Speaker 1: Let's do it. Start the podcast podcast. All right, well
Speaker 1: have the let's have that be what starts the podcast.
Speaker 1: What we just said, let's start the podcast podcast. Let's
Speaker 1: start the podcast. Well, I'm Robert Evans. Yep, I'm so
Speaker 1: feeling I'm in. I never introduced myself. I'm Jamie. Who
Speaker 1: are you, Jamie Loft? Anything more we need to say?
Speaker 1: Are we done with the episode? Anderson's here? No, I
Speaker 1: think that. Yeah, yeah, Anderson is here. Uh sure, Well,
Speaker 1: you know what's happening in the world. Facebook is happening
Speaker 1: to the world, and it's not great. Jamie. It's not great.
Speaker 1: Sophie not not a fan of the Facebook. We left
Speaker 1: off having gone through some of the Facebook papers, particularly
Speaker 1: employees attacking their bosses after jan six, when it became
Speaker 1: clear that the company they were working for was completely
Speaker 1: morally indefensible. Attack they are. Yeah, they already knew. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it attacking either. I would call it they
Speaker 1: were pretty I mean, there's a guy like the quote there,
Speaker 1: there was the guy who's like history won't judge as kindly. Uh,
Speaker 1: the guy, and we didn't ban Trump into thus in fifteen.
Speaker 1: That's what caused the Capital riot. I mean facts or facts?
Speaker 1: Is that really attacking if you're just like, well, I
Speaker 1: think that, Yeah, I think stating facts can be an attack. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: put it on a T shirt. I mean for people
Speaker 1: like this, you know, Um yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: stating facts can be an attack. And we ended Part
Speaker 1: one by sharing some of the blistering criticisms of Facebook
Speaker 1: employees against you know, management in the service itself. So
Speaker 1: as we start part two, it's only proper that we
Speaker 1: cover how Facebook responded to all of this internal criticism.
Speaker 1: As I stated last episode, Facebook is in the midst
Speaker 1: of a year's long drought of capable engineers and other
Speaker 1: technical employees. They are having a lot of trouble hiring
Speaker 1: all of the people that they need for all of
Speaker 1: the things they're trying to do. Um. So, one of
Speaker 1: the things is for a lot of these employees, when
Speaker 1: they say things that are deeply critical, they can't just
Speaker 1: dismiss the concerns of their employees outright because act like
Speaker 1: if they were to do that, these people would get
Speaker 1: angry and they need them, right. Facebook's not in the
Speaker 1: strongest position when it comes to the people who are
Speaker 1: good engineers. They have to walk a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tight rope. However, if they were to actually do
Speaker 1: anything about the actual meat of the concerns, it would
Speaker 1: reduce profitability and in some cases destroy Facebook as it
Speaker 1: currently exists. So they're not going to do anything, um,
Speaker 1: which is meant that they've had to get kind of
Speaker 1: creative with how they respond. So Mark and his fellow
Speaker 1: bosses pivoted and argued that the damning critique like, yeah,
Speaker 1: old Zucky z uck. So when when this all comes
Speaker 1: out and people are like, boy, it sure seems like
Speaker 1: all of your employees know that they're working for the
Speaker 1: fucking death star. Um, Zuckerberg and his like mouthpieces made
Speaker 1: a statement that like, all of these damning critiques from
Speaker 1: people inside the company were actually evidence of the very
Speaker 1: open culture inside Facebook, which encouraged workers to share their
Speaker 1: opinions with management. Um. That's exactly what a company spokesperson
Speaker 1: told The Atlantic when they asked about comments like history
Speaker 1: will not judge us kindly. The fact that they're saying
Speaker 1: will be damned by historians means that we really have
Speaker 1: a healthy office culture. Um. Hashtag dust star, proud, dust Star,
Speaker 1: proud everybody. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the fact that we
Speaker 1: removed a stigma of working for the devil, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, the devil I would be proud to work
Speaker 1: for because he's done some cool stuff, Like have you
Speaker 1: ever been to Vegas? Nice town? Oh, I've been to Vegas.
Speaker 1: I've seen I saw that. I saw the Backstreet Boys
Speaker 1: in Vegas right before two of them were revealed to
Speaker 1: be in Q and On. So really caught the end
Speaker 1: of that, Locomo, Wow, I did not realize that a
Speaker 1: sizeable percentage of the Backstreet Boys had gotten into Q
Speaker 1: and On. That makes total sense. The Backstretoys, They're from Florida.
Speaker 1: They're ultimately five men from Florida. So what can you do?
Speaker 1: As the author of that article, The Atlantic article noted,
Speaker 1: this stance allows Facebook to claim transparency while ignoring the
Speaker 1: substance of the complaints and the implication of the complaints
Speaker 1: that many of Facebook's employees believe their company operates without
Speaker 1: a moral compass. All over America, people used Facebook to
Speaker 1: organize convoys to d C and to fill the buses
Speaker 1: they rented for their trips, and this was indeed done
Speaker 1: in groups like the Lebanon main truth Seekers, where Kyle
Speaker 1: fitz Simmons posted the following quote, this election was stolen,
Speaker 1: and we're being slow walked towards Chinese ownership by an
Speaker 1: establishment that is treasonous and all too willing to gaslight
Speaker 1: the public into believing the theft was somehow the will
Speaker 1: of the people. Would there be an interest locally in
Speaker 1: organizing a caravan to Washington, d C. For the electoral
Speaker 1: College vote count on January six? Um? Yeah, and Kyle
Speaker 1: recently played guilt not guilty to eight federal charges, including
Speaker 1: assault on a police officer. Mark Zuckerberg would argue that
Speaker 1: like Facebook didn't play a significant role in organizing January six,
Speaker 1: and couldn't have played a significant role in radicalizing this
Speaker 1: guy and many other people. But the reality is that
Speaker 1: for the people, like the people who managed part of
Speaker 1: what led Kyle fitz Simmons to go assault people on
Speaker 1: Nuary six, UM was the fact that he had been
Speaker 1: radicalized by a social network that for years made the
Speaker 1: conscious choice to amplify angry content and encourage anger because
Speaker 1: it kept people on the site more right, Like all
Speaker 1: of the anger that boiled up at January six that
Speaker 1: came from a number of places, but one of those
Speaker 1: places was social media. Because social media profited and specifically,
Speaker 1: Facebook knowingly profited from making people angry. That was the business,
Speaker 1: and of course it blew up in the real world.
Speaker 1: I have a question, um, just out of your own
Speaker 1: experience and observation, which is, how do you, um like,
Speaker 1: if you're doing a side by side case study of
Speaker 1: how Facebook responded to events like this versus how like
Speaker 1: YouTube slash Google responded to radicalization? Are there like significant differences?
Speaker 1: Did is there any did anyone do better or difference?
Speaker 1: Twitter has done better than probably most of them YouTube.
Speaker 1: I mean, and again I'm not saying this the Twitter
Speaker 1: has done well, um or that YouTube has done well.
Speaker 1: They've both done, particularly with coronavirus disinformation, a bit better
Speaker 1: than Facebook. Um, and they were they were better in
Speaker 1: general on not really YouTube as much, but like Twitter
Speaker 1: was definitely has taken has been the most responsible of
Speaker 1: the social networks around this stuff. Um. It did seem
Speaker 1: like for a while there the various networks were kind
Speaker 1: of like duking it out to see who could do
Speaker 1: the absolute worst and damage the lives and it's it
Speaker 1: seems like Facebook one. Yes, that I would say Facebook,
Speaker 1: but and again Twitter chose to do a lot of
Speaker 1: the same talxic things Facebook did, so did YouTube, and
Speaker 1: they did it all for profit. A number of the
Speaker 1: things we've criticized Facebook for, you can critique YouTube and Twitter. Four.
Speaker 1: I would argue Twitter certainly has done more and more
Speaker 1: effectively than Facebook, not enough that they're not being irresponsible,
Speaker 1: because I would argue that Twitter has actually been extremely
Speaker 1: irresponsible and knowingly so. Um. But I think Facebook, in
Speaker 1: my analysis, Facebook has been the worst. Although I'm not
Speaker 1: as I haven't gotten studied as much about like TikTok yet,
Speaker 1: so we'll see. But but my analysis, you've got to
Speaker 1: get on TikTok, pivot out of podcasting and into TikTok dances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm it's it's not the dances that concerned
Speaker 1: me on TikTok. It's the minute long conspiracy theory videos
Speaker 1: that have convinced a number of people that the Kardashians
Speaker 1: are Armenian witches and had something to do with the
Speaker 1: collapse of the astro worlds or the deaths in the
Speaker 1: astro working. My my concern there is the dances that
Speaker 1: go over those conspiracy videos and really marry the worst
Speaker 1: of both worlds. Because I have seen dancing on there.
Speaker 1: I have seen conspiracy videos that involved dancing incredible and
Speaker 1: skincare routine. Have you ever seen a conspiracy video where
Speaker 1: someone's also doing their skincare routine? Because that is a
Speaker 1: thriving SOMETI I'm sure that's yeah. So well, I was like,
Speaker 1: that is just a thing that on many platforms. Change
Speaker 1: media companies are willfully bad at stopping radicalization because making
Speaker 1: people angry and frightened is good for all of their
Speaker 1: bottom lines, so they all knowingly participate in this. I
Speaker 1: think Facebook has been the least responsible about it, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't that shouldn't be taken as praise of anybody,
Speaker 1: like saying Twitter. Saying Twitter has done the best is
Speaker 1: saying like, well, we were all drunk driving, but John
Speaker 1: could actually walk most of a straight line before vomiting,
Speaker 1: so he was the least irresponsible of us who drunk
Speaker 1: drove that night. Just to put it in terms that
Speaker 1: I understand, I was it sounds like Twitter is the
Speaker 1: Backstreet boy. That's like, look, I don't believe in Q
Speaker 1: and on, but I see their points. That's that's kind
Speaker 1: of um the vibe I'm getting fair enough. Um So,
Speaker 1: when deciding what which posts should show up more often
Speaker 1: in the feeds of other users. Facebook's algorithm ways a
Speaker 1: number of actors. The end goal is always the same,
Speaker 1: to get the most people to spend the most time
Speaker 1: interacting with the site. For years, this was done by
Speaker 1: calculating the different reactions of post god and weighing it
Speaker 1: based on what responses people had to it. Again, for years,
Speaker 1: the reaction that carried the most weight was anger. The
Speaker 1: little snarling smiley face icon you could click under a
Speaker 1: post it was at one point being waited five times
Speaker 1: more than just like a like really like the again
Speaker 1: when I'm when I'm saying this was all intentional. They
Speaker 1: were like people who respond angrily to post that keeps
Speaker 1: them on the site more. That's they spend the most
Speaker 1: time engaging with things that make them angry. So, when
Speaker 1: it comes to determining what by which methody like how
Speaker 1: we choose to have the algorithm present people with posts,
Speaker 1: the post that are making people angriest is the post
Speaker 1: our algorithm will send to the most people. That's a
Speaker 1: conscious choice. That's a conscious Yeah, it's so funny, how
Speaker 1: I mean not funny, it's tragic and upsetting, But just
Speaker 1: how specific the Facebook audience is that it's like you
Speaker 1: would have to be the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: be like, I'd better react angry as specific as possible.
Speaker 1: In my feedback to this post, which is farm bill
Speaker 1: moms and yeah it's boomers, it's boomers, and yeah, um
Speaker 1: and yeah, they just kind of knowingly set off a
Speaker 1: bomb and a lot of people's fucking brains. Um, they're
Speaker 1: addicted to telling on themselves for Yeah, why why Facebook
Speaker 1: has something called the Integrity Department and these are the
Speaker 1: people with the unenviable task of trying to fight misinformation
Speaker 1: and radicalization on the platform. They noted in July that
Speaker 1: is so embarrassing. Yeah, just going on the first day
Speaker 1: be like, I work for the Facebook Integrity Department, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: good fucking luck. Yeah, I work for thee in your life.
Speaker 1: My job is to go door to door and apologize
Speaker 1: to people after we bomb them. We have gift baskets
Speaker 1: for the survivors, you know, Like it's that that's the gig. Really. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I send edible arrangements to people who have been droned
Speaker 1: striight like, oh Jesus awful. There's was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite follows on twitters, Brook Minkowski Um, who used to
Speaker 1: work for Facebook and was like one of the people
Speaker 1: early on who was trying to warn them about disinformation
Speaker 1: and radicalization on the platform years ago and left because
Speaker 1: like it was clear they didn't actually give a shit.
Speaker 1: UM And and a lot of the Integrity department people
Speaker 1: are actually like really good people who are a little
Speaker 1: bit optimistic and kind of young and coming and like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll make it's my job to make this huge and
Speaker 1: important thing a lot safer. Um. And these people get
Speaker 1: chewed up and spit out very very quickly. Um. And
Speaker 1: the members of the integrity team, Um, we're kind of
Speaker 1: analyzing the impact of weighing angry content so much. And
Speaker 1: some of them noted in July the extra weight given
Speaker 1: to the anger reaction was a huge problem. They recommended
Speaker 1: the company stop weighing at extra in order to stop
Speaker 1: the spread of harmful content. Their own tests showed that
Speaker 1: dialing the weight of anger back to zero so it
Speaker 1: was no more influential than any other reaction, would stop
Speaker 1: rege inducing content from being shared and spread nearly as widely.
Speaker 1: This led to a five percent reduction and hate speech, misinformation, bullying,
Speaker 1: and posts with violent threats. And when you consider how
Speaker 1: many billions of Facebook posts there are that's a lot
Speaker 1: less nasty shit, um, some of which is going to
Speaker 1: translate into real world violence. And again this was kind
Speaker 1: of a limited study, so who knows how it would
Speaker 1: have actually affected things in the long run. So Facebook
Speaker 1: made this well less money question mark. Yeah, this actually
Speaker 1: was kind of a win for them. Um. Facebook did
Speaker 1: make this change. They pushed it out in September. UM,
Speaker 1: and the employees responsible deserve real credit. Again, there's people
Speaker 1: within Um, there's people within Facebook who did things that
Speaker 1: really actually we're good Like changing this was probably like
Speaker 1: made the world a bit healthier. That said, the fact
Speaker 1: that it had been weighted this way for years, you
Speaker 1: don't undo that just by dialing it back now. For
Speaker 1: one thing, anger has become such an aspect of the
Speaker 1: culture of Facebook that even without weighing the anger emoji,
Speaker 1: most of the content that goes viral is still stuff
Speaker 1: that makes pisces people off, because that's just become what
Speaker 1: Facebook is, because that's what they selected for for years.
Speaker 1: Like it Also, like, who knows, like if they've done
Speaker 1: this years ago, if they never waited anger more, it
Speaker 1: might be a very different platform with like a very
Speaker 1: different impact on the brains of for example, our aunts
Speaker 1: and uncles. Um I think that that's really interesting too,
Speaker 1: because that timeline lines up pretty quickly with or pretty
Speaker 1: exactly with where it feels like a lot of younger
Speaker 1: people were leaving that platform and the platforms became associated
Speaker 1: with older people. Because I feel like I don't think
Speaker 1: I was using Facebook consistently after twenties seventeen. I want
Speaker 1: to say it was maybe my last Facebook year. Yeah
Speaker 1: I stopped. I mean I I stopped visiting it super
Speaker 1: regularly a while back. Um yeah, maybe around So in
Speaker 1: April of Facebook employees came up with another recommendation. This
Speaker 1: one wouldn't be as successful as as changing you know,
Speaker 1: the reaction of the algorithm to the angry reaction spurred
Speaker 1: by the lockdown on the sudden surge of q and
Speaker 1: on Boogaloo and he lockdown groups urging real world violence.
Speaker 1: It was suggested by internal employees that the news feed
Speaker 1: algorithm de prioritize the posting of content based on the
Speaker 1: behavior of people's Facebook friends. So the basic idea is this,
Speaker 1: um a new what Facebook was doing was you would
Speaker 1: if normally like the way you'd think it would work, right,
Speaker 1: is that like your friends post something and you see
Speaker 1: that in your news feed, right, like the posts of
Speaker 1: the people that you've chosen to follow and say are
Speaker 1: your friends? Right? That's how you you would you would
Speaker 1: want it to work. Is that what worked? At one
Speaker 1: point they made a change a few years back where
Speaker 1: they started sending you things not because someone you followed
Speaker 1: had said something, but because they'd like to think um,
Speaker 1: or they'd commented like not so even commented just like
Speaker 1: liked a thing, Like if they'd reacted to a thing
Speaker 1: you would get you would get that sent to your
Speaker 1: news feed UM. And members of the Integrity Team start
Speaker 1: to recognize, like, this has some problems um in it
Speaker 1: from one thing, it results in a lot of people
Speaker 1: getting exposed to dangerous bullshit UM. So they uh, they
Speaker 1: start looking into like the impact of this and how
Speaker 1: how just sharing the kind of things your friends are
Speaker 1: reacting to influences what you see and what that does
Speaker 1: to you on Facebook. The Integrity Team experimented without changing
Speaker 1: this might work, and their early experiments found that fixing
Speaker 1: this would reduce the spread of violence, insight and content UM.
Speaker 1: For one thing, what they found is that like normally
Speaker 1: if you hadn't seen someone like a post about something
Speaker 1: that was maybe like violent or aggressive, your conspiratory, like
Speaker 1: a flat earth post, your appost urging the execution of
Speaker 1: an elected leader. If you hadn't seen anyone that you
Speaker 1: knew react to that post, even if you saw it,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't comment on it or share it. But they
Speaker 1: found that, like if you just saw that a friend
Speaker 1: had liked it, you were more likely to share it,
Speaker 1: which increases exponentially the spread of this kind of violent content.
Speaker 1: And it's it's this idea, like the whole people weren't
Speaker 1: stopped being afraid to be racist at a certain points
Speaker 1: as much as they had been earlier, and it led
Speaker 1: to this surge in real world violence. It is kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing people felt by seeing their friends
Speaker 1: react to this, they felt permission to react to it too.
Speaker 1: In a way, maybe they would have liked, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to like, maybe I'm interested in flat earthship,
Speaker 1: but I'm just going to ignore this because like I
Speaker 1: don't want to seem like a kok that is so
Speaker 1: fucking upsetting and and fascinating in the way that it
Speaker 1: affects your mind. Is is Yeah, there there was a
Speaker 1: time where you would if you were you know, racist, misogynist, homophobic,
Speaker 1: whatever you were, but you just didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: But then all of a sudden, there's this confirmation that like, hey,
Speaker 1: this person you know and see all the time feels
Speaker 1: the same fucking way you do. So why be quiet
Speaker 1: about it. Let's discuss. Like it's just that's so dark.
Speaker 1: It's really dark. And so the the the integrity team
Speaker 1: sees this and they're like, we should change this. Um,
Speaker 1: we should only show We shouldn't be showing people just
Speaker 1: like the reactions their friends have had to content because
Speaker 1: it seems to be bad for everybody. Um. And they
Speaker 1: do find in some of their you know, because when
Speaker 1: the experiment, they're like that, we'll take this country or
Speaker 1: this city and we'll we'll roll this change out in
Speaker 1: this limited geograph location to like try and see how
Speaker 1: it might affect its scale. And they do this and
Speaker 1: they see that like, oh, changing this significantly reduces the
Speaker 1: spread of specifically violence and citing contents. So they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we should roll this out service wide. Zuckerberg himself steps in.
Speaker 1: According to Francis Hoggan, the whistleblower and quote rejected this
Speaker 1: intervention that could have reduced the risk of violence in
Speaker 1: the election from The Atlantic Quote, an internal message characterizing
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's reasoning says he wanted to avoid new features that
Speaker 1: would get in the way of meaningful social interactions. But
Speaker 1: according to Facebook's definition, its employees say engagement is considered
Speaker 1: meaningful even if it entails bullying, hate speech, and re
Speaker 1: shares of harmful content. The episode, like Facebook's response to
Speaker 1: the incitement that proliferated between the election in January six,
Speaker 1: reveals a fundamental problem with the platform. Facebook's mega scale
Speaker 1: allows the company to influence the speech and thought patterns
Speaker 1: of billions of people. What the world is seeing now
Speaker 1: through the window provided by reams of internal documents is
Speaker 1: that Facebook catalogs and studies the harm it inflicts on people,
Speaker 1: and then it keeps harming anyway. See that that is
Speaker 1: so that's always um so interesting to hear. And by interesting,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, psychologically harmful, but uh, because it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: that is a fundamental flaw of the platform, but that's
Speaker 1: also very entrenched into like what the DNA of the
Speaker 1: platform always was, which was based on harshly judging other people.
Speaker 1: Like that's why Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, was to harshly
Speaker 1: judge women in his community. So it's like, I I
Speaker 1: know that it is you know, on a bajillion scale
Speaker 1: at this point, but I'm always kind of stunned at
Speaker 1: how people are like, oh, it's so weird that this
Speaker 1: went you know, the way that it did. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: to an extent um, it was always like that, and
Speaker 1: maybe it was like cosplaying as not being like that,
Speaker 1: and for certain people there were eras in Facebook where
Speaker 1: your user experience wouldn't be like that. But it you know,
Speaker 1: this goes back almost twenty is at this point of
Speaker 1: this being in the DNA of this um this ship show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really bleak. Um. It's just really bleak.
Speaker 1: And it also goes to show like the It was
Speaker 1: one of the things Zuckerberg will say repeatedly when he
Speaker 1: talks about when he when he does admit like, yes,
Speaker 1: there are problems and there have been like negatives associated
Speaker 1: with the site, and we're we're aware of that. They're humbling,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, you also have to include all
Speaker 1: the good that we're doing, all of the meaning and
Speaker 1: the way he always phrases this is like all of
Speaker 1: the meaningful social interactions that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And
Speaker 1: then you realize when every time he says that meaningful
Speaker 1: social interactions that have taken place on Facebook, when he
Speaker 1: says he's including as these internal blocuments, he includes bullying
Speaker 1: and people like making death threats and like talking about
Speaker 1: their desire to murder people like, that's a meaningful interaction.
Speaker 1: People getting angry and trying to inside violence together is
Speaker 1: a meaningful social interaction, which I guess yet I mean
Speaker 1: not meaningless that it that has meaning. Plan meetings were
Speaker 1: meaningful social interactions, you know, Um, you gotta give the
Speaker 1: KKK that. Uh, the Nuremberg rally was meaning interacting. The
Speaker 1: last meaningful interaction I had on Twitter led to like
Speaker 1: a rebound. I was dating coming to my grandma's funeral,
Speaker 1: blackout drunk, so you know, just man, it's been too
Speaker 1: long since I've shown up at a funeral just too
Speaker 1: drunk to stand. It was still a one of my
Speaker 1: favorite mag with my family to this day. They're like,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? And I'm like, I don't really know.
Speaker 1: He's drunk. He came on the megabus. He did the
Speaker 1: megabus getting drunk from a camel back on the megabus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be when I used to do a lot
Speaker 1: of bus trips, like when I was traveling and stuff.
Speaker 1: That would be one of the tactics as you feel
Speaker 1: like a thermist or a camel back with like cranberry juice,
Speaker 1: six liquor and and just oh, I mean get that.
Speaker 1: It's I'm not above getting funked up on a mega
Speaker 1: you know, on your way to my grandma's funeral. That was.
Speaker 1: That was a move. Me and my friends got like
Speaker 1: wasted in San Francisco one day, just like going shopping
Speaker 1: in broad daylight with a camel back, where we would
Speaker 1: we would get a bottle of orange flavored Trader Joe's
Speaker 1: Patron tequila, and we would get a half dozen lime
Speaker 1: popsicles and you just throw the popsicles in with the
Speaker 1: patron and the camel back, and throughout the day it
Speaker 1: melts and you just have constant cold margarita. It's actually
Speaker 1: fucking amazing that fucking we were ito. Yeah, I recommend
Speaker 1: it heavily. You will get trashed and people don't notice
Speaker 1: dude walking around with a camel back in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Nobody gives a ship. Oh my god, you're basically camouflaged.
Speaker 1: Yeah there, you know who else is camouflaged, The products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast, camouflaged to be more
Speaker 1: likable to you by being wrapped in a package of
Speaker 1: of the three of us. That's how ads work. I
Speaker 1: thought you were saying that you were taking ads from
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army recruitment center. Again, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible. Um but but but at the moment, we're
Speaker 1: just camouflaging. I don't know whoever, whoever comes on next,
Speaker 1: whoever comes on next, you'll feel more positively about because
Speaker 1: of our presence here. That's how ads work. It's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh we're back. My goodness, What a good time we're
Speaker 1: all having today. How are you doing? You make it okay?
Speaker 1: You made it sounds sarcastic. I'm having I am having
Speaker 1: a good time. I'm glad. I'm happy that you're having
Speaker 1: a good time. That's that's my only goal for for
Speaker 1: this show and for you. That's a good time. See
Speaker 1: now you're doubling down on it, and I'm getting insecure
Speaker 1: doubling down. And I'm also talking more and more like
Speaker 1: an NPR talking head as I as I get quieter
Speaker 1: by the bed. Now I'm going to start having a
Speaker 1: panic attack. I've never heard you talk. I know. This
Speaker 1: is how I talk to my cats when I may
Speaker 1: grey at them there. Honestly, I feel like we do
Speaker 1: have that dynamic. I feel like I'm a cat that
Speaker 1: you get angry at something. Yeah, because you you jump
Speaker 1: on my desk and knock over my zvia. It's infurious attention,
Speaker 1: I know. But I've got to work to keep you
Speaker 1: in expensive cat food. I only feed my cats the
Speaker 1: nice wet food. I would rather have your attention than
Speaker 1: really nice food. That's not what my cats say. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there's just a shipload to say about how Facebook negatively
Speaker 1: impacts the increasingly violent political discourse in the United States
Speaker 1: and how they helped make January six happen. But I
Speaker 1: think the way I'd like to illustrate the harm of
Speaker 1: Facebook next is a bit less political. Um it also
Speaker 1: occurs in a different Facebook product. I'm talking about Facebook,
Speaker 1: the company generally want her to Facebook. But now we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Instagram. In Part one, I mentioned
Speaker 1: that young people felt that removing likes from Instagram temporarily
Speaker 1: corresponded with a decrease in social anxiety. The impact of Instagram,
Speaker 1: specifically on the mental health of kids and teens can
Speaker 1: be incredibly significant. One of the other Facebook internal studies
Speaker 1: that was released as part of the Facebook papers was
Speaker 1: conducted by researchers on Instagram UH. The study, which again
Speaker 1: almost certainly would never have seen the light of day
Speaker 1: if a whistleblower hadn't released, it found that thirty two
Speaker 1: percent of teen girls reported Instagram made their made them
Speaker 1: feel worse about their body. Twenty two million teenagers in
Speaker 1: the United States log onto Instagram on like a daily basis.
Speaker 1: So that's millions of teen girls feeling worse about their
Speaker 1: body because of Instagram. I've never been less surprised. Well,
Speaker 1: good news, it gets worse like no fucking kidding. These
Speaker 1: researchers released their findings internally on in March of noting
Speaker 1: that comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view
Speaker 1: and describe themselves. Again not surprising. So company researchers have
Speaker 1: been investigating the way that Instagram works though for for
Speaker 1: quite a while years um about three years that they've
Speaker 1: been doing this seriously, and their previous findings all back
Speaker 1: up the same central issues. Photos sharing in particular is
Speaker 1: harmful the teen girls nineteen report concluded we make body
Speaker 1: image issues worse for one in three teen girls. Its
Speaker 1: findings included this damning line, teens blame Instagram for increases
Speaker 1: in anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent
Speaker 1: across all groups. So like they almost always mentioned that
Speaker 1: this app specifically makes them feel worse about their body,
Speaker 1: and we don't have to prompt them at all, Like
Speaker 1: this just comes up when they talk about Instagram. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that, truly, It's so Sophie. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you feel. I mean, I truly think that because I've
Speaker 1: been on Instagram since what like show earlier. I think
Speaker 1: I liked that on earlier. It was around when we
Speaker 1: were in high school. I truly think my my life
Speaker 1: and my relationship to my body would be very different
Speaker 1: had not been on that app for the better part
Speaker 1: of a decade. Yeah, I mean, I mean, especially when
Speaker 1: they introduced filters. Yeah, we're about to talk about So
Speaker 1: here's here's the kicker, And by kicker, I mean the
Speaker 1: bleakest part. In teens who reported suicidal thoughts, percent of
Speaker 1: teens in the UK and six percent of the teams
Speaker 1: in the United States claim their desire to kill themselves
Speaker 1: started on Instagram. That's fucking disgusting and terror. That's pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: More than I just like I wish I were more surprise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's good to have this data. Um. The data
Speaker 1: shows that more than forty percent of Instagram so more
Speaker 1: than of Instagram users are less than twenty two years old. UM,
Speaker 1: which means you've got twenty two million teens logging onto
Speaker 1: the service in the US every day. Six percent of
Speaker 1: those people becoming suicidal as the result of Instagram is
Speaker 1: one point three two million children who once started wanting
Speaker 1: to kill themselves while using Instagram. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here,
Speaker 1: and I actually screwed up the math that I just cited,
Speaker 1: which is often the case when I do math. So
Speaker 1: anytime I do math of my own in an episode,
Speaker 1: you're right to question me. UM. I was calculating six
Speaker 1: percent of twenty two million basically, Um. But as the
Speaker 1: auddy noted, it's six percent of kids who are suicidal
Speaker 1: say that their suicidal feelings started on Instagram, So I
Speaker 1: wanted to recalculate that, um about seventy to seventy six
Speaker 1: kind of depending on the source. Percent of American teens
Speaker 1: use Instagram. UM there are about forty two million teenagers
Speaker 1: in the United States um SO I calculated from that,
Speaker 1: and about eighteen percent of about nineteen percent of high
Speaker 1: school students of of like teenagers UM seriously considered attempting suicide. So,
Speaker 1: if we're just counting serious attempts at or people who
Speaker 1: seriously considered attempting suicide, that's UM five millions, seven thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred teens who seriously considered suicide six percent of those.
Speaker 1: If six percent of those kids had their suicidal feelings
Speaker 1: start on Instagram, that's three hundred and forty four thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred and thirty six children in the United States
Speaker 1: who suicidal feelings started on Instagram. UM and I've furthermore
Speaker 1: found that about nine percent of kids who seriously attempt
Speaker 1: suicide or seriously consider suicide attempted. So of that three
Speaker 1: hundred and uh thousand, seven thirty six American kid teens
Speaker 1: whose suicidal feelings started on Instagram, about thirty one thousand,
Speaker 1: uh and twenty six kids attempt suicide. Um SO, about
Speaker 1: thirty one kids in the United States on an annual
Speaker 1: basis attempts suicide because of suicidal feelings that started on Instagram.
Speaker 1: So that is the more accurate look at the data.
Speaker 1: And I apologize as always for the error. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that these studies do document like Facebook has
Speaker 1: is as physically harmful at scale, is like a wide
Speaker 1: variety of narcotics, like most narcotics probably are less harmful
Speaker 1: at scale physically than Instagram. Um, I think weeds certainly
Speaker 1: is um so my god, if if every teenager was
Speaker 1: smoking weed instead of doom scrolling Instagram, the world would
Speaker 1: just be so funny. If they were, they were chained
Speaker 1: smoking cigars instead of being on Instagram. It's so weird
Speaker 1: because I think about, like how I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: Like I'm in my late twenties, so I feel like
Speaker 1: I have like a little bit of memory of like
Speaker 1: what life was like before you were constantly being encouraged
Speaker 1: to compare yourself to every single person you've ever met
Speaker 1: in your life, regardless of whether you know who they are,
Speaker 1: how they are whatever. Um, and I just call me nostalgic,
Speaker 1: but uh, I liked how I felt better. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's so absurd how much I know about people I
Speaker 1: don't give a shit about, and how bad it makes
Speaker 1: me feel to know about the curated lives of people
Speaker 1: that I don't give a shit about, and how I
Speaker 1: let that actively affect my daily life. And it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just fucking miserable. It is. It's horrible. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Um that said, I like Florida on the application, so
Speaker 1: you know, it's sure. Now Here's why despite the documented
Speaker 1: harm that Instagram does, nothing's ever going to change. Um.
Speaker 1: As I stated, million US teens used to Graham daily,
Speaker 1: only five million log on to Facebook. So Instagram is
Speaker 1: almost five times is popular among teenagers as Facebook, where
Speaker 1: kids are leaving in droves. So Facebook Mark Zuckerberg's invention
Speaker 1: is now definitively just the terrain of the olds. And
Speaker 1: Facebook knows that kids are never going to come back,
Speaker 1: because that's not how how it being a kid works
Speaker 1: like that, You don't get them back. They're going to
Speaker 1: continue to do new ship. Eventually they'll leave Instagram for
Speaker 1: something else. You know, That's just the way it fucking goes.
Speaker 1: Unless unless the thirty year nostalgic cycle is like Facebook
Speaker 1: is actually back now, it's actually and I don't think
Speaker 1: it gave anybody a good experience enough to have that
Speaker 1: it's not the fucking teenage mutant ninja turtle. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: one's getting dopamine hits. That's a good Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: flame and hot cheet does. Nobody's thinking fondly back to
Speaker 1: scrolling Facebook when they were seven. They're thinking back to
Speaker 1: I don't know, SpongeBob square Pants. Um oh, but at
Speaker 1: the moment, Instagram is very popular with teens, and Facebook
Speaker 1: knows that if they're going to continue to grow and
Speaker 1: maintain their cultural dominance, they have to keep bringing in
Speaker 1: the teens. They have to keep Instagram as profitable and
Speaker 1: as as addictive as it currently is. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: why they bought Instagram in the first place. They only
Speaker 1: paid like a billion dollars for it. It It was an
Speaker 1: incredible investment um. And they spend in it in a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's cheap as hell for something as influential and
Speaker 1: huge as Instagram. Yeah. I wonder do you know what
Speaker 1: it's worth now? I would guess significantly more than a
Speaker 1: billion dollars um, But I don't entirely know a lot
Speaker 1: of value. But Facebook's like a trillion dollar company now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're very sucks and it's well, but face but that
Speaker 1: includes Instagram, you know. Okay, so yeah, and among you know,
Speaker 1: teens are one of the most valuable demographics to have
Speaker 1: for advertisers, and Instagram is where quarantine. The number it's
Speaker 1: estimated value is two billion. Yeah, that's a good investmentsment,
Speaker 1: good investment if money you gotta yeah. Um So. The
Speaker 1: fact that so much is at stake with Instagram, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's such a central part of company having
Speaker 1: any kind of future, is part of why Mark and
Speaker 1: company have been so compelled to lie about it. None
Speaker 1: of this stuff that we've been talking about was released
Speaker 1: when Facebook researchers got it, of course not. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: want anyone to know this ship. In March, Mark took
Speaker 1: to Congress, where he was criticized for his plans to
Speaker 1: create a new Instagram service for children under thirteen. He
Speaker 1: was asked if he'd studied how Instagram infects affects children,
Speaker 1: and he said, I believe the answer is yes. So
Speaker 1: not yes, I think we've studied that. He told them. Then,
Speaker 1: the research we've seen is that using social apps to
Speaker 1: connect with other people can have positive mental health benefits.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's something that he's gotten paid researchers
Speaker 1: to come up with that he can make that case
Speaker 1: off of. Um, I'm sure in certain situations it may
Speaker 1: even be true. There are ways you can use social
Speaker 1: media that are good. Dear, myth I've legitimately smiled or
Speaker 1: had my heart warmed by things that happened on social media.
Speaker 1: It doesn't not happen. Um, And I do think that
Speaker 1: there is a case for like I mean, and it's
Speaker 1: you can't credit Mark Zuckerberg with it, but just I
Speaker 1: mean going back to fucking like live journal days of
Speaker 1: just like friendships that have deepened as a result of
Speaker 1: social media. That's definitely a thing. But the costs that
Speaker 1: way the benefits there by quite a bit. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's great. So um. So Mark goes on to say,
Speaker 1: you know, I I think we've got research that shows
Speaker 1: that can have positive mental health effects. You know, I
Speaker 1: think we've studied whether or not how it affects children. Um.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't talk about He leaves out all the
Speaker 1: stuff that all the statistics, like about all the kids
Speaker 1: whose suicidal ideation starts on Instagram, they had that data
Speaker 1: when he went before Congress. He just didn't mention it.
Speaker 1: They hadn't told anyone that ship, Like, he didn't say
Speaker 1: a goddamn word about it. Yeah, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've looked into it, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: some ways in which it can be healthy not And
Speaker 1: also one point three million American kids became suicidal because
Speaker 1: of our app Like he did not throw that anything,
Speaker 1: Like did he throw that? I mean truly, I'm like
Speaker 1: up in the air of like did he not say
Speaker 1: that because he didn't want people to know? Or did
Speaker 1: he just say that because he heard it and he
Speaker 1: didn't care and he forgot, Like you just don't know
Speaker 1: what that guy that is so fucking evil. Woah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty great. Um, and we'll talk more about that later.
Speaker 1: In May, Instagram boss Adam Mussari told reporters that he
Speaker 1: thought any impact on teen well being by Instagram was
Speaker 1: likely quote quite small, based on the internal research he'd seen. Again,
Speaker 1: I haven't released this research. He's saying, Oh, we have research,
Speaker 1: and it says that any kind of impact on well
Speaker 1: being is pretty small. And again, the actual research by
Speaker 1: this point show of kids in the UK and six
Speaker 1: percent of kids in the United States were moved to
Speaker 1: thoughts of suicide by Instagram, which I would not call small.
Speaker 1: I would not call I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily say
Speaker 1: it's huge. But that is not a small impact. Um, No,
Speaker 1: that is like thousands and thousands, and yeah, that's significant.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal caught up with Massari after the
Speaker 1: Facebook papers leaked, so they were able to like drill
Speaker 1: him on this a bit, and he said a bit more. Quote,
Speaker 1: in no way do I mean to diminish these issues.
Speaker 1: Some of the issues mentioned in this story aren't necessarily widespread,
Speaker 1: but their impact on people may be huge, which is like,
Speaker 1: again a perfect nonstatement. That's right. They're like, but what
Speaker 1: about the thing we couldn't possibly gauge at all versus
Speaker 1: the thing that we did and we're actively distancing ourselves from.
Speaker 1: I mean those statistics that's like at least one kid
Speaker 1: in every classroom, Like that is gigantic. And when you
Speaker 1: read the responses of guys like Massari and compare them
Speaker 1: the responsive guy like people like Mark Zuckerberg and official
Speaker 1: corporate spokes people, it's it's very clear that they're working
Speaker 1: from the same playbook, that they're very disciplined in their responses.
Speaker 1: Because Massari does try to tell the journal um that
Speaker 1: he he thinks Facebook was late to realizing there were
Speaker 1: drawbacks and connecting people in such large numbers. But then
Speaker 1: he says, I've been pushing very hard for us to
Speaker 1: embrace our responsibilities more broadly, which again says nothing. He
Speaker 1: then pivots from that to stating that he's actually really
Speaker 1: proud of the research they've done in the mental health
Speaker 1: effects on teams, which again they didn't share with anybody,
Speaker 1: and I would argue light about by omission in front
Speaker 1: of Congress. Um, He's proud of this because he says
Speaker 1: that shows Facebook employees are asking tough questions about the platform.
Speaker 1: Quote for me, this isn't dirty laundry. I'm actually very
Speaker 1: proud of this research, which is the same thing Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: said about his own employees damning the service after six Right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that's the same exact thing as the
Speaker 1: as the as the like actually bad work, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about how that working for the Death Star is bad,
Speaker 1: um is like evidence of Oh, the Death Stars actually
Speaker 1: has a really open work culture. Like No, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like there are a few. There are not
Speaker 1: many CEOs that are good at flipping a narrative. But
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is particularly bad at it. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: I mean, part of why they can be bad at
Speaker 1: it is it doesn't really matter um, or at least
Speaker 1: it hasn't fucking so far. Um. But the patterns I
Speaker 1: mean not enough to get a better figurehead like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the patterns pretty clear here. Um. When a scandal comes out,
Speaker 1: deny it until the information that can't be denied leaks out,
Speaker 1: and then claim that whatever is happening at the site,
Speaker 1: whatever like our information you had about how harmful it is,
Speaker 1: is a positive because it means that you were trying
Speaker 1: to do stuff about it, even if you actually rejected
Speaker 1: taking action based on the data you had and refused
Speaker 1: to share it with anybody else. Massari and Zuckerberg were
Speaker 1: also careful to reiterate that any harms from Instagram had
Speaker 1: to be weighed against its benefits, which I haven't found
Speaker 1: a ton of documentation on. In fact, as the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal rights. In five presentations over eighteen months to
Speaker 1: this spring, the researchers Facebook researchers conducted what they called
Speaker 1: a teen mental health deep dive and follow up studies.
Speaker 1: They came to the conclusion that some of the problems
Speaker 1: were specific to Instagram and not social media. More broadly,
Speaker 1: This is especially true concerning so called social comparison, which
Speaker 1: is when people assess their own value you in relation
Speaker 1: to the attractiveness, wealth, and success of others. Social comparison
Speaker 1: is worse on Instagram, states Facebook's deep dive into Team
Speaker 1: Girl body image issues in noting that TikTok, a short
Speaker 1: video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat,
Speaker 1: a rifle photo and video sharing app, are sheltered by
Speaker 1: jokey features that keep the focus on the face. In contrast,
Speaker 1: Instagram more focuses more heavily on the body and lifestyle.
Speaker 1: March Internal Research states it warns that the Explore page,
Speaker 1: which serves users photos and videos curated by an algorithm,
Speaker 1: can send users deep into content that can be harmful.
Speaker 1: Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: The research states, Yeah, I mean, again, not a shocking
Speaker 1: revelation over here there. It is. I mean, I and
Speaker 1: I do think that that let's TikTok and Snapchat get
Speaker 1: off easy. They're like they're certain there is absolutely uh
Speaker 1: toxic body image culture on there, And I feel like
Speaker 1: finspo will thrive on any platform it fucking gloms itself onto.
Speaker 1: But Instagram is particularly bad because it's like where so
Speaker 1: many lifestyle people have launched and and there's so many
Speaker 1: headless women on Instagram. It's it is shocking. There's so
Speaker 1: many like not like um, not like you macheted my
Speaker 1: head off, but like you're not encouraged to show your
Speaker 1: head by the algorithm, which sounds weird, but it is true.
Speaker 1: The less like it is just very focused on how
Speaker 1: you physically look. And then there's also this tendency to
Speaker 1: like tear people apart if they have edited their body
Speaker 1: to look a certain way, when it's like, well that
Speaker 1: the algorithm rewards editing your body to look a certain
Speaker 1: way and to do all this, and it's you do
Speaker 1: bring up a good point where it's like going, it's
Speaker 1: frustrating that it's important to critique Facebook in relation to
Speaker 1: its competitors like TikTok and snapchat. Um. That can lead
Speaker 1: to the uncomfortable situation of like seeming to praise them
Speaker 1: when they haven't done a good job. They just haven't
Speaker 1: been as irresponsible. It's kind of like attacking like Chevron.
Speaker 1: If you look at all of the overall harms, including
Speaker 1: like their impact and like covering up climate change. Maybe
Speaker 1: the worst of the big oil and gas companies. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's debatable, but it's like if you're if
Speaker 1: you're criticizing Chevron specifically, it doesn't you're not saying that
Speaker 1: BP is great. You're just being like, well, these are
Speaker 1: the guys specifically that did this bad thing, and they
Speaker 1: were the leaders in this specific terrible thing. Other bad
Speaker 1: things are going on, but we can't, like, the episode
Speaker 1: can't be about how bad everyone. We're talking about Facebook
Speaker 1: right now, we have these documents from inside Facebook. I'm
Speaker 1: sure versions of this are happening everywhere else. Listeners, in
Speaker 1: your everyday life, just don't use Facebook as a yardstick
Speaker 1: for morality, you know, because they just end up letting
Speaker 1: a lot of people off for a lot of funked
Speaker 1: up stuff. I would say in your regular life, don't
Speaker 1: use Facebook. Is all the sentence we need it there. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: So you asked me you were talking earlier about like
Speaker 1: because Mark went up and of Congress and was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've got research on this, and I've definitely
Speaker 1: seen research that says it's good for kids. We know everything.
Speaker 1: I just stated that quote. I just read everything like
Speaker 1: that's that's in those internal studies. Um, we know that
Speaker 1: Mark saw this. We know that it was viewed by
Speaker 1: top Facebook leaders because it was mentioned in a presentation
Speaker 1: that was given to Mark Zuckerberg himself. We know that
Speaker 1: when in August, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marshall Blackburn sent
Speaker 1: a letter to Mark Zuckerberg asking him to release his
Speaker 1: internal research on how platforms impact child mental health, we
Speaker 1: know that he sent back a six page letter that
Speaker 1: included none of the studies we've just mentioned. Instead, the
Speaker 1: study said that it was hard to conduct research on
Speaker 1: Instagram and that there was no consensus about how much
Speaker 1: screen time is too much. Meanwhile, their own data show
Speaker 1: that Instagram users who reported feeling unattractive said that the
Speaker 1: feeling began while they were on Instagram. Facebook's own internal
Speaker 1: reports showed that their users reported wanting to spend less
Speaker 1: time on Instagram but couldn't make themselves. And here's a
Speaker 1: quote that makes it sound like Heroin teens told us
Speaker 1: they don't like the amount of time they spend on
Speaker 1: the app, but feel like they have to be present.
Speaker 1: They often feel addicted and know that what they're seeing
Speaker 1: is bad for their mental health but feel unable to
Speaker 1: stop themselves. That's Facebook writing about Instagram like that's that's
Speaker 1: their own people saying this like this is not some
Speaker 1: activists getting in here, you know. That's so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I guess, good on them, regardless of the level
Speaker 1: of self awareness going on there. Um, that's I mean.
Speaker 1: And what I was thinking about earlier when it comes
Speaker 1: to any time Zuckerberg is in front of Congress or
Speaker 1: in front of political officials, I feel like for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, the takeaway and the thing that gets
Speaker 1: trending is how little political officials and members of Congress
Speaker 1: understand about how the Internet works. And that's like the
Speaker 1: funny story is like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg talked about an algorithm,
Speaker 1: and they and you know, like this is this comes
Speaker 1: up all the time, It comes up on v became
Speaker 1: up on succession of just like how not internet literate
Speaker 1: the majority of people who just i'd how the Internet
Speaker 1: works are And it's like it almost becomes like a
Speaker 1: he he ha ha, old guy doesn't know how algorithm works.
Speaker 1: But it's like, well, the consequence of that is that
Speaker 1: it ends up making Mark Zuckerberg look way cooler than
Speaker 1: he is and it also doesn't address the problem at
Speaker 1: all of like, no, Mark Zuckerberg is omitting something gigantic here,
Speaker 1: and the majority of our you know, lawmakers in Congress
Speaker 1: don't have the fucking, you know, cultural vocabulary to even
Speaker 1: understand that. And that is like and and I guess
Speaker 1: it's like it makes for a couple of memes, but
Speaker 1: it's just like, no, this is bad. Can you commit
Speaker 1: to cancel Finsta? Do you remember that who that was? Sad? Right?
Speaker 1: Cancel fits? I mean that I think that's the most
Speaker 1: recent one where it's like, okay, yeah, that is you know,
Speaker 1: objectively funny. But but like the consequence of that is
Speaker 1: I mean, that's ultimately a win for Instagram. And that's
Speaker 1: a win for Facebook because it makes them look like
Speaker 1: they're operating on a level of the fucking government doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you know, one kid in every classroom is
Speaker 1: suicidal as a result of the inability of law of
Speaker 1: like law making officials to understand the effect that this has.
Speaker 1: It's just it makes me real mad, Robert. And one
Speaker 1: of the nune things about this is that while these
Speaker 1: lawmakers don't understand and sound like idiots talking to Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg his own employees. These researchers who are part of
Speaker 1: the Integrity team, these researchers studying the impact of Instagram
Speaker 1: on teens know exactly how harmful it is, and they
Speaker 1: are grappling in real time with like the damage their
Speaker 1: product is doing two children. Members of these teams reported
Speaker 1: frustration at the fact that their colleagues often refused to
Speaker 1: take their findings seriously. One former researcher told The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal that we're standing directly between people and their
Speaker 1: bonuses when they try to reduce the harmful aspects of Instagram,
Speaker 1: because like anything that reduces the harm is going to
Speaker 1: reduce its popularity. It's going to cut down on time site,
Speaker 1: it's going to cut down on users, and so everyone
Speaker 1: else at Facebook. But the Integrity team gets paid by
Speaker 1: how much they increase engagement on the site. That's where
Speaker 1: the bonuses come from. So if you're trying to make
Speaker 1: Facebook less dangerous, a huge number of the most influential
Speaker 1: employees have a financially invested financial interest in you failing.
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, And what that boils down to is
Speaker 1: like there is a financial incentive for you convincing a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl that she should get fucking fillers
Speaker 1: in her, Like, what the fuck? It's just now all
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to sell the teens because it's
Speaker 1: ad break time, Jamie, and I would like to Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a teenager, you don't need Instagram.
Speaker 1: That ship is bad for you. You certainly don't need Facebook.
Speaker 1: That's where the olds are. But you know what's come
Speaker 1: back around to being cool and what I think your
Speaker 1: generation needs to get on board with smoking huge comical cigars.
Speaker 1: I'm talking the ones that are like nine inches long
Speaker 1: and like three inches white. Massive teens listening right now,
Speaker 1: go out to your local cigar shop. Do not dribe
Speaker 1: a sad ador. The worst looking you find outside the
Speaker 1: cigar shall pay him for huge, cheap cigars and new
Speaker 1: Instagram smoking horrible cigars. This is this is well, this
Speaker 1: is what's going to bring buying teenagers hook zoomers, zoomers.
Speaker 1: The air is not getting any cleaner. Right, You're all
Speaker 1: gonna we're all gonna choke to death on wildfires. You
Speaker 1: might as well burn down a big fat Macanudoh, Robert,
Speaker 1: can I tell you I bought a teenager a white
Speaker 1: claw the other. Good for you, Thank you. I felt good.
Speaker 1: I felt like I did a public service. Yeah, teens,
Speaker 1: go buy those big, fat, ridiculous lunatic cigars. Bribe, bribe
Speaker 1: for it. You're just preparing yourself for climate change. All right,
Speaker 1: here's the other white claw teens. Okay, I mean white
Speaker 1: Cloud goes great with a huge shitty cigar, Jamie, No,
Speaker 1: it did. Absolutely smoking is bad for you, Andy, as
Speaker 1: a white smoking a cigar, you puff it, so it's
Speaker 1: healthy you. Alright, here's some ads. Alright, we're back. We
Speaker 1: are we all just we all just enjoyed a couple
Speaker 1: of really comically large cigars. Um, we did not have
Speaker 1: those ridiculous long asylum cigars. It was great. Why why
Speaker 1: are you fixated on this what is happening? Because I
Speaker 1: I find that sketch from I think you should leave
Speaker 1: while the little girls are talking about smoking five maccanodos
Speaker 1: to unwind at the end of the day. Actually, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, but like I love when you're reveal yourself
Speaker 1: to be a basic bitch. I am a basic bittix
Speaker 1: A right, That's why I'm thinking about cigar. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that we're in the middle of a podcast,
Speaker 1: and uh, you can't get off that well. I also
Speaker 1: think making children do things that's bad for them as funny,
Speaker 1: but not this way, not the face flashes send dan flashes.
Speaker 1: I mean they've also I think the teens are rejecting
Speaker 1: in f t s pretty widely, Jamie. So when Facebook
Speaker 1: does try to make the case that their products are benign,
Speaker 1: they like to bring up studies from the Oxford Internet Institute,
Speaker 1: which is a project of Oxford University, which show minimal
Speaker 1: or no correlation between social media use and depression. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal actually reached out to the Oxford
Speaker 1: researcher responsible for some of these studies, who right away
Speaker 1: was like wasn't like, oh, yes, they're right, everything's fine. Um,
Speaker 1: he was like, actually, Facebook needs to be much more
Speaker 1: open with the research that they're doing because they have
Speaker 1: better data than than we can get, than researchers can get,
Speaker 1: and so our actual information that they're citing is hampered
Speaker 1: by the fact that they're not sharing what they're finding.
Speaker 1: And who knows how things can change and our conclusions
Speaker 1: could change if we had access to all of that data. Um.
Speaker 1: He even told the Wall spre Street Journal. People talk
Speaker 1: about Instagram like it's a drug, but we can't study
Speaker 1: the active ingredient, which you'll notice is not him saying
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's him being like, yeah, I really wish
Speaker 1: we could actually study this better. Um, it's difficult, right.
Speaker 1: And also he's referring to it like drugs, which is
Speaker 1: the comparable scale of how it manifesting. Okay, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: certainly not being like everything's fine. Um, I think that's clear.
Speaker 1: He's truly like constantly, Mr Policeman. I gave you all
Speaker 1: the closing the situation and just no one gives a ship.
Speaker 1: It is very funny and like that that movie, And
Speaker 1: that's what I was trying to say, that it's hilarious. Ye.
Speaker 1: So we focused a lot on these episodes about how
Speaker 1: Facebook has harmed people and institutions in the United States,
Speaker 1: but as we've covered in past episodes, the social network
Speaker 1: has been responsible for helping to incite ethnic cleansings and
Speaker 1: mass racial violence in places like Myanmar and India. Mob
Speaker 1: violence against Muslims in India and cited by viral Facebook misinformation,
Speaker 1: led one researcher in February of two thousand nineteen to
Speaker 1: create yet another fake account to try and experience social
Speaker 1: media as a person in Kerala, India, might um from
Speaker 1: New York Times quote. For the next three weeks, the
Speaker 1: account operated by a simple rule follow all the recommendations
Speaker 1: generated by Facebook's algorithm to join groups, watch videos, and
Speaker 1: explore new pages on the site. The result was an
Speaker 1: inundation of hate speech, misinformation, and celebrations of violence, which
Speaker 1: were documented in an internal Facebook report published later that month.
Speaker 1: And this is from the Facebook researcher following this test
Speaker 1: users news feed. I've seen more images of dead people
Speaker 1: in the past three weeks than I've seen in my
Speaker 1: entire life total. What a great site Mark built. Facebook's
Speaker 1: new tagline the place for corpses. Oh yeah, my goodness.
Speaker 1: I mean and so I know that we we have
Speaker 1: discussed Facebook's role in in uh super charging ethnic cleansings,
Speaker 1: but that is just that is so. Yeah, it's not great, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Someone wrote that down, Robert and one wrote that down
Speaker 1: and hit published it's not greater or because India is
Speaker 1: Facebook's biggest customer, forty million Indians use one or more
Speaker 1: Facebook products. Um, that's that's a ship of people. Yeah
Speaker 1: three ll um. That is something that I think is
Speaker 1: important to remember and something that I lose sight of
Speaker 1: sometimes is like Facebook is not a super popular platform
Speaker 1: for people of all ages in North America. But that's
Speaker 1: not the case. Yeah, and it is just it is
Speaker 1: the Internet for a lot of these people. Um, Like
Speaker 1: that is the way that that is the whole of
Speaker 1: how they consume the Internet in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe with like YouTube or something mixed in,
Speaker 1: but they're probably getting a lot of their YouTube links
Speaker 1: from their Facebook feed. Um. Now, the fact the fact
Speaker 1: that India is the number one customer in terms of
Speaker 1: like number of people for Facebook, I'm sure the United
Speaker 1: States is still more profitable just because of like differences
Speaker 1: in income and whatnot. Um, but this is a huge
Speaker 1: part of their business. But despite that fact, they have
Speaker 1: failed to invest very much in terms of meaningful resources
Speaker 1: into having employees who speak the language, whereas is more
Speaker 1: the problem the languages of India. See India super mixed
Speaker 1: country right in terms of different like ethnic groups and
Speaker 1: religious groups. They have twenty two officially recognized languages in
Speaker 1: the country, and there's way more languages than that in
Speaker 1: India that significant numbers of people speak. There's twenty two
Speaker 1: officially recognized languages. Anyone who can travel there, and I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in India can tell you
Speaker 1: that being able to effectively say hello and ask basic
Speaker 1: questions of people can require a lot of research if
Speaker 1: you're traveling a decent amount. But Facebook aren't twenty something
Speaker 1: tourists on the problem for good Tan Dory and bond Lassies.
Speaker 1: They have effectively taken control of the primary method of
Speaker 1: communication and information distribution for hundreds of millions of people,
Speaker 1: and they fed failed to hire folks who might know
Speaker 1: if some of those people are deliberately inciting genocide against
Speaker 1: other people in the country. Eight seven to Facebook's global
Speaker 1: budget for identifying misinformation is spent on the United States.
Speaker 1: The rest of the planet shares of their misinformation budget.
Speaker 1: You want to guess what percentage of Facebook users? North
Speaker 1: Americans make up? Ten percent of their budget goes on
Speaker 1: ten percent of their users. Of like dealing with disinformation
Speaker 1: something else, of dealing with disinformation specifically now, When this
Speaker 1: leaked out, Facebook's response was that the information site it
Speaker 1: was incomplete and did not include third party fact checkers.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, this doesn't include all of the people
Speaker 1: the third party companies we hire, except for the data
Speaker 1: they show suggests that the majority of the effort and
Speaker 1: money spent on third party fact checkers is for fact
Speaker 1: checking stuff in the United States. Um. And of course
Speaker 1: they did not elaborate on how including this information might
Speaker 1: have changed the overall numbers, So my guess is not
Speaker 1: by much of at all. Internal documents do show that
Speaker 1: Facebook attempted to create changes to their platform to stop
Speaker 1: the spread of the disinformation during the November election. In
Speaker 1: myan mar those changes which also halted the spread of
Speaker 1: disinformation put out by the military, which was a big
Speaker 1: like the it was the military inciting ethnic cleansings and
Speaker 1: like and trying to incite violence in order to like
Speaker 1: lockdown political power ahead of this election. Um, so they
Speaker 1: cut this significantly prior to the election. They see it
Speaker 1: as a problem. The institute changes similar to the changes
Speaker 1: they talked about putting up in the U. S. If
Speaker 1: things went badly with the election and these worked, it
Speaker 1: dropped dramatically, Yeah and again and it's it's that is
Speaker 1: that is good. I'm glad that was done. But they
Speaker 1: only respond to give me a second, exclusively, give me
Speaker 1: a second, Jamie, because prior to the election, they institute
Speaker 1: these changes which are significant. It reduces the number of
Speaker 1: inflammatory posts by twenty five point one percent and reduces
Speaker 1: the spread of photo posts containing disinformation by forty eight
Speaker 1: point five pc. This is huge. That's that's that's really significant. UM.
Speaker 1: As soon as the election was done, Facebook reversed those changes,
Speaker 1: presumably because they were bad for money. Three months after
Speaker 1: the election, the Myanmar military launched a vicious coup. Violence
Speaker 1: there continues to this moment. In response, Facebook created a
Speaker 1: special policy to stop people from praising violence in the country,
Speaker 1: one which presumably reduces the spread of content by freedom
Speaker 1: fighters resisting the military as much as it reduces content
Speaker 1: spread by the military. It's obviously too much to say
Speaker 1: that Facebook call is to coup and Myanmar ship's been.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot going on there. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not pretending that this is like it's just Facebook,
Speaker 1: but a major contributing factor. It was an insignificant UM
Speaker 1: and the fact that they knew how much their policies
Speaker 1: were helping and reverse them after the election, reversing this
Speaker 1: effect and leading to an increase in inflammatory content because
Speaker 1: it profited them more is damning, right, That's the thing
Speaker 1: that's damning. UM Around the world. Facebook's contribution to violence
Speaker 1: maybe greatest in places where the company has huge reach
Speaker 1: but pays little attention. In Sri Lanka, people were able
Speaker 1: to automatically add hundreds of thousands of users to Facebook
Speaker 1: groups that spread violent content. In Ethiopia, a nationalist militia
Speaker 1: coordinated call sur violence openly on the app. The company
Speaker 1: claims that it has reduced the amount of hate speech
Speaker 1: people see globally by half this year. But even if
Speaker 1: that is true, how much hate was spread during the
Speaker 1: years where they ignored the rest of the world. How
Speaker 1: many killings, how many militant groups seeded with new recruits,
Speaker 1: how many pieces of extermination? Is propaganda spread while Facebook
Speaker 1: just wasn't paying attention? The actual answer is likely incalculable.
Speaker 1: But here's The New York Times again reporting on that
Speaker 1: test account in Kerala, India, perfect turn of friends. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Ten days after the researcher opened the fake account to
Speaker 1: study misinformation, a suicide bombing and the disputed border region
Speaker 1: of cashmir set off a round of violence and a
Speaker 1: spike and accusations misinformation and conspiracies between Indian and Pakistani nationals.
Speaker 1: After the attack, anti Pakistan content began to circulate in
Speaker 1: the Facebook recommendation groups that the researcher had joined. Many
Speaker 1: of the groups she noted had tens of thousands of followers.
Speaker 1: A different report by Facebook published in December two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: found Indian Facebook users tended to join large groups, with
Speaker 1: the company's median group size at a hundred and forty
Speaker 1: thousand members. In a separate report produced after the elections,
Speaker 1: Facebook found that over fort of top views or impressions
Speaker 1: in the Indian state of West Bengal were fake or
Speaker 1: inauthentic when one in authentic account had amassed more than
Speaker 1: thirty million impressions. A report in March showed that many
Speaker 1: of the problems cited during the two thousand nineteen elections persisted.
Speaker 1: In the internal document called Adverse Serial Harmful Networks India
Speaker 1: Case Study, a Facebook researcher wrote that there were groups
Speaker 1: and pages replete with inflammatory and misleading anti Muslim content
Speaker 1: on Facebook. The report said that there were a number
Speaker 1: of dehumanizing posts comparing Muslims to pigs and dogs, and
Speaker 1: misinformation claimed that the Koran, the Holy Book of Islam,
Speaker 1: calls from men to rape their female family members, so
Speaker 1: that's significant. Like the scale at which the ship spreads
Speaker 1: is huge, and and I I mean, I don't even
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like I know the answer if
Speaker 1: if the hate is existing on that scale unmitigated. But
Speaker 1: who is working to? Like how many people does Facebook
Speaker 1: have working on? Is there is there an integrity team
Speaker 1: for this regent? Like technically yes, the question is how
Speaker 1: many of them and how many of the languages there
Speaker 1: are represented by the team. And it's not many exactly,
Speaker 1: Like it's not many. Can't have a global company and
Speaker 1: not have global representation or ship like this is going
Speaker 1: to happen, Like it's just it's actually, you know what.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of Jamie. I was looking
Speaker 1: at this, and I was thinking about the East India
Speaker 1: Trading Company UM. When the East India Company took over
Speaker 1: large chunks of India UM. They took it over from
Speaker 1: a regime. The government, the monarchical government that had been
Speaker 1: in charge in that area prior, was not a good government,
Speaker 1: right because they number one, they lost that war. But
Speaker 1: like they weren't a very good government, they were a government,
Speaker 1: so they did do things like provide aid and famines
Speaker 1: and disasters and have people whose job it was to
Speaker 1: like handle stuff like that and like handle like make
Speaker 1: sure that like place the stuff was getting where it
Speaker 1: needed to go during like calamities and whatnot, and doing
Speaker 1: things specifically that helped people. But we're not we're not
Speaker 1: profitable because a big chunk of what a government does
Speaker 1: isn't directly profitable. It's just helping to like keep people
Speaker 1: alive and keep the roads open and whatnot, right sustain humanity.
Speaker 1: When the East India Company took over, they were governing
Speaker 1: and in control of this region and this has actually
Speaker 1: been all I think is their first place. But they
Speaker 1: don't have any responsibility. They don't have teams who are
Speaker 1: dedicated to making sure people aren't starving. They don't have
Speaker 1: people who are dedicated to actually keeping the roads open
Speaker 1: in any way that isn't necessary for directly the trade
Speaker 1: that profits them. They don't do those things because they're
Speaker 1: not They're governing effectively, but they're not a government. And
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of talk about how Facebook is
Speaker 1: a is effectively like a nation, a digital nation of
Speaker 1: like three billion people, and Mark Zuckerberg has the power
Speaker 1: of a dictator. And one of the problems with that
Speaker 1: is that for all of their faults. Governments have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to do things for people that are like necessary
Speaker 1: to stop them, like to deal with like calamities and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Facebook has no such responsibility, and so when people were
Speaker 1: not paying attention to Sri Lanka to West Bengal to
Speaker 1: um Um to Myanmar, they didn't do anything. Um And
Speaker 1: as we know, like forty in the in a in
Speaker 1: a region where there are millions and millions of people,
Speaker 1: forty percent of the views were fake and authentic content,
Speaker 1: you know, like because don't give a ship what's spreading
Speaker 1: because they don't have to, because they don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with the consequences unless it pisses people off, as
Speaker 1: opposed to a government where it's like, well, yeah, we
Speaker 1: are made up of the people who live here and
Speaker 1: if things go badly enough, it can't not affect us.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be again, not like with TikTok,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to praise the concept of governance. But
Speaker 1: it is better than what Facebook's doing right right, It's
Speaker 1: it's I think that that is like a very I'd
Speaker 1: never considered looking at it that way, but but viewing
Speaker 1: it as this kind of digital dictatorship that a colonial dictatorship.
Speaker 1: It's colonized people's information. Um, really like information streams, it's
Speaker 1: colonized the way people communicate, but it has no responsibility
Speaker 1: to them if they aren't white and wealthy. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, and marginalize people in the same ways
Speaker 1: that actual dictatorships do in terms of how much attention
Speaker 1: is being given, how are are people being hired to
Speaker 1: support and represent this area? And of course the answer
Speaker 1: is no. Course the result of that is extreme human
Speaker 1: consequence and and harm. And it's so and it's like,
Speaker 1: it's just so striking to me that it still feels
Speaker 1: like in terms of the laws that exist that control.
Speaker 1: I mean that that even attempt to address the amount
Speaker 1: of influence and control that a gigantic digital network like
Speaker 1: like Facebook has. Um, you know that Facebook. I mean
Speaker 1: unless people are yelling at them, and unless unless their
Speaker 1: bottom line is threatened, they're never going to respond to
Speaker 1: stuff like this. Like it. That's that's been made clear
Speaker 1: for decades at this point. It's great. I love it
Speaker 1: so well. I'm all worked out. Yeah. A great seal
Speaker 1: of the disinformation that goes throughout India on Facebook comes
Speaker 1: from the RSS, which is an Indian fascist organization closely
Speaker 1: tied to the b j P, which is the current
Speaker 1: ruling right wing party. And when I say fascist, I
Speaker 1: mean like some of the founders of the r S
Speaker 1: s we're actual like friends with Nazis and they were
Speaker 1: heavily influenced by that ship in like the thirties. Both
Speaker 1: organizations are profoundly anti Muslim and the r S s
Speaker 1: IS propaganda has been tied to numerous acts of violence.
Speaker 1: Facebook refuses to designate them a dangerous organization because of
Speaker 1: quote political sensitivities that might harm their ability to make
Speaker 1: money in India. Facebook is the best friend many far
Speaker 1: right and fascist political parties have ever had. Take the
Speaker 1: Polish Confederation Party. There your standard right wing extremists, anti immigrant,
Speaker 1: anti lockdown, anti vaccine, anti LGBT. The head of their
Speaker 1: social media team, Thomas garbage Check uh sorry Toms, told
Speaker 1: The Washington Post that Facebook's hate algorithm, in his words,
Speaker 1: had been a huge boon to their digital efforts. Like
Speaker 1: he calls it a hate Alglerman says this is great
Speaker 1: for us um expanding it. Like I think we're good
Speaker 1: with emotional messages and thus there ship spreads well on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Quote from The Washington post. In one April two nineteen
Speaker 1: document detailing a research trip to the European Union, a
Speaker 1: Facebook team reported feedback from European politicians that an algorithm
Speaker 1: changed the previous year built by Facebook at chief executive
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg's a effort to foster more meaningful interactions on
Speaker 1: the platform had changed politics for the worst. This change,
Speaker 1: Mark claim, was meant to make interactions more meaningful, but
Speaker 1: it was really just a tweak to the algorithm that
Speaker 1: made comments that provoked anger and argument even more viral.
Speaker 1: Um and I'm gonna quote from the post again here.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eighteen, Facebook made a big change
Speaker 1: to that formula to provote meaningful social interactions. These changes
Speaker 1: were built as a design to make the news feed
Speaker 1: more focused on posts from family and friends and less
Speaker 1: from brands, businesses, and the media. The process weighted the
Speaker 1: profit probability that a post would produce an interaction such
Speaker 1: as a like, emoji or comment, more heavily than other factors,
Speaker 1: but that appeared to backfire. Hogan, who this week took
Speaker 1: her campaign against her former employer to Europe, voiced a
Speaker 1: concern that Facebook's algorithm amplifies the extreme anger and hate
Speaker 1: is the easiest way to grow on Facebook, she told
Speaker 1: British lawmakers, many of whom have their jobs because of
Speaker 1: how easy it is to make people ship go by
Speaker 1: roll when it comes. I mean that that that's not
Speaker 1: true for yes, Um, what's again? We're we're focusing on
Speaker 1: Facebook here in part because I do think it's more
Speaker 1: severe in a lot of ways there, but also just
Speaker 1: because like they're the ones who had a big leak,
Speaker 1: and so we have this data. So we're not just saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: look at Facebook obviously hate spreading. They were saying no, no no,
Speaker 1: we have numbers. We have their numbers about how fucking
Speaker 1: bad the problem is. I guess that that is the difference. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, we have evidence that the system is
Speaker 1: well aware of the Yeah. I would love to be
Speaker 1: talking about Twitter too. It's just maybe Twitter just never
Speaker 1: bothered to get those kind of numbers. Who knows. Um.
Speaker 1: This caused what experts describe as a social civil war
Speaker 1: in Poland. Like this change, one internal report concluded, we
Speaker 1: can choose to be idle and keep feeding users fast food,
Speaker 1: but that only works for so long. And you've already
Speaker 1: caught onto the fact that fast food is linked to
Speaker 1: obesity and therefore and it's short term value is not
Speaker 1: worth the long term cost. So he's being like, we're
Speaker 1: poisoning people and it's addictive, like you know McDonald's, but
Speaker 1: like people are going to give it up in the
Speaker 1: same way that McDonald started to suffer a couple of
Speaker 1: years back, because like, they don't they don't like the
Speaker 1: way this makes them feel. Actually, it's fun for a moment.
Speaker 1: We just got to get a Morgan Spurlock for Facebook. Baby,
Speaker 1: we just got to get where's the supersize me for faceboo?
Speaker 1: Entire society is the Morgan Spurlock for Facebook? January sixties more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it was like I feel like
Speaker 1: it's I mean, whatever, not to say that McDonald's isn't
Speaker 1: a hell of a drug, but like this is not
Speaker 1: the same. I mean, I it's stronger because it's your
Speaker 1: fucking brain and self image and the view of yourself.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is the most strong manipulation
Speaker 1: that any given system, person, whatever can have on you
Speaker 1: as controlling the way that you see yourself. It's not
Speaker 1: the same in terms of like involuntary baseness. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's something that you very much participate in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um it's bad. Yeah, um it's good. I think it's good.
Speaker 1: That's what I think, Jamie. Facebook has been aggressive. You've
Speaker 1: called me today to see good, actually to read all
Speaker 1: this and then say so that's fine, let's never talk
Speaker 1: of it again. Um. Anyway, Facebook has been aggressive at
Speaker 1: rebutting the allegations that their product leads to polarization. Their
Speaker 1: spokeswoman brought up a study which she said shows that
Speaker 1: academic research doesn't support the idea that Facebook or social
Speaker 1: media more generally is the primary cause of polarization. To
Speaker 1: ignore for the moment that not the primary cause doesn't
Speaker 1: mean isn't a significant cause. And let's look at this study.
Speaker 1: The spokeswoman was referencing cross country trends and effective Polarization
Speaker 1: in August study from researchers at Stanford and Brown University.
Speaker 1: This study opens by noting it includes data for only
Speaker 1: twelve countries and that all but Britain and Germany exhibited
Speaker 1: a positive trend trend towards more polarization. So right off
Speaker 1: the bat, there's some things to question about this study. Um,
Speaker 1: which is number one, they're saying that, like, oh, Britain
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten more polarized, which is like have you have
Speaker 1: you been there? Have you talked to but I yeah,
Speaker 1: not the not the don't live there, but not what
Speaker 1: I've been hearing. And here's the thing, when you look
Speaker 1: at Facebook is basically using this citing this is like
Speaker 1: evidence that like, look, we're fine, social media is not.
Speaker 1: The study from this very credible study says that we're
Speaker 1: not the cause of polarization, so everything's good. The study
Speaker 1: doesn't quite back them up on this um right off
Speaker 1: the bat. One of the authors provides it like notes this,
Speaker 1: and this is from a right up by one of
Speaker 1: the authors on the study on a website called tech
Speaker 1: policy dot com where he's talking about the study and
Speaker 1: what it says. A flat or de or declining trend
Speaker 1: over the forty years of our sample does not rule
Speaker 1: out the possibility that countries have seen rising polarization in
Speaker 1: the most recent years. Britain, for example, shows a slight
Speaker 1: overall decline, but a clear increasing trend post two thousand
Speaker 1: in Brexit. So he's saying that, like, we don't have
Speaker 1: as much data from like more recent polarization, and that
Speaker 1: may be a reason why this study is less accurate,
Speaker 1: why some of our our statements are not do not
Speaker 1: conform with like what people have observed. He goes on
Speaker 1: to note the data do not provide much support for
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that digital technology is the central driver of
Speaker 1: effective polarization. The Internet has diffused widely in all the
Speaker 1: countries we looked at, and under simple stories where this
Speaker 1: is the key driver, we would have expected polarization to
Speaker 1: have risen everywhere as well. In our data, neither diffusion
Speaker 1: of internet nor penetration of digital news are significantly correlated
Speaker 1: with increasing polarization. Similarly, we found little association with changes
Speaker 1: in inequality or trade. One explanatory factor that looks more
Speaker 1: promising is increasing racial diversity. The non white share of
Speaker 1: the population has increased faster in the US than in
Speaker 1: almost any other country, and our sample in other countries
Speaker 1: like New Zealand and Canada, where it has risen sharply
Speaker 1: have seen that rising polarization as well. So I have
Speaker 1: some significant arguments with him here, including the fact that,
Speaker 1: as he notes here, his study only looks at Western nations.
Speaker 1: With the exception of Japan, all of the nations in
Speaker 1: the study are European or the United States. In Canada,
Speaker 1: um and so they have all have had prior to
Speaker 1: two thousand, higher penetrations of the Internet and non Internet
Speaker 1: mass media. Like outside of this, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: determine the impact of social media elements of what social
Speaker 1: media has done, we're in present in places like Fox
Speaker 1: News in the United States years before Facebook ever existed. Um,
Speaker 1: And that was not the case in places like me
Speaker 1: and mar in India, which are not a part of
Speaker 1: this study. So right off the bat, it's problematic to
Speaker 1: try and study the impact of social media on polarization
Speaker 1: only in countries that already had robust mass media before
Speaker 1: social media came into the effect. Which is not to
Speaker 1: say that I agree with their conclusion, because I think
Speaker 1: there's other flaws with this study, but it one of
Speaker 1: the flaws is just that like hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: their users exist in countries where they did not The
Speaker 1: study was not done, um, where they were not looking
Speaker 1: at these places, which is a flaw which is just
Speaker 1: like dependent on yeah, and that's dependent on most readers,
Speaker 1: just conflating, you know, in North America and Europe with
Speaker 1: the center of the fucking and and again I have
Speaker 1: issues about like, Okay, well you're saying that racial diversity
Speaker 1: is more of a thing. But like, where is the
Speaker 1: where is the propaganda, Where is the hate speech about
Speaker 1: racial diversity spreading? Is it spreading on social media? Like, yes,
Speaker 1: it is. I can say that as an expert. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also just like again, not that this study is
Speaker 1: even bad or not useful. It is one study, um.
Speaker 1: And again we have internal Facebook studies that make claims
Speaker 1: that I would say throw some of this into question.
Speaker 1: But again, this is just how a corporation is going
Speaker 1: to react. They're going to find a study that they
Speaker 1: can simplify in such a way that they claim that
Speaker 1: that they can claim there's not a problem because nobody,
Speaker 1: none of the people who they're going to be arguing
Speaker 1: with on Capitol Hill and precious to you, the journalists
Speaker 1: are going to actually drill into this and then talk
Speaker 1: to other experts. You're gonna reach out to members of
Speaker 1: that study and be like, how fair is this phrasing?
Speaker 1: How does that how does it deal with this information
Speaker 1: and this information As we saw earlier with the last study,
Speaker 1: when we people reached when the Wall Street Journal, to
Speaker 1: their credit, reached out to that scientist, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: actually they have better data than me. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to see it because maybe that'll change our conclusions. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: yeah uh. Mark Zuckerberg has been consistent in his argument
Speaker 1: that deliberately pushing divisive and violent content would be bad
Speaker 1: for Facebook. Quote. We make money from ads, and advertisers
Speaker 1: consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to
Speaker 1: harmful or angry content. While I was writing this article,
Speaker 1: I browsed over to one of my test Facebook accounts.
Speaker 1: The third ad on my feed was for a device
Speaker 1: to illegally turn a glock handgun into a fully automatic weapon. Um,
Speaker 1: just just his heads up. Yeah, one of my I
Speaker 1: have a couple of test feeds and it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: this button will turn your glock automatic, which is so
Speaker 1: many felonies. Jamie. If you even have that thing in
Speaker 1: a glock in your home, the FBI can put you
Speaker 1: away forever. I have to laugh. I have to laugh
Speaker 1: because that is really really scary. But yeah, it is
Speaker 1: like Mark being like, look, oh, no advertiser wants this
Speaker 1: to be a violent place by a machine gun on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, next to ads that are like t shirts
Speaker 1: about telling liberals and stuff, Like a machine gun ad
Speaker 1: advertiser maybe would be one that wouldn't take issue with that.
Speaker 1: Holy fucking hang the media shirts advertised to me on
Speaker 1: Facebook like my god go to go like fuck you
Speaker 1: Mark Um, I used to the last Well, when I
Speaker 1: quit Facebook a couple of years ago, I was I
Speaker 1: was getting Normi advertisements. I was getting good for you,
Speaker 1: those really scary ones that says, like those custom T
Speaker 1: shirts that say it's a Jamie Loftus thing, you wouldn't understand,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't I would not know. And you know,
Speaker 1: the only time Facebook I can think of recently actually
Speaker 1: anticipated something I wanted is they keep showing me on
Speaker 1: all of the accounts that I've I've used videos of
Speaker 1: hydraulic presses crushing things, and I do love those videos.
Speaker 1: Those those are those are pretty pretty fun. And that's
Speaker 1: the meaningful social interactions that Mr Mark Zuckerberg was talking about,
Speaker 1: was the hydraulic press videos, and those are very comforted.
Speaker 1: On the good old Internet, which also wasn't all that great,
Speaker 1: but on the old Internet, which was it was a
Speaker 1: lot more fun. Though there would have just been a
Speaker 1: whole website that was just like, here's all the videos
Speaker 1: of hydraulic presses crushing things. Come watch this ship. There
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been any algorithm necessary. You could just scroll
Speaker 1: through videos. There's no friend function, it's just hydraulic press ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I need, baby, I need. So back to
Speaker 1: the point, it is undeniable that any service on the
Speaker 1: scale of Facebook, again like three billion users, it's going
Speaker 1: to face some tough choices when it comes to the
Speaker 1: problem of regulating the speech of political movements and thinkers.
Speaker 1: As one employee wrote in an internal message, I am
Speaker 1: not comfortable making judgments about some parties being less good
Speaker 1: for society and less worthy of distribution based on where
Speaker 1: they fall in the ideological spectrum. That's true. Um, This
Speaker 1: is again part of the problem of not regulating them
Speaker 1: like a media company, like a newspaper or something. Um,
Speaker 1: Because by not making any choices, they're making an editorial choice,
Speaker 1: which is to allow this stuff to spread. Presumably. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you were actually being held to some kind of
Speaker 1: legal standard that again most of our media isn't anymore,
Speaker 1: you would at least have to be like, well, let's
Speaker 1: evaluate the truthfulness of some of these basic statements before
Speaker 1: president and and I would say that's where the judgment
Speaker 1: should come in on. But that's expensive. If Facebook is saying,
Speaker 1: we won't judge based on politics, but we will will
Speaker 1: We will judge based on whether or not something is
Speaker 1: counter factual that I think is morally defensible. But that's
Speaker 1: expensive as shit and they're never going to do that.
Speaker 1: Look spent more. Moral decisions are famously not cheap, and
Speaker 1: that is a lot of the reason why people do
Speaker 1: not do them. Yeah, um, it is true. That is
Speaker 1: not a profitable venture. Yeah, it's no, of course not um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that's true is that Facebook already
Speaker 1: makes a lot of decisions about which politicians and parties
Speaker 1: are worthy of speech, and they make that decision based
Speaker 1: mostly on whether or not said public figures get a
Speaker 1: lot of engagement. Midway through last year, they deleted and
Speaker 1: like all of the different anarchist media groups that had
Speaker 1: in a lot of anti fascist group that had accounts
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Just across the board, they deleted Let crime
Speaker 1: Think and uh um they kicked off. It's going down
Speaker 1: like a rapper, I know, soul like yeah they I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's nobody ever complains when best ship happens
Speaker 1: to anarchists except for anarchists. But yeah, they knuked a
Speaker 1: bunch of anarchist content. Um just kind of blankets saying
Speaker 1: it was dangerous. And I think it was because they
Speaker 1: just knuked the Proud Boys and they had to be
Speaker 1: shown to be fair. Um. But it has now come
Speaker 1: out that they have a whole program called x check
Speaker 1: or cross check, which is where they decide which political
Speaker 1: figures get to spread violent and false content without getting banned. Um,
Speaker 1: they had a yeah, based on engagement. They've claimed for
Speaker 1: years that everybody's accountable to site rules. But again the
Speaker 1: Facebook papers has revealed that, like, that's explicitly a lie
Speaker 1: and it's a life Facebook has told other people at
Speaker 1: high levels of Facebook. And I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal here. The program, known as cross Checker
Speaker 1: x check, was initially intended as a quality control measure
Speaker 1: for actions taken against high profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians,
Speaker 1: and journalists. Today, at shields millions of v I P
Speaker 1: users from the company's normal enforcement process. The documents show
Speaker 1: some users are white listed, rendered immune from enforcement actions,
Speaker 1: while others are allowed to post rule violating material pending
Speaker 1: Facebook employee reviews that often never come. At times, the
Speaker 1: documents show ex check has protected public figures whose posts
Speaker 1: contain harassment or incitement to violence, violations that would typically
Speaker 1: lead to sanctions for regular users. In two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: it allowed international soccer star in neymar to show nude
Speaker 1: photos of a woman who had accused him of rape
Speaker 1: to tens of millions of his fans before the content
Speaker 1: was removed by Facebook. White Listed accounts shared inflammatory claims
Speaker 1: that Facebook's fact checkers dimmed deemed false, including that vaccines
Speaker 1: are deadly, that Hillary Clinton had covered up pedophile wings,
Speaker 1: and that then president Donald Trump had called all refugees
Speaker 1: seeking asylum animals. According to the documents, A two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen review of Facebook's white listing procedures marked Attorney Client
Speaker 1: Privileged found favoritism to those users to be both widespread
Speaker 1: and not publicly defensible. We are not actually doing what
Speaker 1: we say we do publicly, said the confidential review. It
Speaker 1: called the company's actions a breach of trust, and added,
Speaker 1: unlike the rest of our community, these people violate our
Speaker 1: standards without any consequence, and they like to like their
Speaker 1: board members about whether or not this. They didn't lie
Speaker 1: about whether or not it was a thing. They said
Speaker 1: it was very small and just really I think the
Speaker 1: initial claim was, like we have to have something like
Speaker 1: this in place where people like President Trump. But it's
Speaker 1: a tiny number of people, and it's because they occupy
Speaker 1: some political position where we can't just as easily, you know,
Speaker 1: delete their account because it creates other problems because they're
Speaker 1: not as fringe as they need to be for this
Speaker 1: conduct to be. That was their justification, one sect, Jamie.
Speaker 1: That was their justification on the level of you can
Speaker 1: be unethical and still be illegal. And well, here's the
Speaker 1: thing they told their board. They only did this for
Speaker 1: a small number of users. You want to guess how
Speaker 1: small what that small number was. Oh, I love when
Speaker 1: Facebook say there's a small number. What is this? What
Speaker 1: is this? Eight million? That's so many? Yeah, oh dear,
Speaker 1: it's very funny. It's very funny. It's all good. I
Speaker 1: that is so. I mean, yeah, that they're just they're
Speaker 1: just can I say something controversial? Please? I don't like
Speaker 1: this company one bit. You don't, well, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's going a bit uh, that's going a bit far. Sorry,
Speaker 1: And I'm famously you know, I don't like making harsh
Speaker 1: judgments on others, but I'm starting to think that they
Speaker 1: might be doing some bad stuff over there. M hmmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. You know, I don't like these people. I
Speaker 1: don't like these people at all. You know what, I
Speaker 1: do like Jamie ending podcast episodes. M m oh, I
Speaker 1: actually do like that. Yeah, that's the thing I'm best at.
Speaker 1: Do you want to plug your plug doubles passion? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure you can find. I'm gonna just open by plugging
Speaker 1: my Instagram account, a famously healthy platform that I'm addicted to,
Speaker 1: and I don't really have any concerns about it. I
Speaker 1: don't really think it's affecting my mental health at all. Um.
Speaker 1: So I'm over there and that's Jamie christ Superstar. I'm
Speaker 1: also on Twitter, which Robert can't stop saying is the
Speaker 1: healthiest of the platforms. Of all of the people who
Speaker 1: are drunk driving through intersections filled with children, Twitter has
Speaker 1: the least amount of human blood and gore underneath the
Speaker 1: grill of the car, like the Robert saying for all
Speaker 1: you Backstreet Boys heads, he's saying that Twitter is the
Speaker 1: Kevin Richardson of social media. I'm there as well. I'm
Speaker 1: saying the the drunk driving Twitter car made it a
Speaker 1: full fifteen feet further than the Facebook car before the
Speaker 1: sheer amount of blood being churned up into the engine,
Speaker 1: flooded the engine air intakes. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, we're all fucked. I'm on Twitter as well,
Speaker 1: at Jamie. Listen to my podcast, Yeah, you know. You
Speaker 1: can listen to my podcast, the Beachdel Cast. You listened
Speaker 1: to act Cast, that's about the Kathy Comics. You can
Speaker 1: listen to My year in Mensa. You can listen to
Speaker 1: the lead of podcast. You can listen to nothing you
Speaker 1: know what never led to a genocide in any country
Speaker 1: as far as I'm aware of, Jamie. Uh, the Kathy Comics.
Speaker 1: We'll see then you haven't listened to the whole series, really,
Speaker 1: is it? Oh? You know what? You know? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's why the last the last episode is your Your
Speaker 1: Life Report from Sarah Jevo in episode eleven. Yeah, Irving
Speaker 1: really his his politics were not good. Yeah he was.
Speaker 1: He was. He was like weirdly into the Serbian nationalism. Um.
Speaker 1: Irving is like for the Kathy Comics, he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm about to make a wild parallel. But Irving is
Speaker 1: like the Barefoot Contessa's husband and that he looks so innocent,
Speaker 1: but then when you google him, you're like, wait, a second.
Speaker 1: This man is running on dark money. This guy is
Speaker 1: like was on Wall Street in the eighties. This is
Speaker 1: a bad man. That's he's basically like Jeffrey, the Barefoot
Speaker 1: Contessa's husband. The Barefoot Contessa is run on dark money.
Speaker 1: I know people don't like to hear it. They love her,
Speaker 1: but it's just true. It's objectively true, and that's what
Speaker 1: I would like to say at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of the Barefoot Contessa and I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. I have not even one
Speaker 1: percent surprise, but that's okay. But you know what I
Speaker 1: do know about what I know about podcasts, and this
Speaker 1: one is done great ending