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Speaker 1: What digging graves for my democracy? I'm Robert Evans. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards podcast about the worst people

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Speaker 1: in all the history. UH. My guest this week for

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Speaker 1: a very special two parter UH is the Inimitable Um

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Speaker 1: which I've introduced you as the Inimitable the the very

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Speaker 1: close to Emmy winning Jamie Loft. I lost a fokey, Robert,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know who that is, which means you

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Speaker 1: one in my in my book. I knew. I was like,

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Speaker 1: there's no way that Robert knows who Forky is and

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Speaker 1: that is going to give me piece. Yeah, I never

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Speaker 1: heard of, never heard of? Is it someone the teens like?

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Speaker 1: Because I you know what I hate is the teens.

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Speaker 1: I don't hate the teens. The teens are obsessed with

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Speaker 1: four key. They need their TikTok if they need their

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Speaker 1: their cold route, and they need their forky. Does this

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Speaker 1: have something to do with whatever A hundred gus is?

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Speaker 1: What is that? It's some it's some music thing that

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Speaker 1: the teens love. The teens who are always starting the

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Speaker 1: fires love love hundred gus and I love the teens

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Speaker 1: who are always starting the fires from the teens from

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Speaker 1: the fire Team from the fire Team. He was No,

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Speaker 1: he was a spork. I just looks like I ordered

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Speaker 1: a quirky and I'm gonna throw it. I'm gonna like

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Speaker 1: smash it up. I don't need to be a good

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Speaker 1: sport about losing to no no funk that noise. Let's

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Speaker 1: find his home address and commit federal I mean, sorry,

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Speaker 1: wreaky down and I'm going to commit a crime like yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was when I was like, I wonder how mine craft.

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Speaker 1: Oh the teens love their Minecraft. No, I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: just saying you should only talk about committing crimes in

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Speaker 1: Minecraft because then you can't get in trouble if you

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Speaker 1: do commit the crime later. That's the way the law works. Well,

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Speaker 1: I've been kicked off of Twitter for ename the life

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Speaker 1: of someone fictional before, so wondering if it if it

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Speaker 1: would happen with Forky. But it seems like Jack is

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Speaker 1: in full agreement that Forky's gotta go. Yeah, you know

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Speaker 1: who else has to go Jamie about crimes and definitely

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Speaker 1: have to go. I opened this episode, you know, saying,

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Speaker 1: who's who's the digging graves for my democracy? You know,

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Speaker 1: and sort of the you know, that's kind of a

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Speaker 1: will play on my One of the ways I introduced

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Speaker 1: the show, Well, the person who's digging graves for our

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Speaker 1: democracy is Mark Zuckerberg, and we have another two parter

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Speaker 1: about him today. Yeah, that's right. I can't believe you're

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Speaker 1: doing this. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote another like ten thousand

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Speaker 1: words about Mark Zuckerberg, just for you, Jamie, just for you.

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Speaker 1: So it's worth of crime since we last spoke, I

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Speaker 1: think about him. Yeah, he's done more than that. I

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Speaker 1: had to leave, like there's I just finished writing last

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Speaker 1: night and there was still like four articles worth of

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Speaker 1: stuff to conclude that. I was just like, well, I'm

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Speaker 1: not getting to this because I have to sleep. Listen,

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Speaker 1: we're all we're all entitled to sleeve. I have wear this.

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Speaker 1: I ordered a horrible shirt with Mark Zuckerberg on it

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Speaker 1: the last time we covered him, You did, I wear

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Speaker 1: it all the time. It's all worn in. What with

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Speaker 1: all the crimes? What with all the crimes? YEA, well, Uh,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg. So we've talked about Mark

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Speaker 1: and his creation Facebook quite a lot on this show already.

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Speaker 1: Last year we did a three part series on the

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Speaker 1: Son of a Bitch. Uh, but a lot has happened

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Speaker 1: since then, and Mark himself has only grown more dangerous

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Speaker 1: and I so, yeah, we have to talk about him

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Speaker 1: again and his company. And I think that in order

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Speaker 1: to properly tell this story, we're going to need to

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Speaker 1: actually go back to Mark's backstory because there's a rather

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Speaker 1: critical part of it, um and a part of his

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Speaker 1: psychological profile that I left out during the last series

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Speaker 1: of episodes because I'm a hack in a fraud, so

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Speaker 1: I missed this last time well known, but it it

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Speaker 1: connects some dots that I think are important, especially in

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Speaker 1: the context with him fucking at Harvard. No um, I

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Speaker 1: mean a lot has to do with him not fucking

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Speaker 1: at Harvard, but this is not specifically about that, although

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Speaker 1: it probably played into the fact that nobody wanted to

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Speaker 1: fuck him at Harvard um slash. Ever, So yeah, let's

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Speaker 1: we're gonna go back in time to what I think

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Speaker 1: is Jamie's favorite period of history, the childhood of Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I go, there are my dreams. Yeah, we all ye.

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Speaker 1: In particular, we're gonna be talking about his high school

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Speaker 1: years at Williams Exeter Academy. Now um at present tuition,

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Speaker 1: their costs a little less than forty five thou dollars

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Speaker 1: a year for the day school, which is more than

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Speaker 1: the average American makes. Um. Yeah, as you might expect,

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Speaker 1: young Mark spent a lot of his time their coding, fencing,

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Speaker 1: and studying Latin um, which is like two out of

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Speaker 1: three things that I did in high school too. So

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Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the crime of being for us to

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Speaker 1: study Latin, I'll never get over it. Yeah, No, it

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Speaker 1: ruined my life, except for that one time we got

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Speaker 1: to watch Life of Brian in class um, which I

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Speaker 1: feel like the teacher was stretching and justifying, but I

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Speaker 1: was grateful for. So Mark was in particular a really

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Speaker 1: big fan of studying Latin, unlike us. He he loved

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Speaker 1: it in his study of the language, bread a fascination

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Speaker 1: with the history of ancient rome Um. And again, I

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Speaker 1: kind of find this interesting because that's like the opposite

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Speaker 1: of how it happened to me. I took Latin because

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Speaker 1: I was a huge history nerd about Roman history, and

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Speaker 1: then I stopped liking Roman history as much because I

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Speaker 1: was so bored of Latin class um. Yeah, so Mark

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Speaker 1: fell in love with the language because learning it was

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Speaker 1: fairly similar to coding, and then he kind of fell

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Speaker 1: in love with the history next, and he later explained

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Speaker 1: to a reporter, quote, you have all these good and

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Speaker 1: bad and complex figures. I think Augustus is one of

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Speaker 1: the most fascinating. Now, Jamie. The Augustus he's talking about

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Speaker 1: was Augustus Caesar, who was, uh, the guy who became

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Speaker 1: the very first Roman emperor in thirty one b c.

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Speaker 1: He was Julius Caesar's hair air and uh, yeah, he

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Speaker 1: was Julius Caesar's air um. And he was just seventeen

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Speaker 1: years old when his mentor died um. And suddenly he

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Speaker 1: founds himself in control of like Caesar's armies and like

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Speaker 1: fighting for uh control of Rome. And he basically kind

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Speaker 1: of as a result of this, spent almost his entire

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Speaker 1: life in power um. And by the time he was

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Speaker 1: finally emperor um his which like took some years. You know,

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Speaker 1: Caesar dies and there's a bunch of wars and stuff

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Speaker 1: um like, so by the time he's like emperor in

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Speaker 1: his twenties, um. Like the idea, like any memory of

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Speaker 1: his life, Like think back to when you were like

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Speaker 1: twenty five, how well you remembered being fifteen, right, um,

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Speaker 1: sixteen years old? Not at all? Um? So by the

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Speaker 1: time he's emperor, Like Augustus is like everything that isn't

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Speaker 1: commanding armies and controlling the destiny of millions would have

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Speaker 1: been like a dim memory. Um. You can see why.

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Speaker 1: You can see why Mark has continued after getting out

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Speaker 1: of high school to kind of identify with this guy,

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Speaker 1: because both of them are people who, like, while they're

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Speaker 1: you know, very young adults, uh, come into unbelievable power

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Speaker 1: um and misuse it and largely misuse it. Yeah, Mark

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Speaker 1: would not say that Augustus largely misused it, of course

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Speaker 1: not Now. Augustus did go on to become one of

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Speaker 1: the longest serving emperors in Roman history, and he's generally

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Speaker 1: remembered as one of the best, although this is mainly

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Speaker 1: because he hired all of the like a bunch of

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Speaker 1: broke authors and poets to write the history of his

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Speaker 1: reign um as opposed to like, historians are increasingly critical

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Speaker 1: of Augustus as they analyze actual history and not just

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Speaker 1: like read whatever I think it was Swetonius like just

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Speaker 1: wrote about it. Yeah, it's like a hiring like fan

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Speaker 1: fake writers on five Like, hey, that's literally what the

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Speaker 1: India it is, you know, the India is like the

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Speaker 1: poem like it's it's it's a rip off of the

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Speaker 1: Iliad that's supposed to be about the founding of Rome

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Speaker 1: that connects it to the sacking of troy Um and

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Speaker 1: was written largely as like a largely to glorify Augustus

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Speaker 1: because it was like shaking the case that his ancestors

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Speaker 1: were all these fucking cool ass people. It's also frustrating

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Speaker 1: to me, like when when things like the Anid are

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Speaker 1: treated as like unquestionable primary source, where it's like, no,

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Speaker 1: people were fucking around with the portrayal of history always.

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Speaker 1: It was propaganda, even more shallow than our propaganda is today. Um.

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Speaker 1: I fell asleep reading it when I was fourteen. It's

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Speaker 1: it's also bad. It's a bad book. M boring. It's

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Speaker 1: boring as hell, unlike the Iliad, which which absolutely slaps

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Speaker 1: um like pretty good book, all things considered. Good ship

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Speaker 1: in there, some good ideas, good ship in there. And

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Speaker 1: Virgil I don't know, I only remember like half of

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Speaker 1: this stuff, and I didn't check that he had a ghostwriter.

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Speaker 1: Fuck Virgil. I mean he kind of was the Emperor's

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Speaker 1: ghost right anyway. Whatever, So yeah, Augustus like propaganda like

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Speaker 1: hires a bunch of propagandists to to make it look

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Speaker 1: like he was. He was like awesome, UM, and that's

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Speaker 1: part of why we remember him as being amazing and

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Speaker 1: part of why Mark is obsessed with him. UM. And

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Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that's interesting about Augustus

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Speaker 1: is that his birth name was actually Octavian. He took

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Speaker 1: the name Augustus because it meant lofty or serene, and

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Speaker 1: he needed everybody to know how cool he was. So

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Speaker 1: it's not it's not hard to see why young Mark

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Speaker 1: would have liked both idolized and um identified with this guy.

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Speaker 1: By the time he was thirty, Augustus controlled basically the

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Speaker 1: entire Western world. UM and Mark Zuckerberg, by the time

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Speaker 1: he was thirty controlled an online empire larger than the

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Speaker 1: entire Western world. He controlled my entire self esteem for

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Speaker 1: a good half a decade. Yeah, and destroyed all of

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Speaker 1: journalism anyway. So he uh so again, you can see

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Speaker 1: like why why Mark idolizes this guy, because he's had

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Speaker 1: a lifelong fascination with him. In an interview with The

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Speaker 1: New Yorker, Zuckerberg explained, quote, basically, through a really harsh approach,

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Speaker 1: he being Augustus established two hundred years of world peace.

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Speaker 1: What are the trade offs in that? Zuckerberg said, growing animated.

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Speaker 1: On one hand, world piece is a long term goal

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Speaker 1: that people talk about today, two hundred years feels unattainable.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, he said that didn't come for free,

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Speaker 1: and he had to do certain things. Very funny. Honestly,

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Speaker 1: I gotta be you kind of lost me for a

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Speaker 1: second it becoming animated, because I cannot really imagine. I

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Speaker 1: can imagine for him, the only thing that makes him,

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Speaker 1: that makes him show human emotion is thinking about dominating

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Speaker 1: the entire world and forcing it into to act the

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Speaker 1: way he wants it to. Um like imagining himself as

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Speaker 1: dictator of the planet is the only thing that brings

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Speaker 1: him excitement. It's what It's what his wife has to

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Speaker 1: like with spur into his ears in order to help

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Speaker 1: in order to make a child with him. I guess.

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Speaker 1: I guess world leaders can have very weak arms. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. Do you think he spits when he talks? Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's either it's I feel the same way about how

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Speaker 1: I always think of like does beetle juice come wet

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Speaker 1: scabs or dry scabs? I could picture of having a

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Speaker 1: very wet mouth or a very dry mouth. He's a

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Speaker 1: heavy breather. Yeah, it's it's a nightmare all around. I

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Speaker 1: think we can all agree on that. Um But what's

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Speaker 1: most important to note at this point is that Mark

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Speaker 1: Zuckerberg number one, Augustus and this idea that he brought

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Speaker 1: world peace for a two hundred years very important to Mark.

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Speaker 1: Important for him to talk about two journalists and stuff,

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Speaker 1: something he really makes a point of getting out completely inaccurate,

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Speaker 1: wildly inaccurate. There's a number of reasons it's wildly inaccurate.

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Speaker 1: For one, thing, like he's talking about he's when he

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Speaker 1: says two hundred years of peace, he's talking about two

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Speaker 1: hundre years of peace. And like the Mediterranean and Western Europe,

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Speaker 1: he's not talking about China, he's not talking about Southeast Asia,

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Speaker 1: he's not talking about Japan. He's not talking about North America,

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Speaker 1: South America, the Caribbean, all of which were places that

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Speaker 1: had wars and conflicts during this period. Because again, Mark

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Speaker 1: is fundamentally incapable of, like like a lot of Americans,

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Speaker 1: fundamentally incapable about thinking of thinking about those places as

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Speaker 1: as real as as Western history. Um So, number one,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a problem right from the jump. But even

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Speaker 1: within the context, even if we give him credit and

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Speaker 1: saying like he's saying no, no, he had two hundred

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Speaker 1: years of peace within sort of the classical ancient world,

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Speaker 1: that's also complete horseshit um. Because yeah, I'm gonna just

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Speaker 1: read a short list of some of the wars that

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Speaker 1: Rome got involved with during the two hundred years after

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Speaker 1: Augustus came to power. The Roman Partian War of fifty

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Speaker 1: eight to sixty three, Buddhica is Uprising. This was like

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Speaker 1: that that that English queen who like led an uprising

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Speaker 1: against Rome in the sixty sixty to sixty one UM.

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Speaker 1: The First Jewish Roman War sixty six to seventy three,

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Speaker 1: these is a d sorry, the Roman Civil War of

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Speaker 1: sixty eight to sixty nine, a d Damitian's Decklin War

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Speaker 1: eight six to eighty eight, The First Dation War one

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Speaker 1: hundred and one to one hundred and two, the Second

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Speaker 1: Dation War one hundred and five to one hundred six,

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Speaker 1: The Roman Persian Wars which started in the middle or

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Speaker 1: in the early hundreds, the Quito's War, the Second Jewish

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Speaker 1: Revolt from one thirty two to one thirty five, the

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Speaker 1: Marco Manic Wars from one sixty six to one eighty,

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Speaker 1: and of course the Roman Civil War of a hundred

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Speaker 1: and ninety three to one hundred and ninety seven. And again, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you put those twenty or

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Speaker 1: so other than all of the wars I just listed,

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Speaker 1: it was a period of total peace. It's like saying

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Speaker 1: after war war to the US presided over like half

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Speaker 1: a century of global peace if we ignore the millions

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Speaker 1: who died in Vietnam and Cambodia and Lao in Korea. Um,

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Speaker 1: and of course all of the hundreds of thousands potentially

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Speaker 1: millions who died in Latin America. Um. Half a century

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Speaker 1: of peace, complete total peace? What what I mean? To

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Speaker 1: be fair? He went to Phillips Exeter Academy, So his

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Speaker 1: brain is a bunch of worms and a few empty

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Speaker 1: D batteries. Yeah, his history education was his teacher jacking

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Speaker 1: off with a flag and asking if the class had

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Speaker 1: any questions. Academy sucks. There was a boy that was

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Speaker 1: supposed to take me to a skating rink from there

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Speaker 1: once and then he he didn't show up. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: all I have to do to urge that people burned

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Speaker 1: down Phillips Exeter Academy. This is, in fact incitement to

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Speaker 1: a crime. Please um on behalf of Jamie, not for

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Speaker 1: the Mark Zuckerberg stuff. To defend your avenge my date

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Speaker 1: from two thousands from two wow, two thousand seven, I

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Speaker 1: forget you're younger than me. Um, so yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: those are that's that is a short list of some

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Speaker 1: of the wars that occurred in that two hundred year

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Speaker 1: period that Mark describes as world peace. Um, those were

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Speaker 1: not the only violent conflicts during that period. And outside

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Speaker 1: of those wars, that were a funkload of battles and

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Speaker 1: campaigns that Roman soldiers fought and died in during this period,

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Speaker 1: because there were just a lot of times we're like Romans,

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Speaker 1: there would be like a battle that was this conflict.

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Speaker 1: And you know, anyway, my favorite of these conflicts, and

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Speaker 1: I think one that we need to talk about before

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Speaker 1: we get back into the story of Mark Zuckerberg, because

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Speaker 1: I think this is relevant. My favorite of these battles

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Speaker 1: that happened during Augustus is two hundred years of Peace

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Speaker 1: is the Battle of Tudeberg Forest. Um, have you ever

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Speaker 1: heard of the Battle of Tudeberg Forest? No good name

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Speaker 1: though yeah, you you might also call it why you

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Speaker 1: should never funk with the Germans um. And this happened

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Speaker 1: kind of later on in Augustus reign when he was

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Speaker 1: an older man, And the basic story is that the

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Speaker 1: general named Virus leads three entire Roman Legions, which the

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Speaker 1: whole nations have been were destroyed by forces of that side.

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Speaker 1: Three Roman Legions is a is a It's about eighteen

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Speaker 1: thousand men and a massively competent armed force, like the

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Speaker 1: Roman Legion is the deadliest weapon in the world of

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Speaker 1: this period of time. So this guy Virus in order

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Speaker 1: to kind of push the Roman borders eastward and basically

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Speaker 1: is a way to like they've been having issues with

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Speaker 1: these Germanic tribes, Like Virus is going in there with

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Speaker 1: this massive army to just like function up and show

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Speaker 1: the Germans who is boss um. But they wind up

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Speaker 1: in the middle of these deep, dark German forests and

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Speaker 1: they're led into an ambush by a German soldier guy

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Speaker 1: named Armenius, who actually had gained Roman citizenship but was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: working for the other team. And it's this horrible one

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Speaker 1: of the one of like the five or six great

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Speaker 1: military disasters in all of human history. The entire Roman

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Speaker 1: army is massacred, leaving behind a pile of bones that

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Speaker 1: are still being discovered to this day. Um. It was

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Speaker 1: one of the great defeats in Rome's long history, and

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Speaker 1: it basically stopped Rome's expansion to the east. Um, Like

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Speaker 1: this is this is a an incredibly like it's it's

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Speaker 1: just a nightmarish military defeat, and it's an incredibly significant battle.

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Speaker 1: And it came after decades of what had been continuous

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Speaker 1: expansion for Augustus. Right, he'd gotten used to everything working

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Speaker 1: for him militarily, and then there's just this complete calamitous defeat. Um.

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Speaker 1: And the loss of so many of Rome's best soldiers

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Speaker 1: in a single battle is said by historians to have

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Speaker 1: kind of broken the emperor's mind. Um. One of his

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Speaker 1: own like private paid historians wrote that for weeks afterwards,

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Speaker 1: he would just wander around his palace in a day's

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Speaker 1: slamming his head into doors and screaming, varus, give me

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Speaker 1: back my legions. Okay, I will say that this is

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Speaker 1: very similar to what I've been doing with Forky for

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Speaker 1: the past. Yeah. Yeah, you can really empathize with Augustus here. Yeah, Okay, now,

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Speaker 1: I'm starting to see see his side of things in

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Speaker 1: a way. Haven't we all gotten eighteen thousand Italians killed

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Speaker 1: in the woods of Germany? Thousand Italians living in my mind? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're all Italians anyway. So yeah, So this, this is

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Speaker 1: this is a battle that's important I think to understand,

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Speaker 1: in part because it occurs during the two years of Peace,

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Speaker 1: and in part because Um Augustus is a figure that

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Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg and what happened

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Speaker 1: to him in this defeat the Hubrists that led him.

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Speaker 1: There is something that I think will happen to Mark eventually.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what Marks teudeberg Wold will be. Um.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it was Cambridge Analytica, but I think

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Speaker 1: it is coming. Um. Yeah. And I'm sure Mark knows

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Speaker 1: that story. He has to. It's one of the most

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Speaker 1: famous stories in all of Roman history. He's a nerd

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Speaker 1: about this stuff. He absolutely knows about that battle. I've

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Speaker 1: never seen him talk about it though, Um, but he

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Speaker 1: talks about Augustus a lot. Um. He did note that

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Speaker 1: during that New Yorker article that he and his fiance

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Speaker 1: now wife Priscilla spent their honeymoon in Rome quote. My

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Speaker 1: wife was making fun of me, saying she thought there

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Speaker 1: were three people on the honeymoon, me her and Augustus.

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Speaker 1: All of the photos were different sculptures of Augustus. They

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Speaker 1: go on vacation to Rome for their honeymoon, and he

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Speaker 1: just keeps taking pictures of sculptures of this dead asshole

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Speaker 1: um because he thinks that he's he's the new emperor

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Speaker 1: of the world, just like just Priscilla having her bad

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Speaker 1: decisions shoved in her face over and over, averaging the past.

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Speaker 1: She's a billionaire now, so she I mean, she's also

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Speaker 1: the worst. You know. I don't have any sympathy for her, really, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I do believe. I do believe, like a lot

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Speaker 1: of you know, you always have to kind of second

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Speaker 1: guests things that Mark says in interviews because he's a

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Speaker 1: liar um and because he's trying to get out a

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Speaker 1: propaganda narrative, much like Augustus was by hiring all of

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Speaker 1: those those UH poets to write his story. Um. But

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Speaker 1: I think Mark's being honest when he talks about his

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Speaker 1: fascination with Augustus UM, because number one, have you seen

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Speaker 1: the picture of him getting that fun He keeps getting

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Speaker 1: the haircut. He keeps getting the fucking haircut that like

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Speaker 1: Augustus has, like the Roman emperor haircut. That why he

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Speaker 1: has that shitty haircut. Yes, it is. He makes his

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Speaker 1: wife give it to him. I'm going to send you

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Speaker 1: it's it's the worst thing that's ever happened. And there's

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Speaker 1: a photo as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, he

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Speaker 1: had his wife started giving him the fucking weird Roman

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Speaker 1: haircut that he gets, the weird Augustus type haircut, the

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Speaker 1: Octavian or whatever. I'm sending you a picture right now.

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Speaker 1: We'll have it up on the site. And it's just

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Speaker 1: his eyes or he has the dead it's like that.

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Speaker 1: It's like that scene in Jaws, like dead eyes, like

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Speaker 1: a doll's eyes, not a little like Chuck has a

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Speaker 1: more emotive character than him. It's that is so, but

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Speaker 1: it is. It's horrible funny. He does not have the

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Speaker 1: hairline for that haircut. No one, no one has, like

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Speaker 1: it was a bad haircut for the emperors to have.

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Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen this question kind of asked about

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Speaker 1: a few times. I saw it, most recently asked by

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Speaker 1: Julia Claire. But like, why are all billionaires, Like why

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Speaker 1: can't they afford to like look okay? Like why can't

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Speaker 1: they not ani look okay? Because I don't think any

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Speaker 1: of them. There's a couple of them that I think generally,

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Speaker 1: like like Richard Branson and Mark Cuban all are able

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Speaker 1: to like dress like human beings. Um. But then you

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Speaker 1: have the guys like you have like Elon Musk, Bill Gates,

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Speaker 1: Mark Suckerberg, who all looked like they were like poured

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Speaker 1: into um, like a skin suit. And I don't know

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Speaker 1: what the differences um, because there there are clearly some

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Speaker 1: of these guys who are able to at least like

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Speaker 1: imitate being like a person. Um. Mark Cuban does a

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Speaker 1: decent impression of a human being, but he knows how

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Speaker 1: people are supposed to dress. He is a basic concept

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Speaker 1: of like human beings do this. He says words in

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Speaker 1: an order. Yeah, in a way, we all pretending to

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Speaker 1: be John Cena. Yeah, yeah, I would. I would like

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Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg a lot better if he were pretending to

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Speaker 1: be John Cena. But he's pretending to be an emperor

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Speaker 1: with a shitty haircut. I mean that does answer questions

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Speaker 1: that I had. That is helpful information. Yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: know what's going on, but yeah, so he's He's just

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Speaker 1: also the name their second daughter, August. So like whatever, Mark,

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Speaker 1: this is marked weird things. I think he's being honest

403
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Speaker 1: about it. Um. Yeah, and it it's it makes sense

404
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:43,720
Speaker 1: for him to this to have been like a childhood

405
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 1: fascination of him, because one of the things you find

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Speaker 1: when you look into people who knew Mark is that

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Speaker 1: kind of since he was a kid, he has always

408
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Speaker 1: seen himself as rising to greatness. Um, which is this

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Speaker 1: kind of narcissism that I think is born from growing

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Speaker 1: up in a growing up male white, an upper middle

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Speaker 1: class in a place where mostly affluent people live, and

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Speaker 1: then going to a school where they tell you you're gifted. Um,

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Speaker 1: Like a lot of kids wind up with the same

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Speaker 1: sort of delusions of grandeur. Reality has indulged Marks for

415
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,160
Speaker 1: so for some time. But like one of his childhood

416
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Speaker 1: friends told that interview with the New Yorker quote, I

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Speaker 1: think Mark has always seen himself as a man of history,

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Speaker 1: someone who is destined to be great. And I mean

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Speaker 1: that in the broadest sense of the term, which is

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Speaker 1: a terrible thing to be because when you're that kind

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Speaker 1: of person, you will do almost anything to try to

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Speaker 1: make the reality outside your head correspond with the expectations

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Speaker 1: within it. Um, and Mark has done that. So speaking

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Speaker 1: of history, Jamie, since we just talked about some of that,

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Speaker 1: Mark or Facebook at least, has made a bit of

426
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:55,719
Speaker 1: history since we last discussed Mark in his creation. Uh,

427
00:23:55,760 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 1: there's been new milestones for for membership and for page

428
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 1: engagement that have been hit, which I'm sure you're very

429
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,399
Speaker 1: excited about, especially with this big election coming up. I

430
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: cannot wait all sorts of good stuff. UM. But I

431
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 1: see some really productive, useful conversation going on as well.

432
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,800
Speaker 1: It seems like things are very healthy. And speaking of healthy,

433
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I want to talk to

434
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:18,879
Speaker 1: the history that Facebook has been responsible for that I

435
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: want to talk about right now is um is what

436
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: it's brought to Ethiopia. UM. Have you heard anything about

437
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: Facebook's recent performance in Ethiopia and what's happened there. I've

438
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:31,920
Speaker 1: heard a little bit. I've heard a little bit. I've heard,

439
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: I mean Facebook, um in in in any way I

440
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:38,560
Speaker 1: learned most about, which I think we talked about last

441
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: time was Facebook and Meanmar. But the Ethiopics stuff I've

442
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: got to catch up. Yeah, I don't want to like

443
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: spoil it right away because it's a fun story. But

444
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: it rhymes with schmith nick cleansing. Um, oh that was

445
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: what they were doing over in That's yeah. Yeah, it

446
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 1: keeps happening to countries you have Facebook and interesting yeah

447
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:00,680
Speaker 1: so uh. Facebook has been pop layer and a number

448
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: of African nations for for quite a while now, and

449
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: in many of these countries, like Ethiopia, the Internet is

450
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: basically a synonym for Facebook to millions of people because

451
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: it's just like the way they interface with the Internet,

452
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 1: like Facebook and the Internet are the same thing. They

453
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: don't use a browser, they see everything through Facebook. Um.

454
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: And despite the popularity of Facebook in Ethiopia the country

455
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,360
Speaker 1: and in Africa in general, because it's it's become increasingly

456
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: popular across the entire continent. But despite its popularity, Facebook

457
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: only opened its first content moderation center on the continent

458
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, which is a problem because Africa

459
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 1: is enormous, like it fits a couple in North America's

460
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 1: in there. You probably should have had a content center

461
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: somewhere on the fucking continent, like you should have one

462
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 1: in every country you're doing business in. But they only

463
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 1: added one to just just one on the fucking continent

464
00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:55,239
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, which is I'm not frising from

465
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 1: that comp but like that's just yeah. Now, they promised

466
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:01,360
Speaker 1: to hire a hun drew people to work there through

467
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,400
Speaker 1: third party companies. Um, and we don't know if they've

468
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: actually done that. Number one, it's sketchy that it continues

469
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: to be through third party companies, which is what Facebook

470
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: does so that they can interesting that they're just continuing

471
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:15,119
Speaker 1: this whole third party company thing. Doesn't seem like it's

472
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,399
Speaker 1: gone very well for them in the past. Yeah. That way,

473
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: if an employee makes a decision that gets people killed,

474
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: it's not a Facebook employee that made a decision that

475
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:24,240
Speaker 1: gets got people killed, and so they don't have to

476
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:27,119
Speaker 1: care about it, um, which is very ethical. And then

477
00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: they can release a really cute statement that they're like,

478
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: we had no idea and we're really random. Person made

479
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 1: a mistake. How could we have? Yeah, human error? Yeah? Um.

480
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,959
Speaker 1: You know what doesn't make errors jamie products or services

481
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: products services. Uh. And you know our longtime sponsor, Raytheon.

482
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: You might have heard some news lately Jamie about has

483
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:56,119
Speaker 1: had a lot of employees go uh okay, you know.

484
00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:00,119
Speaker 1: So if you're antipathy towards the Raytheon Corporation is all

485
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: noted um. But I want to ask you to imagine

486
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 1: a world without Ray Theon. Imagine a world where children

487
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,160
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan are able to go to bed at night

488
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:14,640
Speaker 1: and not live in terror that clear skies will bring

489
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,959
Speaker 1: the attack of a predator drone that could wipe out

490
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 1: the entire family. Imagine school buses in Yemen not being

491
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:27,199
Speaker 1: blown up by missiles fired by people in control stations

492
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:30,719
Speaker 1: somewhere in a desert in Nevada using Raytheon's wonderful technology.

493
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 1: Imagine missiles that aren't full of knives. You know, I

494
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 1: don't want to live in that world, which is why

495
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,400
Speaker 1: I choose to buy Ray Theon and why I think

496
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: you should choose listeners to buy Raytheon. Sorry, I didn't

497
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: hear anything. I was thinking about Nacho cheese Derito's. You know,

498
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 1: if ray Theon made derritos, they would kill a lot

499
00:27:53,680 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: of school children in Yemen. Anyway, here's products. Oh we're back.

500
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. I don't know about the rest of you,

501
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: but those products and services. Really I just took a

502
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: hit of Raytheon. Yeah, I've been huffing Raytheon so hard

503
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: that I I keep my right on a little rag

504
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: and I just put it in a rag like the

505
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,879
Speaker 1: paint that I also once I'm out of paint and glue,

506
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 1: Raytheon and huffing paint allies in. That sounds like a

507
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:38,600
Speaker 1: reality abas, that sounds like a really rich person's name. Paint. Yeah,

508
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 1: that's how the rich people huff. So yeah. Facebook sets

509
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: up this data center. It's first and only one in Africa.

510
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: They promised to hire a hundred people, and we don't

511
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: know if they even hired a hundred people to work.

512
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: Is there any confirmation that no, no, because they don't

513
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: have to be open about any of this. We also

514
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: don't know which regions of the country any of those

515
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: folks have specialized in, which languages they might have spoken. Again,

516
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: Africa is the size of several North America's. There's an

517
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: enormous variety of nations and cultures and conflicts like like like,

518
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: I would say anything less than a couple of thousand

519
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: people focusing on content in that continent would seem just

520
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: just so irresponsible as to be purely ornamental. Um and

521
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: like thousands, like a couple of thousand people probably honestly

522
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: isn't enough because of how many millions of Like, yeah,

523
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 1: it's too big a responsibility for a few hundred employees

524
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: to even that's absurd. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just unbelievably

525
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: shoddy worksmanship they had. And yeah, so again and because

526
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: there's Facebook doesn't have to be open um about anything,

527
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 1: we don't even know like which areas of the country

528
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:59,120
Speaker 1: were represented by the content moderation team. Uh VICE reports

529
00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: though that Facebook community standards, like the list of their

530
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: standards has not been translated into either of Ethiopia's two

531
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: main languages, which suggests they don't have anybody in the

532
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: continent who can functionally monitor what's happening in Ethiopia. The

533
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 1: company has no full time employees in the country. Now

534
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: this is a problem UM because Ethiopia, like many countries,

535
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: has a number of bad actors in its national political

536
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: scene and a lot of ethnic conflicts that have been

537
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: exacerbated by Facebook. UM. One of the bad actors in

538
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:36,479
Speaker 1: Ethiopia is a guy named Jawar Mohammed, who is an

539
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: Ethno nationalist and Aromo Ethno nationalist from the Aroma region

540
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: of the country. The Aroma are like like one of

541
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: the people's in in the region or in the country

542
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: that that we call Ethiopia. Um and, and Jamar has

543
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: started like a private TV network based on his success

544
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: and Facebook. He's got like one point seven or five

545
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: million followers on the site. Um so he's extremely popular.

546
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 1: Um He's a big content creator who basically got famous

547
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: as a result of his ability to use and manipulate Facebook.

548
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: Um And one of his big things is regularly urging

549
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: people to do horrible violence to folks who are not

550
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 1: a Romo in Ethiopia on our popular approach. Yeah, it

551
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,719
Speaker 1: keeps happening all over the world, and Facebook keeps failing

552
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 1: it handling it. On October nineteen, he took to Facebook

553
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: and fired off a series of posts claiming he was

554
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: about to be arrested by the police for some of

555
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: his political statements. This appears to have been a lie,

556
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: but it brought huge crowds of his supporters out into

557
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: the street, like massive numbers of people, and they start.

558
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: The horrible violence starts right the cops come out, and

559
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: the police wind up killing more than a dozen people,

560
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: and your supporters wind up committing a bunch of race

561
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: based sectary in murders and something like seventy folks die

562
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 1: by the time this is all over. Um, so yeah

563
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: he yeah, so this guy like like incites a series

564
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: of pace riots that kill like nearly seventy people, which

565
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: is a problem, you might say. Yeah, single Facebook post.

566
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: Yeah that isn't. Yeah, so Facebook at this point, if

567
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: not before, because they hadn't even thought about it for

568
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: a single second, Like Mark Zuckerberg had never, for a

569
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: moment in his life considered Ethiopia prior to this, the

570
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: fifteen years of this company's existence. Yeah, get good. Well

571
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: you it's not a major company. It's one of the places.

572
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like all of the world outside of

573
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire that he assumes was also at peace,

574
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 1: because he's sure as hell, I'm not going to give

575
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: a funk about their history. Yeah, asked Mark Zuckerberg for

576
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: how how long Ethiopia has been at peace? Yeah, I will,

577
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: I will let I will let fucking China know that. Um,

578
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: they were completely at peace and had no wars for

579
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: the two years after Octavian came to power. They will

580
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: be happy to have this information. Yeah, they'll be able

581
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: to edit their history books. Yeah, so Facebook, you know,

582
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: after this race riot that kills almost seventy people, knew

583
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: they had a proble bloom in Ethiopia. Yeah, and in

584
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 1: true Facebook fashion, they took no action. Um. As a

585
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: result deaths, um, they shifted no meaningful resources into the

586
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: country as ethnic and political strife there continued to heighten, uh,

587
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: fanned by the flames of viral Facebook memes. Now, I'm

588
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: not going to pretend I have much expertise over what's

589
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: happening in Ethiopia, because, like Facebook's executives, I know very

590
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: little about the country, which is perhaps why I have

591
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: not launched a massively influential media product that completely restructures

592
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: the way a great deal of the nation's communications occur,

593
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: because that would be irresponsible, Jamie, that would bears. But

594
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: you would maybe want to hire let's say more than

595
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 1: a hundred people too. I would want to hire a

596
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: lot of people if I were attempting to change the

597
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 1: entire way this country I don't understand communicates. Um, Yeah,

598
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: that would be the responsible thing to do. But yeah,

599
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: so as I do understand the conflict, A lot of

600
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: the ethnic tensions in the country have kind of broken

601
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: down around the president who was in a Romo and

602
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: a large number of people, many of whom voted for him,

603
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: who are a Romo, and who hate the fact that

604
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: he has not been a giant piece of ship to

605
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:16,800
Speaker 1: members of other ethnic groups, Like he hasn't been racist

606
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 1: enough for a lot of people, and they're very angry

607
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,800
Speaker 1: about it. Um. And these folks have gotten very like

608
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: used the vast hate machine that is Facebook to assault

609
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: the people that they deem a fault for their country's problems.

610
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: And one of these people, one of the people they

611
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 1: assaulted was a backer of the president named Hachallo Jundessa,

612
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: who was an Aromo singer who supported and raising up

613
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 1: marginalized voices within the Aromo ethnic group. Um. So he

614
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: seems like he was a pretty decent dude, um, Hachallo Jundessa.

615
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 1: So obviously, this massive internet hate mob that has formed

616
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia turns its sights to this guy because he's

617
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 1: a supporter of the president. Earlier this year, they decided

618
00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:59,879
Speaker 1: he was like at the center of some weird conspiracy.

619
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: Think of it as like what happened to Tom Hanks

620
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 1: with Q and on right, Like, this famous person becomes

621
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 1: the center of an online conspiracy and hundreds of Facebook

622
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:11,120
Speaker 1: pages start filling up with misinformation about this guy. Um

623
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote next from a write up and

624
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: vice about what happened next quote. Hondessa was assassinated on

625
00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 1: June twenty nine while driving through the capital Atisa Baba.

626
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: The man police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors that

627
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,919
Speaker 1: he was working as an assassin for the Aroma Liberation Front,

628
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 1: an armed nationalist group linked to numerous violent attacks, and

629
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: who told the shooter that a Romeo would benefit from

630
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: the death of one of its most famous singers who

631
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: Hondessa's death at age thirty four set off a wave

632
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 1: of violence in the capital and his home region of

633
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: a Roma. Hundreds of people were killed, with minorities like

634
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: Christian m Harres, Christian Aromos and garage people suffering the

635
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:50,880
Speaker 1: biggest losses. The bloodshed was supercharged by the almost instant

636
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,720
Speaker 1: and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence

637
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger. Mobs destroyed and

638
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: burned property, They lynched, beheaded and dismembered their victims. Jesus Christ,

639
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 1: So yeah, who could have predicted this after the last

640
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: race riot that killed huge numbers of people, Not I

641
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,800
Speaker 1: Robert and not Mark Zuckerberg. It is I mean, it

642
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: is truly shocking that this this is I mean, I

643
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: guess not shocking isn't even the word. But this is

644
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: all happening within about what eighteen months of the like

645
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 1: a very similar horrific ethnic cleansing being pushed less than

646
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: that October of June. Oh well there you go. Not

647
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: very very short span of time. This is occurring in

648
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: um and again Facebook does basically nothing. Now, finally, after

649
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: these race riots that kill hundreds, Um, they they do

650
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: take some action. Um yeah, they sent a couple of

651
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: executives to Ethiopia on a fact finding mission and they yeah, yeah,

652
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 1: they went looking for some facts, looking for some facts,

653
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: magnifying glass. Yeah. And the company issued a statement that

654
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: it is quote aware of the complexities both within and

655
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: outside the country. These Facebook apologies for cleaning it's just

656
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 1: yeah complexities. Yeah, yeah, what we did we could be

657
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:18,400
Speaker 1: described as complex. Yeah. Facebook says that is deeply concerned

658
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: about the issues flagged by human rights groups. Meanwhile, human

659
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,920
Speaker 1: rights groups in Ethiopia are less than positive about what

660
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: the social network has actually done so far. According to Vice, quote,

661
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: activists say Facebook is instead relying on them in a

662
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: network of grassroots volunteers to flag content and keep the

663
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:37,399
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty billion dollar company up to speed

664
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: about what's happening on the ground. They ask you to

665
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 1: jump on a call so that you can give them

666
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: more context. But fuck no, I said, I'm never going

667
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 1: to do that again. One Ethiopian activist who has been

668
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: repeatedly asked to speak to Facebook employees told Vice News.

669
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: The activists, yeah, like they're they're basically like, hey, we're

670
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:57,359
Speaker 1: almost worth a trillion dollars. But can you people who

671
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,320
Speaker 1: are under the gun and it individually in day injured

672
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 1: by our service provide us with free labor to understand

673
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: how we're endangering you. That would be great right there,

674
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: Like we forgot to put any protections in, but so

675
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: could you actually do this on the back end because

676
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: we're getting some rough pr right now? Are you being

677
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 1: shot at right now? Yeah? Anyway, we're not going to

678
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: pay you. There's that we don't. We just don't have

679
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:25,800
Speaker 1: the money. It's been a rough year for us. A

680
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:29,800
Speaker 1: trillion dollar country. Mark Zuckerberg, who bought forty five million

681
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: dollars of houses that surrounded his house so he could

682
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:35,720
Speaker 1: live in property can't afford to pay more fact checking teams.

683
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: We're so sorry. Um, yeah, so this is horrific. You

684
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: think Facebook might have learned something after the last ethnic

685
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 1: cleansing their product helped to enable, which, if you'll remember

686
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,439
Speaker 1: from our last episode, was in Myanmar. Yeah, yes, yeah there,

687
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I didn't know about the extent of what

688
00:38:55,280 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 1: was going on in Ethiopius. Pretty bad, pretty bad bad um.

689
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: And of course they helped fuel a genocide and the

690
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: master resettlement of nearly a million people in me and

691
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: Marthoro like a Muslim people. It's shocking how beat for

692
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: beat similar a lot of the exact same like steps

693
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: and failures, and what's happening in Ethiopia sounds exactly like

694
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: what's happening in India, where Facebook bullshit like nonsense on

695
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: Facebook lies spreading virally have been responsible for massive like

696
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 1: mobs doing racial violence that's caused hundreds of deaths. It

697
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: keeps happening. And the complete oversight of not even having

698
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:41,760
Speaker 1: the terms and conditions in every language where the service

699
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: has provided. It's just like, I don't know, why would

700
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: you why would you think for even a second about

701
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: a country that you're introducing a product into that will

702
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: have a massive impact on the society. Like, why would

703
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: you for even a second consider that and take any

704
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:01,840
Speaker 1: actions to respond posibly do that? Why why would you

705
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,839
Speaker 1: the country that exists just a second, Mark Zuckerberg's frame

706
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: of reference. It's part of the two hundred years of

707
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:14,399
Speaker 1: PC's bringing us. Yes, yes, um so yeah, we're talking

708
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: about me an marm because we have to actually go

709
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: back to me and Marcus. Some new stuff to happen there.

710
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 1: So remember Facebook again fuel the genocide there? Uh and

711
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: and in fact, a UN report on the genocide and

712
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: me and mar said that Facebook's failure to deal with

713
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 1: the spread of misinformation turned it into a beast complicit

714
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:34,720
Speaker 1: and mass human slaughter. The UN called Facebook a beast

715
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 1: for its what it contributed to in Myanmar, which is

716
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 1: at least I I like it when the UN doesn't

717
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: pull their punches because they often do. That's that's a

718
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 1: fair appreciate the directness. Yeah, um so the hubbub around

719
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: all this forced Mark to actually sit down and in

720
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: an interview with Ezra Kline and engage directly with some

721
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: of the criticism for the genocide that his company enabled.

722
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 1: He admitted, well, he admitted that his network had been

723
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: used to incite real world harm. Um. He did, he did,

724
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: he did, He did admit that, and he also stated, quote,

725
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: this is certainly something that we're paying a lot of

726
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: attention to. It's a real issue, and we want to

727
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: It's a real issue, Jamie. The genocide is a real issue,

728
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 1: and we want to make sure that all of the

729
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech

730
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:26,959
Speaker 1: and citing violence and basically protecting the integrity of civil

731
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 1: discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar as well

732
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: as places like the US that do get a disproportionate

733
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:35,919
Speaker 1: amount of attention, Jamie. Let's think back to that guy

734
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 1: on his porch firing blindly into the neighborhood around you. Say,

735
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: he hits your child in the throat and she bleeds

736
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: out slowly over the course of about you know, let's

737
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:48,280
Speaker 1: say five and a half minutes um as you desperately

738
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: try to stop the bleeding, but the ambulance doesn't arrive

739
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 1: in time, and you you approach this man who's continuing

740
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: to fire blindly into the neighborhood and say, you just

741
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:58,760
Speaker 1: murdered my child, and he says, you know, I'm paying

742
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to what happened to your kid.

743
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: It's a real issue. Serious, Yeah, and I'm going to

744
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: bring tools to bear on eliminating, you know, some of

745
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: the problems that might have caused the death once we

746
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 1: figure out what they are. So that's what Mark said.

747
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: But Mark, you know, to his credit, after using all

748
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 1: those weasel words, did did agree that Facebook had been

749
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: used to incite harm in me and Mark just the

750
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: absolute smug assholary of like addressing a genocide, you are

751
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: beyond it an issue it in so seeing there's a

752
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: lot of negativity surrounding this that you're just like, shut

753
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,240
Speaker 1: the funk up. Oh my god. Yeah, it's like somebody

754
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: going to the Germans in like n and being like,

755
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like this Auschwitz thing is is

756
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: getting real ugly and we're like, yeah, we agree, it's

757
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: an issue. It's definitely an issue. It's an issue. So

758
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 1: my blood pressure. Yeah, but Mark did, he did admit

759
00:42:57,600 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 1: that that there was a problem with his service, So

760
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: there was an issue. I wonder what will happen if

761
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: we check back in on the story of Myanmar and Facebook.

762
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 1: I bet Facebook has turned a new leaf in this. Oh, Jamie,

763
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 1: it turns out there's a Time magazine article on the

764
00:43:13,440 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: matter from August of this year. You know what the

765
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: title is, hit It Facebook wanted to be a force

766
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,240
Speaker 1: for good in Myanmar. Now, what is rejecting a request

767
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:32,879
Speaker 1: to help with the genocide investigation? No, I mean yes, totally. Yeah.

768
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,439
Speaker 1: So the issue seems to be that the Gambia, which

769
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 1: I didn't realize I think is the proper way you're

770
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: supposed to say it is the Gambia, not Gambia. So

771
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: it's kind of the opposite of Ukraine. It seems like that.

772
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gathering from this article. So the Gambia,

773
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,839
Speaker 1: which is a West African nation, is attempting to hold

774
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: me Amar accountable for its ethnic cleansing, and they filed

775
00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 1: an application in a US federal court seeking information from

776
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: Facebook that would help them build their case for the

777
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: International Court of Justice. So they want to take um,

778
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: they want to take leaders in Myanmar to the International

779
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: Court of Justice and hold them accountable, and they're they're

780
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: looking for info from Facebook to help them build their

781
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: case that basically military and governmental leaders in Myanmar were

782
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: manipulating Facebook in inauthentic ways in order to drive violence

783
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: deliberately uh so quote. Specifically, the Gambia is seeking documents

784
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: and communications from Myanmar military officials, as well as information

785
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:30,920
Speaker 1: from hundreds of other pages and accounts that Facebook took

786
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: down and preserved because Facebook, to its credit, when they

787
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 1: took down a lot of these things associated with pages

788
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: that were associated with the violence in Myanmar, they did

789
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: preserve those pages so that they could be potentially used

790
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: in an investigation like the Gambia is trying to do so.

791
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: The Gambia is also seeking documents related to Facebook's internal

792
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: investigations into the matter, as well as a deposition of

793
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 1: a relevant Facebook executive. All of this information could help

794
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: to prove Meanmar's genocidal intent. Back in May, the Gambia

795
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: filed a similar application in US court against Twitter uh

796
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 1: and the case was pulled immediately because Twitter pretty much

797
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 1: instantly agreed to cooperate. Um. Which is you know that's

798
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,840
Speaker 1: so embarrassing too that if Twitter is like, no, we

799
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,919
Speaker 1: would love to do the right thing. Uh. Jack Jack

800
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: Dorsey is somebody I have intense antipathy for, and he

801
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: is also objectively the most responsible social media ahead. When

802
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: when Jack has that's such a bleak sentence when jack

803
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,319
Speaker 1: Ersey has the moral high ground on you. You're Mick

804
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:36,239
Speaker 1: fucked Like, that's just like he is. He is the

805
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,920
Speaker 1: only person who is in that position, a similar position

806
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 1: of power to Mike Mark Zuckerberg, who isn't just like

807
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:49,720
Speaker 1: like drunkenly driving towards the apocalypse like Jack Dorsey clearly

808
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 1: is capable of feeling guilt and thinks genocide is bad.

809
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:57,800
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say about Jack Dorsey. But that's what

810
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: that he is capable of of of caring to some extent,

811
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 1: which is why his company cooperated immediately in an investigation

812
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 1: about a genocide. Well, and if you're listening to this

813
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 1: episode in the future and you're like, how could that

814
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,359
Speaker 1: be true, just just check the date and maybe he's

815
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 1: done something horrible and yeah, he may have finally computed

816
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 1: his robot suit and be carrying out genocide against all

817
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: of Portugal or something. I don't know what Jack Dorsey's

818
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: secret desires are, um, but you know, but yeah, I

819
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: do know what you do know, Robert, I don't know

820
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: where I'm what I do know? Yeah, what do you know? Yeah?

821
00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:36,879
Speaker 1: I know a lot of things that I think would

822
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 1: be fun to do in Minecraft. But I guess we

823
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: shouldn't ye product, We're back. We're earlier this month, UM,

824
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 1: Facebook UH filed its opposition to the Gambias application that

825
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: they received basic information about, you know, to help them

826
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: prosecute a genocide. Facebook complained that their requests were extraordinarily

827
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: broad and unduly intrusive or burdensome, and they called upon

828
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 1: the U S District Court in the in d C

829
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: to reject the application. UH largely because the Gambia failed

830
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: to quote identify accounts with sufficient specificity. Now this is

831
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 1: interesting because the Gambia was incredibly specific, and in fact,

832
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 1: they named seventeen officials to military units and several dozen

833
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:33,759
Speaker 1: very specific pages and accounts that they wanted the information for.

834
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: They really could not have been more specific about what

835
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 1: they wanted. Um yeah. Facebook also takes issue with the

836
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,279
Speaker 1: fact that the Gambia is seeking information that dates back

837
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 1: to two thousand twelve, UM, saying that, like, that's not

838
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: really relevant, and the Gambia is pointing out that, like, well,

839
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:53,320
Speaker 1: but the desire of groups of people to commit genocide

840
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: doesn't just happen overnight. It builds over time, and Facebook

841
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: is where it built over time. And this is something

842
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: we have to document both for our court case against

843
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 1: the people who committed that genocide and for history's sake.

844
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,360
Speaker 1: And Facebook is saying that like, well, no acknowledging that

845
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 1: acknowledging that basically means acknowledging we're currently contributing to what

846
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,359
Speaker 1: will become genocide in the very near future, and that's

847
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: gonna be bad for us. So like the fucking hubris

848
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 1: of Facebook attempting to call the shots of like, well,

849
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: that's not relevant. It's like, well, you your whole thing is,

850
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:30,080
Speaker 1: You've clearly demonstrated you have no idea what's going on

851
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: or what the context of this conflict is. But sure, yeah,

852
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: by all means, by all means. So if you actually

853
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: try to take stock of the scale of the problem

854
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:45,000
Speaker 1: of political manipulation on Facebook, you quickly find yourself spiraling

855
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: into just overwhelmed horror um. Because it's not just like

856
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: the cases that we've kind of talked about so far

857
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: where hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people have been murdered.

858
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: Those are the most spectacular cases, and they're the easiest

859
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: to be like, here is the harm. This number of

860
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: people were killed in race riots that started on Facebook. Um,

861
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:11,360
Speaker 1: But it is contributing to the death of democracies worldwide

862
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:14,359
Speaker 1: on a scale that staggering when you when you start

863
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 1: to lay it out. In a year by jan and Honduras,

864
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:20,040
Speaker 1: corrupt heads of government and political parties have been caught

865
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:25,320
Speaker 1: operating networks of fake accounts to manipulate public opinion. In India, Ukraine,

866
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: Bolivia and Ecuador, there have been coordinated campaigns caught operating

867
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,320
Speaker 1: in violation of the social networks rules to influence elections.

868
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we know about all this is

869
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: a former Facebook data scientist named Sophie Zang. Sophie wrote

870
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:43,480
Speaker 1: a sixty six hundred word memo to her former co

871
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:46,360
Speaker 1: workers after she was let go for desperately blowing the

872
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 1: wisht whistle on Facebook's ethically criminal behavior, and plus Feed

873
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: obtained a copy of that memo and they published a

874
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:55,800
Speaker 1: really good article on it just days before I started

875
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:58,399
Speaker 1: work on this article. It's actually what kind of made

876
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 1: me feel like a new episode on Mark was necessary.

877
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from that article now. This is

878
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: Sophie writing. In the three years I've spent at Facebook,

879
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 1: I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to

880
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 1: abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own

881
00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:17,239
Speaker 1: citizenry and caused international news on multiple occasions, wrote Zaying.

882
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 1: Her LinkedIn profile said she worked as the data scientists

883
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: for the Facebook site Integrity Fake Engagement team. Um so

884
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: that was her job. Now. BuzzFeed didn't publish her letter

885
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 1: directly because it contained a lot of personal info, but

886
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:34,399
Speaker 1: they included a a bullet point list summarizing her allegations.

887
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:36,879
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read that now because again it's

888
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 1: so it's a nightmare quote. It took Facebook's leaders nine

889
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 1: months to act on a coordinated campaign that used thousands

890
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 1: of inauthentic assets to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of

891
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: Honduras on a massive scale to mislead the Honduran people.

892
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:54,799
Speaker 1: Two weeks after Facebook took action against the perpetrators in July,

893
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: they returned, leading to a game of whack a mole

894
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,160
Speaker 1: between Zaying and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which

895
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,760
Speaker 1: are still active. In a Jeer bay Jan Zang discovered

896
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: the ruling political party utilized thousands of inauthentic assets to

897
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: harass the opposition and moss. Facebook began looking into the

898
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 1: issue a year after Zang reported the investigation is still ongoing,

899
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: saying in her colleagues removed ten point five million fake

900
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 1: reactions and fans from high profile politicians in Brazil and

901
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,759
Speaker 1: in the US in the two thousand eighteen elections. In

902
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:28,360
Speaker 1: February two thousand nineteen, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that

903
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:31,920
Speaker 1: quote he'd obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high profile

904
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 1: US political figure that we didn't catch. Zang removed the activity,

905
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:41,800
Speaker 1: dousing the immediate fire. She wrote, Zang discovered inauthentic activity,

906
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,840
Speaker 1: a Facebook term for engagement from bod accounts and coordinated

907
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: manual accounts in Bolivia and Ecuador, but chose not to

908
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 1: prioritize it due to her workload. The amount of power

909
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: she had as a mid level employee to make decisions

910
00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: about a country's political outcomes took a toll on her health,

911
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: so she consciously realized she was ignoring actions that were

912
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:09,240
Speaker 1: shattering the democracies of whole nations because she had bigger

913
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: fish to fry, and that was the decisions she got

914
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: to make without asking anybody as a midlevel employee at Facebook,

915
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,840
Speaker 1: because they cared so little about what was happening in

916
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: these countries, right, I mean, even the fact that that

917
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 1: would be delegated to one year is absurd. It's unspeakable. Yea.

918
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:33,839
Speaker 1: After becoming aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish Health

919
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,239
Speaker 1: Ministry's Facebook page during the current COVID nineteen pandemic, Zeyg

920
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: helped find and remove six hundred and seventy two thousand

921
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 1: fake accounts acting on similar targets globally, including in the US.

922
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 1: In India, she worked to remove a politically sophisticated network

923
00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: of more than a thousand actors working to influence the

924
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 1: local elections taking place in Delhi in February. Facebook never

925
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: publicly disclosed this network or that it had been taken down.

926
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:01,320
Speaker 1: So I want you to remember he yeah, what are you?

927
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 1: Are you just trying to cope with all that right now?

928
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:07,600
Speaker 1: I'm looking through this story as well, and yeah, four

929
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:11,400
Speaker 1: days ago. It's it's unbelievable. I mean, just this should

930
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 1: be the number one story in the world, and Mark

931
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg should be in custody as a result of it.

932
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:21,120
Speaker 1: I have no fucking clue this just happened there. I mean,

933
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: just this is and I am not first off, I

934
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,399
Speaker 1: understand that Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. I am not exaggerating

935
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: when I say most of the Nazis, individual Nazis tried

936
00:53:32,760 --> 00:53:38,320
Speaker 1: in Nuremberg. We're not personally guilty of crimes on this scale. Absolutely,

937
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 1: I mean. And and the fact that I just I'm

938
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: wrapping my head around the fact that if you know,

939
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: while she was employed there, if this, if this employee

940
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:54,240
Speaker 1: got a cold, if this employee like caught a bug, Yeah, people,

941
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:56,440
Speaker 1: there would be a body count attached to it like

942
00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:01,160
Speaker 1: that is just fucking unconscionable. And put that on I

943
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's it's unbelievable. Remember is he a free man?

944
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:13,360
Speaker 1: Right now? We're just getting started, Jamie. I want you

945
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 1: to remember Zang was just one employee whose time was

946
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: severely limited. This is just a selection of the things

947
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: she uncovered. Um and these a mid level employee. Now,

948
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:31,360
Speaker 1: the scale at which Facebook is being used by a

949
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: variety of actors to manipulate and hack global politics is

950
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 1: truly unprecedented. The social network feels so little responsibility to

951
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: deal with this that Zang was essentially alone in her work,

952
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: and her findings were never publicized unless doing so brought

953
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: some material benefit to Facebook. While attempting to lay out

954
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:53,279
Speaker 1: the scale of the problem. Zang noted, quote, there was

955
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: so much violating behavior worldwide that it was left to

956
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:59,560
Speaker 1: my personal assessment of which cases to further investigate, to

957
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: file tasks, and to escalate for prioritization afterwards. Now, despite

958
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:08,240
Speaker 1: the fact that Zang found evidence of vast influence networks

959
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:11,640
Speaker 1: actively subverting dozens of democratic elections, the higher ups and

960
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: Facebook showed basically no interest in this, and she was

961
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,239
Speaker 1: again left alone to make decisions that would influence the

962
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:21,280
Speaker 1: lives and futures of tens of millions of people. Zang wrote, quote,

963
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 1: with no oversight whatsoever. I was left in a situation

964
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: where I was trusted with immense influence. In my spare time,

965
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:32,399
Speaker 1: a manager on Strategic Response mused to myself that most

966
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 1: of the world outside the West was effectively the wild West,

967
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: with myself as the part time dictator. He meant the

968
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:43,320
Speaker 1: statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures

969
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: on me. Well, it's and and how many people were

970
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:49,960
Speaker 1: working in this capacity and other regions. I guess, yeah, yeah, Well,

971
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:52,120
Speaker 1: I mean that. The fact is, I don't think very many.

972
00:55:52,239 --> 00:55:54,880
Speaker 1: She was basically the only person dealing with the world

973
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: outside of the West on this at this level of

974
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: responsibility because they care so little about having anyone monitor it,

975
00:56:03,080 --> 00:56:05,800
Speaker 1: And like the fact that one of her managers just

976
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: kind of blithely walked by and said like casually, oh,

977
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 1: you're kind of like the dictator of the entire world

978
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:15,760
Speaker 1: outside of the West right now, neat and then walks

979
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:20,759
Speaker 1: off like that's the problem. Do you want to go

980
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 1: to an oxygen bar later? Like this is just on.

981
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: It's struggling to rout my head around and the the

982
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:33,359
Speaker 1: outrageous I am without you know, I can't go into

983
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 1: too much detail at this, but I've known a lot

984
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:38,879
Speaker 1: of Facebook employees and I've worked with a number of them.

985
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,719
Speaker 1: I've I've been to Facebook facilities. I've spent a lot

986
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: more time around the people who work at Facebook than

987
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:46,120
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and they're very They tend to

988
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,759
Speaker 1: be very nice people. I like almost everyone I've met

989
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:53,400
Speaker 1: who is a Facebook employee, very intelligent, motivated, um people

990
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:55,360
Speaker 1: who care a lot about what they do in the

991
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: ethics of it. The problem is the people at the

992
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: top UM who refuse to allow this to be hard

993
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 1: to who have the resources to do what they are

994
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:11,200
Speaker 1: doing with at least a modicum of responsibility and refuse

995
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:15,000
Speaker 1: to do it and actively stymy their employees, who again

996
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:19,520
Speaker 1: are mostly decent people from acting responsibly. Well sure, I

997
00:57:19,600 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: mean decent people enact the agendas of indecent people all

998
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: the time. Like there's I just I mean it speaks

999
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: to We talked about this the entire last I recovered

1000
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:34,479
Speaker 1: fucking guy too. But just like the fact that something

1001
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 1: so gigantic can exist with such little oversight period, it's

1002
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 1: just like what body count? Does that start to matter

1003
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: to anybody? Yeah? Now, the reason Mark Zuckerberg and his

1004
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: executives felt safe ignoring many of these individual cases of

1005
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:55,160
Speaker 1: abuse is that they tend to occur in foreign countries

1006
00:57:55,200 --> 00:57:58,240
Speaker 1: that Americans didn't care about. And again, all Mark Zuckerberg

1007
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:00,040
Speaker 1: gives a shit about as the West and I in

1008
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: China to We'll give him credit for that. He cares it,

1009
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:05,280
Speaker 1: clearly cares about what happens in China. He does speak

1010
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,360
Speaker 1: great Chinese like, so the Western China and everything outside

1011
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: of it might as well be a fucking dial tone

1012
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, we've got about three people on the

1013
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 1: rest of the pet I'm gonna quote from Buzzfeeds right

1014
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: up of Zang's letter again quote it is an open

1015
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:22,080
Speaker 1: secret within the civic integrity space, which is where she

1016
00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:25,720
Speaker 1: worked in that Facebook short term decisions are largely motivated

1017
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:29,080
Speaker 1: by pr and the potential for negative decision. She wrote,

1018
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: noting that she was told directly at a summit that

1019
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,680
Speaker 1: anything published in the New York Times or the Washington

1020
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:40,040
Speaker 1: Post would obtain elevated priority. It's why I've seen priorities

1021
00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:42,840
Speaker 1: of escalation shoot up when others start threatening to go

1022
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,160
Speaker 1: to the press, and why I was informed by a

1023
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,600
Speaker 1: leader in my organization that my civic work was not impactful,

1024
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 1: under the rationale that if the problems were meaningful, they

1025
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: would have attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced

1026
00:58:55,840 --> 00:59:00,080
Speaker 1: the company to devote more attention to the space. So

1027
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 1: when less white journalists write about something Facebook's done that

1028
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: got people killed, it doesn't matter. Don't care. Yeah, I

1029
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: mean it's I mean, we did, we did, We did

1030
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: know that. But I mean, just on on this. But

1031
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:19,280
Speaker 1: she was told that by someone who was her boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1032
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: that is just I it's a lot of pressure on

1033
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: the Post in the New York Times too, Okay, So

1034
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:31,440
Speaker 1: I guess I I hope I speak for everyone when

1035
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: I say I care about this, Yeah it's important. Yeah,

1036
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:39,960
Speaker 1: I give a shit about Ethiopia. Please stop enabling race riots.

1037
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:44,680
Speaker 1: Mark um So. In February of two nineteen, a NATO

1038
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:47,800
Speaker 1: strategic communications researcher, like I said, reached out and like

1039
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: warned the company that he that was the thing about,

1040
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: like he'd seen evidence of inauthentic Russian activity backing like

1041
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:58,680
Speaker 1: a high profile US figure and yeah, the researcher warned

1042
00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:00,760
Speaker 1: them that he would be briefing Congress with his findings

1043
01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:03,560
Speaker 1: the next day. And this the company cared about, so

1044
01:00:03,680 --> 01:00:05,960
Speaker 1: Zaying was sent in to minimize the fallout. She was

1045
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: able to investigate the case, figure out what was going on,

1046
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: and remove the activity immediately, so that by the time

1047
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 1: this guy went up in front of Congress, they had

1048
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:16,880
Speaker 1: taken care of the issue. Um And shortly thereafter, the

1049
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 1: same researcher tried another experiment um where he like made

1050
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:23,960
Speaker 1: a report to them but didn't include a threat, and

1051
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: nothing happened for six months. Um So eventually he sent

1052
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:29,640
Speaker 1: a report to the press and it finally caused a

1053
01:00:29,720 --> 01:00:32,040
Speaker 1: pr fire. But he just like like just kind of

1054
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:34,240
Speaker 1: approved that, like, yeah, they don't care unless there's a

1055
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: chance that they will get publicly yelled at the actual

1056
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:40,480
Speaker 1: harm means nothing to them any and even so when

1057
01:00:40,560 --> 01:00:44,480
Speaker 1: someone publicly yells at them, you'd get that fucking speech again.

1058
01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: Of like to realize that there is a problem. There

1059
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 1: is a problem. So Zang came to feel that the

1060
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 1: main focus of her job, rather than actually combating this

1061
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:55,720
Speaker 1: behavior in reducing harm, was to help the company deal

1062
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 1: with what she called large scale problems. And this doesn't

1063
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: mean a more serious problem. It means a problem that

1064
01:01:02,240 --> 01:01:04,600
Speaker 1: affects enough people that they have to care about it.

1065
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: So we're actually not talking about genocides here. We're talking

1066
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 1: about spam networks. Because spam networks impact a lot of people,

1067
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:14,680
Speaker 1: and so they're a larger priority than disinformation going viral

1068
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 1: and leading to race riots. Uh, spam is a big problem,

1069
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:21,760
Speaker 1: so it outweighs tiny problems like say election fraud by

1070
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: the president of Honduras. Zaying came to feel the main

1071
01:01:25,280 --> 01:01:28,360
Speaker 1: focus of her job, rather than combatting this behavior reducing harm,

1072
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,360
Speaker 1: was to help the company deal with these problems. Um

1073
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: and yeah, this meant that spam networks were a bigger

1074
01:01:33,920 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 1: issue than than things that cause death. Uh. Yeah, it's

1075
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: it's so let's let's talk. Let's zoom in on Honduras,

1076
01:01:44,840 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: on the thing that is less of a problem than

1077
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:49,960
Speaker 1: spam networks. So they don't say this lately. This is

1078
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:53,480
Speaker 1: the most upset I've ever been during this show. It's horrible.

1079
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: So saying finds evidence that the president of Honduras and

1080
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: his party are using multiple fake accounts to boost engagement

1081
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:04,200
Speaker 1: and spread content that is benefiting them in the lead

1082
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 1: up to a presidential election. Um and Zane was able

1083
01:02:07,600 --> 01:02:10,200
Speaker 1: to make a connection to the Honduran leader because an

1084
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:13,960
Speaker 1: administrator for the president's Facebook page had been was caught.

1085
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: She caught him basically running hundreds of fake assets, not

1086
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,640
Speaker 1: even trying to hide it. Uh. And she reported all

1087
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:22,880
Speaker 1: of these thousands of fake accounts and a clear attempt

1088
01:02:22,920 --> 01:02:25,840
Speaker 1: to manipulate a national election to Facebook's threat intelligence and

1089
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:28,960
Speaker 1: policy review teams, both of which took months to give

1090
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:33,320
Speaker 1: any sort of response. Um and yeah it So it

1091
01:02:33,360 --> 01:02:35,960
Speaker 1: took almost a year to take down this operation, which

1092
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: Facebook announced in July of two thousand nineteen. Um and

1093
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 1: taking it down didn't actually do anything because the operation

1094
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 1: got set back up again, which Facebook never disclosed, and

1095
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: they didn't take it down again. So it took about

1096
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:53,560
Speaker 1: two weeks. Yeah, and it's still going on right now. Uh.

1097
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:56,360
Speaker 1: And this president who created this massive you know, or

1098
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: who had this massive fraudulent network set up to help

1099
01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:05,880
Speaker 1: him regain election one reelection under circumstances, international monitors and

1100
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:11,040
Speaker 1: basically everyone describes as fraudulent. Um. Facebook felt comfortable letting

1101
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:13,160
Speaker 1: the slide after their first sweet because in the grand

1102
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:16,479
Speaker 1: scheme of things, Honduras is a small country. As Zang wrote,

1103
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: the civic aspect was discounted because of its small volume.

1104
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:24,000
Speaker 1: It's disproportionate impact ignored the civic aspect, of course, being

1105
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 1: that a president with dictatorial ambitions uh, fraudulently won an

1106
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 1: election um in part due to what he was able

1107
01:03:33,800 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 1: to do on Facebook. So yeah, that it's it's frustrating

1108
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 1: that the civic aspect is like the term Facebook uses

1109
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:49,120
Speaker 1: for entire nations democracies, which are less of a priority

1110
01:03:49,160 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: to them than like a spam network. And this is

1111
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 1: something Zang came to understand. She she got a pretty

1112
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:57,400
Speaker 1: good eye for how Mark and her other bosses thought

1113
01:03:57,600 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 1: during her time doing this job and how long would

1114
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:05,000
Speaker 1: she in this position? Sorry years? Yeah, so face she

1115
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:07,959
Speaker 1: figured out over time kind of how to manipulate Mark

1116
01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 1: and other executives in the company in order to get

1117
01:04:11,320 --> 01:04:16,440
Speaker 1: them to act on certain things they would otherwise ignore Facebook. Yeah,

1118
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:20,680
Speaker 1: I mean mainly making them think that there might be

1119
01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:24,920
Speaker 1: some sort of like outcry against them. Facebook uses an

1120
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:28,880
Speaker 1: internal company messaging app for employee communications, and since reporting

1121
01:04:28,920 --> 01:04:32,479
Speaker 1: her concerns about potential genocides didn't seem to matter, Zang

1122
01:04:32,520 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 1: started skipping the steps to officially report problems and just

1123
01:04:35,800 --> 01:04:39,920
Speaker 1: posting openly to her coworkers about specific things she was finding,

1124
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:42,800
Speaker 1: because if she could get her colleagues outraged and talking,

1125
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:46,080
Speaker 1: she could force management to care. Quote in the office,

1126
01:04:46,160 --> 01:04:49,000
Speaker 1: I realized that my viewpoints weren't respected unless I acted

1127
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:52,240
Speaker 1: like an arrogant asshole. So Zaying asked Facebook to do

1128
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 1: more in terms of finding and stopping malicious activity related

1129
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 1: to elections and political activity um and She says that

1130
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:01,880
Speaker 1: she was turned down because human resources are limited. She

1131
01:05:02,040 --> 01:05:04,440
Speaker 1: was then ordered to stop focusing on civic work. I

1132
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,200
Speaker 1: was told that Facebook would no longer have further need

1133
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: for my services if I refused. Okay, okay, so stop

1134
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: talking about the genocide or fire you or you don't

1135
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:19,280
Speaker 1: have health insurance? Got it? Another terrifying case she ran

1136
01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: into was a year by Jan Now in that country,

1137
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:25,120
Speaker 1: Zang discovered another vast network of an authentic accounts being

1138
01:05:25,200 --> 01:05:27,960
Speaker 1: used by the president and his party to spread propaganda

1139
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:31,520
Speaker 1: and influence an election. The whole operation is very similar

1140
01:05:31,520 --> 01:05:34,000
Speaker 1: to the one run by Russia's Internet Research agency. It

1141
01:05:34,080 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: involved quote dedicated employees who worked nine to six Monthey

1142
01:05:37,080 --> 01:05:39,880
Speaker 1: through Friday work to create millions of comments targeting members

1143
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:43,120
Speaker 1: of the opposition and reporters critical to the president. Uh

1144
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:45,760
Speaker 1: Facebook never publicized what Zang found there, nor did they

1145
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:48,440
Speaker 1: take any action against it. Zang wrote that they didn't

1146
01:05:48,520 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 1: care enough to stop it because it's like it's sucking

1147
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 1: a jerby Jan. Do you even know where jearby Jan is? No?

1148
01:05:52,920 --> 01:05:59,480
Speaker 1: Fuck them, fuck their democracy. Buzz yeah, two hundred years apiece,

1149
01:05:59,480 --> 01:06:02,640
Speaker 1: that's what we're um. BuzzFeed actually reached out to some

1150
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:06,080
Speaker 1: journalists in a Jerbaijan about their experiences with this network

1151
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:09,200
Speaker 1: and about Facebook, and those journalists pointed out that, in

1152
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:13,640
Speaker 1: addition to not stopping this inauthentic activity network, uh Facebook

1153
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: sometimes removed the pages of Humans Rights Act human rights

1154
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 1: activists due to reports from trolls and ignored journalists begging

1155
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:22,480
Speaker 1: them that, like, this is a real person doing important work,

1156
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:26,080
Speaker 1: please restore their account, because like, why would they care now?

1157
01:06:26,600 --> 01:06:29,040
Speaker 1: None of this is unique to jer Baijan, and in fact,

1158
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: all of it happens to some extent in the United States.

1159
01:06:31,520 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 1: To Facebook just feels more pressure to act here. Um

1160
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:38,040
Speaker 1: the difference with the United States, yes again that they

1161
01:06:38,120 --> 01:06:41,600
Speaker 1: have to pretend that they care here now. As soon

1162
01:06:41,640 --> 01:06:43,600
Speaker 1: as they operated somewhere off the beaten path. From an

1163
01:06:43,600 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 1: American's perspective, anything goes. In Bolivia, for example, Zang found

1164
01:06:48,200 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: inauthentic activity supporting an opposite the opposition presidential candidate in

1165
01:06:52,200 --> 01:06:55,360
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. She chose not to focus on it

1166
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:57,720
Speaker 1: because she just had so many other genocides to deal with,

1167
01:06:58,120 --> 01:07:00,280
Speaker 1: and a month later, a coup racked the nation, leading

1168
01:07:00,320 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 1: to widespread protests and dozens of deaths um great She

1169
01:07:05,920 --> 01:07:08,440
Speaker 1: made the same call in Ecuador after a two thousand

1170
01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 1: and seventeen election that many claim was fraudulent. Prior to

1171
01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:14,400
Speaker 1: the vote, Zang found massive and authentic activity supporting the

1172
01:07:14,520 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: ruling party, who later won the election under suspicious circumstances.

1173
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: There were horrifying consequences to this. Three years later, the

1174
01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 1: coronavirus hit and this fraudulent government was in charge. They

1175
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: did not do a good job of being in charge.

1176
01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:29,840
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from a New York Times

1177
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:33,720
Speaker 1: article on are on Ecuador's response to the coronavirus. Quote

1178
01:07:34,280 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 1: with bodies abandoned on sidewalk, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into

1179
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:40,720
Speaker 1: cardboard coffins, and stacked by the hundreds and morgues. It

1180
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:43,680
Speaker 1: is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus,

1181
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 1: but the epidemic is even worse than many people in

1182
01:07:46,160 --> 01:07:48,960
Speaker 1: the country recognize. The death toll in Ecuador during the

1183
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:51,720
Speaker 1: outbreak was fifteen times higher than the official number of

1184
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:54,520
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen deaths reported by the government, according to an

1185
01:07:54,520 --> 01:07:57,320
Speaker 1: analysis of mortality data by The New York Times. The

1186
01:07:57,440 --> 01:08:00,200
Speaker 1: numbers suggests that the South American country is suffering one

1187
01:08:00,240 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: of the worst outbreaks in the world, thanks in large

1188
01:08:03,800 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 1: part to the incompetent government that was fraudulently elected, thanks

1189
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 1: in a significant part to the Facebook campaign, the illegal

1190
01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:15,680
Speaker 1: and fraudulent Facebook campaign. It ran that Facebook and didn't

1191
01:08:15,720 --> 01:08:18,519
Speaker 1: have time to care about where One midlevel employee was

1192
01:08:18,640 --> 01:08:22,800
Speaker 1: threatened with having a livelihood removed if she didn't shut

1193
01:08:22,880 --> 01:08:26,280
Speaker 1: the hell up about it. I am certain Mark Zuckerberg

1194
01:08:26,400 --> 01:08:29,320
Speaker 1: lost no sleepover Ecuador, O Bolivia, or any of these

1195
01:08:29,400 --> 01:08:33,639
Speaker 1: other places. But Sophie Zang definitely did and probably will

1196
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:35,680
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. As she wrote in

1197
01:08:35,760 --> 01:08:39,120
Speaker 1: that letter, I have made countless decisions in this vein,

1198
01:08:39,280 --> 01:08:43,280
Speaker 1: from Iraq to Indonesia, from Italy to El Salvador. Individually,

1199
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:45,760
Speaker 1: the impact was likely small in each case, but the

1200
01:08:45,840 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: world is a vast place. Although I made the best

1201
01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:51,320
Speaker 1: decision I could based on the knowledge available at the time,

1202
01:08:51,680 --> 01:08:54,040
Speaker 1: Ultimately I was the one who made the decision not

1203
01:08:54,160 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 1: to push more or prioritize further in each case. And

1204
01:08:57,400 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: I know that I have blood on my hands by now.

1205
01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 1: That's I mean, she's not wrong, but that's just yah

1206
01:09:07,320 --> 01:09:12,360
Speaker 1: she's doing. Before she was fired, Facebook offered Sophie's sixty

1207
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:15,360
Speaker 1: four dollars in severance if she would agree to sign

1208
01:09:15,439 --> 01:09:18,479
Speaker 1: a non disparagement clause, which would state that she basically

1209
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:20,880
Speaker 1: couldn't talk at all about her work, which is just

1210
01:09:21,920 --> 01:09:25,360
Speaker 1: putting a price on the lives of people, like it's

1211
01:09:25,520 --> 01:09:29,519
Speaker 1: just yeah, and not a high one. She turned down

1212
01:09:29,560 --> 01:09:34,880
Speaker 1: the money, so that should be able to sleep at

1213
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:39,760
Speaker 1: night in the future. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, I

1214
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:43,519
Speaker 1: mean getting into the ethics of that is just a

1215
01:09:43,640 --> 01:09:51,559
Speaker 1: fucking she. I mean she definitely should not be sleeping well.

1216
01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:55,479
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, if she was not

1217
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:58,200
Speaker 1: the one point the lovers on some on something like that,

1218
01:09:58,400 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: they would have found someone to do it, and probably

1219
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,200
Speaker 1: someone worse at it who cared less. Like I don't.

1220
01:10:05,120 --> 01:10:08,680
Speaker 1: I actually don't attribute much moral blame to her, other

1221
01:10:08,760 --> 01:10:11,360
Speaker 1: than maybe not blowing the whistle earlier, just because like,

1222
01:10:11,400 --> 01:10:13,800
Speaker 1: when you're in that position, there's a strong case to

1223
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:15,920
Speaker 1: be made that like I if I, if I'm here,

1224
01:10:16,040 --> 01:10:19,080
Speaker 1: I can at least do something, and if I leave

1225
01:10:19,280 --> 01:10:23,759
Speaker 1: even less will be done. Um, which seems verifiably true.

1226
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:31,959
Speaker 1: And yes, yeah, yeah, anyway, Jamie, that's part one. Awesome.

1227
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:38,240
Speaker 1: What could I'm like, well, could well? Could? I don't Well,

1228
01:10:38,479 --> 01:10:46,160
Speaker 1: I guess I'll find out. Yeah, this has been truly horrible. Yep,

1229
01:10:46,479 --> 01:10:49,120
Speaker 1: do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah? What

1230
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:51,120
Speaker 1: do you want to What do you want to sell today? Jamie?

1231
01:10:51,479 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 1: Absolutely fucking not. Well. Okay, uh wait does this come

1232
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:56,840
Speaker 1: out next week? When does this come out? Yeah? This

1233
01:10:56,920 --> 01:11:01,000
Speaker 1: is next week. We have no backlog anymore. I decided

1234
01:11:01,040 --> 01:11:06,000
Speaker 1: to spend sixty or seventy nights out rioting just okay, well,

1235
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:08,479
Speaker 1: you know, things come up, things come up. To put

1236
01:11:08,520 --> 01:11:11,360
Speaker 1: it like Mark Zuckerberg would things come up. There was

1237
01:11:11,400 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 1: an issue, There was an issue, and we're actually keeping

1238
01:11:14,520 --> 01:11:16,840
Speaker 1: a really close eye on it. That's you right now

1239
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:19,680
Speaker 1: that I uh, yeah, you can. You can follow me

1240
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:22,519
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram if you want. Um. The Bechtel Cast,

1241
01:11:22,640 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: my podcast, is doing a fundraiser for a candidate named

1242
01:11:28,240 --> 01:11:32,519
Speaker 1: Fatima like Ball zubertful, she's the best. She's running in

1243
01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:35,640
Speaker 1: District sixty four, California. So we're doing a fundraiser for her.

1244
01:11:35,760 --> 01:11:39,839
Speaker 1: We're reading the entire script of Twilight uh this Friday,

1245
01:11:40,040 --> 01:11:45,360
Speaker 1: So if you donate to her play. I purchased all

1246
01:11:45,439 --> 01:11:51,599
Speaker 1: of my Edward Cullen cosplay Extremely Tall and incredibly toxic.

1247
01:11:51,840 --> 01:11:54,400
Speaker 1: These are traits that we share and so I am

1248
01:11:54,560 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 1: playing Edward Cullen. Um, so yeah, I would just say

1249
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:04,200
Speaker 1: go to that, donate to Fatima's campaign, and funk quarky

1250
01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:09,720
Speaker 1: baby yeah right. Aimed on that note, I don't know

1251
01:12:09,800 --> 01:12:15,080
Speaker 1: who four B is, but episodes gone