with the kind of vigor that protects, in this case, the marketplace. so when you've got 750 big tech mergers and not one of them is questioned, that's unacceptable. that's the job of the ftc and the department of justice antitrust division.

and so we don't we don't want more government and we don't want inefficient government. but the government that we have should be efficient and should be protecting our economic interests, our public safety, our national security in a way that that is once we've funded it is effective. you know, and i think of some some comments i've heard from other conservatives who are thinking about this tech issue and i wonder if you'd agree with framing it this that, you know, conservatives are growing increasingly concerned about out not only the power of government, but also the power of large corporations when get so large that it could rival the power of government. is that a fair summary to place you within that kind of broader conversation in the conservative? no, i actually love big corporations as long as they're not monopolies. i love the fact that american

businesspeople can succeed and can grow corporate power. what i don't in i can't abide is is this growth of of corporate power into a monopoly that controls the flow of information you know, success is great an airline that is is growing competing and is large more power to same with a same with a car company same with a credit card company. all these companies have grown and they are successful and they're successful around the world and that success should be celebrate it when i object to our monopoly that won't make sure that there is no competition so that other companies can't innovate and disrupt and challenge the monopolies. and so i think a distinction between those in this country object to large corporate power,

which in some cases is dangerous. but my objection is to the monopoly side of that large corporate power. if there's a if there's competition in the marketplace there's you know, if nobody dominates more than 20, 30% of the air traffic, nobody dominates more than 20 or 30% of the banking industry. i'm okay with that. these companies are dominating in the eighties and 90% percentile. and that's i consider dangerous. and why can't we use existing to deal with that problem. yeah. the real issue is the consumer welfare state and how it's been interpreted with what i would call the old economy. pre 1970 economy and it was interpreted in a way that used as one of the primary three measures of whether a monopoly was acting the detriment of consumers. so when you go on online and,

you use a search engine, you're paying for that. and so the courts have found, well, there's no price difference to consumer. so the consumer's not being harmed. so this isn't an anti competitive practice. we now have whole different situation where you're giving information about yourself to a company that. company is selling that information and that information. then is being used in advertising products to you. so what what should happen is search should pay consumers to search on their search engine. and you should have a choice every time to say this search engine can can record this can use this information for advertising or it can't and then would get to the point where we the consumer welfare standard that's appropriate. now maybe the courts have heard the public outcry about these

monopolies and maybe the courts shifting the consumer welfare standard towards the new economy or. maybe we need to pass these bills and i think we do need to pass these bills to make sure that we have we move the antitrust into addressing the the problems with the new economy. part of that that scenario then leads us to a conversation about who's going to have the power to enforce if the law is changed and right. that's biden administration. lina khan, for example the chair of the federal trade commission. how do you think they're and you know, to what extent you sympathize with those on the right? and i'll ask you about some criticism the left on the second, but maybe one more on this. i mean, to what extent do you sympathize with criticism of those on the right who say, wait, we're going to give more power to someone? khan yeah, i don't think we're

giving more power. i think what we're doing is we're giving a different set tools and a tool bag to address the changes in the economy. there are certainly things that some of biden administration officials have said about some social issues and issues that concern me. i don't want antitrust law to be to enforce certain views on the environment or certain views on labor or certain views on social issues. i think that antitrust law should narrowly tailored to antitrust activity and so, so there are some concerns that i share with with fellow conservatives, but overall what we're really doing. and it takes a couple of years to up and antitrust division or federal trade commission terms of additional resources those resources will be used ultimately by the next administration. and i hope that america realizes the advantages hiring republican

president to run the next administration. let me ask you also about some criticism that you hear on the left of the positions that you stake here. you know, obviously, you're talking you've talked a lot about the speech of conservative is online and how that's treated. what some liberals say about that is, hey, wait a minute. you know, a lot of conservative commentators that are very on facebook and twitter, you know, you mentioned covid earlier. there was a lot of content shared about, you know, vaccines and masks. and so, you know, where's the problem here this stuff does this stuff goes viral all the time and in fact the liberals will say we wish it didn't go viral so much. you. yeah, well, the problem is when you look at the details, the devil is always in the details, you know, congressman jim from indiana was deplatformed because he made a posted a comment about

time magazine giving the of the year award to a biological male what's. what's wrong with that how does that in any way it create a dangerous situation some people might find it offensive frankly. there's all kinds of humor that appears on night tv that that conservative or some liberals might find offensive. that doesn't mean that it doesn't challenge us to think the box on how we should and should view issues. but i given in this book crushed. i give a series of examples about how these companies have deplatformed people because of their because of their views and that aren't child pornography aren't recruiting terrorists that, aren't selling drugs that aren't human trafficking and so i think when you get outside of what we all agree is dangerous,

it a problem. now, if there are views out there that have been on these platforms, great. but the more the merrier. we shouldn't restricting some views in a subject matter and not others should be a difference when it comes to whether that views being expressed just by you know kind of your average post on twitter facebook versus an and let me explain that a little bit for viewers you know you bring up an of it a group that's on the issue of abortion that was not it was advertising on google and then google had their ads on google taken down is isn't i'd like to press you a little bit on that i guess isn't that it isn't a different of the right to advertise versus the right to speak and and should that be treated the same. yeah. the commercial speech is treated differently than political speech, but in this situation. you've got planned parenthood who's allowed to allowed to

inform platforms and then you had a pro-life group who's not allowed to advertise or inform. and i think that discrimination, whether it's whether it is per se, a violation of the constitution or not, because these are private companies. so i don't think that that unless they're directed do so by government that that it is necessarily unconstitutional but it's also something that people should know about so that people can make a decision as to whether they want to allow their kids to use these platforms or whether they use these platforms and how they do business. and so think it's important to just spread the word on these companies discriminate against conservative. and you know these companies would obviously say they aren't making decisions based on political bias specifically but that their sort of operating

within the terms and that they set out, you know, often they're not the best at telling people about why things get taken up or down. but i feel like we should state that for the record. but let me come back to something just said about the role of government in interacting with these companies as they make these decisions. you know, i think even knowledge can sometimes difficult about where the line is taking something out, believing down, letting it go viral or not. is is it appropriate for the government to be involved at all in interacting with social media companies? or are you saying that that actually interaction really shouldn't exist? and one of the reasons i asked that is, you know, you could imagine a scenario where there a threat to public safety, they might want to talk to the companies about. but then how do you define that you know, covid was arguably a threat to public safety. and as you pointed out, you know, are public emails that show this the white really was leaning on these social media companies about covid and their

policies. covid content. so how do you balance that the role of government in interacting with social media. well i think it's already been balanced. you know, there is clear case law that says that government can prevent it or stop a clear and present danger, something that is going to if someone gets up and advocates, you know, the destruction of a police department across the street from a police department and starts handing out guns government law enforcement can stop that from happening that's that's clearly different than do masks prevent covid do these vaccines prevent covid is it wrong to disseminate statistics from the center for disease control all about the efficacy vaccines is that wrong and and

so i think that government can interact with these platforms in the same way that it could directly if it were to face a danger. well, let's look forward a little bit. what are the chances of any of this legislation passing this year, given that we've now got divided government. well, you know, we had a bipartisan support in, the house and senate before we're going to have a bipartisan support in the house and senate going forward in this congress, i think that there's a good chance that some of these bills passed. we came very close to passing the journalism preservation act in the omnibus. no. and maybe was the defense authorization bill this last congress. i think that some of these bills are popular and will pass with divided government and.

have you had any conversations with leaders in the house yet new republican leadership, whether it be jim jordan, who's going to chair the house judiciary committee or speaker mccarthy, you know, both of them through some water on some of these ideas. the last congress were opposed to of the proposals you're talking about, have you had any conversations with them? what were those like about this topic? i'm not going to talk about private conversations with them, but i will say that both of them talked about the fact it would make more sense to do these bills and a republican conference in a republican congress where we could have more input on how the bills were drafted and and put together and i believe that wasn't just an excuse. and so i look forward to working with my republican colleagues legislation in this area in the antitrust area to throw not privacy necessarily, but in the antitrust area that we can move

forward on and make sure we are helping promote competition in the marketplace so we don't have the issue we're facing now with the flow of information being controlled by monopolies. do you know yet whether you're going to be in charge of that antitrust subcommittee that's so active on this. i do not know that yet. we've just popular to the committees this past week. i think in the next couple of weeks, we're going to learn about these subcommittee chairs. i don't even know if judiciary is going to be structured the same way around the same issues. i do know that there will be an investigation of the fbi and federal law enforcement and its role the last few years. and so i don't know if resources are going to be taken away from different subject matters and put into or just how that's going to work. well, congressman, it's really been a pleasure talking with you today and getting into some of these issues. thank you so much

for taking the time. thank you, ryan. appreciate