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| 0,0.00015,0.0785,spk_0,"Is there, is there a principal reason why I should delete my social media? And if so, what is it?" | |
| 1,0.11065,1.3358333333333334,spk_1,"There are 21 of them is for your own good and the other is for societys good for your own good. Its because youre being subtly manipulated by algorithms that are watching everything you do constantly and then sending you changes in your media feed in your diet that are calculated to adjust you slightly to the liking of some unseen advertiser. And so if you get off that you can have a chance to experience a clearer view of yourself and your life. Uh But then the, the reason for society might be even more important. Society has been gradually darkened by this scheme in which everyone is under surveillance all the time and everyone is under this mild version of behavior modification all the time. Its made people jittery and cranky. Its made uh teens especially depressed, which can be quite severe. But its made our politics kind of unreal and strange where were not sure if elections are real anymore. Were not sure how much the Russians affected Brexit. We do know that it was a crankier affair than it might have been. Otherwise" | |
| 2,1.3408166666666663,1.4338166666666663,spk_0,you say its bad for me as an individual. Is it bad for me because Im addicted? Have I become chemically hooked? | |
| 3,1.44915,2.41765,spk_1,"You have uh the founders of the Great Silicon Valley spying empires like Facebook have publicly declared that they intentionally included addictive schemes in, in their designs. Now, we have to say this is what I would call almost a stealthy addiction. Its, its a statistical addiction. What it says is we will get the broad population to use the services a lot. Well get them hooked through a scheme of rewards and punishment. Uh And the, the, the, the rewards are when youre retweeted, the punishment is when youre treated badly by others online. And then within that, well very gradually start to, to leverage that to change them. So its, its this, its this very kind of stealthy manipulation of the population. So its not as dramatic as a heroin addict or a gambling addict, but it is the same principle, but whos, | |
| whos doing the manipulating?" | |
| 4,2.4178333333333333,2.4915000000000003,spk_0,"I mean, there isnt some m sort of wizard of all sitting behind the screen." | |
| 5,2.4916666666666667,3.0603166666666666,spk_1,"Well, this is the peculiarity of the situation. The people who run the tech companies like Google and Facebook are not doing the manipulating, theyre doing the addicting, but the manipulating which rides on the back of the addicting is the paying customer of, of, of such a company. So, uh and, and many of those customers are not at all bad influences. They might simply be trying to promote their cars or their perfumes or whatever. And indeed, I have sympathy for them because theyre concerned that if they dont put money into the system, nobody will know about them anymore. How | |
| is it different to just television advertising," | |
| 6,3.064983333333333,3.09365,spk_0,billboard advertising or anything else? | |
| 7,3.099333333333333,3.7258333333333336,spk_1,"The difference is that the constant feedback loop? So when you watch the television, the television isnt watching you. When you see the billboard, the billboard isnt seeing you. And vast numbers of people see the same thing on television and see the same billboard. When you use these new designs, social media search uh youtube, when you see these things, youre being observed constantly and algorithms are taking that information and changing what you see next and theyre searching and searching and searching and, and theyre just blind robots. Theres no evil genius here until they find those patterns, those, those little tricks that get you and make you change your behavior" | |
| 8,3.73065,3.852816666666667,spk_0,"in terms of society. I mean, you, you, you threw in this, you know, its making people depressed. But is there any actual evidence for that?" | |
| 9,3.8615,4.4335,spk_1,"Yeah, unfortunately, theres a vast amount of evidence. There have been dozens of studies at this point, um including studies released by Facebook scientists. So this is, this is something we can call a consensus and, and when Facebook releases such things, they say, oh, but we do all these good things too that balance it. But theres, theres a general acknowledgment that uh depression correlates. Uh the scariest uh example is a correlation between rises in uh teen suicide and the, and the rise in use of social media. And so, yes, unfortunately, this is | |
| real. But are you sure you can blame it on" | |
| 10,4.439316666666667,4.509816666666667,spk_0,"social media? Is it, is it not just those two things may have happened at the same time for other reasons?" | |
| 11,4.511,5.040066666666666,spk_1,"Well, heres a distinction we have to make its very similar to the problem of global climate change. We can say statistically over the whole population. Yes, the correlation is real and any particular person, of course, we cant, just as we cant blame any particular storm on global warming. Its causality, isnt it? It, yeah, I mean, uh it is causality and its, this is something thats very well demonstrated. Uh So, uh when the companys own scientists are publishing on, on this topic and come to the same agreement, I think its time to say this is real." | |
| 12,5.05915,5.1493166666666665,spk_0,Why have you sort of turned on your own kind? | |
| 13,5.162983333333333,5.843833333333333,spk_1,"I love Silicon Valley and I do not at all feel that Ive turned on my own kind. And just to be clear, Im very much a part of this. I, Ive sold the company to Google. Im not in any sense an outsider. I believe that what were doing is not in our own self interest. Uh business interests are a part of society. If they destroy society, they destroy themselves. I believe its very clear that we could offer all of the good things. And there are many, many good things in these services and social media in particular. Im convinced we can offer them without this manipulation engine in the background. Theres a world of other business plans and I think theyd be better for us. So III, I dont think were being evil so much as were being stupid" | |
| 14,5.886316666666667,6.01815,spk_0,"when it comes to Facebook has Facebook made itself safe yet in terms of data harvesting and scraping and all of | |
| that." | |
| 15,6.0243166666666665,6.6076500000000005,spk_1,"Well, um Facebooks fundamental design is one that is uh its, its the business model is to addict you and then offer a channel to you, to third parties to take advantage of that to change you in some way without you realizing its happening. I mean, thats, thats what it does. So I dont think any amount of tweaking can uh fully heal it. I think it needs a different business plan you, I mean, its very hard to throw a barrage of rules at somebody whos following certain incentives and then expect them to really make a difference." | |
| 16,6.607833333333334,6.77115,spk_0,"So when Mark Zuckerberg says hes taking action and you know, he regrets whats happened and all the rest of it, youre saying he cant make his own product a safe and desirable product." | |
| 17,6.792833333333333,7.149166666666667,spk_1,"I believe that as long as his business incentives are contrary to the interests of the people who use it, who are different from the customers. Uh then no matter how sincere he is, and I believe hes, hes sincere and no matter how clever he is, he cant undo that problem. He has to go back to the basics and change the nature of the business plan." | |
| 18,7.157333333333333,7.482333333333333,spk_0,"And if he, if he doesnt agree with that and says, were just gonna carry on how much of an how mu how mu how important is security of that data uh and the inability to repeat what has happened with Cambridge Analytica and all that kind of sort of data harvesting that went on. I | |
| dont believe that this is," | |
| 19,7.489166666666667,8.49415,spk_1,"I dont believe that what happened with Cambridge Analytica is the worst of it. Uh The whole system is designed for this, like lets suppose that Facebook reforms itself so that the next Cambridge Analytica cant get access to that data. They can still get access to the same results because the service Facebook offers is exactly what C analytics. Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, um there are uh bad actors are, are, are, are able to use Facebook in ways that Facebook cant understand because the way the service is designed is fundamentally to be manipulative. So I think the data protection idea is a sincere and good idea, but its certainly not adequate. It doesnt address the core problem, which is the manipulation engine. And as long as that, is there a bad actor can find a way to utilize it. So uh to me this, this concern about data protection while laudable doesnt address the core problem, do you think theyre | |
| all as bad as each other?" | |
| 20,8.500483333333333,8.607333333333335,spk_0,"I mean, you know, why is something like youtube which is basically just a way of watching video bad for you" | |
| 21,8.62765,10.035983333333332,spk_1,"youtube, its not necessarily bad for you. Uh Remember this is a statistical distribution. So for some percentage of people, itll have an effect of making them uh crankier around election time and feeling needier around the time they might be making a purchase and so forth. And the way it works is that all the data Google can get on you much of which comes from um just your email or, or whatever else it might be is fed into an engine that compares you with other people who share some similar traits and youtubes ordering of videos that are presented to you is designed to on the one hand maximize your engagement. So you wont stop watching, but thats achieved not just by observing you, but by a multitude of people who are similar to you. And then when you do get an ad, its contextualized in a way that has been shown to be effective, not only for you but for this whole population. So its this giant statistical thing and its bad for you because it leaches your free will. It makes you cranky. It, it makes the world a little darker because youre not perceiving reality clearly anymore. Youre be, its being, uh, manipulated, its being, uh, tricked in a way. Uh, and, uh, it, uh, the, the people who are paying or maybe not paying just using the system to, uh, in a clever way to get at you are not necessarily, um, pleasant people. Theyre, theyre, theyre sort of the worst actors in some cases." | |
| 22,10.036316666666666,10.20915,spk_0,"But dont, dont some users think, look, I can handle advertising. You know, I know what Im doing here. Im getting a free service. Uh And, you know, they think theyre manipulating me, but I know what Im doing." | |
| 23,10.2305,11.1055,spk_1,"The problem is that behaviors, techniques are often invisible to the person whos being manipulated and, and this has a long history. This has been done for a long time. Uh It used to be that the only way to be subjected to continuous observation and modification was to either be in an experiment. Uh You could be in the basement of a psychology building and have students tweaking you for their projects or you could join a cult or you could be in an abusive relationship. I mean, this has been done before and often the people who are in these situations do not realize its happening to them. In fact, the whole point is that its, its sneaky. Its, its a, its a mechanical approach to manipulating people. And because its, its so algorithmic, it doesnt involve direct communication and people dont get the cues to understand whats happening with them. Why | |
| do you think, um, social media has had the effects on politics that it has," | |
| 24,11.115666666666668,11.188483333333332,spk_0,"you know, is, is it because of the way people respond to things on social media?" | |
| 25,11.203983333333332,12.80525,spk_1,"Well, uh, Id like to give you a slightly detailed answer as quickly as I can. And that is that, uh, in traditional behaviorism, you would give an animal or a person a little treat like candy or maybe an electric shock and youd go back and forth between positive and negative feedback. And when researchers try to determine whether positivity or negativity is more powerful, theyre roughly at parody, theyre both important. But the difference with social media is that the algorithms that are are following, you respond very quickly. Theyre looking for the quick responses and the negative responses like getting startled or scared or irritated or angry tend to rise faster than the uh the positive responses like building trust or feeling good. Those things rise more slowly. So the algorithms naturally catch the negativity and amplify it and introduce negative people to each other. And all of this. And so what this does is it means that the algorithms discover theres more engagement possible uh say by promoting Isis and promoting the Arab Spring. And so ISIS gets more mileage or promoting uh the Ku Klux Klan than Black Lives Matter. Now, in the big picture, its not true that negativity is more powerful but if youre doing this very rapid measurement of human impulses instead of accumulated human behavior, then its the negativity that gets amplified. So you tend to have elections that are more driven by rancor and abuse and you tend to have outcomes that are kind of crazy. And so | |
| the the effects on the media, we consume the news" | |
| 26,12.8114,13.052333333333332,spk_0,"as well as also alarming because then it will be the news that makes people angry. This is the news that gets seen in the future or now rather than, you know, a, a more balanced diet of whats really going on in the world." | |
| 27,13.0525,13.598,spk_1,"Well, I think what goes on on a show like this is that you have a bit of a longer time horizon in by which you measure success. So you, you have to um impress your viewership enough to tune in, but this is over a process of days and weeks and months and years and you build up a sense of rapport with your, your viewership, right? Um If youre an algorithm thats just looking at instant responses, you dont get that. Its just like how did I engage this person? And itll be, youll, youll find that engagement more often by irritating people than by educating them." | |
| 28,13.609666666666667,13.796483333333333,spk_0,"And so is that how you create Trump uh or Duterte or you know, any of the other populist leaders who are doing very well at the moment, partly from the internet. I, | |
| I" | |
| 29,13.800983333333331,14.51215,spk_1,"have never known Trump, but I have met him a few times over a fairly long period, over 30 years, actually through different circumstances. And I will say that, um, well, I never would have voted for him as president and I always thought he was, um, somewhat untrustworthy and a bit of a, a showman and a bit of a scammer. He never lost himself and became so strangely insecure and so weirdly, um, um, irritable until he had his own addiction in this case to Twitter. And its, its really damaged him. I mean, I, I view Trump in a way as a victim. Uh Oh yeah, absolutely. His character has been really damaged by his Twitter addiction" | |
| 30,14.514666666666669,14.555983333333334,spk_0," because of the reaction he gets from each tweet. | |
| Yeah." | |
| 31,14.556983333333331,15.363483333333331,spk_1,"So, you know what happens uh in addiction is the addict becomes hooked, not just on the good part of the addiction experience, but on the whole cycle. So a gambler is not just addicted to winning, but to this whole process where they mostly lose and in the same way, uh the Twitter addict or the social media addict becomes addicted to this engagement, which is often unpleasant where theyre engaged in these uh you know, really abusive exchanges with other human beings. And only once in a while is that, you know, you, you can watch Trump like every once in a while there will be this tweet where somebody likes him and thats when he gets his little uh we call it in the trade, the dopamine hit. Uh uh, thats what its called in Facebook, for instance, he gets this little dopamine hit and then he dives in for more negativity and things and he gets it again and you, you can see the addiction playing out." | |
| 32,15.370316666666668,15.460666666666668,spk_0,"Do you think its possible to create a do Gooding social network? | |
| Yes," | |
| 33,15.465,16.960150000000002,spk_1,"Im absolutely positive. And the way to do it is to have a different business model where instead of so right now weve created this bizarre society thats unprecedented where if any two people wish to communicate over the internet, the only way that can happen, the only way its financed is through a third party who believes that those two can be manipulated in a sneaky way. Its, its a, its an insane way to structure civilization so we can keep all the good stuff and there is good stuff on social media. Of course, we can keep all that and just throw away the manipulation business model and substitute in a different business model. And, and there are many alternatives that would be better. They just have to be honest. Uh, it could be a paid service like a Netflix where youre paying for it, youre the genuine customer. It has to keep your interest. It could be like a public library. It could become a, a public thing that is, uh, that isnt commercial at all. Thats an option. Uh, but what we did in Silicon Valley is. We wanted it both ways. We wanted everything open and free, but we wanted hero entrepreneurs and hackers. And so the only way to get that was this advertising thing that, that gradually turned into the manipulation engine as the computers got faster and this, this weird business plan, it, once you can see that there are alternatives, you realize how strange it is and how unsustainable it is. This is the thing we must get rid of. We dont have to get rid of the smartphone. We dont have to get rid of the idea of social media. We just have to get rid of the manipulation machine thats in the background. Uh Just | |
| one last thing as well. That is also obsessing parents at the moment. Um" | |
| 34,16.96215,17.054166666666667,spk_0,Screen time itself. Do you think that is a bad thing or is it just whats on the screen? | |
| 35,17.061666666666667,17.4393,spk_1,"Uh to be um frank with you? I struggle with this question because I have an 11 year old. And so I, I tend to think that manipulation time when the kids are, are being observed by algorithms and tweaked by them is vastly worse than just screen time by itself. So to include | |
| video games and, and in the social media, you know," | |
| 36,17.439466666666664,17.492466666666665,spk_0,"the things that are manipulating them because they are similarly addictive, arent they?" | |
| 37,17.502149999999997,18.097816666666667,spk_1,"Theyre addictive but not manipulative typically. Now there I here, Im not sure how evil weve become lately because there might be some video games that are using behavior mod techniques for pay. Thats conceivable. I can see how that could happen if youre thinking about it out there. Dont do it. OK. Find something better to do. But the, the mainstream video games are not doing that, they are addictive. So there are plenty of things that are addictive that arent leveraging that for manipulation. So these are two different stages. What do you think of Fortnite? I have not played | |
| it. You know, I havent played it because Fort Knox is exactly that." | |
| 38,18.098000000000003,18.15883333333333,spk_0,Its getting people to pay for things within the game. | |
| 39,18.16365,18.88,spk_1,"But see, the thing is getting them to pay is still not manipulating them for a third party thats getting them to buy stuff. I mean, Amazon does that to get you to buy stuff. Uh All kinds of people do that, that, that might be annoying. You might object to it, especially if you feel your kids are wasting money, you might object to it. You might feel its not an ideal um example of human behavior and character and maybe there could be a better business, whatever there, but its not directly manipulating, you say to influence an election. Its not trying to change your behavior out in the larger world. And, and thats the thing thats really tragic about designs like Facebook and Google, they are succeeding in doing that. But | |
| your advice" | |
| 40,18.882,18.953,spk_0,tonight to everyone watching this is delete all your accounts. | |
| 41,18.968316666666663,20.079166666666666,spk_1,"I would like to make two very quick pitches on that account. One, if youre a young person and youve only lived with social media, your first duty is to yourself. You have to know yourself. You should experience travel, you should experience challenge to yourself. You need to know yourself and you cant know yourself without perspective. So at least give it six months without social media and really quit him. Dont like quit Facebook with keep another Facebook thing like whatsapp because then its, itll still be spying and manipulating, get rid of the whole thing for six months and know yourself. And then you can decide, I cant tell you whats right. You have to decide, but you cant until you know yourself. And then for the rest of society, Id say as long as we can have some small percentage of people who are off it, then the society can have voices to give perspective. If everybody is universally part of this thing, we cannot have perspective. We cannot have a real conversation and its too lonely right now. You know, we need more people who are just outside of that loop who are thinking without the manipulation. And I think well find it extraordinarily valuable to have them." | |
| 42,20.097816666666667,20.257483333333333,spk_0,"Are you just a new age hippie? I mean, have you just been through the mill and kind of worked out? I wanna check out of all this and lets just, lets just | |
| stop." | |
| 43,20.2735,20.686333333333334,spk_1,"Um Do I seem new age to you. I dont know. I mean, you know, I mean, I, here, heres what Ill tell you the bind you put me in is that Id be happy to trash the new age. And, uh, and demonstrate that Im not part of that manner of thinking. Im certainly not. I think, I hope Ive come across as a non utopian. Um, but, uh, the problem is many of my friends in California are quite new age so I want to be kind to them." | |