Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Yew.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about photo filters.
Speaker 2: Yes, they've helped mankind realize its dream of puking rainbows.
Speaker 3: But some of the most popular filters just.
Speaker 2: Help you look more attractive, which may sound harmless, but
Speaker 2: it could be anything but.
Speaker 3: Cutting edge apps and social media filters are allowing ordinary
Speaker 3: people to enhance their online photos to impossible perfection.
Speaker 4: In some cases, it's sparking a concerning phenomena.
Speaker 5: With apps like Phase Tuned, you have the power to
Speaker 5: completely transform yourself. Bigger eyes, skinnier nose and jawline.
Speaker 6: Smaller butt or flatter belly, whiter teeth, smoother skin. You
Speaker 6: can do it right on your phone.
Speaker 7: When I take a selfie, I always use filters.
Speaker 8: I wish I could look like my filtered self in
Speaker 8: real life.
Speaker 5: This obsession with personal appearance that selfie culture encourages may
Speaker 5: have darker implications for mental health.
Speaker 3: A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association
Speaker 3: says filtered pictures can take a toll on self esteem,
Speaker 3: body image, and even lead to body dysmorphic disorder.
Speaker 9: I do feel like we're losing touch with what reality
Speaker 9: looks like. We're already getting there to the point where
Speaker 9: we're expecting people to look as unhuman as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, photo editing filters set unrealistic expectations for beauty the
Speaker 3: same way fruit ninja sets up unrealistic expectations of how
Speaker 3: easy it is to slice floating fruit.
Speaker 4: Da.
Speaker 2: And once you have this filtered version of yourself in
Speaker 2: your head, you become dissatisfied with what you really look like.
Speaker 2: So in essence, we're basically catfishing ourselves. But if these
Speaker 2: editing apps can turn adults into quivering blobs of insecurity,
Speaker 2: just imagine what they're doing to kids.
Speaker 5: Psychologists warn these photo filters can be particularly troubling for
Speaker 5: teens and young people who are still developing their sense
Speaker 5: of self.
Speaker 2: Eighty percent of girls in one sir say they compare
Speaker 2: the way they look to other people on social media.
Speaker 8: On instance, like I follow people like Kendall Jenner and
Speaker 8: Kylie Jenner, and they all have this time measure like
Speaker 8: body imit that everyone is expecting from this generation.
Speaker 10: Young girls on social media have a negative body perception,
Speaker 10: with one in seven girls reporting being unhappy with the
Speaker 10: way they look at the end of elementary school, and
Speaker 10: that number almost doubling to nearly one in three by
Speaker 10: age fourteen.
Speaker 1: Eighty percent of young girls are using photo retouching.
Speaker 9: Apps to change the way they look before posting pictures.
Speaker 11: And those with high scores for manipulating their photos were
Speaker 11: associated with high scores for body related and eating concerns.
Speaker 3: Any of you ever question your body because of what
Speaker 3: you see on social media, shame man.
Speaker 4: This is a vicious cycle for teenagers.
Speaker 2: Social media makes them unhappy with how they look, so
Speaker 2: then they use filters, which perpetuate the unrealistic expectations for
Speaker 2: themselves and others. Plus, they're teenagers doing all of this
Speaker 2: while they are driving, which puts everyone at risk, and
Speaker 2: all the insecurity this creates is harmful for teenagers because
Speaker 2: I know it's hard to tune all of this out,
Speaker 2: but teens shouldn't be obsessing over this stuff. Like I
Speaker 2: honestly wish I could sit all teenagers down and say, hey,
Speaker 2: don't worry about how you look.
Speaker 3: The planet's going to die out before you're thirty. It
Speaker 3: doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: It's bad enough when people wish they had the perfect
Speaker 2: Instagram look in real life. What's worse is when they
Speaker 2: actually try to make it happen.
Speaker 5: The more people look at doctored up images, the more
Speaker 5: likely they are to actually start seeking out cosmetic procedures
Speaker 5: at younger ages.
Speaker 9: These cosmetic procedures are becoming so popular with teens plastic
Speaker 9: surgeons have coined a new syndrome for it, Snapchat dysmorphia,
Speaker 9: and the number of kids getting niptucks may astound you.
Speaker 9: In twenty seventeen and nearly two hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 9: teens had cosmetic procedures. Kids as young as thirteen are
Speaker 9: getting them.
Speaker 5: Doctors seeing an influx of people of all ages turning
Speaker 5: to plastic surgery to look more like they're filter.
Speaker 11: Sixty two percent of plastic surgeons reported their patients wanted
Speaker 11: to go under the knife because of dissatisfaction with their
Speaker 11: social media profile. Fifty seven percent said their patients wanted
Speaker 11: to look better and selfies.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's becoming more and more common when people will
Speaker 4: show me images on their Instagram or even something that
Speaker 4: fussed on Facebook, or this is really high I want
Speaker 4: to look.
Speaker 9: Just last week, I had a patient come in and
Speaker 9: asked me for more of an anime eye and she
Speaker 9: couldn't figure out why it's not possible.
Speaker 2: Okay, man, this is really disturbing. Thirteen year olds in
Speaker 2: particular should not be getting plastic surgery. I mean, when
Speaker 2: you're thirteen, your physical appearance is already naturally changing. That's
Speaker 2: not how faces are doing. It's like long term plastic surgery.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what I look like when I
Speaker 2: was thirteen. You gotta let that shit play out. Honestly, though,
Speaker 2: I don't blame the teenagers. I blame the parents and
Speaker 2: the plastic surgeons. I mean, how are you going to
Speaker 2: let them do this to themselves. They can't even buy cigarettes,
Speaker 2: but you're gonna let them buy a new face.
Speaker 3: Canny.
Speaker 2: This is getting out of hand, which is why there's
Speaker 2: now a movement not just against filters, but all the
Speaker 2: ways that people have been distorting reality on social media.
Speaker 12: Many influencers have started speaking up on this issue, admitting
Speaker 12: that they've presented altered images in the past and are
Speaker 12: opening up the conversation. Some are even posting raw, totally
Speaker 12: unedited photos of themselves and breaking down how people on
Speaker 12: your Instagram feed may be manipulating their angles and lighting
Speaker 12: to get that quote unquote perfect selfie.
Speaker 8: There are many celebrities exposing the dangerous of digital distortion.
Speaker 8: They are posting images of themselves unedited, unfiltered online and
Speaker 8: this is a great example to young girls.
Speaker 6: Pop star Lizo made a big splash when she posted
Speaker 6: as selfie in the nude and unretouched.
Speaker 2: There's no shame anymore, and I just kind of post myself.
Speaker 4: It's like, you take me as I am, you gonna
Speaker 4: have to love me.
Speaker 13: British MP Luke Evans has proposed the Digitally Altered Body
Speaker 13: Image Bill, which would require advertisers and publishers to display
Speaker 13: a logo whenever a person's face or body has been
Speaker 13: digitally enhanced.
Speaker 2: Okay, first of all, I love the idea of putting
Speaker 2: disclaimers on photos of people who have been digitally altered.
Speaker 2: I love it, and honestly, I don't think we should
Speaker 2: stop there. We need to do this with everything that's
Speaker 2: been digitally out, like food ads. Those are the worst.
Speaker 2: Every FoST food burger looks great on TV, but then
Speaker 2: when I order it, it looks like it fell asleep
Speaker 2: in a hot tub. But I'm glad that we're finally
Speaker 2: learning the truth about what celebrities look like. You No, personally,
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for SpongeBob to join this movement. I mean,
Speaker 2: no way that guy is that square? Naturally have you
Speaker 2: seen that? It's not even maybe he's not real? The
Speaker 2: how we have a TV show? Now, I'm not naive
Speaker 2: enough to think that society is gonna stop creating unrealistic
Speaker 2: beauty standards anytime soon, all right, But what I do
Speaker 2: hope is that we can better educate our kids and
Speaker 2: ourselves that our own natural bodies all beautiful and except
Speaker 2: for that flap of old people's skin we have on
Speaker 2: our elbows, like that shit is gross. I don't care
Speaker 2: who you are. It looks like a mid on bull sack,
Speaker 2: but everything else is beautiful. But because this movement could
Speaker 2: take a while, we hear The Daily Show decided to
Speaker 2: come up with a filter of our own that might help.
Speaker 1: Are social media filters giving you body image issues? Are
Speaker 1: you depressed you don't look as good as your filter,
Speaker 1: then good news. You'll never have to worry about living
Speaker 1: up to your filter again. With Rudify, it's a brand
Speaker 1: new filter that turns your face into Rudy Giuliani. You'll
Speaker 1: never be happier with how you look in real life.
Speaker 1: And obviously this wouldn't be effective if you could turn
Speaker 1: it off, so Rudeifi overrides all other filters, and just
Speaker 1: to be safe, Rudify retroactively applies itself to every face
Speaker 1: and every photo in your phone. The best part is
Speaker 1: the filter is permanent, just like Rudy himself.
Speaker 6: You can never get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Rudeify, You'll be overflowing with self esteem. Warning you have
Speaker 1: distilted by Rudy Giuliani. Will ruphter the fabric of space
Speaker 1: and time.
Speaker 2: My guest tonight is former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower
Speaker 2: Francis Hogen. She's here to talk about how Facebook prioritizes
Speaker 2: profits over public safety and teen mental health. Francis Hagen,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Daily Show.
Speaker 7: Thank you for reviving me.
Speaker 2: How diy be here? Your name isn't as big as
Speaker 2: the story that you really, I mean leaked to the world.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people, you say, Francis Haugen,
Speaker 2: be like, who is that? But then if you say
Speaker 2: to people, hey, remember how we all learned that Facebook
Speaker 2: and what social media is doing is essentially destroying teenager's
Speaker 2: brains and it's harming all of us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that report happened because of you. So let's start
Speaker 4: with the question of why you've worked.
Speaker 2: For Google, You've worked for Pinterest, You've worked for Yelp,
Speaker 2: and yet you blew the whistle on Facebook.
Speaker 4: Why did you feel like, oh, this is something I
Speaker 4: can't sit on.
Speaker 7: So when I joined Facebook, I thought I was going
Speaker 7: to work on misinformation in the United States, and I
Speaker 7: was surprised. I actually I was charged with working on
Speaker 7: information outside only.
Speaker 3: Outside the United States, Okay.
Speaker 7: And like many people and many technologists, I had never
Speaker 7: really focused on Facebook's impact internationally, And very rapidly I
Speaker 7: realized kind of the horrifying magnitude of the danger that
Speaker 7: we were facing. That Facebook's algorithms give the most reach
Speaker 7: to the most extreme and divisive ideas, and that process
Speaker 7: is destabilizing some of the most fragile places in the world,
Speaker 7: like Ethiopia or what happened in me and more.
Speaker 2: You see, when you say that there were some people
Speaker 2: who were accepted immediately, and then there.
Speaker 4: Are some people be like, that's not trut all.
Speaker 2: But I'm sure there are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: will say, but I mean, aren't they always going to
Speaker 2: be extreme people in the world. You know, there's always
Speaker 2: somebody saying something. You know, Facebook themselves say they go like, hey,
Speaker 2: We're not part of the problem. We're merely a platform
Speaker 2: that people put their views on. We are not part
Speaker 2: of the problem. And you disagree with that.
Speaker 7: So let's imagine you had a relative who had particularly
Speaker 7: extreme ideas. You know, we often say like the crazy.
Speaker 4: Uncle, right, correct, Right?
Speaker 7: Some of us have those that person if we're talking
Speaker 7: to them one on one or we're talking to them
Speaker 7: at a family gathering. That scale allows for resolution of ideas.
Speaker 4: Okay, what's happening.
Speaker 7: On Facebook right now is ideas that are the most
Speaker 7: able to elicit a reaction and the shortest path to
Speaker 7: a click is anger. Those get the most reach. And
Speaker 7: ideas that are more moderate or they try to bring
Speaker 7: us into synthesis or to help us find a middle path,
Speaker 7: those aren't as likely tolicit a comment from you or
Speaker 7: a listed alike, right, And so Facebook doesn't get as
Speaker 7: much distribution.
Speaker 2: So Facebook is essentially propelling certain ideas out there. So
Speaker 2: they may say we're the platform, but really what they're
Speaker 2: also doing is they're advocating for certain viewpoints because they
Speaker 2: push those out because those get people engaged and spinning
Speaker 2: in the cycle.
Speaker 7: So I think it's the thing where it's not. They
Speaker 7: sit out and go, how can we have more extreme ideas.
Speaker 7: I don't think that's what they're trying to do, but
Speaker 7: they do know that there are lots of solutions that
Speaker 7: are not about censorship. It's not about picking good or
Speaker 7: bad ideas or good or bad people. It's about how
Speaker 7: do we change the dynamics of these systems so that
Speaker 7: you could have good speech counter bad speech.
Speaker 4: How do we give those more of a people say
Speaker 4: at the table.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that you lay it out like
Speaker 2: this because I remember talking to my friends about this, saying,
Speaker 2: have we become angrier in the world? Have we become
Speaker 2: less able to have misunderstands? Cause I sit with my
Speaker 2: friends and I go like, I don't agree on so
Speaker 2: many things with my friends, But I don't remember a
Speaker 2: time when that meant that I couldn't be friends with them. Now,
Speaker 2: in the role of social media, right now, it feels
Speaker 2: like if I disagree with you on this, I disagree
Speaker 2: with you on everything. It seems like Facebook is if
Speaker 2: you disagree on this, we're going to make or we're
Speaker 2: going to find more ways to you know, to find
Speaker 2: way you disagree or how to make you disagree.
Speaker 7: So some people have said this idea of like Facebook's
Speaker 7: always leaking for fault liance, right, So a high quality
Speaker 7: piece of content is one that gets lots of engagement
Speaker 7: and it turns out an angry common thread where you know,
Speaker 7: it causes us deal at each other. That is viewed
Speaker 7: as a higher quality.
Speaker 1: Piece of content.
Speaker 7: And so you know, during COVID, I've had friends who
Speaker 7: wrote very long, thoughtful pieces that when in digestive lots
Speaker 7: of information, that's going to cause less knee jerk reaction
Speaker 7: than something that really offends you.
Speaker 4: So masks don't work. People are clicking on that.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing about masks we have to consider in
Speaker 2: our society to boom.
Speaker 4: Facebook's not apprescing that.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting, you know, in everything that you've done
Speaker 2: is even though you're a whistleblower, even though you came
Speaker 2: up with this information, you've never said I'm anti Facebook.
Speaker 2: You've never said shut Facebook down, You've never said this
Speaker 2: thing needs to go away. What you're arguing for is
Speaker 2: we change our relationship with not just Facebook, but social
Speaker 2: media company as a whole.
Speaker 4: Explain what that means. So often when.
Speaker 7: People talk with this idea of when you change our
Speaker 7: relationship with social media it's more about like, should we
Speaker 7: use our phone so much? But I'm encouraged you to
Speaker 7: have a conversation about what's our relationship with companies or
Speaker 7: what's the company's relationships with us.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 7: Facebook knows that they have a level of on accountability
Speaker 7: that's very different than either Google or Apple or other
Speaker 7: big platforms, because in the case of Google, we can scrape,
Speaker 7: we can download their results and analyze them and see
Speaker 7: if they're biases. In the case of Apple, we can
Speaker 7: take apart the phones and put up YouTube videos saying
Speaker 7: Apple phones do or don't work the way they claim. Oh.
Speaker 7: But in case of Facebook, researchers and activists have been
Speaker 7: telling Facebook, hey, we have found all these examples. We
Speaker 7: think there's a pattern here. We think there's too much
Speaker 7: human trafficking, we think kids are suffering.
Speaker 4: Right, And Facebook keeps coming.
Speaker 7: Back because they know no one can call them on
Speaker 7: it and saying that's just anecdotal, that's not real.
Speaker 2: But when you release the information, we realized it wasn't anecdotal,
Speaker 2: it was real because Facebook can do basic research, right
Speaker 2: you see. Now this is interesting because this reminds me
Speaker 2: of the tobacco companies. Yes, it reminds us of the
Speaker 2: you know, the fossil fuel companies. They the research, they
Speaker 2: find out something really bad, and then I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: they go like, we're not going to put this out there,
Speaker 2: but we know. One of the biggest things that's really
Speaker 2: gotten people worried is how social media affects younger brains.
Speaker 4: I mean, it affects my brain.
Speaker 2: I don't consider myself younger anymore, but young people are like,
Speaker 2: it seems like the highest at the highest risk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Facebook's internal research says that the highest rates of problematic
Speaker 7: use peak at age fourteen. So you're not allowed to
Speaker 7: be on the platform until you're thirteen. Uh huh, So
Speaker 7: I guess it takes a little bit of time to
Speaker 7: form that habit. But the largest fraction of any of
Speaker 7: those age cohorts they sampled, and they've done studies that
Speaker 7: have one hundred thousand people in the most beause they're
Speaker 7: not tiny studies, they find that the largest fractions say
Speaker 7: I can't control my usage, and I know it's impacting
Speaker 7: my health, my employment or my school.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 7: Is at age fourteen, and so there's a real thing
Speaker 7: where young people have both you know, they're struggling with
Speaker 7: issues in their life, yes, and they don't have the
Speaker 7: self control and they see this, they say this to researchers,
Speaker 7: They say, I know this is making me feel bad,
Speaker 7: and I can't stop. I fear I'll be ostracized if
Speaker 7: I leave. And those factors mean it's not easy for
Speaker 7: kids just to walk away.
Speaker 2: It's also not easy for people to understand how to
Speaker 2: how to fix it. You have lawmakers now who are
Speaker 2: trying to figure this thing out. Silicon Valley is way
Speaker 2: ahead of them, right like, way ahead of them law makers.
Speaker 2: You see these hearings, they'll be like, what if my
Speaker 2: Facebook is an install flap?
Speaker 4: They don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 2: So how do we begin creating a world where we're
Speaker 2: not destroying the companies, but we're regulating them the way
Speaker 2: they should be.
Speaker 7: So the main thing I'm advocating for is around transparency
Speaker 7: because one of the problems today is because Facebook is
Speaker 7: the only one that holds the cards, like they can
Speaker 7: see they can see whether or not they're holding a
Speaker 7: royal flush or not what they claim. We need to
Speaker 7: move to a world where we have more access to data,
Speaker 7: and that can be aggregate data, it can be privacy
Speaker 7: sensitive data, it doesn't have to expose people. It's not.
Speaker 7: It's a false choice of privacy versus transparency. And once
Speaker 7: we have the ability to have conversations, we can stop
Speaker 7: talking about boogeyman social media, I see, and we can
Speaker 7: start having conversations on how do we solve these problems.
Speaker 7: I think what we need to do, and this is
Speaker 7: why I want to spend twenty twenty two doing, is
Speaker 7: we need to start organizing people like I want to
Speaker 7: plant a youth directed movement where we can begin putting
Speaker 7: pressure on Facebook to release this information, because I don't
Speaker 7: think Facebook is just going to do it automatically out
Speaker 7: of the goodness it's heart. We have to force them
Speaker 7: to and I think there's lots of lots of opportunities
Speaker 7: where we can begin putting pressure on them, either socially
Speaker 7: or financially.
Speaker 2: As a user of social media, as a person who
Speaker 2: speaks to my friends on social media, I have my
Speaker 2: enemies on social media. I appreciate this conversation because I
Speaker 2: think if we're not careful, we end up in a
Speaker 2: world where we're all fighting really just because an algorithm
Speaker 2: is trying to make us fight. Half of those fights
Speaker 2: I've noticed, even with the show. If I say a
Speaker 2: thing on the show, this has been like the most
Speaker 2: interesting thing for me is depending on what I say
Speaker 2: Facebook since to different people.
Speaker 4: One time we have it on the show. Yeah, one
Speaker 4: time we had it on the show a where literally
Speaker 4: I'd laid out both arguments.
Speaker 2: I said, here's here's one way to see it, here's
Speaker 2: another way to see it. But then on Facebook, only
Speaker 2: one way wins to each group.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2: Was I was fascinated by that because then people are like,
Speaker 2: why didn't you say the other wise, Like, but that's
Speaker 2: exactly what I said. They're like, oh, well I didn't
Speaker 2: see that, and then you realize, you know, so.
Speaker 7: One of things that happens is, so let's say you
Speaker 7: take a video clip, so we'll say you have out
Speaker 7: of any given on your shows, people go and put
Speaker 7: on YouTube lots of different little chunks.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 7: People can recede those onto Facebook. Over and over again
Speaker 7: they do. And each time that enters into Facebook, you know,
Speaker 7: someone posts it to a group. Someone doesn't this, it
Speaker 7: enters into the network in a different way, and the
Speaker 7: algorithm begins picking up data on that and it says, oh, interesting,
Speaker 7: like these kinds of people engage these cans still and so,
Speaker 7: and because it's entering from so many different points, it
Speaker 7: actually gets a chance to learn what kinds of people
Speaker 7: or communities it engages the most with. And so that
Speaker 7: echo chamber is real. Like the algorithm pulls us towards
Speaker 7: the homogeneity.
Speaker 2: It's almost like Facebook knows that you react most to
Speaker 2: your neighbor when they play loud music. There's no reaction
Speaker 2: from you when your neighbor's doing other things, but when
Speaker 2: your neighbor plays and loud music, that's when you react.
Speaker 4: Actually, Facebook, I'm just gonna.
Speaker 7: It's even worse than that.
Speaker 4: Actually gonna be worse.
Speaker 7: Imagine there's music that you like, and there's music you
Speaker 7: don't like. Wow, It actually knows you really don't like
Speaker 7: I don't know, reggaeton or.
Speaker 4: Something, oh wow. And one of things that's I think.
Speaker 7: It's really sad is one of the things that was
Speaker 7: in the documents is that people talk about, especially people
Speaker 7: from marginalized communities, that they will go and and correct
Speaker 7: people who are spreading racist actors, homophobic comments.
Speaker 4: And guess what.
Speaker 7: Now, Facebook knows you engage with those keywords, so.
Speaker 4: They send you yeah, yeah, I didn't know they were
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 7: I don't do it a purpose. It's a side effect.
Speaker 4: It's a side effect of the way the algorithm works.
Speaker 2: So the algorithms designed to get as much engagement as possible,
Speaker 2: and then engagement unfortunately met.
Speaker 4: You're more likely.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a car accident, I'm going to engage yeah, or.
Speaker 7: More of if they had an option of showing you
Speaker 7: a stream of different things so they know you got
Speaker 7: a car accidents, so they show you more.
Speaker 2: Man, this is hard because on the one hand, I
Speaker 2: go like, well, I need to stop looking at car accidents.
Speaker 4: But the brain is the brain.
Speaker 12: It's the brain.
Speaker 7: You know, if if all the AI is not intelligent,
Speaker 7: right we like to say artificial intelligence, Yes, but people
Speaker 7: who actually study called machine learning because it's not intelligence.
Speaker 7: It's just a hill climber. It's optimizing and I you know,
Speaker 7: think of all the different pieces of content you get
Speaker 7: exposed to. It's not trying to show you most extreme content.
Speaker 7: It happens to be to a fulfill its goal function.
Speaker 7: It mindlessly pushes you towards it. And so this is
Speaker 7: about Facebook making choices to not fix it. That Facebook
Speaker 7: has lots of lots of options that don't deal with
Speaker 7: that machine.
Speaker 4: Run wild. They're on the machine right Well, money, money,
Speaker 4: that's what it is. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 4: This has really been enlightning. Good luck on nurst of
Speaker 4: your journey.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
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