Event
The Tech Giants, Monopoly Power, and Public Discourse
A symposium examining free speech implications of "breaking up" today's giant online platforms
New York, NY
A small number of tech companies now control the digital public square, or large parts of it. These companies have an enormous influence over who can speak, what can be said, and who gets heard. During this symposium, we’ll examine the extent and nature of the technology giants’ power to structure, shape, and distort public discourse, and we'll consider whether anti-monopoly tools might usefully be deployed to limit, expose, or counter this power.
Program
Thursday, November 14, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Columbia Journalism School
Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall
Private platforms, public discourse
In this stage-setting conversation, we’ll discuss digital platform business models and their impact on public discourse, relative advantages and disadvantages of content-based regulation versus structural reform, and the relevance of First Amendment principles to these issues. This panel will sharpen the questions we’ll tackle over the course of the symposium.
Welcome
Steve Coll, Dean, Columbia Journalism School
Opening remarks
Jameel Jaffer, Knight First Amendment Institute
Panelists
Jack Balkin, Yale Law School
Emily Bell, Columbia Journalism School
Cindy Cohn, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lina Khan, Columbia Law School
Moderator
Katy Glenn Bass, Knight First Amendment Institute
Friday, November 15, 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Columbia Law School
Jerome Greene Hall, Room 104
9:30 am
Welcome
Lee C. Bollinger, President, Columbia University
9:45 am - 11:15 am
Information plurality and integrity in an era of concentrated power
For a number of related reasons—media consolidation, the collapse of local news, the mechanics of surveillance capitalism—a small number of technology companies occupy central positions in our speech environment. These companies’ human and algorithmic decisions have an outsized influence on the quality and integrity of the information we see, as well as on who sees which information, and in which context they see it. In this conversation, we’ll consider legal or institutional reforms that could protect the public’s access to a diversity of news sources and improve the quality and integrity of the information that underlies public discourse.
Panelists
Lina Khan, Columbia Law School
Susan McGregor, Columbia Journalism School
Andrea Prat, Columbia University
Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Media Lab
Moderator
Vivian Schiller, Civil Foundation
11:15 am - 11:30 Am
Coffee Break
Outside Jerome Greene Hall, Room 104
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
New (and old) approaches to shaping the online information environment
Legislators, advocates, and scholars—some of our contributors among them—have proposed a wide variety of legislative and regulatory reforms to address information disorders on digital platforms, including disorders that stem from the technology companies’ increasing power over the speech environment. In response to the threat of legislation, the largest technology companies have begun to develop their own measures to address some of these disorders. In this conversation, we’ll evaluate the promise of these proposed and already-implemented measures and consider whether opening new avenues for government intervention would give rise to new risks for free speech online.
Panelists
Neil Chilson, Charles Koch Institute
Evelyn Douek, Harvard Law School
Ellen P. Goodman, Rutgers Law School
Surya Mattu, The Markup
Moderator
Alex Abdo, Knight First Amendment Institute
1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Lunch
Drapkin Lounge, Jerome Greene Hall (second floor)
2:15 pm - 3:45 pm
Public options, public utilities, public spheres
Questions about information policy and communications infrastructure are tied up with notions of the common and the public good. As the power of privately owned social media platforms has expanded, concerns about the platforms’ dominance and opacity have prompted proposals to regulate the platforms as public utilities, or to intervene more directly in their operations in the name of the public interest. Simultaneously, as other nations advance a vision of an internet that is heavily surveilled, censored, and manipulated, questions about what values we want the internet to reflect have returned again to the fore. In this conversation, we’ll discuss some of the most ambitious proposals for restructuring the internet, and we’ll consider some of the most powerful arguments for and against those proposals.
Panelists
Richard John, Columbia Journalism School
John Samples, Cato Institute
Ganesh Sitaraman, Vanderbilt Law School
Zephyr Teachout, Fordham Law School
Moderator
Ramya Krishnan, Knight First Amendment Institute
3:50 pm - 5:15 pm
First Amendment as object and obstacle
Animating many landmarks of First Amendment jurisprudence is a concern about centralized control over the speech environment. But as the courts have construed the First Amendment to protect an ever-wider range of activity, it may be the First Amendment itself that is the most significant obstacle to some of the antimonopoly reforms that legislators and others are proposing. In our closing conversation, we’ll reflect on the intertwined histories of the First Amendment and antitrust law, and we’ll consider whether, and to what extent, the First Amendment could prove an obstacle to legislative and regulatory proposals meant to protect our system of free expression. We’ll also consider whether reform proposals could be restructured in ways that would make them less likely to fall foul of the Roberts Court’s First Amendment.
Panelists
Daniel Crane, University of Michigan Law School
Genevieve Lakier, University of Chicago Law School
Tim Wu, Columbia Law School
Moderator
Olivier Sylvain, Fordham Law School
Program Materials
Schedule
-
Columbia Journalism School
Joseph D. Jamail Lecture Hall
2950 Broadway
New York, NY
Private platforms, public discourse
In this stage-setting conversation, we’ll discuss digital platform business models and their impact on public discourse, relative advantages and disadvantages of content-based regulation versus structural reform, and the relevance of First Amendment principles to these issues. This panel will sharpen the questions we’ll tackle over the course of the symposium.
WELCOME
- Steve Coll, Dean, Columbia Journalism School
OPENING REMARKS
- Jameel Jaffer, Knight First Amendment Institute
PANELISTS
- Jack Balkin, Yale Law School
- Emily Bell, Columbia Journalism School
- Cindy Cohn, Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Lina Khan, Columbia Law School
MODERATOR
- Katy Glenn Bass, Knight First Amendment Institute
-
Columbia Law School
Jerome L. Greene Hall, Room 104
435 W. 116th Street
New York, NY
Welcome Remarks
Information plurality and integrity in an era of concentrated power
For a number of related reasons—media consolidation, the collapse of local news, the mechanics of surveillance capitalism—a small number of technology companies occupy central positions in our speech environment. These companies’ human and algorithmic decisions have an outsized influence on the quality and integrity of the information we see, as well as on who sees which information, and in which context they see it. In this conversation, we’ll consider legal or institutional reforms that could protect the public’s access to a diversity of news sources and improve the quality and integrity of the information that underlies public discourse.
PANELISTS
- Lina Khan, Columbia Law School
- Susan McGregor, Columbia Journalism School
- Andrea Prat, Columbia University
- Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Media Lab
MODERATOR
- Vivian Schiller, Civil Foundation
Coffee Break
New (and old) approaches to shaping the online information environment
Legislators, advocates, and scholars—some of our contributors among them—have proposed a wide variety of legislative and regulatory reforms to address information disorders on digital platforms, including disorders that stem from the technology companies’ increasing power over the speech environment. In response to the threat of legislation, the largest technology companies have begun to develop their own measures to address some of these disorders. In this conversation, we’ll evaluate the promise of these proposed and already-implemented measures and consider whether opening new avenues for government intervention would give rise to new risks for free speech online.
PANELISTS
- Neil Chilson, Charles Koch Institute
- Evelyn Douek, Harvard Law School
- Ellen P. Goodman, Rutgers Law School
- Surya Mattu, The Markup
MODERATOR
Public options, public utilities, public spheres
Questions about information policy and communications infrastructure are tied up with notions of the common and the public good. As the power of privately owned social media platforms has expanded, concerns about the platforms’ dominance and opacity have prompted proposals to regulate the platforms as public utilities, or to intervene more directly in their operations in the name of the public interest. Simultaneously, as other nations advance a vision of an internet that is heavily surveilled, censored, and manipulated, questions about what values we want the internet to reflect have returned again to the fore. In this conversation, we’ll discuss some of the most ambitious proposals for restructuring the internet, and we’ll consider some of the most powerful arguments for and against those proposals.
PANELISTS
- Richard John, Columbia Journalism School
- John Samples, Cato Institute
- Ganesh Sitaraman, Vanderbilt Law School
- Zephyr Teachout, Fordham Law School
MODERATOR
First Amendment as object and obstacle
Animating many landmarks of First Amendment jurisprudence is a concern about centralized control over the speech environment. But as the courts have construed the First Amendment to protect an ever-wider range of activity, it may be the First Amendment itself that is the most significant obstacle to some of the antimonopoly reforms that legislators and others are proposing. In our closing conversation, we’ll reflect on the intertwined histories of the First Amendment and antitrust law, and we’ll consider whether, and to what extent, the First Amendment could prove an obstacle to legislative and regulatory proposals meant to protect our system of free expression. We’ll also consider whether reform proposals could be restructured in ways that would make them less likely to fall foul of the Roberts Court’s First Amendment.
PANELISTS
- Daniel Crane, University of Michigan Law School
- Genevieve Lakier, University of Chicago Law School
- Tim Wu, Columbia Law School
MODERATOR