Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wika EPI Daily with
Speaker 1: me your Girl Danielle Moody recording not so live but
Speaker 1: from the Brooklyn Bunker. Folks, let me tell you something
Speaker 1: that this Facebook story has really been getting to me,
Speaker 1: getting to me in ways that I didn't anticipate being
Speaker 1: this kind of angry. But the reality is this right
Speaker 1: once again thanks to someone's better angels, thanks to Francis Hagen,
Speaker 1: the thirty seventy year old former Facebook product manager. Francis Hagen,
Speaker 1: because of her integrity, because of her morality, because of
Speaker 1: her desire to see our democracy as well as other
Speaker 1: democracies around the world continue to flourish, she did an
Speaker 1: amazing thing. She came in as a caped crusader and
Speaker 1: divulged documents that we had all had a hunch about. Right.
Speaker 1: We all pretty much kind of knew right that Facebook
Speaker 1: and social media have been in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: really bad for our society. It started out as a
Speaker 1: way to connect people. The whole idea of social media
Speaker 1: was to have people be more social, to connect to
Speaker 1: folks that you no longer live by or go to
Speaker 1: school with, or family members that live in different countries
Speaker 1: or across you know, around the world in different spaces.
Speaker 1: It was an opportunity for us to kind of take
Speaker 1: you know, the the tangible photo album, right that we
Speaker 1: all used to put together or you know, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: naming my age, but the tangible photo album and be
Speaker 1: able to share that in real time with people that
Speaker 1: you care about. Well, that was the intent, right, But
Speaker 1: what do they say about intentions? The road to hell
Speaker 1: was paved with them. And that is exactly where we
Speaker 1: are in our current makeup of the Facebook world that
Speaker 1: we are living in. Is that what began as the
Speaker 1: intention of Mark Zuckerberg and others to be able to
Speaker 1: connect to other folks on their campus has now morphed
Speaker 1: into the ability for the Proud Boys and you know,
Speaker 1: the Boogoloo Boys and different hate groups to be able
Speaker 1: to unite. It has turned into a tool for bullies
Speaker 1: to be able to harass and taunt people. Right. And
Speaker 1: what we are learning about, particularly what Francis Hoggan has
Speaker 1: laid out for us, is the toxic effect that again
Speaker 1: we knew right before Facebook, before Instagram, what did we have.
Speaker 1: We had actual magazines and what were we taught about
Speaker 1: those magazines that the images that were being projected back
Speaker 1: two young girls, right, was distorting their images of themselves.
Speaker 1: We knew this, We've known this for decades. So of course,
Speaker 1: when you are able now to just continually scroll and
Speaker 1: see images of these perfected, quote unquote bodies, right, these edited, photoshopped,
Speaker 1: enhanced bodies, then of course you're going to look at
Speaker 1: yourself in the mirror and say, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: not worthy, right, Or you're going to post a picture
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't get as many likes as your friend, right,
Speaker 1: And so what does that do well? According to CNN Business,
Speaker 1: who picked up some of the key moments of francis
Speaker 1: testimony in front of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee, here are
Speaker 1: some of the things that she said. I am here
Speaker 1: today because I believe that Facebook's products harm children, stoke division,
Speaker 1: and weaken our democracy. These were a part of her
Speaker 1: opening remarks. The company's leadership knows how to make Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram safer, but won't make the necessary changes because
Speaker 1: they have put their astronomical profits before people. Congressional action
Speaker 1: is needed. They won't solve this crisis without your help.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing is that this is a crisis
Speaker 1: of their own making, but much in the same way
Speaker 1: that they have been able to take action to remove
Speaker 1: child pornography and child pornography groups and images from Facebook.
Speaker 1: Tell me why they weren't able to the same thing
Speaker 1: with white supremacy right, tell me why they weren't able
Speaker 1: to do the same thing with misinformation about voting and
Speaker 1: misinformation about COVID. Well, what the whistleblower air is out
Speaker 1: for the rest of us is that hate and fear
Speaker 1: are what get people to stay on the platform. That
Speaker 1: even though these girls seventeen percent of girls are developing
Speaker 1: eating disorders and thirteen point five percent have horrible images
Speaker 1: of themselves, even though these stats based on Facebook's own
Speaker 1: internal research, is there that what they have also learned
Speaker 1: is that though the platform is proving to be toxic
Speaker 1: and making people feel bad about themselves, guess what, they
Speaker 1: can't stop. It's like a drug and they just keep
Speaker 1: scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. So when Miss Hagan says
Speaker 1: they won't solve this crisis without your help, no, it's
Speaker 1: not about their help. It's about their fucking mandate. It's
Speaker 1: about they won't solve this problem because they have no
Speaker 1: incentive to do so. Right, the incentive here is to
Speaker 1: make billions and billions upon billions of dollars, more money
Speaker 1: than you'll ever be able to spend in a fucking lifetime.
Speaker 1: Right earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg, according to many reports,
Speaker 1: with the five hour outage across multiple platforms that are
Speaker 1: owned by Facebook, lost between six and seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: himself six and seven billion dollars he lost. Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: I just like, take that fucking in for a minute,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg lost in the five hours that these platforms
Speaker 1: were down, more than some country's GDP. But we don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about the wealth tax. We don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about how big is too fucking big? Right.
Speaker 1: We got into a financial crisis in the early aughts
Speaker 1: because we said, oh, the banks are too big to fail,
Speaker 1: we can't let them shut down. What about the people?
Speaker 1: But we did nothing to restore the wealth that was
Speaker 1: lost to the millions of people that lost homes because
Speaker 1: of the predatory lending practices, and nobody went to jail.
Speaker 1: So it is not that this behemoth of Facebook needs
Speaker 1: the help of Congress. It's that without the intervention, without
Speaker 1: the regulation, without the mandates, they're going to continue to
Speaker 1: grow out of control. Millions of people, small businesses, individuals
Speaker 1: run their lives their businesses through Facebook's ads and Instagram ads.
Speaker 1: It's the reason why Stephanie Rule on ms NBC said,
Speaker 1: you know what you have to ask yourself when you
Speaker 1: are not paying for a service, Recognize that you are
Speaker 1: the product all of your information, all of your data,
Speaker 1: your phone numbers, You're this everything that we have done.
Speaker 1: We have literally handed over our lives to Facebook, and
Speaker 1: they have optimized their algorithms in order to be able
Speaker 1: to market to us in a way that we don't
Speaker 1: even know if what we like we actually like or
Speaker 1: is it because we've seen it seventeen times? Right? Is
Speaker 1: the news that I'm getting actual news? Or have they
Speaker 1: just decided to feed me the bubble that they believe
Speaker 1: that I'm most comfortable in? And so what does that
Speaker 1: mean if I'm a person that believes that in verktimine right,
Speaker 1: or whatever the fuck that horse hormone is that everybody
Speaker 1: seems to be using in the Midwest, the circles that
Speaker 1: I run in tell me that that is the safest
Speaker 1: thing and the best thing to use. And I'm just
Speaker 1: getting projected back images from inside my own bubble, right,
Speaker 1: then what does that mean for my safety? And while
Speaker 1: being one of the questions that I asked, as we're
Speaker 1: learning more information, as more information is becoming available, and
Speaker 1: after this testimony on Capitol Hill, the question that I asked,
Speaker 1: and I will have some lawyers on in the coming
Speaker 1: weeks that will hopefully unpack this for us. But here's
Speaker 1: a thought, And once again, I'm not a lawyer, but
Speaker 1: I said this. The documents Francis Hagen released confirmed what
Speaker 1: we already knew about Facebook, including their role in spreading hate.
Speaker 1: If the papers reveal that the disillusion of the Civic
Speaker 1: Facebook group right, the one that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: monitor ring misinformation about voting on all of these things,
Speaker 1: all of these social ills, if that group was dissolved
Speaker 1: post twenty twenty election because they felt like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we did our part, we did our very minimal, low
Speaker 1: fucking lift. And they show that the Civic Facebook group
Speaker 1: right that was responsible for reporting and kind of having
Speaker 1: eyes on the situation with regard to voting and misinformation
Speaker 1: and with regard to these white supremacist groups, if they
Speaker 1: shut down and then went back to their old algorithm,
Speaker 1: allowing their platform to become a convening for the insurrection?
Speaker 1: Then are they can Facebook be held criminally liable because
Speaker 1: it was not then an accident? And that's the point.
Speaker 1: That is what is so important here about Francis's testimony
Speaker 1: is that what she has unearthed is what we all
Speaker 1: assumed but had no evidence to prove, which is that
Speaker 1: Facebook knows exactly what the fuck they are doing. They
Speaker 1: know exactly what is toxic, they know exactly what is dangerous.
Speaker 1: But they are choosing to monetize people's pain and monetize
Speaker 1: the demise of our democracy above all else because it
Speaker 1: does not, in this instance or pretty much fucking ever
Speaker 1: pay to do good. But what also gets me, folks,
Speaker 1: is that if it wasn't for this whistleblower, we would
Speaker 1: be none the wiser. And so we are basing right,
Speaker 1: We are basing the health and well being of our democracy,
Speaker 1: right of our cultural climate, on a few people that
Speaker 1: decide to do good. Well, what happens when nobody decides
Speaker 1: to do good? What happens when tribalism fully wins over?
Speaker 1: Are we just fucked then? Because we have put together
Speaker 1: no guardrails, no safety measures. We are not handing out
Speaker 1: sentencing for the insurrectionists that would make us believe that
Speaker 1: another attack isn't on the horizon because there's nothing. What
Speaker 1: they're going to say, Oh, well, maybe you know, this
Speaker 1: is worth the forty five days in jail, This is
Speaker 1: worth the slap on the wrist, if I believe, because
Speaker 1: I'm being fed this line of thinking that I'm the
Speaker 1: true patriot and everybody else's the enemy. If I believe that,
Speaker 1: and that is being reinforced through these algorithms that are
Speaker 1: coming to me, isn't someone somewhere fucking responsible for this?
Speaker 1: And I'm not taking away like this is not this
Speaker 1: is not me deciding then that, oh everyone has been
Speaker 1: duped and so to avail them of personal responsibility. No, No,
Speaker 1: But there was a network that was in place from
Speaker 1: the donors who got these buses and put people up
Speaker 1: in hotels. Right. There was the right wing media that
Speaker 1: was amping people up and telling them what to do. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a manifesto that was put out that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: decided to follow to a t in order to conduct
Speaker 1: this coup. And then he had this tool, this technology,
Speaker 1: both Twitter and Facebook to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: Eighty million fucking people. And so if Facebook knowingly decided, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're losing money because God forbid, right the
Speaker 1: billions upon billions that they make, It's just not enough.
Speaker 1: And that is the disgusting aspect of capitalism. There is
Speaker 1: never enough, right. They'll just keep consuming and doing and
Speaker 1: consuming and doing until somebody stops them. So essentially, what
Speaker 1: this whistleblower has laid out is what she believes and
Speaker 1: what she had said in her testimony. She is doing
Speaker 1: this at great personal risk because she believes quote, we
Speaker 1: still have time to act, but must act now. Well,
Speaker 1: what's terrifying to me is that I don't think that
Speaker 1: our government actually knows how to act. We can't decide
Speaker 1: what Facebook actually is, and we don't have laws that
Speaker 1: are in place or in development of how one regulates
Speaker 1: an algorithm versus an actual tangible entity. Coming up next,
Speaker 1: dear friends, is my conversation with our friend, our in
Speaker 1: house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel to unpack this very issue
Speaker 1: and whether or not the harms that have been done
Speaker 1: are just too far gone for us to be able
Speaker 1: to do anything about it. Hey, friends, as always, I
Speaker 1: am excited every single Wednesday when we get to sit
Speaker 1: down with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan
Speaker 1: Metzel to go through the latest in our global health pandemic,
Speaker 1: the latest in the multiple pandemics that we are living through. Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that we've kind of reached a
Speaker 1: place where we don't know if I like what I
Speaker 1: like or because somebody is telling me that I should
Speaker 1: like it. And I think that that is you know,
Speaker 1: that's part of the problem of being in and like
Speaker 1: I think, I forget who said it, but they said
Speaker 1: it this week. Oh it was Stephanie Rule on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: When you're on a platform that is free, right, you
Speaker 1: have to recognize that if you're not paying for something,
Speaker 1: then you are the product, right, And that is what
Speaker 1: we are learning with the revelation through you know, through
Speaker 1: Facebook and you know their outages this week across you know,
Speaker 1: multiple platforms, billions of people. But it's recognizing that, you know,
Speaker 1: am I clicking on this thing because I like it,
Speaker 1: because I want it, or because somebody has created an
Speaker 1: algorithm that is enticing me? And what does that mean?
Speaker 1: If I am an addict? Right? If I if I
Speaker 1: am somebody who you know is an addict, is a
Speaker 1: gambling addict, you know, an alcoholic or what have you
Speaker 1: like you can literally target to people, and so it's
Speaker 1: really important to begin to cross a reference and to
Speaker 1: kind of, I think, unplug and go back to what
Speaker 1: you were doing, you know, pre which was picking up
Speaker 1: a paper and decid I mean that you were going
Speaker 1: to read it going you know, reading it reading a
Speaker 1: magazine because like you've decided to pick it up. I
Speaker 1: think that you know, it is the question that we
Speaker 1: all need to be asking ourselves, like why do I
Speaker 1: feel the way that I do? Why why has my
Speaker 1: opinion been formed in a certain way? And if we're
Speaker 1: working to get people out of these bubbles, right, like
Speaker 1: these tribal bubbles that you and I have talked about
Speaker 1: so many times, you know, how do you even begin
Speaker 1: to do that? Right? How do you even be able
Speaker 1: to break in to the bubble that's been created around them?
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because it's you can just see even
Speaker 1: and as you describe it, the kind of vicious cycle here, right,
Speaker 1: which is you have a pre existing ideology, your liberal
Speaker 1: or your conservative, your libertarian, your Raylian, your whatever you are,
Speaker 1: and then and then the news is formatted to reaffirm
Speaker 1: your belief, so then you gravitate toward that news that
Speaker 1: news makes an emotional sense to you because of your
Speaker 1: existing ideology, and then when you read the article, it
Speaker 1: doesn't challenge that, it reaffirms that, you know, liberals suck
Speaker 1: or conservative suck, and then you in your mind generalize, oh,
Speaker 1: all liberals suck or all whoever suck, and then it's
Speaker 1: a feedback because then you share that article and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And so we're in this thing where, especially
Speaker 1: in a time like a pandemic, where we don't know
Speaker 1: all the answers. I mean, we thought vaccines did one thing,
Speaker 1: they do something else. Masks now cloth masks are bad whatever.
Speaker 1: Like that's the way humanity understands a pandemic is like
Speaker 1: our knowledge evolves. But when knowledge is changing important life
Speaker 1: or death information is changing, then these kind of bubbles,
Speaker 1: these ideological bubbles. It's just it's a perfect storm. Like
Speaker 1: no wonder Facebook made so much money because it's a
Speaker 1: perfect storm of hunger, attention, anxiety, all those kind of things.
Speaker 1: You know. But I want to I want to ask
Speaker 1: this though, because I you know, I don't think and
Speaker 1: again I'm existing inside of the bubble that you and
Speaker 1: I share, right as progressives, as as democrats. Right, I
Speaker 1: don't get messaging that tells me to hate conservatives. I
Speaker 1: don't get messaging that is directed towards how terrible you know,
Speaker 1: conservatives are white evangelical Christians like any I don't get
Speaker 1: messaging like that, do you? Because I think that the
Speaker 1: messaging that is to I would argue that the messaging
Speaker 1: that is targeted towards people who are Democrats, who are
Speaker 1: you know, who are more aligned with the intent around
Speaker 1: the values of our country. That like, we're not trying
Speaker 1: to hate other people, and that's not that's not our clickbait, right,
Speaker 1: but but it's actually a kind of visual sample biased
Speaker 1: kind of how this works. So even if you're not,
Speaker 1: you're not getting a message that says something horrible like
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell is holding up the infrastructure bill. Who would
Speaker 1: possibly say that, um, you know, but but but but
Speaker 1: what you get is so like I was on a
Speaker 1: plane this morning. There was one guy who was determined
Speaker 1: to be a nostril patriot. He needed his nose out,
Speaker 1: and that kept telling this dude, put your frigging nose
Speaker 1: under your mask for everybody else, and then he'd pull
Speaker 1: it back down something like that. Now there were maybe
Speaker 1: on my flight this morning. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: people want to flight two hundred people at whatever. One
Speaker 1: hundred ninety nine people had their mask on normal, and
Speaker 1: this one guy wanted us to see the inside of
Speaker 1: his nostrils. And so if the way the media algorithm
Speaker 1: works is somebody films this guy, it goes crazy and
Speaker 1: then you think all these anti mask people, they're just
Speaker 1: pulling their nose off out on the thing, but you
Speaker 1: don't see the other one hundred ninety nine people. And
Speaker 1: so the way it works is by kind of a
Speaker 1: stable giance, like you think every single person is doing this,
Speaker 1: who is part of this bigger ideology, when really the
Speaker 1: way things go viral is I mean again, think about it,
Speaker 1: seventy two million people voted for Trump. How many two
Speaker 1: thousand stormed the Capitol on January sixth, But in a way,
Speaker 1: what you think is everybody who voted for Trump must
Speaker 1: have been at the see on that day. That's the
Speaker 1: way it kind of messes with your mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also what it takes to go viral. And you know, conversely,
Speaker 1: how many people marched for justice after the murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd and how many created acts of violence like
Speaker 1: it was like point zero one percent. But in conservative
Speaker 1: media it was like every protester is smashing plates and
Speaker 1: lighting stuff on fire and stuff. So in a way
Speaker 1: it works by taking out of context and totally decontextualizing
Speaker 1: and creating this generalizing, generalizable ethos, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden when it's like, oh, every protester is smashing things,
Speaker 1: how could I possibly negotiate? We're so different from you.
Speaker 1: And so in a way it creates this thing where
Speaker 1: it's like it's like what's the literary term metonomy or
Speaker 1: synectic key or something like that, where the part comes
Speaker 1: to represent the whole. And so you think every black
Speaker 1: person must be an angry protester who's going to steal
Speaker 1: stuff from CBS and all that kind of stuff, when
Speaker 1: probably one person that maybe they were, I don't know,
Speaker 1: getting paid off to do whatever. But that's what drives clicks,
Speaker 1: is like you see the little thing and then you
Speaker 1: generalize it. And that's the danger of this stuff is,
Speaker 1: particularly because the bar is so high to go viral,
Speaker 1: Like it used to be just your dog could catch
Speaker 1: a frisbee, and now it's like you've got to do
Speaker 1: the craziest shit in the world. But then everybody thinks like, oh,
Speaker 1: every person is like that. So that's that's how that
Speaker 1: this algorithm works. Yeah, And this is what the whistleblower
Speaker 1: was articulating in the hearing, which is that the presumption
Speaker 1: that everyone had. And I say presumption that everyone had.
Speaker 1: But I really believe that our members of Congress are
Speaker 1: inept and very fucking lazy. And I will say that
Speaker 1: to say that, one, I wouldn't call my mother and
Speaker 1: ask her what is the best like social media platform
Speaker 1: to use, right, because she is out of her age depth. Right.
Speaker 1: But we then are sitting with a Congress where the
Speaker 1: average age in the Senate is seventy two years old.
Speaker 1: They understand how to regulate things that you can touch
Speaker 1: and feel, and even intellectual property to some degrees. We
Speaker 1: are talking about now regulating algorithms, right, which you need
Speaker 1: somebody to go in and explain exact to all of us, frankly,
Speaker 1: but exactly what an algorithm is. But you're more likely
Speaker 1: to be able to understand the machinations of it if
Speaker 1: you're somebody that readily uses technology and has a general awareness.
Speaker 1: And so I say the laziness part because we have known,
Speaker 1: we've been listening to Congress bitch about Facebook, and we've
Speaker 1: all been bitching about Facebook and it growing into a
Speaker 1: monopoly and gobbling up all of these companies and then
Speaker 1: it goes out and three and a half billion people
Speaker 1: across the around the world can't communicate, right, And so
Speaker 1: it's it's it's this thing where we're our laws are
Speaker 1: not keeping pace with the reality that we're living in
Speaker 1: and how fast technology is moving. And the fact is
Speaker 1: is that like, go ahead, Well, it's also that our
Speaker 1: legal system becomes a reflection of that system. Right. And
Speaker 1: in other words, like the people who do well are
Speaker 1: people like Marjorie together Green who don't do anything, but
Speaker 1: they're good at they're good at manipulating that algorithm, and
Speaker 1: the algorithm the ultimate result. It's great for business if
Speaker 1: people feel like we have so little in common that
Speaker 1: there's no way we're ever going to be able to
Speaker 1: work together, or the other side is so morally bankrupt,
Speaker 1: there's whatever. So if you feed into that, but there's
Speaker 1: a ton of money in that, right, and so polarization
Speaker 1: is great for business. And so again you just think
Speaker 1: about that happening during the pandemic. It's like the it's
Speaker 1: like it's like the perfect storm. Right, it's great for
Speaker 1: their business to be creating all this polarization, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's just really bad if you're trying to
Speaker 1: solve a common problem of humanity. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that that's the thing. Facebook isn't here to solve problems, right,
Speaker 1: They're here to monetize, right, and that and the reality
Speaker 1: is is that we know I mean, you can go
Speaker 1: back in history. What did they used to say about
Speaker 1: journalists and headlines? If it bleeds, it leads, that is
Speaker 1: the same reality that is true for this tech this
Speaker 1: major tech company, this utility that needs to be regulated
Speaker 1: that for them, they've just been able to use that exponentially.
Speaker 1: You know, with billions. We're not talking about, oh, the
Speaker 1: circulation of let's say The New York Times or even
Speaker 1: their online subscription. We're talking about everyone in the world.
Speaker 1: And so when the whistleblower is talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that this is destroying democracies not just in this country
Speaker 1: but around the world because you are so hate and
Speaker 1: you know that you're sewing hate because it's telling you
Speaker 1: that the angrier that people are, the longer that they
Speaker 1: stay on the platform. And this was alternatively true for
Speaker 1: the young girls and the research that was done about
Speaker 1: Instagram that seventeen percent of the young girls that are
Speaker 1: on Instagram or developing eating disorders. Well, and also I
Speaker 1: feel so bad, like like, I mean, so many of
Speaker 1: my students they just want information. Right, the world is changing,
Speaker 1: the economy is changing, There's all these health risks that
Speaker 1: we weren't bargaining for. So they want to know, like
Speaker 1: where can we go for information? And that's really what
Speaker 1: our class was about, and they were just saying, like
Speaker 1: where can we get like do we need to wear
Speaker 1: a mask, do we need to whatever? And the sad
Speaker 1: reality is like, I mean, Trump was right about this,
Speaker 1: and he created this world in a way that there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as a neutral fact that everybody can
Speaker 1: look at the same story. But some people are being
Speaker 1: told Iver Metton is the greatest thing since whatever the
Speaker 1: last d wormer was, and some people are are being
Speaker 1: told it's it's it's a forest, And so we're kind
Speaker 1: of getting different versions. People are just hearing different realities
Speaker 1: in a way, and so it just makes like coming
Speaker 1: together in a common good more difficult because people are
Speaker 1: I just say, I've done a lot of on the
Speaker 1: ground research I'm doing a focused group project tomorrow that's
Speaker 1: starting where I'm talking about COVID with a bunch of
Speaker 1: very conservative people. So I'm curious, you know, because the
Speaker 1: thing is, like in people's daily lives, I feel like
Speaker 1: they're a bit more malleable. But the problem is it
Speaker 1: has tons of implications, particularly during a pandemic, Like you
Speaker 1: want people to be kind of working with the same
Speaker 1: knowledge base, but that becomes impossible when people are are
Speaker 1: really are really just there's like so many different realities
Speaker 1: right now. But that is that is a product of
Speaker 1: Trump and Trumpism, which is where we decided that you
Speaker 1: can have facts and alternative facts. And while the rest
Speaker 1: of us were laughing at Kelly Ann Conway when she
Speaker 1: said that, other people were like, oh, that's right, you know,
Speaker 1: I believe something that is different. Well, this is actual science. Right.
Speaker 1: So if we're just talking, if we're looking at this
Speaker 1: Facebook issue just through the prism of the health pandemic,
Speaker 1: not our social pandemic, just the health pandemic, then we're saying, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean, where do you get information from?
Speaker 1: Don't you get it from the CDC, Don't you get
Speaker 1: it from the World Health Organization? And if you don't
Speaker 1: trust any of those entities, wouldn't you call your doctor's
Speaker 1: office if in fact you have a doctor, or go
Speaker 1: to the local pharmacy. Because I'm sure, Jonathan right, like
Speaker 1: they're not saying, well, maybe you should try and the
Speaker 1: horse hormone. They're not going to tell you that, not
Speaker 1: even at the fucking CBS. But also we live in
Speaker 1: an environment where like again I just tell my students
Speaker 1: go on Twitter and say something really nice, like I'm
Speaker 1: a Democrat but I think Republicans are really friendly or
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. You know, like you get that
Speaker 1: makes no money for Twitter. But if you go on
Speaker 1: and you like spit fire, that's that. So the algorithm
Speaker 1: monetizes conflict. And that's true for the media. I do
Speaker 1: the media, you do. Um And and now we're seeing
Speaker 1: the implications, which is sometimes and certainly of course Trump
Speaker 1: with fake news and all that we didn't we didn't
Speaker 1: even we didn't even say fake news before him. But
Speaker 1: he was stepping into like a he was stepping into
Speaker 1: a table that we set for him in a way.
Speaker 1: Um And and he just mean, I mean, he's a
Speaker 1: he's a manipulator. He's not a maker. He's a manipulator.
Speaker 1: But uh, but but I think that's the issue is
Speaker 1: like how do you step back from that in a way,
Speaker 1: you know, if if it's so clear, like your people
Speaker 1: in your you can like COVID death is not a mystery.
Speaker 1: You can see it everywhere you go right now. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: step back from that? You know, It's kind of a
Speaker 1: million dollar question. That's it for today's Woke f Daily podcast.
Speaker 1: To hear more from today's show, including my full interview
Speaker 1: with doctor Jonathan Metzel, support me on Patreon at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash Woke a power to the people and
Speaker 1: to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke
Speaker 1: as fuck.