Speaker 1: What digging graves for my democracy? I'm Robert Evans. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards podcast about the worst people
Speaker 1: in all the history. UH. My guest this week for
Speaker 1: a very special two parter UH is the Inimitable Um
Speaker 1: which I've introduced you as the Inimitable the the very
Speaker 1: close to Emmy winning Jamie Loft. I lost a fokey, Robert,
Speaker 1: and I don't know who that is, which means you
Speaker 1: one in my in my book. I knew. I was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way that Robert knows who Forky is and
Speaker 1: that is going to give me piece. Yeah, I never
Speaker 1: heard of, never heard of? Is it someone the teens like?
Speaker 1: Because I you know what I hate is the teens.
Speaker 1: I don't hate the teens. The teens are obsessed with
Speaker 1: four key. They need their TikTok if they need their
Speaker 1: their cold route, and they need their forky. Does this
Speaker 1: have something to do with whatever A hundred gus is?
Speaker 1: What is that? It's some it's some music thing that
Speaker 1: the teens love. The teens who are always starting the
Speaker 1: fires love love hundred gus and I love the teens
Speaker 1: who are always starting the fires from the teens from
Speaker 1: the fire Team from the fire Team. He was No,
Speaker 1: he was a spork. I just looks like I ordered
Speaker 1: a quirky and I'm gonna throw it. I'm gonna like
Speaker 1: smash it up. I don't need to be a good
Speaker 1: sport about losing to no no funk that noise. Let's
Speaker 1: find his home address and commit federal I mean, sorry,
Speaker 1: wreaky down and I'm going to commit a crime like yeah,
Speaker 1: I was when I was like, I wonder how mine craft.
Speaker 1: Oh the teens love their Minecraft. No, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying you should only talk about committing crimes in
Speaker 1: Minecraft because then you can't get in trouble if you
Speaker 1: do commit the crime later. That's the way the law works. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been kicked off of Twitter for ename the life
Speaker 1: of someone fictional before, so wondering if it if it
Speaker 1: would happen with Forky. But it seems like Jack is
Speaker 1: in full agreement that Forky's gotta go. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: who else has to go Jamie about crimes and definitely
Speaker 1: have to go. I opened this episode, you know, saying,
Speaker 1: who's who's the digging graves for my democracy? You know,
Speaker 1: and sort of the you know, that's kind of a
Speaker 1: will play on my One of the ways I introduced
Speaker 1: the show, Well, the person who's digging graves for our
Speaker 1: democracy is Mark Zuckerberg, and we have another two parter
Speaker 1: about him today. Yeah, that's right. I can't believe you're
Speaker 1: doing this. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote another like ten thousand
Speaker 1: words about Mark Zuckerberg, just for you, Jamie, just for you.
Speaker 1: So it's worth of crime since we last spoke, I
Speaker 1: think about him. Yeah, he's done more than that. I
Speaker 1: had to leave, like there's I just finished writing last
Speaker 1: night and there was still like four articles worth of
Speaker 1: stuff to conclude that. I was just like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not getting to this because I have to sleep. Listen,
Speaker 1: we're all we're all entitled to sleeve. I have wear this.
Speaker 1: I ordered a horrible shirt with Mark Zuckerberg on it
Speaker 1: the last time we covered him, You did, I wear
Speaker 1: it all the time. It's all worn in. What with
Speaker 1: all the crimes? What with all the crimes? YEA, well, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg. So we've talked about Mark
Speaker 1: and his creation Facebook quite a lot on this show already.
Speaker 1: Last year we did a three part series on the
Speaker 1: Son of a Bitch. Uh, but a lot has happened
Speaker 1: since then, and Mark himself has only grown more dangerous
Speaker 1: and I so, yeah, we have to talk about him
Speaker 1: again and his company. And I think that in order
Speaker 1: to properly tell this story, we're going to need to
Speaker 1: actually go back to Mark's backstory because there's a rather
Speaker 1: critical part of it, um and a part of his
Speaker 1: psychological profile that I left out during the last series
Speaker 1: of episodes because I'm a hack in a fraud, so
Speaker 1: I missed this last time well known, but it it
Speaker 1: connects some dots that I think are important, especially in
Speaker 1: the context with him fucking at Harvard. No um, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot has to do with him not fucking
Speaker 1: at Harvard, but this is not specifically about that, although
Speaker 1: it probably played into the fact that nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: fuck him at Harvard um slash. Ever, So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: we're gonna go back in time to what I think
Speaker 1: is Jamie's favorite period of history, the childhood of Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I go, there are my dreams. Yeah, we all ye.
Speaker 1: In particular, we're gonna be talking about his high school
Speaker 1: years at Williams Exeter Academy. Now um at present tuition,
Speaker 1: their costs a little less than forty five thou dollars
Speaker 1: a year for the day school, which is more than
Speaker 1: the average American makes. Um. Yeah, as you might expect,
Speaker 1: young Mark spent a lot of his time their coding, fencing,
Speaker 1: and studying Latin um, which is like two out of
Speaker 1: three things that I did in high school too. So
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, the crime of being for us to
Speaker 1: study Latin, I'll never get over it. Yeah, No, it
Speaker 1: ruined my life, except for that one time we got
Speaker 1: to watch Life of Brian in class um, which I
Speaker 1: feel like the teacher was stretching and justifying, but I
Speaker 1: was grateful for. So Mark was in particular a really
Speaker 1: big fan of studying Latin, unlike us. He he loved
Speaker 1: it in his study of the language, bread a fascination
Speaker 1: with the history of ancient rome Um. And again, I
Speaker 1: kind of find this interesting because that's like the opposite
Speaker 1: of how it happened to me. I took Latin because
Speaker 1: I was a huge history nerd about Roman history, and
Speaker 1: then I stopped liking Roman history as much because I
Speaker 1: was so bored of Latin class um. Yeah, so Mark
Speaker 1: fell in love with the language because learning it was
Speaker 1: fairly similar to coding, and then he kind of fell
Speaker 1: in love with the history next, and he later explained
Speaker 1: to a reporter, quote, you have all these good and
Speaker 1: bad and complex figures. I think Augustus is one of
Speaker 1: the most fascinating. Now, Jamie. The Augustus he's talking about
Speaker 1: was Augustus Caesar, who was, uh, the guy who became
Speaker 1: the very first Roman emperor in thirty one b c.
Speaker 1: He was Julius Caesar's hair air and uh, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was Julius Caesar's air um. And he was just seventeen
Speaker 1: years old when his mentor died um. And suddenly he
Speaker 1: founds himself in control of like Caesar's armies and like
Speaker 1: fighting for uh control of Rome. And he basically kind
Speaker 1: of as a result of this, spent almost his entire
Speaker 1: life in power um. And by the time he was
Speaker 1: finally emperor um his which like took some years. You know,
Speaker 1: Caesar dies and there's a bunch of wars and stuff
Speaker 1: um like, so by the time he's like emperor in
Speaker 1: his twenties, um. Like the idea, like any memory of
Speaker 1: his life, Like think back to when you were like
Speaker 1: twenty five, how well you remembered being fifteen, right, um,
Speaker 1: sixteen years old? Not at all? Um? So by the
Speaker 1: time he's emperor, Like Augustus is like everything that isn't
Speaker 1: commanding armies and controlling the destiny of millions would have
Speaker 1: been like a dim memory. Um. You can see why.
Speaker 1: You can see why Mark has continued after getting out
Speaker 1: of high school to kind of identify with this guy,
Speaker 1: because both of them are people who, like, while they're
Speaker 1: you know, very young adults, uh, come into unbelievable power
Speaker 1: um and misuse it and largely misuse it. Yeah, Mark
Speaker 1: would not say that Augustus largely misused it, of course
Speaker 1: not Now. Augustus did go on to become one of
Speaker 1: the longest serving emperors in Roman history, and he's generally
Speaker 1: remembered as one of the best, although this is mainly
Speaker 1: because he hired all of the like a bunch of
Speaker 1: broke authors and poets to write the history of his
Speaker 1: reign um as opposed to like, historians are increasingly critical
Speaker 1: of Augustus as they analyze actual history and not just
Speaker 1: like read whatever I think it was Swetonius like just
Speaker 1: wrote about it. Yeah, it's like a hiring like fan
Speaker 1: fake writers on five Like, hey, that's literally what the
Speaker 1: India it is, you know, the India is like the
Speaker 1: poem like it's it's it's a rip off of the
Speaker 1: Iliad that's supposed to be about the founding of Rome
Speaker 1: that connects it to the sacking of troy Um and
Speaker 1: was written largely as like a largely to glorify Augustus
Speaker 1: because it was like shaking the case that his ancestors
Speaker 1: were all these fucking cool ass people. It's also frustrating
Speaker 1: to me, like when when things like the Anid are
Speaker 1: treated as like unquestionable primary source, where it's like, no,
Speaker 1: people were fucking around with the portrayal of history always.
Speaker 1: It was propaganda, even more shallow than our propaganda is today. Um.
Speaker 1: I fell asleep reading it when I was fourteen. It's
Speaker 1: it's also bad. It's a bad book. M boring. It's
Speaker 1: boring as hell, unlike the Iliad, which which absolutely slaps
Speaker 1: um like pretty good book, all things considered. Good ship
Speaker 1: in there, some good ideas, good ship in there. And
Speaker 1: Virgil I don't know, I only remember like half of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I didn't check that he had a ghostwriter.
Speaker 1: Fuck Virgil. I mean he kind of was the Emperor's
Speaker 1: ghost right anyway. Whatever, So yeah, Augustus like propaganda like
Speaker 1: hires a bunch of propagandists to to make it look
Speaker 1: like he was. He was like awesome, UM, and that's
Speaker 1: part of why we remember him as being amazing and
Speaker 1: part of why Mark is obsessed with him. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that's interesting about Augustus
Speaker 1: is that his birth name was actually Octavian. He took
Speaker 1: the name Augustus because it meant lofty or serene, and
Speaker 1: he needed everybody to know how cool he was. So
Speaker 1: it's not it's not hard to see why young Mark
Speaker 1: would have liked both idolized and um identified with this guy.
Speaker 1: By the time he was thirty, Augustus controlled basically the
Speaker 1: entire Western world. UM and Mark Zuckerberg, by the time
Speaker 1: he was thirty controlled an online empire larger than the
Speaker 1: entire Western world. He controlled my entire self esteem for
Speaker 1: a good half a decade. Yeah, and destroyed all of
Speaker 1: journalism anyway. So he uh so again, you can see
Speaker 1: like why why Mark idolizes this guy, because he's had
Speaker 1: a lifelong fascination with him. In an interview with The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, Zuckerberg explained, quote, basically, through a really harsh approach,
Speaker 1: he being Augustus established two hundred years of world peace.
Speaker 1: What are the trade offs in that? Zuckerberg said, growing animated.
Speaker 1: On one hand, world piece is a long term goal
Speaker 1: that people talk about today, two hundred years feels unattainable.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, he said that didn't come for free,
Speaker 1: and he had to do certain things. Very funny. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I gotta be you kind of lost me for a
Speaker 1: second it becoming animated, because I cannot really imagine. I
Speaker 1: can imagine for him, the only thing that makes him,
Speaker 1: that makes him show human emotion is thinking about dominating
Speaker 1: the entire world and forcing it into to act the
Speaker 1: way he wants it to. Um like imagining himself as
Speaker 1: dictator of the planet is the only thing that brings
Speaker 1: him excitement. It's what It's what his wife has to
Speaker 1: like with spur into his ears in order to help
Speaker 1: in order to make a child with him. I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess world leaders can have very weak arms. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Do you think he spits when he talks? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's either it's I feel the same way about how
Speaker 1: I always think of like does beetle juice come wet
Speaker 1: scabs or dry scabs? I could picture of having a
Speaker 1: very wet mouth or a very dry mouth. He's a
Speaker 1: heavy breather. Yeah, it's it's a nightmare all around. I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree on that. Um But what's
Speaker 1: most important to note at this point is that Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg number one, Augustus and this idea that he brought
Speaker 1: world peace for a two hundred years very important to Mark.
Speaker 1: Important for him to talk about two journalists and stuff,
Speaker 1: something he really makes a point of getting out completely inaccurate,
Speaker 1: wildly inaccurate. There's a number of reasons it's wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 1: For one, thing, like he's talking about he's when he
Speaker 1: says two hundred years of peace, he's talking about two
Speaker 1: hundre years of peace. And like the Mediterranean and Western Europe,
Speaker 1: he's not talking about China, he's not talking about Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: he's not talking about Japan. He's not talking about North America,
Speaker 1: South America, the Caribbean, all of which were places that
Speaker 1: had wars and conflicts during this period. Because again, Mark
Speaker 1: is fundamentally incapable of, like like a lot of Americans,
Speaker 1: fundamentally incapable about thinking of thinking about those places as
Speaker 1: as real as as Western history. Um So, number one,
Speaker 1: that's that's a problem right from the jump. But even
Speaker 1: within the context, even if we give him credit and
Speaker 1: saying like he's saying no, no, he had two hundred
Speaker 1: years of peace within sort of the classical ancient world,
Speaker 1: that's also complete horseshit um. Because yeah, I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: read a short list of some of the wars that
Speaker 1: Rome got involved with during the two hundred years after
Speaker 1: Augustus came to power. The Roman Partian War of fifty
Speaker 1: eight to sixty three, Buddhica is Uprising. This was like
Speaker 1: that that that English queen who like led an uprising
Speaker 1: against Rome in the sixty sixty to sixty one UM.
Speaker 1: The First Jewish Roman War sixty six to seventy three,
Speaker 1: these is a d sorry, the Roman Civil War of
Speaker 1: sixty eight to sixty nine, a d Damitian's Decklin War
Speaker 1: eight six to eighty eight, The First Dation War one
Speaker 1: hundred and one to one hundred and two, the Second
Speaker 1: Dation War one hundred and five to one hundred six,
Speaker 1: The Roman Persian Wars which started in the middle or
Speaker 1: in the early hundreds, the Quito's War, the Second Jewish
Speaker 1: Revolt from one thirty two to one thirty five, the
Speaker 1: Marco Manic Wars from one sixty six to one eighty,
Speaker 1: and of course the Roman Civil War of a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety three to one hundred and ninety seven. And again, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you put those twenty or
Speaker 1: so other than all of the wars I just listed,
Speaker 1: it was a period of total peace. It's like saying
Speaker 1: after war war to the US presided over like half
Speaker 1: a century of global peace if we ignore the millions
Speaker 1: who died in Vietnam and Cambodia and Lao in Korea. Um,
Speaker 1: and of course all of the hundreds of thousands potentially
Speaker 1: millions who died in Latin America. Um. Half a century
Speaker 1: of peace, complete total peace? What what I mean? To
Speaker 1: be fair? He went to Phillips Exeter Academy, So his
Speaker 1: brain is a bunch of worms and a few empty
Speaker 1: D batteries. Yeah, his history education was his teacher jacking
Speaker 1: off with a flag and asking if the class had
Speaker 1: any questions. Academy sucks. There was a boy that was
Speaker 1: supposed to take me to a skating rink from there
Speaker 1: once and then he he didn't show up. Well, that's
Speaker 1: all I have to do to urge that people burned
Speaker 1: down Phillips Exeter Academy. This is, in fact incitement to
Speaker 1: a crime. Please um on behalf of Jamie, not for
Speaker 1: the Mark Zuckerberg stuff. To defend your avenge my date
Speaker 1: from two thousands from two wow, two thousand seven, I
Speaker 1: forget you're younger than me. Um, so yeah, and so
Speaker 1: those are that's that is a short list of some
Speaker 1: of the wars that occurred in that two hundred year
Speaker 1: period that Mark describes as world peace. Um, those were
Speaker 1: not the only violent conflicts during that period. And outside
Speaker 1: of those wars, that were a funkload of battles and
Speaker 1: campaigns that Roman soldiers fought and died in during this period,
Speaker 1: because there were just a lot of times we're like Romans,
Speaker 1: there would be like a battle that was this conflict.
Speaker 1: And you know, anyway, my favorite of these conflicts, and
Speaker 1: I think one that we need to talk about before
Speaker 1: we get back into the story of Mark Zuckerberg, because
Speaker 1: I think this is relevant. My favorite of these battles
Speaker 1: that happened during Augustus is two hundred years of Peace
Speaker 1: is the Battle of Tudeberg Forest. Um, have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the Battle of Tudeberg Forest? No good name
Speaker 1: though yeah, you you might also call it why you
Speaker 1: should never funk with the Germans um. And this happened
Speaker 1: kind of later on in Augustus reign when he was
Speaker 1: an older man, And the basic story is that the
Speaker 1: general named Virus leads three entire Roman Legions, which the
Speaker 1: whole nations have been were destroyed by forces of that side.
Speaker 1: Three Roman Legions is a is a It's about eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand men and a massively competent armed force, like the
Speaker 1: Roman Legion is the deadliest weapon in the world of
Speaker 1: this period of time. So this guy Virus in order
Speaker 1: to kind of push the Roman borders eastward and basically
Speaker 1: is a way to like they've been having issues with
Speaker 1: these Germanic tribes, Like Virus is going in there with
Speaker 1: this massive army to just like function up and show
Speaker 1: the Germans who is boss um. But they wind up
Speaker 1: in the middle of these deep, dark German forests and
Speaker 1: they're led into an ambush by a German soldier guy
Speaker 1: named Armenius, who actually had gained Roman citizenship but was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: working for the other team. And it's this horrible one
Speaker 1: of the one of like the five or six great
Speaker 1: military disasters in all of human history. The entire Roman
Speaker 1: army is massacred, leaving behind a pile of bones that
Speaker 1: are still being discovered to this day. Um. It was
Speaker 1: one of the great defeats in Rome's long history, and
Speaker 1: it basically stopped Rome's expansion to the east. Um, Like
Speaker 1: this is this is a an incredibly like it's it's
Speaker 1: just a nightmarish military defeat, and it's an incredibly significant battle.
Speaker 1: And it came after decades of what had been continuous
Speaker 1: expansion for Augustus. Right, he'd gotten used to everything working
Speaker 1: for him militarily, and then there's just this complete calamitous defeat. Um.
Speaker 1: And the loss of so many of Rome's best soldiers
Speaker 1: in a single battle is said by historians to have
Speaker 1: kind of broken the emperor's mind. Um. One of his
Speaker 1: own like private paid historians wrote that for weeks afterwards,
Speaker 1: he would just wander around his palace in a day's
Speaker 1: slamming his head into doors and screaming, varus, give me
Speaker 1: back my legions. Okay, I will say that this is
Speaker 1: very similar to what I've been doing with Forky for
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah. Yeah, you can really empathize with Augustus here. Yeah, Okay, now,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to see see his side of things in
Speaker 1: a way. Haven't we all gotten eighteen thousand Italians killed
Speaker 1: in the woods of Germany? Thousand Italians living in my mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all Italians anyway. So yeah, So this, this is
Speaker 1: this is a battle that's important I think to understand,
Speaker 1: in part because it occurs during the two years of Peace,
Speaker 1: and in part because Um Augustus is a figure that
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg and what happened
Speaker 1: to him in this defeat the Hubrists that led him.
Speaker 1: There is something that I think will happen to Mark eventually.
Speaker 1: I don't know what Marks teudeberg Wold will be. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was Cambridge Analytica, but I think
Speaker 1: it is coming. Um. Yeah. And I'm sure Mark knows
Speaker 1: that story. He has to. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: famous stories in all of Roman history. He's a nerd
Speaker 1: about this stuff. He absolutely knows about that battle. I've
Speaker 1: never seen him talk about it though, Um, but he
Speaker 1: talks about Augustus a lot. Um. He did note that
Speaker 1: during that New Yorker article that he and his fiance
Speaker 1: now wife Priscilla spent their honeymoon in Rome quote. My
Speaker 1: wife was making fun of me, saying she thought there
Speaker 1: were three people on the honeymoon, me her and Augustus.
Speaker 1: All of the photos were different sculptures of Augustus. They
Speaker 1: go on vacation to Rome for their honeymoon, and he
Speaker 1: just keeps taking pictures of sculptures of this dead asshole
Speaker 1: um because he thinks that he's he's the new emperor
Speaker 1: of the world, just like just Priscilla having her bad
Speaker 1: decisions shoved in her face over and over, averaging the past.
Speaker 1: She's a billionaire now, so she I mean, she's also
Speaker 1: the worst. You know. I don't have any sympathy for her, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do believe. I do believe, like a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, you always have to kind of second
Speaker 1: guests things that Mark says in interviews because he's a
Speaker 1: liar um and because he's trying to get out a
Speaker 1: propaganda narrative, much like Augustus was by hiring all of
Speaker 1: those those UH poets to write his story. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think Mark's being honest when he talks about his
Speaker 1: fascination with Augustus UM, because number one, have you seen
Speaker 1: the picture of him getting that fun He keeps getting
Speaker 1: the haircut. He keeps getting the fucking haircut that like
Speaker 1: Augustus has, like the Roman emperor haircut. That why he
Speaker 1: has that shitty haircut. Yes, it is. He makes his
Speaker 1: wife give it to him. I'm going to send you
Speaker 1: it's it's the worst thing that's ever happened. And there's
Speaker 1: a photo as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, he
Speaker 1: had his wife started giving him the fucking weird Roman
Speaker 1: haircut that he gets, the weird Augustus type haircut, the
Speaker 1: Octavian or whatever. I'm sending you a picture right now.
Speaker 1: We'll have it up on the site. And it's just
Speaker 1: his eyes or he has the dead it's like that.
Speaker 1: It's like that scene in Jaws, like dead eyes, like
Speaker 1: a doll's eyes, not a little like Chuck has a
Speaker 1: more emotive character than him. It's that is so, but
Speaker 1: it is. It's horrible funny. He does not have the
Speaker 1: hairline for that haircut. No one, no one has, like
Speaker 1: it was a bad haircut for the emperors to have.
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen this question kind of asked about
Speaker 1: a few times. I saw it, most recently asked by
Speaker 1: Julia Claire. But like, why are all billionaires, Like why
Speaker 1: can't they afford to like look okay? Like why can't
Speaker 1: they not ani look okay? Because I don't think any
Speaker 1: of them. There's a couple of them that I think generally,
Speaker 1: like like Richard Branson and Mark Cuban all are able
Speaker 1: to like dress like human beings. Um. But then you
Speaker 1: have the guys like you have like Elon Musk, Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: Mark Suckerberg, who all looked like they were like poured
Speaker 1: into um, like a skin suit. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what the differences um, because there there are clearly some
Speaker 1: of these guys who are able to at least like
Speaker 1: imitate being like a person. Um. Mark Cuban does a
Speaker 1: decent impression of a human being, but he knows how
Speaker 1: people are supposed to dress. He is a basic concept
Speaker 1: of like human beings do this. He says words in
Speaker 1: an order. Yeah, in a way, we all pretending to
Speaker 1: be John Cena. Yeah, yeah, I would. I would like
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg a lot better if he were pretending to
Speaker 1: be John Cena. But he's pretending to be an emperor
Speaker 1: with a shitty haircut. I mean that does answer questions
Speaker 1: that I had. That is helpful information. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, but yeah, so he's He's just
Speaker 1: also the name their second daughter, August. So like whatever, Mark,
Speaker 1: this is marked weird things. I think he's being honest
Speaker 1: about it. Um. Yeah, and it it's it makes sense
Speaker 1: for him to this to have been like a childhood
Speaker 1: fascination of him, because one of the things you find
Speaker 1: when you look into people who knew Mark is that
Speaker 1: kind of since he was a kid, he has always
Speaker 1: seen himself as rising to greatness. Um, which is this
Speaker 1: kind of narcissism that I think is born from growing
Speaker 1: up in a growing up male white, an upper middle
Speaker 1: class in a place where mostly affluent people live, and
Speaker 1: then going to a school where they tell you you're gifted. Um,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of kids wind up with the same
Speaker 1: sort of delusions of grandeur. Reality has indulged Marks for
Speaker 1: so for some time. But like one of his childhood
Speaker 1: friends told that interview with the New Yorker quote, I
Speaker 1: think Mark has always seen himself as a man of history,
Speaker 1: someone who is destined to be great. And I mean
Speaker 1: that in the broadest sense of the term, which is
Speaker 1: a terrible thing to be because when you're that kind
Speaker 1: of person, you will do almost anything to try to
Speaker 1: make the reality outside your head correspond with the expectations
Speaker 1: within it. Um, and Mark has done that. So speaking
Speaker 1: of history, Jamie, since we just talked about some of that,
Speaker 1: Mark or Facebook at least, has made a bit of
Speaker 1: history since we last discussed Mark in his creation. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's been new milestones for for membership and for page
Speaker 1: engagement that have been hit, which I'm sure you're very
Speaker 1: excited about, especially with this big election coming up. I
Speaker 1: cannot wait all sorts of good stuff. UM. But I
Speaker 1: see some really productive, useful conversation going on as well.
Speaker 1: It seems like things are very healthy. And speaking of healthy,
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I want to talk to
Speaker 1: the history that Facebook has been responsible for that I
Speaker 1: want to talk about right now is um is what
Speaker 1: it's brought to Ethiopia. UM. Have you heard anything about
Speaker 1: Facebook's recent performance in Ethiopia and what's happened there. I've
Speaker 1: heard a little bit. I've heard a little bit. I've heard,
Speaker 1: I mean Facebook, um in in in any way I
Speaker 1: learned most about, which I think we talked about last
Speaker 1: time was Facebook and Meanmar. But the Ethiopics stuff I've
Speaker 1: got to catch up. Yeah, I don't want to like
Speaker 1: spoil it right away because it's a fun story. But
Speaker 1: it rhymes with schmith nick cleansing. Um, oh that was
Speaker 1: what they were doing over in That's yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: keeps happening to countries you have Facebook and interesting yeah
Speaker 1: so uh. Facebook has been pop layer and a number
Speaker 1: of African nations for for quite a while now, and
Speaker 1: in many of these countries, like Ethiopia, the Internet is
Speaker 1: basically a synonym for Facebook to millions of people because
Speaker 1: it's just like the way they interface with the Internet,
Speaker 1: like Facebook and the Internet are the same thing. They
Speaker 1: don't use a browser, they see everything through Facebook. Um.
Speaker 1: And despite the popularity of Facebook in Ethiopia the country
Speaker 1: and in Africa in general, because it's it's become increasingly
Speaker 1: popular across the entire continent. But despite its popularity, Facebook
Speaker 1: only opened its first content moderation center on the continent
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, which is a problem because Africa
Speaker 1: is enormous, like it fits a couple in North America's
Speaker 1: in there. You probably should have had a content center
Speaker 1: somewhere on the fucking continent, like you should have one
Speaker 1: in every country you're doing business in. But they only
Speaker 1: added one to just just one on the fucking continent
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, which is I'm not frising from
Speaker 1: that comp but like that's just yeah. Now, they promised
Speaker 1: to hire a hun drew people to work there through
Speaker 1: third party companies. Um, and we don't know if they've
Speaker 1: actually done that. Number one, it's sketchy that it continues
Speaker 1: to be through third party companies, which is what Facebook
Speaker 1: does so that they can interesting that they're just continuing
Speaker 1: this whole third party company thing. Doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: gone very well for them in the past. Yeah. That way,
Speaker 1: if an employee makes a decision that gets people killed,
Speaker 1: it's not a Facebook employee that made a decision that
Speaker 1: gets got people killed, and so they don't have to
Speaker 1: care about it, um, which is very ethical. And then
Speaker 1: they can release a really cute statement that they're like,
Speaker 1: we had no idea and we're really random. Person made
Speaker 1: a mistake. How could we have? Yeah, human error? Yeah? Um.
Speaker 1: You know what doesn't make errors jamie products or services
Speaker 1: products services. Uh. And you know our longtime sponsor, Raytheon.
Speaker 1: You might have heard some news lately Jamie about has
Speaker 1: had a lot of employees go uh okay, you know.
Speaker 1: So if you're antipathy towards the Raytheon Corporation is all
Speaker 1: noted um. But I want to ask you to imagine
Speaker 1: a world without Ray Theon. Imagine a world where children
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan are able to go to bed at night
Speaker 1: and not live in terror that clear skies will bring
Speaker 1: the attack of a predator drone that could wipe out
Speaker 1: the entire family. Imagine school buses in Yemen not being
Speaker 1: blown up by missiles fired by people in control stations
Speaker 1: somewhere in a desert in Nevada using Raytheon's wonderful technology.
Speaker 1: Imagine missiles that aren't full of knives. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to live in that world, which is why
Speaker 1: I choose to buy Ray Theon and why I think
Speaker 1: you should choose listeners to buy Raytheon. Sorry, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear anything. I was thinking about Nacho cheese Derito's. You know,
Speaker 1: if ray Theon made derritos, they would kill a lot
Speaker 1: of school children in Yemen. Anyway, here's products. Oh we're back.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. I don't know about the rest of you,
Speaker 1: but those products and services. Really I just took a
Speaker 1: hit of Raytheon. Yeah, I've been huffing Raytheon so hard
Speaker 1: that I I keep my right on a little rag
Speaker 1: and I just put it in a rag like the
Speaker 1: paint that I also once I'm out of paint and glue,
Speaker 1: Raytheon and huffing paint allies in. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: reality abas, that sounds like a really rich person's name. Paint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how the rich people huff. So yeah. Facebook sets
Speaker 1: up this data center. It's first and only one in Africa.
Speaker 1: They promised to hire a hundred people, and we don't
Speaker 1: know if they even hired a hundred people to work.
Speaker 1: Is there any confirmation that no, no, because they don't
Speaker 1: have to be open about any of this. We also
Speaker 1: don't know which regions of the country any of those
Speaker 1: folks have specialized in, which languages they might have spoken. Again,
Speaker 1: Africa is the size of several North America's. There's an
Speaker 1: enormous variety of nations and cultures and conflicts like like like,
Speaker 1: I would say anything less than a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: people focusing on content in that continent would seem just
Speaker 1: just so irresponsible as to be purely ornamental. Um and
Speaker 1: like thousands, like a couple of thousand people probably honestly
Speaker 1: isn't enough because of how many millions of Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too big a responsibility for a few hundred employees
Speaker 1: to even that's absurd. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just unbelievably
Speaker 1: shoddy worksmanship they had. And yeah, so again and because
Speaker 1: there's Facebook doesn't have to be open um about anything,
Speaker 1: we don't even know like which areas of the country
Speaker 1: were represented by the content moderation team. Uh VICE reports
Speaker 1: though that Facebook community standards, like the list of their
Speaker 1: standards has not been translated into either of Ethiopia's two
Speaker 1: main languages, which suggests they don't have anybody in the
Speaker 1: continent who can functionally monitor what's happening in Ethiopia. The
Speaker 1: company has no full time employees in the country. Now
Speaker 1: this is a problem UM because Ethiopia, like many countries,
Speaker 1: has a number of bad actors in its national political
Speaker 1: scene and a lot of ethnic conflicts that have been
Speaker 1: exacerbated by Facebook. UM. One of the bad actors in
Speaker 1: Ethiopia is a guy named Jawar Mohammed, who is an
Speaker 1: Ethno nationalist and Aromo Ethno nationalist from the Aroma region
Speaker 1: of the country. The Aroma are like like one of
Speaker 1: the people's in in the region or in the country
Speaker 1: that that we call Ethiopia. Um and, and Jamar has
Speaker 1: started like a private TV network based on his success
Speaker 1: and Facebook. He's got like one point seven or five
Speaker 1: million followers on the site. Um so he's extremely popular.
Speaker 1: Um He's a big content creator who basically got famous
Speaker 1: as a result of his ability to use and manipulate Facebook.
Speaker 1: Um And one of his big things is regularly urging
Speaker 1: people to do horrible violence to folks who are not
Speaker 1: a Romo in Ethiopia on our popular approach. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: keeps happening all over the world, and Facebook keeps failing
Speaker 1: it handling it. On October nineteen, he took to Facebook
Speaker 1: and fired off a series of posts claiming he was
Speaker 1: about to be arrested by the police for some of
Speaker 1: his political statements. This appears to have been a lie,
Speaker 1: but it brought huge crowds of his supporters out into
Speaker 1: the street, like massive numbers of people, and they start.
Speaker 1: The horrible violence starts right the cops come out, and
Speaker 1: the police wind up killing more than a dozen people,
Speaker 1: and your supporters wind up committing a bunch of race
Speaker 1: based sectary in murders and something like seventy folks die
Speaker 1: by the time this is all over. Um, so yeah
Speaker 1: he yeah, so this guy like like incites a series
Speaker 1: of pace riots that kill like nearly seventy people, which
Speaker 1: is a problem, you might say. Yeah, single Facebook post.
Speaker 1: Yeah that isn't. Yeah, so Facebook at this point, if
Speaker 1: not before, because they hadn't even thought about it for
Speaker 1: a single second, Like Mark Zuckerberg had never, for a
Speaker 1: moment in his life considered Ethiopia prior to this, the
Speaker 1: fifteen years of this company's existence. Yeah, get good. Well
Speaker 1: you it's not a major company. It's one of the places.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like all of the world outside of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire that he assumes was also at peace,
Speaker 1: because he's sure as hell, I'm not going to give
Speaker 1: a funk about their history. Yeah, asked Mark Zuckerberg for
Speaker 1: how how long Ethiopia has been at peace? Yeah, I will,
Speaker 1: I will let I will let fucking China know that. Um,
Speaker 1: they were completely at peace and had no wars for
Speaker 1: the two years after Octavian came to power. They will
Speaker 1: be happy to have this information. Yeah, they'll be able
Speaker 1: to edit their history books. Yeah, so Facebook, you know,
Speaker 1: after this race riot that kills almost seventy people, knew
Speaker 1: they had a proble bloom in Ethiopia. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: true Facebook fashion, they took no action. Um. As a
Speaker 1: result deaths, um, they shifted no meaningful resources into the
Speaker 1: country as ethnic and political strife there continued to heighten, uh,
Speaker 1: fanned by the flames of viral Facebook memes. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to pretend I have much expertise over what's
Speaker 1: happening in Ethiopia, because, like Facebook's executives, I know very
Speaker 1: little about the country, which is perhaps why I have
Speaker 1: not launched a massively influential media product that completely restructures
Speaker 1: the way a great deal of the nation's communications occur,
Speaker 1: because that would be irresponsible, Jamie, that would bears. But
Speaker 1: you would maybe want to hire let's say more than
Speaker 1: a hundred people too. I would want to hire a
Speaker 1: lot of people if I were attempting to change the
Speaker 1: entire way this country I don't understand communicates. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be the responsible thing to do. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so as I do understand the conflict, A lot of
Speaker 1: the ethnic tensions in the country have kind of broken
Speaker 1: down around the president who was in a Romo and
Speaker 1: a large number of people, many of whom voted for him,
Speaker 1: who are a Romo, and who hate the fact that
Speaker 1: he has not been a giant piece of ship to
Speaker 1: members of other ethnic groups, Like he hasn't been racist
Speaker 1: enough for a lot of people, and they're very angry
Speaker 1: about it. Um. And these folks have gotten very like
Speaker 1: used the vast hate machine that is Facebook to assault
Speaker 1: the people that they deem a fault for their country's problems.
Speaker 1: And one of these people, one of the people they
Speaker 1: assaulted was a backer of the president named Hachallo Jundessa,
Speaker 1: who was an Aromo singer who supported and raising up
Speaker 1: marginalized voices within the Aromo ethnic group. Um. So he
Speaker 1: seems like he was a pretty decent dude, um, Hachallo Jundessa.
Speaker 1: So obviously, this massive internet hate mob that has formed
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia turns its sights to this guy because he's
Speaker 1: a supporter of the president. Earlier this year, they decided
Speaker 1: he was like at the center of some weird conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Think of it as like what happened to Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: with Q and on right, Like, this famous person becomes
Speaker 1: the center of an online conspiracy and hundreds of Facebook
Speaker 1: pages start filling up with misinformation about this guy. Um
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote next from a write up and
Speaker 1: vice about what happened next quote. Hondessa was assassinated on
Speaker 1: June twenty nine while driving through the capital Atisa Baba.
Speaker 1: The man police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors that
Speaker 1: he was working as an assassin for the Aroma Liberation Front,
Speaker 1: an armed nationalist group linked to numerous violent attacks, and
Speaker 1: who told the shooter that a Romeo would benefit from
Speaker 1: the death of one of its most famous singers who
Speaker 1: Hondessa's death at age thirty four set off a wave
Speaker 1: of violence in the capital and his home region of
Speaker 1: a Roma. Hundreds of people were killed, with minorities like
Speaker 1: Christian m Harres, Christian Aromos and garage people suffering the
Speaker 1: biggest losses. The bloodshed was supercharged by the almost instant
Speaker 1: and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence
Speaker 1: on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger. Mobs destroyed and
Speaker 1: burned property, They lynched, beheaded and dismembered their victims. Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: So yeah, who could have predicted this after the last
Speaker 1: race riot that killed huge numbers of people, Not I
Speaker 1: Robert and not Mark Zuckerberg. It is I mean, it
Speaker 1: is truly shocking that this this is I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess not shocking isn't even the word. But this is
Speaker 1: all happening within about what eighteen months of the like
Speaker 1: a very similar horrific ethnic cleansing being pushed less than
Speaker 1: that October of June. Oh well there you go. Not
Speaker 1: very very short span of time. This is occurring in
Speaker 1: um and again Facebook does basically nothing. Now, finally, after
Speaker 1: these race riots that kill hundreds, Um, they they do
Speaker 1: take some action. Um yeah, they sent a couple of
Speaker 1: executives to Ethiopia on a fact finding mission and they yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they went looking for some facts, looking for some facts,
Speaker 1: magnifying glass. Yeah. And the company issued a statement that
Speaker 1: it is quote aware of the complexities both within and
Speaker 1: outside the country. These Facebook apologies for cleaning it's just
Speaker 1: yeah complexities. Yeah, yeah, what we did we could be
Speaker 1: described as complex. Yeah. Facebook says that is deeply concerned
Speaker 1: about the issues flagged by human rights groups. Meanwhile, human
Speaker 1: rights groups in Ethiopia are less than positive about what
Speaker 1: the social network has actually done so far. According to Vice, quote,
Speaker 1: activists say Facebook is instead relying on them in a
Speaker 1: network of grassroots volunteers to flag content and keep the
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty billion dollar company up to speed
Speaker 1: about what's happening on the ground. They ask you to
Speaker 1: jump on a call so that you can give them
Speaker 1: more context. But fuck no, I said, I'm never going
Speaker 1: to do that again. One Ethiopian activist who has been
Speaker 1: repeatedly asked to speak to Facebook employees told Vice News.
Speaker 1: The activists, yeah, like they're they're basically like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: almost worth a trillion dollars. But can you people who
Speaker 1: are under the gun and it individually in day injured
Speaker 1: by our service provide us with free labor to understand
Speaker 1: how we're endangering you. That would be great right there,
Speaker 1: Like we forgot to put any protections in, but so
Speaker 1: could you actually do this on the back end because
Speaker 1: we're getting some rough pr right now? Are you being
Speaker 1: shot at right now? Yeah? Anyway, we're not going to
Speaker 1: pay you. There's that we don't. We just don't have
Speaker 1: the money. It's been a rough year for us. A
Speaker 1: trillion dollar country. Mark Zuckerberg, who bought forty five million
Speaker 1: dollars of houses that surrounded his house so he could
Speaker 1: live in property can't afford to pay more fact checking teams.
Speaker 1: We're so sorry. Um, yeah, so this is horrific. You
Speaker 1: think Facebook might have learned something after the last ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansing their product helped to enable, which, if you'll remember
Speaker 1: from our last episode, was in Myanmar. Yeah, yes, yeah there,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I didn't know about the extent of what
Speaker 1: was going on in Ethiopius. Pretty bad, pretty bad bad um.
Speaker 1: And of course they helped fuel a genocide and the
Speaker 1: master resettlement of nearly a million people in me and
Speaker 1: Marthoro like a Muslim people. It's shocking how beat for
Speaker 1: beat similar a lot of the exact same like steps
Speaker 1: and failures, and what's happening in Ethiopia sounds exactly like
Speaker 1: what's happening in India, where Facebook bullshit like nonsense on
Speaker 1: Facebook lies spreading virally have been responsible for massive like
Speaker 1: mobs doing racial violence that's caused hundreds of deaths. It
Speaker 1: keeps happening. And the complete oversight of not even having
Speaker 1: the terms and conditions in every language where the service
Speaker 1: has provided. It's just like, I don't know, why would
Speaker 1: you why would you think for even a second about
Speaker 1: a country that you're introducing a product into that will
Speaker 1: have a massive impact on the society. Like, why would
Speaker 1: you for even a second consider that and take any
Speaker 1: actions to respond posibly do that? Why why would you
Speaker 1: the country that exists just a second, Mark Zuckerberg's frame
Speaker 1: of reference. It's part of the two hundred years of
Speaker 1: PC's bringing us. Yes, yes, um so yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about me an marm because we have to actually go
Speaker 1: back to me and Marcus. Some new stuff to happen there.
Speaker 1: So remember Facebook again fuel the genocide there? Uh and
Speaker 1: and in fact, a UN report on the genocide and
Speaker 1: me and mar said that Facebook's failure to deal with
Speaker 1: the spread of misinformation turned it into a beast complicit
Speaker 1: and mass human slaughter. The UN called Facebook a beast
Speaker 1: for its what it contributed to in Myanmar, which is
Speaker 1: at least I I like it when the UN doesn't
Speaker 1: pull their punches because they often do. That's that's a
Speaker 1: fair appreciate the directness. Yeah, um so the hubbub around
Speaker 1: all this forced Mark to actually sit down and in
Speaker 1: an interview with Ezra Kline and engage directly with some
Speaker 1: of the criticism for the genocide that his company enabled.
Speaker 1: He admitted, well, he admitted that his network had been
Speaker 1: used to incite real world harm. Um. He did, he did,
Speaker 1: he did, He did admit that, and he also stated, quote,
Speaker 1: this is certainly something that we're paying a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to. It's a real issue, and we want to
Speaker 1: It's a real issue, Jamie. The genocide is a real issue,
Speaker 1: and we want to make sure that all of the
Speaker 1: tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech
Speaker 1: and citing violence and basically protecting the integrity of civil
Speaker 1: discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar as well
Speaker 1: as places like the US that do get a disproportionate
Speaker 1: amount of attention, Jamie. Let's think back to that guy
Speaker 1: on his porch firing blindly into the neighborhood around you. Say,
Speaker 1: he hits your child in the throat and she bleeds
Speaker 1: out slowly over the course of about you know, let's
Speaker 1: say five and a half minutes um as you desperately
Speaker 1: try to stop the bleeding, but the ambulance doesn't arrive
Speaker 1: in time, and you you approach this man who's continuing
Speaker 1: to fire blindly into the neighborhood and say, you just
Speaker 1: murdered my child, and he says, you know, I'm paying
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to what happened to your kid.
Speaker 1: It's a real issue. Serious, Yeah, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring tools to bear on eliminating, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the problems that might have caused the death once we
Speaker 1: figure out what they are. So that's what Mark said.
Speaker 1: But Mark, you know, to his credit, after using all
Speaker 1: those weasel words, did did agree that Facebook had been
Speaker 1: used to incite harm in me and Mark just the
Speaker 1: absolute smug assholary of like addressing a genocide, you are
Speaker 1: beyond it an issue it in so seeing there's a
Speaker 1: lot of negativity surrounding this that you're just like, shut
Speaker 1: the funk up. Oh my god. Yeah, it's like somebody
Speaker 1: going to the Germans in like n and being like,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like this Auschwitz thing is is
Speaker 1: getting real ugly and we're like, yeah, we agree, it's
Speaker 1: an issue. It's definitely an issue. It's an issue. So
Speaker 1: my blood pressure. Yeah, but Mark did, he did admit
Speaker 1: that that there was a problem with his service, So
Speaker 1: there was an issue. I wonder what will happen if
Speaker 1: we check back in on the story of Myanmar and Facebook.
Speaker 1: I bet Facebook has turned a new leaf in this. Oh, Jamie,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's a Time magazine article on the
Speaker 1: matter from August of this year. You know what the
Speaker 1: title is, hit It Facebook wanted to be a force
Speaker 1: for good in Myanmar. Now, what is rejecting a request
Speaker 1: to help with the genocide investigation? No, I mean yes, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the issue seems to be that the Gambia, which
Speaker 1: I didn't realize I think is the proper way you're
Speaker 1: supposed to say it is the Gambia, not Gambia. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of the opposite of Ukraine. It seems like that.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gathering from this article. So the Gambia,
Speaker 1: which is a West African nation, is attempting to hold
Speaker 1: me Amar accountable for its ethnic cleansing, and they filed
Speaker 1: an application in a US federal court seeking information from
Speaker 1: Facebook that would help them build their case for the
Speaker 1: International Court of Justice. So they want to take um,
Speaker 1: they want to take leaders in Myanmar to the International
Speaker 1: Court of Justice and hold them accountable, and they're they're
Speaker 1: looking for info from Facebook to help them build their
Speaker 1: case that basically military and governmental leaders in Myanmar were
Speaker 1: manipulating Facebook in inauthentic ways in order to drive violence
Speaker 1: deliberately uh so quote. Specifically, the Gambia is seeking documents
Speaker 1: and communications from Myanmar military officials, as well as information
Speaker 1: from hundreds of other pages and accounts that Facebook took
Speaker 1: down and preserved because Facebook, to its credit, when they
Speaker 1: took down a lot of these things associated with pages
Speaker 1: that were associated with the violence in Myanmar, they did
Speaker 1: preserve those pages so that they could be potentially used
Speaker 1: in an investigation like the Gambia is trying to do so.
Speaker 1: The Gambia is also seeking documents related to Facebook's internal
Speaker 1: investigations into the matter, as well as a deposition of
Speaker 1: a relevant Facebook executive. All of this information could help
Speaker 1: to prove Meanmar's genocidal intent. Back in May, the Gambia
Speaker 1: filed a similar application in US court against Twitter uh
Speaker 1: and the case was pulled immediately because Twitter pretty much
Speaker 1: instantly agreed to cooperate. Um. Which is you know that's
Speaker 1: so embarrassing too that if Twitter is like, no, we
Speaker 1: would love to do the right thing. Uh. Jack Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey is somebody I have intense antipathy for, and he
Speaker 1: is also objectively the most responsible social media ahead. When
Speaker 1: when Jack has that's such a bleak sentence when jack
Speaker 1: Ersey has the moral high ground on you. You're Mick
Speaker 1: fucked Like, that's just like he is. He is the
Speaker 1: only person who is in that position, a similar position
Speaker 1: of power to Mike Mark Zuckerberg, who isn't just like
Speaker 1: like drunkenly driving towards the apocalypse like Jack Dorsey clearly
Speaker 1: is capable of feeling guilt and thinks genocide is bad.
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say about Jack Dorsey. But that's what
Speaker 1: that he is capable of of of caring to some extent,
Speaker 1: which is why his company cooperated immediately in an investigation
Speaker 1: about a genocide. Well, and if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: episode in the future and you're like, how could that
Speaker 1: be true, just just check the date and maybe he's
Speaker 1: done something horrible and yeah, he may have finally computed
Speaker 1: his robot suit and be carrying out genocide against all
Speaker 1: of Portugal or something. I don't know what Jack Dorsey's
Speaker 1: secret desires are, um, but you know, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: do know what you do know, Robert, I don't know
Speaker 1: where I'm what I do know? Yeah, what do you know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know a lot of things that I think would
Speaker 1: be fun to do in Minecraft. But I guess we
Speaker 1: shouldn't ye product, We're back. We're earlier this month, UM,
Speaker 1: Facebook UH filed its opposition to the Gambias application that
Speaker 1: they received basic information about, you know, to help them
Speaker 1: prosecute a genocide. Facebook complained that their requests were extraordinarily
Speaker 1: broad and unduly intrusive or burdensome, and they called upon
Speaker 1: the U S District Court in the in d C
Speaker 1: to reject the application. UH largely because the Gambia failed
Speaker 1: to quote identify accounts with sufficient specificity. Now this is
Speaker 1: interesting because the Gambia was incredibly specific, and in fact,
Speaker 1: they named seventeen officials to military units and several dozen
Speaker 1: very specific pages and accounts that they wanted the information for.
Speaker 1: They really could not have been more specific about what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Um yeah. Facebook also takes issue with the
Speaker 1: fact that the Gambia is seeking information that dates back
Speaker 1: to two thousand twelve, UM, saying that, like, that's not
Speaker 1: really relevant, and the Gambia is pointing out that, like, well,
Speaker 1: but the desire of groups of people to commit genocide
Speaker 1: doesn't just happen overnight. It builds over time, and Facebook
Speaker 1: is where it built over time. And this is something
Speaker 1: we have to document both for our court case against
Speaker 1: the people who committed that genocide and for history's sake.
Speaker 1: And Facebook is saying that like, well, no acknowledging that
Speaker 1: acknowledging that basically means acknowledging we're currently contributing to what
Speaker 1: will become genocide in the very near future, and that's
Speaker 1: gonna be bad for us. So like the fucking hubris
Speaker 1: of Facebook attempting to call the shots of like, well,
Speaker 1: that's not relevant. It's like, well, you your whole thing is,
Speaker 1: You've clearly demonstrated you have no idea what's going on
Speaker 1: or what the context of this conflict is. But sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: by all means, by all means. So if you actually
Speaker 1: try to take stock of the scale of the problem
Speaker 1: of political manipulation on Facebook, you quickly find yourself spiraling
Speaker 1: into just overwhelmed horror um. Because it's not just like
Speaker 1: the cases that we've kind of talked about so far
Speaker 1: where hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people have been murdered.
Speaker 1: Those are the most spectacular cases, and they're the easiest
Speaker 1: to be like, here is the harm. This number of
Speaker 1: people were killed in race riots that started on Facebook. Um,
Speaker 1: But it is contributing to the death of democracies worldwide
Speaker 1: on a scale that staggering when you when you start
Speaker 1: to lay it out. In a year by jan and Honduras,
Speaker 1: corrupt heads of government and political parties have been caught
Speaker 1: operating networks of fake accounts to manipulate public opinion. In India, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: Bolivia and Ecuador, there have been coordinated campaigns caught operating
Speaker 1: in violation of the social networks rules to influence elections.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we know about all this is
Speaker 1: a former Facebook data scientist named Sophie Zang. Sophie wrote
Speaker 1: a sixty six hundred word memo to her former co
Speaker 1: workers after she was let go for desperately blowing the
Speaker 1: wisht whistle on Facebook's ethically criminal behavior, and plus Feed
Speaker 1: obtained a copy of that memo and they published a
Speaker 1: really good article on it just days before I started
Speaker 1: work on this article. It's actually what kind of made
Speaker 1: me feel like a new episode on Mark was necessary.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from that article now. This is
Speaker 1: Sophie writing. In the three years I've spent at Facebook,
Speaker 1: I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to
Speaker 1: abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own
Speaker 1: citizenry and caused international news on multiple occasions, wrote Zaying.
Speaker 1: Her LinkedIn profile said she worked as the data scientists
Speaker 1: for the Facebook site Integrity Fake Engagement team. Um so
Speaker 1: that was her job. Now. BuzzFeed didn't publish her letter
Speaker 1: directly because it contained a lot of personal info, but
Speaker 1: they included a a bullet point list summarizing her allegations.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read that now because again it's
Speaker 1: so it's a nightmare quote. It took Facebook's leaders nine
Speaker 1: months to act on a coordinated campaign that used thousands
Speaker 1: of inauthentic assets to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of
Speaker 1: Honduras on a massive scale to mislead the Honduran people.
Speaker 1: Two weeks after Facebook took action against the perpetrators in July,
Speaker 1: they returned, leading to a game of whack a mole
Speaker 1: between Zaying and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which
Speaker 1: are still active. In a Jeer bay Jan Zang discovered
Speaker 1: the ruling political party utilized thousands of inauthentic assets to
Speaker 1: harass the opposition and moss. Facebook began looking into the
Speaker 1: issue a year after Zang reported the investigation is still ongoing,
Speaker 1: saying in her colleagues removed ten point five million fake
Speaker 1: reactions and fans from high profile politicians in Brazil and
Speaker 1: in the US in the two thousand eighteen elections. In
Speaker 1: February two thousand nineteen, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that
Speaker 1: quote he'd obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high profile
Speaker 1: US political figure that we didn't catch. Zang removed the activity,
Speaker 1: dousing the immediate fire. She wrote, Zang discovered inauthentic activity,
Speaker 1: a Facebook term for engagement from bod accounts and coordinated
Speaker 1: manual accounts in Bolivia and Ecuador, but chose not to
Speaker 1: prioritize it due to her workload. The amount of power
Speaker 1: she had as a mid level employee to make decisions
Speaker 1: about a country's political outcomes took a toll on her health,
Speaker 1: so she consciously realized she was ignoring actions that were
Speaker 1: shattering the democracies of whole nations because she had bigger
Speaker 1: fish to fry, and that was the decisions she got
Speaker 1: to make without asking anybody as a midlevel employee at Facebook,
Speaker 1: because they cared so little about what was happening in
Speaker 1: these countries, right, I mean, even the fact that that
Speaker 1: would be delegated to one year is absurd. It's unspeakable. Yea.
Speaker 1: After becoming aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish Health
Speaker 1: Ministry's Facebook page during the current COVID nineteen pandemic, Zeyg
Speaker 1: helped find and remove six hundred and seventy two thousand
Speaker 1: fake accounts acting on similar targets globally, including in the US.
Speaker 1: In India, she worked to remove a politically sophisticated network
Speaker 1: of more than a thousand actors working to influence the
Speaker 1: local elections taking place in Delhi in February. Facebook never
Speaker 1: publicly disclosed this network or that it had been taken down.
Speaker 1: So I want you to remember he yeah, what are you?
Speaker 1: Are you just trying to cope with all that right now?
Speaker 1: I'm looking through this story as well, and yeah, four
Speaker 1: days ago. It's it's unbelievable. I mean, just this should
Speaker 1: be the number one story in the world, and Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg should be in custody as a result of it.
Speaker 1: I have no fucking clue this just happened there. I mean,
Speaker 1: just this is and I am not first off, I
Speaker 1: understand that Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. I am not exaggerating
Speaker 1: when I say most of the Nazis, individual Nazis tried
Speaker 1: in Nuremberg. We're not personally guilty of crimes on this scale. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean. And and the fact that I just I'm
Speaker 1: wrapping my head around the fact that if you know,
Speaker 1: while she was employed there, if this, if this employee
Speaker 1: got a cold, if this employee like caught a bug, Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: there would be a body count attached to it like
Speaker 1: that is just fucking unconscionable. And put that on I
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's it's unbelievable. Remember is he a free man?
Speaker 1: Right now? We're just getting started, Jamie. I want you
Speaker 1: to remember Zang was just one employee whose time was
Speaker 1: severely limited. This is just a selection of the things
Speaker 1: she uncovered. Um and these a mid level employee. Now,
Speaker 1: the scale at which Facebook is being used by a
Speaker 1: variety of actors to manipulate and hack global politics is
Speaker 1: truly unprecedented. The social network feels so little responsibility to
Speaker 1: deal with this that Zang was essentially alone in her work,
Speaker 1: and her findings were never publicized unless doing so brought
Speaker 1: some material benefit to Facebook. While attempting to lay out
Speaker 1: the scale of the problem. Zang noted, quote, there was
Speaker 1: so much violating behavior worldwide that it was left to
Speaker 1: my personal assessment of which cases to further investigate, to
Speaker 1: file tasks, and to escalate for prioritization afterwards. Now, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Zang found evidence of vast influence networks
Speaker 1: actively subverting dozens of democratic elections, the higher ups and
Speaker 1: Facebook showed basically no interest in this, and she was
Speaker 1: again left alone to make decisions that would influence the
Speaker 1: lives and futures of tens of millions of people. Zang wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: with no oversight whatsoever. I was left in a situation
Speaker 1: where I was trusted with immense influence. In my spare time,
Speaker 1: a manager on Strategic Response mused to myself that most
Speaker 1: of the world outside the West was effectively the wild West,
Speaker 1: with myself as the part time dictator. He meant the
Speaker 1: statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures
Speaker 1: on me. Well, it's and and how many people were
Speaker 1: working in this capacity and other regions. I guess, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that. The fact is, I don't think very many.
Speaker 1: She was basically the only person dealing with the world
Speaker 1: outside of the West on this at this level of
Speaker 1: responsibility because they care so little about having anyone monitor it,
Speaker 1: And like the fact that one of her managers just
Speaker 1: kind of blithely walked by and said like casually, oh,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like the dictator of the entire world
Speaker 1: outside of the West right now, neat and then walks
Speaker 1: off like that's the problem. Do you want to go
Speaker 1: to an oxygen bar later? Like this is just on.
Speaker 1: It's struggling to rout my head around and the the
Speaker 1: outrageous I am without you know, I can't go into
Speaker 1: too much detail at this, but I've known a lot
Speaker 1: of Facebook employees and I've worked with a number of them.
Speaker 1: I've I've been to Facebook facilities. I've spent a lot
Speaker 1: more time around the people who work at Facebook than
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and they're very They tend to
Speaker 1: be very nice people. I like almost everyone I've met
Speaker 1: who is a Facebook employee, very intelligent, motivated, um people
Speaker 1: who care a lot about what they do in the
Speaker 1: ethics of it. The problem is the people at the
Speaker 1: top UM who refuse to allow this to be hard
Speaker 1: to who have the resources to do what they are
Speaker 1: doing with at least a modicum of responsibility and refuse
Speaker 1: to do it and actively stymy their employees, who again
Speaker 1: are mostly decent people from acting responsibly. Well sure, I
Speaker 1: mean decent people enact the agendas of indecent people all
Speaker 1: the time. Like there's I just I mean it speaks
Speaker 1: to We talked about this the entire last I recovered
Speaker 1: fucking guy too. But just like the fact that something
Speaker 1: so gigantic can exist with such little oversight period, it's
Speaker 1: just like what body count? Does that start to matter
Speaker 1: to anybody? Yeah? Now, the reason Mark Zuckerberg and his
Speaker 1: executives felt safe ignoring many of these individual cases of
Speaker 1: abuse is that they tend to occur in foreign countries
Speaker 1: that Americans didn't care about. And again, all Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: gives a shit about as the West and I in
Speaker 1: China to We'll give him credit for that. He cares it,
Speaker 1: clearly cares about what happens in China. He does speak
Speaker 1: great Chinese like, so the Western China and everything outside
Speaker 1: of it might as well be a fucking dial tone
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, we've got about three people on the
Speaker 1: rest of the pet I'm gonna quote from Buzzfeeds right
Speaker 1: up of Zang's letter again quote it is an open
Speaker 1: secret within the civic integrity space, which is where she
Speaker 1: worked in that Facebook short term decisions are largely motivated
Speaker 1: by pr and the potential for negative decision. She wrote,
Speaker 1: noting that she was told directly at a summit that
Speaker 1: anything published in the New York Times or the Washington
Speaker 1: Post would obtain elevated priority. It's why I've seen priorities
Speaker 1: of escalation shoot up when others start threatening to go
Speaker 1: to the press, and why I was informed by a
Speaker 1: leader in my organization that my civic work was not impactful,
Speaker 1: under the rationale that if the problems were meaningful, they
Speaker 1: would have attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced
Speaker 1: the company to devote more attention to the space. So
Speaker 1: when less white journalists write about something Facebook's done that
Speaker 1: got people killed, it doesn't matter. Don't care. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's I mean, we did, we did, We did
Speaker 1: know that. But I mean, just on on this. But
Speaker 1: she was told that by someone who was her boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is just I it's a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: the Post in the New York Times too, Okay, So
Speaker 1: I guess I I hope I speak for everyone when
Speaker 1: I say I care about this, Yeah it's important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I give a shit about Ethiopia. Please stop enabling race riots.
Speaker 1: Mark um So. In February of two nineteen, a NATO
Speaker 1: strategic communications researcher, like I said, reached out and like
Speaker 1: warned the company that he that was the thing about,
Speaker 1: like he'd seen evidence of inauthentic Russian activity backing like
Speaker 1: a high profile US figure and yeah, the researcher warned
Speaker 1: them that he would be briefing Congress with his findings
Speaker 1: the next day. And this the company cared about, so
Speaker 1: Zaying was sent in to minimize the fallout. She was
Speaker 1: able to investigate the case, figure out what was going on,
Speaker 1: and remove the activity immediately, so that by the time
Speaker 1: this guy went up in front of Congress, they had
Speaker 1: taken care of the issue. Um And shortly thereafter, the
Speaker 1: same researcher tried another experiment um where he like made
Speaker 1: a report to them but didn't include a threat, and
Speaker 1: nothing happened for six months. Um So eventually he sent
Speaker 1: a report to the press and it finally caused a
Speaker 1: pr fire. But he just like like just kind of
Speaker 1: approved that, like, yeah, they don't care unless there's a
Speaker 1: chance that they will get publicly yelled at the actual
Speaker 1: harm means nothing to them any and even so when
Speaker 1: someone publicly yells at them, you'd get that fucking speech again.
Speaker 1: Of like to realize that there is a problem. There
Speaker 1: is a problem. So Zang came to feel that the
Speaker 1: main focus of her job, rather than actually combating this
Speaker 1: behavior in reducing harm, was to help the company deal
Speaker 1: with what she called large scale problems. And this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean a more serious problem. It means a problem that
Speaker 1: affects enough people that they have to care about it.
Speaker 1: So we're actually not talking about genocides here. We're talking
Speaker 1: about spam networks. Because spam networks impact a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and so they're a larger priority than disinformation going viral
Speaker 1: and leading to race riots. Uh, spam is a big problem,
Speaker 1: so it outweighs tiny problems like say election fraud by
Speaker 1: the president of Honduras. Zaying came to feel the main
Speaker 1: focus of her job, rather than combatting this behavior reducing harm,
Speaker 1: was to help the company deal with these problems. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, this meant that spam networks were a bigger
Speaker 1: issue than than things that cause death. Uh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's so let's let's talk. Let's zoom in on Honduras,
Speaker 1: on the thing that is less of a problem than
Speaker 1: spam networks. So they don't say this lately. This is
Speaker 1: the most upset I've ever been during this show. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: So saying finds evidence that the president of Honduras and
Speaker 1: his party are using multiple fake accounts to boost engagement
Speaker 1: and spread content that is benefiting them in the lead
Speaker 1: up to a presidential election. Um and Zane was able
Speaker 1: to make a connection to the Honduran leader because an
Speaker 1: administrator for the president's Facebook page had been was caught.
Speaker 1: She caught him basically running hundreds of fake assets, not
Speaker 1: even trying to hide it. Uh. And she reported all
Speaker 1: of these thousands of fake accounts and a clear attempt
Speaker 1: to manipulate a national election to Facebook's threat intelligence and
Speaker 1: policy review teams, both of which took months to give
Speaker 1: any sort of response. Um and yeah it So it
Speaker 1: took almost a year to take down this operation, which
Speaker 1: Facebook announced in July of two thousand nineteen. Um and
Speaker 1: taking it down didn't actually do anything because the operation
Speaker 1: got set back up again, which Facebook never disclosed, and
Speaker 1: they didn't take it down again. So it took about
Speaker 1: two weeks. Yeah, and it's still going on right now. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this president who created this massive you know, or
Speaker 1: who had this massive fraudulent network set up to help
Speaker 1: him regain election one reelection under circumstances, international monitors and
Speaker 1: basically everyone describes as fraudulent. Um. Facebook felt comfortable letting
Speaker 1: the slide after their first sweet because in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, Honduras is a small country. As Zang wrote,
Speaker 1: the civic aspect was discounted because of its small volume.
Speaker 1: It's disproportionate impact ignored the civic aspect, of course, being
Speaker 1: that a president with dictatorial ambitions uh, fraudulently won an
Speaker 1: election um in part due to what he was able
Speaker 1: to do on Facebook. So yeah, that it's it's frustrating
Speaker 1: that the civic aspect is like the term Facebook uses
Speaker 1: for entire nations democracies, which are less of a priority
Speaker 1: to them than like a spam network. And this is
Speaker 1: something Zang came to understand. She she got a pretty
Speaker 1: good eye for how Mark and her other bosses thought
Speaker 1: during her time doing this job and how long would
Speaker 1: she in this position? Sorry years? Yeah, so face she
Speaker 1: figured out over time kind of how to manipulate Mark
Speaker 1: and other executives in the company in order to get
Speaker 1: them to act on certain things they would otherwise ignore Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean mainly making them think that there might be
Speaker 1: some sort of like outcry against them. Facebook uses an
Speaker 1: internal company messaging app for employee communications, and since reporting
Speaker 1: her concerns about potential genocides didn't seem to matter, Zang
Speaker 1: started skipping the steps to officially report problems and just
Speaker 1: posting openly to her coworkers about specific things she was finding,
Speaker 1: because if she could get her colleagues outraged and talking,
Speaker 1: she could force management to care. Quote in the office,
Speaker 1: I realized that my viewpoints weren't respected unless I acted
Speaker 1: like an arrogant asshole. So Zaying asked Facebook to do
Speaker 1: more in terms of finding and stopping malicious activity related
Speaker 1: to elections and political activity um and She says that
Speaker 1: she was turned down because human resources are limited. She
Speaker 1: was then ordered to stop focusing on civic work. I
Speaker 1: was told that Facebook would no longer have further need
Speaker 1: for my services if I refused. Okay, okay, so stop
Speaker 1: talking about the genocide or fire you or you don't
Speaker 1: have health insurance? Got it? Another terrifying case she ran
Speaker 1: into was a year by Jan Now in that country,
Speaker 1: Zang discovered another vast network of an authentic accounts being
Speaker 1: used by the president and his party to spread propaganda
Speaker 1: and influence an election. The whole operation is very similar
Speaker 1: to the one run by Russia's Internet Research agency. It
Speaker 1: involved quote dedicated employees who worked nine to six Monthey
Speaker 1: through Friday work to create millions of comments targeting members
Speaker 1: of the opposition and reporters critical to the president. Uh
Speaker 1: Facebook never publicized what Zang found there, nor did they
Speaker 1: take any action against it. Zang wrote that they didn't
Speaker 1: care enough to stop it because it's like it's sucking
Speaker 1: a jerby Jan. Do you even know where jearby Jan is? No?
Speaker 1: Fuck them, fuck their democracy. Buzz yeah, two hundred years apiece,
Speaker 1: that's what we're um. BuzzFeed actually reached out to some
Speaker 1: journalists in a Jerbaijan about their experiences with this network
Speaker 1: and about Facebook, and those journalists pointed out that, in
Speaker 1: addition to not stopping this inauthentic activity network, uh Facebook
Speaker 1: sometimes removed the pages of Humans Rights Act human rights
Speaker 1: activists due to reports from trolls and ignored journalists begging
Speaker 1: them that, like, this is a real person doing important work,
Speaker 1: please restore their account, because like, why would they care now?
Speaker 1: None of this is unique to jer Baijan, and in fact,
Speaker 1: all of it happens to some extent in the United States.
Speaker 1: To Facebook just feels more pressure to act here. Um
Speaker 1: the difference with the United States, yes again that they
Speaker 1: have to pretend that they care here now. As soon
Speaker 1: as they operated somewhere off the beaten path. From an
Speaker 1: American's perspective, anything goes. In Bolivia, for example, Zang found
Speaker 1: inauthentic activity supporting an opposite the opposition presidential candidate in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. She chose not to focus on it
Speaker 1: because she just had so many other genocides to deal with,
Speaker 1: and a month later, a coup racked the nation, leading
Speaker 1: to widespread protests and dozens of deaths um great She
Speaker 1: made the same call in Ecuador after a two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen election that many claim was fraudulent. Prior to
Speaker 1: the vote, Zang found massive and authentic activity supporting the
Speaker 1: ruling party, who later won the election under suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 1: There were horrifying consequences to this. Three years later, the
Speaker 1: coronavirus hit and this fraudulent government was in charge. They
Speaker 1: did not do a good job of being in charge.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from a New York Times
Speaker 1: article on are on Ecuador's response to the coronavirus. Quote
Speaker 1: with bodies abandoned on sidewalk, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into
Speaker 1: cardboard coffins, and stacked by the hundreds and morgues. It
Speaker 1: is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus,
Speaker 1: but the epidemic is even worse than many people in
Speaker 1: the country recognize. The death toll in Ecuador during the
Speaker 1: outbreak was fifteen times higher than the official number of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen deaths reported by the government, according to an
Speaker 1: analysis of mortality data by The New York Times. The
Speaker 1: numbers suggests that the South American country is suffering one
Speaker 1: of the worst outbreaks in the world, thanks in large
Speaker 1: part to the incompetent government that was fraudulently elected, thanks
Speaker 1: in a significant part to the Facebook campaign, the illegal
Speaker 1: and fraudulent Facebook campaign. It ran that Facebook and didn't
Speaker 1: have time to care about where One midlevel employee was
Speaker 1: threatened with having a livelihood removed if she didn't shut
Speaker 1: the hell up about it. I am certain Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: lost no sleepover Ecuador, O Bolivia, or any of these
Speaker 1: other places. But Sophie Zang definitely did and probably will
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. As she wrote in
Speaker 1: that letter, I have made countless decisions in this vein,
Speaker 1: from Iraq to Indonesia, from Italy to El Salvador. Individually,
Speaker 1: the impact was likely small in each case, but the
Speaker 1: world is a vast place. Although I made the best
Speaker 1: decision I could based on the knowledge available at the time,
Speaker 1: Ultimately I was the one who made the decision not
Speaker 1: to push more or prioritize further in each case. And
Speaker 1: I know that I have blood on my hands by now.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, she's not wrong, but that's just yah
Speaker 1: she's doing. Before she was fired, Facebook offered Sophie's sixty
Speaker 1: four dollars in severance if she would agree to sign
Speaker 1: a non disparagement clause, which would state that she basically
Speaker 1: couldn't talk at all about her work, which is just
Speaker 1: putting a price on the lives of people, like it's
Speaker 1: just yeah, and not a high one. She turned down
Speaker 1: the money, so that should be able to sleep at
Speaker 1: night in the future. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, I
Speaker 1: mean getting into the ethics of that is just a
Speaker 1: fucking she. I mean she definitely should not be sleeping well.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, if she was not
Speaker 1: the one point the lovers on some on something like that,
Speaker 1: they would have found someone to do it, and probably
Speaker 1: someone worse at it who cared less. Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I actually don't attribute much moral blame to her, other
Speaker 1: than maybe not blowing the whistle earlier, just because like,
Speaker 1: when you're in that position, there's a strong case to
Speaker 1: be made that like I if I, if I'm here,
Speaker 1: I can at least do something, and if I leave
Speaker 1: even less will be done. Um, which seems verifiably true.
Speaker 1: And yes, yeah, yeah, anyway, Jamie, that's part one. Awesome.
Speaker 1: What could I'm like, well, could well? Could? I don't Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll find out. Yeah, this has been truly horrible. Yep,
Speaker 1: do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: do you want to What do you want to sell today? Jamie?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fucking not. Well. Okay, uh wait does this come
Speaker 1: out next week? When does this come out? Yeah? This
Speaker 1: is next week. We have no backlog anymore. I decided
Speaker 1: to spend sixty or seventy nights out rioting just okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, things come up, things come up. To put
Speaker 1: it like Mark Zuckerberg would things come up. There was
Speaker 1: an issue, There was an issue, and we're actually keeping
Speaker 1: a really close eye on it. That's you right now
Speaker 1: that I uh, yeah, you can. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram if you want. Um. The Bechtel Cast,
Speaker 1: my podcast, is doing a fundraiser for a candidate named
Speaker 1: Fatima like Ball zubertful, she's the best. She's running in
Speaker 1: District sixty four, California. So we're doing a fundraiser for her.
Speaker 1: We're reading the entire script of Twilight uh this Friday,
Speaker 1: So if you donate to her play. I purchased all
Speaker 1: of my Edward Cullen cosplay Extremely Tall and incredibly toxic.
Speaker 1: These are traits that we share and so I am
Speaker 1: playing Edward Cullen. Um, so yeah, I would just say
Speaker 1: go to that, donate to Fatima's campaign, and funk quarky
Speaker 1: baby yeah right. Aimed on that note, I don't know
Speaker 1: who four B is, but episodes gone