Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung and John Meyer, Managing Partner at Starship Capital, discuss the implications of social media companies banning President Trump.

Video Transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: Let's take a look at shares of the big tech stocks. I'm looking at Twitter right now, seeing some further losses after that 6% drop at the close yesterday. It looks like it's down about 2.5% to $47 right now. And obviously, we really saw a domino effect in the ecosystem, perhaps after their decision to take President Donald Trump off the platform.

We saw Parler, which is an alternative social media app, they got the boot from Apple and Google's app stores. And Apple's CEO Tim Cook himself was speaking quite vocally. He spoke to CBS this morning. He was pretty vocal on the idea of accountability. Here's what he said.

TIM COOK: I think it's key that people be held accountable for it. This is not something that should skate. No one is above the law. I mean, that's the great thing about our country. We're a rule of law country. I think everyone that had a part in it needs to be held accountable.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And shares of Apple down by about 6/10 of a percent now, but obviously a lot of discussion on the precedent that was done by booting some of these apps. We have John Meyer. He's the Managing Partner at Starship Capital and also one of the first app developers there on the App Store, so a really good person to talk to about what's been going on here. So I want to kick things off with just a question.

I'm not going to ask, necessarily, about whether or not Twitter made the right move. But we've seen that Apple and even Tim Cook himself having to answer for this idea of accountability with banning apps like Parler. Do you think that those companies really handled the ripple effects well as we've gotten a week out from the events of last Wednesday?

JOHN MEYER: I do. I don't think a company like Twitter, for example, could have really made a move like this until now. I think it really took Trump essentially inciting violence, both on and off of Twitter, for them to finally ban him. And obviously, from many people's perspective, it's actually taken quite a bit too long for a lot of these actions to be taken.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Now John, I want to ask you, though, because it seems like there's been a lot of discussion about the role of big tech in all this. On one hand, yeah, it's Apple and Google that have the ability to make sure that these types of dangerous voices are being amplified.

But that is also a recognition of just how large and influential these firms are as gatekeepers for these apps, which are supposedly supposed to be the free flow of innovation in this country. So where do you think this kind of goes when it comes to regulation, as the Biden administration comes into office? Is this actually fuel for them to say we need to break these companies up?

JOHN MEYER: It's an incredible multifaceted issue, is what we're going through right now. There's clearly a debate over free speech and when that needs to be relevant, as well as what it means to be-- and this is the key-- censored, versus moderated effectively. And I, as you mentioned earlier, have been developing apps for the iPhone since really 2009, and in 2010, developed an app that was user-generated content based.

And even back then-- this is now over 10 years ago-- Apple was issuing us warnings that if we didn't moderate effectively and exclude hate or violence from the platform, that it would get removed from the store.

So these are precedents that really were actually set in the early, early days of the App Store going into 2008, 2009 and are only really now being-- you know, I would say executed in a way that is at the highest level of the country with President Trump on Twitter's end and then with Apple banning Parler from the store.

And obviously there also is the discussion of is this a violation of free speech? In my opinion, and I think it's hard to even debate this, free speech is a right granted by the government to its citizens. But there is no such thing as free speech when it comes to private companies.

Now getting back to your second question, Apple, and Google, and Amazon, and Twitter were all essentially culprits, if you were to talk to a Republican, of restricting free speech. They are executing their own right to do so. And in my opinion, there's a precedent that is being set right now. It's just at a higher level with both Parler and President Trump.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And then lastly, I just want to ask, I mean, we're looking towards the future. There's been a lot of chatter that maybe the president will pursue his own medium to be communicating with the people.

With the big tech companies having done what they've done in the last week or so, is there a real possibility that the future of social media will look like a red side and a blue side, where there are entire ecosystems? Or do you think that this is just kind of part of the growing pains of getting back to what is kind of mass media at large?

JOHN MEYER: Well, I definitely think as someone who's also run companies in the media space, done deals with companies like News Corp, and Fox, and Wall Street Journal, and in talking to my media executive friends, most of the consensus is that President Trump will likely, at a minimum, start his own television-based or video-based news network to have an influence on the American public in that way.

As it relates to a technology platform, like a competing Twitter or other social network, I think that is also highly possible. But the problem in that case, if he were to build a team around him to build a Twitter competitor, is that where are you going to host that content? The leading hosting provider right now is Amazon with their AWS platform.

And there are a number of other competitors to them. But it's highly likely that if they don't moderate content effectively, similar to what Parler did, that they will also essentially get kicked off of these server-based platforms, which hosts the back end or all the content that would be hosted in such a Twitter competitor, website, or app.

BRIAN CHEUNG: All right, John Meyer. You know, I'm just going to reference your awesome Twitter handle, which @BEASTMODE in all caps. Again, Managing Partner at Starship Capital, thank you so much for joining us here on Yahoo Finance this afternoon.

JOHN MEYER: Great to be here. Thanks.