In this episode of The Decentralists, we put Mark Zuckerberg under the microscope. We question whether Facebook is just a benign influence in world events -- or if something shadier is happening:
While Facebook positions itself simply as a company that is “connecting people,” perhaps they’re more effective at dividing people.
Mark Zuckerberg keeps apologizing for the same mistakes again and again, but how sorry is he really?
In this episode of The Decentralists, we put Mark Zuckerberg under the microscope. We question whether Facebook is just a benign influence in world events -- or if something shadier is happening:
While Facebook positions itself simply as a company that is “connecting people,” perhaps they’re more effective at dividing people.
Mark Zuckerberg keeps apologizing for the same mistakes again and again, but how sorry is he really?
Henry : Hey everyone, it's Henry, Mike, and Chris of The Decentralists, and it's another Hot Topix, this time about our good friend Mark Zuckerberg. And of course, he's been up to the same old shenanigans again, and some are saying he's a kingmaker, and some saying he's a kingbreaker, but he certainly has a lot of influence. Mike, what do you think?
Mike : Well, Henry, one of my favourite topics is Mark Zuckerberg, just simply because there are just so many things to talk about but this one is particularly important. So, if you haven't been living under a rock, you have noticed that there's now a brewing battle over social media in the United States. So, it was about a couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump sent out a tweet, which he does an average of 50 times a day, and so think about how many he sent. And for the first time social media, one of the platforms, in this case, it was Twitter that put an advisory on one of his tweets saying that it could be potentially false or misleading and that you should check the facts of what was in this tweet.
So, Donald goes bananas, he signs an executive order, starts going after social media and accusing them of moderating the content that's on these platforms, which then makes them a publisher and he wants to strip them of these protections that they have; of currently not being considered a publisher.
Henry : I think that we talked about that last time.
Mike : We've talked about that last time, but one of the other things that has happened as a result of this is now you have Mark Zuckerberg who runs the biggest social platform stepping out of the fray. And he's maintaining his attitude that he is not going to interfere with anything on his platform that people should be allowed to have their free speech. None of Donald Trump's information or anybody else's information, theoretically that goes up on this platform but for sure, Donald Trump's information, none of it that goes up on Facebook gets censored because that's not their role in society.
And so, in a kind of a court of law type session, you can see arguments about free speech versus not free speech, but in a political arena, this becomes something completely different. And so, Chris and I were talking about this the other day and Chris made a very interesting comment, he said, Zuckerberg is positioning himself to be the kingmaker, and so I'm going to turn it over to Chris to explain what he means by that.
Chris : To put it simply, what is the number one decider of elections nowadays? It's Facebook. We saw this play out in the 2016 presidential election, we saw it play out in the British parliamentary elections, I think last year, right?
Mike : No, it was the Brexit elections.
Chris : Also the Brexit Referendum as well. So, we did see it in the Brexit, we also saw it in the parliamentary elections, we saw it play out in Brazil, we saw it play out in the Philippines.
Mike : I think that actually the count now is 68.
Henry : 68, what?
Mike : 68 elections have been influenced by Facebook.
Chris : Wow and not just elections, but genocides too.
Mike : Absolutely. They even acknowledged that one, they acknowledged genocide in Myanmar.
Chris : Exactly, with the Rohingya. So, this is a company with a lot of influence and Zuckerberg keeps apologizing, he keeps saying that he's made a mistake, he keeps saying that the company's made a breach of trust. But as the old saying goes; fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me and heck shame me three times or more times than that the whole system is faulty. We have ourselves problems of trust and we have a fellow who keeps apologizing but makes the same mistake again and again, and again, when you keep damaging the world's democracies and you do it with so little restraint, what's to say that you're actually sorry.
Mike : Well, and it's not even that, Chris, take it to the next level, which I think where this is now starting to get dangerous. Clearly, in those instances that we all mentioned the Brexit 2016 and the 68 other elections, Facebook was used to influence the results and they basically acknowledged it by paying the fine. And so, when you do that, what in effect is happening is that Facebook is making any kind of political result available to the highest bidder because this is all accomplished by using the platform to influence people, correct?
Chris : Absolutely.
Mike : So now, we're in this position where we have one person, in effect, because he also is the majority shareholder and controls the board of directors and everything else of Facebook, who can literally go around the world and say, you want to be elected, how much are you going to give me?
Chris : And the price is so very little, the cost of Cambridge Analytica, you would think that it would cost them billions and billions of dollars but in fact, it costs them, I believe, little more than 10 million dollars to influence that referendum.
Henry : So, it's clear that the man is a kingmaker.
Chris : Absolutely. Now, my question is how did we get into this situation? Because I'm not an old fellow, I'm 38 years old; I remember a time in which people got news from a variety of sources; they got from TV, radio, newspapers, that doesn't happen anymore. Over the past 10 years, Facebook has stolen the entirety of the news business we can go ahead and say, Facebook is the news because half of all Americans get their news primarily from Facebook.
Henry : And you know why that is? Half the population are just simply lazy, oh, there's information while I'm socializing online, that's all I need to know. As opposed to picking up The New York Times, watching CNN or whatever, or other sources that can give them a balanced view, people are generally lazy.
Mike : Well, or it's either laziness or they're questioning who to trust, if you go to BBC or The New York Times, or The Washington Post, and you read an article and let's say, you read an article that you don't agree with the viewpoint, which is what journalism is about. Good journalism should challenge your conceptions, it should make you think but if instead, you think, Hey, I don't like the tone of that article and you start to question kind of the editorial bent of the person who's delivering that content, it's easier to just take it from Uncle Fred.
Because at least you know Uncle Fred and he's never led you astray, and so if Uncle Fred just posts The New York Times article or something else in his browser, it's easier just to read it through the timeline and say, well, at least I trust Uncle Fred, I don't know that I trust The New York Times.
Henry : Yes, because you're comfortable with his values because you have known him all of your life.
Chris : That's exactly the problem here because according to Pew Research, 73% of Facebook users use the service primarily to catch up on news. Now, that surprised me because I thought that the reason why people use Facebook is to talk to their friends.
Henry : 73%.
Chris : Yeah, 73% use Facebook primarily to catch up on news. So, the shocking thing is that I would think that Facebook would be all about connecting people. That is their mantra, that's their corporate model, connecting people, but no, it's to catch up on news. And the scary thing about that statistic, 73%, is that when it comes to fake news, Facebook is by far the worst perpetrator,
Mike : Well, because think of it, they also control over 70% of the advertising market now too.
Chris : Really? They bypassed Google.
Mike : Oh yeah, for sure.
Chris : Wow.
Mike : And so, you start to think about this combination of the news, like, think about it, you could read The New York Times, to you going back in the old days, you could read The New York Times, you could watch the CBC, you could do things like this. And then there would be ads that would be placed within the feed because CBC needed to make money in order to pay the reporters and all these other kinds of things, those ads were not owned by the CBC. And they were not determined by the CBC and they were not, you know what I mean?
They would just say, here's a slot it's prime time, it's not prime time, here's what it's going to cost you, it doesn't matter who you are, you can put an ad in there.
Henry : Yeah. And In fact, whether they agreed with it or not, if it goes over a certain level, remember in Canada, we have the Advertising Standards Council and they will review any offending ad and decide whether it can air or not.
Mike : Whereas, who looks over Facebook? Zuckerberg
Chris : So, I just want to mention another interesting statistic, I found out last week, which is 98% of Facebook's revenue comes from ads. Now, that's a shocking figure because if you look at their primary competitor, which is Google, well, Google sure, they make money from ads, but they also make money from licensing. If you want an Android verified smartphone you have to pay Google to get the Play Store on your Android smartphone, Google also sells hardware, but Facebook, all of their money comes from advertising and advertising means, in their cases, surveillance and harvesting user data.
So, that's a problem because Facebook, at the end of the day, they don't care about whether things are factual or not, what they care about is time spent on site and the more people spend being outraged whether it's fictional or factual is the more time that they spend talking on Facebook, arguing on Facebook.
Henry : Spending time, and so, therefore, Facebook can measure it and then monetize it through advertising. So, if we've decided or it's obvious that Zuckerberg is a kingmaker, doesn't it follow that if he wishes, if he wants to, he could be a kingbreaker, he could change the status quo.
Mike : Without a doubt and there are a couple of different ways to look at this for the other side of it. You could be a kingmaker, one of the reasons why we're calling him a kingmaker is because while all of this is happening with this war that is brewing with social media, but they're targeting the guys that are blocking, so Twitter and Snapchat, for example. While that's happening, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel are going to have lunch at The White House.
Chris : Yeah. Mike speaking of which our good friend, Peter Thiel, that's a king that Zuckerberg has certainly made, hasn't he?
Mike : Absolutely. Well, or vice versa, you could argue that potentially, maybe Peter Thiel's, the real kingmaker behind everything because he made Zuckerberg into the kingmaker. But the truth of the matter is Chris, you alluded to it earlier; you said that they spent something like 10 million bucks on ads on Facebook to buy the Brexit referendum, which in itself is a shock.
Chris : Well, that's a king-breaking thing, like to destroy the EU.
Mike : Well, it is, but that's not the point, the point is now that everybody knows, you know what I mean? Basically, what's the conversation behind closed doors, who has more money to give Mark Zuckerberg to buy the job?
Henry : Exactly. So, then it leads to the natural question, how much money does he need? Bill Gates doesn't need anymore, there's going to be a point where he doesn't need any more money either, so therefore, what is his motivation to make and break and influence the world? Is it just megalomania, he just wants to be some type of controlling body, or is he, I don't know.
Mike : Who wouldn't want to be that?
Chris : I think that Facebook isn't just about money, it's about accumulating power. We can look at the evidence, prior to 2010; the only folks who were able to make money, like physically make money were governments. Now, Facebook's trying to replace the world's currency, and by the way, failing with Libra, Facebook is now trying to be the arbiters of truth and when they're not the arbiters of truth, they hide behind free speech, that's power.
And they never define, by the way, what free speech is, ever notice that they could ban you for saying something on Facebook but at the same time, they can say, oh, Trump is allowed to say the things that he's able to say because of free speech. And then we could look at other things that are frankly scary, if you're able to influence genocide, that's power, I don't know what is a greater power than ending somebody's life.
Mike : I would say nothing. Well, not just somebody's, millions of people's lives.
Chris : So, in 2010, Peter Thiel, that's one of Facebook's early investors, wrote a big blog post and in the blog post he basically questioned whether women should have the right to vote.
Henry : When was this?
Chris : This was in 2010.
Mike : Like only what about 80 or 90 years after they got the right to vote.
Henry : What was his purpose for such a bizarre question?
Chris : Well, Peter Thiel's one of those guys who likes to style himself as a libertarian, meaning that if you have enough money and you have enough capital, you should be the one who runs society. And of course, Peter Thiel thinks that he's one of those guys who should run society because he has a billion dollars. And according to Peter Thiel, now that he's accumulated all this wealth he should have a greater voice than everybody else.
Mike : Doesn't matter how he got that wealth.
Chris : Exactly. So, the thing to remember about the Thiels and Zuckerbergs, is that they feel that capital equals political power. And that's where Facebook gets dangerous because now, Facebook, what they essentially want to be is the decider of people's fates, and frankly, I'm very uncomfortable with that, I don't think that any company should decide elections, Hey, companies can't vote in elections. If corporations and companies can't vote in elections, they shouldn't decide elections.
Henry : That's a very good point, Chris, very good point.
Mike : Very, very good point. And there are even controls over the influences that companies can have over their own employees. It used to be back in the days before they had different political campaigning rules and things, where companies would basically, kind of force all their employees to donate a certain way, you want your job, you give money to the Democrats, you want your job, you give money to the Republicans or whatever the case may be. And now, that isn't even allowed anymore in the legitimate world, and one of the challenges that you kind of have here, guys, is that regardless of which side of the political spectrum that you're on, there's always going to be a loser.
The truth of the matter is that if you have, especially in a place like the United States where it's a two-party system in effect, and in reality basically, one of the two is going to lose the election, and when you know out front that the game is fixed. And for some reason, you don't get along with Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel, one or the other, or both, what is your hope of actually running in this election in a successful way?
In confronted with what is seeming to be a much more obvious exercise of control over the electoral process, which is what Facebook's absence from this debate over content is, what does that mean for somebody like Joe Biden and the Democrats coming into the next election?
Chris : Well, what it means I would gather is that if Joe wants to win the election, I'm not saying that he should, but if his purpose is to win the election, what's to stop him from paying for the election.
Henry : Well, he has to buy an awful lot of ads on Facebook and I think that he is.
Chris : Well, if elections are all about buying them, how democratic are they?
Mike : Well, that is correct. And so, I think that what you can do is, I've started to see a little bit, I think that Cecilia Kang at The New York Times revealed on June 11th, that the Biden presidential campaign is starting to go after Facebook. So, what's starting to happen is that you have what's shaping out, at least coming into this next election is it's not only going to be kind of Trump against Biden, Republican against Democrat, it's going to be kind of Facebook versus social media, where they're being targeted, Facebook's kind of stepping out of the side and clearly stepping into the side of Donald Trump's campaign.
And one of the things that you could maybe do is do what Biden's done and say, rather than getting into a battle with cash and who has more to spend, you try to get into a battle of ideologies, which is I think, more what politics is supposed to be about. And so, what you start to do is draw attention, bring things forward, and maybe what you start to see is the kingmaker can be turned into the kingbreaker because now all of a sudden being associated with the campaign that maybe doesn't win and is no longer reflected in what is hopefully a more socially just world, which is kind of what's happening right now.
You can see the fabric of society, not just politically and not just economic and kind of socioeconomically, but we have also got the clear systemic racism that has to be tackled in our societies, there's a big shift happening, and there's a real risk here that Mark Zuckerberg does come out on the wrong side of this.
Henry : Well, now to that end, Mike, and I want both of you to weigh in on this. It seems as though Trump is upset with Zuckerberg because of course, Trump, he thinks that conservatives are having their voices stifled on social media and Facebook whereby Biden, he's calling out the fact that Trump is getting a big boost from Facebook. And in fact, Biden seems to be putting Zuckerberg in the crosshairs now, no matter who wins in November, where does this leave Mark?
Chris : Well, one thing that I will say about Facebook is that they're an equal target of hate, no matter which side of the political spectrum that you are on. Even if you're the most conservative of conservative people in the world, you do not like Facebook and ditto if you're liberal, nobody likes Facebook because everybody knows that the game is rigged. If you're conservative and, Hey, Bloomberg became the democratic candidate instead of Biden, well, guess what, Bloomberg has more money than Trump.
Mike : Exactly. And they actually said that I remember that, them actually talking about how the Democrats should make the decision as to who was going to run against Trump based solely on the fact that who had more money, which was just unbelievably crazy. But that's what they said, oh, well, Hey, if we let Mike Bloomberg be the presidential candidate for the Democrats, he's going to obviously, be able to buy more Facebook ads and win this election.
Chris : So, if I'm a conservative I would know going into this election that, Hey, all it takes is somebody with cash to basically Trump things. So, elections are no longer about ideas, they're no longer about policies, they're no longer about things such as what kind of country I would like to live in [Cross-Talking].
Henry : Or facts, it's no longer about facts.
Chris : Exactly or facts. It comes down to how much capital am I willing to invest to get the job.
Henry : And there needs to be a new technology to take us away from all of this., we can't live like this forever.
Mike : No, we can't, and let's face it, as Chris just said, in a world where everybody hates Facebook, then we have to find a different alternative to Facebook and it almost has to be the exact opposite if we're going to fix everything. We have now had 15 or 20 years of Mark Zuckerberg's outrage and misinformation dominating it, everybody hates them, then why are they still there? We have to do something different.
Henry : Exactly. I think that's a fantastic way to end, Chris, Mike, thank you very much. I tell you the lead-up to this election and the conclusion is going to be absolutely fascinating, and I hope that we can somehow help change the world for the better.
Mike : Thank you, Henry.
Henry : Thank you, guys.
Chris : Thank you.