BONUS: Taylor Lorenz says "don't blame social media"

13:42Which is hilarious. Could you tell us who that is and what that was doing?

13:44Taylor Lorenz:So first of all, Haya Wrightchik is the founder of libs of TikTok. She is a well-known political influencer. She was a January 6th rioter turned sort of like anti-LGBTQ influencer. Now, I was doing a story on her because her identity got leaked online. This guy, Travis Brown, identified her and people were tweeting like, oh, you know, this is who this woman is. I thought it was really important to report on her identity because she was directly informing laws in Florida. And DeSantis' press secretary, who's the governor of Florida, was like, yeah, laws are being shaped by libs of TikTok.

14:16Marianna Spring:And I was like, well, we should know who this woman is. So also, isn't that I mean, we talk about these sorts of things when we do any investigation. But when it comes to like revealing someone's identity, ultimately, if they're having a huge amount of influence, a huge reach, you know, it's different if it's like one random person behind a fairly small account or you've got to make sure they're going to be all right. Like it's a kind of different kettle of fish, isn't it?

14:35Taylor Lorenz:Yeah. She had also been doing interviews on Fox News, doing interviews with The New York Post, but just like with this like privacy screen.

14:41Marianna Spring:And what was her reason for wanting anonymity?

14:43Taylor Lorenz:She just didn't want scrutiny. And she had also started to accept millions of dollars in donations. So her identity was already posted online. I went to confirm it. She lived in LA. She actually lived pretty near me. So I said to my editor, I'll just go over to her house because I tried to call her for comment. She kept hanging up on me. I was like, I'm pretty sure this is her. But we actually initially wrote the story in a way that it was like people online are claiming it's her, but we don't, you know, we can't say for sure. So I show up at her house and I knock on her door. I see through the window, there's this bookshelf with all these right wing books.

15:17Taylor Lorenz:and she doesn't answer or whatever. And then she tweets out a picture of me at her doorstep. And by the way, the picture of me on her doorstep shows the exact street she lives on and the exact house she lives in. And she said, Taylor Lorenz showed up on my doorstep. Like, this is unacceptable, which is what confirmed her identity. So I'm sorry, she doxxed herself. Like she, and not only did she doxx herself, our article just said she lived in Los Angeles, which was something that was already public. she tweeted this picture of me on her doorstep where you can see exactly where she lives. And she's never, I don't think she's ever taken it down.

15:53So people assumed that maybe this alleged doxing was one of the reasons that Elon Musk suspended you. Why do you think he suspended you? And how much personal control do you think he actually has over X and the algorithm?

16:08Taylor Lorenz:I mean, I don't think he suspended me over that at all because that had already happened. and I had been on Twitter already previous to that. Like, I didn't even suspend me like the first day he took over Twitter. It was like, I had been on Twitter a minute. It was when all this jet stuff started to happen and he started to suspend other journalists. And I published a story with Drew that was really critical of him. And that's when he suspended me. So obviously it was in response to that. And I think he was using, because I didn't tweet about the jet, which he was saying was doxing, which could have also been what he meant by prior doxing.

16:40Taylor Lorenz:He could have meant the jet. I don't know, but I never wrote about the jet. So that's why I got suspended under this other weird rule. A hundred percent, Elon has total control over the algorithm. And he personally, we know, I mean, Ryan Mack has done amazing reporting on this at the New York Times. Like, we know that he asks for his own content to be amplified.

16:57Marianna Spring:Yeah, and loads of the, I recently did this doc where I was speaking to loads of insiders from within all the major companies. And the ones from X particularly kind of all corroborate that the algorithm was sort of made in the image that Musk wanted it to be. And then obviously they've recently open sourced that algorithm. so you can actually kind of like see the way that it particularly promotes stuff that's like rage-baity, et cetera. But, I mean, I think it came as no surprise to all of us because his tweets were just always at the top of everything. Like you'd literally open the app and you'd be like, whoa.

17:23Marianna Spring:Especially if you don't follow him.

17:24Taylor Lorenz:Like I made an account for my newsletter that I just set up like as a fresh account and like the amount of you just get bombarded with Elon Musk posts. So I understand that you use lots of burner accounts, which I find very interesting, right? Because we don't have control over what the algorithm feeds us, right? So is your use of multiple burner accounts kind of a way to personalize your own algorithms? Yeah, I always try to get out of my personal algorithm. So I just set up basically lurker accounts to follow different communities that I'm reporting on. And of course, if I ever reach out to someone to those communities, actually interact, I would identify myself as a journalist.

18:02Taylor Lorenz:I'd be like, it's Taylor Lorenz. You know what I mean? I'm not like in someone's space, like lurking without like identifying myself. But it's more just like making different feeds, especially I've done this on Twitter a lot to be like, I'm really following this. What is it going to serve me? And like, how can I get into this community online algorithmically?

18:19Marianna Spring:Yeah, I genuinely think it's such an important investigative tool now to be able to like set up these accounts. I run these kind of similar, particularly around my elections and politics, undercover voters. So this idea that you're setting up multiple accounts that are informed by data. data so i use data from like the pew research center or natsen here in the uk and then i set them up and you know came up with like different interests or topics that they they might like based on who they are and those ones like i don't message anyone or interact with anyone but i can just test the algorithm like what i'm pushed and you can just see like entire events unfold in a completely different way like when charlie kirk was shot i was looking at my like very sort of pro trump account versus the very anti-trump account and it was like completely different narratives and the kind of ethics of like how you do it do you have i talked about this when don jr tweeted so i revealed that i had these undercover voters and obviously we run them like we make sure that we adhere to like our editorial guidelines around how we don't deceive people and the public interest has to trump the deception all that kind of thing and um i did an interview about it and then don jr tweeted this article about my undercover voters which like the picture was me and it was like fake news media and loads of my friends are messaging me like why are you on donald trump jr's Twitter.

19:30Taylor Lorenz:Well, it's something that I think the right, the far right has really understood internet manipulation. And I think like they just fundamentally don't like scrutiny over it. But especially with Elon Musk, like we have so much visibility into how he's warped the algorithm, even just comparing the way that X feeds people content today versus five years ago, you know.

19:53Marianna Spring:I think at the moment, especially in the UK, actually, there's a pretty like loud campaign around like, let's ban social media from under-16s. Let's, you know, how are we going to deal with regulation? And it's something that you've like spoken about before, particularly with concerns about what like bans could mean.

20:07Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely no evidence that any of these bans help. It's all like pseudoscience nonsense. We've been through this with video games. We've been through this with comic books. And social media use is declining. I just think a lot of this is parents feeling frustrated, not being educated about how to, you know, control their children's internet use. And wanting the government to kind of come in with a solution. The thing is, there are countries that have these laws already that are more authoritarian. Or Australia. Australia, which has been devastating, terrible effects there.

20:38Taylor Lorenz:What we've seen is that like 70 % of the kids are just getting around the ban, of course. What's frustrating to me is like parents today have access to quite literally like enterprise level spyware. If you want to install this on your children's phone, like you can do it. I understand it's not maybe the easiest to use, but like parents have the controls to do it. I think they just feel overwhelmed and there's a lot of social pressure and it's hard to be a parent. But, you know, we grew up in the days of TV and video games. And at some point, you know, you have to look at the benefits and the tradeoffs.

21:07Taylor Lorenz:And the tradeoffs are so devastating and harmful to children and harmful to the most vulnerable children. There's a lot a lot to talk about there. There are obviously some harms, I'm sure you would acknowledge, to children and to young people and to people in general that come from social media. if it's all, as you're saying, not true. Well, there's just no - Then how do you account, for example, the sharp rise in anxiety and depression amongst lots of English-speaking countries around 2012? Well, hold on. No, I'm just asking. Which has gone down, by the way. But also you could correlate that to baggy pants.

21:39Taylor Lorenz:So as pants have gotten baggier, children have gotten more depressed. So how do you explain that? You're right. There's no conclusive science. There's no conclusive science. It's not that there's no conclusive. It's that every single top researcher on this topic has come together and said everything, like people that have dedicated, these are women like Candace Odgers, Alice Marwick, women that have dedicated their entire lives to this for decades. And they've studied the rise of social media, have said time and time again, they came out and issued this massive report with Princeton, UNC, Duke, all of them in 2024 and said, none of this is based in reality.

22:11Taylor Lorenz:This is a classic moral panic. It's not that social media is informing sort of your mental health. It's that your mental health informs how you interact with social media. So if you are more depressed, perhaps because you feel awkward about yourself or whatever, you will use social media differently. But social media is not causing that. Just the way that if you're depressed, you will listen. We went through this with music in the 80s and 90s, right? Like young people that are depressed listening to Ozzy Osbourne, you know, and then some of them took their own life. They didn't take their own life because of Ozzy Osbourne.

22:41Yeah.

22:42Taylor Lorenz:But that is what everybody claimed at the time. So are you saying that the kind of concern around social media now is a moral panic, like the satanic panic. We are just every single bit of evidence that we have that is actually scientific evidence. I'm not saying you can't find pseudoscientific sort of nonsense polls that these people pop up. But if you actually speak to the researchers, they will say there is simply no causal relationship between these things at all. We don't know that there's no, there's no evidence to say conclusively that there is a causal relationship. There is no, and there's in fact overwhelming - There are some studies that mean it's worth, that indicate it's worth looking into further.

23:18Taylor Lorenz:But we have looked into this for decades. And what they have found over and over and over again is that not only is there no causal relationship to be found, but in fact, social media is a lifeline for the most vulnerable kids. Yeah, and I think you're right to point that out. And I'm not in any way to speak, but just to pose the question, there have been obviously some longitudinal studies that show people who use social media to the more extreme levels do have higher rates of mental illness.

23:45Marianna Spring:They're not as depressed as the people who don't use social media at all. I think there's kind of like two different things, which is quite interesting. And one of them is this, is there a causal link with anxiety and depression and everything else, which is kind of like the broader general public. And I think that exactly like you say, there are lots of questions about how much people kind of go, whoa, like these two things are happening at the same time, therefore they're connected.

24:04Taylor Lorenz:But same thing with video games, same thing.

24:05Marianna Spring:But then there's also, and I think maybe this explains why we've got to the point we have with the like band stuff. There's obviously extreme cases of where people have come to serious harm that are connected to social media. which are in the minority, like they're not the majority of people. Which are horrible.

24:20Taylor Lorenz:Which are horrible, exactly. Which are horrible. And, you know, I covered the social media addiction trial. I was in the courtroom when the girl testified. Now, this is a girl whose mother physically abused her, whose father physically abused her and abandoned her. This girl was struggling. She tried to seek help from her therapist. She didn't talk to her therapist about, you know, social media all day. She was talking about how can I get away from my mom? And instead of having conversations about, like, why was this girl failed by the system so much? Why couldn't we get a family therapist in there to see, like, what was going on?

24:50Taylor Lorenz:We're putting social media on trial, her one escape. And so we see this with vulnerable kids where a huge correlation of depression and, you know, is related to things like religion, right, or your parents have addiction issues. These are issues that we need to tackle. And when we focus on social media, we ignore all of those issues that are causing such immense real harm. And I think the social media addiction case is a perfect example of that. That girl is being harmed by the system.

25:14Marianna Spring:The thing that was so interesting, I thought about the case, we chatted about it on the podcast, was the kind of design of the platforms themselves and the specific features and the kind of understanding about the impact of those designs. I think that there's kind of two things that can be true at once, which is there are so many other compounding factors that affect the decision someone makes, particularly as a kid and a teenager, and there's so much else going on in their life. There's so many variables. Also, she's one of tens of thousands of cases.

25:37Taylor Lorenz:And most of those, a lot of these children are LGBTQ. Their parents dead name them. It's horrific what they've been through. And when parents are grieving, they want to feel like they can hold someone accountable. And, you know, a lot of them were actually fentanyl deaths. We have a huge fentanyl problem in America. So these kids bought drugs through Instagram and ultimately died or bought drugs through Snapchat and that's horrible. We should be making sure that that doesn't happen. But in order to deal with that, we have to actually acknowledge what's going on. And it's not that, you know, they maintained a Snapchat streak for too long with their friend and they're dead.

26:12Taylor Lorenz:It's that they were able to connect with a drug dealer and buy fentanyl and die. But if a platform is designed in such a way that it does push, for example, pro-anorexia content to young women, should we not expect some accountability for these tech companies who are, to be fair, making tons of money off of our children's attention? Absolutely. And social media is responsible for the body positivity movement and actually leading tons of girls out of anorexia. So we know that actually being on social media can actually improve young girls' body image. But the attempts to regulate and the lawsuits relate to the platform design that leads people down a harmful path, not down the body positivity path.

26:46Taylor Lorenz:So again, if you have mental health issues, you will consume different media. I grew up in the 2000s and I used to counsel girls with eating disorders. So I'm very familiar with this topic. There's girls that will make these thinspiration boards from Cosmo magazine, you know, or Us Weekly, celebrity magazines of these rail thin girls. and they'll consume that media and they'll use that media and almost incentivize each other to go to more extreme lengths. The issue with eating disorders, especially in women's body issues, this is not a social media issue. This is a misogyny issue. This is a women's rights issue.

27:16Taylor Lorenz:This is a feminism issue. And we need to talk about the fact that - Could it not be both? Could there not be some culpability? But one is downstream of the other. And this content online that women are consuming, which is aspirational content, hyper, you know, very skinny women or whatever, that is downstream from our culture. And if we focus on that sort of downstream effect instead of focusing on the root of the problem, which is why do we fetishize whiteness, thinness? Why do we have these specific beauty ideals? Why don't we dismantle that? I think of, I don't know how old I was

27:42Marianna Spring:when I first got Instagram, like 14, say. Actually, no, I got Facebook and I didn't tell my mom and she was really annoyed at me. And I think of like what Facebook used to be like versus what like social media is like for me now, like my experience of it. And I think that the core difference for me is just that like, because of how the algorithms worked at that time and EdgeRank and everything else, it was just like my friends and so the worst thing that would happen is like someone be mean to you or I'd see that I've been like left out of a sleepover or like I'd be upset about that I think the thing that feels different now and that's not to say that people haven't had access to like whatever media at different times in history because obviously they have but just that you were like stuff is like arrived to you based on what you are perhaps vulnerable to or interested in or whatever yeah engaging with and you're kind of exposed to like people that you might never have otherwise encountered, which comes with like good and bad bits.

28:29Marianna Spring:And you're inhabiting like a fundamentally like, I don't know if it's right to call it an adult space, but it's kind of like everyone's just in like one room and then you're all in like mini little rooms getting like your bits. And I think the thing that, like something I hear from quite a lot of people in their 20s and teenagers I've spoken to is like, for example, young men who've said to me like, I'm getting pushed loads of violent stuff and I kind of don't want to see it. And I've been trying to watch other stuff and I've been trying to say to them with like, you know, the inbuilt features, like I don't want to see this stuff.

28:53Taylor Lorenz:Ironically, they're about to get less control over that. Yeah, well, exactly. So that's the whole thing is like, ideally, if we focus on the fact that like, users want more control over these platforms, that is undeniable. I think that's what most teenagers want. They want to see stuff that they want. Every user. I think every user is frustrated by the fact, and I also, I'm not arguing. I know people get so mad when I try to explain these things, but like, I truly encourage them to listen to actual experts on these issues and not these like, moral panic pushers, because like, it really is harmful.

29:22Taylor Lorenz:And I feel it breaks my heart, like this girl with the social media addiction case, Like, I'm just like, we need to be helping these children and not exploiting them and saying like, you know, to push some nonsense law about social media. So the issue, what I would say with these platforms is one that they're incredibly profit driven. They focus on exactly like keeping your attention, maximizing engagement and sometimes at the expense of user experience. And like what you want might actually not be what you want. What you sort of proactively want. So we could mandate that there is more choice.

29:49Taylor Lorenz:We could mandate that these platforms federate as well. So, for instance, right now you can only get Instagram content within the context of Instagram, within the design of Instagram. You can't get that Instagram content and have all your followers and maintain all your connections through another third-party app. That is a huge problem because we could have people designing safer apps, better apps, right, that still allow for people to maintain those same connections and maybe even consume a lot of the content on Instagram but in a different way. Black Sky is a good example of this. So we have Blue Sky, which is like the main sort of Twitter clone, and then Black Sky.

30:22Taylor Lorenz:Black Sky is a separate platform, separate app that allows you to consume content from Blue Sky, but within a very different environment. This is the federated model of social media that we could have. It's sort of also similar if you think of back in the day, we had phone numbers, right? And your phone number used to be tied to your carrier, your contacts, et cetera. You couldn't take that with you when you moved. Now you take your phone number, you take your connections anywhere. We could have that for social media, and it would be a lot safer. It would also cut into these companies' business models.

30:49Taylor Lorenz:We could have safe options for children, et cetera. But it would require regulating these platforms in a really intense, thoughtful way. We're not getting any of that. Instead, they're attempting to do these bans that actually take away user control, that don't give users more control. Instead, it says now we want the government to kind of deputize these big tech platforms to censor in a way that we think is good. And if you have something like the Trump administration, we're now seeing abortion content all removed, LGBTQ content, feminist content, etc.

31:17Marianna Spring:And that's harmful because you want children to be exposed to, you know, the world. How difficult do you think it would be to like build an entirely separate like Instagram that's intended for people under the age of 80? Like what do you make of that? Those exist. Those exist.

31:30Taylor Lorenz:And by the way, there's tons of platforms like that. The problem is they can't compete because Meta will drive them out of business. And the reason META continues to drive them out of business is because they're able to consolidate more and more power because instead of passing laws that actually target their business model, we're passing this moral panic nonsense that censors people that allows META to consolidate even more power. Look at what's happened with the Online Safety Act. Thousands and thousands of small forums that were dedicated to things like gardening, hobbies, hamster raising is my favorite one.

32:01Taylor Lorenz:There's just a forum for young people that have hamsters and want to learn how to raise them. Those are all obliterated. And is that because they can't afford the age verification checks that are now a legal requirement? Yes. So they kind of de facto been destroyed by the online safety. So they moved to Facebook. So now these are Facebook groups. Now they're moving to Facebook. And now, again, this is why Facebook is lobbying for these laws. This idea that you're cracking down on big tech by passing these child safety laws, Meta, especially in the U.S., is actively spending billions of dollars to try to get these laws passed.

32:32Taylor Lorenz:You guys have the online... But they are also lobbying against some laws, right? So, for example, the Kids Online Safety Act, which I know you've correctly pointed out, has been funded by. Yeah, exactly. Support by Elon Musk. And loads of these right wing conservative groups that are anti-LGBTQ are also behind. I think it's really interesting. But there are also lots of tech companies lobbying against that, too. So it's a bit more nuanced, isn't it? But they're not. But they're not. Meta's lobbying for a more extreme version of that called the App Store Accountability Act, a more extreme version.

33:02So just to show the App Store, because people don't know that, it's the App Store Accountability Act, right?

33:06Taylor Lorenz:That removes all anonymity from the internet at an App Store level. It puts the onus on Apple and Google to prevent young people from downloading harmful apps. Meta presumably likes that because it's putting the onus on the app rather than on Meta themselves. No, well, sure, sure. And I think most people might react to it and think, well, then shouldn't we have legislation that requires Meta to make their content less harmful to young people rather than that? But there's no, but first of all, what do you mean content less harmful? Do you not think that there's any harmful content on social media?

33:37Taylor Lorenz:Of course there's harmful content on social media. There's also harmful content on the New York Times app, right? So we need to be careful about the regulations that we're making. My point is with sort of these regulations, and especially the ones that Meta backed, is Meta is a maniacal tech company that will obliterate all privacy if they think it'll save them a few dollars. And so they're willing to argue for even more draconian child safety measures because they don't make a living off free speech. None of these platforms profit off free speech or open content. Like, they don't care. What they profit off of is data, right?

34:08Taylor Lorenz:And these laws, the Online Safety Act, all these other age verification laws, allow all tech companies to collect even more data. They're not even enforcing COPPA, which is our law that it's the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, I think is what it stands for. They're no longer enforcing this, obliterating children's data privacy to incentivize identity verification. All of this is really bad. And what I want to say about Meta specifically, because they and OpenAI does the same thing. I mean, all these tech companies do, but they play both sides. They'll fight like hell to win the social media addiction case.

34:40Taylor Lorenz:They lose that case. OK, now they can just use that outcome of that case to push for the App Store Accountability Act. So they constantly play both sides. They want to be at the forefront of whatever legislation comes out so they can control it. Yes, they're nihilist. So they will lobby for one thing out of one side of their mouth and they'll pay the other group to lobby. But could I just ask, though, what do you say to people who might point out that there's also, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychology Association also support it? Well, they've traditionally gone with a lot of really bad and dangerous things, right?

35:07Taylor Lorenz:The American Academy of Pediatrics has gone through, has supported a lot of terrible things. Is it mainly about? These groups will support a lot of insane things, again, because they're just sort of politically motivated. What we need to do is actually listen to the scientists who study this stuff, whose entire life is dedicated to producing research on these topics. and experts. Aren't they the scientists? No, that's the whole point. That's exactly the problem here is that people see the word doctor or psychiatrist and they think that, oh, well, that means that that's what these people think.

35:38Taylor Lorenz:No, there is scientific consensus among people that actually study this topic that says that there's not this causal link. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not harm, but the way that we regulate that harm would be the opposite of what we're doing now.

35:48Marianna Spring:It would be privacy. It feels like all of this is fundamentally about like a knowledge gap. I would say this. I'm sure you've had this, Taylor, as well. Like when you give evidence at like a parliamentary committee, we would or in the States, like you get asked questions where you're like, whoa, you do not understand how these platforms work or what they're about or what's going on. You've got like a kind of fundamental like knowledge deficit, often from the people who are trying to come up with the solutions. And then it can be difficult to speak candidly to the people within the companies. Often you have the best expertise and understanding about what to do.

36:18Marianna Spring:I mean, one of the conversations that's really stayed with me was I interviewed recently Brandon Silverman, who set up CrowdTangle. and like CrowdTangle was this brilliant tool that we used to basically be able to see where posts had originated on Facebook and Instagram it was from like an investigative journalism point of view it was brilliant Meta bought it said that they love transparency and then got rid of it and got rid of Brandon and he the thing that he advocates for is the transparency issue which is like if everybody knows like why they're seeing what they're seeing why things are being pushed where things are coming from what's going on if there is greater transparency from the companies then ultimately people whether that's families or kids or teenagers or whoever, all of us, can make up our own mind about what we're doing.

36:56Marianna Spring:And I think that that transparency issue is one that it doesn't seem like regulators have got their head around.

37:00Taylor Lorenz:But I think also we just need to talk about whose stories are being centered because there are these Christian fundamentalist groups that will ship around the same 20 parents to go talk to the same 20 politicians all day long. We need to center the most vulnerable kids, right? These are the kids that are most harmed by these policies. These are kids who are victims of abuse. These are LGBTQ youth. These are vulnerable young girls, right? for a lot of young people, the internet is a lifeline. It's a lifeline for them. It's where their social interaction happens, where they can seek help if they are being abused.

37:30Taylor Lorenz:It's where they can go to find connection, explore their interests, learn media literacy, which is something we haven't talked about either, but it's so important to get kids exposed to the media and information because it's more of our time when they're young to learn in a safe way to kind of teach them. But we also need to think of who are all these kids that don't have multimillion dollar, right-wing fundamentalist organizations behind them. I can totally see how, especially in the US, when you have the FCC probing whether to put a warning on content mentioning gender identity, where you have ICE working with data to find immigrants, where the fear of more data and more verification leading to some kind of surveillance panopticon is really real.

38:14But do you think that it's a different situation in Europe and the UK? Because we have had kind of adult data protection laws for a while, and we haven't turned into some kind of panopticon surveillance anti-LGBTQ dystopia.

38:26Taylor Lorenz:It's so funny. This is what people have been saying to me all week. And I do think there's truth to it. I do think that Europe is fundamentally different. And I think also, like, just politically, it's not in the place that America's in right now. But what I would say to Europeans who have a bit more trust in these systems, for a good reason, And like you're right that like I think if some of these laws passed in the UK, they would not be used in the same way as the Trump administration is using them in America. Right. But we see how authoritarian laws can be abused once they're passed. We need to have those conversations up front because you're right.

38:56Taylor Lorenz:It's not happening now. But if you pass this law, what happens 10 years from now? What happens if an authoritarian, you know, does take control or if these laws are abused by people in power? Right. Because they often are. And we see also, by the way, like look at other countries like China, Russia, Sri Lanka, some of these other countries that have passed similar laws previously and how those surveillance laws are used against citizens. Is there a happy medium between the kind of surveillance panopticon that you're worried about and the status quo, which is letting tech companies essentially design platforms however they want, even if that harms young people?

39:29Taylor Lorenz:Well, again, we have to go back to the fact that the design of the platforms is not harming young people. If the design of the platforms was harming young people, Spotify would be on trial because Spotify has far more of the addicting features that are being put on trial. and no one's upset about young people being addicted to Spotify, okay? Like, what is the problem here? The problem is that these companies will pursue profit at all costs. And we have never, never meaningfully targeted any of their business models. And we're not targeting their business models with any of these online safety laws either.

39:55What tool do we have other than laws and regulations to prevent the kind of hyper-capitalist tendencies?

40:01Taylor Lorenz:Laws and regulations. And I think that's what I mean. But you don't like the specific ones that are being proposed? Well, the specific laws that are being proposed are not gonna target their business models. They don't do anything. In fact, they mandate more collection of data. Once again, X does not need, like, I know what Elon claims, free speech to survive. Like, look at these platforms that operate in Turkey, in the UAE, that don't have free speech, like, don't have free expression. So they don't require free expression to survive and to thrive. We should be anti-surveillance. We should pass anti-competitive laws.

40:28Taylor Lorenz:You know, we should mandate that they federate, again, allowing content to be seen in other platforms. Just force more competition and really go after their profits.

40:36Marianna Spring:I feel like this is something that we could genuinely talk about forever. It's so interesting. And I think particularly because often the discussions that I had, certainly by like the traditional media, tend to like go really big picture and not zoom in on all of these different kind of things. Like, for example, small platforms being sort of like pushed out and actually could they be the solution? Thank you so much for chatting to us, Taylor. We've absolutely loved it. And promote your sub stack. Go. Thank you.

41:00Taylor Lorenz:I know people are probably screaming at me in the comments right now. No, not at all. What will the top comment be? I know it makes people very angry. I have an enormous amount of empathy for parents. I just want to go about it in a different way. I think like we all have the same goal, which is to make the internet like a safer, more thriving space that reminds us of the internet when we were young, which was less profit driven. So we nearly called this bring back cat videos,

41:24Marianna Spring:e.g. let's go back to old social media.

41:26Taylor Lorenz:We would love that. But yeah, I'm on YouTube, Taylor Lorenz, Substack, usermag.co. You can find me anywhere at Taylor Lorenz and yell at me there. and I would love to hear your feedback. Great. Thank you so much.

41:37Marianna Spring:And anyone that wants to get in touch with any comments on WhatsApp, you can WhatsApp us, plus 44-330-123-9480 and you can email topcomment at bbc.co.uk. Very sort of old school of us. And me and Matt will be back with another episode later in the week. Bye.