WEBVTT - Part Two: Mark Zuckerberg Should Be On Trial For Crimes Against Humanity 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:05.800 Wrecked him. Damn near killed him. That was the punchline 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:08.600 to a joke without the rest of the joke, because 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:11.880 I think we can all put things together now as adults. 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.680 I'm Robert Evans. Yeah, hi, Jamie, this is behind the Bastards. 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.400 We talk about bad people on this podcast. Um. And 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:22.640 that was a little a little bit of levity at 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.440 the start of it before we get into depressing ship again. 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:30.400 Some abstract levity, some abstract levity. Yeah, pieces of levity 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:35.880 that one can assemble into comedy. Um. Yeah, very nice. Yeah, 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.560 I mean comedy. You know, it is just a series 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:40.400 of things that you put in the correct order. It's 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.199 like a deconstruction of comedy, like when people take up 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:45.080 part of sandwich and then serve it on a plane 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:47.400 in a fancy restaurant. I gotta be on it. Anytime 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.440 someone says it's a deconstruction of comedy, it's the least 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.239 funniest ship you'll ever hear in your entire life. Like 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:57.320 he's deconstructing the medium, and it's usually just like some 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:02.640 some guy. It's yeah, some guy. Yeah, it's never any good, 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:07.119 but you know it is good. Jamie, what Facebook's peanut butter? 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:11.280 I was like, this can't be a transition to Mark Zuckerberg, No, 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.000 because nothing about him. Just talked about this delicious lunch 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.760 he had as I eat, I had a great lunch 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:20.880 and I'm eating a peanut butter and you know what, 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.200 I'm content, Sophie is eating peanut butter. I ate a 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:31.559 delicious lunch, love for you, had a couple of chips, 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:35.880 and most important, most important, we're all going to get 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.920 back to my favorite thing to do with my good 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:44.119 friend Jamie Loftus, which is talk about the extensive crimes 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.880 of Mark Zuckerberg. Oh yes, I changed shirts between episodes. 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.400 Roberts and I have a little Marquis with me. Yeah 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.640 you do, You've got your your your Marquez shirt. Yeah, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.840 my favorite, my favorite Mark quote that you can't you 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.360 can be unethical and still be legal. That's the way 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:05.520 I live my life. Ha ha. It is amazing. And 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.200 he really, I mean there's been a lot said about him, 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:11.720 but the man sticks to his guns. He lives by 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.400 this credo to this very day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:19.080 know who else sticks to their guns? Jamie whom the 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:24.560 death squads of the various dictatorial political candidates who use 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:28.160 Facebook to crush opposition and insight race riots. That was 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:33.040 a transition. That was a transition. So Jamie, all right, 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:34.959 I'm gonna start. It's time to start the episode, and 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:36.720 gonna start with a little bit of a little bit, 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:39.960 little well bit of an essay here. So once, once 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.280 upon a decade or so ago, I had the fortune 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.200 to to visit the ruins of a vast Mayan city 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.840 in guatemality call Um. And the scale of the architecture 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:50.639 there was astonishing. If you ever get the chance to 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.000 visit one of these cities, you know, in Guatemala or 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:58.200 in mexicoever really worth the experience. Um, Just again, the 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.680 size of everything you see, the the the precision of 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:04.840 the stonework. Um, it's just amazing. And one of the 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.079 things that was most kind of stirring about it was 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:09.440 the fact that everything that surrounded it was just hundreds 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:12.600 and hundreds of miles of dense, howling jungle. UM. So 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:14.680 I spent like an afternoon there and I got to 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.440 sit on top of one of these giant temple pyramids, 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.400 drinking a one lead bottle of guy O beer and 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.200 staring out over the jungle canopy and just kind of 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.840 marveling at the weight of human ingenuity and dedication necessary 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:29.919 to build a place like that sounds metaphorical, and while 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.480 I was there, Jamie, I thought about what had killed 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.520 this great city and the empire that built it, Because 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:37.960 a couple of years earlier, really not all that long 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.360 before I visited, theories had started to circulate within the 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.200 academic community that the Mayans had, in the words of 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.720 a NASA article in this subject in two thousand nine, 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:51.240 killed themselves through a combination of massy forestation in human 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:55.320 induced climate change. A year after my visit, the first 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:57.840 study on the matter was published in Proceedings of the 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.400 National Academy of Sciences. I'm gonna call to hear from 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:06.080 the Smithsonian magazine. Researchers from Arizona State University analyzed archaeological 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.560 data from across the Yucatan to reach a better understanding 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.680 of the environmental conditions when the area was abandoned around 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.040 this time. They found severe reductions in rainfall were coupled 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:19.960 within a rapid rate of deforestation as the Mayans burned 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:22.560 and shopped down more and more forests to clear land 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:27.120 for agriculture. Interestingly, they also required massive amounts of wood 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.640 to fuel the fires that cooked the lime plaster for 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:34.000 their elaborate constructions, Experts estimated would have taken twenty trees 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.599 to produce a single square meter of city escape. So, 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:41.920 in other words, the Mayans grew themselves to death, turning 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.479 the forests that fed them into deserts, all in the 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:48.360 pursuit of expansion. It's a story that brings to mind 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:52.680 a quote from the great historian Tacitus writing about Augustus 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:59.160 Caesar and men like him solitudinum faciunt pack him appellante. 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.039 They make a desert and call it peace. That's what 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:05.760 he's saying about Augustus Caesar and the Emperor's like him. 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.600 They make a desert and call it peace. That's That's 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.320 one of those Sun dial phrases. I think a more 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:16.920 accurate summation of the two hundred years of peace that 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.760 Augustus Caesar created than than what Mark put out. They 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.200 make a desert and call it peace. Now, I read 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:26.040 that quote for the first time as a Latin student 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.239 in high school, and I saw it referenced in relation 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:30.840 to Mark Zuckerberg in a Guardian article covering that New 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.120 Yorker piece. We quoted from last episode and the title 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.760 of that New Yorker article was, can Mark Zuckerberg fixed 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:43.400 Facebook before it breaks democracy? So democracy a free and 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:47.480 open society where numerous viewpoints are tolerated, cultural experimentation is possible, 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.160 and evolution is encouraged. These are the things that have 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.279 made Facebook success possible. It could not have come about 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:57.480 without them, um, and outside of a culture that embodies 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.840 those values. And now that Facebook's member count is closing 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.520 in at three billion, the social network is doing what 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.240 all empires do. It's turning the fertile soil that birthed 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.920 it into a desert. And as it was with the Mayans, 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.440 all of this is being done in the name of growth. 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.440 Katherine Lois was an early Facebook employee and Mark Zuckerberg 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:22.359 speech writer for a time. In her memoire The Boy Kings, 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.840 which is what you call it, sigured, I don't know 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.039 that's a good title, um, she lays out what she 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:35.360 saw as the engineering ideology of Facebook. Quote, scaling and 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:40.560 growth are everything. Individuals and their experiences are secondary to 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:46.400 what is necessary to maximize the system. Mark Zuckerberg and 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.200 thus Facebook have held a very consistent line since day 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:51.479 one of the company operating as an actual business, and 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.440 that Lion is that Facebook's goal is to connect people, 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.760 but this was and always has been a lie. The 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:02.640 goal is growth, growth at the cost. In two thousand seven, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.560 Facebook's growth leveled off at around fifty million users. At 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.960 the time, this was not unusual for social networks, and 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.040 it seemed to be something of a built in natural 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.360 growth limit, Like maybe fifty million is about as much 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.200 as a social network can get unless you really start 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:21.720 jinking the results um and fifty million users. That's a 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.000 very successful business. You can be a very rich person 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:26.840 operating a business. You can call it a day. That's 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.720 a great thing to accomplish. My Space Tom was thrilled 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:34.080 with that. Yeah, my God, blessed Tom. Space Tom is 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:38.960 now who hasn't done a goddamn problematic thing traveling the 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.200 world now taking photographs of of of the world that 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:45.720 Mark Zuckerberg is destroying. I mean, he might be the 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.840 only person worth hundreds of millions of dollars that I'm 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.679 fine with not taking the money back, right, Like, let Tom, 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.200 You're fine, Like go keep doing your things, use the 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.800 money to be boring. It feels like he is just 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.000 used his fortune to be boring. What is I remember 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.040 it took like five months for me to get my 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.760 my space to lead. So I don't remember anything about 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.560 my space. That's my favorite thing about my space is 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.240 I've forgotten everything about it but the name my space. 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:15.920 Oh for sure my space was not good. But did 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.440 I learn about a lot of goth music on it? 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.000 Now I'm the middle school anchst from not being in 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.960 somebody's top aid. But oh my god, PC four PC, 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.400 I did a lot of PC that I'm my friend, 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:34.240 you are so pretty PC four PC, And you know what, 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:38.120 you know what? No one used my space for Jetta's 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:41.320 side that organizing militia's to show up at the side 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.679 of protests and shoot Black Lives Matter activists was not 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.959 done with with with my space, and I suspect Tom 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:51.920 would have had an issue if it had been. I think, so, 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:54.280 I well, I don't well, I I don't know about 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.760 Tom's but the fact that he's kept his fucking mouth 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.400 shut since getting rich and going off to do whatever 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.120 he does makes me suspect that he's a reasonable man. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:07.360 So Facebook hits this growth limit and it and it 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:09.920 it kind of levels off a bit um And again, 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.120 it's a very successful business in two thousand seven, but 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:14.360 it's not an empire, and that's what Mark wanted. That's 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.920 the only thing Mark has ever wanted um in his 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.360 entire life. And so he ordered the creation of what 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:24.520 he called a growth team, dedicated to putting Facebook back 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.000 on the path to expansion, no matter what it took. 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.520 So the Growth team quickly came to include the very 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.440 best minds in the company, who started applying their intellect 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.640 and ingenuity to this task. One solution they found was 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:40.160 to expand Facebook to users who spoke other languages. And 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.520 this is what began. We talked about last episode, the 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.040 company's heedless growth into foreign markets. Obviously, at no point 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:49.040 did anyone care or even consider what impact Facebook might 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.680 have on those places. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from The 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.600 New Yorker again. Alex Schultz, a founding member of the 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.120 growth team, said that he and his colleagues were fanatical 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.560 in their pursuit of expansion. You will fight for that inch, 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.440 Alex said, You will die for that inch. Facebook left 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:09.240 no opportunity untapped. In two thousand eleven, the company asked 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.760 the Federal Election Commission for an exemption to rules requiring 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.720 the source of funding for political ads to be disclosed 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.800 and filings a Facebook lawyer argued that the agency should 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:24.079 not stand in the way of innovation. Oh okay, it 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:28.160 doesn't seem like an innovation to me, real loose interpretation 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.120 of the word. You know, I get this to an extent. 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.560 So the other day I was drunk driving my Forerunner, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.319 UM and I was I was, I was shooting at 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.679 some targets I'd set up in the trees and the 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:42.480 people in the neighborhood. I was doing this and said, oh, 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.120 for the love of God, you're you're please, you're endangering 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.280 all of our lives. Um, And I said, you're standing 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.320 in the way of innovation because I was innovating what 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.160 you can do drunk in a Forerunner with a kalashnikov, 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:01.320 and they got in the way of that. I understand 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.040 that I have to really heat up a pan and 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:06.640 put it on someone's face just to innovate the art 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:12.200 of what you you innovate their skins. Yeah, and and really, 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.160 people standing in the way of that innovation. Am I 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:17.800 supposed to make progress in hurting people's faces? Yeah? I'm 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.400 a fan of how Polpod innovated the capital city of 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.080 Cambodia by forcing everyone out of it and then killing 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.960 hundreds of thousands of just it's just it's innovative. The 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:31.880 way all of this is just horrific and like, I 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:34.440 don't know, like I'm talking about something else, but it's 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.040 like the language of Silicon Valley applied to the two 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:43.360 genocidal situations is just so it makes my fucking I mean, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.000 I'm just peeled all my skin off. You have to 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.440 you have to agree that Hitler was an innovator. He 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:52.240 innovated so many things. He really did change. He changed 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:56.200 the game. Yeah, he absolutely changed the narrative from there 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.360 not being a war in Europe to there being a 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:03.000 war in Europe. That's called disrupting, Honey. He didn't disrupt it. 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.640 He disrupted the ship out of the Polish government. Oh 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:17.880 my god, doing this dinner wrong. So Sandy Parakilis, who 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.840 joined Facebook in two thousand and eleven as an operations manager, 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:25.160 paraphrase the message of the orientation session he received as 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:31.520 we believe in the religion of growth. Um, the religion 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:33.480 of growth is what he was told when he joined 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.640 the company. That's what it was called him not only horrifying, 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.240 but like, what could you sound like a more of 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:46.680 a sniveling loser? Okay, he said quote the growth team 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:49.040 was the Cure was the coolest. Other teams would even 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.400 try to call subgroups within their teams the growth X 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.960 or the Growth Y to try and get people excited. Um. 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.200 And in the end, Facebook's finest minds decided that the 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:06.880 best way they could I know, I know, yeah, I'm excited. 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.239 I'm a horny, I'm ready to go. I mean with 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.719 with that kind of narrative. I love to hear it. 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.160 I love you do love to hear it. So in 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.280 the end, Facebook's finest minds decided the best way they 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.800 could further the great god of growth was too for 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.480 Facebook to become a platform for outside developers. Um that 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.199 this was the way to really really get things going again. 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.560 And you will remember the start of this period when 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.600 Facebook made this change. This is when like what had 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.880 once been a pretty straightforward service for keeping up with 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.680 your friends from college was suddenly flooded with games like 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:42.839 Farmville and a bunch of like personality tests and ship 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.800 that period of time, the mom's fucking drone struck Facebook 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:51.160 by coming down with Farmville, sending you five trillion invitations, 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:56.520 leaving your like high school choir concert to go harvest strawberries. Yeah, 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.720 I'm making a bunch of fucking money for Facebook. Whatever 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.600 rance these apps took. Their main purpose was the same, 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:04.839 which was to hoover up all of your personal data 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:07.839 and sell it for profit. Yeah. I've given her a 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.680 social security number to the Farmville and that's just a fact. Yeah. 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.840 And the only person you should give your social security 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.800 number two is me. I do encourage all all of 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.160 our listeners to find my email, um and just just 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.080 email me your social uh yeah, just to just do 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.240 your tips line. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's like that 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:29.760 you like that thing from that that documentary about Keith 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.120 Ranieri who also did episodes on the vow. It's your 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.520 collaterals and me your social security number, so I'll know 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:40.840 that you really care. Um. Yeah. So Facebook's employees kind 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.440 of realized very quickly after this change was made and 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.960 these developers start flooding the service with all of their 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.520 ship um that the company's new partners were engaged in 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.520 some really shady behavior. One worker who was put in 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:55.600 charge of a team order to make sure developers weren't 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.280 using user data immediately found out that they were. And 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.680 I'm gonna quote again from the new Yorker. Here, some 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.960 games were siphoning off users messages and photographs. In one case, 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:08.040 he said, a developer was harvesting user information, including that 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.360 of children, to create unauthorized profiles on its own website. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.160 Facebook had given away data before I had a system 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.280 to check for abuse. Peraculis suggested that there be an 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.160 audit to uncover the scale of the problem, but according 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.560 to Paraculus, an executive rejected that idea, telling him, do 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.920 you really want to see what you'll find? No, which 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.800 look I can identify with that too. I recently had 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.200 an issue where I left a bag of potatoes and 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:37.720 the top counter of my of my kitchen for I 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:40.920 don't know, somewhere between four and seven months, and when 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.160 I took them I didn't want to. I knew something 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.080 was wrong. I knew something was wrong up there because 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:48.760 of the flies and the strange smell, but I didn't 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:50.240 want to look into it because I didn't want to 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.160 see the extent of the problem. And when I finally did, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.080 I regretted learning what an issue I had made for 0:15:56.120 --> 0:16:00.400 myself and my home. You are really since the last 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:05.240 BO you've become very prone to a metaphor. I am 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:08.360 I am a living metaphor. You you are living out 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:13.560 an innovative. I innovated those potatoes. You distruct those potatoes. 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:17.720 Works with a family magic. It's okay. We don't need 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.200 to We don't need to talk about what a problem 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:28.240 my life has become. Um Parakeelis told me the New 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:30.800 Yorker reporter quote, it was very difficult to get the 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:32.680 kind of resources that you needed to do a good 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.720 job of ensuring real compliance. Meanwhile, you looked at the 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.240 growth team and they had engineers coming out of their ears. 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:40.920 All the smartest minds are focused on doing whatever they 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.520 can do to get those growth numbers up. Now, Jamie 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.880 Jamie Loft, I happened to read this quote well. I 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.320 was struggling to work in the midst of unprecedented wildfires 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.160 that devastated a huge amount of the state of Oregon 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.680 um and made our air quality the worst in the 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.480 world for a while. On the very day I read 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.800 that article, four of my friends and journalistic colleagues were 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.840 held and threatened at gunpoint by militiamen who had taken 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.159 to the streets of a town very near Portland in 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.840 the middle of an evacuation. Because viral Facebook memes convinced 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:18.119 them that Antipho was starting the fires. Around the same 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.960 time that this was happening, that my buddies were getting 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.880 held at gunpoint because they were not white people. Uh, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.879 and a militia thought that was suspicious. Around that same time, 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:31.960 a tweet went viral from a Portland resident and a 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:36.399 former Facebook employee named bo Wrin. She posted a picture 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:38.960 of the city blotted out by thick, acrid clouds of 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.920 smoke and wrote, my dad sent me this view from 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.159 my childhood room in Portland. It hit me that we 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.960 have been wasting our collective intelligence in tech, optimizing for 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:58.159 profits and ad clicks. Huhmm, glad you got on the 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:04.520 on that page. Bow well glad. We I mean sometimes 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:06.760 it just takes something to put it all in perspective, 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.600 wouldn't you say, like your home burning down? Yeah? Sometimes, 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:15.320 and the militias minutes from your door. Yes, unfu believable 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.640 militias that organized on Facebook. Yeah, I mean the story 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:23.920 went pretty viral about it. They weren't harmed, um yes, 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.399 um yeah. The two people I knew best who were 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:30.359 there were Sergio almost ingined almost In Justin Yao, who 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.000 are both wonderful reporters, But yeah, it was. It was 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.480 not lost on me that I think of the four 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.080 people who were there, three of them were not white people. Um, 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.920 and that some of the white reporters had a much 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:46.680 easier time. Interesting things about militias you learn? Anyway, Do 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.440 you think it makes you think? Now? I thought that 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:58.359 quote was interesting? Um. Anyway, opening interesting, disruptive, disruptive, like 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.280 the fires, like malicious. The thing has made me think 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:07.800 when I could think, Yeah, I threw up in my 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:12.840 d n mask walking down the street, awesome. Yeah, I've 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:17.560 been jogging and doing pull ups in a gas mask. Um, 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.600 just half naked in a gas mask in my front 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:24.199 lawn like a normal person. You're the only person I 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.439 know who would have seen this as a as a 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:31.600 possible outcome. And for that, Um, for that, I thank 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.280 you and I curse you. Yeah. So anyway, opening Facebook 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:38.359 up to developers made a shipload of money and membership grew, 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:40.920 and from Mark's point of view, everything was going great. 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.800 But Catherine Katherine Loss, his speech writer, saw a lot 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.160 of the same problems Parakeelis had seen, and in her 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.919 memoir she writes the idea of providing developers with a 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:55.160 massive platform for application promotion didn't exactly accord I thought 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:58.560 with the site state admission of connecting people to me. 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:02.679 Connection with another a person required intention. They have to 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.359 personally signal that they want to talk to me, and 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:09.880 vice versa. Platform developers, though, went it human connection from 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.520 a more automated angle. They churned out applications that promised 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:15.080 to tell you who had a crush on you if 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.439 you would just send an invitation to the application to 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:21.639 all of your friends. Idea was that after the application 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:23.760 had a list of your contacts, it would begin the 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.320 automated work of inquiring about people's interests in matching people 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.680 who were interested in each other. Soon, developers didn't even 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.960 ask you if you wanted to send invitations to your friends. 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.280 Simply adding the application would automatically notify all of your 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.400 Facebook friends that you had added it and invite them 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.000 to add it to using each user as a vessel 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.159 through which invitations would flow viral e without the user's consent. 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.359 In this way, users needs for friendship and connection became 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.800 a powerful engine of spam, as it already was with 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:56.240 email and on the Internet long before Facebook. The same 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:57.879 will tell you you have a crush on who has 0:20:57.880 --> 0:20:59.399 a crush on you if you just send this email 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.240 to your address book. Ploys were familiar to me from Hopkins, 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:04.879 when spammers would blank at the entire email server with 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.800 emails in a matter of hours, spread violarly by students 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.720 scullably entering the names of their crushes and their crushes 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:15.639 email addresses. So this was the face. This was the 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.680 start of Facebook making choices for its users, choices that 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.080 were based on what would be best for the social network, 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.160 which was keeping people on the site for as long 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:27.200 as possible. The growth teams saw that proactively connecting people 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:30.680 to each other worked out really well for Facebook's bottom line, 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:34.040 even though sometimes, for example, people who had been horribly 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.320 abused and raped by their spouses were reconnected to those 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.560 spouses who they were hiding from and had their personal 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:44.600 data exposed to them, a thing that happened repeatedly. Um 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.600 and still happens repeatedly, you know. But that's a small 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:52.280 price to pay for growth. For that inch, you gotta 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.720 fight for that And sometimes fighting for that inch means 0:21:55.800 --> 0:22:01.800 connecting abused women to the men who horribly injured them. 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.560 That's like Mark talking to Priscilla when they're trying to 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.879 conceive a child. He's just like, you gotta fight for 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.880 my inch, honey, you gotta fight for it. Oh. Mark 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.480 Zuckerberg is incapable of talking during sex um. He lets 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.560 out a high pitched hum that is only audible to crickets. 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:20.879 He doesn't. Yeah, he's sort of got a Kendall situation 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:23.320 going on, whereas he just has a sex lump that 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:27.280 gets really hot. Yeah. Yeah. She has to actually withdraw 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:31.880 the semen from inside his sax using a needle. I think, 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.719 actually put in a little a little hold on, hold on, 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.720 hold on, okay, on the subject holding my vomit but 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:43.800 in a syringe and then suck and then and then 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:45.960 she just has it. And then she just has it. 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:49.680 And if you want to have the emotional equivalent of 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:53.919 Mark Zuckerberg, seem no, that's not that's not fair to 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:58.359 the products or services. It's not anyway. Here they are vomit. 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:09.040 We're back, Okay. So in two thousand ten, Facebook launched 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.840 Facebook Groups, which would allow just about anyone to create 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:15.840 a private wald Off community to discuss just about anything, 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:20.800