Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey therein Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and this is one of
Speaker 1: those topics where things are pretty complicated and are unfolding
Speaker 1: as I sit down to record this episode, but I
Speaker 1: thought it was important enough to actually address it. On
Speaker 1: November two thousand eighteen, The New York Times ran a
Speaker 1: story written by five reporters and it was six thousand
Speaker 1: words long. The focus of the story was about Facebook
Speaker 1: and how executives at the social media company have tried
Speaker 1: to respond after a series of scandals and accusations and
Speaker 1: muddied Facebook's public image. And it was a pretty eye
Speaker 1: opening report and it's ended up causing a lot of
Speaker 1: people to yell at each other, or at least it
Speaker 1: has given a lot of ammunition in the yelling arguments
Speaker 1: that are happening in Washington, d C. And Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: So the scandals in question are uh some of the
Speaker 1: things we've talked about in previous episodes of Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: this year, like the signs that Russian agents and hackers
Speaker 1: were creating numerous accounts in order to steal information and
Speaker 1: spread propaganda and misinformation, and to generally undermine the democratic
Speaker 1: process in the United States. It also included the Cambridge
Speaker 1: Analytica scandal, which is a separate thing. I covered that
Speaker 1: in an earlier episode. In that mess, the public discovered
Speaker 1: that an enormous amount of personal data had been mined
Speaker 1: by this political analystic company, Cambridge Analytica, often without the
Speaker 1: user's consent. Then there's the ongoing problem of hate groups
Speaker 1: and hate speech proliferating on the social network. So this
Speaker 1: New York Times piece was really an investigative look into
Speaker 1: how Facebook top brass have bonded to these problems, and
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, it ain't great. The piece goes through the
Speaker 1: process of Facebook becoming aware of Russian hacker activity on
Speaker 1: the platform. Alex Stamos, who was then the head of
Speaker 1: security over at Facebook, initiated an internal team to look
Speaker 1: into suspicious activity. In December, Mark Zuckerberg sort of dismissed
Speaker 1: the idea that fake news on Facebook was having some
Speaker 1: sort of effect on uh political process and had in
Speaker 1: fact played any role in the election. Stamos was worried
Speaker 1: that this wasn't exactly true and so he ended up
Speaker 1: meeting with Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg, who is the chief
Speaker 1: operating officer over at Facebook now. According to the New
Speaker 1: York Times article, Sandberg was furious with Stamos and said
Speaker 1: that his investigation had opened up the possibility that Facebook
Speaker 1: could be held accountable or liable for this stuff. But
Speaker 1: ultimately the company chose to expand this investigation in an
Speaker 1: internal project that was called Project P. The P stood
Speaker 1: for propaganda. I should also point out that Sandberg responded
Speaker 1: to the New York Times piece after it ran in
Speaker 1: a blog post, and she denied the suggestion that she
Speaker 1: wanted to avoid or slow down any internal investigations into
Speaker 1: Russian interference. She specifically wrote, quote, Mark and I have
Speaker 1: said many times we were too slow, But to suggest
Speaker 1: that we weren't interested in knowing the truth, or we
Speaker 1: wanted to hide what we knew, or that we tried
Speaker 1: to prevent investigations is simply untrue. End quote. So that's
Speaker 1: going on. But in April, Facebook would publish a paper
Speaker 1: about the subject. However, in this paper, the word Russia
Speaker 1: was mysteriously absent from it. It was about interference, but
Speaker 1: the company did not name Russian hackers as the perpetrators.
Speaker 1: Joel Kaplan, who is Facebook's vice president of Global Policy.
Speaker 1: He's also a former deputy chief of staff for Republican
Speaker 1: US President George W. Bush, had argued behind the scenes
Speaker 1: against Facebook taking a more firm and definitive stance. He
Speaker 1: said it would open the company up to accusations that
Speaker 1: it was anti Republican and biased towards Democrats, and so
Speaker 1: he said, in order to do that, let's not just
Speaker 1: let's not lay out that it's Russian hackers that were
Speaker 1: attempting to sway elections specifically in favor of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So how did things get so bad so fast for
Speaker 1: the company. While the piece maintains that Mark Zuckerberg, you know,
Speaker 1: founder and CEO, and Cheryl Sandberg had focused on personal
Speaker 1: projects rather than critical operations at Facebook, and they had
Speaker 1: handed off those important responsibilities to subordinates, the New York
Speaker 1: Times journalists cite numerous current and former executives who indicated
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of delegating going on and
Speaker 1: not enough oversight. So there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were given a great deal of leeway to do
Speaker 1: their jobs, and as a result, people probably stepped a
Speaker 1: little further out than what Zuckerberg or Sandbrick would have preferred. Now,
Speaker 1: when the various scandals all rose to a certain level
Speaker 1: and public opinion was really beginning to shift against Facebook,
Speaker 1: someone over at Facebook and it's not clear who yet
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, made the decision
Speaker 1: to go on the offensive and hire an opposition research
Speaker 1: firm called Definer's Public Affairs. Opposition research is a really
Speaker 1: nice way to describe the technique of researching an opponent,
Speaker 1: typically a political opponent, in an effort to dig up
Speaker 1: dirt or compromising information so that that information can be
Speaker 1: used against that opponent. This information can be used to
Speaker 1: discredit or weaken the person. And this technique is not new.
Speaker 1: It's actually ancient. Was used in ancient Rome in their
Speaker 1: republic more than two thousand years ago, so this has
Speaker 1: been around for quite some time. The term opposition research
Speaker 1: is a bit more modern, but the underlying principles are ancient.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear here, this is a tactic
Speaker 1: that's been used by politicians from all political parties. This
Speaker 1: is not something that's someone should say, oh, only Republicans
Speaker 1: do that. No, No, all political parties, at some point
Speaker 1: or another engage opposition research at some level, and the
Speaker 1: question is when does it go from being a legitimate
Speaker 1: political strategy to an unethical one. And it's a pretty
Speaker 1: gray line. It's uh ugly as well. Politics tend to
Speaker 1: be pretty ugly, and in this case, they Facebook was
Speaker 1: starting to employ a tactic that had been used in
Speaker 1: politics and now was going to be used in business.
Speaker 1: So the reason Facebook hired definers in the first place
Speaker 1: was to help monitor news stories about Facebook so that
Speaker 1: the executives would be aware of the general public opinion
Speaker 1: about the company. In October, Facebook would expand this to
Speaker 1: direct definers to specifically focus on the story about Russian
Speaker 1: hackers on Facebook and how it relates to the manipulating
Speaker 1: of the American public and the lead up to the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election. They said, forget all the other stories,
Speaker 1: really focus on these and see where that narrative is going.
Speaker 1: The more the Facebook security team investigated the Russian hacker issue,
Speaker 1: the bigger and more impactful it was turning out to be.
Speaker 1: So it was sort of an attempt to Facebook trying
Speaker 1: to stay ahead of what the public narrative was about
Speaker 1: this whole thing and to get a better grip on
Speaker 1: exactly what had happened before someone else found out and
Speaker 1: then put Facebook on the defensive. So Facebook was really
Speaker 1: concerned that this increased focus on the company would possibly
Speaker 1: lead to government intervention in the form of regulations. Now,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, big companies are not huge fans of regulations.
Speaker 1: By definition, regulations limit what a company can do, and
Speaker 1: since from a very high level perspective, the purpose of
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company is ultimately to make money for shareholders,
Speaker 1: limitations are generally viewed as a bad thing. They tend
Speaker 1: to also require that a company invest money in various
Speaker 1: processes and procedures, which means there's less money to go
Speaker 1: toward profit. So again, the more costs you have, the
Speaker 1: less attractive you tend to be towards shareholders. So all
Speaker 1: of this requires a bit of mental gymnastics to separate
Speaker 1: out what would typically be considered ethical, as in, what
Speaker 1: is the right thing to do and what is considered
Speaker 1: good business practices. Those two questions often arrive at very
Speaker 1: different answers. A lot of a lot of businesses try
Speaker 1: to go and UH and a moral route not immoral.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to do something that is UH antithetical
Speaker 1: to morals, but rather remove morals from the the question
Speaker 1: entirely as much as you can. Uh, that isn't every business,
Speaker 1: and certainly I don't think there are very many businesses
Speaker 1: that do it to the fullest extent. But you see
Speaker 1: a lot of companies try to ignore certain ethical questions
Speaker 1: if those ethical questions are inconvenient in the pursuit of profit. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair to Facebook, the situation is incredibly complic
Speaker 1: had it. I don't wish to say that there was
Speaker 1: a very simple choice to be made and Facebook went
Speaker 1: the wrong way. That is far too simplistic for what
Speaker 1: was going on. Facebook executives have understandably, I think, argued
Speaker 1: that Facebook is a platform, not a publisher. There is
Speaker 1: a difference. As a platform, the company is not responsible
Speaker 1: for the type of stuff people will post to that platform.
Speaker 1: The ideas that the company is agnostic and disinterested. They
Speaker 1: provide the venue, they do not provide the script. In
Speaker 1: other words, so that guess Facebook a bit of protection
Speaker 1: if someone were to post something really awful on that platform,
Speaker 1: the company can enjoy a bit of protection. It's related
Speaker 1: to a concept it's called safe harbor. The idea that
Speaker 1: if you provide a place for people to put stuff.
Speaker 1: You actually are not liable if someone puts something illegal there.
Speaker 1: You you were fighting a service in the sense of
Speaker 1: a place for people to go and do things. The
Speaker 1: other person who put the illegal thing, they're they're the
Speaker 1: ones who broke the rules. They should be held liable,
Speaker 1: not you as the service provider. But then the problem
Speaker 1: is Facebook doesn't take a completely hands off approach when
Speaker 1: it comes to people posting stuff on the platform. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the company has designed algorithms so that users
Speaker 1: see some content, but they might not see other content
Speaker 1: from their friends. And I'm sure if you've used Facebook
Speaker 1: you've had this experience. Maybe you missed out on a
Speaker 1: post that a lot of other people are talking about,
Speaker 1: and it's not that you were excluded, it's just that
Speaker 1: Facebook's algorithm didn't share that post with you, so you
Speaker 1: didn't see it. Or maybe you posted something and you
Speaker 1: were surprised that more of your friends didn't respond to it.
Speaker 1: And again, it may very well be that Facebook just
Speaker 1: didn't display your post in people's feeds. So Facebook algorithms
Speaker 1: in part determine what you see. Generally speaking, posts that
Speaker 1: get more interaction or engagement tend to be seen by
Speaker 1: more people. Facebook's algorithm tends to favor those. So if
Speaker 1: a post gets a lot of likes, if it gets
Speaker 1: a lot of shares, if it gets a lot of comments,
Speaker 1: it tends to raise the visibility of that post, and
Speaker 1: it tends to show up in more people's news feeds. Well.
Speaker 1: News flash posts that get a lot of engagement tend
Speaker 1: to be very emotionally charged and controversial because they tend
Speaker 1: to invite people to either chime in and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're totally right for that controversial perspective you've posted, or
Speaker 1: you are way off base and you are a jerk
Speaker 1: face for putting such a controversial post up on your
Speaker 1: news feed. All of that engagement just drives the visibility
Speaker 1: of that post and makes it even more visible, which
Speaker 1: invites more people to participate, which again boosts the visibility,
Speaker 1: and so you start to get these sort of toxic
Speaker 1: posts rising to the top. Then there are promoted posts.
Speaker 1: So by paying money people, organizations, companies, they can boost
Speaker 1: the visibility of a post. They pay Facebook and Facebook
Speaker 1: make sure that that post will show up on more
Speaker 1: news feeds. So that muddies the waters too, because Facebook,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, isn't just an empty stage where
Speaker 1: anyone can get up and say anything they want and
Speaker 1: be heard by all the people who happen to be
Speaker 1: in the room at that time. It's not an even
Speaker 1: playing ground, and it tends to favor inflammatory, controversial posts
Speaker 1: and people who have money to spend. And again, understandably,
Speaker 1: Facebook didn't want to take on the mantle of publisher
Speaker 1: at that time. They didn't want to accept that as
Speaker 1: their responsibility because that would mean the company would need
Speaker 1: to monitor posts and potentially step into sensor problematic users
Speaker 1: and accounts. They would where a lot of investment on
Speaker 1: the part of Facebook, and this would be an ongoing expense.
Speaker 1: They would have to keep on policing their service. And
Speaker 1: it's a big service, so that's a huge job. And
Speaker 1: since again the purpose of business is to make as
Speaker 1: much money for the owners or shareholders as possible, additional
Speaker 1: expenses are generally undesirable. I've got a lot more to
Speaker 1: say about this whole subject, but first let's take our
Speaker 1: own quick break to thank our sponsor so we can
Speaker 1: pay our expenses. In addition to monitoring the news about Facebook,
Speaker 1: definers began to dedicate resources to deflecting some of the
Speaker 1: blame for Russian involvement by trying to steer the conversation
Speaker 1: to target some of Facebook's rival tech companies, namely Google
Speaker 1: and Twitter definers, along with two other companies that it
Speaker 1: shares space with. Those two companies being America Rising, which
Speaker 1: is a political action committee, and in t K Network,
Speaker 1: which is a news network with a right wing slant
Speaker 1: on news items. We're all collectively using the same office space,
Speaker 1: some of the same staff, and so that brings some
Speaker 1: questions in there. In t K Network would publish stories
Speaker 1: that were pro Facebook and anti Facebook competitor during this time,
Speaker 1: so they were trying to steer public opinion to try
Speaker 1: and take some of the heat off of Facebook itself
Speaker 1: and put it on some of its competitors. Well before
Speaker 1: the problems that would lead to Zuckerberg having to sit
Speaker 1: in front of Congress, activists had been accusing Facebook of
Speaker 1: allowing various oppressive governments around the world to co op
Speaker 1: the platform in order to spread propaganda or to identify
Speaker 1: people that those governments considered a threat in order to
Speaker 1: sign lence them or eliminate them. When Facebook was responding
Speaker 1: to mounting criticisms, including that famous session in which Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg Berg would appear in front of Congress to provide
Speaker 1: answers or explanations regarding Facebook user data, Russian interference, and more.
Speaker 1: There was a simultaneous problem of people protesting the company
Speaker 1: and its practices. So this is going on around the
Speaker 1: same time. Activists were calling for oversight or regulations, which
Speaker 1: Facebook definitely did not want to have to deal with,
Speaker 1: and so definers got the directive to go do some
Speaker 1: digging on the activists in an effort to discredit them. Now,
Speaker 1: one particular group that was becoming a thorn in the
Speaker 1: side of Facebook was called Freedom from Facebook. Now, this
Speaker 1: included an attempt to link those activists to a billionaire
Speaker 1: financier named George Soros. You probably heard that name if
Speaker 1: you've been paying attention to the political news in the
Speaker 1: United States. George Soros has backed a lot of different causes.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are democratic causes for countries in Europe.
Speaker 1: He's backed a lot of philanthropythropic causes in the United States,
Speaker 1: but hasn't put as much money in direct democratic races
Speaker 1: here in the US as he has in Europe. Soros
Speaker 1: would actually create a philanthropic agency. It was called the
Speaker 1: It is called the Open Society Foundations, and Soros funded
Speaker 1: this organization with eighteen billion dollars of his own money.
Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg, Soros is currently worth about eight billion dollars. So.
Speaker 1: Soros was born in Budapest in nineteen thirty and he
Speaker 1: comes from a Jewish family. His family wasn't really religious,
Speaker 1: they were non observant Jews. But growing up in Budapest
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, you know, World War two write
Speaker 1: on the horizon. It was a stressful time and uh.
Speaker 1: He then would move throughout of Hungary. He moved to
Speaker 1: the UK and then moved to the United States, and
Speaker 1: he built his wealth. His enormous amount of wealth and
Speaker 1: his support of various liberal causes, not just in the
Speaker 1: United States but elsewhere, particularly in Europe, has evolved to
Speaker 1: the point that some conservatives, not all, Some conservatives tend
Speaker 1: to accuse Soros of trying to manipulate government policies around
Speaker 1: the world through his wealth, and those accusations often come
Speaker 1: from the more extreme fringes of the conservative movement, and
Speaker 1: those accusations sometimes carry with them anti Semitic messaging. This
Speaker 1: notion of wealthy Jewish people trying to control world events
Speaker 1: and it's a frequent anti semitic message that has been
Speaker 1: repeated numerous times. Uh, and it is a an insidious
Speaker 1: and dangerous message to send out there. It feels a
Speaker 1: lot of hate groups. So at the same time that
Speaker 1: the Definers were starting to link George Soros to this
Speaker 1: activist group, Freedom from Facebook, the Freedom from Facebook group
Speaker 1: went and did something pretty bone headed and wrong. They
Speaker 1: attended a House Judiciary committee meeting where a Facebook executive
Speaker 1: was testifying about corporate policies, and the activist group held
Speaker 1: up a sign and that sign showed Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandberg as a two headed octopus with its tentacles
Speaker 1: encircling the globe. And that's more than a little problematic.
Speaker 1: Both Zuckerberg and Sandberg are also Jewish, and the depiction
Speaker 1: of an octopus grasping the globe has been used as
Speaker 1: an anti semitic messaging method before, and so this particular
Speaker 1: sign could legitimately be viewed as being anti semitic, as
Speaker 1: being uh bigoted against Jewish people. Now, whether or not
Speaker 1: the activist group intended to express anti Semitic views or
Speaker 1: not is up for debate, but either way, Definers was
Speaker 1: able to take that protest and leverage it against them.
Speaker 1: They contact the Anti Defamation League and they said, this
Speaker 1: is a terrible thing. This should not stand. The group
Speaker 1: needs to apologize taking some of the attention away from
Speaker 1: Facebook and putting it onto Facebook's critics. And again I'm
Speaker 1: not defending Facebook. Freedom from Facebook for doing that sign.
Speaker 1: It was a dumb thing to do, and at best
Speaker 1: it was dumb. At worst, it was racist. So Definers
Speaker 1: takes that protest and leverages it against them. Simultaneously, Definers
Speaker 1: is trying to link George Soros and his money to
Speaker 1: that activist group, which is doubly weird right, and on
Speaker 1: one part the group, this Definers group is reaching out
Speaker 1: to the Anti Defamation League and saying, look at this
Speaker 1: anti semitic messaging that this activist group is sending out
Speaker 1: that is unconscionable. At the same time, this same group
Speaker 1: is trying to link George Soros, who has been frequently
Speaker 1: uh accused of engaging in various anti conservative causes and
Speaker 1: has been linked anti semitic messaging, has been linked to
Speaker 1: those claims, like there's been a lot of of anti
Speaker 1: semitic messages that specifically target George Soros. So they're playing
Speaker 1: both sides at the same time, essentially is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: They're They're saying, how dare this activist group send out
Speaker 1: this anti Jewish message while meanwhile they're fanning the flames
Speaker 1: of anti Jewish sentiment by linking Soros to that group.
Speaker 1: By the way, Soros is philanthropic organization would later say
Speaker 1: it had not provided any financial support to Freedom from Facebook,
Speaker 1: So the claims were, uh, we're burious to begin with,
Speaker 1: they weren't even true. The New York Times piece also
Speaker 1: goes into detail about Facebook executives and their relationships with
Speaker 1: various politicians, and there are many executives at Facebook who
Speaker 1: have worked on political campaigns or held government jobs and
Speaker 1: specific administrations over the years. Several of them, Sandberg included,
Speaker 1: are very close friends with top lawmakers and have leveraged
Speaker 1: those relationships throughout the whole affair. Sandberg would testify in
Speaker 1: front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and leading up to
Speaker 1: her appearance, the Facebook team lobbied the committee chairman, Richard
Speaker 1: Burr to stick to the topic of election interference and
Speaker 1: not to press Cheryl Sandberg on other issues related to Facebook,
Speaker 1: like user privacy or the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Burr
Speaker 1: agreed to that. He said, we should really focus just
Speaker 1: on the election interference side, so that took some pressure
Speaker 1: off of Facebook. Facebook also lobbied to include competitors in
Speaker 1: this same hearing. They said, well, we're going to come forward,
Speaker 1: but you should also really get someone from Google and
Speaker 1: someone from Twitter. And since we're sending Sandberg our chief
Speaker 1: operating officer, the people those companies should send should also
Speaker 1: be very high ranking executives. Burr agreed to that too,
Speaker 1: and he invited both of those companies to send in
Speaker 1: comparable executives to appear before the committee. Twitter's Jack Dorsey
Speaker 1: did so, he showed up. Google did not send anyone,
Speaker 1: So Google's absence became a topic of scorn among the
Speaker 1: committee members. People were saying, well, you know this, this
Speaker 1: is this looks really bad for Google not to be here.
Speaker 1: And that also helped take some of the heat off
Speaker 1: of Facebook and also Twitter because they were there, so
Speaker 1: they were able to come out of it looking a
Speaker 1: little bit better because Google didn't show up. Oh and
Speaker 1: and definers got involved in this part too. According to
Speaker 1: that New York Times article, definers gathered information about all
Speaker 1: the senators on this committee and then sent that information
Speaker 1: to various journalists That included information about how much each
Speaker 1: senator had spent on Facebook ads during various campaigns, as
Speaker 1: well as which tracking tools the various senators websites used
Speaker 1: on the visitors to those websites. The message was pretty
Speaker 1: clear if those senators were to really go after Facebook,
Speaker 1: the journalists had information that could lead to questions from
Speaker 1: the senators. They could they could ask the senators, you know,
Speaker 1: you really chased Facebook down and you argued about privacy,
Speaker 1: but it turns out you're using a tracker on your
Speaker 1: website to track information about people who visit your website.
Speaker 1: So how can how can you accuse them of being
Speaker 1: bad about privacy when you are gathering data or you're
Speaker 1: arguing about Facebook, but at the same time you've spent
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money on Facebook to advertise your campaign.
Speaker 1: How can you be so critical of that company. It
Speaker 1: was all meant to kind of add pressure to the senators,
Speaker 1: and it's all it's essentially saying something like, sure, right now,
Speaker 1: it's politically advantageous to go after Facebook because the public,
Speaker 1: their opinion is turning against this social media site. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about all the ways you've leveraged Facebook to
Speaker 1: get where you are, and as I said before, politics
Speaker 1: gets real ugly. Shortly after The New York Times published
Speaker 1: its article about Facebook strategies to manage those crises, Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: announced that his company had severed ties with Definers. He
Speaker 1: and Sandberg both said that they were unaware that Definers
Speaker 1: had been retained on behalf of Facebook. Sandberg said she
Speaker 1: should have been aware of it, but she wasn't until
Speaker 1: this article came out, and they said it was probably
Speaker 1: someone in the communications department who had hired Definers, and
Speaker 1: they just didn't realize it. That they being Zuckerberg and Sandberg,
Speaker 1: they didn't realize that had happened. According to tech Crunch,
Speaker 1: a number of face boks communications staff have ties to
Speaker 1: Matt Rhodes. Matt Rhodes is the founder of Definers, and
Speaker 1: he had previously run the election campaign for Mitt Romney.
Speaker 1: So Andrea Saul, who serves Facebook as the director of
Speaker 1: Policy Communications, also worked for Rhodes in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: Two thousand twelve, Facebook spokesperson Jackie Rooney likewise had worked
Speaker 1: on the Romney campaign as chief of staff. Another member
Speaker 1: of the corporate communications team named Carolyn Glanville also worked
Speaker 1: on the Romney campaign as the deputy communications director, and
Speaker 1: then Joel Kaplan may have worked with Matt Rhodes while
Speaker 1: Kaplan was deputy chief of staff under George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: So there are plenty of people who could have initiated
Speaker 1: bringing on Definers. Now, I want to be clear, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to suggest that the communications department at Facebook
Speaker 1: has a particular political bias, or if they do have
Speaker 1: a particular political bias, that they performed their jobs and
Speaker 1: that bias affects them. I don't know that that's true.
Speaker 1: I hope it's not. I'm assuming the department is largely
Speaker 1: just doing what most corporate departments do, which is to
Speaker 1: act in the best interests of the company, rather than
Speaker 1: to push any particular political philosophy. The only reason I
Speaker 1: point out the relationships is because I think Zuckerberg's explanation
Speaker 1: that he did not hire Definers, but someone in the
Speaker 1: communications department did is probably true because there were so
Speaker 1: many people who had relationships with the founder of Definers.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think is really interesting is
Speaker 1: that when Zuckerberg appeared before Congress is the founder who
Speaker 1: I don't think always views his company the same way
Speaker 1: as fellow executives. Due said that perhaps regulations might be
Speaker 1: inevitable for platforms like Facebook. Now, this was not quite
Speaker 1: the same thing as saying regulations would be a good thing.
Speaker 1: He said he thinks that they be unavoidable. So you
Speaker 1: can read that as saying Zuckerberg says yes, they're necessary,
Speaker 1: or he just is saying there's no way we're going
Speaker 1: to avoid it in the future. Zuckerberg also warned Congress, however, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times regulation puts in place
Speaker 1: rules that a large company like ours can easily comply with,
Speaker 1: but that small startups can't. End quote, Sandberg would say
Speaker 1: essentially the same thing behind closed door meetings with various lawmakers,
Speaker 1: and she said Facebook was already changing policies to follow
Speaker 1: new best practices to make sure it was doing more
Speaker 1: to police the content on Facebook, but that regulations, if
Speaker 1: they were made formal, could end up hurting smaller platforms.
Speaker 1: The New York Times reports that some of the officials
Speaker 1: were a little skeptical of that messaging, understandably, so it
Speaker 1: sounds like they're saying, oh, no, we we can handle
Speaker 1: this just fine. We're good what we're worried about are
Speaker 1: these smaller companies that don't have our resources. It doesn't
Speaker 1: strike me as being totally genuine, because I'm not convinced
Speaker 1: that Facebook is that concerned with smaller businesses. Um that's
Speaker 1: based upon pretty much every action I've seen Facebook take
Speaker 1: over the last decade. I've got more to say about
Speaker 1: this article and its implications, but first, let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. On top of these
Speaker 1: stories was one coming from CNBC about Kevin Systrom. Systrom
Speaker 1: co founded the company Instagram with Mike Krieger. In two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, Facebook acquired Instagram for one billion dollars, a
Speaker 1: princely some Systrom stayed on for several years, heading up
Speaker 1: Instagram within Facebook, but in September System left Facebook. His
Speaker 1: departure was likely mostly tied to how Facebook has involved
Speaker 1: itself with Instagram over the last several months, and how
Speaker 1: it has changed the way Instagram photos show up in
Speaker 1: Facebook feeds. There were a lot of arguments that said
Speaker 1: that Facebook's approach was watering down the value of instagram.
Speaker 1: Sistrom and Creeer reportedly felt that Facebook was really interfering
Speaker 1: too much with their work and that the decisions being
Speaker 1: made were ultimately hurting growth. So a month after leaving Facebook,
Speaker 1: System would say at a press conference, quote, no one
Speaker 1: ever leaves a job because everything's awesome. End quote. But
Speaker 1: they didn't go into a lot of detail. More to
Speaker 1: the point of this episode, recently, Systrom said that it
Speaker 1: is important for social media companies to be policed well
Speaker 1: and that misinformation and harassment is a growing concern. He
Speaker 1: even referenced deep fakes, which I talked about in a
Speaker 1: very recent episode. But of course that's just one way
Speaker 1: some one could misrepresent a person, from faked video footage
Speaker 1: to faked audio footage or recordings. I guess I should
Speaker 1: say two photoshopped images to smear campaigns. There are tons
Speaker 1: of different ways for people to be pretty darn awful
Speaker 1: to each other and to also reach a huge audience
Speaker 1: to boot, because social media platforms have a very broad reach.
Speaker 1: This goes beyond Facebook. Obviously, Facebook is easy to talk
Speaker 1: about because the platform is so darned huge, but these
Speaker 1: same tactics work on other social media platforms as well.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say that Facebook is the only
Speaker 1: one that is vulnerable to this sort of thing. Specifically,
Speaker 1: System said at the conference, quote, you start to realize
Speaker 1: how important it's going to be for the future of
Speaker 1: the world that we police these things well, that we
Speaker 1: take it very seriously and put real resources against solving
Speaker 1: the problems now that you're at this scale end quote.
Speaker 1: Not to be clear, system wasn't necessarily calling for outside regulation,
Speaker 1: but rather the need for policing the platforms, which could
Speaker 1: come from within. It would not have to be a
Speaker 1: formal set of laws. His point, though, was that it
Speaker 1: is necessary whether it's internal or external, and that the
Speaker 1: added expense of monitoring users and responding quickly in the
Speaker 1: event of someone trying to spread lies or harass others
Speaker 1: is absolutely critical. US Senator Mark Warner's office published a
Speaker 1: paper describing a regulatory scheme for social media platforms after
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's appearances in front of Congress. This proposed policy covered
Speaker 1: stuff like media literacy programs that are aimed at helping
Speaker 1: people so they can determine if the information they are
Speaker 1: encountering online is legitimate or if it's fake. It also
Speaker 1: called for more funding of military and intelligence agencies so
Speaker 1: that they can focus on misinformation campaigns from other countries
Speaker 1: that are aimed to affect domestic politics. Essentially, the policy
Speaker 1: was saying, we've gotten pretty good at detecting hacking attempts
Speaker 1: and infiltration attempts. You know, not not flawless, but we're
Speaker 1: aware of a lot of the tricks people use in
Speaker 1: order to infiltrate systems. What we're not good at is
Speaker 1: combating these misinformation campaigns, and we need to put money
Speaker 1: aside to get better about doing that. The policy also
Speaker 1: calls for social media platforms to do more to ensure
Speaker 1: that the accounts made on those platforms are in fact
Speaker 1: legitimate and not just run by a bot. If they
Speaker 1: are run by a bot and it's all on the
Speaker 1: up and up, it should be labeled as such so
Speaker 1: that users aren't misled into thinking that a bot account
Speaker 1: represents a real, human like person. It also calls for
Speaker 1: platforms to be held legally liable for failing to take
Speaker 1: down posts that include stuff like quote defamation, invasion of privacy,
Speaker 1: false light, and public disclosure of private facts end quote. Also,
Speaker 1: the companies would be held accountable if they failed to
Speaker 1: take down fabricated video or audio if a victim had
Speaker 1: secured a necessary judgment regarding the sharing of that content
Speaker 1: and they also pointed at the European Unions General Data
Speaker 1: Protection Regulation or g d p R rules. I covered
Speaker 1: that in an episode earlier this year that would put
Speaker 1: some pretty extensive privacy protections for Internet users if they
Speaker 1: were to try and copy that. The paper itself wasn't
Speaker 1: a draft of any sort of legislation. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: proposed law. It was more of a broader policy suggestion
Speaker 1: and a call for a discussion about those topics that
Speaker 1: could lead to more actionable plans. The authors of the
Speaker 1: paper admit that the ideas they propose may have flaws,
Speaker 1: that they may not fully understand the situation or the
Speaker 1: implementations that they're suggesting, and that in some cases the
Speaker 1: proposed solutions might even undermine the goal that the solutions
Speaker 1: were meant to achieve. I appreciate that they're very forthcoming
Speaker 1: about this because one of the big problems we saw
Speaker 1: in the initial congressional hearing with Mark Zuckerberg was that
Speaker 1: a lot of these politicians are not exactly clued in
Speaker 1: to the way social media works. Not a big surprise.
Speaker 1: There's a fairly let's call it statesman like nature too
Speaker 1: the Congress in the United States. That's a good way
Speaker 1: of saying, a lot of them are old and are
Speaker 1: a little out of touch, at least when it comes
Speaker 1: to the technological side of things. So this paper was
Speaker 1: really meant more as a call to action to get
Speaker 1: an official stance of how it would be best to
Speaker 1: approach social media platforms as they play increasingly important roles
Speaker 1: in the way people get and share information. The paper
Speaker 1: did not call for Facebook or Google or any other
Speaker 1: big company that plays in this social media space to
Speaker 1: get broken up into smaller companies. That is something that
Speaker 1: some activists have called for. That these companies represent an
Speaker 1: effective monopo bully in various industries, and that as a result,
Speaker 1: they have been able to dictate the conversation and sort
Speaker 1: of bully their way into favorable positions and favorable treatment
Speaker 1: from the government. The general consensus to the policy paper
Speaker 1: that I saw was that it would likely not make
Speaker 1: much headway, and the only real chance it would have
Speaker 1: of getting any real momentum would be if there had
Speaker 1: been a really big shift in Congress after the two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen mid term elections, and there was a pretty
Speaker 1: big shift. The Democratic Party picked up more than enough
Speaker 1: seats to take control of the House of Representatives, but
Speaker 1: the Senate still remains a Republican majority, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to say if this is going to see any progress.
Speaker 1: It may come down to uh partisan lines, where depending
Speaker 1: upon which side proposes it, the other side might strike
Speaker 1: it down not because of the merits of the ideas,
Speaker 1: but because the other side suggested it. Because again, politics
Speaker 1: get ugly, and sometimes politicians act like big old babies
Speaker 1: when if it's not their idea, it can't be a
Speaker 1: good idea. And that again, I apply this to both sides, y'all.
Speaker 1: I am not I have my own personal political beliefs,
Speaker 1: but I have no illusions that the party that I
Speaker 1: support is any better about that than the other party.
Speaker 1: Facebook meanwhile, has changed its policy in many ways to
Speaker 1: police content more effectively. It launched a new report called
Speaker 1: the Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, which goes into the policing
Speaker 1: efforts that Facebook is engaged in, including how many fake
Speaker 1: accounts it has deleted. According to the initial report, Facebook
Speaker 1: deleted one point five billion fake accounts in just six months.
Speaker 1: After the New York Times piece, Mark Zuckerberg announced that
Speaker 1: the company will produce a report like that every quarter,
Speaker 1: rather than you know, annually or semi annually. Zuckerberg also
Speaker 1: published a four thousand, five hundred word outline or blueprint
Speaker 1: on how the company is going to move forward with
Speaker 1: content moderation. In that piece, Zuckerberg wrote, and I quote,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest issues social networks face is that
Speaker 1: when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist
Speaker 1: and provocative content. This is not a new phenomenon. It
Speaker 1: is widespread on cable news today and has been a
Speaker 1: stable of tabloids for more than a century. At scale,
Speaker 1: it can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead
Speaker 1: to polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the
Speaker 1: quality of our services. Our research suggests that no matter
Speaker 1: where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as
Speaker 1: a piece of content gets close to that line, people
Speaker 1: will engage with it more on average, even when they
Speaker 1: tell us afterwards they don't like the content. So how
Speaker 1: is Facebook going to respond to that? How are they
Speaker 1: going to put a cap on that? According to Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: They're going to train AI models to recognize is when
Speaker 1: a piece is sensationalist, when it is either fake news
Speaker 1: or it's misrepresenting the facts, or it is inflammatory on
Speaker 1: purpose and that it will then automatically be able to
Speaker 1: remove those items, which seems kind of interesting, especially since
Speaker 1: we just finished all those pieces about how AI is
Speaker 1: not infallible. But the alternative would be to employ human
Speaker 1: beings to go through billions of posts every day, which
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it's particularly realistic either. Zuckerberg also said
Speaker 1: that the company would seek out an independent oversight body
Speaker 1: to review any appeals made by people who had their
Speaker 1: content removed from the platform. Zuckerberg doesn't expect that such
Speaker 1: a body will be ready to go until the end
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen at the earliest. But the goal here
Speaker 1: is to create an entity that can review these appeals
Speaker 1: and do so objectively and remove the possibility that Facebook's
Speaker 1: algorithms are behaving on a bias against certain groups. So
Speaker 1: let's say it's conservative news. If the news items are
Speaker 1: not against Facebook's policies, if they are objective, you know,
Speaker 1: they are fact based, they're not representing things, and they're
Speaker 1: not inflammatory, but they're still getting removed. That conservative groups
Speaker 1: could legitimately say, hey, your algorithms are targeting us based
Speaker 1: upon our political stance, but we're not lying, we're not
Speaker 1: misrepresenting the truth. This board would be able to review
Speaker 1: the appeals and say, you know what, You're right, that
Speaker 1: piece is completely legitimate. We're going to allow it on Facebook,
Speaker 1: or they might say, I see what you're saying, but
Speaker 1: this piece violates our policy because X, Y, and Z.
Speaker 1: As of the recording of this podcast, this story is
Speaker 1: still unfolding and a lot of people are angry, including
Speaker 1: a lot of politicians, And it's likely that Facebook is
Speaker 1: going to have to wade through a lot more political
Speaker 1: scrutiny in the near future. So I'll probably have to
Speaker 1: read at this sometime in the uh in the future,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to cover it now because it is
Speaker 1: a very fresh story and it brings up a lot
Speaker 1: of very interesting questions because if Facebook's a publisher, at
Speaker 1: what point is it able to or what point should
Speaker 1: it step in to moderate things. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: private company or publicly traded company, but it is a company,
Speaker 1: not a government, so it can choose what can and
Speaker 1: cannot be shown on its platform. That's been the case forever.
Speaker 1: Facebook has been able to do that all the time.
Speaker 1: It's just they haven't really enforced it a whole lot um.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see how this unfolds, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna see different groups react in different ways. They're going
Speaker 1: to be civil rights groups that might say there's some
Speaker 1: freedom of speech problems here. There are going to be
Speaker 1: other groups that say you're not doing enough because they're
Speaker 1: still problematic posts being made on your platform. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a rough, uneven road, I think, for a while.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad to see that some serious discussion is
Speaker 1: being held about these issues. It's a shame that it
Speaker 1: seems to be largely in response to this expose, a
Speaker 1: piece from the New York Times. You would hope that
Speaker 1: people would take these initiatives without that kind of public pressure,
Speaker 1: but sometimes that's what it takes. Anyway. That's what's going
Speaker 1: on so far. We will revisit this sometime in the
Speaker 1: future if there's more to say about it. And uh,
Speaker 1: I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. I hope
Speaker 1: you're all having a great holiday week for those of
Speaker 1: you who are listening to this when it publishes, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to talking to you again soon. If
Speaker 1: you have any ideas for episodes, why not visit our
Speaker 1: website tech Stuff podcast dot com. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about the show there you can email us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com. I'll get those messages. Uh.
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