Speaker 1: Hi, Katie, So, how would you describe your relationship with
Speaker 1: your smartphone? Um? Dependent? I've got a problem. It's bad.
Speaker 1: I would use the word obsessive to describe me. Probably
Speaker 1: not as much as you, but me too. So that's
Speaker 1: the focus of today's show, technology specifically, are growing dependence
Speaker 1: on it or should I say our addiction to it? Now,
Speaker 1: we asked all of you to write in and call
Speaker 1: us with tales from the tech trenches. You had a
Speaker 1: lot to say. Angie loved Joy on Twitter wrote, I
Speaker 1: have fiber my algia and no one I've been over
Speaker 1: using my phone when my thumb on the phone holding
Speaker 1: hand starts to hurt. Even through the pain, I sometimes
Speaker 1: soldier through like it's my life's work to check social
Speaker 1: media and scroll through the news. Ouch. I feel your pain. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't exactly feel your pain, Angie, but I understand
Speaker 1: where you're coming from and share a Dupuis, which is
Speaker 1: a beautiful last name. On Twitter, told us about the
Speaker 1: moment she knew she had a problem with tech, writing,
Speaker 1: I realized that when my children were having to ask
Speaker 1: me questions multiple times because I was engrossed in my phone.
Speaker 1: You know we've all been there, Yes, Nalini Sang on
Speaker 1: Twitter said, I give myself test to see how long
Speaker 1: I will go without looking at my phone, and I
Speaker 1: feel so quickly. I noticed when a friend's dad forced
Speaker 1: me to turn off my phone during a dinner. We
Speaker 1: have a sickness as I type on my phone. Listen.
Speaker 1: I agree with all of the tweets that we got
Speaker 1: about this subject. We are addicted, and we are unfortunately
Speaker 1: ignoring our children at times, ignoring our spouses or our friends.
Speaker 1: There's an actual term Brian for it. It's called fubbing
Speaker 1: p h U B b I n G. That means
Speaker 1: blowing someone off to look at your telephone. And it's
Speaker 1: so aggravating, and I'm sure it is for other people,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure I do it all the time never.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's maybe not entirely our fault, because
Speaker 1: in hard our phones and these tech platforms are designed
Speaker 1: to addict us, which we talk about in today's show.
Speaker 1: That's right, in an attention economy, that's definitely true. We
Speaker 1: also got this very interesting voicemail from a listener named
Speaker 1: Steve who tried to return to a flip phone. Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Steve Glenn. I'm an airline pilot and
Speaker 1: for eight months last year I went back to a
Speaker 1: flip phone. I decided I was spending too much time
Speaker 1: on my smartphone, and so I got a Kyo Seros
Speaker 1: flip phone like they used in the military, and I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed unplugging a bit and not being as accessible
Speaker 1: all the time. But I finally had to go back
Speaker 1: and buy an iPhone because as an airline captain, I
Speaker 1: had to access the Internet and access company websites using
Speaker 1: my smartphone. And also texting is going to a different
Speaker 1: type of technology where people send pictures and people send
Speaker 1: files with texts that you just can't do that with
Speaker 1: with pumps anymore. So I had my my experiment was
Speaker 1: a failure. I had to go back to an iPhone.
Speaker 1: I try and limit my use of it more than
Speaker 1: I used to. But I thought you'd like to hear that.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, well, Steve Glenn. A noble effort,
Speaker 1: we must say, going back to a flip phone. How
Speaker 1: luddite ish of you. But you can see, Brian why
Speaker 1: that would be really hard because so much of our
Speaker 1: day to day activity and interactions require, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a smartphone and not a flip phone. There's even an
Speaker 1: app Katie called Moment, which I was yes, I have
Speaker 1: a very long time, and it tells you not only
Speaker 1: how much time you're spending on your phone, but what
Speaker 1: you're actually doing on your phone. So you kind of
Speaker 1: a lie to yourself and you think, oh, I'm checking
Speaker 1: my email and you're really on Instagram and Twitter, and
Speaker 1: then you get sucked into a vortex of crap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and self loathing for being sucked into a vortex of crap.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's a vicious cycle. Clearly, technology is eating
Speaker 1: up our time, attention, and changing our way of life.
Speaker 1: Loyal listeners, you may recall when we talk with psychologist
Speaker 1: Jane Twangy about the costs and consequences of endless screen
Speaker 1: time is especially for kids and teens. I encourage you
Speaker 1: all to listen to that episode if you haven't, its
Speaker 1: number thirty six. But for this episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: get into these topics from the perspective of a tech insider,
Speaker 1: and I can't think of many people better on this topic, Katie,
Speaker 1: than today's guest Tristan Harris. In his twenties, he sold
Speaker 1: his tech company to Google and they worked there as
Speaker 1: an in house design ethicist of all things, which I
Speaker 1: think many people think is probably an oxymoron when it
Speaker 1: comes to big tech companies, But The Atlantic called trist
Speaker 1: On the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience.
Speaker 1: His latest project is something called the Center for Humane Technology,
Speaker 1: which he started in February, bringing together many former insiders
Speaker 1: in the tech world who believe we need to design
Speaker 1: technology in a different, more humane way. To give you
Speaker 1: an idea, here's how the Center on its website refers
Speaker 1: to Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. They say these are
Speaker 1: not neutral products, they are part of a system designed
Speaker 1: to addict us. Now. I originally spoke with Triston for
Speaker 1: my Nachio documentary series available gosh on demand and ironically
Speaker 1: on YouTube, Facebook, and Hulu, but I wanted to continue
Speaker 1: our conversation. He's such a smart guy an excellent communicator.
Speaker 1: So for today's episode, we talked with Tristan about how
Speaker 1: tech hooks us and what ethical design means to him.
Speaker 1: And to start things off, I asked him how he
Speaker 1: landed at Google and why he left. Well, UM, I
Speaker 1: was a tech entrepreneur when I was twenty two at
Speaker 1: a Stanford I started a small tech company and UM
Speaker 1: It's a long story, but after about five or six years,
Speaker 1: we we soft landed the company at Google, we were acquired,
Speaker 1: and after a year into being at Google, I became
Speaker 1: kind of disenchanted with where things in the tech industry
Speaker 1: we're heading that instead of really building tools that were
Speaker 1: empowering people, it was more and more becoming this race
Speaker 1: between these different companies of getting people's attention and exploiting
Speaker 1: people's psychology. And I I felt alarmed by this. And
Speaker 1: I was working with the Gmail team and Gmail has
Speaker 1: its own problems with people feeling addicted. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: made this you know, this presentation about Google's moral responsibility
Speaker 1: and shaping a billion people's attention. It was sort of
Speaker 1: a slide deck and it exploded. I mean it went
Speaker 1: throughout the company. Tens of thousands of people saw it.
Speaker 1: And um, that led to becoming a design ethicist, where
Speaker 1: I basically was asking the question, which know what had
Speaker 1: asked before? You know, how do you ethically steer a
Speaker 1: billion people's attention? We should pause you for a second
Speaker 1: because you mentioned this slide show. You designed this hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four page Google slide presentation which was called
Speaker 1: a call to Minimize distraction and respect users attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was in two I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: long time ago that this these concerns first rose up,
Speaker 1: and you did this as a Google employee, correct, intending
Speaker 1: to sort of share it within your team. But then
Speaker 1: I think Larry Page saw it and other senior leaders
Speaker 1: with in the company. And what was the reaction to
Speaker 1: the concerns that you were raising. Yeah, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: they were super jiggy about that. Well, you know, um,
Speaker 1: I was. I was nervous about that presentation because I
Speaker 1: mean I was ready at the time to leave the company.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like this was the thing that
Speaker 1: was most concerning to me. Um. But before I left,
Speaker 1: I wanted to raise alarms about this issue. And I
Speaker 1: had a whole background prior to this on how people's
Speaker 1: minds are manipulated, an influence when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was a magician. I studied at this persuasive tech lab,
Speaker 1: so I understood that technology could really manipulate people's minds.
Speaker 1: And that's why I made this presentation. So I sent
Speaker 1: it to ten people and said, hey, I want your feedback.
Speaker 1: It was just a slide deck head, give me your feedback.
Speaker 1: I went home. I came back the next morning, I
Speaker 1: checked my email and I had like, you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred emails about this presentation, and I clicked on the
Speaker 1: you know, their their links, and when you click on
Speaker 1: the link, it shows you, um, inside of Google slides
Speaker 1: the number of people who are looking at it at
Speaker 1: the same time, and there was something like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty people that that morning. When I looked at
Speaker 1: it later that day, there was four hundred. Uh And
Speaker 1: just through the next you know week, it was just exploding.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I had heard that Larry Page it
Speaker 1: had two or three meetings that day where people brought
Speaker 1: it up in conversation with him. Uh And so it
Speaker 1: became this kind of momentum. I wouldn't I don't want
Speaker 1: to overstate its influence. I mean, I don't think it
Speaker 1: changed the course of anything, but that it definitely rose
Speaker 1: alarms and people started to talk about it. But you
Speaker 1: wrote something that I thought was pretty smart and prescient,
Speaker 1: which was never before in history. Had the decisions of
Speaker 1: a handful of designers, mostly men, white, living in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: aged thirty five, working at three companies that is, Google, Apple,
Speaker 1: and Facebook, had so much impact on how millions of
Speaker 1: people around the world spend their attention. We should feel
Speaker 1: an enormous responsibility to get this right. True now more
Speaker 1: than ever. Um. And so what did Google do in
Speaker 1: in response to this besides change your job? Um? Not much.
Speaker 1: I mean I was given this space to kind of
Speaker 1: explore these topics, and I didn't get fired. I really
Speaker 1: just focused on understanding what it meant to hold that responsibility.
Speaker 1: It's not like we've ever had There's no academic discipline,
Speaker 1: there's no university that could teach you this is how
Speaker 1: we do manipulation of a billion people's attention, and that
Speaker 1: never existed before. So this was a new field, and
Speaker 1: so I did mostly a lot of research. Um. And
Speaker 1: in terms of things changing at Google, I tried bringing
Speaker 1: this up with some of the key products that I
Speaker 1: thought would be most important to change, so Android because
Speaker 1: that's the home screen, the phone notifications that people billions
Speaker 1: of people live by, Chromes, the web browser. People spend
Speaker 1: most of their time in UH and Gmail. But it
Speaker 1: was really hard to get a concerted focus on saying
Speaker 1: we have this is an enormously important topic. This is
Speaker 1: literally everything, and we need a whole different way of
Speaker 1: thinking about this. And I was unsuccessful at getting getting
Speaker 1: those neems to change inside Google. Well, you must have
Speaker 1: been considered such a massive disruptor, Tristan. I mean here
Speaker 1: you are saying, hey, hold the phone, everybody, and these
Speaker 1: companies that are growing like weeds, and obviously the concerns
Speaker 1: that you were raising were anathetical to their business model, right,
Speaker 1: you know, It's it's funny, Katie, because it wasn't an
Speaker 1: explicit There was never an explicit responsive we can't do that.
Speaker 1: You're asking us to make less money? No, you know
Speaker 1: it was I never got that response. There this be
Speaker 1: kind of the smiling and nodding, but then no traction,
Speaker 1: no momentum. Right, So I talked to you know, an Android,
Speaker 1: the Android team, and say, well, what if we designed
Speaker 1: it this way we help people check their phone less
Speaker 1: and there'd be this kind of smiling and nodding and yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we could do that, and there's some teams that
Speaker 1: are kind of working on that, but then nothing much
Speaker 1: would really happen. There was no concerted effort. And and
Speaker 1: this is why ultimately I did leave, is because I
Speaker 1: realized that there needed to be a much bigger public
Speaker 1: conversation in public demand for this stuff. But I will
Speaker 1: say there's a difference between and roid, you know, which
Speaker 1: is the how your mobile phone works that doesn't need
Speaker 1: to maximize how much time you spend on the phone.
Speaker 1: It's really it's like, no one goes to work at
Speaker 1: Androids saying, gosh, how do we just steal everyone's time.
Speaker 1: No one says that YouTube, on the other hand, that
Speaker 1: is their goal. I mean, that is the business model.
Speaker 1: Is more time watching videos equals more money for YouTube.
Speaker 1: That means more attention to the advertisements, right exactly. That
Speaker 1: means more more attention to the advertising. Advertising is the
Speaker 1: driving business model behind this, this addiction to stealing people's
Speaker 1: attention and time. So Tristan, let's just step back for
Speaker 1: a second and talk about how and why these tech
Speaker 1: companies addict us. It's gone to the point where we
Speaker 1: check our phones more than a d and fifty times
Speaker 1: per day. Knowledge workers on average spend a third of
Speaker 1: their day just doing email. Um, as you said, it's
Speaker 1: sort of central to the business model of these tech platforms.
Speaker 1: So can you talk to us about, you know, how
Speaker 1: and why this happened. Yeah, well, you know it starts
Speaker 1: by you know, someone building an app and saying I
Speaker 1: gotta get you to use it. So what they what
Speaker 1: they want is they want people, you know, to register accounts.
Speaker 1: They want people to create new accounts and new users
Speaker 1: to show up, and then they want each of those
Speaker 1: accounts to come back every single day. They want you
Speaker 1: to be hooked, So they have to start finding reasons
Speaker 1: for how can I get you to come back tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So if your Instagram and you say, okay, if this
Speaker 1: in the early days of Instagram, I know the guys
Speaker 1: who made it, they went to school with me, Mike
Speaker 1: and Kevin, you know, and they're thinking, okay, how do
Speaker 1: we keep people coming back to this photo sharing app?
Speaker 1: And they didn't always have this feature called the number
Speaker 1: of followers you have? Right, why would they add that?
Speaker 1: We think that that's just natural, that's just the world
Speaker 1: we live in. But the number of followers we have.
Speaker 1: Showing that number to you is a good way to
Speaker 1: get you to come back tomorrow because you want to
Speaker 1: know if that number went up, And you also want
Speaker 1: to know how many likes you get on each photo
Speaker 1: you post, and that's another reason to get you to
Speaker 1: come back. And so think of these as like biological
Speaker 1: organisms sitting on a table and are mutating these new limbs,
Speaker 1: which are just these things that are good at getting
Speaker 1: you to come back and to stay longer. And if
Speaker 1: that thing works, it keeps that limb, and it starts,
Speaker 1: it continues to evolve, and so it's involving all of
Speaker 1: these new ways. Likes, um messages, shares, filters, these are
Speaker 1: all ways to keep you coming back and hooked. But
Speaker 1: what we think we miss is these cultural externalities. This
Speaker 1: entire selfie culture where you know, young you know, teenagers
Speaker 1: and a lot of women take these selfies over and
Speaker 1: over again of basically their their appearance. And let's say
Speaker 1: that Instagram didn't have a feature called the number of
Speaker 1: followers you have. Let's say they never went down that road.
Speaker 1: Would we have an entire culture where everyone's taking photos
Speaker 1: of themselves and posting it on social media if we
Speaker 1: didn't have the notion of followers for ourselves. I mean,
Speaker 1: these design techniques are all being done because they're good
Speaker 1: at hooking people, but downstream they create these cultural externalities.
Speaker 1: You have people being more concerned that they're self worth
Speaker 1: is directly tied to how many likes they on in
Speaker 1: that last photo. And um, I think we're confusing a
Speaker 1: whole generation of children to attach their self worth and
Speaker 1: belonging to the wrong place, not just children triest On.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am always checking my likes on Instagram
Speaker 1: and my followers and has it gone up? And you
Speaker 1: know what comments have I gotten? And on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I kind of appreciate the community that Instagram allows you
Speaker 1: to have. You do feel like you're kind of relating
Speaker 1: to people who have similar interests, and I appreciate hearing
Speaker 1: from people. But the flip side of that for me
Speaker 1: is this kind of hunger and almost frantic feeling that, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to get more followers. I need to make
Speaker 1: sure they like what I'm posting. And I'm embarrassed to
Speaker 1: admit that. But I'm a sixty one year old woman.
Speaker 1: Think about the impact this has on teenagers who are
Speaker 1: still developing their self esteem and sense of worth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think of this a lot like sugar. I mean,
Speaker 1: think of our human evolutionary instincts. I mean, sugar tastes
Speaker 1: good to all human animals. We're built to love sugar. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a reason because it used to be really rare.
Speaker 1: Um It's just like social approval. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: reason that it should feel good to get those likes
Speaker 1: and to get that social validation and approval, but we
Speaker 1: weren't built to get it at this level of frequency
Speaker 1: dripping into our our mind every you know, five ten
Speaker 1: minutes with a new batch of notifications on our film.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, two things really struck me from Katie's
Speaker 1: Natchio hour on tech addiction, which is the physiological reaction
Speaker 1: to this stimulus, the stress hormone cortisol that we're getting
Speaker 1: sort of overdosed on because we feel nervous about our
Speaker 1: text and our emails and checking them, are not checking them.
Speaker 1: And then dopamine, which is this um this pleasure neurotransmitter,
Speaker 1: neurotransmitter you know this, I don't um that kind of
Speaker 1: gives us a high when we're getting social validation on
Speaker 1: these apps and we're not meant or we weren't designed
Speaker 1: to receive these two things this at the level we are,
Speaker 1: with the frequency we are. That's right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's how we can think about how we fix this,
Speaker 1: which is to say, we need to turn the lens
Speaker 1: back at ourselves and say, what were we built for?
Speaker 1: You know how? How are all of our evolutionary instincts
Speaker 1: tuned and how do we respect those instincts. So a
Speaker 1: good example is something like a simple one that leads
Speaker 1: to phones is trigger colors. So red is a trigger color.
Speaker 1: So every single time you look at your phone and
Speaker 1: you see that red dot with the number of notifications,
Speaker 1: it's triggering you into a little bit of a a
Speaker 1: kind of alarm or or or sort of you know,
Speaker 1: grabbing your attention, like maybe I should see there's there's
Speaker 1: something important there that I have to check into. Right,
Speaker 1: But do we want to be sounding the alarm inside
Speaker 1: of our minds every single time we check our phone
Speaker 1: with notifications? You know, in the same way that social
Speaker 1: validation or social approval are really important things to care about.
Speaker 1: It's useful back in the savannah to know what do
Speaker 1: my peers think of me? Otherwise how else are you
Speaker 1: going to survive in the community or the tribe. But
Speaker 1: we weren't meant for a virtual community of tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people around the world to be dosing us
Speaker 1: with little bits of social approval and dopamine every ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And so I think we have to ask how do
Speaker 1: we go back to being in alignment with how our
Speaker 1: human evolutionary instincts work? Before we even talk about that, Trystan,
Speaker 1: I want to dive in a little deeper on some
Speaker 1: of the techniques that we can be aware of and
Speaker 1: ways we're being manipulated. You mentioned the red lettering for alerts.
Speaker 1: Can you help us understand other ways they do it
Speaker 1: so we can aware be aware that we're being manipulated.
Speaker 1: Oh man, there's just so many. One thing that really
Speaker 1: struck me in your writing was the bottomless bowl. Can
Speaker 1: you explain what that is? Sure? Um? You know, so
Speaker 1: a bottomless bowl. There's this study that if you give
Speaker 1: people a bowl of soup, and you know, we think
Speaker 1: we're in control and we choose how much food we eat,
Speaker 1: and you give a bunch of people sitting down at
Speaker 1: the table a bowl setter bowls of soup, and some
Speaker 1: of the bowls of soup um are just regular, there's
Speaker 1: all the same size, But some of the other bowls
Speaker 1: of soup have a little um pipe at the bottom
Speaker 1: and it's actually refilling the bowl of soup as you're
Speaker 1: drinking it. And the question was would the people who
Speaker 1: are drinking from the bottomless bowl notice and to stop eating?
Speaker 1: And the point of the study basically showed that people
Speaker 1: don't notice the bottomless bowl. Uh. And that is what
Speaker 1: how our technology works. The Instagram feed and the Facebook
Speaker 1: feed and the Twitter feed all scroll infinitely, right. They
Speaker 1: could choose to not do that. They could have stopping cues.
Speaker 1: Your your mind is built for something called a stopping queue,
Speaker 1: where basically we expect that there's going to be a
Speaker 1: queue that says, Okay, now this is done, and your
Speaker 1: mind kind of wakes up and figures out what do
Speaker 1: I want to do next? But if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: hook your attention and keep you going for as long
Speaker 1: as possible, my job is to figure out how can
Speaker 1: I remove all of those stopping cues so I can
Speaker 1: keep you sucked in as long as possible. What other
Speaker 1: things other than the bottomless bowl? Uh? I was interested
Speaker 1: that President Trump's digital campaign advisor was able to plant
Speaker 1: these ads, and of course we're going to get into
Speaker 1: the political uses of these big tech companies in a minute,
Speaker 1: but that they could measure if red or green or blue,
Speaker 1: the different backgrounds for and and and the kind of
Speaker 1: words that seem to be attracting more people on the
Speaker 1: design that would suck people in or kind of agitate them,
Speaker 1: and they were able to figure out what was the
Speaker 1: most effective way of in essence, trashing Hillary Clinton? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this, this whole. All of these systems are
Speaker 1: basically asking one question, which is, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we get your attention? And the best way to get
Speaker 1: your attention is what works on your evolutionary instincts? Does
Speaker 1: red work better on your evolutionary instincts? Are on your mind?
Speaker 1: Does blue work better? Does this word work better for you?
Speaker 1: If I use this political message? Does that work better
Speaker 1: for you? We've reared so far away from any authentic
Speaker 1: relationship between a person trying to just talk to you
Speaker 1: versus a person and sitting there scanning all of the
Speaker 1: things you ever said on social media and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out you use um. Whenever you talk about a
Speaker 1: concept like immigration, you always use these three adjectives. And
Speaker 1: let's say they're positive or they're negative. Right now, if
Speaker 1: I'm a political advertiser, what do I want to do
Speaker 1: to manipulate you? Well, I want to use your own
Speaker 1: words back to you so you most agree with me.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to start repeating your own viewpoints, your
Speaker 1: own opinions back at you with your exact word choices.
Speaker 1: So you nod your head in agreement, like, man, that
Speaker 1: person really understands me and what we've created with social
Speaker 1: media and Facebook. Beyond the addiction layer, the addiction just
Speaker 1: sets up the kind of matrix everyone's jacked in. So
Speaker 1: now the moment they wake up in the morning, their
Speaker 1: thoughts are being sort of influenced by these phones. The
Speaker 1: second layer is that we've sold that to the highest
Speaker 1: bidder because of advertising, and we've enabled anyone to go
Speaker 1: in there and say I can target the precise messages
Speaker 1: that will resonate with your specific mind. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what Cambridge Analytica was in the last election. They were
Speaker 1: trying to sell campaigns on the on the ability to
Speaker 1: specifically persuade people using the things that would be most
Speaker 1: persuasive per mind, so they'd have a profile that your
Speaker 1: mind is influenced. Um, you know, more by authority. If
Speaker 1: I tell you that the New York Times said this
Speaker 1: was true, then you're really likely to believe it. Or
Speaker 1: if I told you that Fox News said this was true,
Speaker 1: then you're really likely to believe it. Um. These are
Speaker 1: all different ways of influencing people, you know. I think
Speaker 1: we have to realize that all of our minds can
Speaker 1: be influenced. That's what I learned as a magician. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: language you speak. Magic and slight of hand works on
Speaker 1: every single mind. And what we've just enabled is this,
Speaker 1: you know, arms race for anybody to go in there
Speaker 1: and do what they want. It's time to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. We'll be back with Tristan Harris right after this.
Speaker 1: And now back to our conversation with Tristan Harris. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about how tech in general and social media
Speaker 1: in particular have had a corrosive impact on people's perceptions
Speaker 1: of the news and the issues and basically all of
Speaker 1: these things we've spoken about since Donald Trump became a candidate. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: oftentimes people think that these feeds, you know what, what
Speaker 1: pot what shows it. The inside of your feed is
Speaker 1: just whatever your friends post, so it's just a neutral tool.
Speaker 1: But this is not true. When you open up that
Speaker 1: Facebook feed, there's actually thousands and thousands of things they
Speaker 1: could show you, and out of those thousand things, they
Speaker 1: try to figure out what will be most likely to
Speaker 1: get you to click to watch, or to share, or
Speaker 1: to like, And it turns out that outrage is really
Speaker 1: good at getting you to click and to share because
Speaker 1: you want to tell other people, I can't believe the
Speaker 1: thing that these guys, these politicians did you know today,
Speaker 1: And so those things enter at the top of everyone's
Speaker 1: feed So now everybody's going to these feeds, and them, huters,
Speaker 1: not humans, are selecting out of all the thousands of things,
Speaker 1: the outrageous things. And what that creates are these waves
Speaker 1: of outrage inside of all these human animals. We have
Speaker 1: these you know, human evolutionary instincts, and you turn your
Speaker 1: phone over in the morning, and instead of feeling calm
Speaker 1: and opening your eyes and taking a breath and asking
Speaker 1: like what are my dreams or what are my hopes
Speaker 1: for today? Or what am I grateful for? What I
Speaker 1: want to do? What am I going to have for breakfast?
Speaker 1: What am I going to have for breakfast? You know?
Speaker 1: You instead, the first thing you do when you set
Speaker 1: off your turn off your alarm, after your phone vibrates,
Speaker 1: is you open up one of these feeds and suddenly
Speaker 1: your mind is like filled with outrage. Screw those democrats
Speaker 1: you wake up to exactly and we have to ask,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like this totalizing on it on both sides.
Speaker 1: That's The thing is everyone is influenced by this, which
Speaker 1: is why it should be a unifying issue, right. I
Speaker 1: think that no one wants this to happen to politics.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you sort of see where this is
Speaker 1: all going, we don't want to live in a society
Speaker 1: that's just triggered and filled with outrage, or that's manipulating
Speaker 1: kids from the first moment they wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning and they see photo after photo after photo of
Speaker 1: their friends having fun without them. I mean, it's always
Speaker 1: true that people are having fun without us. But the
Speaker 1: question is, do I fill your day in your morning
Speaker 1: with evidence of that? Do I just make you believe
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that's going on. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is crazy, I agree, And I think it's so corrosive
Speaker 1: for kids in general. You know, when you see that
Speaker 1: the suicide rate for teenage girls has I think tripled
Speaker 1: in the last ten years. And if you look at
Speaker 1: anxiety being the number one mental health disorder in this country,
Speaker 1: isolation being one of the biggest problems, it's so ironic
Speaker 1: in an error when we're all connected, we've never been
Speaker 1: so lonely. Yeah. Well, and I think Sherry Turkle was
Speaker 1: just so precient with her book alone together about this
Speaker 1: that you know, giving having the virtual experience of connection
Speaker 1: of seeing all these people doesn't mean that as an
Speaker 1: animal sitting there with the body right and breathing, that
Speaker 1: we don't need that physical presence. Right. It feels a
Speaker 1: lot better to be physically present someone than to sit
Speaker 1: the entire day on a screen getting that virtual form
Speaker 1: of presidents. Can I ask you Trystan a little more
Speaker 1: about like a firm like Cambridge Analytica, because I don't
Speaker 1: think people fully understand how these firms or even tech
Speaker 1: companies are able to kind of gather absorb these this information,
Speaker 1: highly personalized information, and then spew stuff out at you.
Speaker 1: So if I'm talking on my phone with a friend
Speaker 1: about the fact that I really want to buy a
Speaker 1: new winter coat, can they pick that up and then
Speaker 1: start sending me ads for winter coats? Because that's happened
Speaker 1: to a couple of my friends. They've experimented. They talked
Speaker 1: about Emmy Rawsom just for fun to see if suddenly
Speaker 1: they'd get all this stuff about Emmy Rossum, who I
Speaker 1: really love and I think she's a great person. No,
Speaker 1: no dis on Emmy, but she got started getting all
Speaker 1: this information about Emmy Rowsom So that to me is
Speaker 1: super creepy. I mean, how do they find out all
Speaker 1: this stuff about us? Well, I mean especially Facebook, I
Speaker 1: mean the their business. I mean, how much have you
Speaker 1: paid for your Facebook account? Zero dollars? But we're paying
Speaker 1: in our attention obviously, Well that's interesting, right, So we
Speaker 1: don't pay for Facebook. So the question who is paying them?
Speaker 1: And it's the advertiser, which means that all those people
Speaker 1: who go to work at Facebook. As much as they say, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to make the world more open and connected,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but if your business model is serving not people,
Speaker 1: but the business model is serving advertisers, then guess what.
Speaker 1: All of that information over time is going to be
Speaker 1: used more and more to make the advertisers more successful.
Speaker 1: Otherwise those advertisers aren't going to spend their money on Facebook.
Speaker 1: So in the long run, Facebook has to be, you know,
Speaker 1: helping their advertisers be successful. And what that's going to
Speaker 1: mean is enabling them to access more and more personal
Speaker 1: information when they target uh, you know, adds to you.
Speaker 1: And so when you send a message to someone else
Speaker 1: on Facebook, you know, it'll pick up those keywords and
Speaker 1: that will be part of the way that it starts
Speaker 1: to target and enabling advertisers to target you over time. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Facebook in parta killer for a second.
Speaker 1: Facebook on Instagram. Um, we sometimes use the euphemism of
Speaker 1: social media companies different technology platus, so many of them
Speaker 1: really just Facebook. Yeah. I think we're really in large
Speaker 1: part just talking about Facebook. So the question is, is
Speaker 1: Facebook the worst offender here? Are they doing things that
Speaker 1: are qualitatively different and more harmful than Google for example? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the challenges it's just a ground. For a second,
Speaker 1: just how many people use Facebook. There's more than two
Speaker 1: billion people on Facebook. That's more than a quarter of
Speaker 1: the world's population. Um, that's about the number of notional
Speaker 1: followers of Christianity who every day are jacked into this
Speaker 1: system where they start looking at a feed and their
Speaker 1: thoughts get you know, start flowing into them from these
Speaker 1: one from this one company in California, you know, with
Speaker 1: a handful of engineers who make the design and algorithm decisions.
Speaker 1: And so the reason I say that is that no
Speaker 1: matter what Facebook us, it's creating exponentially complex consequences for
Speaker 1: two billion people. So you know, how many engineers speak
Speaker 1: at Facebook speak Burmese. I mean, I don't know one
Speaker 1: zero maybe, and yet Facebook is the number one way
Speaker 1: for people in Burma to access the internet. Facebook is
Speaker 1: the Internet if you're in Burma. And it started amplifying
Speaker 1: genocides in Burma because it was amplifying this fake news
Speaker 1: about a specific minority group. So the point is that
Speaker 1: they can't reign in this machine that they've created. They've
Speaker 1: created this automated machine that, because there's no humans, they're
Speaker 1: figuring out which thoughts should we put in people's minds.
Speaker 1: It's just the machines calculating what it should put in
Speaker 1: people's minds based on what's most engaging, and it's starting
Speaker 1: to push thoughts into people's minds and elections and democracies
Speaker 1: around the world in languages that the engineers at California
Speaker 1: and Menlo Park they don't even speak. And so they've
Speaker 1: created this kind of monster that they no longer control.
Speaker 1: So now what's going on is they're trying to go
Speaker 1: back and say, how do we reigin this thing in
Speaker 1: How do we quickly, you know, throw all the firefighters
Speaker 1: at this thing and try to save it as much
Speaker 1: as possible. But I think the challenges we trusted them
Speaker 1: to try and be thoughtful about this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: they didn't see from the very beginning that this is
Speaker 1: the level of influence they had. That they aren't just
Speaker 1: you know, helping us keep in touch with our friends.
Speaker 1: They're a political actor. They're steering elections, They're creating addictions,
Speaker 1: they're making people lonely. I know that some activists and
Speaker 1: Mimar wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg about this, about
Speaker 1: the very thing that you were describing in Burma, and
Speaker 1: he wrote them back personally. But you know, to your point,
Speaker 1: all the people in the world, it's impossible to monitor
Speaker 1: these things, isn't it. So before we talk about what
Speaker 1: Facebook can and cannot do, let me ask you about
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg's testimony, because I'm sure you watched it with
Speaker 1: a great amount of interest. Um, what did you think
Speaker 1: about it? And did you think he was questioned vigorously
Speaker 1: enough by members of Congress, you know, some of whom
Speaker 1: still have flip phones. Well, I think that is the issue. Fundamentally.
Speaker 1: It is clear that you know, the modern realities of
Speaker 1: how technology companies work have far outpaced the governance capacity
Speaker 1: of really probably any government to stay in touch with
Speaker 1: you know all of the ways that these things are
Speaker 1: working and evolved in the business model. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were involved in the November first hearings um myself
Speaker 1: and a few other people and briefing major Congress members. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there wasn't as much time for these latest hearings, and
Speaker 1: I think it came across, as you know, a whole
Speaker 1: hodgepodge of issues. Some people are asking about privacy, some
Speaker 1: people are asking about housing discrimination adds, some people are
Speaker 1: asking about election integrity, data breaches, Cambridge Altica. So to
Speaker 1: the average person, it feels like, oh man, this is
Speaker 1: about just a bunch of unrelated things. But I actually
Speaker 1: want to reframe that. The reason why it felt like
Speaker 1: it's about a bunch of unrelated things and that these
Speaker 1: harms are showing up everywhere is because Facebook affects every
Speaker 1: part of society. It affects election campaign pricing, it affects
Speaker 1: housing discrimination ads where some groups get discriminated by over others.
Speaker 1: It affects elections, it affects people's privacy. And I think
Speaker 1: the problem is if you think about Facebook is almost
Speaker 1: like a global government. I mean, how much power does
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg have even over someone like President Trump at
Speaker 1: controlling people's thoughts and actions, right. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: argue that he has more power that's completely unaccountable except
Speaker 1: to him, since he's the major shareholder at doing whatever
Speaker 1: he wants, and we're sort of left to you know,
Speaker 1: his moral compass and whatever happens, you know, to be
Speaker 1: running between the his eyes and ears as the way
Speaker 1: he's thinking about this. Well, what did you think of
Speaker 1: his testimony? Well, you know, I thought he was dodging
Speaker 1: the fundamental issue, which is that the business model of
Speaker 1: advertising and keeping people engaged is the problem. All of
Speaker 1: these issues come down to that one issue, and so
Speaker 1: he was trying to distract Congress from that core issue
Speaker 1: that the business model is what incentivizes them to offer
Speaker 1: better ways for advertisers to take people's personal information and
Speaker 1: target against it and offer better and better ways to
Speaker 1: keep people hooked on Facebook for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: And it's also a little misleading when he said that
Speaker 1: they don't sell data to anyone, because what they actually
Speaker 1: do is they allow advertisers to micro target people based
Speaker 1: on their data. So even though the advertisers themselves don't
Speaker 1: see the data, that's get all the benefits of that data.
Speaker 1: That's right, and and and Facebook is quick to sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, smirk when Congress asked them, why do you
Speaker 1: sell people's data, because they don't do that. But the
Speaker 1: point is that it is equivalently the same because advertisers
Speaker 1: are paying Facebook not to own and access your data,
Speaker 1: not to use it and then spread somewhere else, but
Speaker 1: they're paying to target ads specifically to those people. You
Speaker 1: can go on Facebook and you can target um conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists by knowing what keywords they tend to identify with.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that until and allows Facebook changes
Speaker 1: its fundamental business model, the problem can't be solved. That's
Speaker 1: that's right. And the thing is that we can't change
Speaker 1: their business model overnight, and they can't change their business
Speaker 1: model overnight, even if actually they saw these issues. So
Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot of work, and we
Speaker 1: should celebrate the work that they're trying to do right
Speaker 1: now to try and peel away the problem against their
Speaker 1: own financial interests. And I think that there's some authentic
Speaker 1: things that they're doing there, But the question is there's
Speaker 1: an upper bound to that, And and do they see
Speaker 1: that the fundamental heart of all of these problems comes
Speaker 1: down to their business model. They're not on our team.
Speaker 1: They're not on democracy's team to help strengthen the fabric
Speaker 1: of society. So long as the people who pay them
Speaker 1: are the advertisers they're they're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to solve these problems. So if you were Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: and you were in charge of Facebook, what would you
Speaker 1: be doing to put Facebook back on the side of
Speaker 1: democracy and the American people and everything that's good and
Speaker 1: just in the world. The first thing I would do
Speaker 1: isn't just say I'm sorry and there's this one bad
Speaker 1: actor way over there in the corner called Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 1: but Facebook is fine. I would tell the world I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that I didn't see that our business model was
Speaker 1: so corrosive and I feel bad about that. And now
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do is start a transition plan to
Speaker 1: get off of this business model. And here's how we're
Speaker 1: gonna do that, and here's how much time it's gonna take.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen instantly, but here's how we're gonna
Speaker 1: work on that. Here's why, and hey, shareholders, here's why
Speaker 1: we're going to be regulated if we don't do this.
Speaker 1: In the long run anyway, And I would start with that.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, trust, now, that won't another
Speaker 1: behemoth just take Facebook's place. I mean, I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but when it comes to profits versus ethics,
Speaker 1: profits usually when don't they that that's right? But that's
Speaker 1: all based on consumer demand. So right now, there's essentially
Speaker 1: Facebook as a monopoly. Um and it's a new species
Speaker 1: of monopoly because all of our anti trust, anti monopoly
Speaker 1: laws are about um uh, they don't handle zero price monopolies,
Speaker 1: usually a monopoly as they price discriminate so they can
Speaker 1: control pricing. They can offer one price to you and
Speaker 1: no different price to someone else, and no one can
Speaker 1: stop them because you know their a monopoly. The challenge
Speaker 1: here is it's a monopoly that's free. So all of
Speaker 1: our antitrust law that's normally about regulating these things doesn't
Speaker 1: handle free monopolies. And so I think if we change
Speaker 1: consumer demand and people realize that Facebook doesn't have our
Speaker 1: best interests at heart, and it never will unless they
Speaker 1: change their business model, then we're starting to see this
Speaker 1: movement where people do want an alternative. We're not there yet,
Speaker 1: but I think slowly that's what's happening. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, sorry to play Devil's advocate for a moment,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me, Tristan, that a lot of
Speaker 1: this depends on consumer demand or lack thereof. And there
Speaker 1: was a big thing, oh, you know people were going
Speaker 1: to quit Facebook. Well, to quote Brokeback Mountain, I just
Speaker 1: can't quit you Facebook. I mean it's really really hard
Speaker 1: because people are so addicted to live without it. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: there was an interesting piece in The New York Times
Speaker 1: by my friend Andrew Ross Sorkin, and the headline was
Speaker 1: our privacy has eroded. We're okay with that? I mean,
Speaker 1: don't you think that. People It's sort of like being
Speaker 1: a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. People
Speaker 1: have become you know, complacent and in order to it
Speaker 1: and have pretty much accepted this is the new normal. Well,
Speaker 1: I would frame it a little bit differently. I would
Speaker 1: say that it's a testament to how much of a fabric,
Speaker 1: basic fabric of our lives it's become that we can't
Speaker 1: just delete Facebook. So when I say this, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that consumer demands going to change and everyone's just
Speaker 1: gonna quit because you know, in fact, people I know
Speaker 1: at Facebook say, with a smug on their face, will
Speaker 1: if you don't like the product, just use a different product.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, great, so I'll just switch to that
Speaker 1: other two billion person social network. That's so, that's right
Speaker 1: there to my right. You know, it doesn't exist. And
Speaker 1: right now, what we need to do is change the
Speaker 1: kind of the government and consumer context so that those
Speaker 1: alternatives can start to as so it becomes harder and
Speaker 1: harder for them to innovate. And we need make it
Speaker 1: easier for the alternatives to exist, because we're not going
Speaker 1: to quit. I mean, I still use Facebook every day
Speaker 1: because it's the best. It's the only way I can
Speaker 1: get my ideas out to a large enough audience. And
Speaker 1: that speaks to the amount of power that they have,
Speaker 1: right it's not. And the key thing here is also
Speaker 1: that it's not just an addiction. They've they've really taken
Speaker 1: over the fundamental communications fabric and the fabric of staying
Speaker 1: in touch with the people that matter to us. We
Speaker 1: don't have an alternative, and that's why people aren't just
Speaker 1: going to delete it. But that doesn't mean people don't
Speaker 1: have a problem with it. But aren't there some good
Speaker 1: things about it. I mean about social media writ large,
Speaker 1: not just Facebook, but all these different modalities in terms
Speaker 1: of like galvanizing people, getting like minded people to stand
Speaker 1: up and want more sensible gun laws for example, or
Speaker 1: start you know, stopping genocide in different places because there's
Speaker 1: kind of a grassroots uprising. Uh, the fact that, yes,
Speaker 1: we're lonely, but it is nice to be able to
Speaker 1: look at video of your grandchild if you live far away.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can think of countless examples of the
Speaker 1: positive impact this is having. I mean, you're such a
Speaker 1: debbut down or is there anything that well I think
Speaker 1: this is This is such a critical thing because this
Speaker 1: this conversation often makes it seem as if there's this
Speaker 1: all or nothing choice, like either we have Facebook and
Speaker 1: we we have these these benefits in these costs, or
Speaker 1: we just don't use Facebook at all. And the question
Speaker 1: is is there a middle way? And as I said
Speaker 1: this in my Ted talk, that it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: we can have social movements that take off with positive
Speaker 1: messages without most of the time creating viral outrage most
Speaker 1: of the time. I mean, these positive social movements are
Speaker 1: very very rare in comparison to the daily outrage that
Speaker 1: we experience on these things. The experience of knowing that
Speaker 1: your friend is you haven't seen for ten years is
Speaker 1: also visiting a city, um that you find out about
Speaker 1: that only because you had a Facebook account. That's experience
Speaker 1: is great, but it's very, very very rare compared to
Speaker 1: all the time people spend sort of just mindlessly browsing
Speaker 1: and they self report regretting. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: different way to design all of this stuff. And that's that's,
Speaker 1: by the way, what we're trying to do with our
Speaker 1: with our work with the Center for Humane Technologies, show
Speaker 1: that there actually is a different way to design these
Speaker 1: products that's not an all or nothing choice. So what
Speaker 1: does a good Facebook look like? Is it a subscription
Speaker 1: model where advertisers wouldn't be on the platform, that people
Speaker 1: would pay to use it, and therefore the business of
Speaker 1: social media isn't about capturing as much of our attention
Speaker 1: as possible. Yeah, think of it like a utility. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: you know, um, we would we would pay to have
Speaker 1: access to a service that's all about benefiting our lives.
Speaker 1: So what I mean by that is, right now, if
Speaker 1: you walked I mean, if you walked into Facebook today,
Speaker 1: and you just interviewed a random sample of people and
Speaker 1: you said, what are you doing with your time today?
Speaker 1: You as an engineer at Facebook, and you would find
Speaker 1: every engineer is basically on one goal, which is am
Speaker 1: I keeping people engaged? Scrolling, clicking, liking, hooked or not.
Speaker 1: They're only concerned with that goal. And instead, imagine we
Speaker 1: paid for Facebook. All those engineers go to work and
Speaker 1: they ask, how do we generate positive benefits in society?
Speaker 1: How do we make this a resource? And Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: himself back in two thousand five used to talk about
Speaker 1: Facebook as a social utility. He didn't try to defend
Speaker 1: this stuff about news feeds and content and all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, which that came later after they hinge
Speaker 1: their success on the advertising model. Before that, it was
Speaker 1: a utility. It was an address book. It was something
Speaker 1: I could use to make things happen in my life.
Speaker 1: And I think, if we paid for Facebook, you don't
Speaker 1: just see news feeds without the ads. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: a radically different service that is entirely built as a
Speaker 1: utility to empower us to make new social choices together
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't be able to make without Facebook. Things
Speaker 1: like Oh, I can find out when my best friend
Speaker 1: is visiting town that I haven't seen in ten years. Um,
Speaker 1: I can have strangers who when they move to a
Speaker 1: new city, they can quickly find the groups that they
Speaker 1: can be in touch with. But it wouldn't be built
Speaker 1: around news feeds and mindless consumption, which is what it's
Speaker 1: built around. Now. I want to ask about fake news
Speaker 1: is because listen, these seem to be long term goals, Tristan,
Speaker 1: but you know, we have an important midterm elections coming
Speaker 1: up in November, a hugely important presidential election coming up
Speaker 1: in um and so what immediately, what can be done
Speaker 1: about the proliferation of fake news, these bots, Russian influence
Speaker 1: and what we're seeing and general chaos when it comes
Speaker 1: to this platform in general. Yeah, the thing that people
Speaker 1: should understand is, you know, if I ask you the question,
Speaker 1: how much more confident do you feel today if an
Speaker 1: election was to be held that it is less vulnerable
Speaker 1: to outside manipulation and influence than it was in like
Speaker 1: zero point zero? Correct? These platforms are still highly highly
Speaker 1: vulnerable to not just Russia, but any state and even
Speaker 1: non state actors China, North Korea are in the playbook.
Speaker 1: Is now out there, and now anyone can spend money
Speaker 1: on Facebook to target information to the audiences that they want.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the ads, by the way, there's
Speaker 1: loads of other techniques. I work with ex intelligence people
Speaker 1: that know about those techniques, and it's still one possible
Speaker 1: to create impersonation accounts, to create fake images that are
Speaker 1: dark don't exist, these deep fakes where you can fake
Speaker 1: videos of people saying things they didn't they didn't say.
Speaker 1: All this is going to get worse, which is why
Speaker 1: we're doing this work. This is the short term, as
Speaker 1: you said, Katie, is if you care about the integrity
Speaker 1: of our elections and our democracy, then you ought to
Speaker 1: care about how these platforms reform their practices to better
Speaker 1: protect them from manipulation. Is their awareness part of the solution, though,
Speaker 1: I feel like you know, I had a good friend
Speaker 1: I've mentioned this a couple of times on our podcast
Speaker 1: who got this video and sent it to me about
Speaker 1: whom Aberdeen and her connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, and
Speaker 1: she was appalled and have you seen this? And I
Speaker 1: said day that this is bullshit, this is not true stuff,
Speaker 1: but it was so professionally done. And do you think
Speaker 1: that people are at least more skeptical and are kind
Speaker 1: of more educated did in terms of their consumption of
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, or or am I just a
Speaker 1: little more sophisticated than your average consumer. Well, I'm very
Speaker 1: worried about this because often we have this feeling that well,
Speaker 1: I'm the smart one, and it's only those very persuadable
Speaker 1: person's way over there that were influenced by Russia. But
Speaker 1: not right. Look, and you're as a magician, as a kid,
Speaker 1: you realize that everyone feels that way, Like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I I'm you know, magic is only gonna work on
Speaker 1: those dumb people you know, who don't are un educated.
Speaker 1: But I have a PhD. So therefore I'm not manipulated.
Speaker 1: It's actually the opposite. Usually, the people who are most
Speaker 1: confident are the ones who are much easier to manipulate
Speaker 1: and the you know, we didn't always see society that way.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen forties, UM, the United States government
Speaker 1: UH created you know, the Committee for National Morale UH
Speaker 1: and there is also the Institute for propagand Analysis to
Speaker 1: protect the American psyche from foreign influence. We recognized fundamentally
Speaker 1: how vulnerable our population was to outside influence. And we
Speaker 1: actually made it a government campaign funded to make make
Speaker 1: sure there is large public awareness campaigns. And I think
Speaker 1: Facebook and other companies need to do much better and
Speaker 1: step up their job and spend millions and millions of
Speaker 1: dollars on making sure people are aware of these conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories and needs deliberate campaigns because we're very vulnerable, so
Speaker 1: we need some more awareness for sure, but we also
Speaker 1: need the platforms to crack down on the ways that
Speaker 1: they continue to be vulnerable to outside influence. So what
Speaker 1: you're saying is that for all the rhetoric, Facebook really
Speaker 1: hasn't cleaned up the problem of fakes and foreign influence,
Speaker 1: and it could have as profound in effect this year
Speaker 1: as it did in It could totally have as profound
Speaker 1: in effect this year as in now. I do want
Speaker 1: to say there's a lot of people working really hard,
Speaker 1: I'm sure at Facebook and at Twitter to try and
Speaker 1: clean this up. My point is just that they're not
Speaker 1: nearly close enough to make us feel confident about our
Speaker 1: elections not being manipulated. So to close the gap, I
Speaker 1: think we need to be highly aware and spread this
Speaker 1: message to everybody we know that these conspiracy theories are
Speaker 1: going to be very compelling and look very true, and
Speaker 1: they'll spread really quickly. But we're gonna need you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason we have a five second delay on television.
Speaker 1: You know. We don't want to just automatically broadcast everything
Speaker 1: instantly to millions of people and have it reshared that
Speaker 1: fast networks. When Donald Trump had been elected president without Facebook,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that with the political specific political bias,
Speaker 1: I can just tell you that from the perspective of
Speaker 1: how media works, social media was critical to his election.
Speaker 1: That's pretty chilling. What about artificial intelligence? Just on how
Speaker 1: concerned are you about that? And this trend to give
Speaker 1: more and more decision making authority to robots or to
Speaker 1: you know, algorithms or too technology in general, versus having
Speaker 1: some kind of human judgment involved. Yeah, this is really
Speaker 1: the critical thing we think of artificial intelligence. People think
Speaker 1: of the Terminator movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger and you know,
Speaker 1: death bots or something like that, and they think it's
Speaker 1: all about the future. Oh, and the future will worry
Speaker 1: the AI is going to kill everybody or something like that.
Speaker 1: And what this misses is that we already live inside
Speaker 1: of a system that is governed and run by artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence algorithms. And that's because when you open up a
Speaker 1: Facebook news feed, that's an AI. It's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what can I show you that's going to keep
Speaker 1: you hooked. When you open up YouTube and you wake
Speaker 1: up two hours later saying, what the hell just happened
Speaker 1: with my time? The reason was because it was playing.
Speaker 1: It was an AI that was playing chess against your mind.
Speaker 1: Think if your mind as a chessboard, and you can.
Speaker 1: It's sitting there and it thinks it knows what it
Speaker 1: wants to do and what your goals it has, But
Speaker 1: YouTube sitting there trying to play chess against your mind,
Speaker 1: asking what are the videos I can put on AutoPlay
Speaker 1: next that will keep you on here for as long
Speaker 1: as possible. And just like when Gary Kasprov played the
Speaker 1: AI at chess and it and and Gary lost, it's
Speaker 1: because the AI was seeing way more moves ahead on
Speaker 1: the chessboard than Gary could see. And at some point
Speaker 1: it can see so many moves ahead that it's done.
Speaker 1: It's it's checkmate against humanity. And the issue that we
Speaker 1: have right now is that when you land on YouTube
Speaker 1: and it sees that many more moves ahead it's not
Speaker 1: aligned with our goals, and YouTube also drove fifteen billion
Speaker 1: views to Alex jones conspiracy theory videos on its own
Speaker 1: using AI, So we already have an AI problem right now,
Speaker 1: which is why it's so critical to bring awareness to
Speaker 1: these issues. In closing, Tristan, what are steps that all
Speaker 1: of us can take to protect ourselves from being manipulated
Speaker 1: by tech until our kids from getting addicted to exactly
Speaker 1: until and unless these companies fix themselves. What can we
Speaker 1: do in the interim to to protect ourselves as much
Speaker 1: as we can? Absolutely, I mean, obviously we don't want
Speaker 1: to wait five years for tech companies to finally come around,
Speaker 1: so we have to have choices we can make right now.
Speaker 1: And the good news is we can. Um A bunch
Speaker 1: of these, by the way, are on our website, Humane
Speaker 1: tech dot com. Um. But you know, you can do
Speaker 1: things like turn off all notifications. Most people don't realize
Speaker 1: that notifications on your phone are mostly invented by machines
Speaker 1: trying to find a way to get you coming back, saying, oh,
Speaker 1: ten new friends posted some likes over here. Don't you
Speaker 1: want to see what those are? Just turn all that
Speaker 1: stuff off. Try to make as many notifications on your
Speaker 1: phone off as possible. Um, when I say this, you'll
Speaker 1: hear it, but you probably won't do it. So actually
Speaker 1: consider what you know. Can I turn off notifications? Am
Speaker 1: I willing to make that step? I really recommended. Another
Speaker 1: thing is setting your phone to gray scale. If you
Speaker 1: feel really addicted, every time you turn your phone over
Speaker 1: and you see those colors, it's lighting up some of
Speaker 1: that dopamine rewards, just even if by looking at it,
Speaker 1: And if you set your phone to gray scale, it's
Speaker 1: sort of cuts out about fift of that like addictive feeling.
Speaker 1: Our listeners know. Yeah, you go into uh your on
Speaker 1: an iPhone, you go into general settings, and then general
Speaker 1: and then accessibility and the scroll all the way to
Speaker 1: the bottom to accessibility shortcut. Well, this is a good example.
Speaker 1: And this is where Apple you know, when the new
Speaker 1: iPhone comes out in a few months that they can
Speaker 1: make this a lot easier for people. But I really
Speaker 1: recommend and just not using social media, just you know,
Speaker 1: at least uninstalling it from your phone and only using
Speaker 1: it when you're on a desktop. Um, and that that
Speaker 1: will never happen. By the way, I did do that
Speaker 1: with Facebook. I should probably do it with Instagram as well,
Speaker 1: um Twitter. I couldn't give up, but it made a
Speaker 1: huge difference in my life not to have Facebook on
Speaker 1: my phone. I tried to turn my phone screen to
Speaker 1: black and white per Tristan's recommendation. That lasted about fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes because I missed it. I was like, the world
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel good with a black and white phone.
Speaker 1: See what's my problem, Tristan. You don't have a problem, Katie. Know.
Speaker 1: The thing is that I think people need to be
Speaker 1: able to switch. I think the thing is people need
Speaker 1: to be able to switch it back and forth between
Speaker 1: color and black and white. The point isn't to stay
Speaker 1: in black and white all the time. It's just that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, keep it in black and white by default,
Speaker 1: because then you you actually get used to it. You
Speaker 1: actually it starts to feel overwhelming to see color. It
Speaker 1: feels like whoa, that's that's too much. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of where you want to be is to remind yourself
Speaker 1: that this is a tool in my pocket. It's only
Speaker 1: a tool, and I want to make sure I'm putting
Speaker 1: it in its place. That that's the role I wanted
Speaker 1: to serve in black and white can be a helpful mind.
Speaker 1: And what about for kids? Real quickly, Tristan, because a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners have children or grandchildren. I find
Speaker 1: that it's quite depressing when I see parents at the
Speaker 1: park or playground. They're so you know, they have They're
Speaker 1: so busy looking at their phone. And I'm not being
Speaker 1: judge here because I probably would be doing the same
Speaker 1: thing if my kids were younger. But they are not
Speaker 1: interacting with their kids in the same way. And it's
Speaker 1: or people having dinner. I don't know. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: all have seen this. Nothing is more depressing than to
Speaker 1: see a couple at a nice restaurant on their phones
Speaker 1: or even a family. I get so bummed out. And
Speaker 1: again I'm not being judge e listeners, but it just
Speaker 1: it's just, I don't know, there's something about it that
Speaker 1: just makes me incredibly sad. You know, this is the conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the culture that we're that these
Speaker 1: design choices are creating, and um, you know, this is
Speaker 1: going to be up to us in the short term
Speaker 1: to realize is this the society we want to live in?
Speaker 1: Is this? How is this who we are? Um? And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a question that all parents have
Speaker 1: to start asking themselves. Um. And you can use the
Speaker 1: tips that we just talked about in the meantime to
Speaker 1: try and use it less. And finally, finally, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of apps that you recommend to make this
Speaker 1: easier for all of us. Can you just briefly talk
Speaker 1: about some of those. Yet you can download and installed Moments,
Speaker 1: which is an app for the iPhone that tracks how
Speaker 1: much time you spend. You know, I mean that helps
Speaker 1: to sort of see and get a picture of where
Speaker 1: your time is going. But I do really think that
Speaker 1: the much better thing is simply to look at your
Speaker 1: phone and you know, bleep most of the apps you're
Speaker 1: not using, turn off notifications, set it to black and white. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a couple other tips on on the website. It
Speaker 1: can really make a big difference. And just simply being
Speaker 1: aware of this can change your relationship to it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think that realizing that you're missing out
Speaker 1: on life. Talk about not being present, whether it means
Speaker 1: staring at your phone when you're in a new city
Speaker 1: and you don't even know a your surroundings, or not
Speaker 1: ever being bored, which is the key to creativity. In
Speaker 1: this hour, I did Tristan where You're You're featured. One
Speaker 1: of the things I realized and thought about is the
Speaker 1: part of our prefrontal cortex that allows us to be
Speaker 1: creative that fires up when we have a creative thought,
Speaker 1: cannot really operate or function when we're constantly distracted by
Speaker 1: our phone. So you know, every moment, whether it's driving,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're in the passenger seat of a car,
Speaker 1: or you're just you know, waiting, nobody ever has this
Speaker 1: time to just sit and think, and that is absolutely
Speaker 1: key to being creative and coming up with ideas and
Speaker 1: having epiphanies of all kinds. And that's one thing I
Speaker 1: think about too, This this constant stimulation which only increases
Speaker 1: the cortisol and doesn't allow us to have a moment
Speaker 1: where we can think and consider and contemplate things. That's
Speaker 1: be right. And that's why this is such an invisible
Speaker 1: problem beneath all other problems, because every choice we make
Speaker 1: in our lives is on top of the background of
Speaker 1: how our mind is feeling, thinking, um choosing, and how
Speaker 1: we think feeling. Shoes are basically, you know, never been
Speaker 1: more influenced by how our phones shape our attention and
Speaker 1: whether you care about creativity or mental health or loneliness.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be publishing something soon that's kind of a
Speaker 1: ledger of all of these negative externalities, these cultural harms
Speaker 1: on society, so that people can really see it all
Speaker 1: in one place, because the effects are so profound and
Speaker 1: so invisible. Well, I'm so proud of you raising these
Speaker 1: issues at the ripe old age of thirty four being
Speaker 1: thirty three still but I know the Atlantic called you
Speaker 1: the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate everything you're doing, the consciousness you're raising
Speaker 1: about these issues. If people want to learn more, they
Speaker 1: want to actually support what you're doing, triest On, how
Speaker 1: can we do that? Yeah, just go to the website
Speaker 1: humane tech dot com, which is for our Center for
Speaker 1: Humane Technology, and um, there's ways to get involved, join
Speaker 1: the community, make a donation. Um. You know, we see
Speaker 1: this as a team effort, and this is a team
Speaker 1: humanity really protecting and fighting for for the world we want.
Speaker 1: I was more than a little freaked out after speaking
Speaker 1: with Tristan. What about you, Brian? For sure? But knowledge
Speaker 1: is power, as they say, and I think it's time
Speaker 1: for a lot of us to take a hard look
Speaker 1: at our tech habits, myself included, and just how much
Speaker 1: time they're sucking up in our lives. That's true, and
Speaker 1: I think if you're just conscious of it, it does
Speaker 1: help you. And I think there are times when you
Speaker 1: can leave it at home. I know parents and people say, well,
Speaker 1: what if my kid calls, what if there's an emergency?
Speaker 1: And I feel that way too, But I also feel
Speaker 1: like you have to take a break from it sometimes
Speaker 1: and take a walk, don't listen to our podcast. Wait wait,
Speaker 1: did I just say that? But sometimes you just need
Speaker 1: to leave it at home, get outside and be on tether.
Speaker 1: Don't have it permanently, you know, attached to your hand.
Speaker 1: By the way, I have a friend who has two phones,
Speaker 1: one for during the week which has social media and
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles of a smartphone, and one
Speaker 1: for the weekend, which is just texting and calling in
Speaker 1: case his kids need to reach him. I thought that
Speaker 1: was an interesting idea. Must be nice to have such
Speaker 1: rich friends, Brian. Meanwhile, stop checking your phone a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty times a day, people, Brian. I downloaded that
Speaker 1: Moment app and the worst day I was on my
Speaker 1: phone for ready nine hours now. In fairness, I was sick,
Speaker 1: I had like the flu, and I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do but lying in bed in my phone. Well, I
Speaker 1: was watching The Crown. If I recall and on my
Speaker 1: phone and you weren't transfixed by the Crown, I can't
Speaker 1: believe I was. I was, and it was crazy because
Speaker 1: I had to keep rewinding it because I'm us things
Speaker 1: because I'd be on my phone anyway. I got a
Speaker 1: lot of problems people. That does it for this week's show,
Speaker 1: Thanks as usual to our pod squad over at Stitcher.
Speaker 1: That's Gianna Palmer, Jared O'Connell and Nora Richie. And thanks
Speaker 1: as well to the team over at Katie Curric Media.
Speaker 1: That would be Alison Bresnik, Emily Beena and Beth Demas.
Speaker 1: Mark Phillips wrote our theme music, and Brian and I
Speaker 1: are the show's executive producers. For Better for Worse, I'm
Speaker 1: under Katie Couric on social media. Instagram is where I
Speaker 1: shine people. Brian tweets his little hard out at Goldsmith b. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: don't forget to call in with your stories about discrimination
Speaker 1: and gender bias at work. That number again is nine
Speaker 1: to nine to to four four six three seven, or
Speaker 1: drop us a line at comments at currect podcast dot
Speaker 1: com and by the way, if you haven't already, please
Speaker 1: leave us a rating over at Apple Podcast and be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to the show as well. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.