Speaker 1: Well, we like any opportunity to give a good kick
Speaker 1: in to one Mark Zucker. Well, that is true. I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this interview since we booked at
Speaker 1: Roger mcnabee is a tech ventury capitalist writer, a thinker,
Speaker 1: also a musician, and he's written a book called Zucked
Speaker 1: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Roger, welcome, How are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I am really well, it's so much fun to be
Speaker 1: on the show with you. Guys. Oh, that's that's nice
Speaker 1: of you to say. I see you went to a
Speaker 1: Yale bribe or merit, you know. I actually it was
Speaker 1: worse than that. It was random dumb luck and uh
Speaker 1: no I was. I was. I was back in the
Speaker 1: days before bribe or merit even mattered. Really, you just
Speaker 1: got picked. I'm that old. Yeah, well you've done well,
Speaker 1: so so good for you. Hey, listen the title, that's
Speaker 1: a strong word, Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Do
Speaker 1: tell so you know guys. Here, here's what the issue is.
Speaker 1: That we as consumers love using internet products, right. We
Speaker 1: love the fun, we love the convenience, we love the
Speaker 1: productivity that come from them. But our understanding of the
Speaker 1: deal that we have with them, which is that we
Speaker 1: give up our data. They give us this really cool
Speaker 1: personalized surface is not what's actually going on. What's actually
Speaker 1: going on is that these guys do that, but they
Speaker 1: are now building businesses that are designed to essentially manipulate
Speaker 1: us in ways we're not aware. And I'll give you
Speaker 1: a couple examples, like Google. Right when you think about uh, Gmail,
Speaker 1: which is something so many of us use, right, we
Speaker 1: we originally signed up with a deal that said Google,
Speaker 1: you may scan our emails, uh, because you're gonna put
Speaker 1: targeted advertising in in order to pay for the service.
Speaker 1: But then we discover we didn't like the ads, so
Speaker 1: Google remove the ads, but they're still scanning our emails. Now,
Speaker 1: I want you to think about this for just a minute.
Speaker 1: You know all of us send letters, we send packages
Speaker 1: with fat as, we use the phone company. In those cases,
Speaker 1: those company these are called common carriers. They transport. They're
Speaker 1: not allowed to spy on what we're doing. And Google
Speaker 1: would tell the federal government, hang on, We're a platform,
Speaker 1: not a media company. You can't hold us to the rules. Right.
Speaker 1: You guys are have all these rules because you're a
Speaker 1: media company, you're responsible for the content you put out.
Speaker 1: Google says you can't hold a response to that. You
Speaker 1: have to treat us as a platform, which is like
Speaker 1: a telephone company or like a postal service. And yet
Speaker 1: they scanned the contents of the messages and we, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not aware that what they're doing is they're gathering
Speaker 1: data on our behavior in order to essentially affect our future,
Speaker 1: to give us choices that we're not aware that we're
Speaker 1: being limited to. And it's very harmful. With Pokemon going,
Speaker 1: do you guys remember Pokemon Going? So that got created
Speaker 1: inside Google's labs, and we think we're going out there
Speaker 1: and just playing this really fun game. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you what's really going on. What's going on is they
Speaker 1: got a billion people going around with their cameras taking
Speaker 1: pictures of everything they were doing. So they would use
Speaker 1: it for image recognition, they would do it to follow roots.
Speaker 1: But then they did a behavioral manipulation experiment. They wanted
Speaker 1: to see, if we put a Pokemon in private property,
Speaker 1: can we get you to knock on stranger's door, climb
Speaker 1: over a fence, yes we could. And if we put
Speaker 1: a Pokemon in a Starbucks, can we get you to
Speaker 1: go in and buy a cup? Of coffee. Yes, we could. Now,
Speaker 1: how about if we put it in the third Starbucks
Speaker 1: on the street further away and we gave you ten
Speaker 1: cents off, would you behave that way? And you know
Speaker 1: when we use Google Maps, same thing. You know, the
Speaker 1: route says hey, take this weird looking route right, and
Speaker 1: we think, well, that's going to be faster, and it
Speaker 1: turns out it's not. Google's purpose with Google Maps is
Speaker 1: not to get us to our destination faster, is to
Speaker 1: make sure they gather all the data on the speed
Speaker 1: of all the roots, and so they need some people
Speaker 1: to take inferior roots some of the times. Well that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't take that route, by the way, and I
Speaker 1: never have because I've always looked at and thought that's
Speaker 1: their system is flawed to think that's the best way
Speaker 1: to get there, better way to get it. They know
Speaker 1: it's not the best way to get there. Interesting. So
Speaker 1: my point is we think the deal we have us,
Speaker 1: we're given them data so we get a better service.
Speaker 1: And that is a small part of what's going on.
Speaker 1: But now increasingly what's going on is they're running these
Speaker 1: manipulation experiments. They're essentially recognizing there's a lot of data
Speaker 1: in the world, and if they gather at all, they
Speaker 1: can make the world more efficient. The problem is when
Speaker 1: they make the world more efficient, they're taking choices away
Speaker 1: from us, and we're not conscious of that. And so
Speaker 1: a big part of what I'm trying to do is
Speaker 1: just say to people, wait a minute. The way they're
Speaker 1: doing this is they have said said they own all
Speaker 1: this data. Right, they take pictures of your house, they
Speaker 1: say they own it. They take pictures of you know
Speaker 1: through Pokemon Go, they say they own that. They go
Speaker 1: and buy your most intimate financial data, health data, location data,
Speaker 1: They get your browser history, they scan your emails, they
Speaker 1: scan your documents, and they say they own all that
Speaker 1: and they can use it for their commercial purposes. And
Speaker 1: the problem is while they do all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: they set up an environment where we're all being controlled
Speaker 1: like lab rats, and bad guys can take advantage of
Speaker 1: all those same tools. And that's how you wind up
Speaker 1: with terrorism in New Zealand. That's how you wind up
Speaker 1: with election interference in Brexit in the United Kingdom, That's
Speaker 1: how you wind up with ethnic cleansing in Mean Mar
Speaker 1: And so we've got this situation where the cost of
Speaker 1: these really fun Services is starting to get to be really, really,
Speaker 1: really high. Roger McNamee is on the line. The book
Speaker 1: is zucked waking up to the Facebook catastrophe. Listen, we
Speaker 1: could talk to you all day about this, and we
Speaker 1: ought to drag you back for a longer form podcast,
Speaker 1: but I want to hit some highlights and the time
Speaker 1: we have and the manipulation of our animal brains, the
Speaker 1: tiny shots of endorphin, the hooking of stuff I find
Speaker 1: fascinating is it is scary. So the way it works
Speaker 1: is really simple. They got to get you. They're competing
Speaker 1: against all these other media, they compete against your show.
Speaker 1: So how do they do that. They use the same
Speaker 1: things that markets have always used. They appeal to our
Speaker 1: need for rewards. They give us notifications. But the difference
Speaker 1: in radio, everybody gets same message. On Facebook and Google,
Speaker 1: they can tailor it precisely to you, and once they
Speaker 1: get you on right, they want to make a habit.
Speaker 1: But for many of us, the habit turns into an addition.
Speaker 1: Like I asked people, you want to know if you're addicted,
Speaker 1: when do you check your phone first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: Is it before you pee or while you're peeing? Right?
Speaker 1: Because for most of us that full range, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: by the time you've done peeing, you've been checking your
Speaker 1: phone for a minute. So once they get you, then
Speaker 1: they want to probably about two minutes. Well then you
Speaker 1: get to read a lot more, right, But basically, once
Speaker 1: they've got you, then they got to keep you. And
Speaker 1: the way they do that is they find the stuff
Speaker 1: that most animates us, and it turns out, unfortunately that's
Speaker 1: going to be stuff that makes us afraid, or stuff
Speaker 1: that makes us outraged, or its conspiracy theories and disinformation.
Speaker 1: And the problem with this is that it just it's universal.
Speaker 1: You know, you see somebody's perfect vacation on Instagram, you
Speaker 1: know you might be jealous, but if some he makes
Speaker 1: you afraid, you're gonna share it. And you're gonna share
Speaker 1: it because if you're afraid and others join you in
Speaker 1: that fear, you relax. It's a herd mentality and they're
Speaker 1: so good at it, like you. I mostly my weakness
Speaker 1: is YouTube around this, which is owned by Google, and
Speaker 1: they have figured out my life so well. When I
Speaker 1: throw on YouTube, it's just a list of things I'm
Speaker 1: interested in. I mean, they know all my favorite you know,
Speaker 1: history authors, guitar stores, just all my favorite stuff, baby monkeys,
Speaker 1: the top swine, that sort. They've got me figured out
Speaker 1: completely as to what's going to get here around there,
Speaker 1: here's the problem with it. Okay, we said, were hang on,
Speaker 1: just get rid of the hate speech, get rid of
Speaker 1: the disinformation. But they can't because the business model is
Speaker 1: based on knowing who you really are, and when we're
Speaker 1: going out in public, we have our best selves on.
Speaker 1: But they need to get past that. They need to
Speaker 1: see how we react to outrage, how do we react
Speaker 1: to fear? How do we react you know, if they
Speaker 1: show us something that's anti Semitic, how do we react
Speaker 1: to that. If they show us something that's anti immigrant,
Speaker 1: how do we react to that? And they need that
Speaker 1: information to make the business model work, and in the process,
Speaker 1: that causes polarization. Right, It causes to be angry at
Speaker 1: people who frankly have a lot in common with us,
Speaker 1: but we may disagree on one topic topic and that's
Speaker 1: what's unhealthy about it. And that's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get people to do. Uh, to step back and just
Speaker 1: ask the question. The business model is based on having
Speaker 1: our most personal data. Why is it legal for Google
Speaker 1: and other people to scan our emails and documents. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. They should be treated like the postal service.
Speaker 1: Why is it legal for them to trade our personal
Speaker 1: health information in a doctor's office? They can't do that.
Speaker 1: Why is it legal for them to get our most
Speaker 1: personal financial information without our understanding, approval and support. Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing for location. And I think once we
Speaker 1: have these conversations what I've discovered. If I'm on Fox,
Speaker 1: everybody agrees, If I'm on MSNBC, everybody agrees. Well, now
Speaker 1: that's interesting, right, this is about right and wrong, not
Speaker 1: right and left, And so everybody goes, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be controlled by some corporation. But
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. They're manipulating us. And my point
Speaker 1: it's not because they're bad people, it's because there are
Speaker 1: no rules. Now, Roger, I don't know a lot about you,
Speaker 1: but I have reason to believe that that you're able
Speaker 1: to make your rent and have a little money left
Speaker 1: over to spend. We'll just leave it there. Um, but
Speaker 1: obviously you were really really motivated to write this book. Um.
Speaker 1: Was there a moment, was there a particular realization that
Speaker 1: made you think I'm going to spend the next several
Speaker 1: years of my life fighting this stuff. There was so
Speaker 1: I was at one time a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: and Cheryl Sandberg and UM. But that was early in
Speaker 1: the life of Facebook, back two thousand six two nine,
Speaker 1: and in I started to notice things violations of civil rights,
Speaker 1: the Breggs, a referendum in the United Kingdom. There was
Speaker 1: manipulation going on there, and I reached out to my
Speaker 1: friends to warn them that I thought there was something
Speaker 1: wrong with the business model and algorithms at Facebook, and
Speaker 1: I spent three months trying to persu wait them to
Speaker 1: do with Johnson. And Johnson did after somebody poison bottles
Speaker 1: of talent on Chicago, which is to protect the people
Speaker 1: who used their product, to drop everything and just leap
Speaker 1: to their defense. I spent three months pushing them. They
Speaker 1: said they weren't interested, and it was at that point
Speaker 1: I was faced with a moral choice. I've been involved here,
Speaker 1: I had profited from it, and I was retired, so
Speaker 1: I could have just sat back and watched. But what
Speaker 1: I chose to do, I said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: owe it to myself and to everybody to see if
Speaker 1: I can spread the word to make people aware that
Speaker 1: that this thing I was involved in, which I loved
Speaker 1: so much has for a variety of reasons that are
Speaker 1: related to the culture of business and related to culture
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley, you know, going into a really, really
Speaker 1: bad place. So it's God. That's one question I want
Speaker 1: to I want to get to before we run out
Speaker 1: of time, is did it start as something else and
Speaker 1: become this as they realized how much money to can
Speaker 1: mak or was this the intent all along? Don't know.
Speaker 1: I I believe that that at the beginning they didn't
Speaker 1: see where it was going to go. And I think
Speaker 1: Mark from the beginning, we wanted to connect the whole world,
Speaker 1: But I don't think he completely internalized what that meant
Speaker 1: and what that opportunity would create, because when he was
Speaker 1: in college, before he did this, you couldn't have created Facebook. Basically,
Speaker 1: they came along at the perfect time when suddenly all
Speaker 1: the limits on technology went away and you could make
Speaker 1: a global product. And it took them a long time
Speaker 1: to figure this out. They did not figure it out
Speaker 1: while I was involved there. It came actually three or
Speaker 1: four years later than that. And you know, in Google's case,
Speaker 1: they figured it out much earlier, but I was not
Speaker 1: an insider there, so I didn't see it. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I think that in a
Speaker 1: culture of business where essentially we've removed the government as
Speaker 1: the center of rules and the enforcer of rules, you
Speaker 1: basically have smart people who have license to grab whatever
Speaker 1: they can grab, and the rest of us are powerless
Speaker 1: to stop them until we go to the ballot box,
Speaker 1: until we go to elected officials and say, hang on,
Speaker 1: what are you doing to prevent these guys from trading
Speaker 1: my most personal information and manipulating my wife. You know,
Speaker 1: we tend to be of a libertarian bent around here,
Speaker 1: but the idea of value, including myself, right, right, But
Speaker 1: the idea of an individual having instantaneous global reach is
Speaker 1: kind of a new thing for mankind. Well, I would
Speaker 1: argue that this notion that I believe that when you
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, you have a choice. Am
Speaker 1: I going to go to work? Am I going to
Speaker 1: stay home? Am I gonna have breakfast? Not at breakfast?
Speaker 1: Exercise not exercise. That's called free will. If you're a libertarian,
Speaker 1: you believe each of us has the ability to control
Speaker 1: our own lives. And what I'm talking about is that
Speaker 1: these companies, in their pursuit of efficiency, want to take
Speaker 1: our right to choose away from us because it's more
Speaker 1: profitable to do it that way. And I sit there
Speaker 1: and go, hang on, pal, you're not elected, right, you're
Speaker 1: not accountable. We have to change that lack of accountability.
Speaker 1: They have enormous power. There's no denying that huge power.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, if you're a libertarian, right, if
Speaker 1: you believe each one of us should be responsible for
Speaker 1: our own situation, each one us get to make our
Speaker 1: own choices, then you have to stand up and say
Speaker 1: stop this. Because the deal is they can still provide
Speaker 1: these services just with targeted advertising. They don't need to
Speaker 1: do the manipulation. They do not need to do the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that's coming. And I'm sitting there going, guys,
Speaker 1: I understand you didn't do this because you're bad people.
Speaker 1: You did this because nobody told you it wasn't okay.
Speaker 1: Well now I'm telling us, like, think of this the
Speaker 1: chemical industry, right, they used to be able to dump
Speaker 1: mercury and fresh water, leave mind tailings on the side
Speaker 1: of the hill, pour used oil into the sewer, and
Speaker 1: then we woke up and realized, wait a minute, those
Speaker 1: externalities cast society a lot. People get sick, the environment's polluted.
Speaker 1: We should make the people who create that toxics bill
Speaker 1: pay for the cost. I'm saying now, we have toxic
Speaker 1: digital spills, and we need these guys to pay that
Speaker 1: cost and change the incentives, and we need to give
Speaker 1: each one of us control of our lives back. Roger
Speaker 1: mcne the book is zucked waking up to the Facebook catastrophe.
Speaker 1: We need to talk again, Rogers, my friends, you guys
Speaker 1: are the best. I love the show and you're just
Speaker 1: an honor to be on with you. You're too kind.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks, it's good to talk, and we do it.
Speaker 1: Let's let's make it happen. Yes, so he sounded like
Speaker 1: he met that too. I know he's brilliant actor nor
Speaker 1: sincere and I want to care. Frankly, I don't care. Which.
Speaker 1: We gotta follow up on this when we come back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book is fascinating. I mean it is great, and
Speaker 1: I got no reason to tout it other than I
Speaker 1: mean it. This could be the story of the future
Speaker 1: of the world dealing with this parents. I insist you
Speaker 1: read it. You're listening to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: Conscience of the nation,