Technology, Democracy, and Power: Journalism’s Role in a Time of Crisis

Audio of these podcast conversations is available via your favorite podcast service

On Tuesday, March 25th, Tech Policy Press hosted a webinar discussion to talk shop with others on the tech and democracy beat. We gathered seven colleagues from around the world to explore how tech journalists are grappling with the current political moment in the United States and beyond.

In the first episode, you'll hear the first session of the day, which features Justin Hendrix in discussion with Michael Masnick from Techdirt, Vittoria Elliot from Wired, and Emmanuel Maiberg from 404 Media.

This session explored the intersection of technology and the current political situation in the US. Key questions included:

• How are tech journalists addressing the current situation, and why is their perspective so crucial?
• What critical questions are journalists covering the intersection of tech and democracy currently asking?
• How does the field approach reporting on anti-democratic phenomena and the challenges journalists face in this work?

In the second episode, you'll hear Ramsha Jahangir, Associate Editor at Tech Policy Press, in discussion with ​Rina Chandran, Rest of World; Natalia Anteleva, Coda Story; Anupriya Datta, Euractiv; and Anisha Dutta, award-winning investigative reporter.

​This session delved into the global implications of these developments and key lessons from reporting in various political contexts. Key questions included:

• ​What key narratives are emerging globally from recent shifts in US policy?
• ​How is the rise of a tech oligarchy shaping technology coverage outside the US?
• ​What practical lessons can journalists learn from reporting on technology and politics in non-Western contexts?

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussions.

Justin Hendrix:

So, good morning, everyone. Welcome wherever you are in the world, whatever time it is, I'm very grateful you could join us for this discussion. I'm quite pleased to be here and to talk about a topic that I think is pressing. We're going to have a conversation exploring really how tech journalists are grappling with the current situation in the United States and its implications abroad. I think, hopefully, we'll hear a little bit about the ways in which technology and technology issues are intersecting with the political democratic crisis in the United States.

And also, I think we learn a little bit about patterns that we've seen elsewhere in the world, certainly in the global majority, where some of these phenomena sadly are not new at all. There are many things to learn, I think, from our colleagues abroad who've been covering these issues in some dire circumstances elsewhere. And beginning to see patterns emerge in the situation in the United States that I think they recognize. So we've got two sessions this morning, one that will focus on the domestic context and one that will focus more squarely on the situation abroad, the sort of reaction to what's happening in the United States. And hopefully some of the ideas that we can learn from those who've been covering anti-democratic phenomena abroad.

I'm Justin Hendrix. I'm the CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press. Many of you I'm sure who are joining this webinar are familiar with Tech Policy Press, you've likely heard about this through our newsletter, perhaps one of our social channels. And I'm joined for this first session by three esteemed colleagues. Quite pleased to have here, Vittoria Elliott, a reporter at WIRED who covers platforms in power. Although I would perhaps say that Tori's current beat seems to be all DOGE, all the time, so we'll hear a little bit of... I'm sure, about that. And then, of course, Mike Masnick, founder and editor of the Techdirt blog, and I think fair to say blog because Mike has been blogging there for really some time. And I think has perfected the form of the blog in Techdirt. And then more recent entrant onto the ecosystem, Emanuel Maiberg, who is a journalist and editor and one of the founders of 404 Media, which I'm sure many of you are aware of as well. Doing an excellent job covering many of the phenomena that I'm sure we'll discuss today.

So really grateful to the three of you for joining me and looking forward to what you are working on, hearing how you frame up your coverage and your general effort this morning. And I'm going to come to each of you and ask you a question that hopefully will sort of let you explain what's top of mind for you, what you're focused on at the moment. And how you're thinking generally about this broader context about the political situation in the US, how it relates to coverage of technology, the role of technology. And I suppose I don't need to say to the three of you, but I'll say for the benefit of our audience. Of course, there's so many themes that are related to technology that run through everything that we're seeing in the news of late.

From the role of artificial intelligence in the restructuring of federal agencies and the kind of underlying motivation at the Department of Government Efficiency run, perhaps, I'm not sure exactly where we're at on the legal distinction, by Elon Musk. Social media surveillance in the immigration conversation. So many issues there. Questions around privacy encryption, a looming battle, it appears over Section 230. Lots of questions about what the new administration will do when it comes to handling big tech, which appears to have aligned in many ways with the administration's interests. So much to get into, but by way of framing things up when it comes to each of you. And Mike, perhaps I'll start with you because you published a blog post recently where you sort of put it fairly plainly that you feel your job is to very much cover democracy and cover this crisis, even as you cover these tech issues. So perhaps I'll give you the microphone for just a moment to explain how you're thinking about this moment.

Mike Masnick:

Techdirt has always covered a whole bunch of different issues beyond just technology. We were never sort of really, you know, entirely focused on being a technology blog. We were covering law and policy and economics and civil liberties and all these kinds of things. But you know, what I noticed was that over... Since the election, and definitely since the inauguration, that we were covering more and more stuff that was specifically more on the legal political side of things than on the sort of tech or tech policy side of things.

And a few people had sort of asked me about it. So I finally wrote up this thing that said effectively all of the things that we have talked about for the previous 27 years that we've been around didn't matter as much if the entire framework of the United States of America completely collapses, the institutions that we rely on. And we don't just write about the US, we've always tried to make sure that we are writing for a global audience and about global things. But obviously, the US is so intertwined with... For good and bad, with just about everything else around the world, that it matters there as well.

So it basically came down to a recognition that some of the things that we normally would write about just didn't matter as much if the entire US collapses. Whether that is just the constitutional order or the US economy or any of these other things that might be impacted. So I just felt that it was worth calling out that the things that we needed to cover had to be that. It also mattered because of the way that the Trump administration has been set up and sort of its very close relationship to some elements of the tech industry. Obviously Elon Musk and DOGE, and whether or not he's actually running DOGE, which is a ridiculous question, but one that is actually at stake in some of the court rulings. The number of people from the sort of venture capital industry that are advising or helping the administration. All of these things where they are people and tactics that we have experience covering.

And so the thing that I noticed was that the traditional tech reporters and the three of us on this panel, I would say the two others on the panel more than myself in terms of like straight reporting certainly. But other colleagues as well that we all know who have been on the sort of tech beat for the last however many years, certainly the last 10 years seem to be covering this moment much better than political reporters who seem to be taking it as...

They'll take what is being said and sort of report it as this is what this person said, but not the actual implications of it and not what does this really mean. Not being able to explore deeper, not being able to really get the kinds of scoops that, especially the two other panelists on this panel have been able to get. In part, just because we sort of know these kinds of things better because we've seen... Especially with Elon Musk in particular, we've seen what he's done over the last few years. So we sort of recognize the patterns that, for some reason, a lot of the political press has not been noticing.

Justin Hendrix:

Tori, perhaps it's a good place to come to you. Speaking of scoops, you have had a countless number over the last couple of months, and just prior to starting this reporting mentioned that you may have just had a chance to put your laptop down for the first time this weekend. Hopefully you've got a little bit rest, but it's been an extraordinary breakneck speed for coverage at WIRED particularly of DOGE. Lots of information kind of apparently coming to you over the Transom folks reaching out. WIRED's become a real, I suppose, a gravitational pull for that type of coverage. Can you explain kind of how you're thinking about things and what it's been like for you and the rest of the reporters there over the last couple of months?

Vittoria Elliott:

Yeah, I mean, so I think the thing that I was struck by, you know, once we sort of broke our first set of stories. So like the first story I did on DOGE was actually not like a super scoopy one, it was following the executive order that established DOGE. And I went and talked to a bunch of experts and some former USDS, GSA government people who could sort of explain the importance of why USDS, the US Digital Service, now, the US DOGE service was such a almost like legally ingenious way for them to establish DOGE. Because before then everyone had thought it would be a federal advisory committees of which there are like thousands. And you know, they're important but they aren't particularly powerful, right?

So the first piece that we did actually was just a piece explaining the sort of what someone called the legal jujitsu that they did that was actually, you know, in the estimation of a lot of experts, really unexpected and really smart. And it was from that sort of initial explanatory reporting, which a lot of other publications were not doing. Like they weren't necessarily getting into the executive order and like what does it mean when you have an executive order that appropriates a service that is literally allowed to access any IT system in government that's not classified? Like what could you do with that?

And it was from that that we started to get people reaching out to be like, you know, "Hey, have you looked at this?" And from there, once we did sort of the first couple of DOGE stories about OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, GSA, the General Services Administration, that thing sort of really broke and just kept coming. And I think it was that like, we are... Our audience is not a general audience, so they're okay with being in the nitty-gritty details of some nerdy shit with us.

Like one of the stories that I did last week was talking to government auditors about what an audit looks like. And I don't actually know that there are a ton of mainstream publications where that would be a banger article for their audience, but it is with WIRED. And I think because we sort of have that understanding that maybe our audience has this baseline understanding or baseline interest that we can sort of get a little deeper, a little quicker. But I think fundamentally even more than that, like we've just been paying attention to the tech industry. You know, I've had tons of podcasts and media outlets sort of be like, "How did you guys know?"

And it's like, well, we listen to their podcasts and we listen to their interviews and we read their tweets and we take them seriously. That doesn't mean that they're going to be able to do everything they want to do with their access to government, but nobody was keeping any secrets. You know, Musk has been saying for a year, two years, three years, that he wants to fundamentally sort of rip the teeth out of the administrative state. I think that we can believe that's what he's going to try and do when he gets into government, whether or not experts think that's a smart idea or not.

Justin Hendrix:

Emanuel, I'll come to you next. You in particular have been covering, well, various phenomena, somewhat similar to Tori, but one thing in particular I'm hoping you'll comment on is your coverage of immigration issues, ICE in particular, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You've been following some of the surveillance activity there, you've been following the technology that's being deployed, the way it's being deployed. How are you thinking about this particular moment when it comes to coverage at 404, and your new publication? So I'm sure you're trying new things even as you continue to grapple with this situation.

Emanuel Maiberg:

Yeah, I think maybe unexpectedly, if we are doing new things, they are mostly on the business end of 404 Media and having to run a business while doing journalism. All of that is new to us because we haven't done that before in this way. In terms of our reporting, I would actually say that not a lot has changed in our process. We've been doing this for a long time, we've been working together for a long time. We have had years to develop strategies that we believe work for most situations. And obviously, I share the alarm that you describe, and we're approaching this moment with a lot of seriousness.

But in terms of what we do day to day, it's sort of the same. And there's... I don't know, there's a lot to it obviously, but I want to highlight two key concepts that really define our stories, I think. And one is, this was true at Motherboard, which is the tech publication at VICE where we all worked before we founded 404. And that is a lot of our reporting is bottom up.

So rather than trying to get the scoop from high level executives at tech companies, we approach and build contacts and sources at the lowest levels of these companies and users as well. So we want to talk to warehouse workers at Amazon, we want to talk to Uber drivers, we want to talk to low level employees at Facebook, and kind of work our way up and understand how the company works from that perspective. And that is definitely true right now, it's true about the tech companies and it is especially true in the government where the entire theory of what Elon Musk is doing is very devastating to low level or just like the average government employee.

So there's a lot of people to talk to and they have a lot to say about how this is impacting the government, how it's going to impact the average person, how it's impacting them. And I think we learn a lot about, like there's what DOGE is doing and there is understanding like the ripple effect it's going to have, and we're very focused on both of those. But I think you can really understand what is going to happen and what is happening by talking to the people who do the work.

So for example, I've just been in the past two weeks really focused on talking to researchers who had their funding pulled, and seeing what kind of research the US is going to lose to other countries or that is going to disappear entirely because we're no longer funding scientists. And then the other thing that has always been key at Motherboard and now at 404 Media is just... I mean it's a scary moment for the press and for free speech and the First Amendment. But all that being said, there is still a lot going for us for being reporters in the US and there's transparency laws and there's FOIA and there is the First Amendment still.

So we just really focus on public records, so when you talk about ICE, Joseph Cox, who does a lot of that reporting and at this point has really good sources at people in that industry. We get stories that way, but a lot of that reporting in the way that trust is built is reporting on public documents. These are government contractors, these are the ways agencies describe that they use these private sector tools in government agencies, that we just get by using the law to our advantage and asking for those records.

So those are just like two things that we have always done. And I think the reason we do that is because they compliment no matter what beat we're approaching or whatever moment we're approaching. But they're obviously especially helpful given everything that's happening right now during the Trump administration.

Justin Hendrix:

Mike, I want to kind of come to you on something that Emanuel mentioned there, First Amendment. And you know, we're seeing lots of essentially threats to free speech. We're seeing lots of political retaliation for speech, we're seeing lots of threats against universities and media organizations. How are you thinking about that phenomenon right now? I know it's something that you're covering of course, but... I don't know. What do you see as far as the constellation of events, what does that tell you about what we can expect in the near term?

Mike Masnick:

Yeah, there's a lot of scary stuff going on right now, in particular with free speech and the First Amendment. I think the administration is attacking speech at a rate we haven't seen in modern history. You know, tragically, they're doing so while claiming to be bringing back free speech, and they use the language of free speech to sort of cloak themselves while at the same time attacking speech at an unprecedented rate. And it should be a major concern. I'm extremely disappointed in sort of, again, a lot of the traditional media taking them at face value on the free speech claims.

And again, this goes back a little bit to... This happened with Elon Musk and the takeover of Twitter, in which he also cloaked himself in the fake claims of bringing free speech back to that platform, which was never the case. And he has a long track record from before he even took over Twitter of attacking speech and using the courts and the power of government to suppress speech in all sorts of dangerous ways. Filing all sorts of terrible lawsuits.

We're seeing that across the board with this administration. The FCC in particular, led by Brendan Carr, was put into office again with the statement that he was a free speech warrior. He again, has a history and those of us who have covered the FCC for years knew that Brendan Carr is not about free speech in any form. And it has been really evident ever since he took over the commission.

He's using that power in an incredibly abusive way to attack all sorts of parties for their speech. He's sending out threatening letters, he's opening investigations. You know, the most telling one was that in the previous administration, there were efforts... There were four different efforts to try and get TV station spectrum licenses renewed... The renewal's blocked, and that's usually a pretty proforma thing. TV stations get spectrum, which they're licensing from the government and they always... You know, it's just a rubber stamp to get it renewed. But there were four attempts to get those blocked in the last administration, one of which was from a sort of left-leaning group against a Fox station. And three of which were from a single right-leaning group using different arguments for each one, for other stations generally for platforming democratic politicians in some form or another. And they would make some sort of crazy argument about why that was violating some rule, and therefore the spectrum shouldn't be renewed. The previous administration, the FCC, and Jessica Rosenworcel, who was the chair, dismissed all four of those and noted in her write-up of them that following through on any of these would violate the First Amendment and just made a very clear free speech stand. We're not in the business of policing speech under the First Amendment. And as soon as Brendan Carr took over a week later, he reinstated the three that were brought by a right-leaning group against TV stations for platforming democratic politicians. That is a very clear attack on free speech, and that's just one example. We've seen, obviously, the Trump executive orders, the attacks on universities for other kinds of research that they're doing. We're seeing the attacks on law firms for the clients that they're taking and the sorts of legal defense that they're doing.

There is just a constant attack on people for their association rights and their free speech rights. We've seen talk about attacks on the press. Those haven't been quite as strong yet, but those are definitely coming, and so there's just constant attacks. The one good thing, and there's no good news in all of this, but the one thing Emanuel mentioned that we do technically still have a First Amendment, even though that itself and sort of the underpinnings of that have been under attack going back really since the beginning of the first Trump Administration, is that the courts to some extent are still holding on the First Amendment. It's a bit of a pain. We did have good news yesterday in which there has been an attempt for a while to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, which is the key case for defamation law in the US that really protects the press and has been incredibly important for the press, and there's been this strong effort among the MAGA right to get rid of that ruling and overturn that ruling.

There was a direct attempt to do so in a case filed by Steve Nguyen against some reporters who did some reporting he didn't like, and it was challenged that the Supreme Court, and it was very clearly like, "Should the Sullivan precedent be overturned?" The Supreme Court yesterday rejected that, which I take as a good sign, meaning we knew that there were at least two and probably three justices who are interested in overturning Sullivan, but if they couldn't take that case, that means they don't have enough votes for that, which means they wouldn't have enough votes to overturn it.

I'm hopeful that the courts still hold. I'm not confident that they will, but for now we still have that aspect.

Justin Hendrix:

That does seem to be one of the underlying questions is whether the courts will hold, generally, in a lot of these issues. Vittoria, I want to kind of come to you on this question, but in particular, a lot of your coverage, of course, is focused on DOGE, is focused on Elon Musk. About a year ago, Elon Musk tweeted or posted or whatever they're calling it these days that many years ago WIRED somehow went from being about technology to being an unreadable far-left-wing propaganda mouthpiece. He's clearly not as happy with WIRED as he was a decade ago when he quite appreciated your coverage of his Model S and things of that nature.

How do you calculate the risk that is posed by covering Musk in particular at this moment?

Vittoria Elliott:

I think that's a hard question to answer. On a personal level, I echo the sort of concerns around the fact that, though all the work that everyone on this panel does is entirely legal in the United States in terms of protection by the First Amendment and then by judicial precedent that has since been established either with Sullivan or Bartnicki or many, many other cases, I think the biggest thing for me that I think about is that, again, people like Musk and Trump are very open about what their goals are. They're very open about what they want to see and possibly sometimes the methods through which they're hoping to bring it into being.

And so when Musk said that, for instance, possibly naming people who were part of DOGE was a criminal act, which it's not, that could be a nod for ... It's not right now, but it does raise fears on a personal level of, could we see an executive order that looks quite similar to the way that law firms have been targeted for the work they're doing? And that doesn't mean that's legal, and that doesn't mean that changes the type of reporting that anybody should be doing. We have laws in the US to protect this type of work, but that doesn't mean that they're not initially broadcasting their displeasure.

And I think the other thing about this is WIRED is small, and we have a lot of support from our team here, and I'm very, very grateful for that, but we've also seen Trump bring cases against ABC, against other media outlets, and they've settled. I think that, in general, we are seeing a group of people who see the media as fundamentally an adversarial force and who have a lot of money to try and make at least some of that problem go away. And again, I don't know that that changes our calculus. I think it means that we are incredibly diligent. We do the work. We have the highest standards that we can possibly have for ourselves.

And I think the bigger thing, too, is that when everything is so chaotic, it is ... And everyone's trying to drive scoops because that's what gets you clicks. It can be very easy to make mistakes. I think just in general for the media industry, not necessarily for WIRED, but just in general for all of us, that it can be easy to fall into the pace that the administration is setting with sort of how quickly everything is moving to feel like we have to match that, but the reality is that it is ... We are at a time where trust in institutions and media is so low. It is so much more important to take the breath, to get it right, to even if you're coming at it a couple hours or a couple of days later to do the best version of the thing that you can possibly deliver, and not sort of fall into the traps of moving quickly.

Justin Hendrix:

We do have questions live in the Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, you can go to the Q&A function on Zoom. It's in the bottom row of tools. If you're on your desktop and hopefully on your phone, you can click to that panel. We do have a couple of questions already from folks who are participating, and they're kind of on a related theme.

There's a question first around how traditional media could work better to perhaps maybe learn some of the lessons of influencers on social media to reach a bigger audience and to kind of counter what the questioner phrases as a far-right conservative actors and their prominence in the media ecosystem.

There's another question that sort of addresses this as well around the visible asymmetry in the information ecosystem at the moment. I don't know. How do each of you think about that. Emmanuel, maybe I'll come to you on that. Are there things that perhaps you're learning about how to, as you think about the business of 404, how to make your message heard, get your content out in an environment that is, in some ways, I suppose, hostile to the type of information you're publishing?

Emanuel Maiberg:

I think the short answer is that people value new information regardless of their politics. When we publish scoops, they travel far and wide, and they travel beyond the filter bubbles that you would imagine they would stay contained in, and maybe they morph, and they change, and people spin them in different ways. I'm sure Vittoria and Mike have had this experience, but we'll publish a scoop, and the Drudge Report will pick it up and put it on its front page and have some conservative spin on it. Or, I mean, I know the site has turned anti-Trump in recent years, but our stories will get picked up by the New York Post and Fox News and the Daily Mail and all these tabloids.

And I think that's overall good because the information is getting out there, and that is leading more readers to 404 Media. And we see this time and time again. We're the reporters. We run the business. We see all the data. We see what brings people to the site. We see what converts them from free subscribers to paid subscribers. We see what fosters loyalty from readers and trust. And there are other things you can do on the margins, but if we have a big scoop, people come and read it. And that's what people want to read. And that's what makes them want to support us and what builds trust in all of that.

Justin Hendrix:

Mike, how do you think about this question?

Mike Masnick:

I mean, it's a tough one. And to some extent, it's a question that gets at kind of what is the media today, and what does it need to be, and how should it be acting? And something that I think ... This goes back years before the sort of current crisis is that there is value in actually being able to, one, be authentic, right? I mean, this is what we're seeing with the influencer ecosystem, even if a lot of us can look at it and say there are aspects of it that are not very authentic, but what a lot of consumers of news are looking for are more authentic experiences that don't feel sort of as rehearsed or as ... I don't want to say plastic. That's not quite the right description, but there is something that people are looking for. And part of that also is more willingness to explain why things matter.

And so I think a lot of consumers of news are kind of searching for that explanation. We're living in somewhat chaotic times, perhaps less chaotic than some would tell you, but really chaotic times, and people are sort of searching for understanding. And so, there is a strong hunger for people who will explain stuff in ways that actually put stuff into context and make things understandable. That has opened up the market to people who are doing so through misinformation and nonsense and sort of building an audience by telling people what they want to hear, but I think that a lot of the traditional media has sort of fallen into a standard way of delivering news in a way that is the sort of, "We're the authority. We're giving you just a description of what happened," and that doesn't feel enough for a lot of consumers of the news.

And I think that is where certainly a lot of the right-wing media ecosystem has found success is that they're sort of trying to get in and explain stuff. And I think that is also where I think the three of us on this panel and certainly a number of other folks who are really trying to get deeper into the weeds. I mean, the reporting that certainly WIRED has done over the last few years and that 404 Media has done ... These are not the typical reporting. It's not the same kind of reporting that you're going to see on a CNN or an NBC. In some cases, The Washington Post or The New York Times some aspects of them will get there, but really being able to explain stuff, put stuff into context so that people have a better understanding of it, that it is what a lot of people are seeking.

And a lot of the traditional press and certainly ... And I don't want to tar everybody, but certainly a number of folks in the political press ... They're just doing the sort of, "This is what happened. This is what so-and-so said. This is what he said. This is what she said." It's what Jay Rosen has certainly called the view from nowhere quite frequently. I think all of us on this panel and a lot of the more successful media people today have some element of a point of view. That's not to say that it's a strong bias or something, but we have a point of view, and we're sort of getting it out there. And I think that is resonating with audiences.

Emanuel Maiberg:

Can I add one thing to that? There's also a lot of value ... Back up. The world is very confusing. Just open your Instagram, go through reels, and it's just a crazy experience processing all the information that's coming at you and what is real and what is fake and why are people even posting this stuff and so on. And there's a lot of value we found in explaining to readers how stuff works.

We have a perspective, but even leaving the perspective aside, we see a lot of traction in just explaining, "There's this image of Taylor Swift. This AI-generated nude image of Taylor Swift is going super viral on Twitter, and everybody is covering," but something that we were able to add in that case is explain who made it, why did they make it, where did they make it, why is anyone even doing this? And people really want to find that out. That's useful to them.

Some of our biggest story this year so far in the past 12 months has been just explaining you're seeing all this crazy AI-generated slop on Facebook. Everybody knows this. Everybody's writing about it, but we've been able to explain, again, who is making it. Why? How are they making it? And that's something people really want to know, and it helps them understand all this crazy stuff that they're seeing and why they're seeing it. I find that to be very useful to readers as well.

Vittoria Elliott:

I would also say that one thing that I think there's been a big difference on is ... I don't come from a background of political reporting, and so I feel, in a way ... I mean, I've done a lot of policy reporting, but I feel like I'm kind of learning with my audience in a way, which is super helpful, but I do think that a lot of traditional political reporting is also sort of based on this sort of relationship building and maintenance where maybe you're going to drinks with people, and they're telling you stuff informally, and they can get you into this thing, but please don't write about that. There's sort of this, for lack of a better word, politicking around even being a political reporter because that is just sort of how that industry is and therefore the kind of relationships people build. And so, there's a lot of value placed on those kinds of relationships.

But I think when you cover the tech industry, there's no amount of me going to drinks with someone at Meta that's going to make them give me valuable, scoopy, important information. There's no amount of playing nice or doing favors or building even personal relationships with people at those companies that's going to allow me to do my job. And so I think part of the reason that tech reporters in general have come to this moment maybe a little better armed is because we are constantly working from a position of being at the margins of the industry and trying to get information out of it rather than trying to get into the center of the industry, into the room where things are happening, in order to get information that way and trying to build relationships to facilitate that.

Justin Hendrix:

Excellent point. And I want to say we have five minutes left for this segment. And we've got multiple questions that kind of get at a couple of things that I want to just bring up for conversation.

One, there's multiple questions that are interested in how this moment is for the business of tech journalism. And we've got two founder editors here as well. And I know that WIRED has been public about seeing essentially uptick in subscriptions and uptick in readership, certainly, from its work. I want to kind of address that, how you all might be thinking about that.

And then a question also about whether this context may open up the opportunity for more collaboration across media. That was one of the motivations for me even setting up this webinar with my colleagues at Tech Policy Press. We're always very keen to work with others and hear how things are going and compare notes across the field.

But who would like to take perhaps this question on what this has meant for their business, how they're thinking about their business going forward, and perhaps whether the moment opens this up to more collaboration?

Mike Masnick:

I can jump in quickly. The business side is we're finding out. It's an interesting moment in that some of the traditional sponsors that we've had for certain things are now shying away from sponsoring stuff just because they don't want to be seen as supporting something that might put them in the crosshairs of stuff. We've had some ... That's represented, I think, some challenges and some concerns, not that we make any of our coverage decisions based on that, but it's something that we've certainly noticed. Organizations that we may have gone to sponsor events or things like that in the past are suddenly less willing to do so.

At the same time, I think it's opening up people who actually are concerned about democracy and are concerned about the moment that we're in. We've seen definitely a noticeable growth in direct user support, which I know 404 relies on heavily, and we've definitely seen some of that come in as well. That's been really welcome and a useful moment. But I think a lot of what we're doing now, the stuff when I'm not spending 22 hours a day writing, is often trying to figure out, how do we make sure that this organization can stay alive at this moment? And it's, in some ways, more challenging than it's been in the past, even as we're seeing more direct support from readers.

Justin Hendrix:

Emanuel?

Emanuel Maiberg:

The Trump bump, as they call it, is real, I think. There's a surge of interest in what we cover. More people are coming to the website. More people are subscribing to the website, and that's good for business. I would say, on the other hand, there are two things that counteract that. One is a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people, a lot of them working at government agencies that are doing fairly technical jobs that are very interested in what we do ... They're losing their jobs, and they're losing their income, and we're seeing the impact of that as well.

And then also, I think, while we are going to retain a lot of this audience that is suddenly interested in us, we're going to lose a larger share of them later on compared to other surges of interest once they get fatigued by the news cycle and are no longer interested. I don't think they're as loyal as a readership.

All that being said, this is stuff that I think about constantly and I'm aware of as someone who owns the business, but we also have to compartmentalize that, so I put that aside, not just because it makes reporting difficult when you're constantly thinking about the business. I also think it's just good business for us to focus on the reporting and not consider this stuff too much. Our theory is we're going to come in every day. We're going to do the best reporting that we can do. Every decision that we make as reporters and as business owners is about, how do we produce the best journalism that we can do? And somehow that is going to lead to us having a sustainable business. That's how we've done things so far. That's how we're going to continue to do them no matter what is happening in the news. And so far, that has worked, so that's what we're going to do.

Justin Hendrix:

Vittoria, last word on this and last word for this session on you.

Vittoria Elliott:

I am, I think, more divorced from the financial side of stuff because we're just a bigger publication. But to your point on partnerships, we have a partnership with 404, and we are now making any stories that are based off of FOIAs on paywall because obviously FOIAs are public information. There's definitely much more of a openness, I think, to that because this moment is so particular.

I will say that, for us, we are also seeing that uptick in subscribership and audience engagement, and we are really, really trying to build those relationships so that people feel like they understand our product. We've hosted webinars, for instance, where subscribers can come and they can ask us questions and hopefully can get a sense of how we produce the journalism or the things that we're concerned about or ask follow-ups.

Vittoria Elliott:

Or the things that we're concerned about or ask follow-ups to stories that maybe they were interested in, but they wanted to know more and they can submit those ahead of time. And that's also been a really great way that we've captured feedback about what people are interested in or areas that they wish we were covering more.

So we are trying to recognize that we've gotten these influxes of readers, that we are really grateful that this whole new cohort of people are trusting us and sort of seeing us as the outlet of DOGE record, I guess at least more than anything else. But also trying to say, "Okay, how do we really make sure that people are getting what they feel they need out of their relationship with us?"

Because ultimately it is a relationship with us. And I definitely agree with Emanuel that the best thing that we can do for them is continue to provide useful new information that helps them understand and navigate a really fast-changing and complex world and do so in a way that is discernible to them and give them a level of transparency about who we are and what our priorities are and how we're approaching it.

Justin Hendrix:

Well, I'm grateful to all three of you for doing that and we didn't get to talk about it, but I'm also grateful for the stamina of the individuals on this call. I know how much personal, well pain and effort that has gone into what you've been up to for the last several months and probably running at a constant clip. So very grateful to you.

I'm going to draw this session to a close with a thanks to Emanuel, to Mike, to Tori. I hope that each of you'll go and find them on whichever social media platform you prefer, but I know that they're all on Bluesky these days and that you'll of course subscribe to their work, pay them for their work if possible, and continue to pay attention to the work that they're doing. But thank you to the three of you, and I'm going to now turn things over to my colleague Ramsha Jahangir, who is associate editor at Tech Policy Press.

And Ramsha is going to lead us into this second session where I think we will hear some parallels, but also perhaps some distinct perspectives from elsewhere in the world. And maybe you'll get a chance to get to a couple of these questions that we didn't get to. In particular, it looks like folks, interested in what this means for the future of journalists and journalism education, any ideas you might have for younger journalists who are just getting started in this moment, this difficult moment. So Ramsha, I will bring you on and surrender the microphone to you.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thanks so much, Justin. It's been a great conversation so far and we just hope to make it even better with this very fantastic panel I have here. Just to introduce you, we have Natalia Anteleva, editor-in-chief at Coda Story, and we have Rina Chandran, deputy editor, Rest of World, Anisha Datta, award-winning journalist with the decade of experience covering national Indian politics. And then finally, Anupriya Datta from Euractiv who's been covering European tech laws. So there's quite a bit to get over today, but I hope to do justice in I think 40 minutes that we have. I do encourage folks to keep submitting questions and we will come to those as relevant.

So to start this conversation, a lot that we've been seeing in the US, from institutional capture to attacks in the press and media as well as latent politicization and weaponization of democratic institutions is not new, unfortunately, to a lot of us looking at the developments in US from outside, be it from global majority countries or also Europe, which is also very much in focus right now for various reasons.

So we hope to touch on these different aspects in this conversation. I'm going to start with you Natalia, realizing that you will also have to drop off sooner. So if folks have questions for Natalia, please put them in now and we will come back to you. So Natalia, Coda has been tracking how powerful people in different parts of the world follow similar steps to change politics and what you've called the age of broligarchy. I quite like this term. There are quite many bros out there telling us what to do. So what insights can journalists gained from elsewhere to better understand and report on this new entry of tech oligarchy or the broligarchy, however you want to call it, and its impact within the US but also beyond?

Natalia Anteleva:

It was really interesting to listen to the earlier panel and part of the session. And in part responding to your question, but in part listening to the others, but especially Vittoria, I think the key thing to understanding about both our approach and I think to understanding what's happening in the world is that in some ways it's the same old battle for power and money that we've always had. Nothing has changed except it's powered by the kind of technology that we've never seen before and it has the scope and reach that is unprecedented.

And I have recently come to really question the usefulness of tech as a beat. I think we are no longer in a position where we can afford to have any conversation say about democracy without talking about tech. We can't have any conversations about society. And if you think about it, we don't have electricity as a beat because electricity affects everything that we do. It's changed everything from sleep to the way we work and the way society is structured and tech is very much the same. And I think siloing out technology as a beat in journalism probably feeds into what I think is part of the great problem with our societies where everything is siloed out and then easier to not to pay attention to.

And this is obviously by no means to undermine in any way the importance of the work that everyone on this call and the previous part of the session does, quite the opposite. But I think the mainstream, there was a lot of talk about the mainstream media and I think it would be we would do so much better if technology just became much more part of the core coverage.

In a sense that's what we do at Coda, right? Our work is all about connecting the dots between things that seem to live in silos, things that seem to be isolated. And it was really early on Coda, we started out as a crowdfunding project back in early 2017, and we started with a proof of concept. We were trying a different approach to both news-gathering, and basically to news-gathering and story generation. And we started with this pilot project that focused very clearly on the LGBTQ and Russia's war on LGBTQ communities. And at the time it was well established by the western media that Russia was just terrible place to be a gay man or a woman, and no one had explained why. So we were trying to show what is a foot with the Kremlin, why are they going after it? And it became very quickly apparent that role that the tech, that the war against LGBTQ was really the war against liberal values and liberal west, that it was spreading very fast through various networks that the Kremlin has built throughout the world.

And that technology and tech companies based in Silicon Valley were playing an incredibly important role in all of that because it also was accompanied by the clampdown on dissent back in Russia. So by connecting the dots between seemingly isolated, there was the LGBTQ issue, and then there was all these other things, but in fact they were very related. And I think again and again through our reporting, we've seen how tech just seems to be, the abuse of technology seems to be a driving force of the authoritarian rise. And it's tied into so much more into the convenience that it offers into our unwillingness to give it up into so many other things. But I think not watching tech and not making tech part of the bigger coverage of everything is going on is possibly a really big mistake.

And I think just very quickly reflecting on one more thing that Vittoria said that I think is really on point and important is just listen to them. That's all we need to do. I recently learned this term, heard this term wish casting that apparently we're all wish casting and part of wish casting is not listening, but all we need to do to know what they're about to do or what they're planning to do is just to listen to them because they're incredibly transparent in terms of what it is that is being planned.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thank you so much. Rina, turning to you, I think there's also a question already about the global picture of this and selling the global story. So there's a tech story that's now at the forefront, but there's also the global tech story that often gets sidelined in the mainstream. So of course, Rest of World has changed that dynamic and really introduced the global impact in the mainstream. So what's your experience been on that front and now given certainly the situation in US, how can you better tell that story considering the global impacts as well?

Rina Chandran:

Thanks, Ramsha. I think what's been, as Justin and you pointed out, a lot of this is very familiar to those of us who've been covering other countries. I think what's been most problematic is the state of legislation that governments have introduced, particularly seizing on the opportunity of COVID under the guise of preventing misinformation. There's been a spate of laws from Singapore to India to Indonesia to just about so many countries that introduced laws to supposedly curb misinformation, but have really been used to throttle freedom of speech and expression. And there's been no going back, of course.

Singapore for example, has what's called POFMA an acronym for their fake news law. And that has been used so often it's become an adjective. So you can get POFMA'd by the government, and many of the remaining independent media outlets have been POFMA'd and so has Bloomberg for just a straightforward report on the real estate market in the country.

Bigger outlets can't fight these legislations in court, even in democracies which have a somewhat independent judiciary, it's really hard. It takes a very long time to fight legislations in court. And the governments are aware of that. I mean, we talk about Elon Musk being in government, but in India, Nandan Nilekani, who was the founder of one of the biggest tech companies, Infosys has been embedded in the government for a long time now. He's the architect behind the digital ID program, Aadhaar, and has been tasked with digitizing government records and systems supposedly to streamline everything, but also with the end goal of just increased surveillance and job cuts and excluding people from welfare and benefits.

And all of this has been accompanied with the complete capitulation of social media platforms, which accede to the government requests on content removal and banning accounts because these are markets that are big and are still expanding, and they definitely want to be there. India, Brazil, Turkey, South Korea are among the countries with the most number of content removal requests to Google and YouTube. Ironically, X has just sued the Indian government for what it calls illegal content removal in India just a few days ago.

But platforms have just stopped resisting governments. They're completely hand in glove with governments. Sadly, many of these countries don't have a tradition of independent media, but there are a few brave journalists who are trying to set up trying to newsletters and doing independent media. Regional media used to do a better job than the mainstream English language media in many of these countries. But journalists there are at even greater risk. They face threats and harassment constantly. You will all remember Gauri Lankesh who ran a Canada language newsletter. She was killed in 2017 for her reporting.

Ironically, some of the journalists who were harassed and hounded in India found an outlet in the US like Rana Ayyub, who earned the name of the most hated journalist in the world. She had a column in the Washington Post, which I don't think she has anymore. So we've seen a complete crumbling of institutions and the way that people use social media is so different as well with WhatsApp being this massive way to spread information and misinformation in India. But people are using social media platforms any way they can. There are newsletters that are using WhatsApp as a platform, for example, because that's the way that people communicate, but the fact that there are these legislations and the fact that social media platforms very much want to be on the right side of these governments doesn't bode very well.

Ramsha Jahangir:

I think that's a good segue to, Anupriya, Europe, with tech companies taking a very different stance now. And of course, there's this big question, will Europe hold its ground and enforce its tech crew books on social media, competition and AI? So what are some of the narratives that you are witnessing from Brussels and what are the implications of this recent shift on tech regulation?

Anupriya Datta:

Yeah, thanks for that. Well, in Brussels, of course, we have passed three very important legislations on tech recently, which includes the Digital Services Act that moderates content and our social media platforms to remove what is seen as illegal content. There's the Digital Markets Act, which is a competition law instruments used against very big platforms that are seen as gatekeepers. And there's the AI Act, which has come into force now very recently as well, that is regulating AI from a risk-based approach.

Now, most US big tech companies are under these laws, and during the time these laws were negotiated was before this administration took power, was that lobbyists and big tech companies were not as vocal and critical about these laws as they are right now. It seems that the Trump administration somewhat lobbies for these big tech companies and publicly criticizes these laws. So now we're at this moment where if the EU enforces these laws, they will be seen as overseas extortion against these US big tech companies. And Trump most recently has threatened to impose tariffs if Brussels does enforce these laws.

What we hear from Brussels is more of a temperature check. As you know, the commission is enforcing these laws, but it's not exactly a national government. It's more of a bureaucratic part of the EU. So they will read the law quite literally and enforce through its enforcement actions. And that can mean forcing platforms to comply to these laws and giving them the right to defend, but also then fining them.

But it has in the last few weeks and months become extremely political in the sense that, for example, matters, global affairs manager Joel Kaplan, has come to Brussels and openly criticized these recent EU tech laws. Elon Musk is quite regularly posting against these tech laws, specifically the Digital Services Act. So of course now it's up to the commission on how to respond to this. I think separating tech from these geopolitical tensions is increasingly hard, but I think at the same time what we see is that the commission is trying to keep a bit more of an analytical and a legal approach rather than responding more severely, at least within the tech space. Otherwise, if a decision against X or Meta is taken politically, then it'll just go through years of litigation and we'll never actually see the effects of these laws.

So indeed it's an interesting space. I echo the previous panelists who said that it's really hard to see tech in silos right now. It's definitely a very, very political topic at the moment. But for reporters in Brussels, it's also a challenge in how to explain facts to people also outside Brussels about tech laws, how they work here and how it's not seen as a weaponization against US, big tech companies as certain senators in the US have recently stated. And so that's also an interesting exercise.

I think the US administration is definitely moving very, very quickly. That's not the case in the EU. I think the EU is trying to move in the same pace as it did before and not get influenced by the very dynamic nature of US politics at the moment. But it's going to be interesting few years ahead for us on tech.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thanks so much. Just quickly, a reminder to please submit your questions. We will keep coming to them as we go forward with the conversation, so please do submit them in the Q&A box at the bottom. So Anisha, turning to you, a lot of what we're talking about already happened in India. A couple of examples Rina has pointed to, and you've covered those extensively, like why technology is a political story, and you've done a recent investigation on Modi's battle to control the democracy narrative. And quoting from that I think is very fitting here that, "A democracy that claims strength cannot tolerate scrutiny." I think that's really a powerful quote that sums up what we're discussing today. So what are specific political tactics from Modi's playbook that resonate with current trends in US politics and elsewhere?

Anisha Dutta:

Thanks, Ramsha. And yeah, of course, we see a lot of parallels between what happened in India and what's happening in the case of US right now with the second Trump administration. I think it's very important to note in the case of India, democratic erosion didn't happen overnight. It was a slow strategic process that it began with controlling the flow of information, controlling media, and using federal agencies like the Modi government did.

So very early on, the Modi government realized that it can use federal agencies to go after critics, to go after the media, to go after independent media and also through corporate takeovers. For example, the case of NDTV, which was seen as one of the last remaining bastions of independent journalism in Indian television, TV news, sorry. And we see something similar happening with the kinds of remarks that Jeff Bezos has made regarding the editorial in Washington Post, or the fact that the Trump administration wanted to control its White House press correspondent’s pool, by sidelining AP and platforming, more non-traditional pro-government voices, more right-wing outlets, podcasters, influencers, that sort of thing. And in India we saw a part of my investigation was an official policy document by the government that said, we need to deploy cabinet ministers to see how we can control information, put more pro-government voices out there, have influencers interview the Prime Minister, stuff like that. And Mr. Trump has only been giving interviews to Fox News. He's gone after traditional media. He's been very critical of it. Even today, the news in Atlantic or the Signalgate, now that it's being called, Trump's first reaction was to criticize the Atlantic. So in India, the government did go after media quite strategically.

And what happened as a subsequent reaction was that more and more journalists look towards independent media, digital outlets, websites, stuff like that. And as Rina mentioned, the government found a way of even sort of going after digital platforms, targeting through legislations any content that it deemed critical against the nation's interest. So yeah, I do see some similar patterns emerging with what's happening in the US.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thanks so much, Natalia. A couple of questions have come already. One was obviously an advice for a young tech journalists entering the field at this time. Second, there is a question about journalists fighting disinformation. What are key tactics they could use for evading censorship? So anything you would like to add before you go?

Natalia Anteleva:

Both are really big questions. I think I completely relate to everything that everyone else is saying. And I think Rina was talking about everything right now in the US feeling incredibly familiar to those of us who have either grown up or worked in other authoritarian contexts. Very distinct feeling that we've seen the movie before. But I think it's also important to remember that we don't know how it ends. America is different and the dynamics are different. The caveat is, of course the authoritarianism has spread very successfully in very different contexts.

I think having said all of it, and yes, it's unbelievable. I am in the US at the moment and it's unbelievable that now flying into the country, I would have to do the same things I used to do flying into Iran or Uzbekistan or Burma before, and take all those precautions. It's a bizarre world we suddenly live in. But I think it does make me perhaps naively optimistic about the need for journalism and for quality journalism. And again, in the first part of the session, many people talked about the growth of audience and people coming to smaller players like I think most people in this call, Wired excluded, but even Wired is not a huge publication compared to the old kind of old gatekeepers and old giants. I do think we live in the world where we increasingly... So I believe in the future of journalism, I think we increasingly need to ask ourselves what journalism is for and what purpose we're serving, because I think we have always equated abundance of information with understanding.

And the information has in fact been turned into a tool of censorship. I believe noise is the censorship. So I think for everyone in our industry or wanting to get into it, I think the question we should be asking ourselves is, what am I doing it for and how can I contribute to the conversation? How can I be useful rather be adding to the noise? Because I think it's one of the greatest tools that authoritarians have at their disposal. That they have weaponized information and media very, very successfully, almost against itself, just the way they weaponized elections. So sorry, jumble of thoughts here and not very concrete advice. Everyone always very welcome to reach out. I'll put my email into the chat before I leave. So if any young journalist wants any advice, it's one thing that I always make time for. But yeah, isn't easy but I think it's like the Chinese curse. We live in interesting ties.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thanks so much. One question that I have, and maybe I can start with you, Rina, is what are the stories that you're paying attention to right now in the midst of all of this? And as we said that this is not just a US story, but it's a global story. So what are some of the key narratives that you're paying attention to and what are some early warning signs based on experience of covering similar tactics in other regions, that would be useful to share with journalists in US as well.

Rina Chandran:

We continue to pay close attention to the tech giants in the other countries. So trying to hold them accountable in the markets where they have reduced resources, they've cut back on their content moderation teams, for example. They've decimated trust and safety. And these are markets where people also don't have the option of turning to the government or to courts for protection. So trying to hold tech giants accountable in these countries. The other theme that we are looking at quite closely and are alert to is when the US withdraws in terms of funding of say, non-profit organizations or media organizations in the rest of world, who is filling that space? Is it China, is it Russia? Who is filling these spaces or do these spaces not go filled?

China is of course a massive technology presence in many of these countries, be it through their social media apps or their companies or their electric vehicles. These are countries that have embraced Chinese technology because it's more accessible, it's cheaper. So we are definitely watching that very closely. And I would say holding technology companies accountable in countries that don't have as much of a rule of law, for example, and looking at China's increasing presence in these countries is something we're keeping a very close eye on. I'm not sure I can offer up words of advice because these are countries that don't really regard institutions with a lot of respect. If you look at press freedom, many of these countries, 26 of 32 Asia Pacific countries last year slipped in the rankings on the Press Freedom Index. But none of these countries care.

So you can go on, The Religious Freedom Index that is released by, I think it's Freedom House or another institution, India has consistently slipped on that. And India's basically like, "Well, we don't believe this index." So when there are institutions trying to hold governments accountable, they just don't care about it. So journalists trying to hold their governments accountable, I'm heartened to see journalists still doing that, still trying to do that, but it is getting increasingly harder. In Cambodia, Mech Dara, a local journalist who has been reporting extensively on the cyber scam compounds and the involvement of the Cambodian government, was finally arrested last year.

And then he was forced to read a public confession that everything he reported on was false under threat of harm to him and his family. And he's literally quit journalism because he does not see a future for himself in that country. We talk about journalism in an exile, I hope it doesn't come to that in the US. But a lot of journalists in countries like Myanmar, Iran, China, there are so many countries where journalists have been reduced to reporting from other countries because it's no longer safe for them or their families to be reporting in their own countries. There's this very popular video, well, he's sort of an influencer on YouTube who produces these segments on India, and he does not live in India.

Most people don't even know where he lives because he's under enormous pressure from the government. So I don't know, maybe journalism in exile is the only option for a lot of journalists going forward because they don't feel safe in their countries anymore. I wish I could say that I see more people supporting independent media, but this is not true of many developing countries where there is an enormous distrust of media. Thanks partly to the government blaming them for all sorts of things. Recently, Vietnam folded in the media industry under its ministry for sports, culture and tourism, which tells you exactly what this government sees the media's function being as, it is to portray a positive image of the country.

And there are a lot of people in many countries that will agree that that's what the media is meant to do. So the small minority of people who continue to believe that the media has an important role in holding government and institutions accountable are often not in a position to support the media, to take a stance for the media. So it is unfortunate that A, there's diminishing resources for media institutions, and B that resources from elsewhere are also reducing. So I guess my only takeaway from that would be that what we do is important in all of these countries, and particularly in countries where governments are cracking down on media and on people who question the government needs to go on. And I'm very encouraged to see people still doing the work that needs to be done. And the rest of world, for example, we have a huge network of freelancers that we work with very closely, and that's sort of a group of journalists who don't get talked about much very often.

Yes, we have our reporters but we rely very heavily on freelancers who are local to the country, who don't get as many opportunities to publish in their country's media, for example. And we give them the opportunity to work with us. And I would appeal to media organizations to work with local freelancers wherever they can, because you are not only giving them the resources to continue to work with, but you're also giving them a bigger platform from where they can be heard. So that is something I would definitely ask people to keep in mind, US publications to work with local freelancers more.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Absolutely great piece of advice. It's in a way also more alarming the changing situation in US and its effect on democracies because like you said, this is where people turn to when they can't protect themselves in their home countries. So definitely this is also another layer that we're also continuing to track the funding question, but also where do people go when their safe havens, so to say, are also facing the similar challenges. So Anupriya, one question for you I have is of course, like you've already mentioned in your first remark there are a lot of challenges with regulation, particularly with the DSA and acquisitions of censorship from Europe's side. What are some challenges that you face as a tech reporter when there's a lot of misinterpretation of European laws, not just internationally but also within Europe? Are you also seeing the impact of this type of framing of European laws within Europe? Are there challenges within Brussels? Is the narrative shifting?

Anupriya Datta:

Yeah, so regarding the DSA and what it actually means for platforms can be misinterpreted both in the US and in the EU. And of course, the instinct as a reporter is to comment on probably every post on X by Elon Musk criticizing the DSA and using it more as a weapon to criticize a larger geopolitical issue. And it has been used increasingly by mostly the far right in Brussels, and seen more as a debate for and against free speech. And it's somehow become a tool for the far right to say that this is a legislation that is promoting censorship in Brussels and EU. And now they have received some sort of assistance from X and Elon Musk. For example, two months ago, Elon Musk used X to interview the far right AfD candidate, Alice Weidel, just before the general elections took place in February.

And part of the concern was of course that he is providing a very, very big platform to this candidate. But that would not be something that the DSA would legislate per se. It could be other pieces of laws. But the DSA, for example, would say if he is using the recommended systems or artificially boosting his posts in a way that's not compliant to the tech laws. But it was also seen by the far right and a few parties to sort of change the narrative that this law is used to censor political parties, censor political movements. But that's not the case. Of course, it's hard to be able to prove that's not the case, rather than prove that it is the case. The DSA has become rather a political tool. For example, about two months ago or a month ago, US Representative US Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a long letter to Commissioner Henna Virkkunen, who's the tech commissioner here and the competition commissioner Teresa Rivera, talking about the DSA and also in extension the DMA.

But on the DSA specifically, that it was censoring free speech and used as a tool by the EU to censor US-based tech companies. Keeping in mind, of course, Elon Musk's criticism on this topic. And then politicians from the European Parliament visited Washington just after the letter was sent. So it was a good timing, and they told us that it also comes from a lack of understanding what the DSA is. But really seen as a tool by US politicians and EU politicians to then criticize Brussels, criticize tech legislation and sort of manipulate their notion of what free speech means also to their own advantage.

Ramsha Jahangir:

Thank you. And with that, I think we're at time. This time flies when we're having good conversations. So thank you so much to all of you for participating. This has been very insightful.