Joe Allen

leave room for true accountability, for true liability on the companies.

The companies simply have to have the policies in place.

It's then determined afterwards, even if harm is done, as in the case of the suicide, it's then determined whether or not the company simply had the policy.

It's not the harm itself.

It's being framed as a kind of free speech.

issue.

And I've heard from a number of conservatives, libertarian types and others, that if you put the liability on these tech companies, then you constrain the speech of citizens.

But it's interesting, Steve, the main arguments for this beginning in 2022 were coming from groups like the gay rights and advocacy groups who claimed that such policies, if dictated by Republicans would mean that

In essence, people would not be able to speak to children about homosexual acts.

So it's not, in my opinion, I think that wherever this goes, if it ends in a place anywhere close to where we are right now, where these platforms provide access to children for predators to exploit them, as we saw with the recent unsealing of documents for Meta,

The suit against Meta and Alphabet and others.

If it's allowed to continue in this fashion, it's just going to continue to degrade the social fabric.

It's going to continue to expose children unnecessarily to this sort of poison.

It's going to leave these tech companies in a position where they continue to profit from it.

And as AI becomes a kind of autonomous...

It's just going to see we're going to see this landslide of decadence and basically social decay continue at the behest of these companies and with zero accountability.

You know, Steve, last night you pointed out when we were speaking to the parents that the parents who had gathered there, their children had been lured by human beings via these online platforms.

And we know that.

into the mists of prehistory that human beings have preyed on each other.

That's nothing new.