On this week’s episode, we talk Big Tech and whether or not government regulation is the answer. This is becoming an increasingly important topic as the desire to gain information — that’s unbiased and unfiltered — is difficult and confusing. We struggle with knowing who and what to believe and where to turn for the truth. The result has been a declining faith in institutions. So where do conservatives turn, especially when we are often the first to be censored? Bret Jacobson joins to help shed some light on a complex issue and gives tips on what conservatives can do.
Bret Jacobson is the co-founder and partner at Red Edge, a leading digital advocacy agency in Washington, D.C. Under Bret’s leadership, Red Edge helps a diverse roster of clients cut through an increasingly noisy and disjointed digital landscape to bring their message to the public. From small, tactical projects to long-term strategic initiatives, Red Edge’s efforts have generated millions of dollars in paid and earned media.
Bret got his start in D.C., turning issue and opposition research into effective messaging. His work has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Associated Press, Forbes, TechRepublic, VICE News, and more. He comments regularly in the media about trends related to Big Tech, privacy, and politics. In addition, Bret has been named by Campaigns and Elections Magazine (C&E) as a “Disruptor” and a “Rising Star.” The New York Times profiled Red Edge after the 2012 presidential election.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we talk Big Tech and whether or not government regulation is the answer. This is becoming an increasingly important topic, as the desire to gain information that’s unbiased and unfiltered is seemingly difficult and confusing. We struggle with knowing who and what to believe and where to turn for our truth. The result has been a declining faith in institutions and a call to regulate Big Tech. So where does that leave conservatives, especially when we are often the first to be censored? Well, Bret Jacobson is here to shed some light on a complex issue. Bret Jacobson is co-founder and partner at Red Edge, a leading digital advocacy agency in Washington, DC.
Under Bret’s leadership, Red Edge helps a diverse roster of clients cut through an increasingly noisy and disjointed digital landscape to bring their message to the public. Bret has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and more. In addition, Bret has been named by Campaigns and Elections magazine as a disruptor and a rising star, and it is a pleasure to have him on the program today. Bret, thank you so much for joining She Thinks.
Bret Jacobson:
Thank you, Beverly, glad to be with you.
Beverly Hallberg:
So there’s a lot I want to delve into on this issue, but I just want to start with the problem, things that conservatives tend to be concerned about. And that is censorship. We’re seeing that in many different ways, whether it’s with politicians on Twitter; we’re seeing Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster when it comes to YouTube and even Twitter being censored; even Apple podcasts being censored. There’s also Rand Paul, who has said that he is leaving Twitter altogether. So there are a lot of people out there, whether they’re considered conservatives or just not in the mainstream thought with everything, who are saying that they are being censored. Do you see this as a problem within Big Tech?
Bret Jacobson:
I certainly think it’s a problem. Anytime you have that many users of your own platform concerned that they are being selected for essentially being de-platformed. So I think it’s a problem, at least in perception, whether it is in fact or not. And I think that for the platforms, I think they’ve done probably a very poor job of explaining their thought processes and how they’re making decisions. And I think they probably got themselves a little bit into a pickle when they decided that they should be the arbiters of truth. And I think … You saw Jack Dorsey, the CEO, the former CEO of Twitter, argue that that is not their role to be arbiters of truth, and I think you see what happens when they started down a path that they really technologically and morally couldn’t sustain. And so I think conservatives in particular have a reason to be concerned. But then I think the real question is, what are the solutions to that? And I’m concerned that some conservatives are leaning toward government solutions when history has taught us that that is about the worst way that you could go.
Beverly Hallberg:
What I find fascinating about the government-needs-to-break-up-Big-Tech angle is that it seems that this is the only thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, or at least many of them. That it seems like the very progressive wing wants there to be regulation in Big Tech and the very conservative or very far-right side of Republicans wants there to be regulation of Big Tech. Why do we see these two entities, these two natural enemies, coming together on this one issue?
Bret Jacobson:
Yeah, I think conservatives should take a moment and really think about how much do they really want to be with Elizabeth Warren in a foxhole, and what that’s going to get them long-term. And so, what the very, very far left and the very, very far right have in common is that they’re willing to use government to take short-term control over other people’s speech. And for the 90% of us on the rest of the political spectrum, we know that the government controlling our speech is fundamentally why we left the British Empire and why we started the greatest country on earth. And so it’s puzzling that people would take a short-term vision and introduce government into these communications platforms that have been used so productively to advance conversations and commerce.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so this leads to really what is a solution to this problem? If somebody is kicked off Twitter, what do they do? If somebody is being censored or information is being censored on Facebook, what do we do about that? Now, there is the claim from those who want to break up Big Tech, they claim that these are monopolies. That they’re too big, that other messages can’t get through. What do you make to the claim that these are monopolies and therefore there is a reason for government intervention? And would you agree, if these were monopolies, the government would have a role in getting involved?
Bret Jacobson:
I think if there was an actual monopoly, then the government might have a standing to take action. But you have people complaining on Twitter about being treated poorly on YouTube. So the idea that there aren’t enough places to speak, it doesn’t really hold water. But just the speed of change is itself an argument against very old people in DC trying to understand and then regulate these incredibly fast-moving platforms. And I think, when people think big, they might think Facebook or they might think Google, but they might not realize that within the last several weeks, Chinese communist TikTok has basically rocketed past those for a lot of user demographics in terms of who’s using them, how much time they’re spending on them. So the market changes extremely quickly and what we don’t need is the government hammering American companies while Communist Party-aligned TikTok apps are going and taking a lot of attention in eyeballs.
Beverly Hallberg:
And something that we do often hear people say who share your perspective on how we should handle Big Tech and the problems that we see, is we say that these individual companies — take Twitter, for instance — have every right to set up the rules that they want for their own business. Then you have those who say, well, they need to be treated like a traditional media company, like a publisher, so there must be regulation. For those who are on that side, that private companies can determine what they want to do, how do you see some of the decisions of these companies playing out in real-time? Does the market actually punish them for bad decisions? I know we’re going to be seeing this whether or not this happens with the new CEO of Twitter who is instituting more rules, it seems, with Twitter than Jack Dorsey did. But how do you see that when there is a suppression of speech by these CEOs, do you see that the free market does react positively and the people go elsewhere, they take their business away?
Bret Jacobson:
We have seen a number of new platforms emerge in the last several months. I think Rumble, the video challenger to YouTube, is the most interesting right now. Dan Bongino and a number of other individuals have poured a lot of sweat and resources into building something new and interesting. Senator Rand Paul just said that he’s going to be done with YouTube in favor of Rumble for the most part. And there’s fairly significant market valuations on Rumble. Former President Trump aligned with a SPAC to line up some money, pretty sizable money.
So there is, there are resources. There are technology solutions for people who want to leave the massive platforms for more specific places to talk about politics. And I think a good metaphor is how we think about different retail stores. So I think you’re going to start seeing users who want to talk about politics, maybe go to some very specific political places in the same way that you might go to Bed Bath and Beyond for sheets, you might go to Home Depot for lights. So I think becoming more sophisticated, using different platforms for different needs, I think is going to be something that we’ll see going forward.
Beverly Hallberg:
I know a competitor to Twitter that seems to be gaining some traction is Gettr. You had Joe Rogan join it. You have different politicians joining it, getting off of Twitter altogether. So we’ll see what happens with that startup company. And just on that, I’ve wondered if with this topic of Section 230 being discussed and still thrown around and talked a lot, if you could break down for us, when people talk about Section 230, what exactly is the debate about?
Bret Jacobson:
The debate’s pretty confused. And I think it’s one of those political totems, excuse me, that people use as a stand-in phrase for just trying to reign in something that they think is out of control. But fundamentally, what the argument over Section 230 legally is, is really about whether or not we continue to put a barrier in the way of rapacious trial sharks who would sue every website 10 times a day for every comment that is posted on a website. The law was intended to basically deal with trial attorneys and their bad habits. It has very little [to] do with actual free speech rights, which are still covered by the First Amendment. And so you have the far left, and some on the far right, trying to use it as a way, basically, as a cudgel to knock around large platforms that they don’t like. My hope for conservatives is that they remember the many years and many millions of dollars they spent battling trial sharks and winning the tort reform war for a while and not just give it back to them so easily.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I want to move on to just conservatives and the messaging. The reason, of course, that conservatives do get frustrated with some of these Big Tech arms is that they feel that the conservative message can’t get out there. I think even on the issue of COVID, it’s been most interesting; people who want to share information have been censored. Of course, one of the popular theories that was out there when COVID first came out that was censored quite a bit was where did COVID originate from? Was it from a lab or was it from a wet market? And that was censored. And so I think the question that conservatives often do have is how to fight back. You talk about these other startups, and conservatives can go to other places if they’re frustrated with what a Big Tech company may be doing. But is there anything else they can do? What is the way for them to think about the messages they want to get out there? How do conservatives fight back?
Bret Jacobson:
That’s a great question. And I think I don’t have a great answer for you. I do know that, interestingly, Joe Rogan has basically shot past a lot of cable news and mainstream news outlets in terms of listenership. And I think that’s because he’s willing to at least entertain questions that editors at CNN are not willing to entertain. And I think that’s to the detriment of a lot of legacy media. I think figuring out credibility is probably the biggest challenge of the next two decades. And how do we understand credibility? How do we ascribe it to people somewhat in real-time so that, as these complex global challenges happen, we’re able to figure out who we can listen to? I think an interesting look is the rise and fall of Anthony Fauci and how much credibility he seemed to have early on.
And then he became “I am the science guy,” which is lacking the humility that we want in science. And it took a long time for some of the news outlets to recognize some problems in how we were dealing with public health messaging. So I think learning together how we give people credibility is a challenge for especially young viewers who are very cynical. And the reverse problem is true, maybe for boomers or very older Americans, who grew up in a higher trust environment and might give too much trust to new voices that aren’t very well established.
Beverly Hallberg:
And based on just what we see from data, where do you think the trust level is that Americans have when it comes to the legacy media? Has it diminished immensely? How far has it fallen?
Bret Jacobson:
I think the trust has fallen a lot. But even just viewership in the last two years has fallen dramatically for cable news, in particular, but just news in particular. I think people are a little bit burnt out. I don’t feel, it doesn’t seem like they feel like they’re going to get the honest story the first time. And so, as trust erodes, as people get a little burnt out from a pandemic, from pretty high-octane politics, it certainly seems like they are spending more of their media time on enjoyable or non-challenging things.
Beverly Hallberg:
One of the things I’ve wondered with the rise of podcasts — of course, we are recording a podcast today — as we’ve seen this emergence … and of course podcasts started before COVID. If the reason we’re seeing so many people turn to podcasts, obviously, it’s the lack of trust. I think that’s a big factor. But I think it’s a good sign that people are craving long-form information, that maybe they’re turning away from the sound bite culture that we’ve become so accustomed to in legacy media, in mainstream media, and they’re turning for more information, yes, brought to you in a entertaining way that’s easy to listen to you. I personally like the fact that you can binge episodes of your favorite podcasts when you have time. But do you think that the rise of podcasts and long-form media, whether through YouTube or through wherever people do find their podcasts, is an encouraging sign that people are turning with their feet, they’re turning into a different direction instead of just flipping on the TV?
Bret Jacobson:
I think it’s an extremely positive sign because it means that they’re engaging with one idea or one general aesthetic for longer periods of time. And so I think that that creates complexity of thought, which is usually associated with being kinder to other people. So I think those are great things. I think it’s also very healthy that the podcast culture has evolved into this idea where you can have limited-run series, which is the opposite of network TV, right? Law & Order has been running for 84 years. You can actually just have something as long as it’s relevant. And I think that is also an undervalued contribution that I’m excited about.
Beverly Hallberg:
I’ve yet to see one episode of Law & Order. I don’t know what that says about me, but I’ve never actually ventured an episode of it.
Bret Jacobson:
Well, we know your next podcast series is.
Beverly Hallberg:
So on just the messages and getting the message out, I know that this is what you work with, with Red Edge and digital advocacy. This has changed the landscape for conservatives getting their message out. This has changed the landscape specifically for politicians. I still remember when it was a big deal when president, or then, Barack Obama ran, and he used it texting, texting to get donations and get his message out. But we’ve come a long way since that campaign. How are you finding that Republican politicians, especially as we’re using midterms, what are they turning to, to get their message out? Is it social media? Is it digital advertising? Is it a combination of all of it? But are they turning away from the traditional ads that we would typically see on TV?
Bret Jacobson:
Yeah, there’s in advertising on the web, there’s something called banner blindness, which is the concept that users are now so used to seeing websites for decades, that they know exactly where the ads are in their brains, sort of put, force blinders on and just look at exactly the content that they’re looking for. And what we’ve seen is that the very same thing has happened to the traditional 30-second TV negative where everything gets very gray. And then we have a headline rip and then a bad picture of somebody. And if you’ve ever been in Ohio or Pennsylvania, the last week of an election, you feel so sorry for those poor people because they’re just inundated for 20 hours a day on TV of negative ads. And so what we’re seeing is ads that are a lot more native to the platforms that they’re on.
So they fit in your phone well. They know what’s supposed to be what sound, not what sound. But you also mentioned length. And that’s a really interesting thing is that if you can capture somebody’s attention in the first five seconds, your ad can actually go seven or eight minutes if it’s really interesting. And that’s a nice change because that means that you’re not trying to fit every complex political issue into 30 seconds, which obviously is not always realistic for some of the most important fights of our time.
So we’re really excited with the continued potential for using different digital tools to reach people in ways that is actually useful to them. And that’s one of the things that we focus on is trying to have compassion for the actual user. Because it’s not a mom’s job to stop what she’s doing, tell her kids to be quiet so she can watch a really mean-spirited political ad on TV. It’s our job to give her useful information and tell her why it impacts her life so that she can help form rules to make her kids healthy and safe and grow.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I think it’s interesting, you use that word “compassion.” It makes me think of George W. Bush. Is this a return up to compassionate conservatism when it comes to messaging and tone?
Bret Jacobson:
I certainly think that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Sort of a hobby horse theory with some of my employees, is we talk about what is real masculinity versus fake masculinity. And there’s this concept that to be a man you have to go prove it by just barking like a rabid dog every day. And it turns out you can actually have real thoughts and a real backbone and work really hard for a long period of time on issues that you care about. And so we think that if you do messaging the right way, you can actually get a convert for life, as opposed to somebody who’s just going to pull the lever for you one time because they’re really scared about crime in their local neighborhood.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so when you talk about just being more approachable in the message itself, do you find that in working with your clients, you’ve had to fight against a lot of what we’ve seen in the past few years, including with President Donald Trump, and that is this very tough guy type of talk? A lot of people have said to me, just in my media training over the years, that they want to be trained to speak like Donald Trump because it worked for him. He did win the highest office in the world. Became president of the United States. Have you found much pushback in what do you say and respond to people rightly say, “it worked for Trump, can’t it work for me?”
Bret Jacobson:
Well, we don’t get that a lot. We actually prefer to work on issues, which we’ve always said that the difference between an issue and a candidate is that you will know where the issue is going to be in the morning when you wake up. And candidates are a little bit different. But we do find that people think that there aren’t any limits on tone anymore, that you can always just throw bombs. And that only works in extremely short timeframes, and it burns people out really quickly and they tune you out pretty quickly. And so finding interesting ways and educational ways, and sometimes inspirational ways, to talk to people is more helpful.
And so we focus specifically on one kind of ad called halo effect where we’ll go talk to somebody who’s 80 years old and they started a business 50 years ago in the community, and we’ll talk about the challenges they face and why somebody running for Congress or Senate has actually been there to help them. And so we’ve gone all over the country and then we test it out, in the same way that we test new drugs for the FDA. And we say does it work for these people? Does it not work for these people? And we found time and again, that telling real stories of optimism and of struggle end up being the most effective messaging overall.
Beverly Hallberg:
And as we’re looking towards the midterms, we know we’re going to be getting a lot of political ads and what I have found so interesting in how one should message is I do think people are more in tune to politics than ever before. People who typically weren’t that involved in politics care now. We saw what happened in November in Virginia where you had the activist parent rise up and, regardless of what political party they aligned with, had a very strong opinion on education. Are you seeing that people who haven’t necessarily paid much attention to policies and politics are involved and does that make it a necessity to message differently with that in mind?
Bret Jacobson:
It changes your strategy overall. And the most interesting changes that we recommend to our clients is to shift the calendar forward. In the days where 30 years ago, lobbyists would knock off and just leave DC for all of August. And maybe you wouldn’t run TV ads until October. Opinions are set by then at this point, right? So to actually educate people about a candidate or about an issue, you have to start way earlier. You have to use repetition, you have to be effective.
And so there’s the old playbook is a little bit lazy, right? We’re just going to buy $18-million worth of TV in Poughkeepsie and we’ll call that good. And you have to be a little bit more intentional. You have to be a little bit more nuanced in terms of being honest about where the audience is starting from. You can reach people and change minds, if somebody is already disagreeing with you, if you’re pretty honest with them about why they need to change their minds. And so, it’s not always just about this brutalist turnout model. Sometimes you can actually have a real conversation. And I think that’s why we enjoy the digital side so much is that’s where the conversations tend to happen.
Beverly Hallberg:
And final question for you as we wrap up: we both know, those listening know, that we’re in a very polarized environment. I don’t think Americans are as far apart as often they are portrayed in the media. But yet, I think especially with COVID, whether people have a vaccine, they’re vaxxed or not vaxxed, there’s been a lot of tension within that. When we’re dealing with a polarized society, any tips that you would give on trying to help people reach across the aisle? Is this about just getting to the local level and neighbor getting to know neighbor again? Is the isolation that we’ve seen in the past two years been one of the reasons why we are more polarized?
Bret Jacobson:
The isolation is a big thing, but it’s combined with the fact that we’re inundated with so much information and our brains are just not necessarily built for discerning with deep thought that much information. And so I would say, as I get older, as I have kids, and we’re trying to talk to them about how do they work through that kind of information, sometimes it’s giving people the benefit of the doubt. And that sounds really simple, but maybe somebody disagrees with you because they have a piece of information that you don’t have or maybe they disagree with you because you have a piece of information they haven’t heard yet. And it isn’t necessarily that they’re just a walking incarnation of the devil. So starting with the idea that our fellow Americans are still decent human beings and that if we do the hard work of communicating our values to them, I think, is not necessarily very sexy and not necessarily very easy, but very important.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I’m hoping that we are headed in that direction, that Americans are frustrated with what’s been taking place over the past few years. And like you said, be gracious to people and maybe not assess motive. Maybe having a conversation and seeing where they’re really coming from. Well, Bret Jacobson with Red Edge, we so appreciate you joining us today.
Bret Jacobson:
Thank you, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
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