Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to continue our streaming between the Lines series and discuss the 2020 documentary slash drama the Social Dilemma, which is currently streaming on Netflix as a docudrama hybrid. This film both explains and illustrates the extent to which social media platforms have come to not just dominate our interactions with the world, but also manipulate them in a way to keep our attention and then ultimately to profit from keeping our attention.
Joining me today is a man who asks that you listen to him now and believe him later on. Tunde Ogunlana Tunde. You have some cell therapy on tap for us today.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Of course.
That was a good one.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: All right, laugh it out.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Cry later.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Hey, there you go.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Now, we're recording this on December 29, 2020, and I want to jump right into our discussion on the Social Dilemma. The film is directed by Jeff Orlowski, and it really sought to expose how the engines that drive social media platforms work and the societal dangers that are presented due to the way these engines target weaknesses in our human nature. So, Tunde, what stood out most to you in the documentary?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Great question. A lot stood out to me, but I think the most was really how the. I think the lack of understanding that we have in exactly what you just said, kind of like the manipulation that we're susceptible to, because it is our own human nature that is at play here. And that, to me, stood out the most. How even someone like myself that's educated on this stuff in terms of how we're susceptible to be drugged down certain roads. You know, I still find myself with the same reactions of sometimes confirmation bias, you know, situational ethics, all these things that come up when you're looking at these different things that come at you from these platforms. So the. That stood out to me the most. That just. This is really.
Yeah. We're at the point of where psychology, emotion, and technology have all combined, and it just, you know, I guess we'll talk about that today.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And for me, I would say, you know, what stood out to me the most was, like, the people who were being interviewed. Well, a large number of the people that were being interviewed in the documentary were people who designed this stuff.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: So that's what I was like. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So five years ago, eight years ago, or whatever, you were the head designer at Google or at YouTube or Pinterest or whatever, or you were One of the people that were designing these components that now you're explaining to me are targeting weaknesses in human nature and therefore are doing things or manipulating me or whatever and stuff. So that, to me, is what just blew my mind. Like, okay, so it's all the people who. Not all the people, obviously, but it's the people. But many of the people who implemented these things that are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's literally, you know, frankenstein monster. Like, the people who made Frankenstein's monster coming back to you and saying, hey, this might have been a little too much, guys. You know, like, we might have done this. We need to get a handle on this, because it's. It's spinning out of our control. And as a part of that, the nature that this take has taken on a life of its own, that these algorithms, with machine learning and concepts like that, are getting more efficient at manipulating us. And so, yes, when. When, you know, it kind of the. The point being that they created these things initially, and they created them so that they would get better, and then they've gotten better, and it's like, whoa, we've lost control, essentially. Like, we don't have control of how good this thing is at doing what it's trying to do. Which ultimately, what it's trying to do is not necessarily the. It being the AI being the. The algorithms and so forth that are. That are in place running these social media platforms. What they're trying to do is just keep you in front of the screen, you know, like, that's their ultimate goal, and they'll do. They're pulling on all the levers that they. That they were programmed to do and then have learned are effective to do that. And so, I mean, that was. To me, it was just like, okay, this isn't. Now, there were, quote, unquote, critics or alarmists that were being interviewed as well, who raised excellent points. But I. The people this seemed like this was driven by people who used to work at Google or Facebook or, you know, Instagram or, you know, whatever.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think. I mean, I think there. Whether it's driven or not, I don't know.
It's hard to tell. But I think, obviously they're a big part of the folks who are looking at this now and saying, like you said, whether we call it the Frankenstein's monster or just a realization of where this has gone, it is fascinating. And the part you bring up with algorithms, too, that was interesting to me because, you know, I've heard this stuff before. I'm not a techie. Type of guy. So I'm not, I don't understand some of the inner workings of really this binary code and all that stuff. But when you, when you get to the algorithms, like you said, that the part where they said that these algorithms now are starting to talk to each other in a way that the people that created these programs don't understand anymore, where they've gone.
And, and then the other thing that they said, there's probably literally five to 10 people at each of these companies at the most, meaning like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, that have the knowledge of how to even create the algorithms and put them and implement them. And then, and then they don't even understand half the time how these things then take a life of their own. So it got me thinking.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: It's the complexity. Let me, let me just jump in with that real quick. Because algorithms are basically, when you say that, it's basically collections of instructions. You know, if this, then do that. If this then do that. It's, it's a bunch of instructions that tells a computer to do certain things in response to other things. And so if you, if you build that out though, the computer can make so many decisions so fast, you can build that out to where you, the computer is making a million decisions as a part of this algorithm instantaneously, you know, relatively, you know, as do with our perception. And so then, so when you look at it like that with the algorithms, and so it's just a, and then the machine learning part is just that it can see whether what it did worked. If it's trying to keep your attention, it's saying, okay, well, when we presented, when this, when the algorithm came to this conclusion, because this was weighed like this and the other one was weighed like that. And did it work? Did it keep the attention? If it didn't, then we'll re weigh the things. We being the algorithm will automatically re weigh things in a way that next time it may come to a different conclusion based on how it's weighing certain factors. So yeah, it becomes very complicated when you, because all of that stuff I just said, you multiply that by a million as far as it all happens
[00:07:05] Speaker B: in less than a second, correct to everyone.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: And that's the same time.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: But that got me thinking. I mean, this is definitely, I don't want to digress too far from the topic, but one of the things that stood out for me when thinking and kind of hearing all that was, you know, at some point, this is where the road might get crossed. In a couple decades or however long you know, where, you know, a machine becomes conscious in a sense, if it starts this thinking stuff based on our
[00:07:31] Speaker A: contemplation
[00:07:33] Speaker B: and the ability for it, that then the one guy that was saying that each of us are a node within a big motherboard of a huge computer, almost like a global computer then. And imagine the artificial intelligence being able to tap into all that information at once. It's just fascinating. And then that got me thinking too. I mean, this is again, not to digress, but when quantum computing becomes normal, this is going to be on such steroids, overdrive that we can't even fathom how that's going to look.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't have to go into that. But the thing with quantum computing, because of the way it's structured, basically it's a revolutionary structure and basically the quantum computer is that much better than a regular computer, that a regular computer is. Than us. You know, to kind of put it. So it's like another. It's such a leap to as far as processing power, how fast it can do things compared to even the regular computer. So yeah, I mean, you put that in. Into this type of thing and who knows what will happen. And just your point with the consciousness thing, what where I think the distinction would be. And I mean, and this is going down into the weeds, so you know, I'll keep this quick. But right now the algorithms are still just doing the things.
Ultimately they're still trying to achieve the objectives that they were programmed to achieve. Once you start getting into the question, the threshold probably will be once the machine starts determining that it wants to accomplish other goals other than what it was programmed to do. That's I think when you get into what you're talking about as far as the consciousness, so to speak, where it's saying, well, hey, I was programmed to do this, but actually I've decided on my own that doing what you programmed to me is a suboptimal. So I'm going to do something else that I determined to be more optimal. So that's. But again, we don't have to go into all that.
And so I actually looking at it as from a human society standpoint, you know, in our human societies and how social media just has come to dominate all these interactions with, with people interacting with each other and interacting with society at large. What's your take on. On the challenge? Challenge? Challenge or challenges societies face in terms of just being civil with each other or whatever, you know, with social media and tech and, and do you view these things in the direction we're going. It was raised in the, the, the docudrama several times that, well, several of the, the, the people being interviewed said, hey, this is an existential threat. Not saying a machine is going to show up like the Terminator and just start shooting everybody, but this will cause us to destroy each other, you know, in, in, in a way that we've seen in, in countries around the world, you know, with Myanmar and so forth.
So to, you know, it's kind of a, it's a, it's a compound question. I apologize. But you know, what's your take on the challenges that we're facing with social media and tech, as in the direction it's going? And how big of a threat do you see this?
[00:10:22] Speaker B: All right, I'll answer in reverse. So I think the threat is huge. I think that, like you said, several folks on the documentary alluded to this, this, this existent, existential threat to our society. Now, does that mean that humanity is going to end and all that? I don't know. Right. And I'm not saying it's a doomsday in that way, but could it end societies in the way that we've become comfortable with them? Yeah, I could see that. Does that mean it'll be worse or better? I don't know. But you're right, clearly the threat to the way that we've evolved in the last few hundred years into this kind of modern way of democracy on the larger countries in the world. And I would say all countries, to a certain extent, not all, but the big countries that we consider like United States, Great Britain, Australia, maybe Canada, have a similar open, more open democracy. And then you could say that there's countries like Russia and China that are some kind of quasi authoritarian capitalist type of thing, but they're also getting affected by all this stuff. So I think all the big nations in the world could see are at risk.
And it also takes something that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. It's happened before historically, but for the first time in our lifetimes, really seeing the power, real power and influence go from the hands of governments to private corporations, the ability to influence large amounts or masses of populations around the globe.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: So again, is that an excellent point? Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Is that good or bad? I don't know. I just think it'll be different. And, but looking at how humans have behaved historically, I do tend to fall into the camp of this is probably not going to go well for a while until, you know, the new order is set.
Meaning, I think there was a near the end the gentleman that had like kind of the dreadlock style hair that was the kind of founder of virtual
[00:12:27] Speaker A: reality, they said that was Jaron Lanier, I believe.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, he made a good point, which I felt was the most plausible outcome if nothing is done, if this is continued to go in this direction, which is. He said probably in about 20 to 30 years we'll see a real atrophy of all global democracies and they'll kind of just turn into authoritarian versions of their former self and that basically we'll just have a lot more kind of chaos and infighting as humans. And the way that the world has gone over the last decade since the explosion of social media leads me to believe he's not wrong if the current trajectory is allowed to continue. And then there's other things that I know we'll get into, like depression rates, suicide rates among teens and all that. So that's why I think we're at a very interesting point in human history, because we're also, in 30 years, we're going to have truly two generations of humans that have been raised on this stuff, and we don't.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: And that'll be in control. It'll be adult, where they're in control of stuff. Yeah. And I would, I'll start with the first piece is just the nature of the threat. I think that the focus of this does have to be what it does to us.
And in that really like the humans, human nature is human nature. You know, like now we can set up systems that lean into the best of human nature or set up systems that lean into the worst of human nature. And it seems like the, the combination that seems to be very dangerous here is the combination of the social media platform with the profit at all cost mentality or ethos that has come to define capitalism. Now it doesn't have to define capitalism. We've allowed it to define capitalism in that way for various reasons. As society has, has evolved over the past, you know, 200 years or so, you know, like as capitalism has evolved and the rest of societies have evolved in concert, we've kind of adopted this. Profit justifies everything. You know, if you make money, then you can do whatever you want. You can burn the earth down to the ground as long as you can make a buck. And so when you apply that with social media, it seems like the most efficient way to make a profit is, is to play on negative things in human nature or things that, that have, that end up causing negative outcomes in human nature is to play on our biases. One of the very interesting observations that was made in, in the documentary talked about how we've been looking when we talk about AI and oh, you know, is it going to take over the world and things like that. AI being artificial intelligence, we've always been wondering when a computer will be able to do things, do critical thinking things or so forth better than the best human.
And so, and we see that, you know, like when they're trying to design computer programs that can beat the best chess player or you know, things like that. And so it's like, can the computer be better than our best? But in the documentary pointed out, well, actually what we also need to be concerned about, or maybe even more concerned about is can a computer be able to effectively target where we're at our weakest? Because that's really what's happening with social media. And so I say all that to say it seems like the easiest way to make money with social media and the way to make the most money with social media is to target people's weaknesses, their psychological weaknesses, their, their need to connect, their confirmation bias. Dunning Krueger, all the things that we talked about, talked around social media, the algorithms automatically or program to, and then drill, you'd go into it, lean into it, further attack places where we're weak. And it, thus it brings out the worst or it has the tendency to bring out the worst in people. And I think that's the threat. The threat is, is that in order to make money on people most effectively, you have to bring out the worst in people. And if you continually bring out the worst in people, then bad stuff will happen. And that's, that's, I think, the threat that we have to really come to grips with. And if we can figure out a way to divorce those two, then maybe we can have our cake and eat it too. As far as still being able to have the connectivity but without the risk that humans will destroy each other or the plant.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Yeah, and you bring up some good points because what you're talking about, and they alluded to this in the documentary, they called it persuasive tech.
And what they kind of said was that the, you know, the goal of this technology and these algorithms, and you make a good point about the way that they play to things that are in all of us, you know, you and I included confirmation bias, the Dunning Kruger effect, you know, the thing we just did the show on a week or two ago about this, that, you know, people that have maybe a tendency for victimhood, things like that, and a joke that you know, we've, we've banded around sometimes that misery loves company. So now you can kind of be miserable in your own screen, you know, in your own Facebook feed or Instagram or YouTube space and just continue to find things that tug on your misery, let's put it that way.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, like even for example, and the social media sees that you're miserable, the algorithm that drives it and then puts more, more people who are also miserable in your feed as well. And it's like, oh, everybody's feeling like me.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: That's the thing. Yeah. They alluded to is that because there's no crossover within these groups, the algorithms keep basically segregating people in a sense that they don't.
That you then feel like everybody's on your side and then the people that aren't, there's really something wrong with them. And I think, you know, it reminded me some of that stuff about how, you know, a portion of the countries reacted post election here, you know, that, that.
Because I think a lot of the people who, not that they didn't like the outcome of the election, I think that's normal that you're always going to have, you know, roughly half the country, the way that our politics are, is going to be unhappy with the outcome of election.
But this is the first time in my lifetime where you had a portion, a large enough portion on the side that lost that actually didn't believe that this happened this way. And I think that's because.
So for the first time we've really seen all these algorithms and all this stuff now in hyperdrive and it's almost been perfected this kind of way to tug on people. And that goes back to what stuck out to me of this. The goal of these algorithms and really, I guess the humans that created them in these tech companies was to create gradual, slight changes in behavior. And that's the persuasive tech concept that it's not to get you from being the person that was looking up, let's say a mother in a mother's Facebook group that's trying to learn how to maybe have more healthy food for your baby in an organic way.
You know, a lot of those kind of groups, somehow the algorithms, and I read this in a recent article, led those people in Those groups to QAnon type of stuff, conspiracy theories. And you know, a lot of the people that started in those groups that had nothing to do with this stuff like this QAnon and even in politics ended up going down that rabbit hole once exposed to it. And I Think that's the key that, that I realized from this documentary too is the algorithm's ability to nudge you for a period of time, continue to expose you to things.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: So that, and it's not just exposure as like, it's very, it's very conscious and very intentional. And it's ways that expose you to it. It exposes you to it in a way that it knows will. And that was Lanier as well. That was his quote. A gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: And so you don't realize it because you know, had you been taken all the way to that end point immediately, your mind might have rejected it.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Like, hold on, it most likely would have.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't believe all this and all that, but when it happens over six months or a year and you're, and you're getting also the confirmations from others because the group is small, any small. I mean, you know, it could be a group of 40,000 people, but when you're talking about 2.9 billion users on Facebook, that's still percentage is a small group out of, out of a larger number.
So you feel justified because you've got 40,000 people or 5,000 people or 200 people, or however many people in the group. You're not alone. Another group that used the Internet very effectively, let's put it that way, in the last decade to gain recruits was isis. Remember the whole terrorist group that, you know, everybody was scared of and all that in the middle part of the last decade or so. Yeah. And all we ever heard was that they were radicalized online. They were radicalized online. And it was all, you know, the, the great production of their videos. And this was like the most kind of savvy Internet terrorist group we've ever seen. And they took kids, right? Remember all this stuff. Like six, seven years ago, you'd have kids from western countries, from England, from the United States, 15, 16 year old kids, 20 year old kids that would end up being in, you know, go to Turkey, fly into Istanbul and then sneak across the border into Syria. And you got some kid that grew up in a middle class family in New Jersey or California, and now they're in the desert in Syria with some terrorist group and people are wondering, well, how did that happen? You know.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: And now it's like, you know, you look back and you realize with all this information now through these things like we're talking about, like this documentary, and you realize, okay, now I see how it happens. People kind of just go into these Rabbit holes. And then they believe that that's like the world becomes that for them.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And I remember the. So the social media platform wants to put you in places where you will go down a rabbit hole. So it's trying, it's trying to learn about you and the things that push your buttons and the things that, you know, gain your interest and so forth and then use that information to try to push you into rabbit holes. Like one of the things that was very like this, this hit me like a ton of bricks when they discussed how the Recommendation engines for YouTube or for whatever would, based on videos that you liked or anything like that they would have nothing to do with, let's say Pizzagate was the example they gave that it would serve up in terms of the next video, the recommended videos for people who viewed things related to any type of conspiracy. You know, like if you're flat earth or if you're anti vax or whatever, even if you're not fully baked into those things. But if you just watch a video based on something it deemed, or something that has been deemed to be consp. A person who is conspiracy open, so to speak, then it would serve up something like Pizzagate to them. And then I, I imagine that it would serve it up in a way that was non threatening at first. And that's the whole point of the rabbit hole is, is you, you expose people in a way that, that does not that they won't reject it. Right. You don't show enough of it to where they reject it offhand.
And you get people to go down these rabbit holes. And so I had been thinking up until that point that by and large the people who end up in these situations were looking for it first and then found it and then went down the rabbit hole. And that are bringing this up now when you're talking about isis because it's the same kind of thing. I had thought that those people who ended up in Syria fighting with ISIS coming from New Jersey had looked up ISIS to, to read about it or watch videos about it and then had gotten indoctrinated that way. Now it's like, well, hold on. They could have just been watching anything.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: And then it could have been, you know, this, the algorithm doing what it's trying to do could have nudged them slowly into this rabbit hole because that's what the algorithm is built to do. And Algorithm, excuse me, the algorithm is good. And at doing what it's trying to do, it could have nudged them into this and to the point where they could imperceptible. Where they didn't even perceive that they were being radicalized, but until they were already radical. And so that part about it to me was like, okay, yeah, we really have an issue here. The issue is much different than I would like to believe that it is, because if the machine is actually nudging people towards indoctrination, towards any one of these antisocial type of platforms or movements, then that is that, that is the, the flag that we all need to be waving. Like, whoa, whoa. This thing wants to keep our attention. The best way to keep our attention is to get us radicalized into something. So it's going to figure out the thing that we could get radicalized into and then try to nudge us into that.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that. But that's where it's just fascinating because I don't know, it's going to be heavy lifting trying to unwind all this because you've got the profit motive.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: One of the things I was thinking of when I was watching the documentary started thinking of climate change, how similar to climate change is going to be a very difficult road to go down for those who are concerned about it like we are, because number one, just like climate change, there's now a kind of industrial complex of companies making a lot of revenue on the way, the status quo. Right.
And so just like we have, you know, climate change, you kind of need the powers that be of Exxon and Chevron and then countries like China. It's a lot of heavy lifting to try and get everybody on the same page to take this serious.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: And that's the normal hurdles when you're trying to make a big change. That's the normal stuff. And then what you're about to talk about is like the new stuff that we haven't. Yeah, so go ahead.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Exactly. And so now you're talking the same thing. My equivalent would be Facebook and you know, the Microsoft's and all that in the Googles would be the comparison to the large fossil fuel companies. And then you've got countries like all of them, us included, and talk about all of them. I just mean, you know, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, United States, we're all using these platforms to manipulate each other and to play games on each other. So you've got the profit motive, you've got the kind of the, the countries messing with each other motives, you know, and, and then also the larger countries like us and the Russians and the Chinese and all that, using these platforms also as proxies to have psychological warfare basically on the low, you know, smaller third world and second world nations that we're trying to also control and manipulate. So you basically have this kind of Cold war, if you will, that's all done through cyber now. It's just fascinating. It goes back to the, even the show we did last week on the hack that recently happened to the United States. It's just, this is a new terrain that we're playing on and it, and, and it's going to be a complex and complicated road to navigate, to unwind it. And as you're talking, I was going
[00:27:16] Speaker A: to ask you if did you want to jump into, you know, how would you, you, you, you point that out. But how, what would a solution look like or what would a working system?
Because obviously this stuff is, I don't
[00:27:29] Speaker B: know, this is why it's dangerous, man. Because I think this is where like we're almost here at the singularity, man. Like, meaning we have as human beings now uncovered a way to mess with ourselves in a lightning speed. I mean, the guy was saying it on the, on the, on the documentary that a lie on Facebook travels six times faster than the truth.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: So you're already like, it's just the catch up is just crazy. And then you've got millions of lies every second going on there. So, so how do you deal with that? And then, and then what I mean is like you're saying the algorithms have now been designed and have learned on how to play on our emotional state and our psychological state. And that's what I mean, this is deeper now than climate change or anything
[00:28:16] Speaker A: else, because all, any one issue, basically it's bigger than anyone.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: It's really taking a human being and, and creating, you know, like we've heard, like we're the product now. And what I, what I found interesting also where I think this is going to be very difficult is that what I realize I'm watching this is it's almost like as, as people, I'm going to say we, not necessarily me and you like this, but, but we as humans, like we're accepting that we're being manipulated because now a lot of people know this stuff. Right. It's not like 10, 12 years ago when we didn't know we were the product and all that. I mean, you know, this is all out there and people still use it.
But I realized we're okay with being manipulated in a sense when it comes to things that as a collective become negative. Right. So I understand like the Pizzagate thing and these algorithms that start moving you to Rabbit Holes. And to your point, like, could it. I guess they could create algorithms that bring us together a little more. You know, maybe you promote.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: That's the question.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: But. But it seems like people don't want that.
But what I'm getting at, the reason I bring it up, is because what it kind of shows me is that as humans, we're very susceptible to go down the kind of the rabbit hole. And I guess it's the misery loves company. It's the victimhood.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: And all that was tribalism.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Tribalism, right. And we're all susceptible. Me too. That's why I'm not pointing fingers here. Meaning. And that's why I joke about that thing, the war on Christmas, because it's the first time, I guess, that the Christian tribe in this country, or a certain, you know, let's say a narrower slice of it, because I know not all Christians felt, you know, beat up upon, but felt that because there was others now that were, you know, people saying Happy Hanukkah or people just saying Happy Holidays because they don't know what religion another person might be and don't want to just assume they're Christian. That offended some people. So you're right. Then they found cohesiveness with a tribe of other people that felt offended. And what I'm saying is people seem to respond to those kind of triggers more.
Right. Than the trigger of, hey, let's just accept the fact that this is not a country, a Christian country. This is a secular country. It's in the First Amendment that the Congress shall not, you know, put any religion on this country, but we are a secular country that's majority populated by Christians, you know, at this time. So no one wants to hear that argument. Just like no one wanted to hear the argument of Kaepernick, you know, the algorithms, I'm sure, on Facebook. Because Facebook was already much more advanced by Kaepernick's time than the war on Christmas time 15 years ago. The algorithms out what an experiment could have been to maybe see if the algorithms would have led to a more positive discussion. Maybe. Look, this has nothing to do with the military and the flag. This is about the police and all the stuff that the guy did say.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Tunde, your point has already been proven.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Right, I know. That's what I mean.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: The algorithms are not. The algorithms are not trying to. The algorithms are solely trying to keep more attention. And the algorithms have determined that the best way to keep attention is what you're saying with the. The nudging people. It's. It's it's overwhelming people's weaknesses and people you're more likely to be able to, to get a reaction out of somebody by appealing to tribalism, by appeal, appealing to victimhood. The algorithms have, are, are not purposefully trying to just, just for the fun of it, trying to divide people. They've learned that those divisive things are the ones that get people fired up the most.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: And, and so, but that answers. I think it's going to be difficult because human nature. Right. Clearly we. It. It's like watching a train wreck or the rubber necking on. There's an accident on the highway. People just want to see something and they'll stop and look at something that's kind of terrible.
More so than, I guess, you know, people don't rubberneck just to see a sunset on the highway, but they'll rubber right.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: By and large. By and large.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: So some people will. But by and large and. Well, I think that you're correct in identifying the issue and I think that that's where you have to look at this as.
Now the, in the documentary, they, the people when they were saying, well what can you do about it? Everybody was like, oh, regulation, regulation, regulation. But nobody really said what kind of regulation. Really. They were just kind of general saying you got to regulate it. And which I think is true, by the way. I mean the regulation piece is 100% true. The, the, the social media companies pretending to not be media companies, I think is, is lunacy.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Particularly because of the algorithms. Now if they only, if, if social media worked where they didn't decide what to show you, they weren't curating, they were just showing you in order everything that your friends list showed and that's it. Then they could argue they weren't media companies, but they curate material and decide what to show you their algorithms do. So that makes them a media company in the same way that ESPN is a media company, even though it doesn't. ESPN isn't out there making football games. That's, that's the NFL's content or basketball games, that's the NBA's content. But the, but ESPN decides when to show it and how to just distribute it around and so forth. So as a curator of content, the social media companies are media companies and they need, and really they're super media companies. They're, they're much bigger as far as media companies than, than an NBC or, you know, NBC Universal or whatever. And so they need to be treated as such. And I think that the piece that needs to, somebody needs to worry. I don't have the answer. I mean, I'm not, I'm not paid to figure this out. But somebody needs to figure out how you can, you can divorce the unabashed unrestricted profit, profit motive from the media function that's being served by social media companies, you know, as media companies like. And this is not some new concept, and this was talked about in the, in the, in the documentary. It used to be, and it still is, Saturday morning cartoons. There was regulation on what you could advertise, you know, on, on television. You couldn't advertise cigarette ads. You know, it was like, well, look, that's not good for society, so we're going to regulate that. And so, and the same kind of thing needs to happen here as far as regulation to, as long as it is more profitable to at all costs get people's attention, no matter what you're showing them, no matter what you're doing. And this is what's going to happen. And I'll tell you this, we, we've talked recently also about breaking up social media companies. As long as this, this marrying of the, the unrestricted profit motive to the operation of social media exists, breaking them up won't matter. Like, that won't solve the problem. And so that's, that's interesting to note, I think, is that the, the way this works, you, you could have 10 of these, but all their algorithms are going to be biased towards maximizing profit. And they're all going to function in essentially the same thing until you require the algorithms to put other.
Using one of your words, Tunde, put other guardrails up. That will protect us from our human nature as we do in many things, as we do with our government, as we do with a lot of things. Hey, you can't put lead and paint. You know why? It's free market. I should be able to do it. No, no, it kills people. So as we do with a lot of things, we put things up. We put things up for guardrails that protect us from our human nature. And so until that happens with social media, regardless whether it's 10 companies or there is two companies, that's going to be the problem. So that's what I think it has to look like, is you're going to have to put some guardrails up and, you know, and do with that.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's.
I don't know.
I don't know what those guardrails look like. I think, you know, you're right. One step could be breaking up the companies at least let them compete a little bit more with each other. I think there's obviously some sort of like you're saying about the, it's a great analogy, you're right, they made in the thing in the documentary about the Saturday morning cartoons and the inability to advertise certain things versus you know, my kids YouTube feed which there's no regulation at all on how the, where the algorithms can take him or what ads are on there. So it's fascinating, man. And I think, you know, I'm usually not the kind of suspicion guy and you know, thinking that all the governments are against us and it's this big deep state and this, you know, the 84 for George Orwell stuff. But you know, this is where I definitely see room for concern and, and, and that we need a positive society and figure this out soon because this, like I said earlier in this, in this conversation, you know, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, I'm not going to include Amazon and Apple so much because they're not social media in that way, but they're still huge in terms of their data and their influence. I mean those handful of companies combined, first of all from a market cap, in terms of the value of the companies, I believe that both Amazon and Facebook, and I think Microsoft might be there too now are worth around 2 trillion each. They're estimating Apple could be worth 3 trillion by the end of next year. And what I'm saying, so if you put just these few, you might have seven, eight trillion dollars worth of value. That's more than most countries out there producing gdp and then you've got this, this, this ability for them to come together with the governments for true control.
And I mean you want to talk about, you know, the end of democracy and all that. That's why I think there is between the fact that you could put this in a few hands and have a lot of control over large populations and then the fact that you have the ability to manipulate humans like we're talking about in ways that we kind of want to be manipulated. You know, people kind of going into this thing like deers in a headlight, the long term combination isn't that great. And that's why I said when you look at how we deal with other long term societal issues like climate change, like even if you look at the short term thing we've had this year with COVID how, how difficult it has been to get society on one page.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Well, that's one interesting thing about this is that one of the things about this problem is that it appears to undermine our ability to come together, to solve problems. Because one of the things we should mention, and I don't want to go into this, but just that it's not just the algorithms that recognize that people are hungry for these kind of rabbit holes. It's also people, certain people in society recognize that, hey, people want to go down rabbit holes, people want to be fed nonsense. You know, like, it's one of those things that if we understand how we, how we as human beings operate and we allow something to play to the worst of that, then we're setting ourselves up for failure. And I think that's what we're seeing here. And so at some point there needs to be a will, collective will. And this, this documentary is a start to that, a collective will to try to reverse that and take us in a direction that is not the most directly tapping into the most negative parts of us. So did you have any other pieces on that, man? I wanted to wrap up with a couple of quick hits, quick questions on this.
One of the things that we spoke on last year, actually this was over a year ago, was we asked the question whether fake news was demand driven or supply driven.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: And we actually came to the conclusion, or at least close to the conclusion. We left open the possibility, but just that a lot of this seems to be demand driven by putting out bs. It does seem to draw to, to draw people to it. You know, like you put out and, you know, you got a bunch of flies on it. And sorry for the, the, the, the, the analogy, but I'll say it works. And so, but, but seeing this, I had to question that, you know, because part of that analysis assumes that people who, you know, people are searching this stuff out.
If it's, if it's supply driven or, excuse me, if it's demand driven, then people are seeking it out, people are demanding it as opposed to it just being catnip once people find it. And that seemed that, like what I'm wondering now, is it more so that that stuff is easy, it's prime rabbit hole stuff, but people aren't actually seeking it out to the extent that we thought. What's your thought on that?
[00:40:30] Speaker B: I think that's where we, you know, we were, I think, projecting our own life, that we don't pedal too much in this stuff and go too deep down those rabbit holes. So we assume that someone has to be looking for this. And I think you're right. This has been a great education. Just not just this documentary, but I think this last, over the last Year of us doing having conversations like this on air and the obviously the research and reading that it takes behind the scenes as we learn that I do. That's why I think that, you know, going back to even just the other questions and answering it just reaffirms the answer and that I have with the long term concern of this, that
[00:41:09] Speaker A: it
[00:41:09] Speaker B: goes back to that idea of the persuasive tech, the moving you slowly and subtly so you also don't recognize how far you've moved. And it explains a lot. I mean, I've seen this a lot with people in my life on, on politics.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Are otherwise, you know, 10, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, very moderate. They would vote for both Democrats and Republicans on elections. You know, they would, you know, and they'd be proud of that. Like, hey, you know, I voted for the president this party, but my congressman's this party and it was the opposite party or something. And because they really were more into looking at what the person's about.
And you know, many of those people in my life I've seen get very hardened on either side of the spectrum of politics. I'd say probably just because of the people I'm around. A lot of it has been more. They've been, they've been hardened more on the conservative side and have gone down the rabbit holes there. But I have. And I mean, I expressed to you too, as one of my friends I grew up with, that I was surprised had really gone down the, the left wing side of things.
Much more so than in prior conversations that we had in earlier years. So it just, it, it, you know, kind of sitting here in the middle and watching it, it's just fascinating. And I say in the middle. I'm sure I'm being persuaded too by certain forces that I'm not aware of. So let me, you know, put on my humble hat there and follow my sword. But that's where I feel like, yeah, this is not going to be easy, man. This is, this is. There's so many of us are susceptible to it. And that's the thing too. That was amazing to me. You know, I got off of Facebook fully December of 2019.
I have no social media exposure at all except for I've got a account on LinkedIn which I don't consider. I mean, I know technically that's social media, but I don't consider it that same kind of social media, number one. Number two, I barely use it anyway,
[00:43:01] Speaker A: so it's not what it is, it's how you use it.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And I. And I don't spend much time on it anyway. So the point is, is that, like, I really appreciated watching this documentary, not being on social media this past year, not seeing the stuff I would have seen, you know, with the COVID stuff, with the summer, with all this post, you know, George Floyd and BLM and Antifa and the Proud Boys and all the kind of conversations that it's brought up, because I hear it from people in my networks and they're so concerned, and you gotta, like.
And that's why it's sad, because these are all very good people.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Time to take a shot. Time to take a shot.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Sorry.
What I'm saying is these are the same people that I'm saying 10, 15 years ago were once very much more moderate. And their ones now, like, that's why I say. And I don't want to pick on the political sides here, but just the recent election, right, because it's just fresh in our mind.
There was people that were just, like, really scared in a way, because they felt that if Joe Biden won, the United states would go 100% and socialists.
And I felt bad watching them because I saw how really disturbed they were emotionally, you know, and that's the thing. Like, I don't take it as a joke. I feel bad. Somebody's, like, very scared, you know, and this isn't healthy. They're depressed and they're angry and all this stuff. And it's just like, well, hold on. You just lived for eight years under the guy as vice president, and you were. We had a group test with one of our friends who will name, remain unnamed, who's definitely more conservative on the political spectrum than many. And he's Even this past week was very scared that Biden's inauguration in a couple weeks will bring on some sort of socialism. And you asked him, well, did we go socialist in 92 or in 2008? Because we're all of the same age. So that would, you know, we all basically were born in the late 70s. So those were the two Democratic administrations
[00:44:59] Speaker A: of our lifetime, which, by the way, people were saying, oh, we're gonna go socialist. Oh, when those people got elected.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: That's what I like. It's like. It was a good. The reason I bring it up, it was just a good kind of mental stopper when you put that in the text, like, yeah, we've never been socialists in the United States. And. And the definition of socialism is that there's no more private ownership of capital. And I'm just thinking, like, at what point did people get so ginned up on this? Like, what is it that these algorithms that took these people down these rabbit holes, that they saw things that convinced them that the opposing political party in their own country is like a foreign enemy?
[00:45:38] Speaker A: And, you know, I'll take it a step further, man. This is the thing that, that blows my mind about this, is that the algorithm is able to convince people of things and show them things that will allow them to convince themselves even that will disregard what actually has happened. That's why I brought that up, because in 2008, everybody was saying, we're going socialist. It didn't happen.
In fact, the stock market performed great over those eight years. But yet, and I would think, me personally, I would think that after living through that experience, someone would not be able to be then convinced when Joe Biden gets elected that he's going to take a socialist. Like you would say, oh, no, they said that in eight and it didn't. Oh, eight and it didn't happen. So these people are just alarmists. But it seems like people forget that they were told that in 2008 it didn't happen. And we, we go through the same thing again. And so that's the part that's the disconnect for me. I'm just like, somebody lies to me once or somebody says something to me once and it's completely 100% wrong. And then they tell me the same thing again. 12 years later, I'm not about to believe them again.
Let me give you a quick one
[00:46:41] Speaker B: just to get, to get us off politics too, because I don't want to hear beaten up. I don't want to be, you know, seeing us beating up politics and political parties inside.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: But, but I think, I mean, but let's get to the last piece though, because, you know, I don't want to go too long.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: You know, and so we have also wondered whether people who believe, the people who believe wild conspiracy theories or conspiracy theories, at least that are unsubstantiated, that there isn't evidence that support them should be considered to be marks or, you know, victims or things like that, whether they are.
Whether we should be looking at them as, oh, man, these people have been targeted by, in the algorithms or actors who see them as easy to persuade persuadables or whatever that are, that can be told. Anything that feeds their confirmation bias now and then. But that also raises the question of what. How do you consider them once they have been indoctrinated? You know, like they may have been indoctrinated because they were marks or whatever. But once they're indoctrinated and they start doing things, then you know that that goes down a different pathway. But what is your thought on that? Like it.
That seems to substantiate the fact that the algorithms do target weaknesses. It learns about you, it tracks your every move, and then it targets weaknesses it identifies in you. That would seem to support the idea that the. The algorithms are seeking out for each individual person whatever they can find as their weakness and then trying to exploit that for profit. And to exploit that for profit. A lot of times is. Involves going down rabbit holes or presenting people with rabbit holes that they may go down and so forth so that they can maintain their attention.
Do you think that. But bottom. So do you think that this supports that type of theory of, you know, that. That the people who are believing in things that are unsupedicate or whatever those are, are the victims here or those are the marks that of society or whatever. And does that matter once somebody shows up at a pizza restaurant, you know, with a gun and, you know, like as it happened with Pizzagate, and starts threatening violence?
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think in a certain. Says, yes, they are victims. Because the word victim, I think is. I got to be careful how I put it because, well, it's a loaded word. Yeah.
And by that I mean to define what I mean in this sense is they're victims because until kind of like now, and unless you really get into these kind of documentaries and understand the human psychology and all that, most people using these platforms are totally unaware of how they're being manipulated.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: And that's how the algorithm works is to. The algorithms work to. To make it. So you are unaware that you're being manipulated as you're being manipul.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. And it's. And it's. And it's just fascinating because there is a bit of the chicken and the egg in this thing. Which one came first? Because I do think there are people out there that are looking like the confirmation bias. Right. There are people that want to see information that matches how they feel about things, and they don't want to be challenged with information that doesn't. And so here's an.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Those would be called human beings.
[00:49:37] Speaker B: No, I know. And here's an interesting conversation I had with a good friend of mine recently. So my friend, he's black American, Right.
I assume most black Americans understood that Nazis don't like blacks. Like, I just assume that.
[00:49:50] Speaker A: Yeah, Right.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: But there goes my naiveness with the modern world. So he's perceived. We just somehow got in a conversation about the swastika, and he was saying, like, well, you know, when black people see that, they get offended this and that. I'm thinking like, yeah, okay, so what? Like, and he's like, well, they, you know, black people shouldn't get offended by everything. And I'm like, okay, dude, where are you going with this? And he's like. He starts going down this rabbit hole with me about how Hitler didn't really dislike blacks because of some. Because he told Mussolini not to invade Ethiopia, but then Mussolini did, and then they left Mussolini hanging every all the Axis powers in Ethiopia and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had to then give him a friendly education about, you know, the African soldiers stationed in Germany during World War I and how there was a lot of biracial kids and how they were one of the first in the early 30s, when Hitler got to power, they got sterilized, euthanized, and you got put in camps, too. And I was like.
I told my friend, I just said, you know, I don't know where you're getting this information. He goes, well, I saw it online or something. Right? That's how it starts. And I then had to just educate him and say, look, go look up proper education about the Nazis. They thought if you weren't a white area and blonde person, that you were an animal. So whether you're black, Chinese, whatever it is, Jewish, doesn't matter. Like, everybody else was equal mud race to them. And it just. It amazed me because that's why I wanted to give another example outside of politics. I know politics is loaded as well, and people start going down all these roads. But it's this example that even, like, I would have thought, wow, you know, Nazis and swastikas is pretty common sense, right?
But he, like my own friend, who's a smart guy, saw something that took him down a road that if given more information, I think he'd be all baked into that. I'm able to have a conversation with him. Maybe he'll do something with the information I gave him and go research something. Maybe he won't. But it just. It it in that conversation that was just a recent last few days. That's why it sticks out of my mind. It was another reminder about the pervasive disinformation that's out there.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: And how susceptible even people that you would assume kind of would know better. Like a black American.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Well, it's not an intelligence thing, you know, like, exactly something that anybody can get caught in. But this brings me to, you know, like the, the whole point here is that everyone should have a friend like Tunde If everybody had a friend like Tunde.
[00:52:24] Speaker B: We waited an hour for me to hear that.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we would be able to nip this in the bud.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Show's over.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Algorithms have nothing on a friend like Tunde.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: So we got to multiply me 2.9 billion times so that I could sit next to everybody while they're looking at Facebook.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: And be the Facebook whisperer. Huh.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: That is the solution. I was going to say it took us 70 something episodes to get there, but we finally got there. Our purpose for being here.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: But the reality, reality, here's the thing that I think, you know, to get back to seriousness and maybe where this can take us to. Because they made some interesting allusions to Matrix in this. You know, how do you, how do you get like, how do you fix the Matrix when you're in it? And I think that's what. I think one danger is with this thing as a. For large societies, which is just fascinating to me, which is we could really manipulate the perception of what reality is.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: And facts. That's something that I don't think we've ever seen in a large population, like billions of people. And I don't think we're prepared for that. And I don't think we understood that this could happen even just 20 years ago when all this stuff was being created. So that's where I think we could
[00:53:35] Speaker A: imagine that it could happen. I don't think we could imagine the avenues through which it would. Remember they actually played a clip from the Truman show, you know, a movie that was, you know, what, 20 years ago. Well, let me, let me read it. Let me, let me, let me, let me. The quote was that we accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. And that was in, in.
In response to the question of how Truman, who was played by Jim Carrey, could believe that his whole life was real when it was actually part of a television production. We. We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented.
And that's not. So that's not new information. That's. That predates social media in terms of that kind of mindset. But now we've seen it, that it's real.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And also I think where I've learned, I mean, just looking at this stuff like we've talked about is how willing so many of us as human beings are kind of willing to be kind of taken down those roads Right. And that's kind of what. What, what amazes me.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: It's not a some of us thing, man. That is our humanity. Our humanity is, you know, like, we seek connection with other people. Social media provides that and plays on that. We seek to feel like we're right. We seek confirmation for our existing beliefs. Social media plays on that and knows how to profit from that. And so it's really like social media has been designed to identify the weaknesses in our humanity and then profit from them. And that is the risk that we run. As long as those two things are married, then the risk will exist. But that also gives us at least the kind of framework how we would be able to lessen the risk is we have to divorce the ability to profit so efficiently from identifying and playing on our weaknesses as human beings. This isn't about smart people or dumb people. This is about being human.
And as Tunde has observed on more than one occasion, sometimes people are human beings too.
So, you know, so with that, I think we can close this one up. We appreciate everybody for joining us. If you haven't checked out the documentary, definitely check it out.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: It's.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: It's worth. It's worth your time. It's worth. It's 90 minutes or so. It's worth your time. We both enjoyed it. So until next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Walana.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: All right, subscribe to the podcast. Rate us, Review us, Tell us what you think. Everyone, have a happy New Year, and we'll talk to you next time.
