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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George, nor

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Speaker 1: with you. Facebook as an American online social media and

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Speaker 1: social networking service founded by Facebook, Inc. Was founded in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and four by Mark Zuckerberg along with his

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Speaker 1: fellow Harvard College students and roommates. Facebook today claims that

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Speaker 1: it has nearly three billion monthly active users around the planet.

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Speaker 1: That's almost half of the entire planet. What we are

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Speaker 1: going to talk about for the next couple hours is

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Speaker 1: the controversy surrounding Facebook. Right now, there's a book called

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Speaker 1: Behind the Mask of Facebook, a whistleblower shocking story of

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Speaker 1: big tech bias and censorship. Two special people with us.

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Speaker 1: The first Kent Heck and Lively back with us. Kent

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Speaker 1: as a science teacher, an attorney, as staff writer for

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Speaker 1: Green med Info, and a founding contributing editor of Age

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Speaker 1: of Autism. In the summer of two ten and two eleven,

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Speaker 1: he attended the Teacher Research Academy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories,

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Speaker 1: spending eight weeks weeks in a virus lab investigating the

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Speaker 1: expression of micro RNA's and a Monkey Model of Ebola infection.

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Speaker 1: He has written a number of books, including Inoculated, How

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Speaker 1: Science Lost Its Soul and Autism Can't Welcome back to

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Speaker 1: the program. Thanks for having me, George, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to introduce Ryan, and then I'm going to have you

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Speaker 1: Can't talk about how you two got together, and then

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Speaker 1: off we go. Ryan Hartwig was a content moderator for Cognizant,

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Speaker 1: which was under contract to Facebook. After observing many instances

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Speaker 1: of domestic and foreign bias, Ryan contacted Project Veritas and

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Speaker 1: then became a whistleblower. This story is told in this

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Speaker 1: book that we're talking about tonight, Behind the Mask of Facebook,

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Speaker 1: a whistleblower, shocking story of big tech bias and censorship.

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Speaker 1: And Ryan, thank you for coming on the program tonight. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Can't tell us about the relationship

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Speaker 1: with Ryan. How did you two meet up? You know,

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Speaker 1: it was really very interesting because I had first done

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Speaker 1: another big tech us a blower as a book, Google Leaks,

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Speaker 1: with Zach Vorhees, and then Zach and Ryan were good friends,

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Speaker 1: and I believe that Zach had set Ryan up with

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Speaker 1: my agent, and my agent contacted me and said, okay,

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Speaker 1: you've done Google how about Facebook. And strangely enough, I

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Speaker 1: was really busy at the time and I didn't have

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Speaker 1: time for it. And Ryan came back to me a

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Speaker 1: couple of months later and I was able to jump

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Speaker 1: in and help him put his book together, get it

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Speaker 1: across the finish line. He'd done so much work on

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Speaker 1: it already. He is just a really intelligent, thorough researcher,

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Speaker 1: and it was really such an easy task to be

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Speaker 1: his co writer because he had done so much and

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Speaker 1: gathered so much material. And I think the thing that

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Speaker 1: really attracted me, as it does with all my stories,

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Speaker 1: is I'm always looking for a good central character. And

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Speaker 1: Ryan is just as honest as can you know, and he,

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Speaker 1: like these whistleblowers, he risked so much because sure here

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Speaker 1: he was working for Cognizant and looking to have a

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Speaker 1: career with him, and then he saw things wrong and

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Speaker 1: felt like he had to speak up. And you know

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Speaker 1: that's not usually good for your career. But you know,

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Speaker 1: I like to write stories of heroes, and Ryan joins

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Speaker 1: the pampion of heroes that I've had the pleasure of

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Speaker 1: writing their stories. Well, let's bring Ryan Hartwig in again. Ryan,

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Speaker 1: you of course know that Facebook's getting slapped around from

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Speaker 1: all different angles right about now. But what made you

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Speaker 1: decide to go public? Yeah? I decided to go public

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Speaker 1: because I just felt like it was my civic duty

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Speaker 1: as a patriot. Of course, I didn't plan on ongoing

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Speaker 1: public when I started there. It was kind of a

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Speaker 1: dream job for me because I was using my Spanish.

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Speaker 1: I love Spanish. I was following current events and politics,

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Speaker 1: which I love, and so after about a year there,

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Speaker 1: I just started, you know, multiple exceptions. So I just

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Speaker 1: felt like the American public decide should know what Facebook

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Speaker 1: was doing doing behind closed doors to prioritize content and

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Speaker 1: sensor political speech. What did you decide to come forward with?

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Speaker 1: What did you start seeing that really got to you? Yeah? Um,

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Speaker 1: so that the first summer that I started there, because

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Speaker 1: I started in March of twenty eighteen there for Cognizant,

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Speaker 1: and I started on the on the Latin American side,

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Speaker 1: but I was seeing content on on both sides, North

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Speaker 1: America and South America. But that first summer there, summer

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Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, there was a viral there's some there's

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Speaker 1: some things about um like, um, there was a viral

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Speaker 1: viral video of a Trump supporter being attacked and this

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Speaker 1: is just one of one of many examples. But Facebook

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Speaker 1: decided to delete that viral video. So just the power

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Speaker 1: they wheeld for both sides, whether for the life l

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Speaker 1: after the right. And I'm put pretty clear about that

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Speaker 1: said book, that censorship can be bad for anybody, sure

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Speaker 1: who's trying to, you know, have a political conversation, and

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Speaker 1: so face the rules. Facebook kind of made up the

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Speaker 1: rules as they went, so there was really no clear

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Speaker 1: violation for this viral video of a of a of

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Speaker 1: this this kid being attacked. But Facebook decided to delete

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Speaker 1: the viral video. So that just like really got to

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Speaker 1: me because I realized how much power Facebook has and

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Speaker 1: they can really control like the public discourse on the internet.

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Speaker 1: And Ryan, in your opinion, is Facebook starting to wane

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Speaker 1: a little bit? I mean, it's got close to three

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Speaker 1: billion people who have signed up with it. But the

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Speaker 1: word is on the street that I hear from my

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Speaker 1: grandkids and stuff is that younger people are kind of

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Speaker 1: turning away from Facebook like they did MySpace. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think that's that's true. I think I mean there's a

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Speaker 1: lot I think Facebook is losing losing some of its

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Speaker 1: value and people are turning away from it. Um, they

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Speaker 1: still have Instagram, so you know, I also reviewed content

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Speaker 1: for Instagram, and Instagram is more popular with young kids.

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Speaker 1: But you know, with some of these missteps that Facebook's

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Speaker 1: and making, I mean going back to as far as

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Speaker 1: back as Camera j Analytica, whether we know they're abusing data,

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Speaker 1: Facebook's definitely not as popular as it used to be.

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Speaker 1: It definitely has a stranglehold on the market still, but

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Speaker 1: I think people are going on it less and less.

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Speaker 1: Can't tell me what your concern is about Facebook. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's not a newspaper. It's not like the New York

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Speaker 1: Times or the Washington Post or our city newspapers that

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Speaker 1: you see the Saint Louis Post Dispatch, the LA Times.

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Speaker 1: But it does have an influence and when it sends

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Speaker 1: out news stories, a lot of people follow it and

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Speaker 1: sometimes they get hits and the millions. What's your concern here, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: my concern with Facebook, and it's a little bit different

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Speaker 1: than some of these other whist blowers coming forward, But

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Speaker 1: my concern is they're not really holding true to the

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Speaker 1: origins of the law that gives them the authority to

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Speaker 1: censor content. So you know, Section two thirty of the

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Speaker 1: Communications Decency Act from nineteen ninety six. The law actually

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Speaker 1: talks about how the Internet should be allowed for a

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Speaker 1: true diversity of political discourse, and I'm not really seeing

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Speaker 1: that happen, and so I'm seeing this censorship. Most of

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Speaker 1: the other waist of blowers call for more censorship from

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Speaker 1: a more of a liberatary and perspective. I don't think

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Speaker 1: there should be as much censorship, especially of political conversations.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's the danger I see is, you know,

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Speaker 1: with these mega corporations Facebook and Google controlling just large

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Speaker 1: sloths of the Internet, where I really think the Internet

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Speaker 1: should be kind of free from us centralized control. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what do you think? Yeah? And I think that what

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Speaker 1: is happening is these social media giants are replacing a

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Speaker 1: lot of the traditional media, so that all of the

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Speaker 1: concerns that we have about fairness and media, we should

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Speaker 1: have fairness and social media. And one of the things

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Speaker 1: that I think was really interesting in Ryan's story and

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Speaker 1: was very clear to me, is that Facebook was really

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Speaker 1: trying to build the airplane as they were flying at

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Speaker 1: and so what Ryan was experiencing was like every two

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Speaker 1: weeks you'd get more, you get an update, and oh,

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Speaker 1: here's our here's what we're doing. And then what really

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Speaker 1: kind of got him was seeing the exceptions. So I

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Speaker 1: think that we can all generally agree that to call,

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Speaker 1: you know, somebody's filth is not a good thing, and

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Speaker 1: that was one of Facebook's policies. Well, along came the

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Speaker 1: Pride Month, and suddenly it became okay for the LGBT

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Speaker 1: community to call straight white male's filth if they didn't

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Speaker 1: agree with their agenda. And so suddenly what you saw

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Speaker 1: was that there was this attempt to put the fingers

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Speaker 1: on the scale of the political discussion so that you know,

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Speaker 1: I think everybody just wants the rules to be equally applied,

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Speaker 1: and so when you saw such examples like that, you

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Speaker 1: just said yourself, something is not right here. They're not

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Speaker 1: play fair. And even though I understand the argument that

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Speaker 1: these are private companies, although I think there's a problem

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Speaker 1: with that because they have so much government involvement, and

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Speaker 1: if you know anything about discrimination law, if there's any

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Speaker 1: governmental connection, you really have to follow, you know, the rules,

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Speaker 1: as any government did. But you know, let's put that aside.

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Speaker 1: But the problem is you social media giants have solved

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Speaker 1: themselves to the public as free and open platforms, and

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Speaker 1: they're betraying the trust of their consumers. And I just

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Speaker 1: don't think it's a good business model to betray the

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Speaker 1: trust of your customers because eventually your customers are going

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Speaker 1: to find other places to go. And so regardless of

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Speaker 1: whether the government does something, I think people are going

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Speaker 1: to be voting with their cliques and moving away to

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Speaker 1: the first thing that looks as good as Facebook when

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Speaker 1: it appears. Do you think, Ken, it's just too big

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Speaker 1: right now, and it's too big to handle in control.

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Speaker 1: But you know, it was really interesting because you know,

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Speaker 1: Ryan documented over forty examples of what he saw as bias,

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Speaker 1: and as I kept looking at this again and again,

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Speaker 1: I found myself saying, I just don't think there are

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Speaker 1: adults in charge at Facebook, you know, because when you

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Speaker 1: create a large company, you have to be aware that,

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Speaker 1: you know, you need to generate trust with the public,

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Speaker 1: and so many of the decisions that they were making

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Speaker 1: were violating that trust. And I just felt like they

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Speaker 1: didn't have certain voices in the room, you know, Like

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Speaker 1: I said, they didn't have the adults there who said, hey,

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Speaker 1: this isn't a good idea, this is going to backfire

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Speaker 1: on you. So I think a lot of short term

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Speaker 1: thinking not a lot of long term thinking, and I

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Speaker 1: think it's it's really going to come back and bite

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Speaker 1: him in the end. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more