♪ [Music] ♪ Hi everyone, welcome to Both Sides of the Story.

I am your host Alan Gionet from CBS 4, thanks for joining us.

Tonight is our consolation bracket championship match, students from Denver East high school in Denver, and Holy Family high school in Broomfield battle it out.

Let's meet our participants to get things going.

First up, Graham Cummings, he is a senior from Denver East high, let's see his story.

- My name is Graham Cummings, I am a senior and I go to East High School.

Speech and debate kind of drew me in because part of me is competitive and just likes to do well at things, and win tournaments is a big thing, and also just academic part of it that you can be competitive in a way that is not the usual route of sports.

Skills of communicating and researching are super important, they will help me in whatever I choose to do in the future.

- Graham works incredibly hard, he is a quiet leader and he wants everybody in the room to feel like they belong there.

Anytime he does a round, he comes in and ask questions, he shares information, and then he takes that back to the team and really tries to foster relationships with everybody, and is just such a natural leader.

- My advice that I would give to people who are new to speech and debate, is it's going to be hard and you're going to hate every part of it for the first year or two, and there will be a lot of losses and a lot of people that will be better than you, but you will see improvement if you do keep trying.

- All right, you have met Graham.

Jaden is a senior from Holy Family high school.

Let's meet Jaden.

- My name is Jaden Keenan, I'm currently a senior at Holy Family High School.

Debate has allowed me to grow into more of a research thoughtful person, and allowed me to become a better speaker.

I like to research a lot and just apply as many arguments as I can and find where everything connects.

Just a day in my life outside of school, I play tennis, I play for Silver Creek high school, I am very involved in Civil Air Control which is one of our community organizations.

- Jaden was selected for Both Sides of the Story because he is an excellent leader first of all, he is our debate Capt.

here at Holy Family.

Jaden might seem quiet when you first meet him, and reserved, but really he is very interesting, well read, funny, and a really great communicator who is compassionate to other people.

- What expires me is my goals and ambitions in life, I want to attend Service Academy.

And then serve in the military as an officer.

- All right you have met are two competitors.

Also joining us is our illustrious panel of experts who will offer their analysis of our debate.

They are Dominic Dezutti, host of Colorado Inside Out.

The weekly Roundtable program here on PBS 12.

And he is joined by Marion Goodland on the right, chief legislative reporter with the Colorado Politics.

And Eric Saudermann, political analyst and columnist for the Gazette and Colorado Politics as well.

Let's set our ground rules right now.

Each side will present their case and ask each other questions and have a chance to offer rebuttals as well.

Both students have produced a pro and con case for tonight's debate, they will not know what side they will defend until we have a coin flip right here in our studio.

When it is finished, we go back to our illustrious panel for questions and find out who they felt offered the best arguments.

So let's get started here.

Here's the issue up for debate this evening, should the United States government regulate social media platforms?

It's a big one.

We will have our coin flip, and we will get things underway.

Graham I will let you make the call on this, heads or tails?

- I will take tales.

- Heads it is, so I'll go to Jaden.

What would you like?

Go ahead sorry.

- I will take the affirmative.

- That means you go first.

Jaden, three minutes for your open arguments, go ahead.

- I affirm the resolution that the United States government should regulate social media platforms.

Social media is quickly becoming one of the largest sources of information and entertainment in the United States.

With 73% of the United States using it, according to pew research in 2021.

We need government regulation in order to assure safety, security, and free communication in our country.

The first reason the government should regulate social media platforms is in order to ensure consumer security and privacy.

One of the latest developments in the cyber world is advanced social media algorithms that delivers content based on the likelihood that the user will engage with it.

The Institute for the Internet and Just Society, stated in 2021, "algorithms make use of sensitive data such as the location of the user, the friends they interact with, and the pages they search for."

This poses the issue of privacy threats.

Specifically regarding how social media platforms use that sensitive information.

Regulations will allow us to standardize how platforms collect and use such data.

As each platform has different means of curated content.

This standardized approach will create a safer, more transparent user experience, and better equip the government to handle national security threats.

In fact, this is something the other nations are already doing.

Such as the European Union general data protection regulation which imposes strict rules as to how companies can use personal data.

The United States should follow this approach.

The second reason the government should regulate social media platforms is in order to uphold the freedom of speech and our democratic values.

When we think of regulation, we often think of censorships or restrictions on what a platform can have.

However, regulations can be used to uphold freedom of speech.

Because social media companies are private entities, they have control over what is published on the platform, and remove content depending on the rules.

Government regulations will allow these rules to be standardized, unambiguous, and designed to ensure freedom of speech.

This is actually something that social media companies currently advocate for.

According to a 2019 Washington Post article, written by Mark Zuckerberg, I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators.

By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what's best about it.

The freedom for people to express themselves, and for entrepreneurs to build new things, while also protecting society from broader harms.

This is the founder and CEO of the largest social media platform advocating for increased formal regulations.

Government input effectively gives us a path to reinforcing our democratic values in the virtual world.

Finally, it is important understand that the United States government already imposes regulations on social media.

We monitor sites in order to find and remove illegal content such as copyright material, child pornography, and should continue to do so.

We need to continue to have regulations in order to mitigate privacy breaches, uphold our democratic values, and remove illegal or obscene content.

For these reasons, I strongly affirm the resolution and affirm the United States should regulate social media platforms.

- Jaden thank you very much, in the affirmative, Graham Cummings, in the negative you now have two minutes for questions and cross-examination go ahead.

- All right so I was like to start on your first point of consumer security, you mention all these algorithms are really bad for privacy and for the security of consumers, but then your contention three, you talk about how these algorithms can be used to stop terrorists and stop like illicit posts on social media.

Would you argue that those are good things?

- So that is not what I was mentioning and algorithms, and that there contention there where I'm talking about like illicit content, that is a government regulation that we impose on social companies, where the government is actively regulating those and removing things such as child pornography and illegal things for society.

But what I'm talking about in the first contention there is where algorithms are using peoples' sensitive information And we don't necessarily have any transparent view on how companies do that, and therefore regulations are going to open up that standpoint and allow the government to be better equipped to handle threats that come out of that.

- On your second point about freedom of speech, we mentioned about how the government can censor different types of - that freedom of speech has helped regulations because it allows for more speech, but if the government can decide what can and cannot be posted on social media, wouldn't you argue that actually hurts freedom of speech in the US?

- Absolutely not because there's a key point in that, it's that the government is not actually regulating it, what we're doing is we're going to be helping social media companies and their teams because those social media company team such as Mark Zuckerberg's quote, might not be robust enough to actually handle what's going on in the platforms.

If we get government regulation, we can get some bipartisan input, we can see a more effective solution, and this is something social media companies want in their platforms.

- So at the core, the sites themselves still be doing regulation.

- Yes so the social media platforms are going to be using government input and teams, along with themselves in order to achieve the goals set out by the government and the social media platform roles.

- Okay on your third point again, on current regulations, do you think current regulations are enough in the status quo to where we do not need more?

- No I do not think so, I think we should maintain our current regulations against child pornography and illegal material.

We need a little more regulation in order to increase the transparency.

- Let's hold up right there on the questions, the questions are over, you have heard the affirmative now from Jaden.

You now have three minutes in the negative, on the concept of should the United States government regulate social media platforms.

Go ahead.

- I negate the resolution that the United States government should regulate social media platforms.

My first contention is that they would be ineffective, and the status quo, the federal government does not have the power to adequately regulate speech online.

In 2019, John Zamples of the Cato Institute found that social media companies are largely immune from federal regulation, as this would pass under the strict scrutiny test that courts applied to restrictions of fundamental rights.

Preventing the harms caused by fake news and hate speech, have a common weakness.

If we do not know what the term means, we cannot know how it applies.

Thus vagueness fosters unconstitutionality, this is corroborated by David Ortner of The Hill, when he says because social media companies are private companies and not government actors, they have their own First Amendment right to exclude anyone from their platforms for any reason at all.

The government cannot force these companies to open up their site and associate with viewpoints their owners and shareholders find objectionable.

It is infeasible for the government to implement any effective policy without expanding its powers to an unconstitutional level.

For this reason, any legislation passed by the federal government would only have minimal effect on online communications.

My contention too is that self-regulation solves.

With the government unable to provide suitable regulation, the most effective solution to issues online is for social media platforms to help regulate themselves.

In fact we've already seen this platforms use their powers to limit harmful posts involving illicit content and terrorism.

In 2016, twitter alone suspended an additional 250,000 accounts for violating policies relating to the promotion of terrorism.

This brings the total to the overall number of suspensions to 360,000 since the middle of 2015.

Social media platforms have proven themselves to be extremely dedicated to removing detrimental speech on the platforms, and critically, they can reach much react much faster than the government would be able to.

A study by the information technology innovation foundation, found that rulemaking monitoring and enforcement processes can also be faster using self-regulation instead of government regulation.

Which means that consumers are protected sooner.

As opposed to federal regulation that would be slow and weak, self-regulation has the power to keep up with rapidly changing issues.

Contention three would be that federal regulation would reduce the innovation in the tech center.

Federal regulation which mandates strict regulation would create massive costs for tech companies thus making it very hard for small companies to rise.

Clyde Wayne of Forbes describes the existing social media firms and rules they can live with, which can too easily translate to rules that future social networks cannot live with.

Government cannot create new competitors, but it can easily prevent the emergence by imposing barriers to entry to market entry.

Essentially, regulation designed to affect large social media platforms will put those costs onto any new actors in the tech space.

Tech startups must be prioritized as a study by University of Nevada, Prof. Mary Blankenship finds that technology-based startups account for 3.8% of total firms in the United States, and employed 3.6% of the workforce.

They provide jobs have higher wages, and create jobs in sectors outside of their own.

A single technology-based job can create another five jobs in other industries.

We will see the loss of these benefits if federal regulations were to impose massive costs on small tech startups and for those reasons, I negate.

- Graham thank you very much, Jaden your opportunity for two minutes of questions and cross-examination.

Go ahead.

- Sounds good thank you, so I want to start out with your first contention that regulations are going to be ineffective, is that correct?

Can you elaborate on just how regulations are going to be so ineffective and in handling social media problems?

- So what we have seen with past attempts regulating social media, is that it is almost impossible for anything to pass through the house and Senate because of the vague unconstitutionality within the idea of regulating speech online, even if there are detrimental side effects that we have seen it is superhard for anything or for any politician to pass any bills because of that risk.

- Okay do you think it is important to maintain freedom of speech in the Internet?

- I would say it is important to maintain freedom of speech.

- And do you think that private companies can adequately do that if they do not have government input?

- I think they definitely can, we have already seen that happening as I mentioned, in 2016 alone, twitter banned 360,000 terrorist accounts.

That's just one example of how it doesn't have to go so far as the banning people within America that may have controversial opinions, but they're actively taking down posts that can be harmful and display a list of actions through their algorithms in this setting as well.

- In the second contention, social media platforms should regulate themselves, if this truly was a good option, then why would companies like Facebook in the Washington Post article advocate for government input?

- So yes that is super important, ties into my third point, that the only reason that these large companies are advocating for regulation is because they want to kill the chances of other companies coming up in competing with them and taking their massive shares within the technology sector.

We have seen this with companies like Facebook and Twitter buying out smaller companies that they fear are competing with them just so they can maintain their competitive advantage, so what we are seeing is Facebook knows that they can afford to have these regulations put on them, but other small companies cannot, so that leaves them either to drop out of the market shut down the company or to be bought out by larger companies.

- I'm so glad you brought that up, so wouldn't regulations like we do on real businesses in the real world, leave or allow for these over takings, not monopolistic companies like Facebook to not stifle competition independently?

- Sure you can argue that specified clauses in there that would allow for that.

But the fundamental ideas of regulations allows for that those companies to have increased costs.

- All right we have to wrap up the questions right there.

We're talking about whether government should regulate social media platforms, Jaden in the affirmative two minutes for rebuttal go.

- So I really wanted to start out with my opponents first contention that regulations are ineffective, so this is going to be extremely important in this case, because social media platforms are being continually used as means to start political protests, start political means and politicians campaign on these platforms as well.

In fact, Congressional research service in 2019 stated quote, the Supreme Court has recognized the Internet as a critical form for expression of free speech, so what we need as government regulations in order to ensure that the social media companies cannot unilaterally exclude people and they do not have enough input to effectively deal with what might be political advertising or terrorist groups or stuff like that, so that's why we need those government regulations in order to make sure that these platforms and people campaigning on social media are allowed to do so.

So that's why we need to use government regulation and can see that it's actually going to achieve free speech better than if we just allow for social media companies to go unregulated.

So moving on to my opponent's second contention, again why would companies like Facebook advocate for increased government regulations if they could regulate themselves, so my opponent's stating that this will lead to massive federal regulation where the federal government is going to be explicitly picking out individual posts, however this is not true as seen in my second contention, we're going be working with social media companies in order to achieve just goals outlined by the government and by social media companies, what we're doing is setting a baseline standard for social media companies to follow and what this is going to do is create a more safer and more transparent virtual environment.

And then moving on to my opponent's third contention that this will stifle competition, the fact is that regulations in themselves, is going to do the opposite way, as you see it Facebook as my opponent mentioned, buying out the competition this is stifling the competition in and of itself, we have regulations in the first place in order to mitigate this from happening.

We see it in the real world, let's take any business from the progressive age, therefore we need regulations in order to make this impact true.

-On both sides this evening, you are watching two of the top high school debaters in the state talk about social media, Graham in the negative.

Three minutes to respond and close now.

Go ahead.

- So I would like to start on the topic of his case where he talks about consumer security, the most important thing here is that consumers are already being protected on social media sites, even if this means the data goes towards companies, that data feeds algorithms that can then take illicit post or hostile actors off of the sites, I give you my example from Twitter in 2016 where they took 360,000 terrorist accounts off of twitter.

That is the most important thing you're going to be looking at when prioritizing the security of these users is that if there exposed to this harmful content.

Next moving on to second contention of freedom of speech, this also applies to my first point, but what we are seeing here is that there is actually competition within the market for these companies to be more invested and protecting freedom of speech.

What we saw after January 6th, with Twitter and Facebook is that a lot of right-leaning people moved off of these platforms because they believe that they were not representing their values, so what we are seeing is that these companies are actually going to be losing consumers if they take to hard of a stance on any one topic and they see that as a competitive disadvantage so they will obviously be smart about what and where they are regulating certain people or things.

And then on his last point about current regulations, there is a double bind here when his first contention is saying that algorithms are bad because they are leaking our data, but then he goes on to say how they are a good thing and they can protect consumers by making sure that they are not exposed to obscene content, or to child pornography, but if those algorithms are working as well, then that means that they cannot change data collecting methods within these companies.

And even with that, the government itself cannot decide how these companies are going to be presenting this data or how they're going regulating because that is fundamentally unconstitutional for the government to tell a private business who and what can use the platform.

That moves directly into my first point about social media regulations would be completely ineffective because the terms that we are describing such as hate speech, are extremely vague thus they cannot be assigned to any one set value or any type of post, meaning that all in the opinion of either the government or private company, and if the government was to decide that a certain opinion should not be allowed on these platforms, that is fundamentally unconstitutional and for that reason, they can only impose weak laws.

But that moves on to my second point that if the government can only use weak laws, that leaves social media companies to be the only ones to regulate themselves, as I said they have a competitive advantage if they are able to take off obscene posts, but leave speed freedom of speech on the platform.

Next moving on to my last point about innovation, if we are to put these harsh regulations on as he is saying, such as making these companies like talk with the government and have the strict guidelines on what can and cannot be posted, we are going to see that new companies have to implement the data technology into their platforms which they simply cannot afford to do, that means there is massive amounts of loss of innovation within the technology industry as these new companies fail.

- Graham Cummings, thank you very much, Jaden Reenan one minute for your close.

Go ahead.

- Thank you so much, so I want to start out with one misconception.

My opponent states in my third contention where I talk about illegal material, I am advocating for algorithms that is not the case.

I talk about algorithms in my first contention, and how government regulations will always be more transparent and third contention I'm talking about regulations we already have in place that do not involve algorithms.

So with that being said, this debate really boiled down to two things.

One the role government and to the impacts of regulations.

So to start with the role government, governments ought to protect citizens' rights, and they can do that through regulating social media.

Again, this upholds freedom of speech and a greater degree if we have regulations on companies.

Again why would companies like Facebook want these if they cannot handle the issues on their own?

And moving on to the 2nd point, the impacts of regulation, my opponent mentions the January 6th impacts with political involvement on social media, regulations allow for multi-political involvement and allow for people to not be so polarized in their social media usage and finally, businesses in the real world are regulated in order to ensure the impact of non-stifling competitors.

So therefore, this is going to go to the affirmative.

- Thank you very much, spirited debate.

Let's go to our illustrious panel and get their thoughts on what they saw.

Dominic?

- Jaden and Graham, you both are embarking on a debate that is being debated internationally with various countries various governments, you both have done a remarkable job I think any of the people debating this on a larger realm will be very lucky to have either one of you involved.

But, you know the debate is not over, we have questions for our panel, Eric why don't we start with you for your question for Jaden.

- Sure, Jaden I think that at the very end of your close there, you use the word polarized.

It's no secret that the polarization and our country and our government is ramping up.

Don't you run the risk by having government regulation of social media that at Ying's and Yang's depending on which party is in power, specifically would you have wanted the Trump administration and the run-up to the last election and the aftermath of the last election, to be in charge of that regulation of social media?

- That's an absolutely great question.

The thing is is that the government creates independent regulation committees, all the time.

And that's what we would ought to do if we are going to impose more regulations on social media.

This should not be a political thing, because that's why regulations we should impose them in the first place.

To make this nonpolitical, and to create and keep private companies from kind of displaying their own values instead.

So what this is going to allow us to do is lead to more bi- political participation and again we need to create this independent regulatory committees.

- Marianne your turn, your question for Jaden.

- Thanks very much, good job guys.

Jaden my question for you is what about the fact that these companies are not just here in the United States, these are international global, competitors here.

How would you handle the international aspects of this for particularly for countries that do not have the same kinds of freedom of speech regulations that we have?

- Yes absolutely so this again will be centered down to the United States as regulating and upholding our own values, and then we can communicate with other regulations such as the European Union and in order to create a standard for security and transparency among the social media companies.

Again, I did mention that the European Union is already creating some things with strict rules, so regulations are happening already, there happening across the world we ought to be a part of this in order to make sure that our values do make it into these worldwide regulations.

- Graham it is your turn to face the panel.

Eric your question for Graham?

- Good stuff both of you, Graham, I think the status quo that we have now, would be defined as largely your position which is self-regulation or very very light regulation.

How do you make the case that that self or light regulation is working?

Particularly in a situation where by late polling, 65% of Republicans, a year after the election, think that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, when that is factually just not clear.

That is fed by social media, how do you defend the light or self-regulation we have now?

- Yes so I think it is super important that social media can companies have to adapt to these issues as they are presented.

So we saw when vaccine misinformation and misinformation about the election was rising.

We saw the company start to crack down and put warning flags under post that may not have been accurate, pertaining to that information.

So we can see that as technology advances, as algorithms become more complex and the gather more data, there's going to be more complex ways of making sure that all the content on the site is correct.

And that it all still falls within freedom of speech but in a way that is not harmful.

Marianne your question for Graham?

- Hi Graham, great job.

What about the argument about content, should social media companies have or be able to decide what content is appropriate for their sides?

- I think that first of all as a private company, they are constitutionally obligated to have the ability to have the ability to decide.

But because of the larger role that they play in our society, it does become a bit more complicated.

But again as I mentioned in my closing statements, that they get an advantage if they are keeping more users on their side, so obviously they're not going to become completely to one side or the other, they're going to want to foster that conversation in order to have more users and more engagement.

- Alan as you can see, both Jaden and Graham have done a great job rising to the occasion to tackle this global issue.

Now it is our job to rise to the occasion and somehow pick a winner.

- I will be willing to leave it up to them to decide the entire issue permanently.

We're going to give our panel a moment to consider whom they felt won this debate.

That gives me a moment to let you know that next week we're going to conclude the 2021 both sides tournament with our winners bracket championship.

Now Kalina Kulig from Washington and Masha Osovskaya from Cherry Creek high school will compete to become the 2021 champ.

Do not miss that one.

All right panel, let's have a decision.

- First and foremost, Jaden, Graham, you both did a fantastic job thank you for what you have provided in this debate.

We have to do our job and somehow pick a winner.

We went through it, and when we looked at how the answers to questions both in cross-examination and from the judges Jaden, we decided that you are the consolation bracket champion, congratulations you both did a fantastic job but Jaden congratulations on a wonderful debate.

- All right Jaden, congratulations well done you are the 2021 champion of our consolation bracket here and really a terrific debate.

A very complicated issue.

It's great to hear without political bias and both of you ought to be proud for a terrific job.

And that is all the time we have our program tonight.

We do want to think are excellent students as well as our illustrious judging panel.

I want to thank you for tuning in.

It is the support of viewers like you and our sponsors that help to make this show a reality.

Remember you can catch up on past episodes of this program pbs12.org, and you can catch me on CBS 4 for all of the latest news and information that impacts our state of Colorado.

For everyone here at PBS 12, I'm Alan Gionet, thanks for watching and that is Both Sides of the Story.

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