This is Gulf Coast Life, Im Mike Kiniry.

Thanks for joining us, Tim Love spent more than four decades in the realm of global advertising.

He was vice chairman of Omnicom Group when he retired in 2013.

He was CEO of their Asia Pacific, India, Middle East and Africa regions since retiring.

Tim is focused his attention on the way our online world works and how behavior data being collected on us is being used to shape our behavior and how, as he sees it, this vicious cycle is driving polarization, negatively impacting mental health and in a sense, destroying our sense of collective reality.

His 2025 book “The Medium is the Mirror The Reformation of Truth Reshaping Our Relationships, Politics, and Sacred Beliefs” was recently awarded first prize in the business, Marketing and Advertising category in the 2026 International Book Awards, so we're checking back in with him.

Welcome back to the show, Tim.

Thank you.

It's good to be back.

And also joining us via zoom is Dick Gephardt.

Mr.

Gephardt served as a Missouri congressman for 28 years, including a stretch as Democratic House majority leader.

He also ran for president twice.

He wrote the introduction to Tim's book.

Welcome back to the show, to you as well, Congressman Gephardt.

Thank you, Mike, great to be with you.

So, Tim, you won this award in the business marketing and advertising category.

And I've read your book.

And I was thinking when I first saw that, that I'd put it like in a technology and culture category if there was one.

But as I started thinking about it and the things I've learned through your work is that in a sense, the way the internet has turned out to work and how advertising fits into that, and how confusion over that.

Back when section 230 was passed.

The thing that governs the internet, it really is about business marketing and advertising at its root.

Is that a fair assessment?

Yes.

And I think that's the that's the approach that I can legitimately discuss from my background.

I'm not a politician, and I believe that that my work in, in the persuasion sciences has given me a unique perspective on the effect of media and the effect of this media on people.

And so put a point on it, the way that the internet is being regulated, per that 99 1996 regulation was created because the internet was designed or it was claimed that it was going to be a subscription model and not an advertising model.

And so that sort of created creates the gap that we're we're dealing with now.

Yes.

That and the and the reason why it was it was considered to be a subscription model.

When you say that, think of telephone service, you pay a monthly fee for your service.

But it was considered and assumed that this medium would be like an empty pipe, just distributing information.

It wasn't going to curate or create content, and it wasn't going to surveil the users.

So when that law was made, it it was made thinking that this would be like telephone service.

And that made sense to everybody, because in the early days of the internet, in 1995/96, we access the internet by getting a modem and using a telephone line.

But that's not the way it's turned out.

It's turned out in into a surveillance medium that reads our interests, our attitudes and our behaviors and feeds those perceptions with content that is designed to create, capture our attention and also keep that attention as long as it can, because the advertising is being sold and funding the the content and the connection.

So it's a very different model than what was assumed.

And it's time to change our our communications policy.

We've had seven different communication policies in the last 120 years.

Some people think, oh boy, communication policy.

That's an indictment of the, you know, the, the, the First Amendment.

Well, we've had seven different communication policies, all done in the public interest.

And it's time to put the public interest and our and our republic at the forefront of the issue we're now facing with an very much unregulated internet medium.

Dick, you wrote the introduction to Tim's book.

You also voted for section 230 back in 1996, and once told me that it was one of your greatest regrets as a lawmaker.

Can you connect those two dots together?

Sure.

So I will carry guilt for voting for section 230 to my grave.

It was a horrible mistake.

If we.

If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted for it.

And it's a mistake because the platforms came to us in Congress and said we're just a dumb pipe.

We don't put any information out.

We don't create any content.

The people do that.

Maybe they should be liable, but not us.

We're just a dumb pipe.

We're a conveyance of information.

They also said if you don't give us this immunity, you'll never have an internet economy.

So we bought that unwisely.

And that's where we are today, right now.

I am co-chair of a group called Council for Responsible Social Media.

Tim is a great member of that council.

It's bipartisan.

It is volunteers.

And we are trying to amend our rescind our at least sunset section 230.

We work on it every day.

In fact, I was in a CRC meeting, a council responsible social media meeting yesterday all day.

And we had a lot of people that are working on this project, including a lot of mothers of children who ill themselves because of the impact of the algorithms, the AI boosting of information to their children.

And so we need to do this not only to save our children, but to save our country, to save our democracy.

Because I believe the hate machines which the platforms are, are so polarizing the American people that self-governance is no longer going to be possible.

There have been some lawsuits in recent years.

Quite a few.

They're starting to mount.

There was a $6 million verdict in California.

A 20 year old woman sued meta, and Google basically argued that her compulsive social media use, forced upon her by the algorithms, caused her severe depression and anxiety.

I'll ask you this, Tim, and then you can weigh in if you want.

Dick, are these kinds of lawsuits having any effect?

Yes.

They're starting to legitimize and raise awareness that there is a need for oversight with the internet.

The the primary defense or obstruction that people put up is that any, any communication policy would be an invasion of our First Amendment.

And the general population in America is not well educated about the the past history of communications policies that we've had.

As I mentioned earlier, we've had seven different policies.

We an important one was just to isolate.

One in particular was the Fairness Doctrine, which was agreed to by everybody in 1949 because we were concerned about invasion of the the, the Cold War countries and Russia in particular into our media.

And it was agreed that with three networks, we were in a vulnerable position where if one network or two went off on a tangent, that this could be dangerous to the country because it would, in fact, the perceptions that Americans had.

So we agreed to the Fairness Doctrine, which basically said when delivering the news, the news providers would have to give both sides of the story.

A lot of Americans remember Walter Cronkite, and they say to me in my talks, well, we don't have a Walter Cronkite today.

And I remind them that we don't, because the Fairness Doctrine was discontinued in 1987, right before the internet.

We decided that with cable news stations coming, we'd have so many choices for news that no one news provider could dominate or or alter the general perception of the population.

What they didn't realize was that people would gravitate to news that they agree with.

And so what we've ended up with, without the Fairness Doctrine, is an incentive for news to be entertainment and to be controversial so that it attracts and continues to sustain somebody's attention.

It's time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

There was nothing wrong with it.

But the news you get today, and particularly from those that call themselves news organizations like Fox News, they're not news.

And the broadcasters that they use, the announcers readily admit that they're not journalists, they're commentators, and that puts them in the same league as as Alex Jones or any of the other commentators that are on in late night television.

It isn't news.

It's it's but it is persuasion.

And that persuasion has no barometer for truth or accuracy has no barometer for effect on children, and no barometer in terms of its effect on our country's operations and beliefs.

So we have a situation where it's very hard to determine truth.

And when a consensus population can't have a consensus of opinion over truth, extremist ideas can more readily propagate.

And that's what we're saying.

This is something that Orwell focused on in 1984, in his book on this, which we're now seeing is happening.

So extremism is polarizing, polarizing us.

And when that happens, extremist ideas come more readily populate because some people, in their confusion, would rather follow somebody that seems to know what the truth is, even though it's not truth.

This is Gulf Coast life.

Our guest today are Tim Love.

He's author of The Medium is the Mirror The Reformation of Truth Reshaping Our Relationships, Politics, and Sacred Beliefs.

The former vice chairman of the global advertising company Omnicom Group, it lays out his book, lays out how the internet and social media have become a feedback loop, being driven by attention maximizing algorithms that are almost hypnotizing users and causing negative societal impacts.

We're also talking with Dick Gephardt.

He served as a Missouri congressman for 28 years, including a stretch as Democratic House Majority leader.

Mr.

Gephardt wrote the introduction to Tim's book, and they've become colleagues in efforts to rein in the dangerous aspects of social media and online life.

Dick, anything you'd like to add to what Tim said?

Sure.

So yesterday at our council meeting for responsible social media, we had the lawyer, the woman who filed all the lawsuits that were recently heard in California, and she said that this breakthrough they had with the jury in the court in California was amazing, and that it's the first chink in the armor of section 230, because the court and the jury put aside section 230, giving immunity to companies like meta and the rest, and said, no, you're liable for the harm you created for these children.

She said that when the jury came back, she cried in happiness in jail, that these people finally got accountability on the part of one of the platforms.

She said that after that, the platforms reached out and that they want to settle every other case as quickly as they can because they don't want the negative publicity.

And she said, you know, these are just ordinary people and their children have been harmed or killed.

So you've got to represent them and you got to make a deal.

So that's why they're settling for 6 or 7 million bucks whatever to help these people.

And that's what she should do.

She went on to say that the the answer to this is what Tim and I and others are advocating every day.

We've got to get rid of section 230.

They do not deserve it.

In fact, they deserve to be liable for the harms that they are causing to people.

She also said that what they mostly fear, or the attorneys general in the states filing suits against them to keep them from doing what they're doing in their states to harm people.

And that is the greatest problem the platforms face.

She said they're in a state of panic today, and they're going to spend even more money than they've already spent trying to keep Congress from doing anything to section 230.

So we're up on the hill.

That's why I'm here in Washington today.

We're trying to be a counter to all of that money.

We don't have any money, but we have the truth on our side that Tim just talked about.

And we're trying to convince members of Congress to do the right thing for the people and get rid of, or at least radically amend section 230.

You know, Tim, I'm going to direct this at you.

And, you know, you can weigh in.

And as well, Dick, I was thinking about, you know, individuals do have free speech and you do have free speech on the internet.

But I think what the difference is, is that the social media companies use algorithms to funnel examples of free speech in a targeted way in order to attention, to gather attention and create friction, because that's what gathers attention.

Is that am I am I on the right track there?

Yes.

The key learning is continuing for me.

But one of the things that I've always been impressed with in my career was how often people would tell me that advertising and information can make people do things that they don't want, or buy things that they don't want.

And yet, when you ask them if the advertising for some of the brands I worked on, like bounty paper towels or crest toothpaste, had any effect on them, they will say no, no, and the advertising doesn't affect me.

And then if you ask them, well, what is?

Can you tell me what bounty talks about?

Oh, the quicker picker upper.

And what's happening now is there.

They're disavowing that this internet is having an effect on them.

And they're believing what the pet platforms are saying.

But this is an influence machine, and it's an influence machine that sells more advertising.

There's a reason why the advertising industry has been quiet about this.

It's because they're benefiting from it, too.

And I ask the advertisers to live up to their responsibility that they've always had in, in our republic for demanding that the media and the information systems that we have operate in an upright and fair basis and don't harm people, that the advertisers money enables this system to exist.

And it's appropriate, as it has been seven times in the past, for the advertisers to demand better product performance from the platforms that doesn't harm children or weaken our country.

I'm going to ask you to think back to when you were maybe in the middle of your career in advertising, and obviously part of your job or all of your job was to convince people or in some way instill in people the desire to purchase a product.

Can you imagine having the knobs that you can turn in, the ways you can tune the message to the degree that that not only do advertisers have now, but individual users have this power as well.

If they learn how to harness the algorithms.

Exactly.

And that started when the like, share and retweet functionality through algorithms were incorporated into the internet around 2012 - ‘14, I might add, before the 2016 election.

So for the first time, advertisers could direct their advertising to actual consumer behavior and actual consumer interest and attention, not to researched feedback on their potential interests.

They could actually we could target somebody's interests.

And most consumers have seen this.

If they go online and they they search for some kind of an exercise mat or something like that, or insurance program.

The next thing they know, they're getting bombarded with appeals for insurance and exercise mats.

So it's very different medium than what Dick and, and our, our congressmen and, and, and Congress voted on in 1995, 96.

And I might add that this argument is very similar to the one you're now seeing with AI.

There's a you know, if you ask the platforms, they want to have a moratorium on any oversight of AI for ten years because they're making so much money on it, and it affects their revenue projections.

But we have to take care of the products we deliver to our consumers.

In this country.

The consumer is boss.

And when consumers are being harmed by our products, measures are needed.

It's time to do that.

And we need to repeal section 230 and develop a better and unique communication platform and reform for America.

Dick, I talked to you back in 2023 when your book 530 5.1 came out.

I want to ask you what your thoughts are on where Congress is at three years plus on.

And, you know, that's where the, you know, the solutions have to come from.

Well, what we're talking about in this broadcast is really at the heart of the challenge we face.

And I'll say it again, if the people are bitterly polarized and hateful toward one another, self-governance not work.

Why do I say that?

I say that because the Congress is a reflection of the American people.

When I was in Congress, I was in a what's called a swing district.

It was kind of a 5050 district between Democrats and Republicans.

The only way I stayed in office and was able to reach compromises with my Republican colleagues, was that my people would accept that they would put up with that because they knew me.

I went door to door for 28 years religiously, so they knew me.

And even though I voted for things that they hated, they were willing to grudgingly put up with that because they were not polarized.

I would have town hall meetings almost every week.

I'd have 200 people in a church basement, whatever.

And we had all the disagreements you have today, and people got up and disagreed with one another.

Sometimes, you know, not violently but strongly on issues that they cared about abortion or guns or whatever, but they didn't hate one another.

They'd go up and talk to one another after the meeting and talk to me after the meeting today.

People are polarized.

They are divided almost as much as we were in 1860.

So I don't believe that Congress, our state legislatures, our city councils are going to be able to succeed anymore in representing people if the people are so bitterly divided.

So this issue that Tim has talked about more eloquently than anybody I've ever seen is at the heart of being able to retain self-governance in America and all across the world.

Well, unfortunately, that's all the time we have.

I want to thank my guests.

Dick Gephardt is a former congressman and Democratic House majority leader, and he wrote the introduction to Tim's book.

Thank you so much for your time, Dick.

Thank you.

Tim Love is the author of The Medium is the mirror the reformation of truth reshaping our relationships, politics and sacred beliefs.

Always a pleasure, Tim.

Thank you very much.

Our show today was produced by yours truly with technical support from Jared Gonzalez and David.

For now, thanks for listening.

I'm Mike Kennedy.

This is WGU FM Fort Myers 90.1 W Marco Island 91.7 FM, NPR for Southwest Florida.