Part One: Mark Zuckerberg Should Be On Trial For Crimes Against Humanity

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
What digging graves for my democracy? I'm Robert Evans. Uh.
This is Behind the Bastards podcast about the worst people
in all the history. UH. My guest this week for
a very special two parter UH is the Inimitable Um
which I've introduced you as the Inimitable the the very

(00:23):
close to Emmy winning Jamie Loft. I lost a fokey, Robert,
and I don't know who that is, which means you
one in my in my book. I knew. I was like,
there's no way that Robert knows who Forky is and
that is going to give me piece. Yeah, I never
heard of, never heard of? Is it someone the teens like?

(00:47):
Because I you know what I hate is the teens.
I don't hate the teens. The teens are obsessed with
four key. They need their TikTok if they need their
their cold route, and they need their forky. Does this
have something to do with whatever A hundred gus is?
What is that? It's some it's some music thing that

(01:08):
the teens love. The teens who are always starting the
fires love love hundred gus and I love the teens
who are always starting the fires from the teens from
the fire Team from the fire Team. He was No,
he was a spork. I just looks like I ordered
a quirky and I'm gonna throw it. I'm gonna like

(01:30):
smash it up. I don't need to be a good
sport about losing to no no funk that noise. Let's
find his home address and commit federal I mean, sorry,
wreaky down and I'm going to commit a crime like yeah,
I was when I was like, I wonder how mine craft.
Oh the teens love their Minecraft. No, I mean, I'm

(01:50):
just saying you should only talk about committing crimes in
Minecraft because then you can't get in trouble if you
do commit the crime later. That's the way the law works. Well,
I've been kicked off of Twitter for ename the life
of someone fictional before, so wondering if it if it
would happen with Forky. But it seems like Jack is
in full agreement that Forky's gotta go. Yeah, you know

(02:10):
who else has to go Jamie about crimes and definitely
have to go. I opened this episode, you know, saying,
who's who's the digging graves for my democracy? You know,
and sort of the you know, that's kind of a
will play on my One of the ways I introduced
the show, Well, the person who's digging graves for our
democracy is Mark Zuckerberg, and we have another two parter

(02:33):
about him today. Yeah, that's right. I can't believe you're
doing this. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote another like ten thousand
words about Mark Zuckerberg, just for you, Jamie, just for you.
So it's worth of crime since we last spoke, I
think about him. Yeah, he's done more than that. I
had to leave, like there's I just finished writing last

(02:53):
night and there was still like four articles worth of
stuff to conclude that. I was just like, well, I'm
not getting to this because I have to sleep. Listen,
we're all we're all entitled to sleeve. I have wear this.
I ordered a horrible shirt with Mark Zuckerberg on it
the last time we covered him, You did, I wear
it all the time. It's all worn in. What with
all the crimes? What with all the crimes? YEA, well, Uh,

(03:17):
let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg. So we've talked about Mark
and his creation Facebook quite a lot on this show already.
Last year we did a three part series on the
Son of a Bitch. Uh, but a lot has happened
since then, and Mark himself has only grown more dangerous
and I so, yeah, we have to talk about him
again and his company. And I think that in order

(03:38):
to properly tell this story, we're going to need to
actually go back to Mark's backstory because there's a rather
critical part of it, um and a part of his
psychological profile that I left out during the last series
of episodes because I'm a hack in a fraud, so
I missed this last time well known, but it it
connects some dots that I think are important, especially in

(03:58):
the context with him fucking at Harvard. No um, I
mean a lot has to do with him not fucking
at Harvard, but this is not specifically about that, although
it probably played into the fact that nobody wanted to
fuck him at Harvard um slash. Ever, So yeah, let's
we're gonna go back in time to what I think
is Jamie's favorite period of history, the childhood of Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, yeah,

(04:22):
I go, there are my dreams. Yeah, we all ye.
In particular, we're gonna be talking about his high school
years at Williams Exeter Academy. Now um at present tuition,
their costs a little less than forty five thou dollars
a year for the day school, which is more than
the average American makes. Um. Yeah, as you might expect,

(04:46):
young Mark spent a lot of his time their coding, fencing,
and studying Latin um, which is like two out of
three things that I did in high school too. So
you know, yeah, the crime of being for us to
study Latin, I'll never get over it. Yeah, No, it
ruined my life, except for that one time we got
to watch Life of Brian in class um, which I

(05:09):
feel like the teacher was stretching and justifying, but I
was grateful for. So Mark was in particular a really
big fan of studying Latin, unlike us. He he loved
it in his study of the language, bread a fascination
with the history of ancient rome Um. And again, I
kind of find this interesting because that's like the opposite
of how it happened to me. I took Latin because
I was a huge history nerd about Roman history, and

(05:33):
then I stopped liking Roman history as much because I
was so bored of Latin class um. Yeah, so Mark
fell in love with the language because learning it was
fairly similar to coding, and then he kind of fell
in love with the history next, and he later explained
to a reporter, quote, you have all these good and
bad and complex figures. I think Augustus is one of

(05:54):
the most fascinating. Now, Jamie. The Augustus he's talking about
was Augustus Caesar, who was, uh, the guy who became
the very first Roman emperor in thirty one b c.
He was Julius Caesar's hair air and uh, yeah, he
was Julius Caesar's air um. And he was just seventeen
years old when his mentor died um. And suddenly he

(06:14):
founds himself in control of like Caesar's armies and like
fighting for uh control of Rome. And he basically kind
of as a result of this, spent almost his entire
life in power um. And by the time he was
finally emperor um his which like took some years. You know,
Caesar dies and there's a bunch of wars and stuff
um like, so by the time he's like emperor in

(06:36):
his twenties, um. Like the idea, like any memory of
his life, Like think back to when you were like
twenty five, how well you remembered being fifteen, right, um,
sixteen years old? Not at all? Um? So by the
time he's emperor, Like Augustus is like everything that isn't
commanding armies and controlling the destiny of millions would have
been like a dim memory. Um. You can see why.

(07:00):
You can see why Mark has continued after getting out
of high school to kind of identify with this guy,
because both of them are people who, like, while they're
you know, very young adults, uh, come into unbelievable power
um and misuse it and largely misuse it. Yeah, Mark
would not say that Augustus largely misused it, of course

(07:21):
not Now. Augustus did go on to become one of
the longest serving emperors in Roman history, and he's generally
remembered as one of the best, although this is mainly
because he hired all of the like a bunch of
broke authors and poets to write the history of his
reign um as opposed to like, historians are increasingly critical
of Augustus as they analyze actual history and not just

(07:44):
like read whatever I think it was Swetonius like just
wrote about it. Yeah, it's like a hiring like fan
fake writers on five Like, hey, that's literally what the
India it is, you know, the India is like the
poem like it's it's it's a rip off of the
Iliad that's supposed to be about the founding of Rome
that connects it to the sacking of troy Um and

(08:06):
was written largely as like a largely to glorify Augustus
because it was like shaking the case that his ancestors
were all these fucking cool ass people. It's also frustrating
to me, like when when things like the Anid are
treated as like unquestionable primary source, where it's like, no,
people were fucking around with the portrayal of history always.

(08:28):
It was propaganda, even more shallow than our propaganda is today. Um.
I fell asleep reading it when I was fourteen. It's
it's also bad. It's a bad book. M boring. It's
boring as hell, unlike the Iliad, which which absolutely slaps
um like pretty good book, all things considered. Good ship

(08:50):
in there, some good ideas, good ship in there. And
Virgil I don't know, I only remember like half of
this stuff, and I didn't check that he had a ghostwriter.
Fuck Virgil. I mean he kind of was the Emperor's
ghost right anyway. Whatever, So yeah, Augustus like propaganda like
hires a bunch of propagandists to to make it look

(09:12):
like he was. He was like awesome, UM, and that's
part of why we remember him as being amazing and
part of why Mark is obsessed with him. UM. And
you know, one of the things that's interesting about Augustus
is that his birth name was actually Octavian. He took
the name Augustus because it meant lofty or serene, and
he needed everybody to know how cool he was. So

(09:32):
it's not it's not hard to see why young Mark
would have liked both idolized and um identified with this guy.
By the time he was thirty, Augustus controlled basically the
entire Western world. UM and Mark Zuckerberg, by the time
he was thirty controlled an online empire larger than the
entire Western world. He controlled my entire self esteem for
a good half a decade. Yeah, and destroyed all of

(09:54):
journalism anyway. So he uh so again, you can see
like why why Mark idolizes this guy, because he's had
a lifelong fascination with him. In an interview with The
New Yorker, Zuckerberg explained, quote, basically, through a really harsh approach,
he being Augustus established two hundred years of world peace.
What are the trade offs in that? Zuckerberg said, growing animated.

(10:16):
On one hand, world piece is a long term goal
that people talk about today, two hundred years feels unattainable.
On the other hand, he said that didn't come for free,
and he had to do certain things. Very funny. Honestly,
I gotta be you kind of lost me for a
second it becoming animated, because I cannot really imagine. I

(10:39):
can imagine for him, the only thing that makes him,
that makes him show human emotion is thinking about dominating
the entire world and forcing it into to act the
way he wants it to. Um like imagining himself as
dictator of the planet is the only thing that brings
him excitement. It's what It's what his wife has to

(10:59):
like with spur into his ears in order to help
in order to make a child with him. I guess.
I guess world leaders can have very weak arms. I
don't know. Do you think he spits when he talks? Yes, yes,
it's either it's I feel the same way about how
I always think of like does beetle juice come wet
scabs or dry scabs? I could picture of having a

(11:21):
very wet mouth or a very dry mouth. He's a
heavy breather. Yeah, it's it's a nightmare all around. I
think we can all agree on that. Um But what's
most important to note at this point is that Mark
Zuckerberg number one, Augustus and this idea that he brought
world peace for a two hundred years very important to Mark.

(11:42):
Important for him to talk about two journalists and stuff,
something he really makes a point of getting out completely inaccurate,
wildly inaccurate. There's a number of reasons it's wildly inaccurate.
For one, thing, like he's talking about he's when he
says two hundred years of peace, he's talking about two
hundre years of peace. And like the Mediterranean and Western Europe,

(12:04):
he's not talking about China, he's not talking about Southeast Asia,
he's not talking about Japan. He's not talking about North America,
South America, the Caribbean, all of which were places that
had wars and conflicts during this period. Because again, Mark
is fundamentally incapable of, like like a lot of Americans,
fundamentally incapable about thinking of thinking about those places as

(12:26):
as real as as Western history. Um So, number one,
that's that's a problem right from the jump. But even
within the context, even if we give him credit and
saying like he's saying no, no, he had two hundred
years of peace within sort of the classical ancient world,
that's also complete horseshit um. Because yeah, I'm gonna just

(12:47):
read a short list of some of the wars that
Rome got involved with during the two hundred years after
Augustus came to power. The Roman Partian War of fifty
eight to sixty three, Buddhica is Uprising. This was like
that that that English queen who like led an uprising
against Rome in the sixty sixty to sixty one UM.

(13:07):
The First Jewish Roman War sixty six to seventy three,
these is a d sorry, the Roman Civil War of
sixty eight to sixty nine, a d Damitian's Decklin War
eight six to eighty eight, The First Dation War one
hundred and one to one hundred and two, the Second
Dation War one hundred and five to one hundred six,

(13:27):
The Roman Persian Wars which started in the middle or
in the early hundreds, the Quito's War, the Second Jewish
Revolt from one thirty two to one thirty five, the
Marco Manic Wars from one sixty six to one eighty,
and of course the Roman Civil War of a hundred
and ninety three to one hundred and ninety seven. And again, well,
I mean, I think if you put those twenty or

(13:48):
so other than all of the wars I just listed,
it was a period of total peace. It's like saying
after war war to the US presided over like half
a century of global peace if we ignore the millions
who died in Vietnam and Cambodia and Lao in Korea. Um,

(14:10):
and of course all of the hundreds of thousands potentially
millions who died in Latin America. Um. Half a century
of peace, complete total peace? What what I mean? To
be fair? He went to Phillips Exeter Academy, So his
brain is a bunch of worms and a few empty
D batteries. Yeah, his history education was his teacher jacking

(14:32):
off with a flag and asking if the class had
any questions. Academy sucks. There was a boy that was
supposed to take me to a skating rink from there
once and then he he didn't show up. Well, that's
all I have to do to urge that people burned
down Phillips Exeter Academy. This is, in fact incitement to
a crime. Please um on behalf of Jamie, not for

(14:53):
the Mark Zuckerberg stuff. To defend your avenge my date
from two thousands from two wow, two thousand seven, I
forget you're younger than me. Um, so yeah, and so
those are that's that is a short list of some
of the wars that occurred in that two hundred year
period that Mark describes as world peace. Um, those were

(15:14):
not the only violent conflicts during that period. And outside
of those wars, that were a funkload of battles and
campaigns that Roman soldiers fought and died in during this period,
because there were just a lot of times we're like Romans,
there would be like a battle that was this conflict.
And you know, anyway, my favorite of these conflicts, and
I think one that we need to talk about before
we get back into the story of Mark Zuckerberg, because

(15:35):
I think this is relevant. My favorite of these battles
that happened during Augustus is two hundred years of Peace
is the Battle of Tudeberg Forest. Um, have you ever
heard of the Battle of Tudeberg Forest? No good name
though yeah, you you might also call it why you
should never funk with the Germans um. And this happened
kind of later on in Augustus reign when he was

(15:57):
an older man, And the basic story is that the
general named Virus leads three entire Roman Legions, which the
whole nations have been were destroyed by forces of that side.
Three Roman Legions is a is a It's about eighteen
thousand men and a massively competent armed force, like the
Roman Legion is the deadliest weapon in the world of

(16:17):
this period of time. So this guy Virus in order
to kind of push the Roman borders eastward and basically
is a way to like they've been having issues with
these Germanic tribes, Like Virus is going in there with
this massive army to just like function up and show
the Germans who is boss um. But they wind up
in the middle of these deep, dark German forests and

(16:38):
they're led into an ambush by a German soldier guy
named Armenius, who actually had gained Roman citizenship but was like, yeah,
working for the other team. And it's this horrible one
of the one of like the five or six great
military disasters in all of human history. The entire Roman
army is massacred, leaving behind a pile of bones that

(16:59):
are still being discovered to this day. Um. It was
one of the great defeats in Rome's long history, and
it basically stopped Rome's expansion to the east. Um, Like
this is this is a an incredibly like it's it's
just a nightmarish military defeat, and it's an incredibly significant battle.
And it came after decades of what had been continuous

(17:19):
expansion for Augustus. Right, he'd gotten used to everything working
for him militarily, and then there's just this complete calamitous defeat. Um.
And the loss of so many of Rome's best soldiers
in a single battle is said by historians to have
kind of broken the emperor's mind. Um. One of his
own like private paid historians wrote that for weeks afterwards,

(17:42):
he would just wander around his palace in a day's
slamming his head into doors and screaming, varus, give me
back my legions. Okay, I will say that this is
very similar to what I've been doing with Forky for
the past. Yeah. Yeah, you can really empathize with Augustus here. Yeah, Okay, now,
I'm starting to see see his side of things in

(18:04):
a way. Haven't we all gotten eighteen thousand Italians killed
in the woods of Germany? Thousand Italians living in my mind? Yeah,
we're all Italians anyway. So yeah, So this, this is
this is a battle that's important I think to understand,
in part because it occurs during the two years of Peace,

(18:25):
and in part because Um Augustus is a figure that
reminds me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg and what happened
to him in this defeat the Hubrists that led him.
There is something that I think will happen to Mark eventually.
I don't know what Marks teudeberg Wold will be. Um.
I don't think it was Cambridge Analytica, but I think

(18:46):
it is coming. Um. Yeah. And I'm sure Mark knows
that story. He has to. It's one of the most
famous stories in all of Roman history. He's a nerd
about this stuff. He absolutely knows about that battle. I've
never seen him talk about it though, Um, but he
talks about Augustus a lot. Um. He did note that
during that New Yorker article that he and his fiance
now wife Priscilla spent their honeymoon in Rome quote. My

(19:10):
wife was making fun of me, saying she thought there
were three people on the honeymoon, me her and Augustus.
All of the photos were different sculptures of Augustus. They
go on vacation to Rome for their honeymoon, and he
just keeps taking pictures of sculptures of this dead asshole
um because he thinks that he's he's the new emperor
of the world, just like just Priscilla having her bad

(19:35):
decisions shoved in her face over and over, averaging the past.
She's a billionaire now, so she I mean, she's also
the worst. You know. I don't have any sympathy for her, really, Yeah,
but I do believe. I do believe, like a lot
of you know, you always have to kind of second
guests things that Mark says in interviews because he's a
liar um and because he's trying to get out a

(19:58):
propaganda narrative, much like Augustus was by hiring all of
those those UH poets to write his story. Um. But
I think Mark's being honest when he talks about his
fascination with Augustus UM, because number one, have you seen
the picture of him getting that fun He keeps getting
the haircut. He keeps getting the fucking haircut that like
Augustus has, like the Roman emperor haircut. That why he

(20:19):
has that shitty haircut. Yes, it is. He makes his
wife give it to him. I'm going to send you
it's it's the worst thing that's ever happened. And there's
a photo as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, he
had his wife started giving him the fucking weird Roman
haircut that he gets, the weird Augustus type haircut, the
Octavian or whatever. I'm sending you a picture right now.

(20:41):
We'll have it up on the site. And it's just
his eyes or he has the dead it's like that.
It's like that scene in Jaws, like dead eyes, like
a doll's eyes, not a little like Chuck has a
more emotive character than him. It's that is so, but
it is. It's horrible funny. He does not have the

(21:04):
hairline for that haircut. No one, no one has, like
it was a bad haircut for the emperors to have.
I've seen I've seen this question kind of asked about
a few times. I saw it, most recently asked by
Julia Claire. But like, why are all billionaires, Like why
can't they afford to like look okay? Like why can't
they not ani look okay? Because I don't think any

(21:27):
of them. There's a couple of them that I think generally,
like like Richard Branson and Mark Cuban all are able
to like dress like human beings. Um. But then you
have the guys like you have like Elon Musk, Bill Gates,
Mark Suckerberg, who all looked like they were like poured
into um, like a skin suit. And I don't know

(21:48):
what the differences um, because there there are clearly some
of these guys who are able to at least like
imitate being like a person. Um. Mark Cuban does a
decent impression of a human being, but he knows how
people are supposed to dress. He is a basic concept
of like human beings do this. He says words in

(22:09):
an order. Yeah, in a way, we all pretending to
be John Cena. Yeah, yeah, I would. I would like
Mark Zuckerberg a lot better if he were pretending to
be John Cena. But he's pretending to be an emperor
with a shitty haircut. I mean that does answer questions
that I had. That is helpful information. Yeah, I don't
know what's going on, but yeah, so he's He's just

(22:31):
also the name their second daughter, August. So like whatever, Mark,
this is marked weird things. I think he's being honest
about it. Um. Yeah, and it it's it makes sense
for him to this to have been like a childhood
fascination of him, because one of the things you find
when you look into people who knew Mark is that
kind of since he was a kid, he has always
seen himself as rising to greatness. Um, which is this

(22:55):
kind of narcissism that I think is born from growing
up in a growing up male white, an upper middle
class in a place where mostly affluent people live, and
then going to a school where they tell you you're gifted. Um,
Like a lot of kids wind up with the same

(23:16):
sort of delusions of grandeur. Reality has indulged Marks for
so for some time. But like one of his childhood
friends told that interview with the New Yorker quote, I
think Mark has always seen himself as a man of history,
someone who is destined to be great. And I mean
that in the broadest sense of the term, which is
a terrible thing to be because when you're that kind
of person, you will do almost anything to try to

(23:38):
make the reality outside your head correspond with the expectations
within it. Um, and Mark has done that. So speaking
of history, Jamie, since we just talked about some of that,
Mark or Facebook at least, has made a bit of
history since we last discussed Mark in his creation. Uh,
there's been new milestones for for membership and for page

(23:58):
engagement that have been hit, which I'm sure you're very
excited about, especially with this big election coming up. I
cannot wait all sorts of good stuff. UM. But I
see some really productive, useful conversation going on as well.
It seems like things are very healthy. And speaking of healthy,
I think the thing that I want to talk to
the history that Facebook has been responsible for that I

(24:18):
want to talk about right now is um is what
it's brought to Ethiopia. UM. Have you heard anything about
Facebook's recent performance in Ethiopia and what's happened there. I've
heard a little bit. I've heard a little bit. I've heard,
I mean Facebook, um in in in any way I
learned most about, which I think we talked about last
time was Facebook and Meanmar. But the Ethiopics stuff I've

(24:42):
got to catch up. Yeah, I don't want to like
spoil it right away because it's a fun story. But
it rhymes with schmith nick cleansing. Um, oh that was
what they were doing over in That's yeah. Yeah, it
keeps happening to countries you have Facebook and interesting yeah
so uh. Facebook has been pop layer and a number
of African nations for for quite a while now, and

(25:03):
in many of these countries, like Ethiopia, the Internet is
basically a synonym for Facebook to millions of people because
it's just like the way they interface with the Internet,
like Facebook and the Internet are the same thing. They
don't use a browser, they see everything through Facebook. Um.
And despite the popularity of Facebook in Ethiopia the country
and in Africa in general, because it's it's become increasingly

(25:24):
popular across the entire continent. But despite its popularity, Facebook
only opened its first content moderation center on the continent
in two thousand nineteen, which is a problem because Africa
is enormous, like it fits a couple in North America's
in there. You probably should have had a content center
somewhere on the fucking continent, like you should have one

(25:44):
in every country you're doing business in. But they only
added one to just just one on the fucking continent
in two thousand nineteen, which is I'm not frising from
that comp but like that's just yeah. Now, they promised
to hire a hun drew people to work there through
third party companies. Um, and we don't know if they've
actually done that. Number one, it's sketchy that it continues

(26:07):
to be through third party companies, which is what Facebook
does so that they can interesting that they're just continuing
this whole third party company thing. Doesn't seem like it's
gone very well for them in the past. Yeah. That way,
if an employee makes a decision that gets people killed,
it's not a Facebook employee that made a decision that
gets got people killed, and so they don't have to
care about it, um, which is very ethical. And then
they can release a really cute statement that they're like,

(26:29):
we had no idea and we're really random. Person made
a mistake. How could we have? Yeah, human error? Yeah? Um.
You know what doesn't make errors jamie products or services
products services. Uh. And you know our longtime sponsor, Raytheon.
You might have heard some news lately Jamie about has

(26:51):
had a lot of employees go uh okay, you know.
So if you're antipathy towards the Raytheon Corporation is all
noted um. But I want to ask you to imagine
a world without Ray Theon. Imagine a world where children
in Afghanistan are able to go to bed at night

(27:11):
and not live in terror that clear skies will bring
the attack of a predator drone that could wipe out
the entire family. Imagine school buses in Yemen not being
blown up by missiles fired by people in control stations
somewhere in a desert in Nevada using Raytheon's wonderful technology.
Imagine missiles that aren't full of knives. You know, I

(27:35):
don't want to live in that world, which is why
I choose to buy Ray Theon and why I think
you should choose listeners to buy Raytheon. Sorry, I didn't
hear anything. I was thinking about Nacho cheese Derito's. You know,
if ray Theon made derritos, they would kill a lot
of school children in Yemen. Anyway, here's products. Oh we're back.

(28:04):
Oh my gosh. I don't know about the rest of you,
but those products and services. Really I just took a
hit of Raytheon. Yeah, I've been huffing Raytheon so hard
that I I keep my right on a little rag
and I just put it in a rag like the
paint that I also once I'm out of paint and glue,

(28:28):
Raytheon and huffing paint allies in. That sounds like a
reality abas, that sounds like a really rich person's name. Paint. Yeah,
that's how the rich people huff. So yeah. Facebook sets
up this data center. It's first and only one in Africa.
They promised to hire a hundred people, and we don't

(28:49):
know if they even hired a hundred people to work.
Is there any confirmation that no, no, because they don't
have to be open about any of this. We also
don't know which regions of the country any of those
folks have specialized in, which languages they might have spoken. Again,
Africa is the size of several North America's. There's an
enormous variety of nations and cultures and conflicts like like like,

(29:14):
I would say anything less than a couple of thousand
people focusing on content in that continent would seem just
just so irresponsible as to be purely ornamental. Um and
like thousands, like a couple of thousand people probably honestly
isn't enough because of how many millions of Like, yeah,
it's too big a responsibility for a few hundred employees

(29:37):
to even that's absurd. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just unbelievably
shoddy worksmanship they had. And yeah, so again and because
there's Facebook doesn't have to be open um about anything,
we don't even know like which areas of the country
were represented by the content moderation team. Uh VICE reports

(29:59):
though that Facebook community standards, like the list of their
standards has not been translated into either of Ethiopia's two
main languages, which suggests they don't have anybody in the
continent who can functionally monitor what's happening in Ethiopia. The
company has no full time employees in the country. Now
this is a problem UM because Ethiopia, like many countries,

(30:24):
has a number of bad actors in its national political
scene and a lot of ethnic conflicts that have been
exacerbated by Facebook. UM. One of the bad actors in
Ethiopia is a guy named Jawar Mohammed, who is an
Ethno nationalist and Aromo Ethno nationalist from the Aroma region
of the country. The Aroma are like like one of
the people's in in the region or in the country

(30:45):
that that we call Ethiopia. Um and, and Jamar has
started like a private TV network based on his success
and Facebook. He's got like one point seven or five
million followers on the site. Um so he's extremely popular.
Um He's a big content creator who basically got famous
as a result of his ability to use and manipulate Facebook.

(31:07):
Um And one of his big things is regularly urging
people to do horrible violence to folks who are not
a Romo in Ethiopia on our popular approach. Yeah, it
keeps happening all over the world, and Facebook keeps failing
it handling it. On October nineteen, he took to Facebook
and fired off a series of posts claiming he was
about to be arrested by the police for some of

(31:30):
his political statements. This appears to have been a lie,
but it brought huge crowds of his supporters out into
the street, like massive numbers of people, and they start.
The horrible violence starts right the cops come out, and
the police wind up killing more than a dozen people,
and your supporters wind up committing a bunch of race
based sectary in murders and something like seventy folks die

(31:52):
by the time this is all over. Um, so yeah
he yeah, so this guy like like incites a series
of pace riots that kill like nearly seventy people, which
is a problem, you might say. Yeah, single Facebook post.
Yeah that isn't. Yeah, so Facebook at this point, if
not before, because they hadn't even thought about it for

(32:14):
a single second, Like Mark Zuckerberg had never, for a
moment in his life considered Ethiopia prior to this, the
fifteen years of this company's existence. Yeah, get good. Well
you it's not a major company. It's one of the places.
It's like, it's like all of the world outside of
the Roman Empire that he assumes was also at peace,
because he's sure as hell, I'm not going to give
a funk about their history. Yeah, asked Mark Zuckerberg for

(32:36):
how how long Ethiopia has been at peace? Yeah, I will,
I will let I will let fucking China know that. Um,
they were completely at peace and had no wars for
the two years after Octavian came to power. They will
be happy to have this information. Yeah, they'll be able
to edit their history books. Yeah, so Facebook, you know,

(32:56):
after this race riot that kills almost seventy people, knew
they had a proble bloom in Ethiopia. Yeah, and in
true Facebook fashion, they took no action. Um. As a
result deaths, um, they shifted no meaningful resources into the
country as ethnic and political strife there continued to heighten, uh,
fanned by the flames of viral Facebook memes. Now, I'm

(33:19):
not going to pretend I have much expertise over what's
happening in Ethiopia, because, like Facebook's executives, I know very
little about the country, which is perhaps why I have
not launched a massively influential media product that completely restructures
the way a great deal of the nation's communications occur,
because that would be irresponsible, Jamie, that would bears. But
you would maybe want to hire let's say more than

(33:41):
a hundred people too. I would want to hire a
lot of people if I were attempting to change the
entire way this country I don't understand communicates. Um, Yeah,
that would be the responsible thing to do. But yeah,
so as I do understand the conflict, A lot of
the ethnic tensions in the country have kind of broken

(34:02):
down around the president who was in a Romo and
a large number of people, many of whom voted for him,
who are a Romo, and who hate the fact that
he has not been a giant piece of ship to
members of other ethnic groups, Like he hasn't been racist
enough for a lot of people, and they're very angry
about it. Um. And these folks have gotten very like
used the vast hate machine that is Facebook to assault

(34:25):
the people that they deem a fault for their country's problems.
And one of these people, one of the people they
assaulted was a backer of the president named Hachallo Jundessa,
who was an Aromo singer who supported and raising up
marginalized voices within the Aromo ethnic group. Um. So he
seems like he was a pretty decent dude, um, Hachallo Jundessa.

(34:46):
So obviously, this massive internet hate mob that has formed
in Ethiopia turns its sights to this guy because he's
a supporter of the president. Earlier this year, they decided
he was like at the center of some weird conspiracy.
Think of it as like what happened to Tom Hanks
with Q and on right, Like, this famous person becomes
the center of an online conspiracy and hundreds of Facebook

(35:07):
pages start filling up with misinformation about this guy. Um
and I'm gonna quote next from a write up and
vice about what happened next quote. Hondessa was assassinated on
June twenty nine while driving through the capital Atisa Baba.
The man police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors that
he was working as an assassin for the Aroma Liberation Front,

(35:28):
an armed nationalist group linked to numerous violent attacks, and
who told the shooter that a Romeo would benefit from
the death of one of its most famous singers who
Hondessa's death at age thirty four set off a wave
of violence in the capital and his home region of
a Roma. Hundreds of people were killed, with minorities like
Christian m Harres, Christian Aromos and garage people suffering the
biggest losses. The bloodshed was supercharged by the almost instant

(35:50):
and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence
on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger. Mobs destroyed and
burned property, They lynched, beheaded and dismembered their victims. Jesus Christ,
So yeah, who could have predicted this after the last
race riot that killed huge numbers of people, Not I
Robert and not Mark Zuckerberg. It is I mean, it

(36:12):
is truly shocking that this this is I mean, I
guess not shocking isn't even the word. But this is
all happening within about what eighteen months of the like
a very similar horrific ethnic cleansing being pushed less than
that October of June. Oh well there you go. Not
very very short span of time. This is occurring in

(36:33):
um and again Facebook does basically nothing. Now, finally, after
these race riots that kill hundreds, Um, they they do
take some action. Um yeah, they sent a couple of
executives to Ethiopia on a fact finding mission and they yeah, yeah,
they went looking for some facts, looking for some facts,

(36:56):
magnifying glass. Yeah. And the company issued a statement that
it is quote aware of the complexities both within and
outside the country. These Facebook apologies for cleaning it's just
yeah complexities. Yeah, yeah, what we did we could be
described as complex. Yeah. Facebook says that is deeply concerned

(37:18):
about the issues flagged by human rights groups. Meanwhile, human
rights groups in Ethiopia are less than positive about what
the social network has actually done so far. According to Vice, quote,
activists say Facebook is instead relying on them in a
network of grassroots volunteers to flag content and keep the
seven hundred and fifty billion dollar company up to speed
about what's happening on the ground. They ask you to

(37:39):
jump on a call so that you can give them
more context. But fuck no, I said, I'm never going
to do that again. One Ethiopian activist who has been
repeatedly asked to speak to Facebook employees told Vice News.
The activists, yeah, like they're they're basically like, hey, we're
almost worth a trillion dollars. But can you people who
are under the gun and it individually in day injured

(38:00):
by our service provide us with free labor to understand
how we're endangering you. That would be great right there,
Like we forgot to put any protections in, but so
could you actually do this on the back end because
we're getting some rough pr right now? Are you being
shot at right now? Yeah? Anyway, we're not going to
pay you. There's that we don't. We just don't have

(38:22):
the money. It's been a rough year for us. A
trillion dollar country. Mark Zuckerberg, who bought forty five million
dollars of houses that surrounded his house so he could
live in property can't afford to pay more fact checking teams.
We're so sorry. Um, yeah, so this is horrific. You
think Facebook might have learned something after the last ethnic

(38:45):
cleansing their product helped to enable, which, if you'll remember
from our last episode, was in Myanmar. Yeah, yes, yeah there,
Uh yeah, I didn't know about the extent of what
was going on in Ethiopius. Pretty bad, pretty bad bad um.
And of course they helped fuel a genocide and the

(39:05):
master resettlement of nearly a million people in me and
Marthoro like a Muslim people. It's shocking how beat for
beat similar a lot of the exact same like steps
and failures, and what's happening in Ethiopia sounds exactly like
what's happening in India, where Facebook bullshit like nonsense on

(39:27):
Facebook lies spreading virally have been responsible for massive like
mobs doing racial violence that's caused hundreds of deaths. It
keeps happening. And the complete oversight of not even having
the terms and conditions in every language where the service
has provided. It's just like, I don't know, why would
you why would you think for even a second about

(39:47):
a country that you're introducing a product into that will
have a massive impact on the society. Like, why would
you for even a second consider that and take any
actions to respond posibly do that? Why why would you
the country that exists just a second, Mark Zuckerberg's frame
of reference. It's part of the two hundred years of

(40:09):
PC's bringing us. Yes, yes, um so yeah, we're talking
about me an marm because we have to actually go
back to me and Marcus. Some new stuff to happen there.
So remember Facebook again fuel the genocide there? Uh and
and in fact, a UN report on the genocide and
me and mar said that Facebook's failure to deal with
the spread of misinformation turned it into a beast complicit

(40:31):
and mass human slaughter. The UN called Facebook a beast
for its what it contributed to in Myanmar, which is
at least I I like it when the UN doesn't
pull their punches because they often do. That's that's a
fair appreciate the directness. Yeah, um so the hubbub around
all this forced Mark to actually sit down and in

(40:52):
an interview with Ezra Kline and engage directly with some
of the criticism for the genocide that his company enabled.
He admitted, well, he admitted that his network had been
used to incite real world harm. Um. He did, he did,
he did, He did admit that, and he also stated, quote,
this is certainly something that we're paying a lot of

(41:12):
attention to. It's a real issue, and we want to
It's a real issue, Jamie. The genocide is a real issue,
and we want to make sure that all of the
tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech
and citing violence and basically protecting the integrity of civil
discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar as well
as places like the US that do get a disproportionate
amount of attention, Jamie. Let's think back to that guy

(41:36):
on his porch firing blindly into the neighborhood around you. Say,
he hits your child in the throat and she bleeds
out slowly over the course of about you know, let's
say five and a half minutes um as you desperately
try to stop the bleeding, but the ambulance doesn't arrive
in time, and you you approach this man who's continuing
to fire blindly into the neighborhood and say, you just
murdered my child, and he says, you know, I'm paying

(41:58):
a lot of attention to what happened to your kid.
It's a real issue. Serious, Yeah, and I'm going to
bring tools to bear on eliminating, you know, some of
the problems that might have caused the death once we
figure out what they are. So that's what Mark said.
But Mark, you know, to his credit, after using all
those weasel words, did did agree that Facebook had been

(42:20):
used to incite harm in me and Mark just the
absolute smug assholary of like addressing a genocide, you are
beyond it an issue it in so seeing there's a
lot of negativity surrounding this that you're just like, shut
the funk up. Oh my god. Yeah, it's like somebody
going to the Germans in like n and being like,

(42:43):
you know, it seems like this Auschwitz thing is is
getting real ugly and we're like, yeah, we agree, it's
an issue. It's definitely an issue. It's an issue. So
my blood pressure. Yeah, but Mark did, he did admit
that that there was a problem with his service, So
there was an issue. I wonder what will happen if
we check back in on the story of Myanmar and Facebook.

(43:06):
I bet Facebook has turned a new leaf in this. Oh, Jamie,
it turns out there's a Time magazine article on the
matter from August of this year. You know what the
title is, hit It Facebook wanted to be a force
for good in Myanmar. Now, what is rejecting a request
to help with the genocide investigation? No, I mean yes, totally. Yeah.

(43:34):
So the issue seems to be that the Gambia, which
I didn't realize I think is the proper way you're
supposed to say it is the Gambia, not Gambia. So
it's kind of the opposite of Ukraine. It seems like that.
That's what I'm gathering from this article. So the Gambia,
which is a West African nation, is attempting to hold
me Amar accountable for its ethnic cleansing, and they filed
an application in a US federal court seeking information from

(43:57):
Facebook that would help them build their case for the
International Court of Justice. So they want to take um,
they want to take leaders in Myanmar to the International
Court of Justice and hold them accountable, and they're they're
looking for info from Facebook to help them build their
case that basically military and governmental leaders in Myanmar were
manipulating Facebook in inauthentic ways in order to drive violence

(44:19):
deliberately uh so quote. Specifically, the Gambia is seeking documents
and communications from Myanmar military officials, as well as information
from hundreds of other pages and accounts that Facebook took
down and preserved because Facebook, to its credit, when they
took down a lot of these things associated with pages
that were associated with the violence in Myanmar, they did
preserve those pages so that they could be potentially used

(44:41):
in an investigation like the Gambia is trying to do so.
The Gambia is also seeking documents related to Facebook's internal
investigations into the matter, as well as a deposition of
a relevant Facebook executive. All of this information could help
to prove Meanmar's genocidal intent. Back in May, the Gambia
filed a similar application in US court against Twitter uh
and the case was pulled immediately because Twitter pretty much

(45:02):
instantly agreed to cooperate. Um. Which is you know that's
so embarrassing too that if Twitter is like, no, we
would love to do the right thing. Uh. Jack Jack
Dorsey is somebody I have intense antipathy for, and he
is also objectively the most responsible social media ahead. When

(45:24):
when Jack has that's such a bleak sentence when jack
Ersey has the moral high ground on you. You're Mick
fucked Like, that's just like he is. He is the
only person who is in that position, a similar position
of power to Mike Mark Zuckerberg, who isn't just like
like drunkenly driving towards the apocalypse like Jack Dorsey clearly

(45:49):
is capable of feeling guilt and thinks genocide is bad.
That's all I'll say about Jack Dorsey. But that's what
that he is capable of of of caring to some extent,
which is why his company cooperated immediately in an investigation
about a genocide. Well, and if you're listening to this
episode in the future and you're like, how could that

(46:11):
be true, just just check the date and maybe he's
done something horrible and yeah, he may have finally computed
his robot suit and be carrying out genocide against all
of Portugal or something. I don't know what Jack Dorsey's
secret desires are, um, but you know, but yeah, I
do know what you do know, Robert, I don't know

(46:31):
where I'm what I do know? Yeah, what do you know? Yeah?
I know a lot of things that I think would
be fun to do in Minecraft. But I guess we
shouldn't ye product, We're back. We're earlier this month, UM,

(46:56):
Facebook UH filed its opposition to the Gambias application that
they received basic information about, you know, to help them
prosecute a genocide. Facebook complained that their requests were extraordinarily
broad and unduly intrusive or burdensome, and they called upon
the U S District Court in the in d C
to reject the application. UH largely because the Gambia failed

(47:18):
to quote identify accounts with sufficient specificity. Now this is
interesting because the Gambia was incredibly specific, and in fact,
they named seventeen officials to military units and several dozen
very specific pages and accounts that they wanted the information for.
They really could not have been more specific about what
they wanted. Um yeah. Facebook also takes issue with the

(47:41):
fact that the Gambia is seeking information that dates back
to two thousand twelve, UM, saying that, like, that's not
really relevant, and the Gambia is pointing out that, like, well,
but the desire of groups of people to commit genocide
doesn't just happen overnight. It builds over time, and Facebook
is where it built over time. And this is something
we have to document both for our court case against

(48:03):
the people who committed that genocide and for history's sake.
And Facebook is saying that like, well, no acknowledging that
acknowledging that basically means acknowledging we're currently contributing to what
will become genocide in the very near future, and that's
gonna be bad for us. So like the fucking hubris
of Facebook attempting to call the shots of like, well,

(48:24):
that's not relevant. It's like, well, you your whole thing is,
You've clearly demonstrated you have no idea what's going on
or what the context of this conflict is. But sure, yeah,
by all means, by all means. So if you actually
try to take stock of the scale of the problem
of political manipulation on Facebook, you quickly find yourself spiraling

(48:45):
into just overwhelmed horror um. Because it's not just like
the cases that we've kind of talked about so far
where hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people have been murdered.
Those are the most spectacular cases, and they're the easiest
to be like, here is the harm. This number of
people were killed in race riots that started on Facebook. Um,

(49:05):
But it is contributing to the death of democracies worldwide
on a scale that staggering when you when you start
to lay it out. In a year by jan and Honduras,
corrupt heads of government and political parties have been caught
operating networks of fake accounts to manipulate public opinion. In India, Ukraine,
Bolivia and Ecuador, there have been coordinated campaigns caught operating

(49:30):
in violation of the social networks rules to influence elections.
One of the reasons we know about all this is
a former Facebook data scientist named Sophie Zang. Sophie wrote
a sixty six hundred word memo to her former co
workers after she was let go for desperately blowing the
wisht whistle on Facebook's ethically criminal behavior, and plus Feed

(49:50):
obtained a copy of that memo and they published a
really good article on it just days before I started
work on this article. It's actually what kind of made
me feel like a new episode on Mark was necessary.
And I'm gonna quote from that article now. This is
Sophie writing. In the three years I've spent at Facebook,
I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to
abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own

(50:12):
citizenry and caused international news on multiple occasions, wrote Zaying.
Her LinkedIn profile said she worked as the data scientists
for the Facebook site Integrity Fake Engagement team. Um so
that was her job. Now. BuzzFeed didn't publish her letter
directly because it contained a lot of personal info, but
they included a a bullet point list summarizing her allegations.

(50:34):
And I'm going to read that now because again it's
so it's a nightmare quote. It took Facebook's leaders nine
months to act on a coordinated campaign that used thousands
of inauthentic assets to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of
Honduras on a massive scale to mislead the Honduran people.
Two weeks after Facebook took action against the perpetrators in July,

(50:55):
they returned, leading to a game of whack a mole
between Zaying and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which
are still active. In a Jeer bay Jan Zang discovered
the ruling political party utilized thousands of inauthentic assets to
harass the opposition and moss. Facebook began looking into the
issue a year after Zang reported the investigation is still ongoing,

(51:15):
saying in her colleagues removed ten point five million fake
reactions and fans from high profile politicians in Brazil and
in the US in the two thousand eighteen elections. In
February two thousand nineteen, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that
quote he'd obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high profile
US political figure that we didn't catch. Zang removed the activity,

(51:36):
dousing the immediate fire. She wrote, Zang discovered inauthentic activity,
a Facebook term for engagement from bod accounts and coordinated
manual accounts in Bolivia and Ecuador, but chose not to
prioritize it due to her workload. The amount of power
she had as a mid level employee to make decisions
about a country's political outcomes took a toll on her health,

(51:59):
so she consciously realized she was ignoring actions that were
shattering the democracies of whole nations because she had bigger
fish to fry, and that was the decisions she got
to make without asking anybody as a midlevel employee at Facebook,
because they cared so little about what was happening in

(52:20):
these countries, right, I mean, even the fact that that
would be delegated to one year is absurd. It's unspeakable. Yea.
After becoming aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish Health
Ministry's Facebook page during the current COVID nineteen pandemic, Zeyg
helped find and remove six hundred and seventy two thousand
fake accounts acting on similar targets globally, including in the US.

(52:44):
In India, she worked to remove a politically sophisticated network
of more than a thousand actors working to influence the
local elections taking place in Delhi in February. Facebook never
publicly disclosed this network or that it had been taken down.
So I want you to remember he yeah, what are you?
Are you just trying to cope with all that right now?

(53:04):
I'm looking through this story as well, and yeah, four
days ago. It's it's unbelievable. I mean, just this should
be the number one story in the world, and Mark
Zuckerberg should be in custody as a result of it.
I have no fucking clue this just happened there. I mean,
just this is and I am not first off, I

(53:25):
understand that Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. I am not exaggerating
when I say most of the Nazis, individual Nazis tried
in Nuremberg. We're not personally guilty of crimes on this scale. Absolutely,
I mean. And and the fact that I just I'm
wrapping my head around the fact that if you know,
while she was employed there, if this, if this employee

(53:48):
got a cold, if this employee like caught a bug, Yeah, people,
there would be a body count attached to it like
that is just fucking unconscionable. And put that on I
just yeah, it's it's unbelievable. Remember is he a free man?
Right now? We're just getting started, Jamie. I want you

(54:13):
to remember Zang was just one employee whose time was
severely limited. This is just a selection of the things
she uncovered. Um and these a mid level employee. Now,
the scale at which Facebook is being used by a
variety of actors to manipulate and hack global politics is

(54:35):
truly unprecedented. The social network feels so little responsibility to
deal with this that Zang was essentially alone in her work,
and her findings were never publicized unless doing so brought
some material benefit to Facebook. While attempting to lay out
the scale of the problem. Zang noted, quote, there was
so much violating behavior worldwide that it was left to

(54:56):
my personal assessment of which cases to further investigate, to
file tasks, and to escalate for prioritization afterwards. Now, despite
the fact that Zang found evidence of vast influence networks
actively subverting dozens of democratic elections, the higher ups and
Facebook showed basically no interest in this, and she was
again left alone to make decisions that would influence the

(55:17):
lives and futures of tens of millions of people. Zang wrote, quote,
with no oversight whatsoever. I was left in a situation
where I was trusted with immense influence. In my spare time,
a manager on Strategic Response mused to myself that most
of the world outside the West was effectively the wild West,
with myself as the part time dictator. He meant the

(55:39):
statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures
on me. Well, it's and and how many people were
working in this capacity and other regions. I guess, yeah, yeah, Well,
I mean that. The fact is, I don't think very many.
She was basically the only person dealing with the world
outside of the West on this at this level of
responsibility because they care so little about having anyone monitor it,

(56:03):
And like the fact that one of her managers just
kind of blithely walked by and said like casually, oh,
you're kind of like the dictator of the entire world
outside of the West right now, neat and then walks
off like that's the problem. Do you want to go
to an oxygen bar later? Like this is just on.

(56:24):
It's struggling to rout my head around and the the
outrageous I am without you know, I can't go into
too much detail at this, but I've known a lot
of Facebook employees and I've worked with a number of them.
I've I've been to Facebook facilities. I've spent a lot
more time around the people who work at Facebook than
a lot of people, and they're very They tend to

(56:46):
be very nice people. I like almost everyone I've met
who is a Facebook employee, very intelligent, motivated, um people
who care a lot about what they do in the
ethics of it. The problem is the people at the
top UM who refuse to allow this to be hard
to who have the resources to do what they are

(57:07):
doing with at least a modicum of responsibility and refuse
to do it and actively stymy their employees, who again
are mostly decent people from acting responsibly. Well sure, I
mean decent people enact the agendas of indecent people all
the time. Like there's I just I mean it speaks

(57:27):
to We talked about this the entire last I recovered
fucking guy too. But just like the fact that something
so gigantic can exist with such little oversight period, it's
just like what body count? Does that start to matter
to anybody? Yeah? Now, the reason Mark Zuckerberg and his

(57:49):
executives felt safe ignoring many of these individual cases of
abuse is that they tend to occur in foreign countries
that Americans didn't care about. And again, all Mark Zuckerberg
gives a shit about as the West and I in
China to We'll give him credit for that. He cares it,
clearly cares about what happens in China. He does speak
great Chinese like, so the Western China and everything outside
of it might as well be a fucking dial tone

(58:10):
to him. Yeah, we've got about three people on the
rest of the pet I'm gonna quote from Buzzfeeds right
up of Zang's letter again quote it is an open
secret within the civic integrity space, which is where she
worked in that Facebook short term decisions are largely motivated
by pr and the potential for negative decision. She wrote,
noting that she was told directly at a summit that

(58:32):
anything published in the New York Times or the Washington
Post would obtain elevated priority. It's why I've seen priorities
of escalation shoot up when others start threatening to go
to the press, and why I was informed by a
leader in my organization that my civic work was not impactful,
under the rationale that if the problems were meaningful, they
would have attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced

(58:55):
the company to devote more attention to the space. So
when less white journalists write about something Facebook's done that
got people killed, it doesn't matter. Don't care. Yeah, I
mean it's I mean, we did, we did, We did
know that. But I mean, just on on this. But
she was told that by someone who was her boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(59:20):
that is just I it's a lot of pressure on
the Post in the New York Times too, Okay, So
I guess I I hope I speak for everyone when
I say I care about this, Yeah it's important. Yeah,
I give a shit about Ethiopia. Please stop enabling race riots.
Mark um So. In February of two nineteen, a NATO

(59:44):
strategic communications researcher, like I said, reached out and like
warned the company that he that was the thing about,
like he'd seen evidence of inauthentic Russian activity backing like
a high profile US figure and yeah, the researcher warned
them that he would be briefing Congress with his findings
the next day. And this the company cared about, so
Zaying was sent in to minimize the fallout. She was

(01:00:06):
able to investigate the case, figure out what was going on,
and remove the activity immediately, so that by the time
this guy went up in front of Congress, they had
taken care of the issue. Um And shortly thereafter, the
same researcher tried another experiment um where he like made
a report to them but didn't include a threat, and
nothing happened for six months. Um So eventually he sent

(01:00:27):
a report to the press and it finally caused a
pr fire. But he just like like just kind of
approved that, like, yeah, they don't care unless there's a
chance that they will get publicly yelled at the actual
harm means nothing to them any and even so when
someone publicly yells at them, you'd get that fucking speech again.
Of like to realize that there is a problem. There
is a problem. So Zang came to feel that the

(01:00:49):
main focus of her job, rather than actually combating this
behavior in reducing harm, was to help the company deal
with what she called large scale problems. And this doesn't
mean a more serious problem. It means a problem that
affects enough people that they have to care about it.
So we're actually not talking about genocides here. We're talking
about spam networks. Because spam networks impact a lot of people,

(01:01:11):
and so they're a larger priority than disinformation going viral
and leading to race riots. Uh, spam is a big problem,
so it outweighs tiny problems like say election fraud by
the president of Honduras. Zaying came to feel the main
focus of her job, rather than combatting this behavior reducing harm,
was to help the company deal with these problems. Um

(01:01:31):
and yeah, this meant that spam networks were a bigger
issue than than things that cause death. Uh. Yeah, it's
it's so let's let's talk. Let's zoom in on Honduras,
on the thing that is less of a problem than
spam networks. So they don't say this lately. This is
the most upset I've ever been during this show. It's horrible.

(01:01:54):
So saying finds evidence that the president of Honduras and
his party are using multiple fake accounts to boost engagement
and spread content that is benefiting them in the lead
up to a presidential election. Um and Zane was able
to make a connection to the Honduran leader because an
administrator for the president's Facebook page had been was caught.
She caught him basically running hundreds of fake assets, not

(01:02:17):
even trying to hide it. Uh. And she reported all
of these thousands of fake accounts and a clear attempt
to manipulate a national election to Facebook's threat intelligence and
policy review teams, both of which took months to give
any sort of response. Um and yeah it So it
took almost a year to take down this operation, which
Facebook announced in July of two thousand nineteen. Um and

(01:02:40):
taking it down didn't actually do anything because the operation
got set back up again, which Facebook never disclosed, and
they didn't take it down again. So it took about
two weeks. Yeah, and it's still going on right now. Uh.
And this president who created this massive you know, or
who had this massive fraudulent network set up to help

(01:03:00):
him regain election one reelection under circumstances, international monitors and
basically everyone describes as fraudulent. Um. Facebook felt comfortable letting
the slide after their first sweet because in the grand
scheme of things, Honduras is a small country. As Zang wrote,
the civic aspect was discounted because of its small volume.
It's disproportionate impact ignored the civic aspect, of course, being

(01:03:24):
that a president with dictatorial ambitions uh, fraudulently won an
election um in part due to what he was able
to do on Facebook. So yeah, that it's it's frustrating
that the civic aspect is like the term Facebook uses

(01:03:45):
for entire nations democracies, which are less of a priority
to them than like a spam network. And this is
something Zang came to understand. She she got a pretty
good eye for how Mark and her other bosses thought
during her time doing this job and how long would
she in this position? Sorry years? Yeah, so face she
figured out over time kind of how to manipulate Mark

(01:04:08):
and other executives in the company in order to get
them to act on certain things they would otherwise ignore Facebook. Yeah,
I mean mainly making them think that there might be
some sort of like outcry against them. Facebook uses an
internal company messaging app for employee communications, and since reporting

(01:04:28):
her concerns about potential genocides didn't seem to matter, Zang
started skipping the steps to officially report problems and just
posting openly to her coworkers about specific things she was finding,
because if she could get her colleagues outraged and talking,
she could force management to care. Quote in the office,
I realized that my viewpoints weren't respected unless I acted

(01:04:49):
like an arrogant asshole. So Zaying asked Facebook to do
more in terms of finding and stopping malicious activity related
to elections and political activity um and She says that
she was turned down because human resources are limited. She
was then ordered to stop focusing on civic work. I
was told that Facebook would no longer have further need
for my services if I refused. Okay, okay, so stop

(01:05:12):
talking about the genocide or fire you or you don't
have health insurance? Got it? Another terrifying case she ran
into was a year by Jan Now in that country,
Zang discovered another vast network of an authentic accounts being
used by the president and his party to spread propaganda
and influence an election. The whole operation is very similar
to the one run by Russia's Internet Research agency. It

(01:05:34):
involved quote dedicated employees who worked nine to six Monthey
through Friday work to create millions of comments targeting members
of the opposition and reporters critical to the president. Uh
Facebook never publicized what Zang found there, nor did they
take any action against it. Zang wrote that they didn't
care enough to stop it because it's like it's sucking
a jerby Jan. Do you even know where jearby Jan is? No?
Fuck them, fuck their democracy. Buzz yeah, two hundred years apiece,

(01:05:59):
that's what we're um. BuzzFeed actually reached out to some
journalists in a Jerbaijan about their experiences with this network
and about Facebook, and those journalists pointed out that, in
addition to not stopping this inauthentic activity network, uh Facebook
sometimes removed the pages of Humans Rights Act human rights
activists due to reports from trolls and ignored journalists begging

(01:06:20):
them that, like, this is a real person doing important work,
please restore their account, because like, why would they care now?
None of this is unique to jer Baijan, and in fact,
all of it happens to some extent in the United States.
To Facebook just feels more pressure to act here. Um
the difference with the United States, yes again that they
have to pretend that they care here now. As soon

(01:06:41):
as they operated somewhere off the beaten path. From an
American's perspective, anything goes. In Bolivia, for example, Zang found
inauthentic activity supporting an opposite the opposition presidential candidate in
two thousand nineteen. She chose not to focus on it
because she just had so many other genocides to deal with,
and a month later, a coup racked the nation, leading
to widespread protests and dozens of deaths um great She

(01:07:05):
made the same call in Ecuador after a two thousand
and seventeen election that many claim was fraudulent. Prior to
the vote, Zang found massive and authentic activity supporting the
ruling party, who later won the election under suspicious circumstances.
There were horrifying consequences to this. Three years later, the
coronavirus hit and this fraudulent government was in charge. They
did not do a good job of being in charge.

(01:07:28):
And I'm gonna quote now from a New York Times
article on are on Ecuador's response to the coronavirus. Quote
with bodies abandoned on sidewalk, slumped in wheelchairs, packed into
cardboard coffins, and stacked by the hundreds and morgues. It
is clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus,
but the epidemic is even worse than many people in
the country recognize. The death toll in Ecuador during the

(01:07:49):
outbreak was fifteen times higher than the official number of
COVID nineteen deaths reported by the government, according to an
analysis of mortality data by The New York Times. The
numbers suggests that the South American country is suffering one
of the worst outbreaks in the world, thanks in large
part to the incompetent government that was fraudulently elected, thanks
in a significant part to the Facebook campaign, the illegal

(01:08:12):
and fraudulent Facebook campaign. It ran that Facebook and didn't
have time to care about where One midlevel employee was
threatened with having a livelihood removed if she didn't shut
the hell up about it. I am certain Mark Zuckerberg
lost no sleepover Ecuador, O Bolivia, or any of these
other places. But Sophie Zang definitely did and probably will

(01:08:33):
for the rest of her life. As she wrote in
that letter, I have made countless decisions in this vein,
from Iraq to Indonesia, from Italy to El Salvador. Individually,
the impact was likely small in each case, but the
world is a vast place. Although I made the best
decision I could based on the knowledge available at the time,
Ultimately I was the one who made the decision not

(01:08:54):
to push more or prioritize further in each case. And
I know that I have blood on my hands by now.
That's I mean, she's not wrong, but that's just yah
she's doing. Before she was fired, Facebook offered Sophie's sixty
four dollars in severance if she would agree to sign

(01:09:15):
a non disparagement clause, which would state that she basically
couldn't talk at all about her work, which is just
putting a price on the lives of people, like it's
just yeah, and not a high one. She turned down
the money, so that should be able to sleep at
night in the future. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, I

(01:09:39):
mean getting into the ethics of that is just a
fucking she. I mean she definitely should not be sleeping well.
And then on the other hand, if she was not
the one point the lovers on some on something like that,
they would have found someone to do it, and probably

(01:10:01):
someone worse at it who cared less. Like I don't.
I actually don't attribute much moral blame to her, other
than maybe not blowing the whistle earlier, just because like,
when you're in that position, there's a strong case to
be made that like I if I, if I'm here,
I can at least do something, and if I leave
even less will be done. Um, which seems verifiably true.

(01:10:23):
And yes, yeah, yeah, anyway, Jamie, that's part one. Awesome.
What could I'm like, well, could well? Could? I don't Well,
I guess I'll find out. Yeah, this has been truly horrible. Yep,

(01:10:46):
do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah? What
do you want to What do you want to sell today? Jamie?
Absolutely fucking not. Well. Okay, uh wait does this come
out next week? When does this come out? Yeah? This
is next week. We have no backlog anymore. I decided
to spend sixty or seventy nights out rioting just okay, well,
you know, things come up, things come up. To put

(01:11:08):
it like Mark Zuckerberg would things come up. There was
an issue, There was an issue, and we're actually keeping
a really close eye on it. That's you right now
that I uh, yeah, you can. You can follow me
on Twitter and Instagram if you want. Um. The Bechtel Cast,
my podcast, is doing a fundraiser for a candidate named
Fatima like Ball zubertful, she's the best. She's running in

(01:11:32):
District sixty four, California. So we're doing a fundraiser for her.
We're reading the entire script of Twilight uh this Friday,
So if you donate to her play. I purchased all
of my Edward Cullen cosplay Extremely Tall and incredibly toxic.
These are traits that we share and so I am

(01:11:54):
playing Edward Cullen. Um, so yeah, I would just say
go to that, donate to Fatima's campaign, and funk quarky
baby yeah right. Aimed on that note, I don't know
who four B is, but episodes gone

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Mark Zuckerberg Should Be On Trial For Crimes Against Humanity