This is an IHeart podcast.

I'm Mae Piggins and this is Solvable.

Interviews with the world's most innovative thinkers working to solve the world's biggest problems.

So our guest today is David Kay,

the United Nations leading voice on freedom of expression.

He is talking to Jacob Weisberg

about one of the more polarizing issues of today.

So my solvable is democratizing the internet, reclaiming public principles for online speech

over the next three to five years. Now being online has never been perfect. Even in the early days of

the internet, there were some trolls and even some danger, but we used to see the internet as this potential

utopia.

Today, with so many of us living out so much of our lives online and the explosion of disinformation

and hate speech and even terrorist propaganda, the internet can be a horrible place to

spend time. Basically, we don't know how to

regulate speech on the internet. Here in the US, we hold tight to our First Amendment, but we

agree that some things should be censored, but which things? Right now, we're leaving it up

to the platforms and the social media companies that serve it up.

This past decade has seen three giant American companies, Facebook, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube,

become the way that most of the world experiences the internet and the conveyors of much of its disturbing and dangerous material.

So how should online speech be governed? What law should apply to

global companies? Should companies make the rules or should governments step in to regulate?

Also, consider this. Freedom in the world is an annual global report on political rights and

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