Taylor Lorenz Unfiltered on Social Media, Free Speech & the Surveillance State

**Taylor Lorenz** (0:00)
Oh no, you made the product too good. We have to destroy it because you made it too enjoyable for people. There is no such thing as being addicted to consuming media and communicating with people. You know, you can tweet from your vape nap. I'm not kidding you.

**Eric Newcomer** (0:12)
On this show, I've sat down with Peter Thiel's fixer, got in a yelling match with Keith Raboy, and had AI's number one hater, Edzitron, on twice. But no guess seems to cause a bigger stir online than the one I have today. Taylor Lorenz has covered internet culture for The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. She wrote the book on creators, Extremely Online. Then she left Legacy Media and went independent with UserMag. Nobody covers the internet like Taylor, and nobody gets attacked by it quite like her either. Taylor Lorenz, welcome to The Newcomer Podcast. I'm Eric Newcomer, subscribe to The Newcomer Substack at newcomer.co.
I want to start off, though, really on your, I don't know, core ethos of the moment, which is maybe being one of the last people in the world who wants to defend anonymous internet. It feels like a lot of people have just sort of forgotten about it, or we want to protect children to such a degree that we're willing to give up anonymity on the internet.

**Taylor Lorenz** (1:13)
Which endangers children, by the way, but yeah.

**Eric Newcomer** (1:16)
Yeah, so is this a lost cause? Are you fighting a fight that's already over?

**Taylor Lorenz** (1:21)
Oh, God.
I know. Is all of my coverage worthless? Potentially. Yeah, I don't think it's over. I think that these court battles are happening right now. And these laws are being written right now.

**Eric Newcomer** (1:31)
These are state laws. Right now, basically, a bunch of states are.

**Taylor Lorenz** (1:33)
We have, yeah, exactly. There's over 25 states that have age verification laws on the books. The App Store Accountability Act was just upheld in Texas. I mean, this is a very active fight. And I will tell you, who definitely cares is the tech companies who are lobbying on all different sides. Is this going to be done at the device level? Is this going to be done on the app level?
What is this going to look like? I do think that the culture, the broader culture has gotten on board with this campaign, but I think we're going to start seeing backlash because I've been reporting a lot about what's going on in the UK. The UK has been a little bit ahead of us in terms of passing these types of laws, and people are irate or look at the complete failure of the social media ban in Australia. I think people are starting to see through the grift a little bit and starting to recognize like number one, none of this is about protecting children, and number two-

**Eric Newcomer** (2:20)
Do you think that's true?

**Taylor Lorenz** (2:21)
Yeah. I mean, I've been covering this movement for a decade. I think that there are some well-intentioned people who falsely believe that this is going to protect children somehow. What I would say to them is, in what way does mass surveillance protect?
Show me an example of any of these policies that has protected children.

**Eric Newcomer** (2:38)
This is a tangent, but I think you'll understand. Do you sleep with your phone in your bedroom?

**Taylor Lorenz** (2:42)
Sometimes, yeah.

**Eric Newcomer** (2:44)
Like, you agree that there's some toxic aura to having the phone with you all the time?

**Taylor Lorenz** (2:51)
Well, I think you should take a break if you need to take a break. I think everybody has a different relationship to their phone. For instance, I have no notifications on.

**Eric Newcomer** (2:57)
But as a full grown adult, I mean, I've started at the advice of an executive coach, sleeping with my phone outside of my bedroom, just because even me, sort of a 36 year old grown human with a daughter now, I can't overcome the addiction that is a phone. And so obviously, I just don't think my young child is going to be able to overcome it.

**Taylor Lorenz** (3:17)
Now, is that a problem that the government should solve? Is what I would ask. Yeah, right, right.

**Eric Newcomer** (3:21)
But that's why I just want to start with, does your own sort of sense that the phone is, there's a danger there that people are worried about legitimately.

**Taylor Lorenz** (3:29)
I don't think it's just the phone. I think people, I mean, you're seeing this across the spectrum. You're seeing people really resentful of the influence that they feel technology has on their life. And they learn about sort of like interaction design, right? And they hear people design these products for them to be used. How terrible, like, let's prosecute them, you know? Like, and I just, I think it's-