WEBVTT - Your Brain on Tech 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:08.760 Hi, Katie, So, how would you describe your relationship with 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:14.760 your smartphone? Um? Dependent? I've got a problem. It's bad. 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.720 I would use the word obsessive to describe me. Probably 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:21.919 not as much as you, but me too. So that's 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.640 the focus of today's show, technology specifically, are growing dependence 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.720 on it or should I say our addiction to it? Now, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.040 we asked all of you to write in and call 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:33.839 us with tales from the tech trenches. You had a 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.239 lot to say. Angie loved Joy on Twitter wrote, I 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:39.760 have fiber my algia and no one I've been over 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:42.879 using my phone when my thumb on the phone holding 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:45.760 hand starts to hurt. Even through the pain, I sometimes 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.040 soldier through like it's my life's work to check social 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.720 media and scroll through the news. Ouch. I feel your pain. Well, 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.560 I don't exactly feel your pain, Angie, but I understand 0:00:56.800 --> 0:00:59.840 where you're coming from and share a Dupuis, which is 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.000 a beautiful last name. On Twitter, told us about the 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.399 moment she knew she had a problem with tech, writing, 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:07.800 I realized that when my children were having to ask 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.160 me questions multiple times because I was engrossed in my phone. 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.440 You know we've all been there, Yes, Nalini Sang on 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:17.560 Twitter said, I give myself test to see how long 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:19.399 I will go without looking at my phone, and I 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.200 feel so quickly. I noticed when a friend's dad forced 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:24.920 me to turn off my phone during a dinner. We 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.480 have a sickness as I type on my phone. Listen. 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.640 I agree with all of the tweets that we got 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:36.240 about this subject. We are addicted, and we are unfortunately 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.400 ignoring our children at times, ignoring our spouses or our friends. 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.039 There's an actual term Brian for it. It's called fubbing 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.920 p h U B b I n G. That means 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.440 blowing someone off to look at your telephone. And it's 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.200 so aggravating, and I'm sure it is for other people, 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.520 because I'm sure I do it all the time never. 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.640 But you know, it's maybe not entirely our fault, because 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.160 in hard our phones and these tech platforms are designed 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.760 to addict us, which we talk about in today's show. 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.560 That's right, in an attention economy, that's definitely true. We 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.080 also got this very interesting voicemail from a listener named 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.400 Steve who tried to return to a flip phone. Hi, 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.040 my name is Steve Glenn. I'm an airline pilot and 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.880 for eight months last year I went back to a 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.799 flip phone. I decided I was spending too much time 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.480 on my smartphone, and so I got a Kyo Seros 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.240 flip phone like they used in the military, and I 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:34.360 really enjoyed unplugging a bit and not being as accessible 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.440 all the time. But I finally had to go back 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.800 and buy an iPhone because as an airline captain, I 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:45.919 had to access the Internet and access company websites using 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.640 my smartphone. And also texting is going to a different 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:52.680 type of technology where people send pictures and people send 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:54.680 files with texts that you just can't do that with 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.640 with pumps anymore. So I had my my experiment was 0:02:57.680 --> 0:02:59.840 a failure. I had to go back to an iPhone. 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.520 I try and limit my use of it more than 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.120 I used to. But I thought you'd like to hear that. 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:08.440 Thank you very much, well, Steve Glenn. A noble effort, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.440 we must say, going back to a flip phone. How 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.040 luddite ish of you. But you can see, Brian why 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:18.480 that would be really hard because so much of our 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:23.600 day to day activity and interactions require, uh, you know, 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.240 a smartphone and not a flip phone. There's even an 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.040 app Katie called Moment, which I was yes, I have 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:32.519 a very long time, and it tells you not only 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.280 how much time you're spending on your phone, but what 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.360 you're actually doing on your phone. So you kind of 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:38.160 a lie to yourself and you think, oh, I'm checking 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.840 my email and you're really on Instagram and Twitter, and 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.920 then you get sucked into a vortex of crap. Yeah, 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.040 and self loathing for being sucked into a vortex of crap. 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.280 But anyway, it's a vicious cycle. Clearly, technology is eating 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.840 up our time, attention, and changing our way of life. 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.400 Loyal listeners, you may recall when we talk with psychologist 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.560 Jane Twangy about the costs and consequences of endless screen 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.000 time is especially for kids and teens. I encourage you 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.720 all to listen to that episode if you haven't, its 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.800 number thirty six. But for this episode, we wanted to 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.320 get into these topics from the perspective of a tech insider, 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.400 and I can't think of many people better on this topic, Katie, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:19.320 than today's guest Tristan Harris. In his twenties, he sold 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:21.720 his tech company to Google and they worked there as 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.039 an in house design ethicist of all things, which I 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.479 think many people think is probably an oxymoron when it 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.799 comes to big tech companies, But The Atlantic called trist 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.800 On the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience. 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.520 His latest project is something called the Center for Humane Technology, 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:42.680 which he started in February, bringing together many former insiders 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.480 in the tech world who believe we need to design 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:49.200 technology in a different, more humane way. To give you 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.000 an idea, here's how the Center on its website refers 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.960 to Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. They say these are 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.120 not neutral products, they are part of a system designed 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.800 to addict us. Now. I originally spoke with Triston for 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:08.360 my Nachio documentary series available gosh on demand and ironically 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.440 on YouTube, Facebook, and Hulu, but I wanted to continue 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.320 our conversation. He's such a smart guy an excellent communicator. 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.520 So for today's episode, we talked with Tristan about how 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.040 tech hooks us and what ethical design means to him. 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.200 And to start things off, I asked him how he 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:31.840 landed at Google and why he left. Well, UM, I 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.560 was a tech entrepreneur when I was twenty two at 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.040 a Stanford I started a small tech company and UM 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.520 It's a long story, but after about five or six years, 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.200 we we soft landed the company at Google, we were acquired, 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.039 and after a year into being at Google, I became 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.200 kind of disenchanted with where things in the tech industry 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.200 we're heading that instead of really building tools that were 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:56.839 empowering people, it was more and more becoming this race 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.200 between these different companies of getting people's attention and exploiting 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.560 people's psychology. And I I felt alarmed by this. And 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.000 I was working with the Gmail team and Gmail has 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.200 its own problems with people feeling addicted. Uh, And I 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.640 made this you know, this presentation about Google's moral responsibility 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.039 and shaping a billion people's attention. It was sort of 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:18.599 a slide deck and it exploded. I mean it went 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.480 throughout the company. Tens of thousands of people saw it. 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:24.960 And um, that led to becoming a design ethicist, where 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:27.400 I basically was asking the question, which know what had 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.320 asked before? You know, how do you ethically steer a 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.160 billion people's attention? We should pause you for a second 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.360 because you mentioned this slide show. You designed this hundred 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:41.640 and forty four page Google slide presentation which was called 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:46.000 a call to Minimize distraction and respect users attention. Yeah, 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.240 and that was in two I mean, this is a 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:50.880 long time ago that this these concerns first rose up, 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.920 and you did this as a Google employee, correct, intending 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.840 to sort of share it within your team. But then 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.760 I think Larry Page saw it and other senior leaders 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.760 with in the company. And what was the reaction to 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.919 the concerns that you were raising. Yeah, I can't imagine 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:10.240 they were super jiggy about that. Well, you know, um, 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.440 I was. I was nervous about that presentation because I 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:15.560 mean I was ready at the time to leave the company. 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:17.640 I kind of felt like this was the thing that 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.960 was most concerning to me. Um. But before I left, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.840 I wanted to raise alarms about this issue. And I 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.200 had a whole background prior to this on how people's 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:29.480 minds are manipulated, an influence when I was a kid, 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.640 I was a magician. I studied at this persuasive tech lab, 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.160 so I understood that technology could really manipulate people's minds. 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.080 And that's why I made this presentation. So I sent 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:40.840 it to ten people and said, hey, I want your feedback. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:42.679 It was just a slide deck head, give me your feedback. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:44.760 I went home. I came back the next morning, I 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.080 checked my email and I had like, you know, a 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.640 hundred emails about this presentation, and I clicked on the 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.080 you know, their their links, and when you click on 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.960 the link, it shows you, um, inside of Google slides 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:57.800 the number of people who are looking at it at 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.440 the same time, and there was something like a hundred 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:02.640 and fifty people that that morning. When I looked at 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.160 it later that day, there was four hundred. Uh And 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.520 just through the next you know week, it was just exploding. 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:09.680 I mean, and I had heard that Larry Page it 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:11.600 had two or three meetings that day where people brought 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.640 it up in conversation with him. Uh And so it 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.000 became this kind of momentum. I wouldn't I don't want 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:18.920 to overstate its influence. I mean, I don't think it 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:22.520 changed the course of anything, but that it definitely rose 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:24.800 alarms and people started to talk about it. But you 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.200 wrote something that I thought was pretty smart and prescient, 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:32.080 which was never before in history. Had the decisions of 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:36.119 a handful of designers, mostly men, white, living in San Francisco, 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:40.840 aged thirty five, working at three companies that is, Google, Apple, 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.200 and Facebook, had so much impact on how millions of 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.480 people around the world spend their attention. We should feel 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:51.440 an enormous responsibility to get this right. True now more 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.720 than ever. Um. And so what did Google do in 0:08:54.720 --> 0:09:00.240 in response to this besides change your job? Um? Not much. 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:04.200 I mean I was given this space to kind of 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.880 explore these topics, and I didn't get fired. I really 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.559 just focused on understanding what it meant to hold that responsibility. 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.240 It's not like we've ever had There's no academic discipline, 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.920 there's no university that could teach you this is how 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.199 we do manipulation of a billion people's attention, and that 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.880 never existed before. So this was a new field, and 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.200 so I did mostly a lot of research. Um. And 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:29.920 in terms of things changing at Google, I tried bringing 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.560 this up with some of the key products that I 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.600 thought would be most important to change, so Android because 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.240 that's the home screen, the phone notifications that people billions 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.640 of people live by, Chromes, the web browser. People spend 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:46.000 most of their time in UH and Gmail. But it 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:50.400 was really hard to get a concerted focus on saying 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.000 we have this is an enormously important topic. This is 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.000 literally everything, and we need a whole different way of 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.800 thinking about this. And I was unsuccessful at getting getting 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:01.800 those neems to change inside Google. Well, you must have 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.520 been considered such a massive disruptor, Tristan. I mean here 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.880 you are saying, hey, hold the phone, everybody, and these 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:14.160 companies that are growing like weeds, and obviously the concerns 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.040 that you were raising were anathetical to their business model, right, 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.160 you know, It's it's funny, Katie, because it wasn't an 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.840 explicit There was never an explicit responsive we can't do that. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.200 You're asking us to make less money? No, you know 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:30.000 it was I never got that response. There this be 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.160 kind of the smiling and nodding, but then no traction, 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.120 no momentum. Right, So I talked to you know, an Android, 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.000 the Android team, and say, well, what if we designed 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:39.920 it this way we help people check their phone less 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.560 and there'd be this kind of smiling and nodding and yeah, 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:44.400 maybe we could do that, and there's some teams that 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.480 are kind of working on that, but then nothing much 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.440 would really happen. There was no concerted effort. And and 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.560 this is why ultimately I did leave, is because I 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.400 realized that there needed to be a much bigger public 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.280 conversation in public demand for this stuff. But I will 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.880 say there's a difference between and roid, you know, which 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:03.240 is the how your mobile phone works that doesn't need 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.360 to maximize how much time you spend on the phone. 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.320 It's really it's like, no one goes to work at 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.600 Androids saying, gosh, how do we just steal everyone's time. 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.440 No one says that YouTube, on the other hand, that 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:15.720 is their goal. I mean, that is the business model. 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.960 Is more time watching videos equals more money for YouTube. 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.360 That means more attention to the advertisements, right exactly. That 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.199 means more more attention to the advertising. Advertising is the 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:30.320 driving business model behind this, this addiction to stealing people's 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.360 attention and time. So Tristan, let's just step back for 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.560 a second and talk about how and why these tech 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:39.360 companies addict us. It's gone to the point where we 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.760 check our phones more than a d and fifty times 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:45.320 per day. Knowledge workers on average spend a third of 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.360 their day just doing email. Um, as you said, it's 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.840 sort of central to the business model of these tech platforms. 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.560 So can you talk to us about, you know, how 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.199 and why this happened. Yeah, well, you know it starts 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.200 by you know, someone building an app and saying I 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.320 gotta get you to use it. So what they what 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.440 they want is they want people, you know, to register accounts. 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:08.600 They want people to create new accounts and new users 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:10.560 to show up, and then they want each of those 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:13.720 accounts to come back every single day. They want you 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:16.760 to be hooked, So they have to start finding reasons 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.800 for how can I get you to come back tomorrow. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:22.720 So if your Instagram and you say, okay, if this 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:24.560 in the early days of Instagram, I know the guys 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:26.040 who made it, they went to school with me, Mike 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:28.640 and Kevin, you know, and they're thinking, okay, how do 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.000 we keep people coming back to this photo sharing app? 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:34.760 And they didn't always have this feature called the number 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.440 of followers you have? Right, why would they add that? 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:39.319 We think that that's just natural, that's just the world 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.520 we live in. But the number of followers we have. 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.280 Showing that number to you is a good way to 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:47.960 get you to come back tomorrow because you want to 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.400 know if that number went up, And you also want 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:53.199 to know how many likes you get on each photo 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:55.080 you post, and that's another reason to get you to 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.000 come back. And so think of these as like biological 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.600 organisms sitting on a table and are mutating these new limbs, 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:03.880 which are just these things that are good at getting 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.760 you to come back and to stay longer. And if 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.120 that thing works, it keeps that limb, and it starts, 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:11.400 it continues to evolve, and so it's involving all of 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:17.199 these new ways. Likes, um messages, shares, filters, these are 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.760 all ways to keep you coming back and hooked. But 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.600 what we think we miss is these cultural externalities. This 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.720 entire selfie culture where you know, young you know, teenagers 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.480 and a lot of women take these selfies over and 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:34.000 over again of basically their their appearance. And let's say 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.480 that Instagram didn't have a feature called the number of 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:38.600 followers you have. Let's say they never went down that road. 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.480 Would we have an entire culture where everyone's taking photos 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.120 of themselves and posting it on social media if we 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:49.160 didn't have the notion of followers for ourselves. I mean, 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.520 these design techniques are all being done because they're good 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:55.319 at hooking people, but downstream they create these cultural externalities. 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:58.000 You have people being more concerned that they're self worth 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:00.240 is directly tied to how many likes they on in 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.520 that last photo. And um, I think we're confusing a 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.719 whole generation of children to attach their self worth and 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.360 belonging to the wrong place, not just children triest On. 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.120 I mean, I am always checking my likes on Instagram 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:15.120 and my followers and has it gone up? And you 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:18.480 know what comments have I gotten? And on the one hand, 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.320 I kind of appreciate the community that Instagram allows you 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.560 to have. You do feel like you're kind of relating 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:29.080 to people who have similar interests, and I appreciate hearing 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.000 from people. But the flip side of that for me 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:36.960 is this kind of hunger and almost frantic feeling that, oh, 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.280 I need to get more followers. I need to make 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.360 sure they like what I'm posting. And I'm embarrassed to 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:44.880 admit that. But I'm a sixty one year old woman. 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.360 Think about the impact this has on teenagers who are 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:52.680 still developing their self esteem and sense of worth. Yeah. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:54.560 I think of this a lot like sugar. I mean, 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:58.320 think of our human evolutionary instincts. I mean, sugar tastes 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.800 good to all human animals. We're built to love sugar. Right, 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:03.800 There's a reason because it used to be really rare. 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.560 Um It's just like social approval. I mean, there's a 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.080 reason that it should feel good to get those likes 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.040 and to get that social validation and approval, but we 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.560 weren't built to get it at this level of frequency 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.640 dripping into our our mind every you know, five ten 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.040 minutes with a new batch of notifications on our film. 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.240 Speaking of that, two things really struck me from Katie's 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:28.400 Natchio hour on tech addiction, which is the physiological reaction 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:33.960 to this stimulus, the stress hormone cortisol that we're getting 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:38.800 sort of overdosed on because we feel nervous about our 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.680 text and our emails and checking them, are not checking them. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:47.920 And then dopamine, which is this um this pleasure neurotransmitter, 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.800 neurotransmitter you know this, I don't um that kind of 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.840 gives us a high when we're getting social validation on 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.440 these apps and we're not meant or we weren't designed 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.480 to receive these two things this at the level we are, 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.760 with the frequency we are. That's right, And I think 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:06.720 that's how we can think about how we fix this, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:09.960 which is to say, we need to turn the lens 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.000 back at ourselves and say, what were we built for? 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.720 You know how? How are all of our evolutionary instincts 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.520 tuned and how do we respect those instincts. So a 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.920 good example is something like a simple one that leads 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.280 to phones is trigger colors. So red is a trigger color. 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:28.160 So every single time you look at your phone and 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.880 you see that red dot with the number of notifications, 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:33.680 it's triggering you into a little bit of a a 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:35.280 kind of alarm or or or sort of you know, 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:37.480 grabbing your attention, like maybe I should see there's there's 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:39.640 something important there that I have to check into. Right, 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.160 But do we want to be sounding the alarm inside 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.720 of our minds every single time we check our phone 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.680 with notifications? You know, in the same way that social 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.720 validation or social approval are really important things to care about. 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.480 It's useful back in the savannah to know what do 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:56.560 my peers think of me? Otherwise how else are you 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:58.720 going to survive in the community or the tribe. But 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.120 we weren't meant for a virtual community of tens of 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:04.719 thousands of people around the world to be dosing us 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:08.480 with little bits of social approval and dopamine every ten minutes. 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:10.480 And so I think we have to ask how do 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.959 we go back to being in alignment with how our 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.479 human evolutionary instincts work? Before we even talk about that, Trystan, 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:19.960 I want to dive in a little deeper on some 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:23.159 of the techniques that we can be aware of and 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:27.200 ways we're being manipulated. You mentioned the red lettering for alerts. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.320 Can you help us understand other ways they do it 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:33.120 so we can aware be aware that we're being manipulated. 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:36.640 Oh man, there's just so many. One thing that really 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.080 struck me in your writing was the bottomless bowl. Can 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.120 you explain what that is? Sure? Um? You know, so 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.080 a bottomless bowl. There's this study that if you give 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.520 people a bowl of soup, and you know, we think 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:50.640 we're in control and we choose how much food we eat, 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:52.800 and you give a bunch of people sitting down at 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.359 the table a bowl setter bowls of soup, and some 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.400 of the bowls of soup um are just regular, there's 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.080 all the same size, But some of the other bowls 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:03.440 of soup have a little um pipe at the bottom 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.480 and it's actually refilling the bowl of soup as you're 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.399 drinking it. And the question was would the people who 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.560 are drinking from the bottomless bowl notice and to stop eating? 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.359 And the point of the study basically showed that people 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.439 don't notice the bottomless bowl. Uh. And that is what 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:24.879 how our technology works. The Instagram feed and the Facebook 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.280 feed and the Twitter feed all scroll infinitely, right. They 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.800 could choose to not do that. They could have stopping cues. 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.160 Your your mind is built for something called a stopping queue, 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.040 where basically we expect that there's going to be a 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.719 queue that says, Okay, now this is done, and your 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:41.560 mind kind of wakes up and figures out what do 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.040 I want to do next? But if I'm trying to 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.080 hook your attention and keep you going for as long 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.840 as possible, my job is to figure out how can 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.400 I remove all of those stopping cues so I can 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:55.160 keep you sucked in as long as possible. What other 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.160 things other than the bottomless bowl? Uh? I was interested 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:04.919 that President Trump's digital campaign advisor was able to plant 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:06.720 these ads, and of course we're going to get into 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.320 the political uses of these big tech companies in a minute, 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:14.600 but that they could measure if red or green or blue, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.239 the different backgrounds for and and and the kind of 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.080 words that seem to be attracting more people on the 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:25.600 design that would suck people in or kind of agitate them, 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:27.960 and they were able to figure out what was the 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:32.560 most effective way of in essence, trashing Hillary Clinton? Yeah, 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:34.880 I mean this, this whole. All of these systems are 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.879 basically asking one question, which is, you know, how do 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:40.439 we get your attention? And the best way to get 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.640 your attention is what works on your evolutionary instincts? Does 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.080 red work better on your evolutionary instincts? Are on your mind? 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.080 Does blue work better? Does this word work better for you? 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.680 If I use this political message? Does that work better 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.240 for you? We've reared so far away from any authentic 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.479 relationship between a person trying to just talk to you 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.879 versus a person and sitting there scanning all of the 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.560 things you ever said on social media and trying to 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.720 figure out you use um. Whenever you talk about a 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:12.119 concept like immigration, you always use these three adjectives. And 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.800 let's say they're positive or they're negative. Right now, if 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:16.480 I'm a political advertiser, what do I want to do 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:18.440 to manipulate you? Well, I want to use your own 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:20.919 words back to you so you most agree with me. 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.439 So I'm going to start repeating your own viewpoints, your 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.320 own opinions back at you with your exact word choices. 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:29.600 So you nod your head in agreement, like, man, that 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.280 person really understands me and what we've created with social 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:35.879 media and Facebook. Beyond the addiction layer, the addiction just 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.439 sets up the kind of matrix everyone's jacked in. So 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:40.040 now the moment they wake up in the morning, their 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.919 thoughts are being sort of influenced by these phones. The 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.560 second layer is that we've sold that to the highest 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.919 bidder because of advertising, and we've enabled anyone to go 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.720 in there and say I can target the precise messages 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:56.120 that will resonate with your specific mind. And that's exactly 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.600 what Cambridge Analytica was in the last election. They were 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.280 trying to sell campaigns on the on the ability to 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.240 specifically persuade people using the things that would be most 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.600 persuasive per mind, so they'd have a profile that your 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.919 mind is influenced. Um, you know, more by authority. If 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:15.480 I tell you that the New York Times said this 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.520 was true, then you're really likely to believe it. Or 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:19.400 if I told you that Fox News said this was true, 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:21.919 then you're really likely to believe it. Um. These are 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:24.160 all different ways of influencing people, you know. I think 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:26.120 we have to realize that all of our minds can 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:28.199 be influenced. That's what I learned as a magician. It 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:30.800 doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter what 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.719 language you speak. Magic and slight of hand works on 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:38.040 every single mind. And what we've just enabled is this, 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:40.720 you know, arms race for anybody to go in there 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:47.639 and do what they want. It's time to take a 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.800 quick break. We'll be back with Tristan Harris right after this. 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:02.600 And now back to our conversation with Tristan Harris. Can 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.719 you talk about how tech in general and social media 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:12.480 in particular have had a corrosive impact on people's perceptions 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.679 of the news and the issues and basically all of 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:20.359 these things we've spoken about since Donald Trump became a candidate. Yeah. Well, 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.720 oftentimes people think that these feeds, you know what, what 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:25.639 pot what shows it. The inside of your feed is 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.760 just whatever your friends post, so it's just a neutral tool. 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:31.439 But this is not true. When you open up that 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:34.840 Facebook feed, there's actually thousands and thousands of things they 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.760 could show you, and out of those thousand things, they 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:40.280 try to figure out what will be most likely to 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.199 get you to click to watch, or to share, or 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.840 to like, And it turns out that outrage is really 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:49.000 good at getting you to click and to share because 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:50.800 you want to tell other people, I can't believe the 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:54.040 thing that these guys, these politicians did you know today, 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:56.920 And so those things enter at the top of everyone's 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.399 feed So now everybody's going to these feeds, and them, huters, 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:03.040 not humans, are selecting out of all the thousands of things, 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:06.360 the outrageous things. And what that creates are these waves 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:08.320 of outrage inside of all these human animals. We have 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.199 these you know, human evolutionary instincts, and you turn your 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:13.760 phone over in the morning, and instead of feeling calm 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:15.960 and opening your eyes and taking a breath and asking 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:17.520 like what are my dreams or what are my hopes 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:19.800 for today? Or what am I grateful for? What I 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:21.560 want to do? What am I going to have for breakfast? 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:23.679 What am I going to have for breakfast? You know? 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:26.080 You instead, the first thing you do when you set 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:28.600 off your turn off your alarm, after your phone vibrates, 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:30.800 is you open up one of these feeds and suddenly 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:34.400 your mind is like filled with outrage. Screw those democrats 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:38.080 you wake up to exactly and we have to ask, 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:41.639 I mean, it's like this totalizing on it on both sides. 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:43.520 That's The thing is everyone is influenced by this, which 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:45.960 is why it should be a unifying issue, right. I 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:49.240 think that no one wants this to happen to politics. 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:50.600 I mean, once you sort of see where this is 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:52.400 all going, we don't want to live in a society 0:23:52.400 --> 0:23:56.119 that's just triggered and filled with outrage, or that's manipulating 0:23:56.200 --> 0:23:57.679 kids from the first moment they wake up in the 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:00.040 morning and they see photo after photo after photo of 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:03.560 their friends having fun without them. I mean, it's always 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:06.320 true that people are having fun without us. But the 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.119 question is, do I fill your day in your morning 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:11.679 with evidence of that? Do I just make you believe 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:13.680 that's the only thing that's going on. I mean, this 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.639 is crazy, I agree, And I think it's so corrosive 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:18.840 for kids in general. You know, when you see that 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:22.639 the suicide rate for teenage girls has I think tripled 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:26.320 in the last ten years. And if you look at 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:31.080 anxiety being the number one mental health disorder in this country, 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:34.720 isolation being one of the biggest problems, it's so ironic 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:37.680 in an error when we're all connected, we've never been 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:41.159 so lonely. Yeah. Well, and I think Sherry Turkle was 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:43.679 just so precient with her book alone together about this 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:49.000 that you know, giving having the virtual experience of connection 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:51.639 of seeing all these people doesn't mean that as an 0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:54.760 animal sitting there with the body right and breathing, that 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:57.960 we don't need that physical presence. Right. It feels a 0:24:57.960 --> 0:25:01.240 lot better to be physically present someone than to sit 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:04.000 the entire day on a screen getting that virtual form 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:06.360 of presidents. Can I ask you Trystan a little more 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:10.160 about like a firm like Cambridge Analytica, because I don't 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:14.080 think people fully understand how these firms or even tech 0:25:14.119 --> 0:25:18.320 companies are able to kind of gather absorb these this information, 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:22.840 highly personalized information, and then spew stuff out at you. 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:25.880 So if I'm talking on my phone with a friend 0:25:26.080 --> 0:25:28.840 about the fact that I really want to buy a 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:32.960 new winter coat, can they pick that up and then 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:36.159 start sending me ads for winter coats? Because that's happened 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.640 to a couple of my friends. They've experimented. They talked 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:42.680 about Emmy Rawsom just for fun to see if suddenly 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:45.240 they'd get all this stuff about Emmy Rossum, who I 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:47.560 really love and I think she's a great person. No, 0:25:47.760 --> 0:25:50.720 no dis on Emmy, but she got started getting all 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:54.359 this information about Emmy Rowsom So that to me is 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:58.040 super creepy. I mean, how do they find out all 0:25:58.040 --> 0:26:02.040 this stuff about us? Well, I mean especially Facebook, I 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:03.879 mean the their business. I mean, how much have you 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:07.280 paid for your Facebook account? Zero dollars? But we're paying 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:09.879 in our attention obviously, Well that's interesting, right, So we 0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:12.760 don't pay for Facebook. So the question who is paying them? 0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:15.639 And it's the advertiser, which means that all those people 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:17.960 who go to work at Facebook. As much as they say, hey, 0:26:18.240 --> 0:26:19.920 we want to make the world more open and connected, 0:26:20.400 --> 0:26:24.320 I'm sorry, but if your business model is serving not people, 0:26:24.359 --> 0:26:27.560 but the business model is serving advertisers, then guess what. 0:26:27.800 --> 0:26:30.679 All of that information over time is going to be 0:26:30.760 --> 0:26:33.359 used more and more to make the advertisers more successful. 0:26:33.400 --> 0:26:36.520 Otherwise those advertisers aren't going to spend their money on Facebook. 0:26:37.000 --> 0:26:39.399 So in the long run, Facebook has to be, you know, 0:26:39.440 --> 0:26:41.600 helping their advertisers be successful. And what that's going to 0:26:41.720 --> 0:26:45.119 mean is enabling them to access more and more personal 0:26:45.200 --> 0:26:47.840 information when they target uh, you know, adds to you. 0:26:48.200 --> 0:26:50.200 And so when you send a message to someone else 0:26:50.240 --> 0:26:53.000 on Facebook, you know, it'll pick up those keywords and 0:26:53.119 --> 0:26:54.800 that will be part of the way that it starts 0:26:54.800 --> 0:26:58.199 to target and enabling advertisers to target you over time. Well, 0:26:58.280 --> 0:27:01.159 let's talk about Facebook in parta killer for a second. 0:27:01.400 --> 0:27:05.720 Facebook on Instagram. Um, we sometimes use the euphemism of 0:27:05.800 --> 0:27:09.280 social media companies different technology platus, so many of them 0:27:09.400 --> 0:27:12.160 really just Facebook. Yeah. I think we're really in large 0:27:12.240 --> 0:27:15.199 part just talking about Facebook. So the question is, is 0:27:15.280 --> 0:27:19.359 Facebook the worst offender here? Are they doing things that 0:27:19.400 --> 0:27:26.480 are qualitatively different and more harmful than Google for example? Um? Yeah, 0:27:26.560 --> 0:27:29.960 I think the challenges it's just a ground. For a second, 0:27:30.040 --> 0:27:32.879 just how many people use Facebook. There's more than two 0:27:33.080 --> 0:27:37.480 billion people on Facebook. That's more than a quarter of 0:27:37.520 --> 0:27:40.919 the world's population. Um, that's about the number of notional 0:27:40.920 --> 0:27:44.760 followers of Christianity who every day are jacked into this 0:27:44.800 --> 0:27:47.240 system where they start looking at a feed and their 0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:50.120 thoughts get you know, start flowing into them from these 0:27:50.160 --> 0:27:53.159 one from this one company in California, you know, with 0:27:53.200 --> 0:27:56.320 a handful of engineers who make the design and algorithm decisions. 0:27:56.920 --> 0:27:58.719 And so the reason I say that is that no 0:27:58.760 --> 0:28:04.399 matter what Facebook us, it's creating exponentially complex consequences for 0:28:04.680 --> 0:28:08.320 two billion people. So you know, how many engineers speak 0:28:08.440 --> 0:28:11.920 at Facebook speak Burmese. I mean, I don't know one 0:28:12.240 --> 0:28:16.240 zero maybe, and yet Facebook is the number one way 0:28:16.280 --> 0:28:18.840 for people in Burma to access the internet. Facebook is 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:21.480 the Internet if you're in Burma. And it started amplifying 0:28:21.560 --> 0:28:24.399 genocides in Burma because it was amplifying this fake news 0:28:24.600 --> 0:28:27.360 about a specific minority group. So the point is that 0:28:27.680 --> 0:28:30.120 they can't reign in this machine that they've created. They've 0:28:30.160 --> 0:28:33.680 created this automated machine that, because there's no humans, they're 0:28:33.720 --> 0:28:35.720 figuring out which thoughts should we put in people's minds. 0:28:35.720 --> 0:28:37.639 It's just the machines calculating what it should put in 0:28:37.680 --> 0:28:41.160 people's minds based on what's most engaging, and it's starting 0:28:41.200 --> 0:28:44.160 to push thoughts into people's minds and elections and democracies 0:28:44.200 --> 0:28:47.920 around the world in languages that the engineers at California 0:28:47.960 --> 0:28:50.880 and Menlo Park they don't even speak. And so they've 0:28:50.920 --> 0:28:54.040 created this kind of monster that they no longer control. 0:28:54.320 --> 0:28:56.400 So now what's going on is they're trying to go 0:28:56.480 --> 0:28:58.480 back and say, how do we reigin this thing in 0:28:58.560 --> 0:29:01.000 How do we quickly, you know, throw all the firefighters 0:29:01.000 --> 0:29:02.959 at this thing and try to save it as much 0:29:03.000 --> 0:29:06.720 as possible. But I think the challenges we trusted them 0:29:06.840 --> 0:29:09.720 to try and be thoughtful about this whole thing, and 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:11.760 they didn't see from the very beginning that this is 0:29:11.760 --> 0:29:13.560 the level of influence they had. That they aren't just 0:29:13.920 --> 0:29:15.640 you know, helping us keep in touch with our friends. 0:29:15.640 --> 0:29:19.440 They're a political actor. They're steering elections, They're creating addictions, 0:29:19.480 --> 0:29:22.480 they're making people lonely. I know that some activists and 0:29:22.560 --> 0:29:25.800 Mimar wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg about this, about 0:29:25.840 --> 0:29:28.160 the very thing that you were describing in Burma, and 0:29:28.200 --> 0:29:32.880 he wrote them back personally. But you know, to your point, 0:29:32.920 --> 0:29:36.560 all the people in the world, it's impossible to monitor 0:29:37.360 --> 0:29:40.240 these things, isn't it. So before we talk about what 0:29:40.320 --> 0:29:43.440 Facebook can and cannot do, let me ask you about 0:29:43.480 --> 0:29:46.640 Mark Zuckerberg's testimony, because I'm sure you watched it with 0:29:46.840 --> 0:29:50.080 a great amount of interest. Um, what did you think 0:29:50.160 --> 0:29:53.040 about it? And did you think he was questioned vigorously 0:29:53.240 --> 0:29:56.640 enough by members of Congress, you know, some of whom 0:29:56.680 --> 0:30:00.800 still have flip phones. Well, I think that is the issue. Fundamentally. 0:30:00.840 --> 0:30:05.200 It is clear that you know, the modern realities of 0:30:05.240 --> 0:30:10.920 how technology companies work have far outpaced the governance capacity 0:30:10.960 --> 0:30:14.200 of really probably any government to stay in touch with 0:30:14.880 --> 0:30:17.080 you know all of the ways that these things are 0:30:17.120 --> 0:30:20.360 working and evolved in the business model. And you know, 0:30:20.480 --> 0:30:23.960 we were involved in the November first hearings um myself 0:30:23.960 --> 0:30:27.200 and a few other people and briefing major Congress members. Unfortunately, 0:30:27.240 --> 0:30:29.520 there wasn't as much time for these latest hearings, and 0:30:29.560 --> 0:30:32.400 I think it came across, as you know, a whole 0:30:32.400 --> 0:30:35.120 hodgepodge of issues. Some people are asking about privacy, some 0:30:35.160 --> 0:30:38.000 people are asking about housing discrimination adds, some people are 0:30:38.080 --> 0:30:42.120 asking about election integrity, data breaches, Cambridge Altica. So to 0:30:42.200 --> 0:30:44.480 the average person, it feels like, oh man, this is 0:30:44.520 --> 0:30:47.640 about just a bunch of unrelated things. But I actually 0:30:47.640 --> 0:30:50.440 want to reframe that. The reason why it felt like 0:30:50.480 --> 0:30:53.520 it's about a bunch of unrelated things and that these 0:30:53.560 --> 0:30:57.480 harms are showing up everywhere is because Facebook affects every 0:30:57.600 --> 0:31:03.240 part of society. It affects election campaign pricing, it affects 0:31:03.440 --> 0:31:07.400 housing discrimination ads where some groups get discriminated by over others. 0:31:07.440 --> 0:31:11.480 It affects elections, it affects people's privacy. And I think 0:31:11.520 --> 0:31:13.640 the problem is if you think about Facebook is almost 0:31:13.640 --> 0:31:15.760 like a global government. I mean, how much power does 0:31:15.800 --> 0:31:18.960 Mark Zuckerberg have even over someone like President Trump at 0:31:18.960 --> 0:31:23.160 controlling people's thoughts and actions, right. I mean, you could 0:31:23.240 --> 0:31:26.920 argue that he has more power that's completely unaccountable except 0:31:26.960 --> 0:31:29.880 to him, since he's the major shareholder at doing whatever 0:31:29.920 --> 0:31:32.880 he wants, and we're sort of left to you know, 0:31:33.000 --> 0:31:35.400 his moral compass and whatever happens, you know, to be 0:31:35.480 --> 0:31:38.080 running between the his eyes and ears as the way 0:31:38.120 --> 0:31:40.080 he's thinking about this. Well, what did you think of 0:31:40.120 --> 0:31:43.719 his testimony? Well, you know, I thought he was dodging 0:31:43.720 --> 0:31:48.440 the fundamental issue, which is that the business model of 0:31:48.840 --> 0:31:53.040 advertising and keeping people engaged is the problem. All of 0:31:53.080 --> 0:31:57.240 these issues come down to that one issue, and so 0:31:57.400 --> 0:32:01.120 he was trying to distract Congress from that core issue 0:32:01.560 --> 0:32:05.280 that the business model is what incentivizes them to offer 0:32:05.360 --> 0:32:08.520 better ways for advertisers to take people's personal information and 0:32:08.560 --> 0:32:11.400 target against it and offer better and better ways to 0:32:11.480 --> 0:32:13.760 keep people hooked on Facebook for as long as possible. 0:32:13.920 --> 0:32:15.920 And it's also a little misleading when he said that 0:32:15.960 --> 0:32:19.480 they don't sell data to anyone, because what they actually 0:32:19.520 --> 0:32:24.000 do is they allow advertisers to micro target people based 0:32:24.000 --> 0:32:27.360 on their data. So even though the advertisers themselves don't 0:32:27.360 --> 0:32:29.680 see the data, that's get all the benefits of that data. 0:32:29.720 --> 0:32:32.040 That's right, and and and Facebook is quick to sort of, 0:32:32.200 --> 0:32:34.720 you know, smirk when Congress asked them, why do you 0:32:34.760 --> 0:32:37.240 sell people's data, because they don't do that. But the 0:32:37.280 --> 0:32:40.600 point is that it is equivalently the same because advertisers 0:32:40.600 --> 0:32:44.000 are paying Facebook not to own and access your data, 0:32:44.040 --> 0:32:46.480 not to use it and then spread somewhere else, but 0:32:46.520 --> 0:32:50.280 they're paying to target ads specifically to those people. You 0:32:50.320 --> 0:32:54.280 can go on Facebook and you can target um conspiracy 0:32:54.320 --> 0:32:57.360 theorists by knowing what keywords they tend to identify with. 0:32:57.720 --> 0:33:01.120 So are you saying that until and allows Facebook changes 0:33:01.320 --> 0:33:06.480 its fundamental business model, the problem can't be solved. That's 0:33:06.640 --> 0:33:09.720 that's right. And the thing is that we can't change 0:33:09.720 --> 0:33:12.280 their business model overnight, and they can't change their business 0:33:12.280 --> 0:33:15.120 model overnight, even if actually they saw these issues. So 0:33:15.200 --> 0:33:16.880 I know that there's a lot of work, and we 0:33:16.880 --> 0:33:19.160 should celebrate the work that they're trying to do right 0:33:19.200 --> 0:33:22.000 now to try and peel away the problem against their 0:33:22.000 --> 0:33:24.840 own financial interests. And I think that there's some authentic 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:27.320 things that they're doing there, But the question is there's 0:33:27.320 --> 0:33:29.840 an upper bound to that, And and do they see 0:33:30.120 --> 0:33:33.000 that the fundamental heart of all of these problems comes 0:33:33.040 --> 0:33:36.200 down to their business model. They're not on our team. 0:33:36.240 --> 0:33:39.479 They're not on democracy's team to help strengthen the fabric 0:33:39.480 --> 0:33:41.640 of society. So long as the people who pay them 0:33:42.000 --> 0:33:44.120 are the advertisers they're they're not going to be able 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:46.920 to solve these problems. So if you were Mark Zuckerberg 0:33:47.320 --> 0:33:49.600 and you were in charge of Facebook, what would you 0:33:49.640 --> 0:33:52.840 be doing to put Facebook back on the side of 0:33:52.960 --> 0:33:57.000 democracy and the American people and everything that's good and 0:33:57.080 --> 0:33:59.320 just in the world. The first thing I would do 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:03.520 isn't just say I'm sorry and there's this one bad 0:34:03.560 --> 0:34:06.280 actor way over there in the corner called Cambridge Analytica, 0:34:06.280 --> 0:34:09.600 but Facebook is fine. I would tell the world I'm 0:34:09.719 --> 0:34:12.880 sorry that I didn't see that our business model was 0:34:12.920 --> 0:34:17.160 so corrosive and I feel bad about that. And now 0:34:17.200 --> 0:34:19.920 what we're gonna do is start a transition plan to 0:34:19.960 --> 0:34:23.160 get off of this business model. And here's how we're 0:34:23.200 --> 0:34:25.000 gonna do that, and here's how much time it's gonna take. 0:34:25.000 --> 0:34:27.160 It's not gonna happen instantly, but here's how we're gonna 0:34:27.160 --> 0:34:30.160 work on that. Here's why, and hey, shareholders, here's why 0:34:30.160 --> 0:34:32.239 we're going to be regulated if we don't do this. 0:34:32.280 --> 0:34:35.399 In the long run anyway, And I would start with that. 0:34:35.640 --> 0:34:37.760 I was going to say, trust, now, that won't another 0:34:37.840 --> 0:34:41.719 behemoth just take Facebook's place. I mean, I hate to 0:34:41.760 --> 0:34:45.520 say it, but when it comes to profits versus ethics, 0:34:45.640 --> 0:34:49.279 profits usually when don't they that that's right? But that's 0:34:49.280 --> 0:34:52.960 all based on consumer demand. So right now, there's essentially 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:55.440 Facebook as a monopoly. Um and it's a new species 0:34:55.440 --> 0:34:58.200 of monopoly because all of our anti trust, anti monopoly 0:34:58.280 --> 0:35:03.000 laws are about um uh, they don't handle zero price monopolies, 0:35:03.120 --> 0:35:05.359 usually a monopoly as they price discriminate so they can 0:35:05.400 --> 0:35:07.320 control pricing. They can offer one price to you and 0:35:07.440 --> 0:35:09.600 no different price to someone else, and no one can 0:35:09.600 --> 0:35:12.720 stop them because you know their a monopoly. The challenge 0:35:12.719 --> 0:35:15.840 here is it's a monopoly that's free. So all of 0:35:15.840 --> 0:35:19.320 our antitrust law that's normally about regulating these things doesn't 0:35:19.360 --> 0:35:22.960 handle free monopolies. And so I think if we change 0:35:23.000 --> 0:35:26.080 consumer demand and people realize that Facebook doesn't have our 0:35:26.120 --> 0:35:28.839 best interests at heart, and it never will unless they 0:35:28.920 --> 0:35:31.839 change their business model, then we're starting to see this 0:35:31.880 --> 0:35:34.759 movement where people do want an alternative. We're not there yet, 0:35:34.840 --> 0:35:37.000 but I think slowly that's what's happening. I don't know, 0:35:37.120 --> 0:35:39.720 you know, sorry to play Devil's advocate for a moment, 0:35:39.760 --> 0:35:42.000 but it seems to me, Tristan, that a lot of 0:35:42.040 --> 0:35:47.359 this depends on consumer demand or lack thereof. And there 0:35:47.440 --> 0:35:50.040 was a big thing, oh, you know people were going 0:35:50.080 --> 0:35:53.920 to quit Facebook. Well, to quote Brokeback Mountain, I just 0:35:54.000 --> 0:35:56.880 can't quit you Facebook. I mean it's really really hard 0:35:57.080 --> 0:36:01.799 because people are so addicted to live without it. And furthermore, 0:36:01.960 --> 0:36:04.080 there was an interesting piece in The New York Times 0:36:04.200 --> 0:36:06.759 by my friend Andrew Ross Sorkin, and the headline was 0:36:06.840 --> 0:36:10.440 our privacy has eroded. We're okay with that? I mean, 0:36:10.560 --> 0:36:12.600 don't you think that. People It's sort of like being 0:36:12.640 --> 0:36:16.000 a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. People 0:36:16.120 --> 0:36:19.480 have become you know, complacent and in order to it 0:36:19.520 --> 0:36:23.160 and have pretty much accepted this is the new normal. Well, 0:36:23.239 --> 0:36:26.040 I would frame it a little bit differently. I would 0:36:26.120 --> 0:36:29.719 say that it's a testament to how much of a fabric, 0:36:30.280 --> 0:36:33.080 basic fabric of our lives it's become that we can't 0:36:33.120 --> 0:36:34.840 just delete Facebook. So when I say this, I'm not 0:36:34.880 --> 0:36:37.279 saying that consumer demands going to change and everyone's just 0:36:37.280 --> 0:36:39.840 gonna quit because you know, in fact, people I know 0:36:39.880 --> 0:36:42.080 at Facebook say, with a smug on their face, will 0:36:42.680 --> 0:36:45.280 if you don't like the product, just use a different product. 0:36:45.400 --> 0:36:47.279 It's like, okay, great, so I'll just switch to that 0:36:47.360 --> 0:36:49.920 other two billion person social network. That's so, that's right 0:36:49.960 --> 0:36:52.400 there to my right. You know, it doesn't exist. And 0:36:52.480 --> 0:36:54.799 right now, what we need to do is change the 0:36:54.880 --> 0:36:58.520 kind of the government and consumer context so that those 0:36:58.560 --> 0:37:01.560 alternatives can start to as so it becomes harder and 0:37:01.600 --> 0:37:03.759 harder for them to innovate. And we need make it 0:37:03.800 --> 0:37:05.960 easier for the alternatives to exist, because we're not going 0:37:06.040 --> 0:37:09.040 to quit. I mean, I still use Facebook every day 0:37:09.680 --> 0:37:11.440 because it's the best. It's the only way I can 0:37:11.480 --> 0:37:14.080 get my ideas out to a large enough audience. And 0:37:14.120 --> 0:37:15.840 that speaks to the amount of power that they have, 0:37:16.040 --> 0:37:18.040 right it's not. And the key thing here is also 0:37:18.120 --> 0:37:20.720 that it's not just an addiction. They've they've really taken 0:37:20.800 --> 0:37:24.080 over the fundamental communications fabric and the fabric of staying 0:37:24.080 --> 0:37:26.160 in touch with the people that matter to us. We 0:37:26.200 --> 0:37:28.520 don't have an alternative, and that's why people aren't just 0:37:28.520 --> 0:37:30.680 going to delete it. But that doesn't mean people don't 0:37:30.719 --> 0:37:32.279 have a problem with it. But aren't there some good 0:37:32.280 --> 0:37:35.280 things about it. I mean about social media writ large, 0:37:35.360 --> 0:37:39.200 not just Facebook, but all these different modalities in terms 0:37:39.239 --> 0:37:42.760 of like galvanizing people, getting like minded people to stand 0:37:42.840 --> 0:37:45.680 up and want more sensible gun laws for example, or 0:37:46.080 --> 0:37:49.759 start you know, stopping genocide in different places because there's 0:37:49.800 --> 0:37:53.799 kind of a grassroots uprising. Uh, the fact that, yes, 0:37:53.840 --> 0:37:56.520 we're lonely, but it is nice to be able to 0:37:56.920 --> 0:38:00.000 look at video of your grandchild if you live far away. 0:38:00.040 --> 0:38:03.040 I mean, I can think of countless examples of the 0:38:03.120 --> 0:38:06.360 positive impact this is having. I mean, you're such a 0:38:06.400 --> 0:38:10.399 debbut down or is there anything that well I think 0:38:10.400 --> 0:38:12.480 this is This is such a critical thing because this 0:38:12.480 --> 0:38:15.400 this conversation often makes it seem as if there's this 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:17.960 all or nothing choice, like either we have Facebook and 0:38:18.040 --> 0:38:20.640 we we have these these benefits in these costs, or 0:38:20.680 --> 0:38:23.080 we just don't use Facebook at all. And the question 0:38:23.160 --> 0:38:25.000 is is there a middle way? And as I said 0:38:25.040 --> 0:38:27.040 this in my Ted talk, that it's like, you know, 0:38:27.120 --> 0:38:29.960 we can have social movements that take off with positive 0:38:29.960 --> 0:38:34.839 messages without most of the time creating viral outrage most 0:38:34.880 --> 0:38:37.120 of the time. I mean, these positive social movements are 0:38:37.239 --> 0:38:40.520 very very rare in comparison to the daily outrage that 0:38:40.600 --> 0:38:43.799 we experience on these things. The experience of knowing that 0:38:43.840 --> 0:38:45.680 your friend is you haven't seen for ten years is 0:38:45.719 --> 0:38:48.520 also visiting a city, um that you find out about 0:38:48.520 --> 0:38:51.160 that only because you had a Facebook account. That's experience 0:38:51.280 --> 0:38:54.279 is great, but it's very, very very rare compared to 0:38:54.320 --> 0:38:57.080 all the time people spend sort of just mindlessly browsing 0:38:57.080 --> 0:39:00.080 and they self report regretting. And I think there's a 0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:03.080 different way to design all of this stuff. And that's that's, 0:39:03.080 --> 0:39:04.560 by the way, what we're trying to do with our 0:39:04.640 --> 0:39:06.799 with our work with the Center for Humane Technologies, show 0:39:06.880 --> 0:39:08.839 that there actually is a different way to design these 0:39:08.840 --> 0:39:11.520 products that's not an all or nothing choice. So what 0:39:11.600 --> 0:39:14.080 does a good Facebook look like? Is it a subscription 0:39:14.160 --> 0:39:18.000 model where advertisers wouldn't be on the platform, that people 0:39:18.000 --> 0:39:21.080 would pay to use it, and therefore the business of 0:39:21.160 --> 0:39:24.040 social media isn't about capturing as much of our attention 0:39:24.080 --> 0:39:28.080 as possible. Yeah, think of it like a utility. I mean, um, 0:39:28.120 --> 0:39:31.680 you know, um, we would we would pay to have 0:39:31.840 --> 0:39:35.600 access to a service that's all about benefiting our lives. 0:39:35.600 --> 0:39:37.880 So what I mean by that is, right now, if 0:39:37.880 --> 0:39:39.880 you walked I mean, if you walked into Facebook today, 0:39:39.920 --> 0:39:42.040 and you just interviewed a random sample of people and 0:39:42.080 --> 0:39:43.840 you said, what are you doing with your time today? 0:39:43.880 --> 0:39:46.160 You as an engineer at Facebook, and you would find 0:39:46.280 --> 0:39:50.160 every engineer is basically on one goal, which is am 0:39:50.160 --> 0:39:54.480 I keeping people engaged? Scrolling, clicking, liking, hooked or not. 0:39:54.840 --> 0:39:57.439 They're only concerned with that goal. And instead, imagine we 0:39:57.560 --> 0:40:00.200 paid for Facebook. All those engineers go to work and 0:40:00.239 --> 0:40:03.040 they ask, how do we generate positive benefits in society? 0:40:03.040 --> 0:40:05.600 How do we make this a resource? And Mark Zuckerberg 0:40:05.680 --> 0:40:08.800 himself back in two thousand five used to talk about 0:40:08.880 --> 0:40:13.239 Facebook as a social utility. He didn't try to defend 0:40:13.280 --> 0:40:16.160 this stuff about news feeds and content and all this 0:40:16.239 --> 0:40:19.080 kind of stuff, which that came later after they hinge 0:40:19.120 --> 0:40:22.239 their success on the advertising model. Before that, it was 0:40:22.280 --> 0:40:24.839 a utility. It was an address book. It was something 0:40:24.880 --> 0:40:27.960 I could use to make things happen in my life. 0:40:28.640 --> 0:40:31.000 And I think, if we paid for Facebook, you don't 0:40:31.040 --> 0:40:33.680 just see news feeds without the ads. I'm talking about 0:40:33.719 --> 0:40:37.200 a radically different service that is entirely built as a 0:40:37.320 --> 0:40:41.040 utility to empower us to make new social choices together 0:40:41.239 --> 0:40:43.200 that we wouldn't be able to make without Facebook. Things 0:40:43.239 --> 0:40:45.279 like Oh, I can find out when my best friend 0:40:45.320 --> 0:40:48.239 is visiting town that I haven't seen in ten years. Um, 0:40:48.280 --> 0:40:50.680 I can have strangers who when they move to a 0:40:50.719 --> 0:40:52.520 new city, they can quickly find the groups that they 0:40:52.520 --> 0:40:54.520 can be in touch with. But it wouldn't be built 0:40:54.560 --> 0:40:57.160 around news feeds and mindless consumption, which is what it's 0:40:57.160 --> 0:41:00.000 built around. Now. I want to ask about fake news 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:04.000 is because listen, these seem to be long term goals, Tristan, 0:41:04.160 --> 0:41:07.200 but you know, we have an important midterm elections coming 0:41:07.320 --> 0:41:11.920 up in November, a hugely important presidential election coming up 0:41:11.960 --> 0:41:16.439 in um and so what immediately, what can be done 0:41:16.480 --> 0:41:21.719 about the proliferation of fake news, these bots, Russian influence 0:41:21.840 --> 0:41:25.520 and what we're seeing and general chaos when it comes 0:41:25.560 --> 0:41:29.640 to this platform in general. Yeah, the thing that people 0:41:29.680 --> 0:41:33.000 should understand is, you know, if I ask you the question, 0:41:33.400 --> 0:41:36.799 how much more confident do you feel today if an 0:41:36.840 --> 0:41:40.000 election was to be held that it is less vulnerable 0:41:40.040 --> 0:41:44.120 to outside manipulation and influence than it was in like 0:41:44.280 --> 0:41:49.600 zero point zero? Correct? These platforms are still highly highly 0:41:49.680 --> 0:41:53.399 vulnerable to not just Russia, but any state and even 0:41:53.440 --> 0:41:57.360 non state actors China, North Korea are in the playbook. 0:41:57.400 --> 0:42:00.200 Is now out there, and now anyone can spend money 0:42:00.239 --> 0:42:03.359 on Facebook to target information to the audiences that they want. 0:42:03.360 --> 0:42:04.919 And it's not just the ads, by the way, there's 0:42:05.280 --> 0:42:07.640 loads of other techniques. I work with ex intelligence people 0:42:07.640 --> 0:42:11.160 that know about those techniques, and it's still one possible 0:42:11.200 --> 0:42:15.160 to create impersonation accounts, to create fake images that are 0:42:15.239 --> 0:42:17.959 dark don't exist, these deep fakes where you can fake 0:42:18.280 --> 0:42:21.120 videos of people saying things they didn't they didn't say. 0:42:21.320 --> 0:42:23.239 All this is going to get worse, which is why 0:42:23.440 --> 0:42:25.319 we're doing this work. This is the short term, as 0:42:25.320 --> 0:42:28.200 you said, Katie, is if you care about the integrity 0:42:28.280 --> 0:42:30.840 of our elections and our democracy, then you ought to 0:42:30.880 --> 0:42:34.200 care about how these platforms reform their practices to better 0:42:34.239 --> 0:42:37.640 protect them from manipulation. Is their awareness part of the solution, though, 0:42:37.680 --> 0:42:39.360 I feel like you know, I had a good friend 0:42:39.480 --> 0:42:41.960 I've mentioned this a couple of times on our podcast 0:42:42.000 --> 0:42:44.680 who got this video and sent it to me about 0:42:44.760 --> 0:42:47.640 whom Aberdeen and her connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, and 0:42:47.640 --> 0:42:49.719 she was appalled and have you seen this? And I 0:42:49.719 --> 0:42:52.440 said day that this is bullshit, this is not true stuff, 0:42:52.640 --> 0:42:55.399 but it was so professionally done. And do you think 0:42:55.440 --> 0:42:58.239 that people are at least more skeptical and are kind 0:42:58.280 --> 0:43:01.880 of more educated did in terms of their consumption of 0:43:01.960 --> 0:43:04.480 this kind of thing, or or am I just a 0:43:04.520 --> 0:43:09.319 little more sophisticated than your average consumer. Well, I'm very 0:43:09.320 --> 0:43:11.920 worried about this because often we have this feeling that well, 0:43:11.960 --> 0:43:14.799 I'm the smart one, and it's only those very persuadable 0:43:14.840 --> 0:43:17.200 person's way over there that were influenced by Russia. But 0:43:17.239 --> 0:43:21.200 not right. Look, and you're as a magician, as a kid, 0:43:21.239 --> 0:43:23.239 you realize that everyone feels that way, Like, no, no, no, 0:43:23.320 --> 0:43:25.400 I I'm you know, magic is only gonna work on 0:43:25.440 --> 0:43:27.440 those dumb people you know, who don't are un educated. 0:43:27.440 --> 0:43:29.880 But I have a PhD. So therefore I'm not manipulated. 0:43:30.040 --> 0:43:32.719 It's actually the opposite. Usually, the people who are most 0:43:32.760 --> 0:43:35.239 confident are the ones who are much easier to manipulate 0:43:35.719 --> 0:43:38.359 and the you know, we didn't always see society that way. 0:43:38.360 --> 0:43:41.440 Back in the nineteen forties, UM, the United States government 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:44.360 UH created you know, the Committee for National Morale UH 0:43:44.400 --> 0:43:46.680 and there is also the Institute for propagand Analysis to 0:43:46.719 --> 0:43:51.719 protect the American psyche from foreign influence. We recognized fundamentally 0:43:51.760 --> 0:43:54.920 how vulnerable our population was to outside influence. And we 0:43:54.920 --> 0:43:57.960 actually made it a government campaign funded to make make 0:43:57.960 --> 0:44:00.359 sure there is large public awareness campaigns. And I think 0:44:00.680 --> 0:44:03.319 Facebook and other companies need to do much better and 0:44:03.360 --> 0:44:05.200 step up their job and spend millions and millions of 0:44:05.280 --> 0:44:08.520 dollars on making sure people are aware of these conspiracy 0:44:08.520 --> 0:44:11.960 theories and needs deliberate campaigns because we're very vulnerable, so 0:44:12.000 --> 0:44:14.439 we need some more awareness for sure, but we also 0:44:14.520 --> 0:44:16.640 need the platforms to crack down on the ways that 0:44:16.719 --> 0:44:20.080 they continue to be vulnerable to outside influence. So what 0:44:20.080 --> 0:44:22.719 you're saying is that for all the rhetoric, Facebook really 0:44:22.760 --> 0:44:26.240 hasn't cleaned up the problem of fakes and foreign influence, 0:44:26.239 --> 0:44:28.560 and it could have as profound in effect this year 0:44:28.600 --> 0:44:31.640 as it did in It could totally have as profound 0:44:31.640 --> 0:44:34.000 in effect this year as in now. I do want 0:44:34.040 --> 0:44:36.640 to say there's a lot of people working really hard, 0:44:36.760 --> 0:44:39.520 I'm sure at Facebook and at Twitter to try and 0:44:39.560 --> 0:44:42.279 clean this up. My point is just that they're not 0:44:42.400 --> 0:44:45.600 nearly close enough to make us feel confident about our 0:44:45.640 --> 0:44:48.840 elections not being manipulated. So to close the gap, I 0:44:48.840 --> 0:44:50.840 think we need to be highly aware and spread this 0:44:50.880 --> 0:44:53.759 message to everybody we know that these conspiracy theories are 0:44:53.760 --> 0:44:56.160 going to be very compelling and look very true, and 0:44:56.200 --> 0:44:58.560 they'll spread really quickly. But we're gonna need you know, 0:44:58.560 --> 0:45:01.000 there's a reason we have a five second delay on television. 0:45:01.440 --> 0:45:04.560 You know. We don't want to just automatically broadcast everything 0:45:04.640 --> 0:45:07.360 instantly to millions of people and have it reshared that 0:45:07.520 --> 0:45:11.640 fast networks. When Donald Trump had been elected president without Facebook, 0:45:13.520 --> 0:45:16.560 and I'm not saying that with the political specific political bias, 0:45:16.600 --> 0:45:19.400 I can just tell you that from the perspective of 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:24.960 how media works, social media was critical to his election. 0:45:25.719 --> 0:45:29.239 That's pretty chilling. What about artificial intelligence? Just on how 0:45:29.239 --> 0:45:32.759 concerned are you about that? And this trend to give 0:45:32.800 --> 0:45:37.120 more and more decision making authority to robots or to 0:45:38.000 --> 0:45:42.400 you know, algorithms or too technology in general, versus having 0:45:42.480 --> 0:45:46.240 some kind of human judgment involved. Yeah, this is really 0:45:46.239 --> 0:45:49.600 the critical thing we think of artificial intelligence. People think 0:45:49.640 --> 0:45:53.239 of the Terminator movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger and you know, 0:45:53.400 --> 0:45:55.960 death bots or something like that, and they think it's 0:45:56.000 --> 0:45:58.080 all about the future. Oh, and the future will worry 0:45:58.080 --> 0:46:00.359 the AI is going to kill everybody or something like that. 0:46:00.719 --> 0:46:04.400 And what this misses is that we already live inside 0:46:04.400 --> 0:46:07.760 of a system that is governed and run by artificial 0:46:07.800 --> 0:46:10.560 intelligence algorithms. And that's because when you open up a 0:46:10.560 --> 0:46:13.439 Facebook news feed, that's an AI. It's trying to figure 0:46:13.480 --> 0:46:15.440 out what can I show you that's going to keep 0:46:15.440 --> 0:46:17.759 you hooked. When you open up YouTube and you wake 0:46:17.840 --> 0:46:19.840 up two hours later saying, what the hell just happened 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:23.400 with my time? The reason was because it was playing. 0:46:23.440 --> 0:46:26.000 It was an AI that was playing chess against your mind. 0:46:26.000 --> 0:46:28.279 Think if your mind as a chessboard, and you can. 0:46:28.360 --> 0:46:30.000 It's sitting there and it thinks it knows what it 0:46:30.040 --> 0:46:32.279 wants to do and what your goals it has, But 0:46:32.480 --> 0:46:34.799 YouTube sitting there trying to play chess against your mind, 0:46:34.880 --> 0:46:37.920 asking what are the videos I can put on AutoPlay 0:46:38.000 --> 0:46:40.200 next that will keep you on here for as long 0:46:40.280 --> 0:46:43.520 as possible. And just like when Gary Kasprov played the 0:46:43.560 --> 0:46:46.719 AI at chess and it and and Gary lost, it's 0:46:46.760 --> 0:46:49.520 because the AI was seeing way more moves ahead on 0:46:49.560 --> 0:46:52.760 the chessboard than Gary could see. And at some point 0:46:52.800 --> 0:46:55.440 it can see so many moves ahead that it's done. 0:46:55.560 --> 0:46:58.279 It's it's checkmate against humanity. And the issue that we 0:46:58.360 --> 0:47:01.080 have right now is that when you land on YouTube 0:47:01.360 --> 0:47:03.920 and it sees that many more moves ahead it's not 0:47:03.960 --> 0:47:07.520 aligned with our goals, and YouTube also drove fifteen billion 0:47:07.640 --> 0:47:11.399 views to Alex jones conspiracy theory videos on its own 0:47:11.560 --> 0:47:15.160 using AI, So we already have an AI problem right now, 0:47:15.200 --> 0:47:17.239 which is why it's so critical to bring awareness to 0:47:17.280 --> 0:47:21.359 these issues. In closing, Tristan, what are steps that all 0:47:21.400 --> 0:47:25.200 of us can take to protect ourselves from being manipulated 0:47:25.239 --> 0:47:30.239 by tech until our kids from getting addicted to exactly 0:47:30.320 --> 0:47:33.759 until and unless these companies fix themselves. What can we 0:47:33.840 --> 0:47:37.120 do in the interim to to protect ourselves as much 0:47:37.160 --> 0:47:41.040 as we can? Absolutely, I mean, obviously we don't want 0:47:41.040 --> 0:47:44.400 to wait five years for tech companies to finally come around, 0:47:44.400 --> 0:47:46.520 so we have to have choices we can make right now. 0:47:46.560 --> 0:47:48.600 And the good news is we can. Um A bunch 0:47:48.640 --> 0:47:50.880 of these, by the way, are on our website, Humane 0:47:50.920 --> 0:47:53.239 tech dot com. Um. But you know, you can do 0:47:53.320 --> 0:47:56.440 things like turn off all notifications. Most people don't realize 0:47:56.440 --> 0:48:00.640 that notifications on your phone are mostly invented by machines 0:48:01.120 --> 0:48:03.399 trying to find a way to get you coming back, saying, oh, 0:48:03.520 --> 0:48:05.600 ten new friends posted some likes over here. Don't you 0:48:05.600 --> 0:48:07.839 want to see what those are? Just turn all that 0:48:07.880 --> 0:48:10.440 stuff off. Try to make as many notifications on your 0:48:10.440 --> 0:48:13.319 phone off as possible. Um, when I say this, you'll 0:48:13.360 --> 0:48:15.280 hear it, but you probably won't do it. So actually 0:48:15.280 --> 0:48:18.480 consider what you know. Can I turn off notifications? Am 0:48:18.480 --> 0:48:21.320 I willing to make that step? I really recommended. Another 0:48:21.360 --> 0:48:23.600 thing is setting your phone to gray scale. If you 0:48:23.600 --> 0:48:26.040 feel really addicted, every time you turn your phone over 0:48:26.080 --> 0:48:28.560 and you see those colors, it's lighting up some of 0:48:28.600 --> 0:48:31.440 that dopamine rewards, just even if by looking at it, 0:48:31.719 --> 0:48:33.359 And if you set your phone to gray scale, it's 0:48:33.400 --> 0:48:37.240 sort of cuts out about fift of that like addictive feeling. 0:48:39.640 --> 0:48:42.920 Our listeners know. Yeah, you go into uh your on 0:48:42.920 --> 0:48:45.880 an iPhone, you go into general settings, and then general 0:48:46.360 --> 0:48:49.120 and then accessibility and the scroll all the way to 0:48:49.120 --> 0:48:53.720 the bottom to accessibility shortcut. Well, this is a good example. 0:48:53.760 --> 0:48:55.279 And this is where Apple you know, when the new 0:48:55.320 --> 0:48:57.239 iPhone comes out in a few months that they can 0:48:57.280 --> 0:48:59.560 make this a lot easier for people. But I really 0:48:59.600 --> 0:49:02.440 recommend and just not using social media, just you know, 0:49:02.880 --> 0:49:05.200 at least uninstalling it from your phone and only using 0:49:05.200 --> 0:49:09.200 it when you're on a desktop. Um, and that that 0:49:09.239 --> 0:49:12.399 will never happen. By the way, I did do that 0:49:13.160 --> 0:49:16.719 with Facebook. I should probably do it with Instagram as well, 0:49:17.200 --> 0:49:20.480 um Twitter. I couldn't give up, but it made a 0:49:20.520 --> 0:49:22.520 huge difference in my life not to have Facebook on 0:49:22.560 --> 0:49:25.000 my phone. I tried to turn my phone screen to 0:49:25.080 --> 0:49:29.239 black and white per Tristan's recommendation. That lasted about fifteen 0:49:29.520 --> 0:49:32.160 minutes because I missed it. I was like, the world 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:35.040 just doesn't feel good with a black and white phone. 0:49:35.280 --> 0:49:38.840 See what's my problem, Tristan. You don't have a problem, Katie. Know. 0:49:38.920 --> 0:49:40.719 The thing is that I think people need to be 0:49:40.760 --> 0:49:43.799 able to switch. I think the thing is people need 0:49:43.800 --> 0:49:45.600 to be able to switch it back and forth between 0:49:45.640 --> 0:49:47.319 color and black and white. The point isn't to stay 0:49:47.360 --> 0:49:49.640 in black and white all the time. It's just that, um, 0:49:49.680 --> 0:49:51.440 you know, keep it in black and white by default, 0:49:51.920 --> 0:49:53.600 because then you you actually get used to it. You 0:49:53.640 --> 0:49:56.440 actually it starts to feel overwhelming to see color. It 0:49:56.520 --> 0:49:58.719 feels like whoa, that's that's too much. And that's kind 0:49:58.719 --> 0:50:00.840 of where you want to be is to remind yourself 0:50:00.840 --> 0:50:03.480 that this is a tool in my pocket. It's only 0:50:03.520 --> 0:50:05.600 a tool, and I want to make sure I'm putting 0:50:05.640 --> 0:50:08.000 it in its place. That that's the role I wanted 0:50:08.040 --> 0:50:09.719 to serve in black and white can be a helpful mind. 0:50:09.800 --> 0:50:12.440 And what about for kids? Real quickly, Tristan, because a 0:50:12.440 --> 0:50:16.200 lot of our listeners have children or grandchildren. I find 0:50:16.280 --> 0:50:19.040 that it's quite depressing when I see parents at the 0:50:19.160 --> 0:50:22.959 park or playground. They're so you know, they have They're 0:50:23.000 --> 0:50:25.040 so busy looking at their phone. And I'm not being 0:50:25.120 --> 0:50:27.719 judge here because I probably would be doing the same 0:50:27.760 --> 0:50:30.399 thing if my kids were younger. But they are not 0:50:30.600 --> 0:50:33.520 interacting with their kids in the same way. And it's 0:50:33.640 --> 0:50:36.400 or people having dinner. I don't know. I'm sure you 0:50:36.440 --> 0:50:39.480 all have seen this. Nothing is more depressing than to 0:50:39.560 --> 0:50:42.720 see a couple at a nice restaurant on their phones 0:50:42.960 --> 0:50:46.160 or even a family. I get so bummed out. And 0:50:46.200 --> 0:50:48.799 again I'm not being judge e listeners, but it just 0:50:49.200 --> 0:50:51.000 it's just, I don't know, there's something about it that 0:50:51.040 --> 0:50:55.160 just makes me incredibly sad. You know, this is the conversation. 0:50:55.320 --> 0:50:57.439 I mean, this is the culture that we're that these 0:50:57.440 --> 0:51:01.200 design choices are creating, and um, you know, this is 0:51:01.239 --> 0:51:02.839 going to be up to us in the short term 0:51:02.880 --> 0:51:05.319 to realize is this the society we want to live in? 0:51:05.560 --> 0:51:08.279 Is this? How is this who we are? Um? And 0:51:08.320 --> 0:51:10.120 I think that that's a question that all parents have 0:51:10.239 --> 0:51:13.080 to start asking themselves. Um. And you can use the 0:51:13.080 --> 0:51:15.000 tips that we just talked about in the meantime to 0:51:15.200 --> 0:51:17.600 try and use it less. And finally, finally, there are 0:51:17.680 --> 0:51:20.040 a couple of apps that you recommend to make this 0:51:20.080 --> 0:51:22.080 easier for all of us. Can you just briefly talk 0:51:22.120 --> 0:51:25.920 about some of those. Yet you can download and installed Moments, 0:51:25.960 --> 0:51:27.799 which is an app for the iPhone that tracks how 0:51:27.880 --> 0:51:30.080 much time you spend. You know, I mean that helps 0:51:30.120 --> 0:51:32.280 to sort of see and get a picture of where 0:51:32.280 --> 0:51:34.359 your time is going. But I do really think that 0:51:34.760 --> 0:51:37.200 the much better thing is simply to look at your 0:51:37.200 --> 0:51:39.480 phone and you know, bleep most of the apps you're 0:51:39.480 --> 0:51:42.680 not using, turn off notifications, set it to black and white. Um, 0:51:42.680 --> 0:51:45.480 there's a couple other tips on on the website. It 0:51:45.480 --> 0:51:47.480 can really make a big difference. And just simply being 0:51:47.480 --> 0:51:49.840 aware of this can change your relationship to it. And 0:51:50.200 --> 0:51:53.160 you know, I think that realizing that you're missing out 0:51:53.160 --> 0:51:56.879 on life. Talk about not being present, whether it means 0:51:56.920 --> 0:51:59.000 staring at your phone when you're in a new city 0:51:59.080 --> 0:52:02.680 and you don't even know a your surroundings, or not 0:52:03.160 --> 0:52:06.239 ever being bored, which is the key to creativity. In 0:52:06.280 --> 0:52:09.560 this hour, I did Tristan where You're You're featured. One 0:52:09.600 --> 0:52:12.640 of the things I realized and thought about is the 0:52:12.719 --> 0:52:15.759 part of our prefrontal cortex that allows us to be 0:52:15.920 --> 0:52:19.120 creative that fires up when we have a creative thought, 0:52:19.200 --> 0:52:23.319 cannot really operate or function when we're constantly distracted by 0:52:23.320 --> 0:52:27.400 our phone. So you know, every moment, whether it's driving, 0:52:27.640 --> 0:52:29.600 you know, if you're in the passenger seat of a car, 0:52:29.840 --> 0:52:33.920 or you're just you know, waiting, nobody ever has this 0:52:34.120 --> 0:52:37.839 time to just sit and think, and that is absolutely 0:52:37.960 --> 0:52:41.440 key to being creative and coming up with ideas and 0:52:41.480 --> 0:52:45.560 having epiphanies of all kinds. And that's one thing I 0:52:45.600 --> 0:52:50.360 think about too, This this constant stimulation which only increases 0:52:50.400 --> 0:52:54.000 the cortisol and doesn't allow us to have a moment 0:52:54.239 --> 0:52:59.719 where we can think and consider and contemplate things. That's 0:53:00.160 --> 0:53:02.719 be right. And that's why this is such an invisible 0:53:02.760 --> 0:53:06.560 problem beneath all other problems, because every choice we make 0:53:06.560 --> 0:53:09.319 in our lives is on top of the background of 0:53:09.360 --> 0:53:13.600 how our mind is feeling, thinking, um choosing, and how 0:53:13.640 --> 0:53:17.000 we think feeling. Shoes are basically, you know, never been 0:53:17.000 --> 0:53:20.680 more influenced by how our phones shape our attention and 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:23.640 whether you care about creativity or mental health or loneliness. 0:53:24.080 --> 0:53:26.279 We're gonna be publishing something soon that's kind of a 0:53:26.360 --> 0:53:29.719 ledger of all of these negative externalities, these cultural harms 0:53:29.760 --> 0:53:31.640 on society, so that people can really see it all 0:53:31.680 --> 0:53:34.600 in one place, because the effects are so profound and 0:53:34.600 --> 0:53:37.799 so invisible. Well, I'm so proud of you raising these 0:53:37.840 --> 0:53:41.880 issues at the ripe old age of thirty four being 0:53:42.440 --> 0:53:45.560 thirty three still but I know the Atlantic called you 0:53:45.640 --> 0:53:48.799 the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience, and 0:53:49.280 --> 0:53:54.200 I really appreciate everything you're doing, the consciousness you're raising 0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:57.200 about these issues. If people want to learn more, they 0:53:57.200 --> 0:54:00.319 want to actually support what you're doing, triest On, how 0:54:00.360 --> 0:54:04.040 can we do that? Yeah, just go to the website 0:54:04.400 --> 0:54:06.920 humane tech dot com, which is for our Center for 0:54:07.040 --> 0:54:10.200 Humane Technology, and um, there's ways to get involved, join 0:54:10.239 --> 0:54:12.839 the community, make a donation. Um. You know, we see 0:54:12.840 --> 0:54:15.120 this as a team effort, and this is a team 0:54:15.200 --> 0:54:18.439 humanity really protecting and fighting for for the world we want. 0:54:22.360 --> 0:54:24.520 I was more than a little freaked out after speaking 0:54:24.560 --> 0:54:28.160 with Tristan. What about you, Brian? For sure? But knowledge 0:54:28.200 --> 0:54:30.000 is power, as they say, and I think it's time 0:54:30.000 --> 0:54:31.799 for a lot of us to take a hard look 0:54:31.880 --> 0:54:35.319 at our tech habits, myself included, and just how much 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:38.799 time they're sucking up in our lives. That's true, and 0:54:38.840 --> 0:54:41.000 I think if you're just conscious of it, it does 0:54:41.160 --> 0:54:43.360 help you. And I think there are times when you 0:54:43.400 --> 0:54:47.040 can leave it at home. I know parents and people say, well, 0:54:47.040 --> 0:54:49.480 what if my kid calls, what if there's an emergency? 0:54:49.520 --> 0:54:53.200 And I feel that way too, But I also feel 0:54:53.200 --> 0:54:55.640 like you have to take a break from it sometimes 0:54:55.800 --> 0:55:00.640 and take a walk, don't listen to our podcast. Wait wait, 0:55:00.680 --> 0:55:02.759 did I just say that? But sometimes you just need 0:55:02.800 --> 0:55:05.839 to leave it at home, get outside and be on tether. 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:09.239 Don't have it permanently, you know, attached to your hand. 0:55:09.719 --> 0:55:11.920 By the way, I have a friend who has two phones, 0:55:12.160 --> 0:55:15.880 one for during the week which has social media and 0:55:15.960 --> 0:55:18.480 all the bells and whistles of a smartphone, and one 0:55:18.560 --> 0:55:21.640 for the weekend, which is just texting and calling in 0:55:21.719 --> 0:55:23.600 case his kids need to reach him. I thought that 0:55:23.640 --> 0:55:26.000 was an interesting idea. Must be nice to have such 0:55:26.200 --> 0:55:29.600 rich friends, Brian. Meanwhile, stop checking your phone a hundred 0:55:29.640 --> 0:55:33.359 and fifty times a day, people, Brian. I downloaded that 0:55:33.400 --> 0:55:36.799 Moment app and the worst day I was on my 0:55:36.840 --> 0:55:42.400 phone for ready nine hours now. In fairness, I was sick, 0:55:42.840 --> 0:55:45.440 I had like the flu, and I had nothing to 0:55:45.480 --> 0:55:50.440 do but lying in bed in my phone. Well, I 0:55:50.480 --> 0:55:53.319 was watching The Crown. If I recall and on my 0:55:53.360 --> 0:55:56.000 phone and you weren't transfixed by the Crown, I can't 0:55:56.000 --> 0:55:58.399 believe I was. I was, and it was crazy because 0:55:58.440 --> 0:56:00.359 I had to keep rewinding it because I'm us things 0:56:00.360 --> 0:56:02.320 because I'd be on my phone anyway. I got a 0:56:02.360 --> 0:56:04.799 lot of problems people. That does it for this week's show, 0:56:05.120 --> 0:56:08.040 Thanks as usual to our pod squad over at Stitcher. 0:56:08.080 --> 0:56:11.319 That's Gianna Palmer, Jared O'Connell and Nora Richie. And thanks 0:56:11.360 --> 0:56:13.800 as well to the team over at Katie Curric Media. 0:56:13.880 --> 0:56:16.880 That would be Alison Bresnik, Emily Beena and Beth Demas. 0:56:17.320 --> 0:56:20.319 Mark Phillips wrote our theme music, and Brian and I 0:56:20.360 --> 0:56:23.680 are the show's executive producers. For Better for Worse, I'm 0:56:23.760 --> 0:56:26.719 under Katie Couric on social media. Instagram is where I 0:56:26.760 --> 0:56:31.840 shine people. Brian tweets his little hard out at Goldsmith b. Meanwhile, 0:56:31.880 --> 0:56:34.560 don't forget to call in with your stories about discrimination 0:56:34.680 --> 0:56:37.120 and gender bias at work. That number again is nine 0:56:37.120 --> 0:56:39.960 to nine to to four four six three seven, or 0:56:40.040 --> 0:56:44.000 drop us a line at comments at currect podcast dot 0:56:44.040 --> 0:56:46.600 com and by the way, if you haven't already, please 0:56:46.680 --> 0:56:49.200 leave us a rating over at Apple Podcast and be 0:56:49.280 --> 0:56:52.239 sure to subscribe to the show as well. Thank you 0:56:52.360 --> 0:56:54.680 so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.