#336: Tech Illiteracy on the Right

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bad tech policy is a bipartisan affair. Lately, though, the right has particularly excelled at it. TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold and Ari Cohn discuss the GOP’s obsession with supposed “Big Tech censorship,” its performative new “weaponization” subcommittee, its strange quest to turn spammy fundraising emails into a political cause, and more. The episode centers around Corbin’s and Ari’s article at Techdirt, “If You Believe In Free Speech, The GOP’s ‘Weaponization’ Subcommittee Is Not Your Friend,” and Corbin’s article for The Bulwark, “The Republican Project to Break Your Email Account.” The podcast Corbin mentions (8:24) is called Moderated Content. The McSweeney’s piece Ari cites (42:05) is “If I Emailed My Parents Like Democrats Email Me.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back one and all to the tech policy podcast.
0:18.4	I am Corbyn Barthold.
0:20.5	I'm pleased to be joined once again today by Tech Freedom's
0:24.3	Free Speech Council Ari Cohn. Bad tech policy, driven sometimes by viciousness, sometimes by
0:34.4	ignorance, often by both at once, is a bipartisan affair.
0:41.1	Please don't mistake us as saying otherwise at any point on this episode.
0:47.3	Nor would we ever claim that everyone in a given political party, even the Republican Party,
0:57.8	is hopeless on every tech issue.
1:02.3	Obviously, that'd be painting with too broad a brush.
1:15.9	Still, if we have to give a trophy, a tech golden raspberry, if you will, for worst tech policy performance to one side,
1:23.3	I'm sorry to say the winner right now has to be the Republicans and the political right.
1:34.9	Maybe they only win by a nose, but it's certainly enough to get them an episode on this show devoted to the subject of right-wing tech illiteracy.
1:41.4	There are a number of themes at play here, although they all connect to each other.
1:48.0	I have in my head a picture of sort of a web of political assininity. When it comes to tech policy, the loudest and most prominent figures on the right fixate on
1:57.0	petty and irrelevant issues. They use tech policy, which, when done correctly, is a pretty
2:04.6	meaty topic as a totem for culture war. I have in mind, at least to begin with, the GOP leaders who are
2:14.1	still shouting constantly about Hunter Biden's laptop.
2:19.8	Because tech policy for such people is not an end in itself,
2:24.9	it should come as no surprise that they tend to emphasize theatrics and tribalism over substance.
2:32.2	For instance, many GOP politicians take a position on Section 230 that utterly
2:39.0	contradicts their supposed opposition to what they call big tech censorship. Their stances are
2:45.6	incoherent, but they make for good sound bites, which seems to be what matters to them.
	...

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