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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 30 July 2025 on Monocle Radio.
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Why has none of the above become everyone's preferred prime minister? Iran's taps run increasingly dry at the height of summer and the new moral panic about young people not watching television. I'm Andrew Miller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Tara Kangalu and Simon Brook will discuss today's big stories. And we'll hear from former US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Pozner about his new book explaining how corporations can have principles as well as profits. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
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Foreign.
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This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Tara Kangalu, global affairs journalist for NBC, CNN and Al Jazeera America, adjunct professor, Georgetown University, and author of the Heartbeat of Iran, and by Simon Brook, journalist and communications consultant. Hello to you both.
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C
Hello.
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B
Hello, Simon. First of all, you, I understand, have recently been making your neighbourhood tidier.
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C
I've been doing my best, yes, exactly. For a change, trying to do some good. So I've joined a litter picking group and yeah, we go around our neighborhood picking up cans, burger packets, pizza boxes, putting them in bags and putting them out of the way. What I didn't realize was that actually I am now taking part in something that is a sport, globally recognized sport, and the world championships take place very soon in Japan. I won't be going there, but I'm going to carry on doing the litter bit.
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B
Are you hoping to qualify for next year?
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C
I'm now. I am now, absolutely, yeah. I'm in training already, whatever that is. I don't know.
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B
I mean, doubtless I'm assuming participating in such a thing endows you with a sort of smugness, smug warm feeling of having actually done something constructive, made things objectively better, etc. But do you not find yourself even more consumed than you might previously have been with the idea that people who do, in fact, litter should be fired out of cannons?
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C
That's the least that should have from the matter. Absolutely. The other funny thing is I do notice when I'm walking down the street, but not with my litter picking gear with me, I get a kind of dopamine hit when I see a tin can or a bit of rubbish on the street. But I suppose, yeah, I'm not very keen on those people and there's also part of me that wonders why I'm doing this thing. Am I not paying my taxes for the local authority to be picking up litter instead?
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B
So it's turned you into a crazed libertarian law and justice fanatic. Totally excellent, Tara. We will not be much discussing Gaza on today's show, but you have been talking to people in Gaza.
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Yes, indeed. As you know, my charity Art of Hope has two running programs in Gaza as we speak. And our team members have been doing a lot of play therapy, drama work with kids all over. And, but, but you know, this. This past week, we've been focusing on food and getting people the, the much needed cash to buy the very expensive food, if they can find it, of course. And we were very lucky to actually have access to be able to get the money needed through one of our managers. He's actually a music teacher. And if I may share a conversation that I had with him over the weekend, he was saying how much he's struggling to find milk for his baby. And right now, baby formula, again, if you can find it, is $50. One kilo of rice is $50.
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There is a thriving black market in Egypt.
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And as we know, you know, the war brings out the best and the worst in people. And I think in this case, we're seeing some of the worst of humanity with these high prices. But anyway, Hussam said to me, he said, tara, I'm trying to find milk, and you know, even if I find it, it's so expensive. And I said, you know, we're trying to get you guys the cash needed for the 10 teachers and their families. And he said, tara, I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed to take this money because my job is to be a music teacher for the program. And you have to promise that I can return this. To which I, you know what, you have to promise me that when I visit you next in Gaza, you host me and cook for me. And he said, for a moment, I imagined that and that brought me joy. And my family is actually known for making good fish. So I will make you fish when you come. And I want to leave our audiences with that thought because we are looking at a population of, you know, deeply educated, vibrant, you know, individuals who are now reduced to, quite frankly, beggars. And, you know, the world is just standing by with very little being done to help this population.
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B
Well, there is much more on that coming up across our shows the rest of this week. Also on this Saturday's edition of the Foreign Desk, we will start today's daily in the United Kingdom. And yesterday, as we have been discussing on other shows, earlier today, Prime Minister Sakir Starmer took a position on Gaza which could have been designed to please absolutely nobody and which duly pleased absolutely nobody. But he and every other politician, the UK and indeed in the Western democratic world, could probably be forgiven for throwing their hands skywards and harrumphing that there is no point in trying to please anybody. So apparently determined are their electorates to approve of nothing their governments do. Starmer, whose Labour Party were awarded a thumping majority in the House of Commons in last July's general election, is presently polling at around 23% approval. Other party leaders are doing at best a little bit better. Better. Simon, have you known the like previously? Is the British public more chronically malcontent now than at any previous point you can recall?
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C
Very much so, yeah, absolutely. And the polls show that, don't they? And I think what's interesting is what's happening here in the UK is something we're seeing replicated certainly around in the US and across Europe, where people are turning their backs on mainstream political parties. The problem here, particularly in the uk, is if you look at the polling, it shows that, that as you say, the Labour Party who won what was described as a loveless landslide last year is polling in the sort of the twenties, the Tories behind them, the Reform, the populist right wing party, a little bit ahead. We've got the Greens, we've now got this Jeremy Corbyn party just adding to the mix and adding to the confusion. And so I think what's really interesting and quite worrying here is that you've got this real fragmentation of voters, that there's no, you know, it's been 30, nearly 40 years since the two main parties in the UK got more than 80% of the vote. In other words, you know, really dominated the political scene. Now you've got this fragmentation and the problem is that the political system, the first past the post voting system, really cannot deal with that. And as I say, it's a problem in the uk, but certainly that fragmentation, that dislike, distrust of mainstream politicians is something we're seeing across the world.
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Tara, do you see that fragmentation that Simon was talking about merely accelerating in coming months or years? Is there going to come a point at which this might snap back, at which people, perhaps especially in this country, which has, has had an unusually solid two party setup, will return to the familiar, perhaps?
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I would say, you know, with regards to UK politics, I agree with what Simon said, but, but if we look at the United States and, you know, what's happen, Donald Trump, what he has done is in his second term, really, very robustly allow us to see that fragmentation, that rift between, you know, people and groups and also the party. You know, there. There has been no other time in recent history where there has been such stark difference between the Democratic Party and the Republicans. And right now, what. What I'm finding very interesting is the Trump administration's effort in doing all that they can, by the way, to keep control of the House and Senate in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. And I think that's something we should watch very, very closely. And also to that, I would say what worries me about this fragmentation is how the protests of the last few months, just take 2025 in the United States, have been quashed, how they've been received. Right. You know, I teach perhaps the most elite universities in the United States, and just speaking with students and speaking with colleagues, there is a sense of fear in environments where discourse and conversation should be allowed. So I think when you look at what's happening in Trump's America, I can say that that rift and fraction is there. And the last bit I would say to that is it's also very interesting to look at the MAGA movement, you know, Trump's MAGA movement, and how some fol there are moving away from Trump's agenda that is seeming to be worrying for Mr. Trump. And I would use the example of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think is very important to mention. Yesterday it was the first Republican member of Congress to call what's happening in Gaza a genocide. And I find these conversations interesting and moments that would probably tell us what may come next in the coming months before the primary elections.
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But on that thought, Simon, is Trump and Trumpism perhaps not about to fall victim to the same thing? His own approval ratings are down to 40%. Obviously, it skews massively when you look at what Republicans think of him versus what Democrats think of him. But the median approval of Trump is not huge. Is he being one of those people who has thrived on creating a spectacle? Could he be about to find that his audiences got bored with the show?
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C
Well, certainly, if he doesn't deal with this Epstein file. Epstein file challenge. Yeah. This controversy very much. It's interesting. He set this hair running, didn't he, during the. The election about. Let's publish the Epstein files. All that thing about, you know, secrecy and the deep state and things. And of course, now his supporters want him to publish them. And so he's obviously trying to distract from that. So that's really difficult. I think also you can see how Trump is moving away from his bas on things like his action in the Middle east and his action opposing Putin. You know, a lot of the MAGA base is very keen on Putin. They see him as a bulwark against liberalism and against the values that they really don't like LGBTQ rights, women's rights, things like that. They also voted for Trump because they didn't want the US to get drawn into the Middle east and to conflicts in Europe. And of course, Trump is doing that. So in that case, we are seeing this split. But generally, I think, I think populism, I'm afraid, is alive and well and it's going to continue that. I mean, you know, you think about what's caused it, sort of issues about immigration, people who feel financially disenfranchised, they can't afford a house, a feeling that the mainstream politicians are incompetent and dishonest, all that sort of stuff. You look what happened in Japan just, you know, in the last few weeks where we've seen senseito, this right wing populist party gain 14 seats. So I think populism is not on the way. I think it's just evolving and developing over the next few years.
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Well, let's look now at Iran, which is increasingly beset by a water crisis. And at roughly the last time of year Iran would wish to be beset by such a thing. Iranian officialdom is blaming drought and irresponsible consumption by the public, whereas the public may be more inclined to blame people who could probably spend more energy maintaining the basic functions of society, perhaps a bit less teeing off theatrically at the Great Satan, though arguably unhelpfully, the Great Sat has decided to pile in on this one. The US State Department posting in Persian that, quote, the people of Iran continue to suffer the real consequences of the regime's greed, corruption and mismanagement of water resources. Iranian people deserve better than this. Tara, before we get into whether that's helpful or not, what's your sense of how bad it actually is when we talk about a water shortage, we're looking at a bit beyond the sort of English summer hose pipe ban 100%.
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And I will say, you know, with full force that Iran is a bankrupt country when it comes to water. And when it comes to pretty much environmental, you know, challenges and realities, it is facing a catastrophe that has, that has been on the forefront of many environmental activists and has been reported. But now we're seeing the, you know, we're seeing the crisis in action. And as usual, people are bearing the brunt. Just before coming on the show, I was speaking with a physician actually in Tehran, and he was saying, you know, I've been waiting for electricity to come back on so I can visit, you know, I can see my patients. And he's, by the way, his practice is in northern Tehran. So we are looking at a country that is one of the richest when it comes to natural resources, when it comes to oil and gas, but is suffering profoundly. Also. It's important to not. The environmental issue in Iran has always somehow become a matter of national security. Over the years, we have seen environmental activists being arrested in Iran and so on and so forth. Under the last year of the Biden presidency, there was a prisoner exchange and many of them were released. But Iran's environmental crisis is not a new story. But right now we're seeing the impact. And at a time that the country's economy is in free fall, which is really it, people are grappling with, you know, just hoarding water and living at a time when a businessman told me factories and large companies are shut down three times, you know, three days per week. And he said, we go to the office and we go to work, but nothing gets done. So the country is in a sort of stalemate, standby mode. And so, and, you know, 80% of this goes to the mismanagement and lack of knowledge and cronyism when it comes to Iranian government's handling of anything. And, you know, one, one important point that I want to mention is anytime you see the Iranian government acknowledges something that that is not an alarm bell, that is really a detrimental message, that shows that, you know, the problem is way beyond the red line. And I think that's where we are. And it's quite unfortunate. The irgc, the Iran that controls all of, I would say, manufacturing and the, you know, the various infrastructures in Iran. And for the last, you know, many years, decades, they've been over building, over, developing dams. That has, by the way, contributed to this water shortage. So the list goes on and on. And I can talk about this for hours. But again, you know, coming out of this 12 day war at a time when the country's economy is at its worth, worse people are dealing with this now water and electricity shortage.
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Simon, communications, political communications being your department, and with all perhaps due acknowledgement that when the United States starts slinging off at other people's infrastructure, they are venturing out Onto thin ice, heaving rocks around the glass house, et cetera. Does this help? Does pointing out to the Iranian people what I suspect most of them have already figured out, that is the reason nothing's coming out of your taps is because of these bozos who are running your country. Does that actually help?
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Well, it should do, yeah. I mean, one thing, you know, I lecture at Roehampton University on political communications and one of the things we always look at in the workshops with my students is what we call the bread and butter issues and, you know, sort of political corruption and who said what, where and what goes on in the corridors of power really doesn't resonate at all with 99% of voters. But it's the bread and butter issues, which we always used to regard as food on the table and gas in the car or petrol in the car or whatever. But it's interesting now that it might. Water, as you say, actually might be another issue.
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It doesn't get more basic than that.
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It doesn't. And the point, I think, about water as well, is that you can find substitutes for gas and electricity and people are doing that, which is great. There's a technology developing rapidly, but you're never going to find a substitute for water, are you? We all need water. And I think what's interesting is that water is increasingly becoming a source of conflict. I mean, the World Resources Institute says that half the population of the world, that's about 4 billion people, live under highly water stressed conditions for at least one month of the year. That's going to increase. The UN and the World bank calculate that drought could put up to 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. We've already seen, you know, the Russians attacking dams and water facilities in Ukraine. So water is becoming not just a bread and butter issue for politicians, but also a cause, increasingly a cause of conflict. So, I mean, I've just been writing a piece as a journalist about desalination, which is making a little bit of a difference, but there's a long way to go.
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Tara, just quickly on this, because I know it's a thing that people always. Well, certainly people outside Iran always look wishfully at Iran thinking, you know, is this the thing which finally causes those Iranians who don't much care for the regime to do something about the regime, but could something like this be the thing which doesn't really give them. I mean, I'm sure the Iranian regime will do their best to blame all this on somebody else if they can, but external attacks tend to cause a bit of a rally around the flag effect. This won't. Is this the kind of thing that could perhaps threaten the regime eventually?
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A tipping point, perhaps. We saw a few years ago, by the way, in Khuzestan, a city of. An important city strategically in southwest of Iran bordering Iraq, where there was a shortage of water and people took to the streets. And we saw that, by the way, over the years elsewhere in the country. So the issue with water and, by the way, lack of fuel and gasoline is not a new issue. But every single time people were cracked down, the protests were brutally squashed. So I'm not sure if people in Iran, seeing the brutality and the repression that they've seen from the regime over the past few years, have the energy to come on the streets, but is it breaking the back of people? Yes. I spoke with another Iranian woman today. I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, what she's going through. She lives in Isfahan, by the way, a very warm city. And she said, tara, it is the end of this system because it cannot continue. They are digging their own grave. And that. Those are her words. Now, Andrew, are people. Are, you know, are people going to come on the streets and protest? I don't know, Maybe. But what I can say with confidence is that the way the trajectory is going and the way the Iranian government is moving forward, it's not going to work for the people, people first and foremost, but also, you know, for their sustainability and longevity.
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Well, returning to the UK, where proprietors of VPNs, I.e. virtual private networks, are being knocked down in the rush. As of this broadcast, four of the top six free apps in Apple's App Store are VPNs. This is a consequence of this week's imposition of age verification regimes on websites providing adult material of one sort or another. VPNs are the means by which folk will circumvent them, doubtless, especially the young folk the new laws are supposed to protect. In Australia. Meanwhile, children under 16 will be punted off all social media in December, including YouTube, despite YouTube becoming the first port of call for young viewers. Simon? I thought, first of all, it might be fun. Would anyone like to reminisce about how limited their own choice of viewing was when they were younger? I will give you Canberra. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, we had two channels, both of which closed before midnight, and there was tremendous excitement at one point when a third was launched.
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C
I do remember, I remember having three channels and a fourth being launched. I also remember having to get up off the settee, walk across and press a button to change channel. And I do remember in this country when the, the, the programming ended, as you say, probably actually 12. Gosh, that's a bit pushing the boat out a bit. This would have been 11 o'. Clock, they would play the national anthem to close, which I thought was lovely in a way, but obviously it's not happening these days. But no, I think what's interesting about this explosion of YouTube is that it's really about the, the democratization of the media, isn't it? I mean, there was a time when anything you wanted to get out there, you would have to pitch to an editor or program. Exactly. And they would decide and they were the people in charge and you would have to crawl up to them and hope that they might throw a bit of money your way for doing it. Whereas now, of course, anyone can do it for better or for worse. As I say, substack, blogs, YouTube, Instagram, everybody can do, be a presenter. One thing I've noticed as well, being on TV is a lot of the time when we would stop people on the street to do a vox pop. Me and my cameraman, we would be there.
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B
That was, that was never a good idea.
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C
Well, no, exactly, you had to do it because just funny what the ordinary person on the street thinks, oh, must we? But they will be nervous and they will be tongue tied and they will be holding back. These days when you do it, everyone's just ready to go. Everybody's a TV star. So I think it's that democratization and it's also. YouTube is about on demand as well, isn't it? As you say, you'd have to wait until your favorite program came on. Now we want it instantly, we want our music instantly, we want literature books downloaded to our Kindle in seconds. And the pizza has got to come within 17 minutes or whatever as we watch it tracking across on the app. So yeah, I think these are trends that are very powerful and they're only going to continue ironically, perhaps.
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B
Tara, does that free for all aspect of YouTube actually make the case for regulating it? Because you don't need to spend too long on YouTube or basically any other site where any Yahoo can have a go to find no end of just unpleasant, obnoxious, fallacious, malevolent garbage. Is there an argument for protecting. Well, it's a separate question whether it's actually possible to protect children from all that. But is there an argument for at least trying?
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I'm going to come to that. But can I just say When I was growing up in Iran, I would watch Cartoon Network on satellite tv that if the government would find out that we had it, we would get arrested and they will come and, you know, collect it. Yes. So every morning we, you know, we had. My mom had to go fix the dish, you know, get the channel. And by the time I would come home from school, Cartoon Network was done. So then, you know, my mom would record stuff so I could watch it later. And by the way, VPN is one of the most lucrative businesses in Iran because they buy a whole lot of it. And another way that the government makes money. But two separate stories when it comes to control in benefit of children. Again, coming from a country that media and press and pretty much any form of free expression is censored, I'm not a fan of censorship and controlling any modes of communication. And I do believe that it starts at home. It starts from families and parents and, you know, what they teach kids. And I think looking at different countries, we can see different trends. If you compare Scandinavian countries to what's happening in the United States, Western Europe and Asian countries. So I think it truly starts from home. How parents interact with their kids, what they teach them and how, how they train them. Rather than allowing the government to put standards and regulations. Sure. Is it a good thing to not allow students, elementary students, to have mobile phones in classrooms? 100 I agree with. Right. But I think we're at a point, by the way, that if we allow governments to impose regulations as such, and by the way, these are democratic, you know, governments, how much regulations will we see elsewhere in years to come? So fundamentally, I think it starts at home, especially in Western countries where childcare is a huge issue and people just give tablets to their kids and expect them to be occupied. The one bit I would say, to add to what Simon was saying, by the way, about content being all over social media and YouTube, I think there is a huge appetite to move away from mainstream media and move, move toward independent voices and independent journalism and independent content creators. So I think so much of that, again, putting my, you know, American journalist hat, I would say, is people's urge and hunger for independent content.
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B
But are we not learning, Simon, that the, the market cannot necessarily, by which I mean the general public cannot necessarily be relied upon to isolate what valid, instructive, researched, independent content from nonsense?
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C
Yeah, good question. I think certainly where news is concerned, then I'm 100% behind that, coming from reputable news organizations. And obviously we know that very often they will have some bias or there'll be a perceived perspective that they will take, but the idea that it has to be fact checked. And I mean, I used to write for the Daily Mail here in the uk, which I know is a scurrilous rag in a lot of people's opinions, but I would make the point that everything we wrote had to be legaled. You know, I could write something that people might find offensive or annoying, but it had to be factually correct and we had to make sure that I wasn't defaming anybody because otherwise we could be sued. Whereas of course I can pop up on YouTube and make the most outrageous allegations. And because YouTube, like other social media, is not a publisher, it's a platform form, interesting legal distinction, I can get away with it. And I think the other thing is just to say as well, obviously we are seeing this explosion of user generated content, but then there's also some really good professionally made stuff on the conventional channels on YouTube, sorry, on Netflix and other channels which are really grabbing not just viewers but also the national conversation, aren't we? So I think there's certainly an appetite for professionally made, high quality content.
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B
Well, it does seem perhaps that not quite the entire population has collapsed into a post literate troglottitism. A minor boom is occurring, it says here, in sales of novels by Jane Austen, who despite being dead since 1817, has shifted 78000 books in the first half of 2025 and is on course for her best year since 2009. I mean, Tara, my first instinct is to be incredibly annoyed because Jane Austen, who has been dead since 1817, has sold in fact by orders of magnitude more books just in the first half of this year than I have in my entire life. But to what do we, once we've looked past envy, spite, etc as reactions, to what do we attribute this boom? Why is Jane Austen still flying off the shelves?
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A
First of all, this story and the news makes me so happy. And I concur, by the way, Andrew, as an author and by the way, she died when she was 41 and I think we still don't know how and why she died. And I always found that very interesting. I find myself to believe that there's a sense of escapism in her work and the fact that in a world where we are consumed with information and we think we know a whole lot, we really don't. There is no wisdom. And I think people are hungry for that. And there's a danger, I believe, in a society that does not have depth, that does not have wisdom. And someone told me, actually an Iranian professor, she said, I was interviewing her for my book that didn't sell as much, not even near. She said, you know, in the Western world, the speed of capitalism is so fast that it takes away from depth. And I think. Right. You know, for someone right now reading Jane Austen's work. Work, yes, of course they can decipher, you know, in the social issues and, you know, women's rights issues and so on and so forth, but there's a moment that they can take, you know, take a seat back and appreciate that effortless ease, that effortless confidence, that, that depth and that beauty of life. You know, things that we don't do. Music, art, conversing, having a conversation. I'm quite curious, actually, how much time people, you know, day to day, spend time having a conversation with one another, because quite frankly, I think they're doing it on WhatsApp, Instagram, while being distracted by a whole million other things. And I think that's why there's an appetite for being still. And she gives us that.
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B
Simon, what do you think? Are you a hefty consumer of Austen or other literature of that period, perhaps?
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C
I was saying to Tara before we came on, I was slightly embarrassed to be reading Emma in the book form as a bloke on a train station. On a train or whatever. But, yeah, I think the wonderful thing, I mean, just by the way, there is a pocket, there is a story that, that a Hollywood producer read. I think it was the screenplay of Pride and Prejudice or something. Loved it so much. He said, this Jane Austen, she's great. Can we set up a meeting with her? Well, not unless you've got a Ouija board or whatever. But anyway, I think the reason why I love Emma and a couple of other Austen novels I have read is that, yes, she died over 200 years ago, but these are, they're wonderful characters, twists and turns. This has got everything that is kind of universally appealing about literature, hasn't it? As I say, especially those wonderfully complex, flawed characters that we really root for, even if we find them infuriating or whatever, which is fascinating. And I think, you know, we talk about the growth of long term, sorry, long form copy people are actually willing to sit down, as you say, Tara, and spend some time reading things. And I think that's what, that's the enduring appeal of Jane Austen, I think.
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A
And if I may just add, in a world where we're constantly being looked at or judged, whether on social media, elsewhere, among colleagues and peers, and you know the hypervisibility and hyper exposure that we have. I think there's a sense of confidence that we see in her work in every character. They're trying to find happiness, they're trying to find that calmness, that clarity, that presence in subtle ways. And that's what we're missing. And I wanted to share this quote that stayed with me and I thought it's appropriate for the show. It's actually from Emma, my favorite work of Jane Austen. She, she said, you must be the best judge of your own happiness. And I think that's what we all want to be best judges of our own lives at a time when the speed of life and information is so fast that we don't have a moment to reflect.
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C
Absolutely.
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B
Tara Kangalu and Simon Brook, thank you for joining us. Finally, on today's show, it is commonly supposed that any commercial enterprise will eventually be forced into a choice between doing well and doing good. That is that you, you will make more money by being ruthless and obnoxious, such is the inbuilt flaw of capitalism, etc. But what if that isn't the case? It is the contention of Michael Posner, former U.S. assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, now professor of Ethics and Finance at New York University, that it does not have to be that way. He explains how in a new book called Conscience Incorporated, pursue profits while protecting human rights. I spoke to Michael at Midori House earlier and began by asking why businesses don't take things like labour standards as seriously as they might and whether it was just about money.
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D
It's money and it's risk. Risk to reputation. At the end of the day, you know, I'm dealing with, we're dealing with all the supply chain issues, labor supply chain issues, issues relating to content, moderation for tech. Whatever we're looking at, whatever industry might, mining, farming, fishing, there are costs to doing it the right way. And when you seek to get involved, you're putting an X on your back and people think, oh, they promised to do this. We're going to show that they're actually not doing it. So for a lot of companies it's better to keep your head down and just pretend it's not your problem. Outsourcing, responsibility, basically saying, we don't own the factory, we don't own the, the farm, we don't own the mine site, therefore it's not our problem.
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B
And I guess that's a partial answer to the question I was going to ask because you talk about these abuses in supply chains in the book. And is it more often a question of the company not knowing that this is happening, or have they more often taken steps to ensure that they never find out this is happening?
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D
I wouldn't say they've taken steps. What they've not done is take steps to really take a look at what's actually happening, happening and to try to figure out what the risks are. So at the end of the day, my view is that they ought to take these issues, human rights issues, seriously, make them a priority. And that means gathering data. Every company keeps lots of data on things like profitability or worker retention or efficiency, but they're not using the same rigor to evaluate how their business model, how the way they're operating is playing out in terms of the workers or the communities where they operate.
- [35:46]
B
I want to come back to the question of how you persuade the companies that this is in their interest, because there is a line that leapt out at me from your text because it would probably seem to most people, well, why don't governments just pass and enforce laws? But what you write is that however well designed or reinforced, regulations alone will never be sufficient. Why not?
- [36:08]
D
Well, let's take the tech sector. We've done a lot of work with social media companies, meta Google, et cetera. Governments need to regulate, and we've just put out a report looking at ways to regulate that are consistent with free speech. But at the end of the day, social media posts come through the companies. If the companies aren't actively involved in trying to figure out how to better moderate content, it's not going to happen. So companies can be held accountable up to a point. Governments can say, you need to have a better system in place. But at the end of the day, companies need to be involved in that process for it to work.
- [36:48]
B
But aren't the social media companies? And I think listeners can guess which one I'm thinking of. In particular, the ultimate exemplar of the fact that they're not going to care until or unless someone makes them care. I mean, I could fire up that particular social media platform right now, now, and find reams of obnoxious, unpleasant, possibly even illegal material in a matter of seconds.
- [37:12]
D
Yeah, I don't know which one you're thinking of, but I could tell you three or four that I'm paying attention to. Yeah, at the end of the day, the social media companies have grown very fast. They're basically advertising juggernauts and they live on engagement. And engagement means feeding people things that are emotionally evocative and negative emotions. Trump positive emotions. So it's hate and fear. And at the end of the day, if your business model is engagement and you're trying to get advertisers to pay you a lot of money to put their ads on your site, the incentive is not there to figure out how you moderate away harmful content disinformation, things that are again playing into people's spheres. Yes, government needs to regulate, but government alone can't do that. There are ways in which government can make companies push companies to do the right thing, but those companies internally need to figure out how to do that and who should be doing that even.
- [38:17]
B
Once the regulations have been passed. And beyond that, when you're trying to encourage companies to do the right thing, as you put it, and to be good corporations, corporate citizens, what pitch can you actually make to them when they say, well, what's in it for us?
- [38:32]
D
Well, the pitch is, in this instance, I think this is the hardest. By the way, we've made more progress with manufacturing the apparel industry with a whole range of others. The tech companies have been, I would say, singularly resistant. Their view is we're the smartest people on earth and nobody's going to tell us what to do. At the end of the day, though, the pitch is the European Union and its commission are going to hold you accountable. You're going to pay deep vines if you don't start to get your act together, if you're not more transparent, if you don't give people alternative algorithms to use, and if you don't have systems in place that basically deal with these moderation concepts. So there has to be a government. Government needs to kick these companies in the pants, frankly, and say there are going to be costs to you that are meaningful, even how big you are. We're going to have a penalty if you don't do the right thing. And I think over time that will take an effect. It's not going to happen easily and it's certainly not going to be driven by the United States government now. But I think the eu, through the Digital Services act, is beginning to really look at this in a serious way.
- [39:43]
B
That was Michael Posner, former U.S. assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. His book, Conscience In Incorporated, is out now. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Tara Kangalu and Simon Brook. Today's show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Henry King. Our sound engineers were Faith Eden and Steph Chungu. Amandru Mullet here in London. The daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
- [40:16]
A
Race.