Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
Speaker 1: that reimagined citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This season is all about tech and how it can
Speaker 1: bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you the people using technology for so much more than
Speaker 1: revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
Speaker 1: Last time on How to Citizen, you got to meet
Speaker 1: my older sister, Belinda, which meant a deep dive into
Speaker 1: little Baritune Day. Yes, there was a point when I
Speaker 1: was small, but we weren't just reminiscing for old times sake.
Speaker 1: We were sharing the lessons our mom taught us, lessons
Speaker 1: that laid the foundation for how I see tech and citizen.
Speaker 1: My mom taught me to stand up for myself, to
Speaker 1: advocate for my own education, to question authority, and to
Speaker 1: wash my own damn clothes. But beyond that, she showed
Speaker 1: me that tech could help me citizen. And now that
Speaker 1: I'm grown, or at least mostly grown, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: it one step further. Tech has the potential to help
Speaker 1: us all citizen. Imagine a social media platform where people
Speaker 1: supported each other instead of tearing each other down, or
Speaker 1: a web browsing experience that doesn't assault you with advertising
Speaker 1: at every single page load. Or imagine just having control
Speaker 1: over your personal data instead of constantly hearing about some
Speaker 1: company losing it again. Unfortunately, we're nowhere near any of this.
Speaker 1: Our tech landscape is dominated by a handful of wildly
Speaker 1: wealthy companies that in so many ways make it harder
Speaker 1: for us to citizen. How did we even get here,
Speaker 1: what happened along the way, and how do we fix it?
Speaker 1: I wanted to find find out. So today I'm going
Speaker 1: to retrace the defining moments of the tech industry, at
Speaker 1: least according to my definitions. I'm gonna see where we
Speaker 1: went wrong and try to figure out a path forward.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just address the problems. I want
Speaker 1: to imagine a better future. And this task, Yo, it's
Speaker 1: a big one. So I brought someone along to help
Speaker 1: me out very ten day. First off, you are coming
Speaker 1: for my job, your guest hosting. I'm pivot. I know
Speaker 1: what you're up to. This is this is diplomacy right now.
Speaker 1: I'm like, if I have him on my pod that
Speaker 1: he won't feel the threat, so sharply, he won't feel
Speaker 1: the knife going in. Yeah, you and your good looks
Speaker 1: and your deep boys, brother that that you know. Sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: this job is taken. I'm Scott Galloway is a professor
Speaker 1: of marketing at n y U Stern and co host
Speaker 1: of the Pivot podcast for Now. I've actually never met
Speaker 1: Scott in person. I mostly know him from his podcast
Speaker 1: with Kara Swisher, but I feel like I've got to
Speaker 1: know him. He's really fiery at this intersection of tech
Speaker 1: and business. Was there a moment that got you really
Speaker 1: into this world? As an academic, you you hit a
Speaker 1: ceiling if you don't do research, And so I decided
Speaker 1: to do research on how technology disrupts traditional industries and
Speaker 1: then wrote a book and kind of made I don't
Speaker 1: say a living, but my I would say my star
Speaker 1: kind of rose. I mean if I called my star
Speaker 1: whatever it is. A dark moon on Pluto started getting
Speaker 1: some heat because I was talking a lot about Amazon, Apple, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google, which became kind of bigger and bigger parts
Speaker 1: of the economy. Yeah. I love this stuff. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in technology. I'm interested in society and to try and
Speaker 1: understand big tech has to understand everything from grocery to
Speaker 1: teen depression. It gives you a lot alattitude to talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of different things. Clearly, Scott gets it.
Speaker 1: I knew he'd be able to help me better understand
Speaker 1: the problem and also offer up some guidance and words
Speaker 1: of wisdom. Big tech wasn't always a thing. Um, there
Speaker 1: was lots of little tech being connected, especially by the Internet.
Speaker 1: What do you recall as the early aspirations of this
Speaker 1: thing that is now dominating our lives in terms of
Speaker 1: connected in network technologies and the Internet. Well there was
Speaker 1: Intel and Microsoft, so there was sort of the Windtel world,
Speaker 1: and then now they seem kind of quaint compared to
Speaker 1: the impact. You know, no one weaponized our elections using
Speaker 1: Microsoft word right that we know of, that we know of.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I remember the Windtel world vividly. And you
Speaker 1: are this, Jennifer Andson and Matthew Perry. We're here to
Speaker 1: see Mr Bill Gates about a possible starring role in
Speaker 1: the video guide to Microsoft Window. It was n and
Speaker 1: the long awaited Windows had just hit the scene. And
Speaker 1: Scott is right, it was quaint compared to what we
Speaker 1: have now, But for me it represented possibility. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: was obsessed. And when my big sister Belinda, who was
Speaker 1: a journalist at USA Today got the opportunity to have
Speaker 1: someone review Windows. Well, she gave me the best gift
Speaker 1: I could have dreamt of. The headline read teen says,
Speaker 1: program gives PC a Macintosh personality. Life was good. Your
Speaker 1: boy was in the paper. But it wasn't just Windows
Speaker 1: that made notable. That same year brought us Craigslist, Match,
Speaker 1: dot com, eBay, and even a little bookseller that went
Speaker 1: by the name of Amazon dot com, Earth's biggest bookstore.
Speaker 1: You can't drop by, not in person anyway, for the customer,
Speaker 1: Amazon only exists on the computer screen. These soon to
Speaker 1: be Internet goliath were just little David's back then, and
Speaker 1: they've benefited from the dramatic increase of home computers, the
Speaker 1: rising curiosity in the world Wide Web that hit the
Speaker 1: scene ever so slightly ahead of the curve. And while
Speaker 1: many of us were setting up our dating profiles and
Speaker 1: fighting with our roommates over who got to use the
Speaker 1: dial up, these tech David's we're seeing as just a
Speaker 1: bunch of quirky dudes innovating out of their garage. We
Speaker 1: ate that underdog story up, allowing these future giants to
Speaker 1: fly under the radar. I think this gross fetishization. This
Speaker 1: idolatry of innovators has resulted in a lack of scrutiny
Speaker 1: or counterbalance because they're doing their job, So the government
Speaker 1: is meant to be a counterbalance and the government because
Speaker 1: individuals fetishize innovators and tech, so they all say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's innovators and our economy and our most productive citizens
Speaker 1: and YadA, YadA, YadA. So there there they have gotten
Speaker 1: free rein If I said to my ten year old,
Speaker 1: you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, you know,
Speaker 1: it would pretty much be occasionally to have a peanut
Speaker 1: butter sandwich, but for the most part it would just
Speaker 1: be you know, ice creams amwiches in Coca Cola. So
Speaker 1: there's just no guardrails. But at the time, I wasn't
Speaker 1: paying attention to all that. I was too busy starting
Speaker 1: college at Harvard University. Yeah, there's no way to not
Speaker 1: say it and not sound like that dude who's dropping
Speaker 1: the Harvard thing. But if I don't say it, you
Speaker 1: could be like, why are you being mysterious about the
Speaker 1: college you went to? So, yeah, I went to Harvard University. Now,
Speaker 1: if you ask someone who met me in those first
Speaker 1: few months, They're likely gonna remember two things about me. First,
Speaker 1: my afro. It was huge and it was beautiful. Second
Speaker 1: my four eight six d X two computer. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was always on the computer, which, depending on the angle
Speaker 1: you were at, you might not see because of the afro. Now,
Speaker 1: one of my first campus jobs was as a computer
Speaker 1: user assistant a k a. Tech support, and we had
Speaker 1: a mission to bring the Internet to every dorm room. Basically,
Speaker 1: I set the stage from Mark Zuckerberg to launch Facebook
Speaker 1: nine years later. You're welcome Mark now where my share
Speaker 1: is at. And long before Facebook even existed, I helped
Speaker 1: create and maintain an online community built around real life friendships.
Speaker 1: It was a small, simple email list of many of
Speaker 1: the black students in Harvest class, and it worked because
Speaker 1: we actually knew each other, We had something in common,
Speaker 1: we lived among one another. We were actually friends, not
Speaker 1: Facebook friends, real friends, and that made this space safe
Speaker 1: for us to joke, to organize our politics, to organize
Speaker 1: our parties, even two more in the loss of some
Speaker 1: of our members, and none of us was in it
Speaker 1: for followers or likes or brand deals. It was real
Speaker 1: community powered by the Internet. In I graduated Harvard and
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of living through a brief moment
Speaker 1: of technological hysteria. Why two K the year two thousand
Speaker 1: computer bug as a worldwide crisis special hardware stores, But
Speaker 1: the biggest sellers our ammunition, gun safes, kerosene lefts, and
Speaker 1: water jugs. But if you're looking for a generator, forget it.
Speaker 1: There are It's gonna be for a long time. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a change. I think we're gonna be setting
Speaker 1: ourselves back to about side. It could quite literally trigger
Speaker 1: at the end of the world, depending on what nuclear
Speaker 1: missiles think when that computer screens suddenly go blank. It's
Speaker 1: not Why two K is the first time that I
Speaker 1: can remember a collective pause about our faith in technology.
Speaker 1: It was this idea that the way we coded, literally
Speaker 1: the code that was in almost all of our systems,
Speaker 1: would implode because of a law error and lack of
Speaker 1: imagination and destroy us. Because the year changed over beyond
Speaker 1: someone's expectations. And though the world didn't implode, the U.
Speaker 1: S Government did spend nearly a hundred billion dollars trying
Speaker 1: to fix the glitch, and this left many people with
Speaker 1: a permanently uneasy feeling about the future of tech. Yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, there was an emerging underground revolution
Speaker 1: of bloggers. Around the turn of the twenty one century,
Speaker 1: the term blog entered the mainstream, along with the formation
Speaker 1: of blogging sites Zanga, live Journal, and of course blogger.
Speaker 1: Blogs were a threat to traditional media gatekeepers. Folks who
Speaker 1: had been subjected to the narratives others wrote for them,
Speaker 1: they could finally write their own and reach an audience
Speaker 1: without asking for permission. I even threw my hat in
Speaker 1: when Cheryl Contie and I launched Jack and Joel Polock six,
Speaker 1: a black bourgeoisie perspective on US politics. That's what we
Speaker 1: called our blog. We held institutions accountable for their treatment
Speaker 1: of black people, whether it was the Congressional Black Caucus
Speaker 1: or CNN. When I think about Jack and Joe politics,
Speaker 1: it gave me so much a chance to grow as
Speaker 1: a writer, community organizer, and citizen. And this period wasn't
Speaker 1: just good for me. We all as a society experienced
Speaker 1: this big push for at home broadband. Two thousand three
Speaker 1: to two thousand six, we saw the launch of Skype, MySpace,
Speaker 1: Facebook popping up at my alma mater, Twitter, which called
Speaker 1: itself a micro blogging site. It was on right. The
Speaker 1: latest cyber drug of choice. It is called Twitter, an
Speaker 1: addictive concoction of blogs, Google maps, personal websites, and text
Speaker 1: messaging all the century version of the old paper bound yearbook.
Speaker 1: Now millions of students used the Facebook dot com to
Speaker 1: list not only their pictures and hobbies, but as a
Speaker 1: virtual community. And this was exciting. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: connecting and creating together on the Internet. But while hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people were logging into these sites, these
Speaker 1: future tech golias were growing like crazy, some of them
Speaker 1: offering services below costs just to gobble up market share.
Speaker 1: And they were blowing our minds with what we were
Speaker 1: told was innovation. And remember, they could do some of
Speaker 1: this because the government didn't want to regulate innovation. No
Speaker 1: innovation knows no bounds because you can't get in the
Speaker 1: way of at least a man, probably white, trying to
Speaker 1: make a doubt. These tech giants weren't just capturing our
Speaker 1: attention though, they were also capturing our personal information. And
Speaker 1: while we thought we were just sharing our cute selfies
Speaker 1: with our friends, behind the scenes, we will share something
Speaker 1: much more valuable. We were giving away our data and
Speaker 1: as a result, the CEOs and shareholders of these companies
Speaker 1: would profit big time. Little did we know this data
Speaker 1: capture would eventually power the most profitable and destructive business
Speaker 1: model yet, online advertising, which has since grown to dominate
Speaker 1: almost all Internet businesses. This is the Onion News Network,
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour, NonStop loses and in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: when I started my job at the satirical news organization,
Speaker 1: the Onion online advertising was really starting to take off.
Speaker 1: As the first ever director of Digital, my job was
Speaker 1: basically to bring the Onion online and I loved it.
Speaker 1: But one of my biggest frustrations was also just keeping
Speaker 1: up with the tech. And I say this as the
Speaker 1: tech guy, but we'd have to change our entire creative
Speaker 1: process to accommodate some software or some app that I
Speaker 1: just knew wasn't gonna be around in two years. And
Speaker 1: this was really my first personal exposure to the intersection
Speaker 1: of business and technology. Sometimes it worked great, other times
Speaker 1: there was some conflict. I actually remember being in the
Speaker 1: room at an online ads award show and folks were
Speaker 1: giving out awards for like the best pop up ad.
Speaker 1: They were giving out awards for obscuring the content, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, they think they're content too. It
Speaker 1: was a huge aha, like a major turning point for
Speaker 1: me because the Internet, in the future of tech was
Speaker 1: no longer this shiny object that excited me and gave
Speaker 1: me a place for community and fun. It was becoming
Speaker 1: something co opted by opitalism. The perfect example is Facebook.
Speaker 1: The company went public in two and raised a record
Speaker 1: sixteen billion dollars during its initial public offering I p
Speaker 1: O for sure. To this day, Facebook is the largest
Speaker 1: tech I p O ever and as CEO is like
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, started selling more and more of their company
Speaker 1: shares to the public. They also started figuring out clever
Speaker 1: ways to hoard their power. One, I want you to
Speaker 1: quickly explain dual class shareholders in terms of the path
Speaker 1: we've taken to get here and why it's become a problem.
Speaker 1: What is a dual class shareholder company? So governance, what
Speaker 1: are the systems and constructs for who's in charge and
Speaker 1: who gets to make decisions and remove leadership? Right? So,
Speaker 1: corporate governance is loosely based on societal or national governance,
Speaker 1: and that is we show up at shareholder meetings and
Speaker 1: we get one share, one vote, and we vote for
Speaker 1: who the board is and the board gets to make
Speaker 1: decisions around whether or not the CEO gets fired if
Speaker 1: they sell the company. So essentially, the notion is that
Speaker 1: the wisdom of crowds and ownership is linked to accountability
Speaker 1: and responsibility. And until Google, very few companies had dual
Speaker 1: class shareholder structures. Now dual class shareholder structure means that
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, even though he controls less than half of
Speaker 1: the company, he has control. So that is a total
Speaker 1: departure or a fissure from what you call democratic governance.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is it's a group of individuals that
Speaker 1: like control and don't want to make the economic sacrifices
Speaker 1: or don't have the economics to get shareholder control. You know,
Speaker 1: the board isn't a board at Facebook, It's an advisory
Speaker 1: board because at the end of the day, Mark can
Speaker 1: get rid of all of them do whatever the funk
Speaker 1: he wants. The Apple is not a dual class shareholder company,
Speaker 1: and I would argue that there's a link to behavior.
Speaker 1: I think Apple behaves better because Tim Cook can be
Speaker 1: fired Mark Zuckerberg, and I've said this before, is the
Speaker 1: most dangerous person in the world. Putin will be out
Speaker 1: of office because of biology In ten or fifteen years
Speaker 1: or less. We can vote by them out office. Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg could be with us for sixty years. For the record,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to pick on Mark Zuckerberg. He wasn't
Speaker 1: the first tech founder to adopt a dual class structure,
Speaker 1: but when he did it in he opened the doors
Speaker 1: for so many others to do the same. According to
Speaker 1: Fast Company, in of tech companies that went public were
Speaker 1: dual class models. And while Facebook was going public, I
Speaker 1: was having my own internal conflicts about tech. I didn't
Speaker 1: just like tech. I loved it. I thought it was
Speaker 1: gonna free us all, but I was starting to see
Speaker 1: hints that it could do the opposite, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure it didn't go down that path. After
Speaker 1: the break, I leave The Onion for Silicon Valley. That
Speaker 1: same year, I left my job at The Onion to
Speaker 1: start my own company, Cultivated with with a vague but
Speaker 1: important mission to merge humor and technology by bringing together comedians, designers,
Speaker 1: and developers. We opened an office in San Francisco, where
Speaker 1: I spent increasing amounts of time, and just as I
Speaker 1: had committed myself further to technology, I got a platform
Speaker 1: to reflect on and challenge it. When I took over
Speaker 1: the back page column for Fast Company magazine, I wrote
Speaker 1: pieces with headlines like social media may be efficient, but
Speaker 1: don't forget good old face to face conversation. Okay, Grandpa
Speaker 1: tun day another headline, living in the cloud apps can
Speaker 1: only get you so far, or one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: a radical proposal for putting people in charge of their data.
Speaker 1: The era of technology that I loved was turning into
Speaker 1: an environment that aggressively and effectively mind our attention and
Speaker 1: seemed to demand more work from us rather than liberating
Speaker 1: us from work as promised, and all that was by design.
Speaker 1: I would say that when you know I'm one of
Speaker 1: my colleagues. Jonathan hy sort of raised my awareness when
Speaker 1: you start talking about He wrote this book called The
Speaker 1: Coddling of the American Mind and said that the emerging
Speaker 1: mental health crisis among teens was in large part due
Speaker 1: to the rise of social media and then dual class
Speaker 1: shareholder companies such as these companies didn't have to really
Speaker 1: listen to shareholders regulatory overrun. I just all these things
Speaker 1: added up, and I just noticed personally my addiction to Twitter.
Speaker 1: You just have all these little moments I remember my
Speaker 1: kid at the age of nine doing a handstand and
Speaker 1: asking me to record it and then saying could you
Speaker 1: put it on YouTube? And I said sure, because I
Speaker 1: think technology is wonderful. I want my kids understand it.
Speaker 1: And then on the way home, uh, he said, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I got a like, And then every fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes for the next day he wanted to go back
Speaker 1: onto YouTube to see if he got more pikes. And
Speaker 1: it was one of those moments like, there's some externalities here,
Speaker 1: and while we focus on all the wonderful things about technology,
Speaker 1: the shareholder return the innovation it does unlock a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of value. It seems like the gross idolatry of
Speaker 1: technology has resulted and we ignore the externalities, and it's been,
Speaker 1: I think, really detrimental to mental health, really detrimental to
Speaker 1: our economy, really detrimental to our democracy. And I feel
Speaker 1: as if there needs to be a counterbalance, and usually
Speaker 1: that counterbalance our regulatory bodies. They have been in a
Speaker 1: deep slumber for twenty or thirty years. As it relates
Speaker 1: to technology. In my personal life, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was on a hamster wheel producing content for my feed,
Speaker 1: taking pictures of my food, instead of eating it, posting
Speaker 1: about books online instead of reading them. I was doing
Speaker 1: all that more than living my actual life. This lack
Speaker 1: of accountability that you've been bringing up, whether it's inside
Speaker 1: the company's governance structure, whether it's our collective will through
Speaker 1: our government and an unwillingness and ability to regulate them.
Speaker 1: I think of it in another way about the funding
Speaker 1: of some of these businesses. When when I see a
Speaker 1: lot of VC backed firms that have never made a
Speaker 1: dollar after five, ten, maybe many more years, that doesn't
Speaker 1: to me deserve to be called a business. It's like
Speaker 1: a special project that's subsidized by people who should have
Speaker 1: been taxed more at some point in their lives. What
Speaker 1: role do you think, um the funding mechanism for these
Speaker 1: companies has contributed to some of the downsides we're experiencing
Speaker 1: now in terms of that lack of accountability, like they're
Speaker 1: not failing. The thing that has kind of changed everything.
Speaker 1: And this is your point, and it's an important one,
Speaker 1: is that before Amazon, a company was kind of given
Speaker 1: three four years a runway and then it was expected
Speaker 1: to start making money. And two thirds of companies that
Speaker 1: went public just ten twenty years ago were profitable right
Speaker 1: now as we sit here today, s the companies that
Speaker 1: go public are not profitable. So the markets have taught
Speaker 1: because of Amazon the Netflix, which were extremely unprofitable but
Speaker 1: still became gargantrian companies that dominate their sectors and have
Speaker 1: had enormous returns to shareholders. It's taught investors to replace
Speaker 1: profits with vision and growth. And it's really changed the
Speaker 1: ecosystem because the big shift you're talking about where there's
Speaker 1: a new class of companies that are afforded cheaper capital
Speaker 1: and more runway. It's just an enormous advantage. If I
Speaker 1: told a T and T they no longer needed to
Speaker 1: be profitable, they no longer needed to have a divin end,
Speaker 1: they could go negative for ten or twenty years and
Speaker 1: their shareholders would continue to bid their stock price up.
Speaker 1: They could be remarkably innovative. So this is a real
Speaker 1: shift in our economy in the markets, and that is
Speaker 1: the keyest disruption, and the key is being perceived as
Speaker 1: a leader, not necessarily profitability. It used to be that
Speaker 1: the numbers kind of spoke for themselves, and now it's
Speaker 1: the numbers that everyone's looking at. Is growth and also
Speaker 1: just a certain level of innovation, so you end up
Speaker 1: with Facebook with seven people in pr and comms. Let
Speaker 1: me set one thing straight, it's not necessarily a bad
Speaker 1: thing to bet on companies with a vision. I love
Speaker 1: risk taking, I support it. And there are so many
Speaker 1: innovative people out there with brilliant ideas that deserve to
Speaker 1: be funded, even overfunded, even if it may not immediately
Speaker 1: be profitable. But who's getting this no strings attached funding.
Speaker 1: It's just gendered men. It's mostly white men a k a.
Speaker 1: The visionaries that we've been taught get to have that title.
Speaker 1: They have this endless supply of chances. They can be
Speaker 1: unprofitable for years, and often their share prices still go up.
Speaker 1: But are we doing the same kind of investing, the
Speaker 1: same kind of risk taking for women for l g B,
Speaker 1: t q I A plus business owners for BIPOC folks.
Speaker 1: Hell no. And let's not forget the big five companies
Speaker 1: who control the industry get to cherry pick who succeeds.
Speaker 1: They decide who to acquire, who to buy out. Anti
Speaker 1: monopoly experts Stacy Mitchell said it best on this podcast
Speaker 1: last season. If you control the roadway that the vast
Speaker 1: majority of traffic is traveling down. Then you control what
Speaker 1: that traffic sees. For example, all the movies on Netflix
Speaker 1: are basically stored on Amazon servers. Facebook bought Instagram and What'sapp.
Speaker 1: And think about it, Google's algorithms determine what posts you
Speaker 1: see first in your search results. If someone new steps
Speaker 1: onto the scene, maybe someone who's trying to help us
Speaker 1: citizen better, these five companies can basically determine if they succeed.
Speaker 1: And to me, that sounds really undemocratic. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: still lingering on something you said earlier about disrupting major industries.
Speaker 1: I'm for becused, and I think we're focused in this
Speaker 1: upcoming season on the disruption to our democracy itself and
Speaker 1: into the fabric of our society, not just their competitors,
Speaker 1: which in some ways should happen. How are you seeing
Speaker 1: the structure of the industry, the design of the technology,
Speaker 1: the lack of oversights, what elements are making the impact
Speaker 1: on us less bearable? I would say ground zero for
Speaker 1: what I'd call the unraveling of the fabric of America.
Speaker 1: Kind of one threat at a time is algorithms. These
Speaker 1: algorithms have been trained to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: capture as much of your attention for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: And so we are a tribal species. We are very
Speaker 1: suspicious of each other. We're very prone to making stereotypes
Speaker 1: and believing bad things about people who don't look, smell,
Speaker 1: and feel like us. That's one of the flaws of
Speaker 1: our species. Of modern societies learned to cooperate and they
Speaker 1: learn from more progressive ideals. And if you think about capitalism,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the least bad system of its kind,
Speaker 1: it's based on this collision of cooperation and self interest,
Speaker 1: which is this gangster cocktail. And what these algorithms have
Speaker 1: done is staid, let's tap into our primal instincts and
Speaker 1: let's amplify content that is really divisive and create violence
Speaker 1: online because people can't look away from violence. So and
Speaker 1: by the way, it's not just social media, it's the
Speaker 1: situation room at CNN. It's Fox gas lighting America constantly.
Speaker 1: But there's less money in news and content that says,
Speaker 1: you know, everything is kind of incrementally getting a little
Speaker 1: bit better. Isn't that great? That's just not an exciting story.
Speaker 1: It's like remember the kid. Remember when you're in fifth
Speaker 1: grade and two people start having words and someone would
Speaker 1: screen fight, fight fighting, and they just didn't really have
Speaker 1: an intention of fighting. Facebook a billion times an hour
Speaker 1: is saying to any two entities fight, fight, fight, It
Speaker 1: just it promoting this coarseness. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I checked around myself is I started identifying people as
Speaker 1: blue a red. And what I realized is if you
Speaker 1: don't separate the person from the ideology, you lose fifty
Speaker 1: of all potential relationships. And what you find is that
Speaker 1: the majority of conservatives don't dislike democrats, and the majority
Speaker 1: of democrats don't like conservatives because of their viewpoint, but
Speaker 1: because of our ecosystem has taught us to hate each
Speaker 1: other and take taken the worst aspects of our dialogue
Speaker 1: and turned it into insults and made it very personal.
Speaker 1: And I think these companies lie at the center of that.
Speaker 1: With infinite computing capacity and bottomless venture funding on their side,
Speaker 1: these companies had the power to keep us in their
Speaker 1: world by luring us to click and scroll and swipe,
Speaker 1: such that I had written a Fast Company cover story
Speaker 1: talking about taking a social media detox. I can't express
Speaker 1: to you how dramatic and public this rejection was of
Speaker 1: the tech I had long celebrated and been celebrated for
Speaker 1: that cover piece. You know it kind of unleashed me.
Speaker 1: For the next few years, I spoke up louder about
Speaker 1: the gap I was seeing between the promise of tech
Speaker 1: and the reality unfolding. My critiques were bolstered by others
Speaker 1: seeing the same things, who taught me even more than
Speaker 1: I thought I already knew. The most fun group of
Speaker 1: fellow critics were the people I met through cultivated with
Speaker 1: comedy hackathons. These events brought together comedians, designers, and coders
Speaker 1: to build apps in a single weekend. The apps themselves
Speaker 1: were designed to be jokes, satirizing the industry we were
Speaker 1: all a part of, and trust me, there was a
Speaker 1: lot to satirize. Who's been here. You got one bill,
Speaker 1: multiple people, a wage gap plaguing women in minorities, plus
Speaker 1: Molly drank most of the wine. That's why I created
Speaker 1: an appuit Table, the only bill splitting app that uses
Speaker 1: real labor statistics to adjust for income inequality between races
Speaker 1: and genders. Now, during this period, I was bouncing back
Speaker 1: and forth between San Francisco, where I had this office
Speaker 1: with my colleagues, and New York, where I actually lived,
Speaker 1: and when I was in New York. I worked out
Speaker 1: of the offices of a group called Data in Society.
Speaker 1: It's a research institute that studies the social implications of
Speaker 1: data centric technologies as well as automation. These researchers were
Speaker 1: pointing out with data how the systems we were building
Speaker 1: discriminated against folks who are already overlooked in our society,
Speaker 1: poor people, l G, B, t q I, A plus
Speaker 1: and BIPOC folks. Today, it's become fashionable to talk about
Speaker 1: things like the surveillance economy and criticize how we make
Speaker 1: money with tech by observing and mining data around people's behavior.
Speaker 1: But I first heard that phrase years ago when I
Speaker 1: was at Data in Society. I remember being there and
Speaker 1: seeing Rebecca Wexler, a lawyer in residence who was part
Speaker 1: of the group, give a talk about how the New
Speaker 1: York government it was using evidence derived from computers in
Speaker 1: prosecuting black and brown people, but that digital evidence from
Speaker 1: cell phones and social media was often deemed proprietary or
Speaker 1: some companies trade secret, so folks had no ability to
Speaker 1: challenge it or even understand it. As smartphones and apps
Speaker 1: became more than norm, attention mining and addiction became the
Speaker 1: new currency. You know that little thing called the terms
Speaker 1: of service that no one ever reads. Well, it gives
Speaker 1: these companies the authority to use and sell our data
Speaker 1: to their hearts content. Eventually, this data mining became a
Speaker 1: full on surveillance apparatus, monitoring and monetizing our whereabouts, social interactions, tastes,
Speaker 1: and more international intrigue, and an American fugitive on the run,
Speaker 1: Edward Snowden, the man who told the world about the
Speaker 1: federal government sweeping top secret domestic spying program, is on
Speaker 1: the move as we speak. Incredible extent to which the
Speaker 1: US government is monitoring and keeping records of not just
Speaker 1: our phone calls, but also apparently our emails, internet searches, downloads, photos,
Speaker 1: Facebook pages, and on and on. All this led to
Speaker 1: a massive shift for the little boy who was so
Speaker 1: excited for that apple to eat. Instead of feeling like
Speaker 1: a technology user, I was feeling used. The tool that
Speaker 1: had empowered me was now sapping my power. And it's
Speaker 1: no wonder these big tech companies were set up with
Speaker 1: essentially zero oversight and in a position to do pretty
Speaker 1: much whatever they wanted. And the extra frustrating part is
Speaker 1: that despite all these warning signs, it still felt like
Speaker 1: this was all happening under our noses. Big business had
Speaker 1: essentially pick pocketed the people's internet and made it their internet.
Speaker 1: How did we as a society let this happen? What
Speaker 1: do you think happened along the way in terms of
Speaker 1: the development of the Internet, in the role of technology
Speaker 1: in our lives to give us the Internet we have
Speaker 1: now that has so much more harm than we remember
Speaker 1: in the early days. Well, a lot of good things.
Speaker 1: There's more utility, you know. I can order a car
Speaker 1: and see where it is before it gets here. I
Speaker 1: can have almost everything delivered to me off my phone.
Speaker 1: I can find out almost answered almost any basic question
Speaker 1: from our new god Google. So the utility and the
Speaker 1: innovation has been extraordinary. Um that's one of the many positives.
Speaker 1: One of the many negatives is that as a society
Speaker 1: becomes wealthier and more educated, it's reliance on a super
Speaker 1: being in church attendance goes down. But we still need
Speaker 1: that spiritual guidance or what I call is super being
Speaker 1: that can answer very complicated questions. And into that void
Speaker 1: has slipped tech. Because technology is kind of the closest
Speaker 1: thing we have to magic or some sort of godlike action.
Speaker 1: I just have no idea how my phone does what
Speaker 1: it does, but it's amazing, so it feels somewhat mystical,
Speaker 1: somewhat spiritual, so what God like? And as a result,
Speaker 1: I think our new Jesus Christ are Jack Dorsey and
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs and that we don't longer have go to church,
Speaker 1: we go to Apple. And there's a certain that's dangerous
Speaker 1: now whole type because after the break we'll find out
Speaker 1: why despite all this doom and gloom, my optimism has returned,
Speaker 1: and we'll learn about Scott's take on investing in citizenship
Speaker 1: as a way to get us out from under big tick.
Speaker 1: So at this point in my personal journey, we're now
Speaker 1: in the year I know it's almost as hard of
Speaker 1: a year to say as why do we get trauma's
Speaker 1: eyes every four years in America? That same year, I
Speaker 1: was at south By Southwest ringing the alarm bell even
Speaker 1: before the election. Upon receiving the Hall of Fame award,
Speaker 1: Yes I am in a Hall of Fame and it's exciting.
Speaker 1: My acceptance speech sounded a very different tone from my
Speaker 1: more optimistic past self. Could we in the virtual reality racism?
Speaker 1: Could we have should learned sexism? Could power the police
Speaker 1: by drones and Internet of crop. This is all very possible.
Speaker 1: We don't needede cautiously in the world that we're all doing.
Speaker 1: Hate to say I told you so. After that historic
Speaker 1: election went down, so many of us saw that the
Speaker 1: human manipulation and tricks learned through attention economics weren't just
Speaker 1: stressing us as individuals, but also as a collective as
Speaker 1: a democracy. This is where I mentioned Robert Mueller. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry to bring you back to that era of
Speaker 1: our history. It explains that under longstanding Department policy, he
Speaker 1: probably president, cannot be charged with a federal crime while
Speaker 1: he is in office, even if the charge is kept
Speaker 1: under sealed and hidden from public view. That too is prohibited.
Speaker 1: But I remember reading through his indictments against the Russian
Speaker 1: hackers and learning how they poured gasoline on our existing,
Speaker 1: highly flammable divisions. Their techniques were not novel spycraft. They
Speaker 1: were simply effective digital marketing strategies, the kind I'd seen myself,
Speaker 1: the kind I'd used myself and had become increasingly critical of,
Speaker 1: but the kind that even I hadn't imagined could help
Speaker 1: weaken a whole nation. I was screaming even louder than before.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sugarcoating anything, and comedy alone wasn't gonna cut
Speaker 1: it for me. This led to my longest tech piece yet,
Speaker 1: my technology manifesto, Humble Guy Here. Technology Manifesto Demands from
Speaker 1: a citizen to Big Tech. This manifesto included five overall demands.
Speaker 1: Number one transparency around data collection and usage. Number two
Speaker 1: data sovereignty, as in, we are in charge of our
Speaker 1: own data and consent to use it is in our hands.
Speaker 1: Number three inclusive design and participation by diverse stakeholders in
Speaker 1: the development of all these tools. You can't design for
Speaker 1: the world if you don't look like the world. Number
Speaker 1: four we need new regulations and new accountability. And number
Speaker 1: five decentralization of tech power back to the people the
Speaker 1: way we design this thing in the first place. Between
Speaker 1: pursuing profit regardless of the social harms and the lack
Speaker 1: of transparency and oversight, we've reached a point where tech
Speaker 1: is actually making it harder for us to citizen. But
Speaker 1: when we're overwhelmed by the serotonin inducing algorithmic hits from
Speaker 1: our tech products, we can't show up for our communities.
Speaker 1: When tech platforms just view us as dollar signs and
Speaker 1: click potential. They make it harder for us to feel
Speaker 1: connected to each other. When economic and computing power is
Speaker 1: concentrated in a handful of companies, that makes it harder
Speaker 1: for all of us to be fluent in our power
Speaker 1: and use it for collective benefit. One of the things
Speaker 1: my mother encouraged me to do often was question authority.
Speaker 1: She wanted me to think for myself and understand my
Speaker 1: own power. We've ceded too much authority to too few
Speaker 1: controlling how we use technology. It's past time to question
Speaker 1: that and come up with some better answers. That brings
Speaker 1: us to season three of How to citizens the technology addition,
Speaker 1: because despite all that we've gone through, I see a
Speaker 1: light and that's what this season is gonna focus on.
Speaker 1: There was a moment when I was listening to Scott
Speaker 1: and Karros Swisher's Pivot podcast walking down the Street in
Speaker 1: my Hood, and Scott said something that stopped me in
Speaker 1: my tracks. But I've been plenty of money and private
Speaker 1: companies in my theme, My entire theme for the next
Speaker 1: five years of my life around investment strategy is citizenship.
Speaker 1: Other than lobbying to get on this podcast, why did
Speaker 1: you choose to use the word citizenship in connection with
Speaker 1: your own investment strategy. What do you see coming? What
Speaker 1: do you hope is coming? That's an alternative to what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. Sure, So first off, just the
Speaker 1: asterisk around all my virtue signaling is I'm doing this
Speaker 1: for selfish reason. I think there's money to be made
Speaker 1: and what I'll call the citizenship or immunity strategy. And
Speaker 1: I like the strategy. I like the idea of trying
Speaker 1: to do stuff that I think are investment companies that
Speaker 1: I think are good for the commonwealth. When Amazon becomes
Speaker 1: abusive to their partners, Shopify emerges, and when I think
Speaker 1: the toxicity of Twitter and Facebook becomes so noxious, I
Speaker 1: think Snap and Pinterest, which are less toxic, are outperforming
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter right now on a shareholder level. I
Speaker 1: think the people that Robin Hood I'm gonna use an
Speaker 1: academic term here, are mendacious Fox. I think that they
Speaker 1: are addicting young men. I think they are absolutely using
Speaker 1: dark psychological techniques to create a dopamine addiction among young men.
Speaker 1: I do not think they are building wealth. There's just
Speaker 1: so many gotchas, but make them richer and their shareholders
Speaker 1: poort a much less their customers. I've invested in open web,
Speaker 1: which manages comments section. The comments section is actually more
Speaker 1: important than the actual content. It's where you get a
Speaker 1: lot of back and forth and they're trying to make
Speaker 1: people fights right. And this this company, open Web, manages
Speaker 1: it for big media companies ranging from news Core to
Speaker 1: ganet and helps them create a comment section that elevates productive,
Speaker 1: thoughtful comments. I invested in better dot com, which is
Speaker 1: online mortgages. We have found it and when whenever we
Speaker 1: get humans involved in improving mortgages, we end up with
Speaker 1: terrible things such as this emmic racism, and mortgages are
Speaker 1: just too expensive and intimidating. You know, take a take
Speaker 1: a young immigrant family. They don't want to walk into
Speaker 1: a bank of American apply for a mortgage. They don't
Speaker 1: have a confidence that they've heard really bad things about
Speaker 1: mortgages and redlining and all that bullshit. So I think
Speaker 1: there's just some really outstanding opportunities from companies that are
Speaker 1: zigging when other companies are zagging in terms of not
Speaker 1: addressing the externalities they create. What obligations do you think
Speaker 1: a tech company in particular, company in general has to
Speaker 1: the public to us, you know, other than generating as
Speaker 1: many profits as possible for their shareholders, we've basically prioritized
Speaker 1: companies and shareholders over workers. We have done that for
Speaker 1: the last thirty years. And the results of since two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the nastacas quintupld CEO compensation as a
Speaker 1: multiple of the average workers compensations got from sixty to
Speaker 1: thirty and minimum wayagees exploded from seven dollars and cents
Speaker 1: to wait for it, seven dollars and cents. And we
Speaker 1: say that, oh, this is a function of a processor
Speaker 1: network economy, and isn't this terrible? And let's pretend that
Speaker 1: we give a flying fuck. We have managed this. We
Speaker 1: have orchestrated a transfer of wealth from poor people to
Speaker 1: rich people, from young to old, with almost every major
Speaker 1: economic policy and constructing our approach to this. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to think that companies have an obligation will calling
Speaker 1: their better angels. That is not a good strategy. The
Speaker 1: government needs to regulate them. The government needs to say,
Speaker 1: if you have grown your wealth a hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: in the last five years and paid less than one
Speaker 1: percent of that and taxes, we need to rethink our
Speaker 1: tax system. When you have a profit incentive around making
Speaker 1: young girls feel bad about themselves, the government needs to
Speaker 1: step in because here's the bottom line. And I'm guilty
Speaker 1: of this too. When it's raining money, it blurs your vision.
Speaker 1: The people at Philip Morris weren't bad people, but they
Speaker 1: talked themselves into believing cigarettes were no worse than ice
Speaker 1: cream because they were all making a ship ton of money.
Speaker 1: So we need to elect leaders who will hold these
Speaker 1: firms to the same standards we've held other firms. We
Speaker 1: call this show how to Citizen, and he interprets citizen
Speaker 1: as a verb actions When you think about citizen ng
Speaker 1: as a verb, how do you define it? What does
Speaker 1: it mean to Scott Galloway to citizens? First and foremost,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to raise secure, loving kids that have empathy
Speaker 1: in a sense of how fortunate that they are to
Speaker 1: be to be American, but more than anything, and this
Speaker 1: is hard for me because I'm naturally an angry to
Speaker 1: press person. I'm trying to be less coarse in my dialogue.
Speaker 1: I am really good at dunking on people, and I've
Speaker 1: tried to stop that. I've tried to say, Okay, your
Speaker 1: opportunity to get a couple of thousand likes because you
Speaker 1: call out someone, make a character of their comments, and
Speaker 1: take it to an ugly place. It's just not adding
Speaker 1: any value to our commonwealth. It might feel good, so
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of what I call comedy a
Speaker 1: manner being good to your neighbor and imagine that everybody
Speaker 1: you meet online is your neighbor. You would never say
Speaker 1: this ship to your neighbor. You would never say hey about.
Speaker 1: You would never say this ship to another American who
Speaker 1: maybe served and was a good person and got up
Speaker 1: in the morning. You would never say this to someone
Speaker 1: who'd been raised by a single mother and was struggling
Speaker 1: with you know, economic shame. You would just never say
Speaker 1: this ship, So why would you do it online? And
Speaker 1: I fall into that trap. I get angry at people,
Speaker 1: and I respond the easiest way to live your life?
Speaker 1: I think, are there are good? I give a lot
Speaker 1: of advice to your dad's try and be the man
Speaker 1: your kids think you are, especially your young kids. My
Speaker 1: thirteen year old kind of figuring out who I am, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but my ten year old still a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, my ten year old still thinks I'm
Speaker 1: the bomb. Unfortunately, they have Google and they're finding ship
Speaker 1: on me and the like, oh God, Dad did this?
Speaker 1: You have been really gracious with your time. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for being here with me. Scott Galloway,
Speaker 1: good luck with everything, all the journeys. You're wrong and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you. Yeah. Likewise, brother, congrats on your success.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that optimistic Baritune Day who went dorm
Speaker 1: to dorm connecting his classmates to the Internet. He's still
Speaker 1: with me. I believe there's more to the story than
Speaker 1: vaccine disinformation, mental health crises, and hyper concentrated wealth. This season,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be speaking with ten different people who are
Speaker 1: redefining tech. They've built systems that reward consensus, create safe
Speaker 1: online spaces for l g B, t q I A
Speaker 1: plus communities, and use games to combat misinformation. It's easy
Speaker 1: to get bogged down by all the negativity surrounding tech,
Speaker 1: but it's exciting to think about the possibilities. As I
Speaker 1: wrote in my tech Manifesto, the promise of the Internet
Speaker 1: isn't that a few centralized powers will do everything for us.
Speaker 1: That's the old world and we shouldn't try to recreate it.
Speaker 1: Imagine if we used our collective data to help us
Speaker 1: be better than neighbors, partners, artists, citizens, and humans, rather
Speaker 1: than just better products to be auctioned off to the
Speaker 1: highest bidder. Imagine two. If we could hold technology companies
Speaker 1: accountable by demanding that they share power more equitably with
Speaker 1: the people who use and enable their products and services.
Speaker 1: Imagine it. Now, let's go building. I still believe in
Speaker 1: that vision because I've seen evidence that it's real. I've
Speaker 1: used tools that empower us collectively, and I've met some
Speaker 1: of the people building those tools. So now that we
Speaker 1: know how we got here, let's find the people with
Speaker 1: the solutions to take us where we want to go,
Speaker 1: the people making technology that helps us live together better,
Speaker 1: that helps us citizen. Next week we talked to co
Speaker 1: founder of New Public, Eli Pariser. I think this is
Speaker 1: the playbook for how we've moved through times of social
Speaker 1: stress and social fracture in the past. Is like we've
Speaker 1: invented new kinds of organizations, new kinds of institutions, public libraries,
Speaker 1: or a thing that we're invented. Hear it, How do citizen,
Speaker 1: We're committed to giving you things to do beyond listening
Speaker 1: to me, talk to somebody We're building an entire universe
Speaker 1: of citizen action over at our new website, how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com. For this episode, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: three types of things you can do. First, feeds and feelings.
Speaker 1: I want you to take a moment and reflect on
Speaker 1: your various social media feeds. If your Facebook or Instagram
Speaker 1: or TikTok had a personality, what would it be and
Speaker 1: how would you describe it? Is it sassy with a
Speaker 1: little bit of inspiration? Is it gossipy and entertaining? Does
Speaker 1: it just make you sad? How do those feeds make
Speaker 1: you feel? Once you thought about that, consider training the algorithm.
Speaker 1: Selecting accounts and content that makes you feel good, that
Speaker 1: pushes you forward rather than drags you down. This small
Speaker 1: act could have a mighty impact on your mental and
Speaker 1: emotional well being. The second category of action, check out
Speaker 1: my digital manifesto. Yes, I wrote this thing for you,
Speaker 1: and I'd love you to check it out. It's available
Speaker 1: via link in the show notes, and there's even an
Speaker 1: open source Google doc version that you can contribute to.
Speaker 1: I am open to expansion, modification, uh and criticism, So
Speaker 1: share your thoughts on this and I'll share some of
Speaker 1: your feedback on my own social channels. Lastly, let's ensure
Speaker 1: the regulation of big tech. We talked about it a
Speaker 1: lot in this episode, and there are several grassroots efforts
Speaker 1: already underway that you can lend your voice, your skills,
Speaker 1: maybe some of your money to. Check out Freedom from
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google dot Com, Athena for All dot org,
Speaker 1: which is working to free us from Amazon, which we
Speaker 1: probably all need, and the Economic Liberties Project dot US.
Speaker 1: You don't have to memorize all this stuff. We have
Speaker 1: a whole website with this and more. Visit how to
Speaker 1: Citizen dot com and follow us on Instagram, Join with
Speaker 1: us and others on the journey becaus the Internet doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be terrible. Hashtag how to Citizen See you later.
Speaker 1: How To Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me Barretton Bay Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusa.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our producer is Ali Kilts,
Speaker 1: and our assistant producer Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cohne is our editor.
Speaker 1: Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer and Matthew Laie as
Speaker 1: our Apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
Speaker 1: music for season three from Andrew Clauson. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
Speaker 1: Dustlight Production