Speaker 1: It's one eleven AM in a box full of ones
Speaker 1: and zeros on planet Mars, and you're listening to Night Call.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Night Call, a college show about our dystopian reality.
Speaker 1: My name is Emily Oshida, and with me on the
Speaker 1: other line is Molly Lambert. And we will be joined
Speaker 1: in the second half of the show by our special
Speaker 1: guests Natasha Tiku and also Tess will be jumping in then.
Speaker 1: But for now, it's just me and Emily. It's just
Speaker 1: us and our new show, our new segment Chat and Cradham. Um. I, uh,
Speaker 1: this is my own night call to that. I actually
Speaker 1: considered doing a night call about this when I was
Speaker 1: going out traveling east uh from Los Angeles, because basically
Speaker 1: as soon as I got into the outh kind of
Speaker 1: parts of Texas as well, I just noticed that Crawdham
Speaker 1: was everywhere kind of with the ubiquity that UM CBD
Speaker 1: is in you know, well just about everywhere now too,
Speaker 1: but um definitely in California UM, and I vaguely knew
Speaker 1: what it was, but I was sort of like, why
Speaker 1: why is it? Why is there so much here? Why
Speaker 1: does this feel like something that exists, uh, like kind
Speaker 1: of outside of the uh, the coastal norms like you
Speaker 1: don't see crowdam necessarily and your smoke shops and your
Speaker 1: head shops and in California, and I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's because it's we got crawdham. It's it's yeah, it's legal,
Speaker 1: it's there. It's just not push it's not It's not everywhere,
Speaker 1: but I've definitely seen it in the Hollywood boulevards, smoke
Speaker 1: shops and some big signs that say like, we have crowdham.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what crawdham is? Well, I, I
Speaker 1: mean I was actually thinking I should guinea pig and
Speaker 1: do it myself and report back, but I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: there yet. But um, I it was. It was moved
Speaker 1: to the top of my awareness again because my friend
Speaker 1: that I'm staying with here does use it, so I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, you have to tell me
Speaker 1: all about it. Um And And the the deal with
Speaker 1: crowdham is that it's uh, it's a plant it uh
Speaker 1: and it kind of works with your brain in a
Speaker 1: similar way that opioids do. It. It attaches to the
Speaker 1: same receptors um and has an effect that a lot
Speaker 1: of people compare to um opioids, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people use it therefore to uh self medicate and get
Speaker 1: off of opioids, for instance. But there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of other uses for it. There's um people use it
Speaker 1: for all sorts of reasons. I'm gonna just read off
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia uh Mitrigania speciosa, commonly known as crowdam, is
Speaker 1: a tropical evergreen tree in the coffee family native to
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, Indigenous to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myan mar and
Speaker 1: Papua New Guinea, where it has been used in traditional
Speaker 1: medicines since the nineteenth century. Cradham has opioid properties and
Speaker 1: stimulant like properties. Yeah, that's to both worlds. Baby makes
Speaker 1: sense that it's related to coffee then yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think you know, it's one of these things
Speaker 1: that there's actually everything that I've read about it it
Speaker 1: says there's comparatively little formal research done about it, which
Speaker 1: is sort of becomes this catch twenty two when it
Speaker 1: comes to regulating it, because there's been efforts to make
Speaker 1: it a Schedule one substance for years now, um that
Speaker 1: have not um that have not gone through, but that
Speaker 1: would make it um kind of on the same level
Speaker 1: as LSD, heroin, ecstasy and uh therefore also harder to research. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of limitations on researching those substances. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the d e A said it has no
Speaker 1: legitimate medical use in Yeah, clearly that's not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I I I there have been um,
Speaker 1: I think fifteen deaths linked to Cradham maybe this past decade.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the span of time, but it's
Speaker 1: it's somewhat recent, um, which is you know, pretty low
Speaker 1: and I'm not but again, we don't really like the
Speaker 1: One thing that people do know is that it uh
Speaker 1: if it even though it does create a sensation on
Speaker 1: some people that is like obioids, it does not um
Speaker 1: stop breathing. That's a you know, a signature of an
Speaker 1: opioid overdoses, Um people stop breathing. But UM, so you
Speaker 1: can basically have you know, I guess still get that um,
Speaker 1: that same sensation without the risk with lower risk. UM.
Speaker 1: The other other main risk that I saw was that
Speaker 1: there was a Cradham link salmonella outbreak in UH. So
Speaker 1: UH Salmonella is a possible risk of Crowdham, but also
Speaker 1: UM of eating chicken. So there, Yeah, there were like
Speaker 1: a hundred and ninety nine cases of of crowdham salmonella,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there's very little report of like
Speaker 1: lethality or danger or anything with this. And the the
Speaker 1: impression that I got, but I would like night callers
Speaker 1: who have firsthand or secondhand experience with it to give
Speaker 1: us a call at one to four oh for six night.
Speaker 1: But my impression is that this feels like a lot
Speaker 1: like UM, a lot of other stuff we talked on
Speaker 1: the show, UH, when it comes to people finding solutions, UM,
Speaker 1: where healthcare is not UM coming coming, when when you
Speaker 1: can't afford healthcare, when you can't when when the health
Speaker 1: care system is not working for people, UM, when doctors
Speaker 1: aren't equipped to address certain concerns. Um. This feels like
Speaker 1: another one of these you're saying, this is like a
Speaker 1: home grown way that people are getting opioids. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that seems to be what a lot of UH people
Speaker 1: have used it for in in the various reports that
Speaker 1: I've read, And it makes sense. I mean, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I it just I was sort of it felt
Speaker 1: very regional to me. It felt like a thing that
Speaker 1: I started to see really pop up in UM in
Speaker 1: these parts of the country that I had not spent
Speaker 1: much time in recently, so it felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: I noticed it. And I'm always interested in UM regional
Speaker 1: truck use. Uh, what is more popular and for what
Speaker 1: reasons UM in different part of the parts of the country.
Speaker 1: And I think I would wonder if in New England
Speaker 1: and a lot of places where there there have been
Speaker 1: huge opioid epidemics, UM, if it's as prevalent there as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously opioid abuses and and and and death
Speaker 1: has been all over the country, but you know, in
Speaker 1: the in the parts of the country where it's been
Speaker 1: particularly bad, I wonder if that's UM, if it's popular there.
Speaker 1: There's something really Midwestern about being like we're going to
Speaker 1: grow a plant to treat it right, Well, it's it
Speaker 1: kind of it gives me vibes of salvia, which is like,
Speaker 1: I mean, even though it's like totally different I think experience.
Speaker 1: But just the drugs that are like not technically illegal,
Speaker 1: but also there's no research done on them because most
Speaker 1: of them are like and theogens for somebody, including creato
Speaker 1: my guess, is used in some rituals, yeah, but also
Speaker 1: used to just like keep people awake at work in factories.
Speaker 1: It says, yeah, there's that part too. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm color me curious, you know, maybe maybe next week.
Speaker 1: I think it's crazy that caffeine is legal right as
Speaker 1: we're on the beverage pod. Yeah, Like, I've had some
Speaker 1: of the most fucked up experiences of my life from
Speaker 1: having too much caffeine. You know, I have never really
Speaker 1: freaked out from like smoking too much pot, but I've
Speaker 1: definitely had like a panic attack from from caffeine from coffee.
Speaker 1: We'll see everybody's everybody's body is different. Everyone's different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, so I'll see. I guess I'll see,
Speaker 1: uh what happens when I ride the green Wave And yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to be joined by Natasha and
Speaker 1: Tests and uh and dive into the world of Unfriendly AI.
Speaker 1: So stick with us. Hello, night callers. Have you experienced
Speaker 1: any strange weather recently or any natural disasters in your
Speaker 1: lifetime that are meaningful to you or something you want
Speaker 1: to share with the show. Are you a storm chaser?
Speaker 1: Do you actively seek out natural disasters? Are you Helen
Speaker 1: Hunt from twister. Give us a night call at one
Speaker 1: to four oh four six night or night email at
Speaker 1: Night Call podcast at gmail dot com. Share your experience
Speaker 1: with us. We're getting ready to dive into some scary
Speaker 1: weather territory. So yeah, let us know what kinds of
Speaker 1: storms and earthquakes and hurricanes you've been in. Things are
Speaker 1: weirder than ever and we want to hear about it
Speaker 1: from you. Welcome back to Nightcall. We are now joined
Speaker 1: by our special guest, Natasha Tiku. Natasha is the tech
Speaker 1: culture reporter for Washington Post and The Papers San Francisco Bureau.
Speaker 1: She's been covering tech for more than a decade. She's
Speaker 1: been at Wired, BuzzFeed News, The Verge, Valley Wag, among others.
Speaker 1: Hello Natasha, Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. Guys,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for you to be here. We have
Speaker 1: a night email that is I feel like right up
Speaker 1: your alley high Night Call. Relatively new listener here catching
Speaker 1: up on some recent episodes, and I wanted to add
Speaker 1: to the discussion you've been having on Elon musk Ai
Speaker 1: and fascist imaginings of the future. There's an article from
Speaker 1: seventeen about a movement in Silicon Valley called the Dark
Speaker 1: Enlightenment and it's neo reactionary followers that I think you
Speaker 1: would enjoy, which with a link that we will include
Speaker 1: in our show notes. The too long, didn't read version
Speaker 1: is that a group of neo reactionaries believe that the
Speaker 1: Singularity quote a vision of the future that anticipates artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence both surpassing the human mind and merging with it.
Speaker 1: End quote is inevitable that the resulting society will be
Speaker 1: ruled by a super intelligence AI, and that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is using neural link to help build the tech to
Speaker 1: merge the human brain with his AI super intelligence and
Speaker 1: create an AI god king. It involves trans humanism, fascism,
Speaker 1: and is as absurd as it is terrifying. Some of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley's most influential people, including Musk and Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: are associated with this movement's thinkers and true believers. Elon
Speaker 1: even found Grimes on Twitter because she made a joke
Speaker 1: about Rocco's basilisk And anyway, I thought this article would
Speaker 1: be a good read because it deals with a lot
Speaker 1: of what you've been talking about on the pod with
Speaker 1: Meredith and amongst yourselves. While putting a terrifying conspiratorial twist
Speaker 1: on it. When I first read the article, it felt
Speaker 1: like a conspiracy theory. But it's something I keep returning
Speaker 1: to over the years for its explanatory power. Big fan
Speaker 1: of the pod and I hope you found this as
Speaker 1: interesting as I did. Thanks Justin. This was quite an article.
Speaker 1: Um it. We will be linking to it. It's long
Speaker 1: and dead is a long read, but it's a great read.
Speaker 1: This is by Shuja Hater for Viewpoint Magazine. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Dark Enlightenment, the DAR or what is it d r
Speaker 1: X or no, no, no, no, that's in the neo reactionaries?
Speaker 1: Are that n r X like? Of course it has
Speaker 1: to have an extreme abbreviation that sounds like an energy drink.
Speaker 1: It sounds like d XAM, which is what people robo
Speaker 1: trip on. Um. Natasha, how long have you been following
Speaker 1: the Dark Enlightenment tech narrative? For about nine or ten years? Actually? UM.
Speaker 1: Back when I lived in New York and worked for
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner UM for the New York Observer, I had
Speaker 1: written a story for them about UM, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to find like a New York angle on UM, this
Speaker 1: particular ecosystem of people and so in the article, although
Speaker 1: I haven't had a chance to read that one, but
Speaker 1: but basically a central figure there is elazer Yatkowski. Have
Speaker 1: you you guys have talked about him on the pod
Speaker 1: or you haven't talked about him on the pod or
Speaker 1: he's featured heavily in this viewpoint article. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: so he's he's a main character in the story. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you want to explain for who he is
Speaker 1: for listen, yeah, UM, so he is the author of
Speaker 1: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys know that, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a central text for UM for this movement. UM.
Speaker 1: It's kind of stems off of less wrong dot com,
Speaker 1: which is a forum that a lot of these people
Speaker 1: participate in. So at the time they're there, group was
Speaker 1: called the Singularity Institute, not to be confused with Singularity University.
Speaker 1: They've since changed the name, I believe because there was
Speaker 1: some money exchange. UM, but now they're called um Miry
Speaker 1: Machine Intelligence Research Institute. And that's where the Teal funding
Speaker 1: came in. And in fact, like I think it's an
Speaker 1: incredible investment from Peter teal because he only put in
Speaker 1: like maybe a million dollars for the first donation and
Speaker 1: then a couple hundred thousand after that. Like they haven't
Speaker 1: received a ton of money, and yet like think about
Speaker 1: the like the return on investment in terms of being
Speaker 1: associated with futurism and enlightenment and contrarianism and and like
Speaker 1: same with his c studing investments. It's actually very minor.
Speaker 1: And since then, UM, there has been a lot of
Speaker 1: other people like UM, the Ethereum guy, uh Skype co founders, Khaza,
Speaker 1: like you can look at UM who is donated to them.
Speaker 1: But but in any case, there they have an actually
Speaker 1: a pretty simplistic argument UM about unfriendly AI general, you know,
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence that UM you know, if you don't, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like it's and it's really infected the effective
Speaker 1: altruism movement. UM. So it's like, if you don't do
Speaker 1: everything you can in your power right now to prevent
Speaker 1: unfriendly AI from from coming into existence, unfriendly AI will
Speaker 1: will you know, kill you and kill everyone and revenge
Speaker 1: exactly like Eliaser's the guy behind the paper clip experiment.
Speaker 1: Just the idea that you know, it just could happen.
Speaker 1: You tell them to maximize for peace, and the quickest
Speaker 1: way to peace is to kill all the humans. Um
Speaker 1: you know. So so that's how all of Human City ends.
Speaker 1: And Ellie's are like not, you know, not a comment
Speaker 1: on his intelligence, but he is a third grade dropout
Speaker 1: and like does not have a background in this stuff.
Speaker 1: So it also causes a really big rift within the
Speaker 1: AI community, Like the Google founders definitely do not appreciate, um,
Speaker 1: you know this this uh, this kind of very cinematic
Speaker 1: take on on unfriendly Yeah, sorry, I just want to right,
Speaker 1: but it's super fascinating. Right. So, the place I learned
Speaker 1: about the singularity was from the Ray Kurtzwild books from
Speaker 1: the eighties, I believe, which sort of put forth the
Speaker 1: idea of the singularity, the moment when AI will merge
Speaker 1: with human intellect or surpass it. Is that where a
Speaker 1: lot of this comes from originally. Yes, Ray is definitely
Speaker 1: a foundational thinker, although he doesn't get referenced I think
Speaker 1: that much anymore. But I mean, honestly, they talk about,
Speaker 1: like the members that I've met with do talk about
Speaker 1: like John Connor and Terminator to try to explain it
Speaker 1: to other people. Although you know, they've been warned against that,
Speaker 1: but it just it helps you understand, it helps you
Speaker 1: picture it. And and Google and everybody like they're they're
Speaker 1: anti that's just because they've invested so much in like
Speaker 1: neural networks and the you know, machine learning and all this,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they potentially are playing the role
Speaker 1: of skynet here, which maybe is not a role they
Speaker 1: want to be perceived as playing, even if they are.
Speaker 1: To give them a little credit, UM, I think it's
Speaker 1: actually based on their own understanding of how neural nets
Speaker 1: work and how um, you know, machine learning works. I
Speaker 1: think they're just saying like that is not um, it's
Speaker 1: just that like far fetched potential reality is just going
Speaker 1: to distract you from like the very real things that
Speaker 1: happen when you put in like bad data sets and um,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a bunch of developers and um
Speaker 1: machine learning experts who don't think about the implications of
Speaker 1: their work. Like it's it's like, you know, people have
Speaker 1: been talking about self driving cars forever, Like the chances
Speaker 1: of a self driving car almost as far off as
Speaker 1: or vice versa. Yeah. Yeah, one of the things in
Speaker 1: this article, UM that I thought was interesting because I'm
Speaker 1: less familiar with this kind of stuff, but uh, and
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize that this was a concern that
Speaker 1: people had. I'm quoting from the article, but this is
Speaker 1: Roko's hypothesis. Hypothesis um that AI maybe quote or it
Speaker 1: may quote, develop a survival instinct that it will apply retroactively.
Speaker 1: It will want to hasten its own birth by requisition
Speaker 1: in human history to work towards its creation. In order
Speaker 1: to do this, it will institute an incentive that dictates
Speaker 1: how you will be treated after you come back to life.
Speaker 1: So is that kind of the center of this panic
Speaker 1: is that if we create machines that reach singularly, you
Speaker 1: know that if we reach the singularity point, that the
Speaker 1: machines will somehow like become angry at us and try
Speaker 1: to bring us back to life and torture us forever,
Speaker 1: because that was alluded to in this article. And I
Speaker 1: was like, is that actually what Rocco's first post like
Speaker 1: did to people's brains? Is that where their their minds
Speaker 1: went with that? Well, I feel like it's sort of
Speaker 1: this thing where it's like, if you take rationalism far enough,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna like be rationalizing away human beings. So
Speaker 1: like because there's nothing rational about human beings like that
Speaker 1: feels like the crux of this. But then I think
Speaker 1: the thing that's funny about the Rocco's basilic thing is
Speaker 1: that it's like a cursed chain mail letter or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you exactly then your brain is poisoned forever,
Speaker 1: and now you are a part of the scheme to
Speaker 1: bring about the unfriendly or you have this moral responsibility
Speaker 1: to somehow coach AI to be beneficent, benevolent or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: And and that if you don't act, if you don't
Speaker 1: act on that, that they will be evil because now
Speaker 1: you know and say you have some kind of an
Speaker 1: obligation to do that. Yeah, I mean it honestly sounds
Speaker 1: so much like the white racists being afraid that when
Speaker 1: minorities have power, they'll come treat the white people like
Speaker 1: white people have been treating them all along. And that
Speaker 1: is something that I thought was interesting because it's like,
Speaker 1: what if they put as much money and time and
Speaker 1: thought into dealing with the racism issues that they have
Speaker 1: in tech as they do to dealing with like a
Speaker 1: potential unfriendly AI, which is the thing that doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: unlike racism which does. Right I think there's the like
Speaker 1: the two potential um you know, dreadful outcomes. One is
Speaker 1: the you know, uh sentient AI that that judges you
Speaker 1: for your actions, and then the other is that like
Speaker 1: paper clip factory example, where um, you know, just you
Speaker 1: put in an input to maximize one thing or the
Speaker 1: other and just like without even attributing human attributes to
Speaker 1: the to the machine, it just destroys humanity because you
Speaker 1: didn't have enough people writing white papers and thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And in the way that it's like, you know, become
Speaker 1: such a priority for the effective altruism movement is like
Speaker 1: I think dovetails into exactly what you're saying, well about like, um,
Speaker 1: so that's a movie like money that potentially initially was
Speaker 1: fixated on how you can make the most impact on
Speaker 1: like the you know, on poverty or um you know,
Speaker 1: global desperation in its many forms, and is now prioritizing
Speaker 1: as one of the top issues this um eventuality potential. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I uh, does anybody know who Roco is is? The
Speaker 1: person who kind of floated this idea to begin with
Speaker 1: that's become you know, that's had this much consequence financially
Speaker 1: for the tech world. Does any like I didn't. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything about who this dude was. I forgot,
Speaker 1: but I think I looked it up when Grimes and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk Scott because I just could not believe she
Speaker 1: would because it's forbidding being discussed now. So I maybe
Speaker 1: it's from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be I'm looking. It's named after a legendary serpent
Speaker 1: creature from European mythology that killed Bisques. I was just
Speaker 1: wondering about Rocco. Yeah, the dude Rocco or Rocco's obviously
Speaker 1: the sentient robot from the future who created this to
Speaker 1: warn people. Yeah, um, but yeah, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: the pop cultural implement implications also of this idea that
Speaker 1: it did bring Grimes and Elon Musk together to have
Speaker 1: their math baby, So you know, it's the tendrils reach
Speaker 1: into all sectors of society and culture. Basilisks, by the way,
Speaker 1: Molly are still popular pets, those lizards. They can walk
Speaker 1: on water. But the whole thing about the Basilist because
Speaker 1: it's a monster. The reason that they called it the
Speaker 1: rokos Basilist, because that because it's a monster that you
Speaker 1: die if you look at it. So that's the whole
Speaker 1: thing of if you are exposed to this theory about
Speaker 1: the unfriendly AI, then you are now a part of it.
Speaker 1: Because the idea we should clarify the idea is that
Speaker 1: by putting that idea into the Internet, by typing it
Speaker 1: onto the internet, the thing that the AI are supposedly
Speaker 1: going to be learning from, you have now exposed them
Speaker 1: to this idea and they're like, hey, great idea. Human.
Speaker 1: When I'm smart enough, I'm going to destroy you if
Speaker 1: you didn't help me exist. Um, that's that kind of
Speaker 1: feels like the gist of it. I thought it was
Speaker 1: also a little bit that when you spread that idea
Speaker 1: among people, like they can't stop thinking about it. Like
Speaker 1: people were going like years of effective altruism are less wrong.
Speaker 1: We're like, yeah, people were really really losing it. Yeah Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why do you think so much time gets spent on
Speaker 1: theoretical problems like this when there are so many real
Speaker 1: problems in tech that you've been covering for a decade
Speaker 1: that seemingly have not gotten fixed or even really worked on. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's an incredibly effective tactic. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys are familiar with data and society,
Speaker 1: but they have a bunch of researchers who do like
Speaker 1: great work kind of tying historical discussion on automation with
Speaker 1: how things are going these days. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: just like as simple as as it looks like you
Speaker 1: you know, gesture over here and um make it sound
Speaker 1: make the future sound inevitable, right like if self driving
Speaker 1: cars are inevitable, then you don't need to worry about people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, complaining about this or that, um, and it
Speaker 1: makes it seems the fight seemed futile, like it just
Speaker 1: distracts you. I mean this is also how like companies
Speaker 1: work with I P O s. You know, it's or
Speaker 1: or whatever like the stuff like public companies with the
Speaker 1: stock market. It's just always the next thing, Like new
Speaker 1: work is looking at co living and then I don't
Speaker 1: know what they're looking at, like wave pools that's actually
Speaker 1: a real one. Um, I was gonna stay in spaceships, um,
Speaker 1: you know, or Elon Musk looking at Mars when you
Speaker 1: know what they're doing right now is uh cheaper work
Speaker 1: that has already been accomplished. So if you think that
Speaker 1: like eventually this planet is going to blow Um, then
Speaker 1: of course why would you worry about the piddling concerns
Speaker 1: of those who won't even end up on Mars? And
Speaker 1: it's probably cheaper to like, Elon Musk has so enough
Speaker 1: power that he could, you know, create a green economy,
Speaker 1: probably more or less single handedly if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: That might prevent our need to go to Mars. What
Speaker 1: is your what's the PUDs like unifying theory on Elon Musk?
Speaker 1: Like that we hate him, right, We're not into it.
Speaker 1: And I think in general that the in particular the
Speaker 1: Mars thing feels pretty um, pretty dark. Well, it's like
Speaker 1: super colonialism from somebody who's money all comes from apartheid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I totally believe Azalea Banks who said that people
Speaker 1: who want to colonize Mars are planning to do it
Speaker 1: entirely with robots and leave all the humans behind except
Speaker 1: for the god king humans who will get to go
Speaker 1: to Mars. I know sometimes I've been I've been trying
Speaker 1: to think about like a you know, a good sci
Speaker 1: fi plot for landing on Mars with Ellen, and it's
Speaker 1: just so absurdist. But but I do think he's like
Speaker 1: did guys read Ashley advances biography of him, he's just
Speaker 1: like an incredible salesperson and he knows like the narrative
Speaker 1: arc that they have perfected, Like multiple times in in
Speaker 1: the book, you know, he tries to refer back to
Speaker 1: like I was interested in space when I was eight
Speaker 1: years old, like these are the this is how the
Speaker 1: trope goes, you know, like some outlandish thing. And he
Speaker 1: also is frequently talking about how he sleeps under his desk,
Speaker 1: and you know, from for from all of his employees
Speaker 1: who have been overworked and super stressed, like I'm sure
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that, but it's part of this narrow
Speaker 1: like if you look him up on Cora, all the
Speaker 1: questions are about like how can I be like Ellen
Speaker 1: and emulate this like non sleeping, hard working lifestyle. But
Speaker 1: you know, and when he meets his actress, his second
Speaker 1: wife actress wife to Lula Um in the book, he's like,
Speaker 1: I was I hadn't taken a vacation years and I
Speaker 1: was so sick. But my friends they forced me to
Speaker 1: go to this club. And then I was at this
Speaker 1: club and I met this actress and I was I
Speaker 1: was basically forced to like pursue this actress. But it's
Speaker 1: just like, how like this he knows to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like this turbout Steve Jobs origin story. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the romance of the garage, like you know,
Speaker 1: times twenty and UM just kind of made more toxic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think
Speaker 1: like maybe like Steve Jobs is good at consumers. I
Speaker 1: feel like Ellen does this to have his workers and
Speaker 1: to have like direct money to certain areas and interest
Speaker 1: in things. Yeah, that wasn't a really interesting distinction that's
Speaker 1: made in this UM, in this viewpoint article, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure other people have made as well, is that there's
Speaker 1: been this shift in Silicon Valley culture. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that like one is necessarily more virtuous than the other,
Speaker 1: but this humor facing UM kind of mindset, like you're
Speaker 1: kind of the previous generation, you're Steve Jobs, and you're
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I'll I'll that that era and then UM
Speaker 1: this sort of current era, which is sort of more
Speaker 1: techno feudal, much more interested in UM kind of creating
Speaker 1: empires than necessarily creating a product for consumers. UM, like
Speaker 1: the product for consumers is sort of incidental to creating
Speaker 1: these sort of factions, these sort of like mini empires,
Speaker 1: which is um, yeah, that really clarified a lot, because
Speaker 1: that's there's definitely a shift in how like when a
Speaker 1: company like uber or lifts says that the drivers are
Speaker 1: not their employees. Um, which is a big part of
Speaker 1: some big news that happened in California this past week. Um,
Speaker 1: that is part of that, you know, that's that's part
Speaker 1: of the new tech culture that we have now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think part of the thing about Elon sleeping
Speaker 1: under the desk and this whole uh you know origin
Speaker 1: story of tech where everybody is like, I gave up
Speaker 1: my entire life to build this thing, and you know,
Speaker 1: I worked on it so much. But you see that
Speaker 1: in all kinds of industries where you know, the founder
Speaker 1: or CEO, especially in like startup culture, will be like
Speaker 1: I'm the first person here, in the last person out,
Speaker 1: like therefore nobody else can work less hard than me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean for Ellen, I think it's especially interesting given
Speaker 1: that his um early companies were just software companies. His
Speaker 1: first one was like Quasi a like a media guide
Speaker 1: company or something, and then um, but I think like
Speaker 1: that romanticization of somebody who's gone from like just code
Speaker 1: and like not that inventive to hardware to you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: the kind of the most difficult kind of hardware just
Speaker 1: makes him such Um. I mean, I think like the
Speaker 1: cultish implications of everything we've been talking about our time together,
Speaker 1: because like Pretesta and pres Sex, it's not like this
Speaker 1: is somebody who has some singular vision. Um it seems
Speaker 1: really scattered PayPal a singular vision. But yeah, these are yeah,
Speaker 1: these are like little there there there bits of code
Speaker 1: there there. Yeah, that's software. It's not it's not like
Speaker 1: something like the Mac or something like that or Windows
Speaker 1: even it's it's uh pretty. It feels like it's all
Speaker 1: stepping stones that each individual product or service is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the thing that's going to be the legacy. It's
Speaker 1: more just like a massing power and going onto the
Speaker 1: next thing. And yeah, and just progress, progress and scare
Speaker 1: quotes for progress is sake, um going going to the
Speaker 1: moon for the sake of going to the moon, because
Speaker 1: it's more active than investing in um our planet. It's
Speaker 1: like fetishizing empire. Like the growth, you know, the growth
Speaker 1: which is like um, you know, uh enforced by the
Speaker 1: stock market by investors, everything becomes the like the the
Speaker 1: end in itself. And I think that is because they,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these people do think of themselves
Speaker 1: as having good intentions and a and a smarter, better
Speaker 1: vision for the way the world should be. So if
Speaker 1: you use that argument in reverse back, it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: the end goal of Jeff Bezos should be to you know,
Speaker 1: just have the biggest empire possible, and then at some
Speaker 1: point you'll switch to you know, benevolent mode. And and
Speaker 1: that was I mean, that's like a weird side note
Speaker 1: of the Roco's basilisk thing is that it starts with
Speaker 1: this like it starts with this argument about um about
Speaker 1: altruism and creating this uh potential solve for the altruists,
Speaker 1: um the altruist burden the altruist. See, when you start
Speaker 1: with a phrase like altruist burden, you know it's just
Speaker 1: like not going anywhere useful. But the solve is the
Speaker 1: quantum billionaire trick, which is basically like, um, you become
Speaker 1: a billionaire via many worlds and h then you can
Speaker 1: solve the world. That's the most effective way to solve
Speaker 1: the world's problems. Like you invest some money and then
Speaker 1: there's like one universe in which you end up with,
Speaker 1: you know, three million dollars or whatever. You can do
Speaker 1: whatever you want with it to help the world. And
Speaker 1: so that's the most powerful thing you can do in
Speaker 1: this world to help other people. It just made me
Speaker 1: so angry. As we approached the fall season, it's the
Speaker 1: perfect time to share your ghost stories with Nightcall. Please
Speaker 1: leave us a night call at to four oh four
Speaker 1: six night or a night email at Nightcall podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com with all of your tales of the supernatural, spooky,
Speaker 1: and just the mundanely weird. You wrote a great thing
Speaker 1: this week about the Chance Zuckerberg Initiative and how sort
Speaker 1: of the philanthropy arm of these tech companies and tech
Speaker 1: billionaires really doesn't compute with their own personal choices as
Speaker 1: business people. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 1: Sure so? Um So, the article was looking at what's
Speaker 1: been going on inside the Chance Zuckerberg Initiative over the
Speaker 1: past few uh months and years. Um So, the Chance
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg Initiative is a limited liability company, not a foundation,
Speaker 1: not a nonprofit, which means that um so, so, Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who's a pediatrician. They
Speaker 1: have pledged their Facebook stock to go into that, but
Speaker 1: because it's not a foundation, that doesn't mean the money
Speaker 1: has been committed. It also means they're allowed to make
Speaker 1: investment in for profit companies and allowed to do political advocacy.
Speaker 1: So when they announced this, which was like with the
Speaker 1: birth of their first daughter, it was like this UM
Speaker 1: letter to their to their daughter about UM, about wanting
Speaker 1: to think long term, and the focus at the time
Speaker 1: was on sign So it's like cure all disease in
Speaker 1: your lifetime and the biggest issues facing UM the next
Speaker 1: generation UM. Many people, including myself, were very skeptical about, like,
Speaker 1: how are they going to exercise this political power. There's
Speaker 1: much less transparency UM and uh, you know investing in
Speaker 1: for profit companies, and I think the problems that have
Speaker 1: manifested itself recently just shows you, you you know, you can't
Speaker 1: sometimes you just can't even anticipate the right problem because
Speaker 1: UM unlike Bill Gates say, who like stepped away not
Speaker 1: he was still on Microsoft's board actually up until earlier
Speaker 1: this year, but he stepped away from this YEO jobs
Speaker 1: like so Zuckerberg is in this position now they are
Speaker 1: the largest one of the largest funders in the US
Speaker 1: of criminal justice reform, and through their investments in Forward
Speaker 1: dot Us, which UM worked a lot on, like data
Speaker 1: and with Dreamers. UM. They are also one of the
Speaker 1: biggest funders of immigration reform in the U S. So
Speaker 1: what happened this summer is that the black employees at
Speaker 1: u c c i UM, their group is called Building
Speaker 1: Leadership and Knowledge b LK. They saw Facebook's decision to
Speaker 1: leave up that Trump shooting and looting post um, and
Speaker 1: then they saw their comments on Black Lives Matters, and
Speaker 1: they decided to write a letter to Priscilla Chiyan, who
Speaker 1: actually runs the day to day to articulate this kind
Speaker 1: of like it's a much more sophisticated diversity problem than
Speaker 1: what's happening at most tech companies are the level of
Speaker 1: discussion because they're working on criminal justice reform. They have
Speaker 1: a whole section called Justice and Opportunity that's focused on
Speaker 1: housing criminal justice reform, immigration movement in capacity building. And
Speaker 1: what they were saying is, we've been asking you for
Speaker 1: years to prioritize racial equity. So obviously there's various ways
Speaker 1: to to define it, but what they mean is like
Speaker 1: really looking at you know, these are progressive causes in
Speaker 1: and of themselves. No one is saying that. You know,
Speaker 1: like the end goal is is different. But if you
Speaker 1: don't look at how you know, who are the organizations
Speaker 1: who are receiving this funding, how is this impacting communities,
Speaker 1: especially because their work in places like criminal justice reform
Speaker 1: has focused as most corporate philanthropy has on clean slate initiatives.
Speaker 1: So that's like expunging records UM, which has gotten a
Speaker 1: ton of bipartisan support, like Center for American Progresses on
Speaker 1: it UM. So are of the Koch brothers, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of UM, there's a lot of Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just more momentum and cohesion across the spectrum than
Speaker 1: most things. But like, you know, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: it could only it could be easier to obtain for
Speaker 1: white prisoners, or you know, there's just so if you
Speaker 1: don't look at those implications, the fact that you're one
Speaker 1: of the biggest funders is not gonna mean anything. And
Speaker 1: they were saying that the same thing has happened to
Speaker 1: them within cc I, like they're not promoted at the
Speaker 1: same rate, they're not listened to. They were hired for
Speaker 1: their expertise in these areas and the fact that they
Speaker 1: worked closely with these communities. UM, and they're not being
Speaker 1: you know, their their wisdom, their lived experiences not being
Speaker 1: prioritized or respected. And I mean, just like the layers
Speaker 1: of irony are just it's just it's too much. Like
Speaker 1: because at the same time, UM, organizations like Color of
Speaker 1: Change and the n double a c P. They like
Speaker 1: they had just been in the news talking about and
Speaker 1: I feel like the the critiques have gotten extremely precise
Speaker 1: and and really strong about Mark Zuckerberg, which is like,
Speaker 1: no one is trying to say that it's your perception
Speaker 1: of yourself as good intentioned is the problem here, Like
Speaker 1: you don't recognize your own blind spots on these issues.
Speaker 1: And part of it is just like pressure from the
Speaker 1: right because you are trying to maintain your empire, so
Speaker 1: you have to and you're under attack from the left
Speaker 1: and the right. So but part of it is choices.
Speaker 1: You choose to listen to the conservative critique. UM, you
Speaker 1: know more than anything, Uh, let's see what happens if
Speaker 1: you know the administration changes. But they're saying that you know,
Speaker 1: you're going for these bipartisan initiatives. UM. And they talked
Speaker 1: about like not so much in the letter, but in
Speaker 1: my conversations with UM, with employees and current and past,
Speaker 1: they were talking about, like, your desire to appear equal
Speaker 1: is disproportionately hurting black leaders and and and black black
Speaker 1: lead solutions, and this is it's just like echoed what
Speaker 1: I've heard from Facebook employees, what I've heard from everyone,
Speaker 1: and the irony of one of the biggest funders of
Speaker 1: this movement being in control also of what threats get
Speaker 1: amplified against black lives matters to billions of people. It's
Speaker 1: just it's too much power. I mean, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of It's like I think it's just so apparent when
Speaker 1: you look at these huge companies. When you look at
Speaker 1: a Google or Facebook, they all have you know, like
Speaker 1: or alphabet I guess where you have all these little
Speaker 1: projects And like sometimes if you look at it at face,
Speaker 1: valure like what does this have to do with you know,
Speaker 1: forwarding the Google agenda or something? But then you look,
Speaker 1: there's always a threat. There's always some reason, whether it's
Speaker 1: just data gathering, data harvesting UM or it's usually that,
Speaker 1: but like you know, UM, there's always some way you
Speaker 1: can connect it back to like Okay, this is how
Speaker 1: this helps them. They're not just giving you free books
Speaker 1: on Google Books because it's a nice thing to do.
Speaker 1: There's always some kind of UM agenda behind it. And
Speaker 1: I think it's always so apparent when you see the
Speaker 1: philanthropi philanthropic efforts of any of these companies that they
Speaker 1: don't have that connective to shoe to what the UM
Speaker 1: like they're They're they're completely not uh cohering or part
Speaker 1: of the same conversation as what the rest of the
Speaker 1: company is about UM in a way that you know,
Speaker 1: allows there to be these huge discrepancies between what where
Speaker 1: they put their money and where they you know, do
Speaker 1: their good deeds. It's like a completely it's unlike unlike
Speaker 1: an alphabet where you have all these like it's not
Speaker 1: a part of a network of activities in the same
Speaker 1: way that you know, any number of uh Facebook initiatives
Speaker 1: could be like you know, creating Messenger or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a a like a countervailing force to
Speaker 1: the work that they do. Like I I just UM
Speaker 1: it just find it so interesting, like the work in
Speaker 1: science versus the amount of misinformation spread on Facebook, the
Speaker 1: work in edging pation versus you know, the impact on information,
Speaker 1: access to information and and and news gathering and um,
Speaker 1: you know, with justice and opportunity UM. That also has
Speaker 1: it like they're working in housing. Uh. You know Facebook
Speaker 1: has been sued by HUDD, you know, for for um
Speaker 1: for discrimatory ads, um. You know, not like redlining when
Speaker 1: it comes to what housing ads are served to black users.
Speaker 1: It's so it's just crazy to me because like when
Speaker 1: people thought that Zuckerberg was going to run for office,
Speaker 1: I just like kept I just you know, people have
Speaker 1: some idea about his personal beliefs or the personal beliefs
Speaker 1: of Google's founders. And when your main existential threat is
Speaker 1: like empire maintenance, you can't your personal beliefs do not matter.
Speaker 1: And it's honestly so I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: most like dangerous forces. This this faith in yourself as
Speaker 1: a good person and feeling like you're like, imagine these discussions,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's like giving books to like chromebooks
Speaker 1: or whatever, laying in books books. Um, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're inside Google and you're like, well, we know that
Speaker 1: we care and you know, we trust ourselves like you
Speaker 1: just and and they don't kind of see maybe the
Speaker 1: irony in the fact that they have the power to
Speaker 1: make these seemingly man magnanimous gestures because they've siphoned from
Speaker 1: you know, X, Y and Z. And that's where I
Speaker 1: think Also the Zuckerberg, Uh, Like we thought the problem
Speaker 1: was going to be He's going to impose his personal beliefs,
Speaker 1: but the problem is that he's imposing and advocating for
Speaker 1: It appears that he's imposing and advocating for beliefs based
Speaker 1: on what will allow Facebook to continue for the years.
Speaker 1: I don't know that he has any personal beliefs, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the problem. Like that and the idea
Speaker 1: that I mean this this thing feels like a really
Speaker 1: fundamental difference between running a country versus running a company, um,
Speaker 1: and trying to run a country like a company, say,
Speaker 1: is that, Um, there's no policy in the same way
Speaker 1: in a in a company that there is in a
Speaker 1: country like or in a government, in a functional government
Speaker 1: like you're not you have to make those um, those
Speaker 1: fail safes for um, human human failure and human error. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, in a in a at least in a
Speaker 1: functional society like you have to have those things. But
Speaker 1: in a company, everything is if you're part of the company,
Speaker 1: then you're a part of the the activities that the
Speaker 1: create wealth for that company. So, uh, you don't need
Speaker 1: to be questioned in the same way there, there's not
Speaker 1: it is assumed that you are on the team. Well, also,
Speaker 1: I think you know, you can have good beliefs, but
Speaker 1: you can also really maintain the idea that the only
Speaker 1: way to achieve any good is to hang on so
Speaker 1: tightly to your power and your empire that you can
Speaker 1: achieve it. And that kind of also ties back to
Speaker 1: the article that we were discussing, because if you feel
Speaker 1: a moral responsibility to be able to have that much
Speaker 1: power because you do feel like your vision is aligned
Speaker 1: with something good, then you also probably feel a moral
Speaker 1: moral responsibility to increase your profits, to have more money
Speaker 1: to do good things. But then, as Natasha pointed out,
Speaker 1: it's at the expense of people who are already marginalized
Speaker 1: and already saying like, hey, you know, we're being left
Speaker 1: out of this um. It's so complicated. I mean, everyone's
Speaker 1: always so hard on Zuckerberg, and we are definitely quite
Speaker 1: hard on Zuckerberg on this podcast, but I think it's
Speaker 1: worth mentioning that, I mean, it is complicated, like it
Speaker 1: is very complicated, and it's I think good. But what
Speaker 1: you were saying to about blind spots, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: an actually smart person would be aware that they have
Speaker 1: blind spots. But because of the sort of Emperor god
Speaker 1: king of Dune way that tech situates itself around these
Speaker 1: personalities and has these sort of cults of personality, they
Speaker 1: don't listen to the people that are pointing out the
Speaker 1: blind spots and something. I thought it was really interesting
Speaker 1: as a ship because I do feel like it's like
Speaker 1: they think about the optics, they make sure that there
Speaker 1: are like some black people at the company, but then
Speaker 1: they don't empower the black employees and it just creates
Speaker 1: like an endless loop. But the thing you wrote about
Speaker 1: Pinterest where they were doing some sort of front facing
Speaker 1: like we're making it more diverse and we're gonna like
Speaker 1: work on racial equality and like we love BLM and
Speaker 1: we're not going to have plantations on the boards anymore.
Speaker 1: And then you profiled a couple of black employees of
Speaker 1: Pinterest who were like, Pinterest has a huge race problem, um,
Speaker 1: and they're not really doing anything about it except these
Speaker 1: sort of superficial mickey mouse. You know, look what we're
Speaker 1: doing to fix racism. Right. So umsa Alma and Erica
Speaker 1: both worked in public policy, and they were responsible for
Speaker 1: all of these things that pinterest had been doing that
Speaker 1: looked so progressive, such as, um, you know, uh stopping
Speaker 1: the ads that were placed on plantation wedding content, UM
Speaker 1: stopping the spread of health misinformation and actually, uh, you
Speaker 1: know what was the one of the catalysts for their
Speaker 1: decision to speak out was the fact that their internal
Speaker 1: documents had been leaked to UM Project very toss about
Speaker 1: their efforts to get Ben Shapiro designated a white supremacist.
Speaker 1: And they weren't even saying like take his content off,
Speaker 1: but they were warning that this is going to become
Speaker 1: an issue and you know, you need to to put
Speaker 1: a warning on that. And so the again like the
Speaker 1: irony is just it's too much. Because the fact that
Speaker 1: that is what led them to realize the company does
Speaker 1: not support them, they ended up having to they warned
Speaker 1: the company that you know, hey, if you have Project
Speaker 1: Fairy Tasks going after you, this means like something has
Speaker 1: been breached. Um, they're going to come after the you know,
Speaker 1: women and uh like minority employees. This is they have
Speaker 1: a pattern of doing it, and they wouldn't. They didn't
Speaker 1: take them seriously. They had to pay for the organizations
Speaker 1: that they work for to get health misinformation content. They
Speaker 1: had to pay them to to look out for them
Speaker 1: being docked, and they were docked and um, and then
Speaker 1: the pinterest hired that company it's called story Full and
Speaker 1: had them look into is Ben Shapiro really a white supremacist?
Speaker 1: And and I didn't see that. Yeah, I conclusion, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like they have people telling them the information that
Speaker 1: they need to know and they're just not listening. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that seems to be the problem across the board
Speaker 1: at all kinds of companies. Yeah, that actually happened at
Speaker 1: Facebook is oh it was um they only had one
Speaker 1: black executive in the room when they decided to um
Speaker 1: make the decision about Trump's shooting and looting post. That
Speaker 1: is the like their global head of diversity who's been
Speaker 1: working at the company for seven years. Everybody has been
Speaker 1: telling them that she should be reporting to Zuckerberg. They
Speaker 1: just only promoted her to report to Cheryl Sandberg and
Speaker 1: the black employees inside Facebook. We're also trying to explain
Speaker 1: to him, like how these dog whistles work how you know,
Speaker 1: so so Uh, it's just it's just the same story everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's been the same story, like it's been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: such an opportunity because now people are sort of willing
Speaker 1: to talk more about it on the record because they
Speaker 1: see how their um, you know, the their employer's decisions
Speaker 1: are making real world impact and they have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a buffer with everything that's been happening for
Speaker 1: their own like safety and jobs and um. But they've
Speaker 1: been talking. I mean, I've just it's just the same
Speaker 1: thing for yeah, And I think this mirrors a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff, especially you know, having the information told
Speaker 1: to you and not doing anything about it because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're not that interested in
Speaker 1: learning or changing or emitting that you've done anything that
Speaker 1: wasn't helpful or constructive. Like that feels like that happens
Speaker 1: in every sector, that happens in journalism. That's been the
Speaker 1: basis of a lot of recent dust ups that have
Speaker 1: happened in in in journalism and editorial and everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just that when you're talking about a company and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I like Pinterest feels more on the
Speaker 1: level of like a Conde nast or something. But like
Speaker 1: when you're talking about Facebook, where you're talking about um,
Speaker 1: a company that has really unjudicially gotten itself UM mixed
Speaker 1: up in all of these different aspects of American life,
Speaker 1: than you know, the the unwillingness to learn becomes even
Speaker 1: more of a hazard. I also think the like free
Speaker 1: speech obsession, which are these kind of straight white guys
Speaker 1: that are in charge of these companies manifests as like well,
Speaker 1: we can't we can't tamp down any kind of speech.
Speaker 1: We just have to see what happens. And what happens
Speaker 1: is like it goes towards fascism. But there's this like
Speaker 1: anti interventionist attitude of like, well if it wants to
Speaker 1: go towards fascism, like that's where it wants to go,
Speaker 1: and we just have to let it, you know. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not even anti I mean I would
Speaker 1: say that it appears that it's not even anti interventionists
Speaker 1: so much as like anti paying for the labor to
Speaker 1: uh to intervene. Like if you look at Zuckerberg's founding letter,
Speaker 1: uh you know, which they put out when they go public,
Speaker 1: or Google's, they don't say anything about free speech, um.
Speaker 1: You know, early books on Zuckerberg, they don't talk about
Speaker 1: free speech. UM. And recently there's some amazing reporting in
Speaker 1: the Journal and NBC News Olivia sol and UM about
Speaker 1: how their own researchers, Facebook's own research has found that
Speaker 1: their moderation policies were um taking down more content from
Speaker 1: black users. We're like, you know, and and they told
Speaker 1: them to stop researching it. So it's just like, obviously
Speaker 1: there's hypocrisy everywhere, but it just really does not hold up.
Speaker 1: And that is one of the blind spots. Like the
Speaker 1: the idea that um, you know freeze, like the kind
Speaker 1: of free speech you're concerned about protecting is somebody who
Speaker 1: has this massive platform, right, And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's own employees at c c I. This is from
Speaker 1: first reported by UM by recode, but one of the
Speaker 1: employees at c c I was like, you should resign
Speaker 1: from Facebook or resign from c z I. UM, And
Speaker 1: you know, he laughed it off and was like that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Of course not and brought up free speech, and they said, well, like,
Speaker 1: what about the free speech of the protesters. They're dead.
Speaker 1: When they're dead, they can't talk like it sounds. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just like fighting with this massive myopia. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: when you don't think you're going to die, when death
Speaker 1: isn't a factor for you, then what do you care
Speaker 1: about other people's lives? And you'll be on Mars, You'll
Speaker 1: be You'll be a robot. You'll be in a box
Speaker 1: on Mars. You'll have a robot dick. Number one priority.
Speaker 1: Get the robot dick. Somebody allegedly already has one SpaceX Um, Natasha,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. We are all
Speaker 1: such huge fans of your work, and I really look
Speaker 1: up to you for, you know, tirelessly covering this thing
Speaker 1: that seems very soul killing to look at in depth
Speaker 1: all the time. Now we're lucky to have your eyes
Speaker 1: on it. Um, you're doing a great public good. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Natasha. So people can find you at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. You're also on Twitter at Natasha tiku
Speaker 1: n I T A s h A t I K you.
Speaker 1: Is there any uh anywhere else that you can point
Speaker 1: people or is that or anything recent you want to
Speaker 1: you wanna hype that you wrote I want to hype
Speaker 1: that I don't have to no, no, but gold read
Speaker 1: this NBC investigation about them telling researchers not to look into, uh,
Speaker 1: not to look into how Facebook moderation policies are just
Speaker 1: proportionately impacting black people. It's just got a lot of
Speaker 1: good stuff. Perfect. Will you send us a link that
Speaker 1: we get in our show notes? Perfect? Thank you so much, Natasha.
Speaker 1: This ples come back sometime. Yeah for sure. Thanks, stay cool.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to Nightcall. You can't
Speaker 1: subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Leave us a review in our rating while you're at it,
Speaker 1: as long as it's nice. You can also follow us
Speaker 1: on social media. We're on Twitter at Night Call Pod
Speaker 1: and Instagram and Facebook at Nightcall Podcast, and you can
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Speaker 1: slash Nightcall, where you can get bonus. Episodes are monthly newsletter,
Speaker 1: merch and all sorts of fun stuff. So check us
Speaker 1: out there and we will see you all next week.
Speaker 1: Go bye,