Speaker 1: You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Hillary Clinton, and this is You and Me Both.
Speaker 1: This week, we're talking about a topic that not only
Speaker 1: has kept me up late at night, but I think
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest threats we face to our society,
Speaker 1: to our democracy, to who we are as a people.
Speaker 1: And that's the spread of disinformation. Now, the first time
Speaker 1: I became aware of this was during the election of
Speaker 1: I really did not understand it, and it was only
Speaker 1: after I saw how outright lies and conspiracy theories and crazy,
Speaker 1: unbelievable stories could take hold on the Internet, on social
Speaker 1: media platforms and change how people thought and behave. I'm
Speaker 1: talking today to two people who have seen the dangers
Speaker 1: of disinformation up close, and they are doing everything they
Speaker 1: can to stop it. I'll speak with Maria Ressa, a
Speaker 1: journalist from the Philippines and a personal hero of mine.
Speaker 1: She has risked her own safety and freedom by reporting
Speaker 1: on President du Terte's corruption and propaganda campaigns, and she's
Speaker 1: an important warning for the rest of us. The rapid
Speaker 1: fire spread of online disinformation that has happened is happening
Speaker 1: in the Philippines. You know what can happen anywhere, especially
Speaker 1: here in the US. But first I'm speaking with Tristan Harris.
Speaker 1: You may have seen Tristan in the Netflix documentary The
Speaker 1: Social Dilemma. He's been called the closest thing Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: has to a conscience, and he's the co founder of
Speaker 1: the Center for Humane Technology, which is working to help
Speaker 1: us realign technology so that it actually helps people. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Tristan because I met him shortly
Speaker 1: after the sixteen election, and he was able to describe
Speaker 1: to me what had happened during that election in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't understand before. And he has been
Speaker 1: sounding the alarm in every way that he knows about
Speaker 1: what is happening to all of us because of the
Speaker 1: way social media platforms run. I have to start by
Speaker 1: just asking you to give a little bit of background
Speaker 1: for our listeners, because although you're now one of the
Speaker 1: leading global critics of the way major tech platforms contribute
Speaker 1: to a toxic online ecosystem, you worked in the industry
Speaker 1: for years. You were really on the forefront of a
Speaker 1: lot of the technological developments that were now coping with.
Speaker 1: Could you give us a little background. Yeah, So, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to Stanford and studied computer science at the
Speaker 1: time when many of my colleagues later became the new
Speaker 1: heirs of this new tech ecosystem that we're now building.
Speaker 1: I started a technology company myself called Apture, which was
Speaker 1: later Talent acquired by Google. And I say that just
Speaker 1: to have maybe the listeners understand that I don't come
Speaker 1: to this wanting to tear down the entire project of
Speaker 1: technology or be a sort of dystopian leadite. There's very
Speaker 1: specific critiques of technology that we have to fix and
Speaker 1: that have totally warped the collective psyche of humanity. But
Speaker 1: hopefully for people to understand that, you know, I came
Speaker 1: to these conclusions that we'll get into through first saying,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we build technology that helps the world,
Speaker 1: and seeing my friends start there and then end up
Speaker 1: in this kind of perverse race for human attention. Because
Speaker 1: that's really what changed in two thousand eleven two twelve.
Speaker 1: Many of the people who were my friends in technology
Speaker 1: had gotten into it because we thought we could make
Speaker 1: the world better and build things that would improve the
Speaker 1: state of the world, and increasingly everyone was just getting
Speaker 1: trapped in this game for who what can I dangle
Speaker 1: in front of people's nervous systems to get them to
Speaker 1: come back more and more often. How can I turn
Speaker 1: things into more of a slot machine? How can I
Speaker 1: add more social validation? What if I could get people
Speaker 1: addicted to getting attention from other people. I remember when
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram added the feature that allows you to
Speaker 1: follow people so you could have followers. That was an innovation, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that suddenly I have, you know, an increasing
Speaker 1: number of people who are listening to me every day,
Speaker 1: and I want to log back in every day to
Speaker 1: see did my follower account go up? They got all
Speaker 1: of us addicted to getting attention from other people, which
Speaker 1: is really the root of many of the troubles that
Speaker 1: we see today. When you now look at where we
Speaker 1: are in technology, how do you think we got there?
Speaker 1: I think it's very much a product of decision after
Speaker 1: decision that we didn't know what road we were walking down,
Speaker 1: and discovering much later the harms and I think being
Speaker 1: wrong philosophically about the narratives we were telling ourselves. For
Speaker 1: so long, people thought technology is this this neutral tool.
Speaker 1: I mean, after all, the Facebook, it's like you choose
Speaker 1: your friends, you chose the things you clicked on, You
Speaker 1: chose the things you liked, commented and shared. So why
Speaker 1: would we call Facebook responsible for radicalizing the world or
Speaker 1: something like that? And what that, mrs. Is the asymmetry
Speaker 1: of power where they are really the ones orchestrating and
Speaker 1: pulling the puppet strings of why would certain things show
Speaker 1: up to you in the first place, why would certain
Speaker 1: groups be recommended to you? I think this came because
Speaker 1: we let these algorithms run out of control. It really
Speaker 1: was this race for attention figuring out you know, if
Speaker 1: Facebook's looking at TikTok or Instagram competing with it. If
Speaker 1: they don't do say live video or add Facebook groups
Speaker 1: or add auto play and the other guys are, they're
Speaker 1: gonna lose. And that's why we call it this race
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the brainstem, a race to the
Speaker 1: retilian brain, to the kind of automated decision making. And
Speaker 1: that's really I think what got us here, and I
Speaker 1: think what radicalized an entire population leading to things like
Speaker 1: the January six event. Right? Was it this work that
Speaker 1: led you to begin your understanding of how these applications
Speaker 1: and these uh deliberate designs to capture attention truly making
Speaker 1: it an addiction began to make you question what was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's really two ingredients to my own kind
Speaker 1: of waking up process. One was this earlier work I
Speaker 1: did as part of this class at Stanford called the
Speaker 1: Stanford Persuasive Technology Class, where the co founders of Instagram
Speaker 1: and again many of the other alumni in the tech
Speaker 1: industry learned from a certain body of work about how
Speaker 1: do you make technology more persuasive, how do you pull
Speaker 1: on these invisible lovers in the human mind, much like
Speaker 1: a magician. You know, in the film The Social Alenement
Speaker 1: we talk about my magic background. I was a magician
Speaker 1: as a kid, and so I got really interested in
Speaker 1: how do people's minds work. What are the predictable ways
Speaker 1: that our attention can be fooled, that we can be
Speaker 1: led to make meaning of the coin move from that
Speaker 1: hand to that hand. But maybe that's not true. We
Speaker 1: make false conclusions all the time, and I saw that
Speaker 1: was one of the ingredients and what I saw technology
Speaker 1: was doing. Then getting to Google, I first started off
Speaker 1: again as this kind of optimist, but I felt increasingly
Speaker 1: concerned about where the whole industry was heading. This kind
Speaker 1: of social media craze. Everyone was building more and more
Speaker 1: addictive app with more and more notifications buzzing your phone.
Speaker 1: And I made this presentation at Google after kind of
Speaker 1: having my own questioning process, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: just broadcasting my own questions and concerns. I wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to tear down the company or do a whistleblower type thing.
Speaker 1: I just made this presentation basically saying, never before in
Speaker 1: history have fifty designers in California, mostly white, young engineering.
Speaker 1: You know, male minds from twenty to thirty years old,
Speaker 1: shaped a billion people's daily psychology. We are holding the
Speaker 1: collective psyche of humanity in our hands and we don't
Speaker 1: even know what we're doing. And obviously, with leading to
Speaker 1: more distraction, it's weakening relationships. This is back in two thousand,
Speaker 1: two twelve. That presentation went viral when I was a
Speaker 1: product manager. Unexpectedly, I thought I might get fired for
Speaker 1: the presentation and was prepared to leave if I had to.
Speaker 1: But instead, and again to Google's credit, actually they ended
Speaker 1: up giving me a little position, a carve out position
Speaker 1: to research. But I didn't know what else to call
Speaker 1: it except design ethics. How do you ethically design the
Speaker 1: psychological experience of other people, and I really did research
Speaker 1: for several years. I tried to change things from the inside,
Speaker 1: but ultimately I had to leave because, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll get into, the business model of capturing attention is
Speaker 1: the fundamental thing that all of these companies are trapped in.
Speaker 1: Where you know, Facebook stock price, Google stock price, YouTube
Speaker 1: stock price depends on growing the amount of attention that
Speaker 1: they have every day, every year from users. In a
Speaker 1: funny way, even though people have been on these platforms
Speaker 1: now for more than a decade, I'm not sure a
Speaker 1: lot of them really understand the underlying business model, how
Speaker 1: it's financed, and how in effect they are commodities. Every
Speaker 1: single person who goes on one of those platforms is
Speaker 1: being used, and our data, our privacy, the security of
Speaker 1: our personal information, all of it is being commodified. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, in the film The Social Dilemma, we quoted
Speaker 1: the line that if you're not paying for the product,
Speaker 1: then you are the product. So you know, how much
Speaker 1: have any of us paid for our Facebook account recently? Well? Nothing?
Speaker 1: And how are they worth almost a trillion dollars of
Speaker 1: market cap because they're selling the predictability of our attention?
Speaker 1: They're selling the manipulatability of our mind their business models advertising.
Speaker 1: Now again, if people are enjoying this, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to identify where the concern is. But if we don't
Speaker 1: look way out and sort of see how is the
Speaker 1: whole system behaving it's actually polarizing us, then we're really
Speaker 1: in trouble. Because one other aspect of a business model
Speaker 1: that relies on attention is which news feed would work
Speaker 1: better at keeping your attention? One that personalizes the information
Speaker 1: to you, so every time you scroll your finger, it
Speaker 1: gives you a next post that says this is why
Speaker 1: you're right and the other side is wrong, versus a
Speaker 1: news feed that does not personalize information to you. Well,
Speaker 1: the personalized news feed is gonna work better at keeping
Speaker 1: your attention. So then you take the shared truth and
Speaker 1: it shreds it into three billion Truman shows where we're
Speaker 1: each more and more confident and certain of our view
Speaker 1: of reality. And it's done that for everyone, which is
Speaker 1: really emphasized tribalism, polarization, and broken down our capacity to
Speaker 1: talk to each other, which I think is the ultimate
Speaker 1: concern about Where this leads to is if we don't
Speaker 1: have a shared reality or the ability to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with shared understanding. We can't solve any problem with
Speaker 1: our climate change or racial injustice or COVID. Also, what
Speaker 1: we know from analyzing the top postings on Facebook and
Speaker 1: other kinds of metrics for social media is that the
Speaker 1: most sensational, the most controversial, you know, the most conspiracy
Speaker 1: minded forms of disinformation are going to capture the most attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is really an extension of problems that we've been
Speaker 1: familiar with around yellow journalism and sort of salacious you know,
Speaker 1: putting car crashes and killings on the front pages of newspapers.
Speaker 1: But this extends it because it's now automated by machines.
Speaker 1: You know. One study we have on their Ledger of
Speaker 1: Harms website, on the Humane Technology website is that there's
Speaker 1: a study about Twitter that for each word of moral
Speaker 1: outrage that you added to a tweet, it increased the
Speaker 1: retweet rate by In other words, if you use the
Speaker 1: more a negative emotional language, the more indignant resentment, the
Speaker 1: more look at these hypocritical you know that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: the more retweets you get. If you have a system
Speaker 1: that's profiting indiscriminately from whatever against the most attention, you know,
Speaker 1: using that logic, imagine you're driving down a freeway and
Speaker 1: Facebook is looking at what people look at while they're
Speaker 1: having on the freeway, and everybody looks at the car crash. Well,
Speaker 1: according to that logic of Facebook and Google, the whole
Speaker 1: world must want car crashes. So we made a philosophical
Speaker 1: mistake that what we look at is what we want
Speaker 1: or what's good for us. And really it's almost the
Speaker 1: worst of us. It's almost the the inmates are running
Speaker 1: the asylum. But the inmates are are the human amygdala,
Speaker 1: the fear and outrage center of the brain, and that
Speaker 1: has become the choice making basis, the basis of authority
Speaker 1: in our society, in our information system. Well, when you
Speaker 1: look at where we are right now and you think
Speaker 1: about what is it we could be doing to try
Speaker 1: to reign back in the operations of the platforms, and
Speaker 1: you know, without sounding to Pollyannish, try to return it
Speaker 1: more to the original vision of what it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing and connecting people, creating community and all
Speaker 1: of that. Are there things that platforms can do on
Speaker 1: their own to change their business model that would make
Speaker 1: them less toxic or is this going to have to
Speaker 1: be imposed on them. This is an incredibly difficult conversation because,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually believe there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: good hearted people who are in the tech industry who
Speaker 1: would like to No one actually wants this to happen.
Speaker 1: I want to make really clear. I think there's not
Speaker 1: a mustache twirling, evil genius who wants to do all this.
Speaker 1: But here's an example of why Facebook, for example, we
Speaker 1: need to put pressure on them from the outside. You know,
Speaker 1: as people are following all these Facebook groups with you know,
Speaker 1: more extremists, uh, you know, militia groups. Facebook is increasingly
Speaker 1: on the hook with public pressure to try to do
Speaker 1: something about these kinds of groups, of this kind of content,
Speaker 1: and that's getting recently expensive for them. They have to
Speaker 1: hire more content moderators, they have to take actions. When
Speaker 1: they take those actions is more political because they get
Speaker 1: blowback from different sides saying you're not taking down this,
Speaker 1: you're not taking down this. So the cost to them
Speaker 1: reputationally are going up. The cost to them in terms
Speaker 1: of hiring content moderators and building integrity teams and monitoring
Speaker 1: for hate speech, all that's going up, and that's getting
Speaker 1: really expensive for them. So one of the things I
Speaker 1: know is happening now that they're in the process of
Speaker 1: moving to an encrypted model where groups and communication are encrypted.
Speaker 1: So they're moving from we didn't know that January six
Speaker 1: was going to happen. Two we can't know. In other words,
Speaker 1: they're making it impossible for them to actually do something
Speaker 1: about these problems because it's too expensive. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that their business model makes it impossibly
Speaker 1: expensive for them to moderate all this content. They have
Speaker 1: something like fifteen billion post or messages that are running
Speaker 1: through their system every single day, and they can't hire,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen billion New York Times journalists to say
Speaker 1: is this credible? Is this true? Is this real? And
Speaker 1: so we're left with the authority of virility. Whatever goes
Speaker 1: viral wins, and that is just fundamentally toxic. So when
Speaker 1: I say what do we have to do about this,
Speaker 1: I think we have to go much deeper. You know,
Speaker 1: is a virility based information environment compatible with democracy? Are
Speaker 1: rules where whatever goes viral wins. It cannot be the
Speaker 1: basis of a society that that defeats climate change, cannot
Speaker 1: be the basis of a society that defeats COVID Now
Speaker 1: when I say that, I don't mean that there's these
Speaker 1: magical authorities that we just have to suddenly switch back to.
Speaker 1: There's good reasons why people, I think are skeptical of
Speaker 1: some of the sources of authority, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: major news media or the CDC flip flopping on masks,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's things like these reasons that that's
Speaker 1: been debased. But I think we have to ask almost like,
Speaker 1: what would it take to restore warranted trust? And I
Speaker 1: really mean, I wonder if there's even a kind of
Speaker 1: humility movement for the media to sort of self examined
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, hey, you're right, there's reasons why you
Speaker 1: don't trust us on all sides. But what would it
Speaker 1: take to regain and restore trust so that we can
Speaker 1: actually have an information system that is credible? And this
Speaker 1: is an incredibly complex problem, and I think the first
Speaker 1: step is we have to realize that this happened to us,
Speaker 1: and that hopefully is a place we can proceed from.
Speaker 1: But Tristan, is there no way that smart engineers who
Speaker 1: created these algorithms could tweak them or in some way
Speaker 1: moderate them so that there could be a technological fix
Speaker 1: to the virility. The problem is there's no algorithm for
Speaker 1: determining what is true. But there's no keywords or phrases
Speaker 1: that would trigger some kind of reaction. No, and in fact,
Speaker 1: when they try to do it that way, one of
Speaker 1: the things that happened actually after COVID. People don't know this,
Speaker 1: but Facebook actually had to shut down. They lost all
Speaker 1: their content moderators. Because the content moderators used to have
Speaker 1: to go to a physical space, log into you know,
Speaker 1: secure computers, and then do the content moderation posts after
Speaker 1: post coming through the saying is as good are we
Speaker 1: going to remove it whatever? Because of COVID and because
Speaker 1: of safety concerns, they didn't go into the physical offices
Speaker 1: and there was no way to do that work remotely.
Speaker 1: So for the early stages of COVID, Facebook was just
Speaker 1: this big open floodgate where anything went right. So if
Speaker 1: you have this kind of unregulated information environment, you know,
Speaker 1: all the sort of COVID disinformation and misinformation about it
Speaker 1: being related to five G and all these kinds of
Speaker 1: things sort of spread like wildfire. They don't have an
Speaker 1: algorithm for knowing what's true, and increasingly since that they've
Speaker 1: been trying to rely on machines to classify what is
Speaker 1: hate speech, what is a conspiracy, And what it's doing
Speaker 1: is deep platforming hundreds of thousands of people who then
Speaker 1: get further polarized. I have friends who are in no
Speaker 1: way conspiracy theorists or you know, crazy people who are
Speaker 1: actually getting deep platforms because they might be using words
Speaker 1: or phrases that are near people who are maybe you know,
Speaker 1: getting tagged by the system, and that just produces so
Speaker 1: much anger. Now, what could you do? I mean, you
Speaker 1: could decrease virility just not making it so sort of
Speaker 1: hyper fast morality. You can increase friction. For example, Twitter
Speaker 1: did this during the election. When you hit retweet. Instead
Speaker 1: of just letting you instantly retweet, they forced you to
Speaker 1: say something about what it is you are sharing. That
Speaker 1: tiny little step decrease the spread of information. Well, and
Speaker 1: what you just said really concerned me. Also is that
Speaker 1: if Facebook is moving toward encryption so that you wall
Speaker 1: off these groups so that the argument is well, they're
Speaker 1: not spreading it except among people who are already in
Speaker 1: the group, then you're likely to have a different and
Speaker 1: maybe more dangerous breeding ground not only of disinformation but
Speaker 1: extremist behavior. That's right, and it's important to realize also
Speaker 1: that with the global if you think about the users
Speaker 1: who haven't come on to Facebook yet, they're all in
Speaker 1: the developing world. They're all in these other countries that
Speaker 1: have more fragile societies, more fragile democracies, and that Facebook
Speaker 1: doesn't have the content moderators in those languages or have
Speaker 1: the cultural context to do it well. So if you
Speaker 1: think about to Facebook having a system based on content
Speaker 1: moderation and integrity where they have to do all that monitoring,
Speaker 1: that's only going to get more expensive for the remaining
Speaker 1: users they have to bring online, which means that they
Speaker 1: want to stop this problem now and not have that
Speaker 1: responsibility in the first place. So again, this is actually
Speaker 1: going to get more dangerous, not just here in the West,
Speaker 1: but for the developing world, in the global South, which
Speaker 1: often gets the worst of these things. If you look
Speaker 1: at countries like Myanmar or Ethiopia right now that actually
Speaker 1: have massive disinformation problems that are driving up civil wars
Speaker 1: and conflict, and that's, you know, an enormous problem. We're
Speaker 1: taking a quick break. Stay with us. You have a
Speaker 1: great quote that I loved in a couple of things
Speaker 1: you've written. I first saw it when you wrote a
Speaker 1: piece a little over a year ago in the New
Speaker 1: York Times where you quote Edward oh Wilson, who is
Speaker 1: famous for his study of ants and was the eminence
Speaker 1: Greece of sociobiology, and when he was asked whether humans
Speaker 1: would be able to solve the crises that would confront
Speaker 1: them over the next one hundred years, he replied, yes,
Speaker 1: if we are honest and smart. The real problem of
Speaker 1: humanity is the following. We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions,
Speaker 1: and god like technology. And this really does sum up
Speaker 1: what I hear you saying that we've advanced so far
Speaker 1: in technology, but basically our brains are the evolution of
Speaker 1: our capacity has by no means kept up with this
Speaker 1: godlike technology. And it's hard to figure out how we're
Speaker 1: going to be able to rein it in when the
Speaker 1: technology keeps racing. And assuming that we have an administration
Speaker 1: now with the Biden Harris administration, we have interest in Congress.
Speaker 1: If you could wave a magic wand and it's an
Speaker 1: unfair question, but I'll ask it anyway, what would you
Speaker 1: have them do? What three things would you ask them
Speaker 1: to do right now that could at least slow it
Speaker 1: down until we could figure out how we're going to
Speaker 1: better control this. Gosh, there's there's so much in what
Speaker 1: you just shared, and I really appreciate you bringing up EO.
Speaker 1: Wilson's quote because I really think that is the problem
Speaker 1: statement that at least guides are work at the Center
Speaker 1: for Humane Technology, because the answer to the paleolithic emotions,
Speaker 1: medieval institutions, and godlike technology is we have to embrace
Speaker 1: and honestly admit and understand our paleolithic emotions that we
Speaker 1: respond to social validation. We have negativity bias, Our minds
Speaker 1: do get pulled and distracted, and it does degrade the
Speaker 1: quality of our attention spans. We have to know that
Speaker 1: about our own minds. We're really one species who has
Speaker 1: the capacity to do this. So I just want to
Speaker 1: say that first, because I think that's the real project
Speaker 1: of being humane means actually a deep embrace an understanding
Speaker 1: of how we really work, even when it's uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: look in that mirror. So that's embracing the first. The
Speaker 1: second is we have to upgrade our medieval institutions from
Speaker 1: the clock rates of being too slow and not appraising
Speaker 1: of the harms of technology as they accelerate and grow
Speaker 1: to have a more frequent understanding and also projecting forward
Speaker 1: the risks that different and new technologies are going to create,
Speaker 1: because as you said, it's not just we have to
Speaker 1: solve today's issues with social media. We have to have
Speaker 1: the first derivative that kind of where is this all going,
Speaker 1: projected into the future, and make sure that in government
Speaker 1: and in our democratic institutions, having strong assessments of where
Speaker 1: these different areas are going, and having some kind of
Speaker 1: collaboration public private partnership maybe to try to make sure
Speaker 1: we're assessing those risks, dealing with the issues, prioritizing them,
Speaker 1: and having adequate democratic process to deal with them. So
Speaker 1: that's the medieval institutions, and then the last is on
Speaker 1: the accelerating godlike technology is you cannot have godlike powers
Speaker 1: without godlike wisdom. Phrase from Barbara Marks Hubbard is you
Speaker 1: cannot have the power of God's without the wisdom, love,
Speaker 1: and prudence of God's god like powers. Be they biotech weapons,
Speaker 1: be they psychological influence, be they split testing. You know,
Speaker 1: trillions of variations of psychological influence and micro targeting cannot
Speaker 1: be wielded by those who do not have the wisdom, love,
Speaker 1: and prudence and care that a God would have. Think
Speaker 1: of if your Zeus and you accidentally bump your elbow
Speaker 1: and don't know your Zeus, you just scorched half the
Speaker 1: earth of the lightning bolt without even realizing it. We
Speaker 1: have these powers of God's and we have to be
Speaker 1: able to have the responsibility and self awareness and frankly
Speaker 1: reign in that power. Now, what does that look like?
Speaker 1: That's a more difficult question. I think we need a
Speaker 1: culture of responsibility. In the tech industry. There should be
Speaker 1: almost a license to practice these kinds of exponential powers,
Speaker 1: and you could lose that license. We have that in law,
Speaker 1: we have that in medicine, we have that in mental health.
Speaker 1: If you think about how much compromising information a technology
Speaker 1: company has on you compared to say a psychotherapist, Like,
Speaker 1: there you are in the psychotherapist room. You're sharing all
Speaker 1: your anxieties, You're sharing all these sort of secret parts
Speaker 1: of your mind and your weaknesses. Imagine that the business
Speaker 1: model of a psychotherapist was to turn to the advertiser
Speaker 1: and say, hey, do you want to manipulate Hillary here
Speaker 1: for you know which you just said. That would be ridiculous. Given,
Speaker 1: and they would lose their license if they did that.
Speaker 1: You compare how much a psychotherapist could know about your
Speaker 1: weaknesses to a supercomputer that's been pointed at your brain
Speaker 1: the last ten years, learning every pattern of what you've clicked,
Speaker 1: what you've watched. These things know us so much better
Speaker 1: than we know ourselves. And when you recognize the asymmetry
Speaker 1: of that relationship, there's a compromising amount of information that
Speaker 1: technology companies have on each of us. They cannot have
Speaker 1: a business model that's based on exploiting and extracting from
Speaker 1: that information. So I just say this because this sets
Speaker 1: up the kind of dramatic action that I think a
Speaker 1: Biden Harrison administration we need to take. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you really want to go all the way, you ban
Speaker 1: surveillance capitalism, you ban the micro targeting based business model.
Speaker 1: It has become toxic. It has warped our society. This
Speaker 1: is not a partisan conversation. This is so critical that
Speaker 1: this is beyond partisan. This is a transpartisan, beyond partisan
Speaker 1: topic because it's really narrowed each of our views to
Speaker 1: make it very hard to have a shared understanding of reality,
Speaker 1: and that harms everyone. Whatever it is that you care
Speaker 1: about I want to really zero in on the individual
Speaker 1: because listeners could hear us speaking and just throw their
Speaker 1: hands up and say, well, yeah, okay, it's a mess,
Speaker 1: and yeah they know everything about me. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get off of Facebook. I'm not getting off
Speaker 1: of Twitter. I love watching TikTok, you know, so I'm
Speaker 1: kind of you know, in for a diamond for a dollar.
Speaker 1: What could individuals do to take their own attention spans
Speaker 1: back and not only try to have more control over
Speaker 1: their own minds, but also to try to avoid consuming disinformation.
Speaker 1: I think what people needed to protect themselves is to
Speaker 1: understand how this works. And I don't mean to self
Speaker 1: promote here, but I think that the film The Social
Speaker 1: Dilemma is a partial antibody or semi inoculation to understanding
Speaker 1: some of the effects. You at least you know what
Speaker 1: you're getting into. My colleague Grenade Arresta actually is the
Speaker 1: one who showed a conspiracy correlation matrix that you know.
Speaker 1: If you're a new mom and you join do it
Speaker 1: Yourself baby Food group on Facebook, which is a great
Speaker 1: tool you can make your own baby food organic baby
Speaker 1: You're great when Facebook when aggressive on recommending groups for
Speaker 1: people to join. It was trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: which group could I recommend to these new do it
Speaker 1: yourself baby food moms that would be most engaging for them,
Speaker 1: that would keep them here the longest. What do you
Speaker 1: think was the most recommended group to them? It was
Speaker 1: the anti vaccine conspiracy theory groups for moms. If you
Speaker 1: join that group, then Facebook does the same thing again, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's the most engaging group? I could show people who
Speaker 1: look like that who have joined the anti vaccine moms
Speaker 1: And the next recommendation was q and on gosh, So
Speaker 1: Facebook basically directed these women. Yeah, this was an automated
Speaker 1: system that was finding the kind of conspiracy minded people
Speaker 1: and actually recommending more things just like that to them
Speaker 1: because that's quote unquote what they like or what they want.
Speaker 1: But it's actually not what they want, it's what they
Speaker 1: will be persuaded to click on and to fall into.
Speaker 1: And those echo chambers are so powerful because, as you said,
Speaker 1: you know, when people are inside of these these closed
Speaker 1: echo chambers, like minded people getting social validation and affirmation
Speaker 1: from these crazier beliefs, you can really lock yourself into
Speaker 1: a worldview. And there's a great Reddit channel called q
Speaker 1: and on Casualties where actually a lot of human onbelievers,
Speaker 1: especially post January, are talking about how hard it's been
Speaker 1: for them to sort of snap out of it and
Speaker 1: what that process was. And thank God for this channel
Speaker 1: because it is a story of alumni who are kind
Speaker 1: of all sharing stories of how why do they believe
Speaker 1: us in the first place, and what was it like
Speaker 1: and what did it cost them? And I think that's
Speaker 1: really important. But when it comes to you know, how
Speaker 1: can we live in this system again? The first thing
Speaker 1: is we have to understand what it's doing. We have
Speaker 1: to understand that we are the product, not the customer.
Speaker 1: So if you're using it, just understand the relationship. Every
Speaker 1: time you use it, you have a supercomputer pointed at
Speaker 1: your brain. It does not distinguish between what is true
Speaker 1: versus what just went viral. It is not trying to
Speaker 1: protect you. It doesn't know what's good for you. It's
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out what keeps your attention. And
Speaker 1: so we should use it. If you use it with
Speaker 1: the consciousness that is adequate to understand the perversity of
Speaker 1: that relationship. And I still have a couple of social
Speaker 1: media count even use them very minimally I think using
Speaker 1: it less, you know, spending more time face to face
Speaker 1: with people and actually having conversations, trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of the world with people together. The final question we
Speaker 1: can ask is what is worth our attention? Which is
Speaker 1: a very spiritual and almost very basic question, which is
Speaker 1: what is really worth my attention? What is worth our
Speaker 1: society's attention? What is the cost of not putting our
Speaker 1: attention on the things that we actually care about? And
Speaker 1: I think if you just spend one day away away
Speaker 1: from social media for one weekend, the difference in our
Speaker 1: whole psyche and you talk about our attention spans, we
Speaker 1: come back feeling so different. Just to follow up on that, Tristan,
Speaker 1: because I think that's really helpful for people. So how
Speaker 1: do you get your news? You know, there really should
Speaker 1: be more out there. I think on this specause, I
Speaker 1: think that we should see social media is unsafe forgetting
Speaker 1: our political news because it's based sickly just a drama
Speaker 1: snowball machine. It allows you know, the most indignant, you know,
Speaker 1: dramatic hypocrisy and people's anger about hypocrisy to just show
Speaker 1: up constantly, never ending. So I think we have to
Speaker 1: just recognize, you know what we're what we're in for,
Speaker 1: you know, I try to watch and understand views that
Speaker 1: are different from mine. I try to follow lots of
Speaker 1: media from people's different perspectives. There's from wonderful groups out there,
Speaker 1: like Braver Angels or Courageous Conversations that are working on
Speaker 1: these deep polarization work. I think there needs to be
Speaker 1: much more funding of that kind of thing. That could
Speaker 1: be something that also we could be government funded, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, really just un following outrage media, whether it's
Speaker 1: partisan television, you know, I would I frankly, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: watch either MSNBC or Fox News. I just think that
Speaker 1: outrage media is just not healthy for our society. People
Speaker 1: can argue about differences about how they conduct themselves, but
Speaker 1: I just think asking what are really long form, you know,
Speaker 1: understanding based kind of media that actually really do cultivate
Speaker 1: long term understanding. Because also, so much of this is
Speaker 1: just breathing by our brains so fast that you end
Speaker 1: up reading all this new then you say, do I
Speaker 1: even know what I just did for the last hour? Right?
Speaker 1: Your mind sort of feels empty afterwards? Yeah? Yeah, how
Speaker 1: how can I be d program when I don't even
Speaker 1: know I'm programmed exactly. We just we said that in
Speaker 1: the film, which is how do you deprogram yourself from
Speaker 1: the matrix when you don't know you're in the matrix? Now,
Speaker 1: of course each side is convinced that the other side
Speaker 1: is in the matrix, but not at least in the matrix.
Speaker 1: We had a shared matrix and not two billion different ones, right.
Speaker 1: I just can't thank you enough for the work you're doing,
Speaker 1: for your incredibly thoughtful approach to these really difficult issues.
Speaker 1: And I am such a grateful admirer. So I just
Speaker 1: know there are a lot of us in your corner.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much that that means so much to me.
Speaker 1: Tristan Harris is the co founder of the Center for
Speaker 1: Humane Technology. He also co hosts a podcast of his
Speaker 1: own called Your Undivided Attention. As Triston pointed out, the
Speaker 1: combination of social media platforms and disinformation has been and
Speaker 1: continues to be hugely destructive in the United States. But
Speaker 1: this combination can cause even greater harm in fledgling democracies
Speaker 1: or outright dictatorships. And no one knows that better than
Speaker 1: our next guest, Maria Ressa. I first crossed paths with
Speaker 1: Maria when she was leading CNN's Southeast Asia bureau. I
Speaker 1: followed her career, and then in twelve, Maria left traditional
Speaker 1: media to create a new outlet of her own, an
Speaker 1: online news site called Rappler. Four years later, she found
Speaker 1: herself reporting on President du Terte, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot to report. He was democratically elected in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and right after that he took aim at the country's institutions.
Speaker 1: He praised martial law and the extra judicial killings of
Speaker 1: people he claimed were connected with drug trafficking. He targeted
Speaker 1: freedom of the press and journalists like Maria, and every
Speaker 1: step of the way, Rappler has been there shining a
Speaker 1: light on it all. In eighteen, Time magazine included her
Speaker 1: in a group of journalists they named Person of the
Speaker 1: Year for bravely holding the powerful accountable. You'd be hard
Speaker 1: pressed to find someone who has experienced disinformation on a
Speaker 1: personal level like Maria has anywhere in the world, so
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to catching up with her
Speaker 1: for an important and timely conversation. Maria, Hello, you know,
Speaker 1: my lord, I have thought about you so often. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much my heart is with you
Speaker 1: and everything you're going through Maria. Let me start by
Speaker 1: introducing you to those who may not know you. You know,
Speaker 1: long before Maria started winning international awards and acclaim, she
Speaker 1: was a high school student in New Jersey who then
Speaker 1: went on to Princeton and then went back to the
Speaker 1: country of her birth, the Philippines. And I'd love for
Speaker 1: you to connect the dots for us, Maria, how did
Speaker 1: you go on this life journey that brings you to
Speaker 1: where you are today? Oh? My gosh, A search for home?
Speaker 1: I mean, weirdly, I was looking for home. I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who I was. I grew up
Speaker 1: in America, in New Jersey, you know. But while I
Speaker 1: was growing up in the States, I never felt completely American.
Speaker 1: I wasn't as articulate. I was small. I walked to
Speaker 1: the third grade in public school, and I was afraid
Speaker 1: to speak because I spoke the dialog right. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so I find my way home. Six I was here
Speaker 1: on a full break going the other way. That was
Speaker 1: the only way I could have afforded to come home,
Speaker 1: to come to Manila. It wasn't home yet. And then
Speaker 1: when I got here, that's when I realized I'm not Filipino.
Speaker 1: I am very American, and I learned about the Philippines
Speaker 1: through the Noose. I set up the Manila Bureau in
Speaker 1: for seen it. Yes, so so I guess that was
Speaker 1: it right, But it's like the search for identity again,
Speaker 1: like for everyone. When I think about you, I think,
Speaker 1: in a way, you're returning to Manila sort of followed
Speaker 1: the arc of opening up and democracy and hopefulness about
Speaker 1: the Philippines. How would you describe that? So you come
Speaker 1: back and what did you find when you first got there?
Speaker 1: And then how did that evolve? The people power revolt
Speaker 1: in Night six was my introduction to the Philippines as
Speaker 1: an adult. And when I came in as a reporter here,
Speaker 1: I covered the blossoming of democracy in the Philippines in
Speaker 1: all of Southeast Asia. That was the privilege that I
Speaker 1: had being a reporter at that point in time, and
Speaker 1: you felt like, my gosh, democracy is just going to
Speaker 1: steam roll through. So I became a reporter. I watched
Speaker 1: the pendulum swing from one man authoritarian rule in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: And then now I would say, at the tail end
Speaker 1: of my career, I begin to see the pendulum swinging
Speaker 1: back and it is horrifying because it feels like the
Speaker 1: search for justice, strengthening institutions, everything I've worked for professionally
Speaker 1: has been thrown out. And the irony of speaking to
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton is that as I became a target of disinformation,
Speaker 1: no one has felt that more than you, because in
Speaker 1: the end, the disinformation what technology had enabled this propaganda
Speaker 1: at an exponential scale. The Philippines was one of the
Speaker 1: countries where it was like a testing ground for the
Speaker 1: real target, which is America the elections. We are the
Speaker 1: Petrie dish for Cambridge Analytica. They tested these tactics of
Speaker 1: mass manipulation here and if it weren't they poured it
Speaker 1: over to you because you were the target. Um why
Speaker 1: the Philippines hundred and ten million people? We are now
Speaker 1: six years running. Filipino spend the most time on social
Speaker 1: media globally, really the whole world, the whole world, six
Speaker 1: years running. So even Katie Harbath, who was with Facebook,
Speaker 1: we were doing something together in Berlin, and you know,
Speaker 1: she admitted we were patient zero, and I guess I
Speaker 1: worried that this isn't over, and it isn't over for America.
Speaker 1: It's far from over. I want to circle back to
Speaker 1: that because really That's what I want to focus on today,
Speaker 1: is this whole ecosystem of disinformation. But to just again
Speaker 1: sort of enter you and where you are right now.
Speaker 1: What is Rappler? I mean when you found it in
Speaker 1: a decade ago, it was scrappy. A lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't give you much optimism about its success. But boy,
Speaker 1: have you made it a real journalistic center. So I
Speaker 1: did six years heading the largest news group. When I left,
Speaker 1: I resigned because I thought technology was taking over and
Speaker 1: that legacy media was not going to be able to
Speaker 1: recover fast enough to take advantage of it. And that's
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. In in I was writing
Speaker 1: my second book, it's called From Bin Laden to Facebook.
Speaker 1: So I was looking at, you know, if virulent ideology
Speaker 1: that was hijacked by al Qaeda, if that can spread
Speaker 1: through social media, why couldn't the forces for good use
Speaker 1: this new technology? And that was the basis of Rappler.
Speaker 1: We wanted to take yourself phone and be with you,
Speaker 1: and we succeeded at it. But Facebook and the social
Speaker 1: media platforms, frankly, they just got too greedy. They find
Speaker 1: too the design of the platform, to the point that
Speaker 1: this thing that was empowering people now became a behavior
Speaker 1: modification system that has been open to geopolitical power places.
Speaker 1: In a thousand cuts the documentary about you and Rappler,
Speaker 1: there are some video of early interviews that you had
Speaker 1: with the then newly elected President to Tarte, who you
Speaker 1: are very respectful toward. You are asking the questions of
Speaker 1: a seasoned, experienced journalist and he seems to be responsive.
Speaker 1: And then as it goes on, if you ask hard questions,
Speaker 1: if you publish embarrassing, inconvenient information that counters what he's saying,
Speaker 1: he becomes more and more hostile and the enablers around
Speaker 1: him are beginning to take it out on you and Rappler.
Speaker 1: So that's a shorthand description of what you've gone through
Speaker 1: with this latest leadership in the Philippines. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: let me put it over the last four years right
Speaker 1: and connected to how this was used the influence operations.
Speaker 1: I think in Sten we kept doing our job. We
Speaker 1: we tried to hold Terta accountable for the drug war
Speaker 1: and then the propaganda war. So in the narrative, journalist
Speaker 1: equals criminal was seated. It came up a million times
Speaker 1: bottom up seen President to Artis said the same thing
Speaker 1: top down in his State of the Nation address about US.
Speaker 1: A week later, I got my first subpoena in the
Speaker 1: government filed eleven cases against me and Rappler. I was
Speaker 1: arrested twice. There was one point I got off a
Speaker 1: plane and you know, they bring me into this van
Speaker 1: of the police, but they're they're all wearing swat gear
Speaker 1: like I'm a terrorist. All of the trials begin, I
Speaker 1: get convicted. So I'm convicted for cyber libel for a
Speaker 1: crime that didn't exist when the story we published, a
Speaker 1: story I didn't write, edit or supervise. That's this cough
Speaker 1: gyass moment. So I have ten arrest warrants in less
Speaker 1: than two years. That's how the influence operations, information and power.
Speaker 1: It acts like fertilizer to allow democratically elected leaders like Luterte,
Speaker 1: who uses the levers of power of democracy to cave
Speaker 1: it in from within. It's like termites eating the wood.
Speaker 1: It still looks solid, but the minute you step on
Speaker 1: it it'll break. Our democracy look strong, but they are
Speaker 1: extremely weak. We'll be right back. What do you hope
Speaker 1: that this new Biden Harris administration and other leaders can
Speaker 1: try to achieve to shore up democracy to go after
Speaker 1: the termites, you have to think like an Adam bomb
Speaker 1: has gone off in the information ecosystem. It's carnage, right.
Speaker 1: It's going to be impossible to bring this together using
Speaker 1: the old tools that we had, and we must come
Speaker 1: together like the world came together post World War two,
Speaker 1: to create new structures of how to deal with this.
Speaker 1: And and the first is to stop the insidious manipulation
Speaker 1: that we are all being subjected to. It is not
Speaker 1: possible to think that the old media ecosystem or the
Speaker 1: old checks and balances are going to work the same way.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping America takes a need role in this
Speaker 1: because frankly, you allowed American companies to do this globally.
Speaker 1: That's true, So you please do something well, you know,
Speaker 1: it does seem that a few platforms have recognized the
Speaker 1: role that they played in the Stop the Steel movement,
Speaker 1: the insurrection, the attack on the Capitol. They barred Trump
Speaker 1: and Steve Bannon from posting. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: I mean, too little, too late? You know, there's all
Speaker 1: of this, like everyone everyone is talking about it, debating
Speaker 1: of whether it's a free speech issue. It isn't. This
Speaker 1: is a distribution issue. It is, you know it insidious manipulation.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have had to ban him, the former president,
Speaker 1: if you hadn't allowed it to get to this point.
Speaker 1: It's like how many times can someone lie or insight
Speaker 1: to violence or attack women with impunity? Right? And I
Speaker 1: think that's been the problem globally, is that the social
Speaker 1: media platforms, when it's convenient to them, claim it's free speech.
Speaker 1: It also makes them a lot of money, and then
Speaker 1: when it's not, they take a long time to take action.
Speaker 1: I know this firsthand because I have asked for this
Speaker 1: after my conviction. On June, I was attacked again by
Speaker 1: influence operations and they were really you know I've gone through.
Speaker 1: When you get messages for hour, you get used to it,
Speaker 1: Like I'm sure you get used to how to deal
Speaker 1: with criticism. Right. There's valid criticism, and then there is
Speaker 1: criticism that is meant to pound you to silence. It's
Speaker 1: beyond hate speech. It's dehumanizing. It's turning you into a
Speaker 1: caricature that breaks down inhibition from otherwise, let's say, ordinary
Speaker 1: people to go after you. And it happens in such
Speaker 1: a short period of time, and it cannot happen without
Speaker 1: a concerted campaign to make it happen. And that's what
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand, which you have not
Speaker 1: only reported on, but lived through, Maria. This doesn't happen
Speaker 1: by accident. You know there are bots, these are not
Speaker 1: even real human beings that are unleashed to perpetuate the
Speaker 1: lies and the attacks and the undermining and the dehumanization.
Speaker 1: And you know now you're facing what any reasonable observer
Speaker 1: would conclude, our bogus made up charges, all kinds of
Speaker 1: charges against you that could literally lead to your being
Speaker 1: imprisoned for the rest of your life. And they're not
Speaker 1: satisfied with one charge. They have to keep bringing charges.
Speaker 1: They have to keep hauling you into court. And as
Speaker 1: you said, the arrest that you faced in the airport
Speaker 1: when you landed, I think from the United States after
Speaker 1: that very long flight is in a thousand cuts. And
Speaker 1: it's all meant to destroy empathy for you, sympathy for you,
Speaker 1: to try to create this sense that well, you know,
Speaker 1: I always liked her. I thought she was a good reporter.
Speaker 1: But you know there must be something to it. They
Speaker 1: don't make everything up, do they. And as somebody who
Speaker 1: you know has had a million things made up about me. Oh,
Speaker 1: yes they do. But what really touches me and and
Speaker 1: impresses me but also worries me, Maria, is that you
Speaker 1: keep coming back to the Philippines. You get out on bail,
Speaker 1: and you go off for an event for getting an award,
Speaker 1: for making a speech, and then you come back and
Speaker 1: I just am so, you know, admiring but also worried
Speaker 1: about you continuing to come back. But it seems that
Speaker 1: that's your commitment, that you are going to stand your ground,
Speaker 1: so to speak, in the Philippines and not just stand
Speaker 1: for yourself, but stand for democracy, stand for the freedom
Speaker 1: of the press. How do you feel though when that happens? Gosh, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think I have a choice, you know, because
Speaker 1: if I am who I am, and if I believe
Speaker 1: in the standards and ethics and the mission of journalism,
Speaker 1: which I do, then I don't have any other choice.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, you don't really know
Speaker 1: who you are until you're tested, and it's it's up
Speaker 1: to what you compromise that defines who you are. And
Speaker 1: I don't have I've lived my life with no regrets
Speaker 1: and I don't intend to have any regrets. Right in
Speaker 1: this one. I have a company that has a hundred
Speaker 1: and some odd people who who are idealistic, who will
Speaker 1: do the job, and we keep doing our jobs. We
Speaker 1: just released another exclusive story of corruption in the government,
Speaker 1: and of course there will be retaliation of some sort.
Speaker 1: But it's okay, Maria. I will do everything I can,
Speaker 1: through you know, my platforms, to support you, to support Rappler,
Speaker 1: because it's not only about you, as much as I
Speaker 1: admire and respect you, and it's not only about the Philippines.
Speaker 1: It is, as you rightly say, it's about the entire world.
Speaker 1: Whether we're going to maintain freedom and truth and an
Speaker 1: ability to talk with one another, to have some sense
Speaker 1: of community to solve common problems like what this pandemic
Speaker 1: has demonstrated is so needed and we need your voice
Speaker 1: and your leadership and your example. And Maria, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for talking with me today. Thank you. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about maria Rests fight for press freedom
Speaker 1: and against disinformation in the Frontline documentary A Thousand Cuts.
Speaker 1: It's streaming online at PBS dot org, slash Frontline and
Speaker 1: on YouTube. And if you want to help Maria and Rappler,
Speaker 1: you can do so by making a contribution to their
Speaker 1: legal fees. Go to Press Freedom Defense Fund dot org
Speaker 1: slash donate. We all have to do everything we can
Speaker 1: to protect ourselves and others from disinformation. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a partisan issue. This is a human issue.
Speaker 1: It's a democracy issue, So just stay aware, check your sources.
Speaker 1: Don't believe everything you see online or hear from people
Speaker 1: in power. You and Me Both is brought to you
Speaker 1: by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie Subran, Kathleen
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