January 16, 2019 • 45 mins
In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Maggie Mae Fish and Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Mark Zuckerberg.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M podcast. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards.
Sophie is angry at me for that opening. Uh. This
is the podcast when we talk about all the things
you didn't know about terrible people. Uh, and we laughed
and sometimes too. We're talking about Mark Zuckerberg. This is
(00:20):
part two, so you shouldn't need a normal intro if
you're listening to part two. You saw in the title
this is part two. You know what? You know what's
going on here. My guests, as always on podcasts about
Mark Zuckerberg, Jamie Loftus and Maggie may Fish. We're nice
and warm from part one, maybe from part one and
from the delightful internal heating effect of Brito's. Yeah, I
(00:42):
feel the fern is deep in my belly and right
next to my uterus is nice. The powders coursing through
my main clogging my blood stream like a diet any second,
not clogging enhancing? Now, Oh god, that is a good dorito?
Is there a bad dorito? No? No, there's not fantastic.
(01:06):
You all ready to talk about marzuck some more? Marzak.
It's Mike Marwin. Welcome, Welcome to Marzak. For someone who
gets beaten by a Facebook hate mob. Welcome to Marzak everyone.
So the bloom is well and truly off the rows
(01:26):
of Facebook. In the wake of the two thousand and
sixteen election, criticizing the social media company has become so common,
as of articles declaring that young people have increasingly left
the service behind, that it can be very easy to
forget just what a darling Facebook was in its early days.
I was a tech journalist in the wild and wooly
era of two thousand and ten, when Facebook was cracking
new number milestones every couple of months. I remember when
(01:48):
they had half a billion and eventually a billion. We
would all write articles about Facebook. There's many people are
on Facebook. There's how much time there's been. Look at
all this great stuff. Now. There was a lot of
excitement about what Facebook might mean for the future back
then from most of the tech media. It lasted right
up until the election. I found a Business Insider article
from two thousand fifteen that illustrates this pretty well. It's
titled the Fabulous Life of Mark Zuckerberg. To give you
(02:09):
an idea of its tone, here's the line from the introduction.
The Harvard droughtouts current net Worth is at about thirty
three point four billion, putting him at number sixteen on
Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires. Here's a closer look
at the life of the simultaneously down to earth yet
extravagant CEO. Now, if this report is opending that no
(02:30):
one worth thirty three billion dollars can never be considered
down to earth, but hey, maybe I got some sour grapes.
It is interesting to me that this seems to be
a carefully concocted market employ used by Zuckerberg. The first
big book about facebooks founding, the book that was the
basis for the movie The Social Network, was titled The
Accidental Billionaires Wants to Push They stumbled into it. Oops,
(02:53):
I wound up with more wealth than most of Africas.
Oops tootles. I can't be doing wrong if I'm successful.
If it was, if I just Mr Magoon my way
into a pile of money the size of the Sears Tower,
I can't even grow a beard. Guys, I'm just gonna
keep making fun of this. There's not actually as much
cash in existence as I have in my bank account.
(03:15):
Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, now, uh. The Business Insider article with
all of its flawed and fawning pros, still provides a
decent little look at Zuck's early life. It makes a
point of really really going into Mark's bona fides as
a legit smart guy that he who is to be
very sensitive about his intelligence. I could the size of
(03:40):
his intelligence. Interesting fun fact, Maggie, I could. I could
taste the anger in your voice. Really was. It was
almost like a derrito literally. Yea of the things that
I've noticed, like just having immersed myself in zuckernus um,
he is extremely protective of the idea that he is
(04:05):
a genius um on all things and not just Facebook,
So I mean, he's not in men. But how's that
boop threat on Facebook? Mental love Facebook? To be fair,
It's where they spread all their hate to It is
the platform that they need to have to do it.
(04:26):
So they earned it. They paid seventy five dollars to
take a test on a Sunday. Oh, I Q. Tests
are bastard, almost as terrible as Mark Zuckerberg. But that'll
be for our Stefan Mala new episode. I'm going to
read a quote from that Business Insider article about how
smart Mark Zuckerberg to hear he wasn't just a computer nerd. Though.
(04:49):
Zuck loved the classics, the Odyssey and the like, and
he became captain of the high school. Like yes, yes,
I figured the writer being like, what's the second book
with the second book? Second classic book. Well, and there
was an article that I read that was like he
loves the Greek classics, you know, like talking about that
(05:11):
at the very end, that's a Latin classic. Yeah, there's
a Latin classic. It's actually Roman propaganda written by Virgil
so that he could make the case that Octavian had
like a deep connection to like Roman history. Like it
was literally a propaganda novel to rewrite Roman history in
the image of Octavian after Octavian destroyed the Republican you know,
(05:31):
the Greek classics, the Greek classics, the Greek classics, like
this Roman propaganda novel. Yeah, I hate Harry Potter culture,
but there is a very like, uh, like a disgruntled
hufflepuff vibe to Mark Zuckerberg, like he wants to be
in anywhere else, Mark Huffelberg. Now the article goes through
(05:52):
some of the gushi er us were the details of
Zuckerberg's charmed life since starting Facebook. For example, here's what
it says about his wedding to Priscilla Chandan Days No Days.
Billy Joel Armstrong performed and Mark designed Priscilla's ruby ring.
Himself performed at their wedding, and he designed and in
(06:13):
The Excellent Billionaires makes a point of when it's talking
about like the place that everyone at Facebook lived in
when they all first moved to California, that they were
always playing Green Day because they're so into punk rock.
They're guys, you heard of this record called What What Era?
This has to be like post American idiot. It's gotta
(06:35):
be righting. It's really exciting. Now. The few details about
his life that Mark lets out into the public sphere
are carefully curated. He's one of the many Silicon Valley
CEOs who takes a token one dollar a year salary.
You'll always hear that. Of course, that number ignores what
he makes in stock, and it ignores expenses like the
(06:57):
six and ten thousand, four hundred and fifty four dollars
Facebook spent in two thousand fourteen to chart our private
jets for Mark and his friends. The Business Insider article
and many other pro Zack pieces I have read make
a lot of hay out of the fact that he
doesn't drive a fancy car, instead preferring a Volkswagen g
T I that only costs thirty dollars. Now, if you've
got that kind of money, Mark Zuckerberg, Gas, I don't
think you should have it. But if you got it
(07:17):
and you're going to buy a car, you're an idiot.
If you buy a car that anybody can buy, get
a fucking blimp like that Google guy. At least it's
even more sussed to get a right like, Hello, fellow kids,
I am just like you. I drive Volkswagen like you
are all Volkswagons. You have to tape the gash Sucker
(07:41):
somewhere now. While Facebook was expanding and the world was
falling in love with marky Zack, there were signs that
everyone's favorite new tech book, there were signs that everyone's
favorite new tech billionaire was maybe not the nicest dude
to be around. Noah Kagan worked for Facebook for nine
months in two thousand five, back when the company was
first start its meteoric rise to world dominance. Kagan later
(08:03):
wrote an e book that touched on his experiences there.
In it, he recalled Mark Zuckerberg pouring water on an
engineer's computer after a product demo that he thought looked
like quote shit. Here's a quote from Kegan's e book. Well,
I don't remember the feature we were working on. Engineer
Chris Puttenham and I had spent almost a month building
something we thought Mark would love. He walks to Chris's
computer and we demo the product to Mark. Mark thought
(08:24):
it was ship. I know so because instead of giving
product feedback, he screamed, this is ship. Redo it, throw
water on Chris's computer and walked away. All of us
stood around in shock. Kagan also claims that Zuck, like
far right gang leader Gavin McGinnis, has a distinct fondness
for samurai swords. Oh sword, we get it out, dude.
(08:51):
I remember my first sword guy when it was before
I had the language to identify a sword guy, and
I was like, well, I know I feel unsafe, but
there's more to it than that. It's more than just
a general unease that I have. I also feel bad
for this could so easily kill me with a samurai
saw that he bought forty five dollars at the gas station.
(09:12):
Yeah about Stanford, and bought stand always by a stand.
Well he need you just need to see it. Yeah,
what is he going to hide it? No? No, no, no,
I want you to know exactly what I'm like. Yeah,
I'm like this what I would use to kill you.
I know I look like this guy, but I'm also
this guy. Now, are you guys ready for the samurai
(09:37):
sword story? Yes? Pretty good, It's pretty good. This is
like when Kaddafi had his astronaut short story. This is
the mark of quote. He'd walk around with a samurai sword,
fake threatening to attack you for bad work. Where the
hell he got that samurai sword? Who the hell knows?
Luckily no employees were harmed while I was there. He'd
come around and pretend to cut you, joking. If you
take down the site, he'll chop your head off. You
(09:58):
have to remember you have a twenty few year old
uber nerd running one of the fastest growing sites on
the web. As mature as he could be, he was
also still immature. He had some great motivational alliance with love.
He'd say, if you don't get that done sooner, I
will punch you in the face, or I will shop
you with this huge sword. While holding a huge sword
in hand, but with love. Guys. Oh, it's just like
I'm going to cut you with this sort. Men in
(10:21):
their twenties should have businesses, really sense, Well, the thing
is that he has stunted his growth. Like he doesn't
realize this because he's living his own life. But from
outside perspective, you cemented yourself as a twenty two year
old inept at talking to people and connecting with people,
and you've stopped your life. Well, as he learned from
his later colleague, he should just lean in. That should
(10:45):
just go for it. Next paragraph starts with Cheryl saying,
I do want to share one story about me. When
I was twenty three years old, just for fairness, so
I'm not judging Mark for immaturity. I vomited it down
an elevator in between the shaft and the wall because
I had to puke. I was super drunk and I knew, okay,
(11:07):
I have to puke somewhere. If I puke in this
elevator on other people, that's going to be bad. But
when the door opens, I can I respect that. That's innovative.
I didn't want to hurt too many other people, but
I realized now as a sober man, I really fucked
some repair. Again, not a good person here, but better
(11:30):
than Mark, which is a low bar. Yeah, and also
you learned which let's let's not go. Actually, I am
still a ruined ruin of a human being. Santa Monica
lightbulb bandit. But I don't I don't have a business.
(11:50):
Sophie manages the podcast for good reason. In two thousand eight,
Facebook hired Cheryl Sandberg, the author of Lenin and generally
as Slim is a Queen. Hashtag girl boss O my god,
the girl Boss narrative is my favorite. There's a great
podcast y'all should listen to. It's not our network, but
(12:12):
it's great. It's called The Dream and it's about m
l M s and it talks about an m l
M that's all based on the hashtag girl boss leaning ship.
Super super interesting. Yes, women can also destroy the world
us too. We can eat the planet tea. Yeah. So yes, here,
women are running the CIA now hashtag feminist side. Oh listen,
(12:37):
give us a chance to buy into this power structure.
We waterboard with Lacroix now, but we're still waterboard. We're like,
we're guys, girls were still waterboards. Yeah, let's listen. I
actually get along better with guys than I do with girls.
It's real. It's really weird too, like guys. I know,
(13:01):
like I'm gonna sound like one of those girls, but
I actually like think Mark is really nice and you
just like misunderstood, you know what. I like, agree with that,
and let's shun all other women that disagree with us.
They're kind of like bitchy girls. Yeah, like we shouldn't
hire them anyways. This podcast will not go into nearly
enough detail on miss Sandberg, but we will talk about
her in the in the future yea. At the time,
(13:25):
Sandberg's job was to be the adult in the room
at Facebook, to reinsure the investors and the world that
this browie frat robots suddenly harvesting data from millions of
people was being managed by competent, thoughtful human beings who
would act responsibly with the great power placed in their hands.
Charles Sandberg does at least a very good impression of
a human being. Super Yeah, she does a really good job.
It's the new dictator is a woman with a smile
(13:46):
on her face. First, you know, yeah, always a white
woman with us. Yeah, the white woman, yeah, and the
whitest the whitest woman and a big smile. The front
line interview one of the representatives that they sent. That's
basically all she did was smile and say, oh, yeah,
we know, and we know we fuck up. We're listening
(14:06):
corporate feminism by soap Now. In two six, Facebook introduced
the news Feed, that infinitely scrolling thingy that has replaced
the way roughly Americans get their news. The timeline was
programmed with a distinct preference for controversial content by virtue
of the fact that people were most likely to chat
about things that made them angry, You're scared. They were
(14:26):
also more likely to share articles that angered or scared them.
Skanked sky or did you ever skank? Like in high school?
I guess the scott You know what? Scott is my
favorite genre. But I have never been to a show
or dance. I felt like, for sure you would like
bust it was not a rude boy, but I street
(14:47):
Light Manifesto is maybe my favorite band. Fucking fantastic band. Yeah,
it's not too late. It's not too late, never too late,
not too never too late to skank. Thomas Kalnach If
you're listening, uh, sponsor the show. I don't think you
have any money because you're a ska musician. But you're great. Hey,
if you're listening, give us five stars on idea. We'll
(15:07):
give you. Give you some money you might We feel
like you could probably use that. So when the news
feed launched, Facebook also made a change to its privacy
policies in order to make the news feed work better.
Here's the New Yorker quote. Unless you wrestled with a
(15:27):
set of complicated settings, vastly more of your information, possibly
including your name, your gender, your photograph, your list of friends,
would be made public by default. Now. That New Yorker
article is published in two thousand and ten, after some
of those unpleasant chats between Zuckerberg and his friends about
all of his weasel behavior, you know, after all those
chats and stuff went public, like this came out. The
author of the article is a guy named Jose Antonio Vargas,
(15:48):
and he's a good journalist. I think, I think it's
a good article. He spent some time with Zuckerberg and
when the subject of privacy came up, this happened. And
I'm going to quote the entire bit from the article
because it's fantastic. Privacy. He told me is the third rail?
Is you online. A lot of people who are worried
and this is Zuck talking. A lot of people who
are worried about privacy and those kinds of issues will
take any minor misstep that we make and turn it
into as big a deal as possible, he said. He
(16:09):
then excused himself as he typed on his iPhone for
answering a text from his mother. We realized that people
will probably criticize us for this for a long time,
but we believe this is the right thing to do.
Zuckerberg and I talked about the first time I signed
up for Facebook and September two thousand six, users are
asked to check a box to indicate whether they're interested
in men or women. I told Zuckerberg that it took
me a few hours to decide which box to check.
(16:30):
If I said on Facebook that I'm a man interested
in men, all my Facebook friends, including relatives, coworkers, sources,
some of whom might not approve homosexuality, would see it.
So what did you end up doing, Zuckerberg asked, I
put men. That's interesting. No one has done a study
on this as far as I can tell, but I
think Facebook might be the first place where a large
number of people have come out. He said, we didn't
create that. Society was generally ready for that. He went on,
(16:52):
I think this is just part of the general trend
that we talked about about society being more open, and
I think that's good. Then I told Zuckerberg that two
weeks later, I removed of the check and left the
boxes blank. A couple of relatives who are Facebook friends
had asked about my sexuality, and at that time, at
least I didn't want all my professional sources to know
that I am gay. Is it still out? Zukerberg asked, Yeah,
it's still out. He responded with a flat huh, dropped
(17:14):
his shoulders and stared at me, looking genuinely concerned and
somewhat puzzled. Facebook had asked me to publish a personal
detail that I was not ready to share. Uh. Yeah.
I think that's a really interesting bit of inside there.
That's a crossroads for for a little zuck for z
and I think it points to how stupid I think
he is, that he can't think of other situations until
(17:36):
they're in his face, like until his face is shoved
into it. And also it seems like a very like
straight white guy attitude of just like, I mean, I
think we come up against this all the time. It's
just like stuff that truly didn't occur to him, like
not even at this point, I still prioritize my money
(17:59):
over your privacy. But that sucks, dude. Yeah, yeah, Now.
I found this particularly fascinating in light of a Daily
Beast article I read back in two thousand fifteen how
Facebook exposes domestic violence survivors. The article is as you'd expect,
about a bunch of people whose abusers were able to
get in touch with them and start harassing them again
because Facebook required those women to use their real names
(18:21):
to start Facebook accounts. Quote. Of the major social networking services,
Facebook alone requires users to use an authentic name listed
on an acceptable form of identification, such as a driver's license,
a passport, or a bill. Lincoln's user agreement asks for
a real name, but does not specify any required documentation. Twitter, Instagram,
and as of two fourteen, Google Plus all allows pseudonyms.
Has also been an issue for transgender people. A lot
(18:46):
of people get who Mark never considered and because almost
everyone working at Facebook was another white guy was not
there because it never prioritized and this will be a
problem that will crop up when we start talking about
the genocide being enabled by Facebook. But it's an issue
when you run a company this big that impacts the
(19:06):
lives of this many people, and you don't hire folks
specifically to be like, oh, I'm a member of this
particular community. And this might be an issue for say,
gay men, because you Mark Zuckerberg, don't realize that this
is the thing we have to deal with. Yeah, it's
an online nation and he thinks that he can be
the leader of it without caring about any of the
(19:29):
What don't you learn about the world as the son
of a wealthy dentist who goes to Harvard An excellent? Right, Yeah,
you're right, extremely well, yeah there, it is crazy that,
I mean, you would think the second that you have
this wide of a reach, you would prioritize getting people
at different perspectives in or it's almost like your product
(19:51):
will turn on you. Yeah. Well, it's the ego that
he has that he is unwilling to confront and hide
that all costs. He plays the philanthropy the like I
care about the people when my book Yeah doing my
book club, let's learn together let me listen. Let me
go across the world and listen, so you will look
(20:12):
me for president. The only book club I'm interested in
joining is the Dorrito's book Club. What is it this month?
It's actually tried by Sebastian Young. Are fantastic book, really
good book about PTSD. Dorito's recommends it. Togtion Um adds
(20:33):
it's adds time. That's what that was a lead into
products products, and we're back talking about podcast products services Facebook.
All right, let's get back into it. For the most part,
up through the early aughts, Mark Zuckerberg's brand in most
(20:55):
of the world remained quite strong. He was the genius
who changed the way the world communicated, and he's like
such a humble, down to earth guy. In two thousand ten,
he was even given a guest star role on The Simpsons.
He played a bit part. Lisa is trying to convince
Nelson to stay in school rather than drop out to
focus on his business. They meet Mark Zuckerberg at some
sort of expo thing and he goes on a little
rant about all of the all the great innovators in
(21:17):
the tech industry dropped out of school, which is true.
Now I'll say this I think this is another example
where it's really easy for a guy like Mark. If
you were a coder, what do you need to go
to college? Well, Jamie's a hacker and but yeah, it's
the same thing like as a writer, you can go
you can get a writing degree and get a journalism degree,
but you could also just start writing. And it's the
(21:37):
nature of the business that if you get stuff published
that starts your career. Too. It's not like that for everybody.
If you're an electrician, I got to get some trade,
A surgeon kind of got to go to school. That's
where we're in faker professions. Yeah, that's where we're in
professions where you can be a faker. And in my experience,
someone could be like, so you have a degree in
(21:58):
journalism and you go the sounds good journalism. No, okay, good,
then you're clearly a journalist. Yeah. So anyway, a little
rant there. Uh Now. Two thousand ten was a time
in which Suckerberg and his ideas were the toast of
Silicon Valley, and what did Mark believe? In two He
(22:19):
sat for an interview with tech Crunch. They pressed him
on the matter of other people trusting him with their
data quote. When I got started in my dormom at Harvard,
the question a lot of people asked was why would
I want to put any information on the internet at all?
Why would I want to have a website? And then
the last five or six years, blogging has taken off
in a huge way, and all these different services that
are people sharing all this information. People have really gotten
comfortable not only sharing more information in different kinds, but
(22:42):
more openly and with more people. That social norm is
just something that has evolved over time. We view it
as a role in the system to constantly be innovating
and be updating what our system is to reflect what
the current social norms are. I'm not pushing society. I'm
changing Facebook to adapt to the changing social norm for
selling your data. Well, the funny that I've now realized
that Zuckerberg says a lot like, you know, like I
(23:03):
want to bring the world together, But that is code
for I want the world's information. I want every single
person to be on my website so I have their information,
I have their context. I gotta steal all of the
yell of all of them. It is weird to me,
like how long and I don't know at what point
this occurred to you. It took me a long time
to figure out what the concept of data mining and
(23:26):
big data was and like what it meant, because when
I was in college, I was like, well, who would
want my data? I don't have any money, like all,
I have a student debt, Like who cares if they
have my data? Because I have nothing to hide and
I have nothing, so who cares? And I wrote I
was a copywriter for big data companies for six months.
I would write ten thousand words a day about big
data and still couldn't understand why. I'm like, who gives
(23:48):
a fun unless you have money? But now I feel
like now it's very easy. But this was like five
years ago. I had no fucking clue and it was
my job to know. So I didn't my job. It
didn't make it all you're the true journal A yeah, no,
I do say. There's a great frontline documentary. You just
look up frontline Facebook on YouTube. It's all up there
(24:09):
that there's a journalist on there who was like the
first person to like request a copy of his data
from Facebook and realized how much was being logged. Another
good journalist, solid play because again I was the same
way I didn't pay any attention to what's happening. I
didn't care when going on and when you're taking like
I don't know, like especially in the era that was
(24:29):
super asinine, where you're like you've got bumper stickers and
there's you're taking quizzes all the time. You're like, well,
what would people do with this information? And now I
can't watch band or Snatch without being like they're taking
my opinions. Next, what's good? Yeah, TV is now going
to sell me personalized abs well, and I do think
Netflix is making a big mistake with like focusing on
(24:50):
like this. Many people watched the fucking bird Box movies like, well,
it's successful as Black Panthers, No, because nobody had to
pay Yeah, no, one would have seen gust making money.
People saw cumulatives eighteen minutes of bird Box where they
were cooking, checking their phone and pooping. What are the
(25:11):
rules of this world? Why they put birds in the box, guys?
And I think that that makes it worth hard time.
I do think that that quote from the tech Crunch
interview maps out Mark's ideology pretty well. The world wants
to be more connected. His only job is delivering that
connectivity and As long as Facebook is connecting more people faster,
he does not need to worry about anything else. This
(25:32):
was mapped out even more eloquently by the company motto,
based on a quote by Mark himself, move fast and
break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you aren't moving
fast enough. Now. The title of this episode, part two
is move fast, and the title of part three is
break things. Don't talk about that little genocide. Yeah, people
(25:56):
have ended their lives now. Now, it is important to
understand that at every level Facebook, the organization is programmed
to work this way. I'd like to quote from a
great CNBC article with the revealing title inside Facebook's cult
like workplace where the sin is discouraged and employees pretend
to be happy all the time. Solid title sounds like
(26:19):
one of those really long Fiona Apple. Oh yeah, you're
about to tell me a lot of stuff. I'm ready quote.
Employees feel pressure to place the company above all else
in their lives, fall in line with their manager's orders,
enforce cordiality with their colleagues so that they can advance
several former employees like in the culture to a cult.
This culture has contributed to the company's well publicized wave
(26:41):
of scandals over the last two years, such as government
spreading misinformation to try to influence elections and the misuse
of private user data. According to many people who work
there during this period, they say Facebook might have caught
some of these problems sooner if employees were encouraged to
deliver honest feedback. You can't deliver honest feedback if you're
moving fast and break and show well, you can't deliver
on his feedback with fucking Katana. Yeah. Well, Also, why
(27:02):
would you tell someone I think this product that we're
about to launch might break something If you're part of
half of your job is to break things right, you're
encouraged to and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook employees rate each other
and then managers give them final grades to determine whether
or not they'll be promoted, fired, or give them raises.
Never learns a lesson, never, ever, ever, ever ever. I've
(27:25):
quoted BoJack Horseman once before in this show, but another
one of the truest fucking things that show ever pointed
out one of the characters is an agent saying that
the age in which you get rich is the age
in which your growth is forever stunted. So if you're rich,
are twenty forever? Yes, buy a shirt at T public
so I can stop aging at age thirty and by
(27:48):
my own blimp. That's a reasonable Yeah, good age to stop. Yeah,
still optimistic enough. You want to want to have a
light bulb fight after that lightbulb steal in spirit. I'm
not keeping the light bulbs. I just like the way
they shatter when you throw them at people. That's better,
You're right, it's way better. I'm not taking these light bulbs.
(28:10):
I don't want them. Cricket, cricket, cricket. I don't need
your judgment. Magbert. You do this in groups or so
low groups? Okay, Yeah, it's come along next time there's this.
This could go a lot of dir if you're doing
it alone. It's like just drunkenly throwing. No. I throw
(28:33):
light bulbs at people I love, oh affection, just like
at the ground next to them. So it's like it's
like a little puff. It's fun like firecrap. I didn't
do this to be judged, Okay, I feel it's gonna
be a great behind the best you can be on
ethical and still be legal my life. What if I
(28:58):
prefer to be ethical buddily goal. Right there we go. Yeah,
that course, treat people well, break the law. Yeah. So
employees rate each other, managers give them final grades that
determine whether or not they'll be promoted, fired, or given raises.
These grades are issued by quota, so managers are pressured
to underrate perfectly good employees just because the quota of
(29:20):
good employees has already been met. It sounds like a
stressful mess. The article goes into substantial detail about the
review process. This quote in particular stood out to me. Quote.
These twice yearly reviews encourage employees to be particularly productive
around June and December, working nights and weekends as they
race to impress bosses before reviews, which are typically completed
in August and February. It's especially true in December, the
(29:41):
half Facebook predominantly uses to determine which employees will receive promotions.
This rush causes employees to focus on short term goals
and push out features that drive user and engagement and
improve their own metrics without fully considering the potential long
term negative impacts on user experience or privacy. Multiple former
employees said, wow, fast break the world. Wow, it sounds
(30:03):
like a guy that's too dumb to run a company.
It sounds like twenty year old shouldn't have much responsibility.
Yeah he was. He was stunted at like a man
learned something all the time from that show about the
sad horse, about the sad horse, depressed Horse Show. That
the depressed horse show has some has some truth in
(30:24):
it too. Yeah, And horses are inherently sad. You never
see a horse land and like looking happy. Yes, me too.
Oh no, sad was the same horse there? Like we
killed a horse, Jimmie Loftus and I murdered a horse
(30:44):
and a light bulb. I'm gonna believe how it in
our defense, the horse started it. Yes, yes, very sad horse.
So Mark Zuckerberg has never wasted much time I'm worrying
about the consequences of his actions. He's more of an
asked questions later kind of guy, And as he aged
into a tech titan, Mark Zuckerberg remained pretty cavalier about
(31:08):
people's privacy. This would all come to a dangerous head
for the first time in two thousand seven with a
Facebook product called Beacon. I would like to quote from
a book titled appropriately enough, Move Fast and Break Things,
which is a really good book about all of these monsters,
but not just a Silicon val grows. This was essentially
(31:28):
an alert system that told your friends you had purchased
something on a partner site. It was built as an
opt out system, so you had to actively tell Facebook
each time you didn't want the site to broadcast your
purchase to all your friends. It was a total disaster
from the outset, but Zuckerberg was so confident that he
knew better than his users that he refused to turn
it off for many weeks while the pr disaster escalated. Eventually,
he relented and posted a mia colpa on his blog saying,
(31:49):
We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but
we've made even more with how we've handled them. Spite
Zuckerberg's regret and a payment of nine point five million
for a class action suit over Beacon, many who worked
with him feel he doesn't really understand privacy. Charlie Cheever,
one of his key programmers, told Kirkpatrick, who's some guy.
I feel that Mark doesn't believe in privacy that much,
or at least believes in privacy is a stepping stone
(32:10):
to radical transparency. He The way he put out that
press release is the same way he talked to the
guy that he fucked over. I am so sorry. I
did something wrong here, I did something Go away away.
It means nothing to me, never has I've always been
rich and always will be. We'll have it resolved within
(32:31):
the year parentheses here now. Radical transparency is a buzz
term Mark brings up whenever he needs a high minded
ideological justification for doing precisely whatever the fuck he wants.
And two don twelve whatever the funk he wants included
fucking with people's emotions, just to see if that was possible.
(32:54):
Here is a quote from the hilariously named pen S
Scientific Journal. And it's p n A S but what
else could I call it? Plus they're a Penis journal.
It's a very serious scientific journal, the big dignat the
big swing science. We all got slapped with sciences. And
(33:20):
you don't go with the swings, you're gonna get slapped.
Here's Penas nice. In an experiment with people who use Facebook,
we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in person
interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content
and the news feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people
(33:42):
produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts. When negative
expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate
that the emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our
own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive scale contagion via
social networks. A k A. We used Facebook to see
if we could make people sad, and we can. It
(34:03):
works now. The researchers she carried out this study had
previously studied real life social networks to you know, to
study the same sort of emotional contagion, but with like
actual groups of friends. You know, your buddy sad, she
calls you, he called you know, you get sad too. Um,
this is the way people have always worked. They then
went to Facebook to see if the social network was
down to play guinea pig with its users. Facebook totally was.
(34:26):
They and the researchers found quote emotional states can be
transferred to others via emotional contagient, leading people to experience
the same emotions without their awareness. In other words, they
proved that emotional states like anger or hopelessness could be
spread via Facebook. Facebook proved this by determining what kinds
of content got pushed to the timelines of each of
its users effectively manipulating their emotions just to see if
(34:47):
it was possible. People got angry. Facebook responded with faux regret,
and Mark Zuckerberg kept pretty quiet about this whole thing.
But if you followed the guy's history and intellectual development,
you can understand why an experiment like this would be
pretty in line with his past behavior. It's just another
like a woman versus cow situation. It's like if one
girl is deemed unhot, then other people will agree unhot,
(35:10):
and then we'll just reshape what is hot. Yeah, so
that's fun. What else is fun is products also services,
consumable items that you can spend money on and then
have in your home. The big swinging Dick of Capital
of the Swinging Dicks or one the hanging Labia Heavy
(35:35):
Wonderful women's CEOs care about people. If you want to
support the heavy swinging Labia, that support their show by
these products, we're back. Maggie Mayfish just said something through
a mouthful of derritos. I'm about to do the same,
(36:00):
oh Man, better than us swinging Labia. I'd rather lick
these Yes. Yes. In June, all Facebook was in the
midst of playing with their users emotions. Glenn Greenwald published
an article to the Guardian based on Edward Snowden's releases.
The article revealed that the National Security Agency had been
given access to huge amounts of data from Facebook, Google, Apple,
(36:23):
and several other major Internet companies. When Mark Zuckerberg was
asked about Glenn Greenwald's article, he said, frankly, the government
blew it and lamented that the state had done a
bad job of protecting privacy. Why uh, you know what,
just because it's so bold, I'll give him that one.
I'll give him that now. In March of two fifteen,
(36:49):
the Guardian broke what would turn out to be a
critically important story. Millions of americans personal data had been
harvested through a Facebook app without their knowledge and handed
off to a little company called Cambridge Analytica. In an
interview Mark Zuckerberg gave with Ricode in two thousand eighteen,
he swore that as soon as Facebook was alerted to
the harvesting of their user data by Cambridge Analytica's Alexander
Cogan quote, we immediately shut down the app, took away
(37:11):
his profile, and demanded certification that the data was deleted. However,
further reporting from The Guardian showed that Facebook didn't suspend
Cogan or Cambridge Analytica until March of two thousand eighteen,
like two or three months before the interview in which
Zuckerberg swore they'd banned his ass back in two thousand fifteen. Now,
I'd say it has been proven beyond much doubt that
Mark Zuckerberg's attitude about the value of other people's privacy
(37:31):
has not changed much since the days when he stole
people's pictures to build an app where kids could vote
on which of their female classmates was hotter than a cow.
Thankfully we know how Mark Zuckerberg and the other Facebook
top brass really feel about the value of their users privacy.
Last year, the British government released an enormous cash of
internal company emails to the public. The data included this
bit from two thousand twelve. I'm going to quote Recode's
fantastic coverage and Kara Swisher with Ricode has done some
(37:54):
of the best reporting on Mark Zuckerberg in the best
holding of his in the in the front lane when
he yes, Harris Wisher is a really good ship in
the tech industry of the tech journalists. She's like, she's
she's solid. I'm gonna quote recodes coverage and two thousand twelve,
(38:14):
Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook charged some outside developers for accessing
and collecting data on users through the company's ap i
S software that allows Facebook to share data with other apps.
If we make it so debs can generate revenue for
us in different ways. That makes it more acceptable for
us to charge them quite a bit more for using
the platform, Zuckerberg wrote. He suggested that developers could offset
these charges by spending money on Facebook ads. Now. Facebook
(38:36):
said they didn't actually go through with that, but the
fact that Mark Zuckerberg himself suggested doing the same thing
Cabage Analytico would do three years later, Suggesse probably was
not that mfended by the concept. Mark published a Facebook
post to address this and other revelations. Quote, Like any organization,
we had a lot of internal discussion and people raise
different ideas. Ultimately, we decided on a model where we
(38:56):
continue to provide the developer platform for free and developers
could choose to buy ads a they wanted. This model
has worked well. Other ideas we considered but decided against,
included charging developers for usage of our platform. Similar to
how developers pay to use Amazon Aws or Google Cloud.
To be clear, that's different from selling people's data. We've
never sold anyone's data, but it kind of sounds like
that's exactly what Facebook did. Here's recode quote. In some cases,
(39:18):
Facebook granted other businesses like Netflix and Lift special permission
to access information that other companies didn't have, So they
didn't sell data directly. But people who paid Facebook a
shipload and ad dollars got access to more user data
which they didn't pay for, but they got access to
because they were paying more money to Facebook, which is
different from paying for data. Because a lawyer can argue
(39:40):
that it's legally distinct from selling access to people's data,
and I'm sure it is in a court of law
until it's proven not hopefully, it's like until the laws
need to be made to make the distinction clear, to
make it a crime what they did, which I think
is it ethically at It's like a crime in the
(40:02):
hearts of any decent person, but anyweah, well, we know
how Zucky feels about ethics. Zucky Zuck ha ha ha.
So that article also revealed that companies that Facebook found
threatening to their bottom line had their access to use
your data restricted. Quote. When Twitter launched the video service
(40:24):
Fine in two thousand twelve, Facebook cut off access to
its friend graph. That meant users who signed up for
Vine with their Facebook account couldn't see and connect with
all their Facebook friends inside Vine, and ability that would
have theoretically helped Vine create a network much faster. Yeah.
I don't feel that sorry for Twitter either, but you know,
just rap god, I mean imagine, I mean, and Vine
still managed to happen in spite of it all the Paul,
(40:46):
you know what the Vine is, how Alex Jones finally
flamed out, And I'm I'll always be grateful for that. Yeah,
he was finding when he was on Capitol Hill people. Yeah,
that was very sad to see. It was a fun day.
That was a fun day watching the news. Now the
(41:07):
emails that have been revealed make it clear that Suck's
issue was never with the selling of data. He doesn't
give one funk about that. He didn't seem to care
a lot about the fact that he wasn't able to
charge people to steal his customers data. And another email
Zuckerberg sent and two's and twelve, he complained that quote
not charging still means people were overuse and abuse our
a p I s and waste money for us. I
think we should implement some kind of program where you
(41:28):
have to pay if he used too many of our resources.
So by two fifteen, there was a lot of shady
stuff out in the world about Mark Zuckerberg, but the
lions share of the coverage of the man and his
brain baby was still unfailingly positive. That two thou fifteen
Business Insider article that I keep gleefully quoting is only
one example of a big fat pile of similar content.
Articles about Mark during this period tended to emphasize his
(41:49):
casual dress and down to earth personality. Many included a
quote from Tyler Winkle Boss stating that Mark is the
poorest looking rich guy he's ever seen since Tyler Winklevoss
was literally born a millionaire. I'm not super trusting that
he's a good judge of how poor people look. Yeah,
is like, well, not to make too fine a point
(42:12):
on it, but Mark Zuckerberg looks like shit, and he
looks like the guy who fixed my toilet the one
time that the rich person plumber wasn't available. Here's another
quote from that fantastic Business Insider article, but despite his billions,
Zack seems incredibly down there. He holds regular town hall
(42:34):
style Q and A sessions where he chats with regular
people from all around the world. I want to show
you guys a shot from one that took place in May, Maggie,
I think you're the person to describe this. Do you
just want a clip of me crying. He's just a
man of the people, you know, God, he's just beating people.
(42:59):
He was our struggles. Someone's doing a shakuh I didn't read.
During this time. He was like posting on Facebook about
all his meetings, and there's a post where he realizes
in real time that slavery still has lasting impacts. Yeah,
and you know, yeah, yeah, it's how many of those
(43:20):
people do you think are wax statues play one Mark
zuckerber I will note that there are not very many
black men in the audience, but one of the few
is right next to Yeah, the ones that yeah, I
don't know how they asked that in the room, but
somehow they got him to come to the front and
(43:42):
surround Mark Zuckerberg. Two fifteen would be Mark Zuckerberg's last
full year is being seen as mostly a good guy
by the outside world. The two thousand sixteen election brought
questions of fake news and Russian propaganda being spread through
the social networks. I wanted to ground these episodes as
much as possible on Mark Zuckerberg the and before we
get into the terrible consequence of some of his actions,
(44:03):
because the fact of the matter is that Facebook is
a tool and a tool someone was going to build
at some point. There is no version of network humanity
where we don't end up with something like this at
some point. But Mark Zuckerberg is the first guy who
got it right, and as a result, his personal characteristics
have had a huge impact on how this colossus has
impacted the world. Now Tomorrow, in part three, we're going
(44:23):
to discuss exactly how Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg production has changed
our world. Throughout parts one and two, we've talked about
him moving fast. In part three, we're going to talk
about what he broke. So everybody ready, let's do it.
You go okay? Oh oh dear uh. Well, you can
find me on Zuckerberg platform, in Stack Graham at Jamie
(44:47):
christ Superstar. You can find me on on Jack's website
and Jamie Lance's Help and listen to the Bechdel Cast
on Tim's platform. Yeah. Uh, that's a lot of man's names,
a lot of the Internet. Uh. Yeah. You can also
find me on all these male dominated spaces on Twitter
(45:08):
and Instagram, Maggie may Fish. Yeah, you can find me
inside of any bag of Dorito's you buy because they're
in my spirit resides m haunting. You can find us
on them on Twitter at bastards pot. You can find
us on the Internet at behind the Bastards dot com.
(45:29):
Do that. We're on every Tuesday. We sell t shirts
on t public, we sell cups, we sell the posters, stickers,
we sell they're not technically living sentient beings, but they've
been engineered to serve you. Uh and they don't have
any legal rights yet, so it's fine. So yeah, all
of that that sounds on the up and up on
the oup and up. The episode tomorrow
M podcast. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards.
Sophie is angry at me for that opening. Uh. This
is the podcast when we talk about all the things
you didn't know about terrible people. Uh, and we laughed
and sometimes too. We're talking about Mark Zuckerberg. This is
(00:20):
part two, so you shouldn't need a normal intro if
you're listening to part two. You saw in the title
this is part two. You know what? You know what's
going on here. My guests, as always on podcasts about
Mark Zuckerberg, Jamie Loftus and Maggie may Fish. We're nice
and warm from part one, maybe from part one and
from the delightful internal heating effect of Brito's. Yeah, I
(00:42):
feel the fern is deep in my belly and right
next to my uterus is nice. The powders coursing through
my main clogging my blood stream like a diet any second,
not clogging enhancing? Now, Oh god, that is a good dorito?
Is there a bad dorito? No? No, there's not fantastic.
(01:06):
You all ready to talk about marzuck some more? Marzak.
It's Mike Marwin. Welcome, Welcome to Marzak. For someone who
gets beaten by a Facebook hate mob. Welcome to Marzak everyone.
So the bloom is well and truly off the rows
(01:26):
of Facebook. In the wake of the two thousand and
sixteen election, criticizing the social media company has become so common,
as of articles declaring that young people have increasingly left
the service behind, that it can be very easy to
forget just what a darling Facebook was in its early days.
I was a tech journalist in the wild and wooly
era of two thousand and ten, when Facebook was cracking
new number milestones every couple of months. I remember when
(01:48):
they had half a billion and eventually a billion. We
would all write articles about Facebook. There's many people are
on Facebook. There's how much time there's been. Look at
all this great stuff. Now. There was a lot of
excitement about what Facebook might mean for the future back
then from most of the tech media. It lasted right
up until the election. I found a Business Insider article
from two thousand fifteen that illustrates this pretty well. It's
titled the Fabulous Life of Mark Zuckerberg. To give you
(02:09):
an idea of its tone, here's the line from the introduction.
The Harvard droughtouts current net Worth is at about thirty
three point four billion, putting him at number sixteen on
Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires. Here's a closer look
at the life of the simultaneously down to earth yet
extravagant CEO. Now, if this report is opending that no
(02:30):
one worth thirty three billion dollars can never be considered
down to earth, but hey, maybe I got some sour grapes.
It is interesting to me that this seems to be
a carefully concocted market employ used by Zuckerberg. The first
big book about facebooks founding, the book that was the
basis for the movie The Social Network, was titled The
Accidental Billionaires Wants to Push They stumbled into it. Oops,
(02:53):
I wound up with more wealth than most of Africas.
Oops tootles. I can't be doing wrong if I'm successful.
If it was, if I just Mr Magoon my way
into a pile of money the size of the Sears Tower,
I can't even grow a beard. Guys, I'm just gonna
keep making fun of this. There's not actually as much
cash in existence as I have in my bank account.
(03:15):
Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, now, uh. The Business Insider article with
all of its flawed and fawning pros, still provides a
decent little look at Zuck's early life. It makes a
point of really really going into Mark's bona fides as
a legit smart guy that he who is to be
very sensitive about his intelligence. I could the size of
(03:40):
his intelligence. Interesting fun fact, Maggie, I could. I could
taste the anger in your voice. Really was. It was
almost like a derrito literally. Yea of the things that
I've noticed, like just having immersed myself in zuckernus um,
he is extremely protective of the idea that he is
(04:05):
a genius um on all things and not just Facebook,
So I mean, he's not in men. But how's that
boop threat on Facebook? Mental love Facebook? To be fair,
It's where they spread all their hate to It is
the platform that they need to have to do it.
(04:26):
So they earned it. They paid seventy five dollars to
take a test on a Sunday. Oh, I Q. Tests
are bastard, almost as terrible as Mark Zuckerberg. But that'll
be for our Stefan Mala new episode. I'm going to
read a quote from that Business Insider article about how
smart Mark Zuckerberg to hear he wasn't just a computer nerd. Though.
(04:49):
Zuck loved the classics, the Odyssey and the like, and
he became captain of the high school. Like yes, yes,
I figured the writer being like, what's the second book
with the second book? Second classic book. Well, and there
was an article that I read that was like he
loves the Greek classics, you know, like talking about that
(05:11):
at the very end, that's a Latin classic. Yeah, there's
a Latin classic. It's actually Roman propaganda written by Virgil
so that he could make the case that Octavian had
like a deep connection to like Roman history. Like it
was literally a propaganda novel to rewrite Roman history in
the image of Octavian after Octavian destroyed the Republican you know,
(05:31):
the Greek classics, the Greek classics, the Greek classics, like
this Roman propaganda novel. Yeah, I hate Harry Potter culture,
but there is a very like, uh, like a disgruntled
hufflepuff vibe to Mark Zuckerberg, like he wants to be
in anywhere else, Mark Huffelberg. Now the article goes through
(05:52):
some of the gushi er us were the details of
Zuckerberg's charmed life since starting Facebook. For example, here's what
it says about his wedding to Priscilla Chandan Days No Days.
Billy Joel Armstrong performed and Mark designed Priscilla's ruby ring.
Himself performed at their wedding, and he designed and in
(06:13):
The Excellent Billionaires makes a point of when it's talking
about like the place that everyone at Facebook lived in
when they all first moved to California, that they were
always playing Green Day because they're so into punk rock.
They're guys, you heard of this record called What What Era?
This has to be like post American idiot. It's gotta
(06:35):
be righting. It's really exciting. Now. The few details about
his life that Mark lets out into the public sphere
are carefully curated. He's one of the many Silicon Valley
CEOs who takes a token one dollar a year salary.
You'll always hear that. Of course, that number ignores what
he makes in stock, and it ignores expenses like the
(06:57):
six and ten thousand, four hundred and fifty four dollars
Facebook spent in two thousand fourteen to chart our private
jets for Mark and his friends. The Business Insider article
and many other pro Zack pieces I have read make
a lot of hay out of the fact that he
doesn't drive a fancy car, instead preferring a Volkswagen g
T I that only costs thirty dollars. Now, if you've
got that kind of money, Mark Zuckerberg, Gas, I don't
think you should have it. But if you got it
(07:17):
and you're going to buy a car, you're an idiot.
If you buy a car that anybody can buy, get
a fucking blimp like that Google guy. At least it's
even more sussed to get a right like, Hello, fellow kids,
I am just like you. I drive Volkswagen like you
are all Volkswagons. You have to tape the gash Sucker
(07:41):
somewhere now. While Facebook was expanding and the world was
falling in love with marky Zack, there were signs that
everyone's favorite new tech book, there were signs that everyone's
favorite new tech billionaire was maybe not the nicest dude
to be around. Noah Kagan worked for Facebook for nine
months in two thousand five, back when the company was
first start its meteoric rise to world dominance. Kagan later
(08:03):
wrote an e book that touched on his experiences there.
In it, he recalled Mark Zuckerberg pouring water on an
engineer's computer after a product demo that he thought looked
like quote shit. Here's a quote from Kegan's e book. Well,
I don't remember the feature we were working on. Engineer
Chris Puttenham and I had spent almost a month building
something we thought Mark would love. He walks to Chris's
computer and we demo the product to Mark. Mark thought
(08:24):
it was ship. I know so because instead of giving
product feedback, he screamed, this is ship. Redo it, throw
water on Chris's computer and walked away. All of us
stood around in shock. Kagan also claims that Zuck, like
far right gang leader Gavin McGinnis, has a distinct fondness
for samurai swords. Oh sword, we get it out, dude.
(08:51):
I remember my first sword guy when it was before
I had the language to identify a sword guy, and
I was like, well, I know I feel unsafe, but
there's more to it than that. It's more than just
a general unease that I have. I also feel bad
for this could so easily kill me with a samurai
saw that he bought forty five dollars at the gas station.
(09:12):
Yeah about Stanford, and bought stand always by a stand.
Well he need you just need to see it. Yeah,
what is he going to hide it? No? No, no, no,
I want you to know exactly what I'm like. Yeah,
I'm like this what I would use to kill you.
I know I look like this guy, but I'm also
this guy. Now, are you guys ready for the samurai
(09:37):
sword story? Yes? Pretty good, It's pretty good. This is
like when Kaddafi had his astronaut short story. This is
the mark of quote. He'd walk around with a samurai sword,
fake threatening to attack you for bad work. Where the
hell he got that samurai sword? Who the hell knows?
Luckily no employees were harmed while I was there. He'd
come around and pretend to cut you, joking. If you
take down the site, he'll chop your head off. You
(09:58):
have to remember you have a twenty few year old
uber nerd running one of the fastest growing sites on
the web. As mature as he could be, he was
also still immature. He had some great motivational alliance with love.
He'd say, if you don't get that done sooner, I
will punch you in the face, or I will shop
you with this huge sword. While holding a huge sword
in hand, but with love. Guys. Oh, it's just like
I'm going to cut you with this sort. Men in
(10:21):
their twenties should have businesses, really sense, Well, the thing
is that he has stunted his growth. Like he doesn't
realize this because he's living his own life. But from
outside perspective, you cemented yourself as a twenty two year
old inept at talking to people and connecting with people,
and you've stopped your life. Well, as he learned from
his later colleague, he should just lean in. That should
(10:45):
just go for it. Next paragraph starts with Cheryl saying,
I do want to share one story about me. When
I was twenty three years old, just for fairness, so
I'm not judging Mark for immaturity. I vomited it down
an elevator in between the shaft and the wall because
I had to puke. I was super drunk and I knew, okay,
(11:07):
I have to puke somewhere. If I puke in this
elevator on other people, that's going to be bad. But
when the door opens, I can I respect that. That's innovative.
I didn't want to hurt too many other people, but
I realized now as a sober man, I really fucked
some repair. Again, not a good person here, but better
(11:30):
than Mark, which is a low bar. Yeah, and also
you learned which let's let's not go. Actually, I am
still a ruined ruin of a human being. Santa Monica
lightbulb bandit. But I don't I don't have a business.
(11:50):
Sophie manages the podcast for good reason. In two thousand eight,
Facebook hired Cheryl Sandberg, the author of Lenin and generally
as Slim is a Queen. Hashtag girl boss O my god,
the girl Boss narrative is my favorite. There's a great
podcast y'all should listen to. It's not our network, but
(12:12):
it's great. It's called The Dream and it's about m
l M s and it talks about an m l
M that's all based on the hashtag girl boss leaning ship.
Super super interesting. Yes, women can also destroy the world
us too. We can eat the planet tea. Yeah. So yes, here,
women are running the CIA now hashtag feminist side. Oh listen,
(12:37):
give us a chance to buy into this power structure.
We waterboard with Lacroix now, but we're still waterboard. We're like,
we're guys, girls were still waterboards. Yeah, let's listen. I
actually get along better with guys than I do with girls.
It's real. It's really weird too, like guys. I know,
(13:01):
like I'm gonna sound like one of those girls, but
I actually like think Mark is really nice and you
just like misunderstood, you know what. I like, agree with that,
and let's shun all other women that disagree with us.
They're kind of like bitchy girls. Yeah, like we shouldn't
hire them anyways. This podcast will not go into nearly
enough detail on miss Sandberg, but we will talk about
her in the in the future yea. At the time,
(13:25):
Sandberg's job was to be the adult in the room
at Facebook, to reinsure the investors and the world that
this browie frat robots suddenly harvesting data from millions of
people was being managed by competent, thoughtful human beings who
would act responsibly with the great power placed in their hands.
Charles Sandberg does at least a very good impression of
a human being. Super Yeah, she does a really good job.
It's the new dictator is a woman with a smile
(13:46):
on her face. First, you know, yeah, always a white
woman with us. Yeah, the white woman, yeah, and the
whitest the whitest woman and a big smile. The front
line interview one of the representatives that they sent. That's
basically all she did was smile and say, oh, yeah,
we know, and we know we fuck up. We're listening
(14:06):
corporate feminism by soap Now. In two six, Facebook introduced
the news Feed, that infinitely scrolling thingy that has replaced
the way roughly Americans get their news. The timeline was
programmed with a distinct preference for controversial content by virtue
of the fact that people were most likely to chat
about things that made them angry, You're scared. They were
(14:26):
also more likely to share articles that angered or scared them.
Skanked sky or did you ever skank? Like in high school?
I guess the scott You know what? Scott is my
favorite genre. But I have never been to a show
or dance. I felt like, for sure you would like
bust it was not a rude boy, but I street
(14:47):
Light Manifesto is maybe my favorite band. Fucking fantastic band. Yeah,
it's not too late. It's not too late, never too late,
not too never too late to skank. Thomas Kalnach If
you're listening, uh, sponsor the show. I don't think you
have any money because you're a ska musician. But you're great. Hey,
if you're listening, give us five stars on idea. We'll
(15:07):
give you. Give you some money you might We feel
like you could probably use that. So when the news
feed launched, Facebook also made a change to its privacy
policies in order to make the news feed work better.
Here's the New Yorker quote. Unless you wrestled with a
(15:27):
set of complicated settings, vastly more of your information, possibly
including your name, your gender, your photograph, your list of friends,
would be made public by default. Now. That New Yorker
article is published in two thousand and ten, after some
of those unpleasant chats between Zuckerberg and his friends about
all of his weasel behavior, you know, after all those
chats and stuff went public, like this came out. The
author of the article is a guy named Jose Antonio Vargas,
(15:48):
and he's a good journalist. I think, I think it's
a good article. He spent some time with Zuckerberg and
when the subject of privacy came up, this happened. And
I'm going to quote the entire bit from the article
because it's fantastic. Privacy. He told me is the third rail?
Is you online. A lot of people who are worried
and this is Zuck talking. A lot of people who
are worried about privacy and those kinds of issues will
take any minor misstep that we make and turn it
into as big a deal as possible, he said. He
(16:09):
then excused himself as he typed on his iPhone for
answering a text from his mother. We realized that people
will probably criticize us for this for a long time,
but we believe this is the right thing to do.
Zuckerberg and I talked about the first time I signed
up for Facebook and September two thousand six, users are
asked to check a box to indicate whether they're interested
in men or women. I told Zuckerberg that it took
me a few hours to decide which box to check.
(16:30):
If I said on Facebook that I'm a man interested
in men, all my Facebook friends, including relatives, coworkers, sources,
some of whom might not approve homosexuality, would see it.
So what did you end up doing, Zuckerberg asked, I
put men. That's interesting. No one has done a study
on this as far as I can tell, but I
think Facebook might be the first place where a large
number of people have come out. He said, we didn't
create that. Society was generally ready for that. He went on,
(16:52):
I think this is just part of the general trend
that we talked about about society being more open, and
I think that's good. Then I told Zuckerberg that two
weeks later, I removed of the check and left the
boxes blank. A couple of relatives who are Facebook friends
had asked about my sexuality, and at that time, at
least I didn't want all my professional sources to know
that I am gay. Is it still out? Zukerberg asked, Yeah,
it's still out. He responded with a flat huh, dropped
(17:14):
his shoulders and stared at me, looking genuinely concerned and
somewhat puzzled. Facebook had asked me to publish a personal
detail that I was not ready to share. Uh. Yeah.
I think that's a really interesting bit of inside there.
That's a crossroads for for a little zuck for z
and I think it points to how stupid I think
he is, that he can't think of other situations until
(17:36):
they're in his face, like until his face is shoved
into it. And also it seems like a very like
straight white guy attitude of just like, I mean, I
think we come up against this all the time. It's
just like stuff that truly didn't occur to him, like
not even at this point, I still prioritize my money
(17:59):
over your privacy. But that sucks, dude. Yeah, yeah, Now.
I found this particularly fascinating in light of a Daily
Beast article I read back in two thousand fifteen how
Facebook exposes domestic violence survivors. The article is as you'd expect,
about a bunch of people whose abusers were able to
get in touch with them and start harassing them again
because Facebook required those women to use their real names
(18:21):
to start Facebook accounts. Quote. Of the major social networking services,
Facebook alone requires users to use an authentic name listed
on an acceptable form of identification, such as a driver's license,
a passport, or a bill. Lincoln's user agreement asks for
a real name, but does not specify any required documentation. Twitter, Instagram,
and as of two fourteen, Google Plus all allows pseudonyms.
Has also been an issue for transgender people. A lot
(18:46):
of people get who Mark never considered and because almost
everyone working at Facebook was another white guy was not
there because it never prioritized and this will be a
problem that will crop up when we start talking about
the genocide being enabled by Facebook. But it's an issue
when you run a company this big that impacts the
(19:06):
lives of this many people, and you don't hire folks
specifically to be like, oh, I'm a member of this
particular community. And this might be an issue for say,
gay men, because you Mark Zuckerberg, don't realize that this
is the thing we have to deal with. Yeah, it's
an online nation and he thinks that he can be
the leader of it without caring about any of the
(19:29):
What don't you learn about the world as the son
of a wealthy dentist who goes to Harvard An excellent? Right, Yeah,
you're right, extremely well, yeah there, it is crazy that,
I mean, you would think the second that you have
this wide of a reach, you would prioritize getting people
at different perspectives in or it's almost like your product
(19:51):
will turn on you. Yeah. Well, it's the ego that
he has that he is unwilling to confront and hide
that all costs. He plays the philanthropy the like I
care about the people when my book Yeah doing my
book club, let's learn together let me listen. Let me
go across the world and listen, so you will look
(20:12):
me for president. The only book club I'm interested in
joining is the Dorrito's book Club. What is it this month?
It's actually tried by Sebastian Young. Are fantastic book, really
good book about PTSD. Dorito's recommends it. Togtion Um adds
(20:33):
it's adds time. That's what that was a lead into
products products, and we're back talking about podcast products services Facebook.
All right, let's get back into it. For the most part,
up through the early aughts, Mark Zuckerberg's brand in most
(20:55):
of the world remained quite strong. He was the genius
who changed the way the world communicated, and he's like
such a humble, down to earth guy. In two thousand ten,
he was even given a guest star role on The Simpsons.
He played a bit part. Lisa is trying to convince
Nelson to stay in school rather than drop out to
focus on his business. They meet Mark Zuckerberg at some
sort of expo thing and he goes on a little
rant about all of the all the great innovators in
(21:17):
the tech industry dropped out of school, which is true.
Now I'll say this I think this is another example
where it's really easy for a guy like Mark. If
you were a coder, what do you need to go
to college? Well, Jamie's a hacker and but yeah, it's
the same thing like as a writer, you can go
you can get a writing degree and get a journalism degree,
but you could also just start writing. And it's the
(21:37):
nature of the business that if you get stuff published
that starts your career. Too. It's not like that for everybody.
If you're an electrician, I got to get some trade,
A surgeon kind of got to go to school. That's
where we're in faker professions. Yeah, that's where we're in
professions where you can be a faker. And in my experience,
someone could be like, so you have a degree in
(21:58):
journalism and you go the sounds good journalism. No, okay, good,
then you're clearly a journalist. Yeah. So anyway, a little
rant there. Uh Now. Two thousand ten was a time
in which Suckerberg and his ideas were the toast of
Silicon Valley, and what did Mark believe? In two He
(22:19):
sat for an interview with tech Crunch. They pressed him
on the matter of other people trusting him with their
data quote. When I got started in my dormom at Harvard,
the question a lot of people asked was why would
I want to put any information on the internet at all?
Why would I want to have a website? And then
the last five or six years, blogging has taken off
in a huge way, and all these different services that
are people sharing all this information. People have really gotten
comfortable not only sharing more information in different kinds, but
(22:42):
more openly and with more people. That social norm is
just something that has evolved over time. We view it
as a role in the system to constantly be innovating
and be updating what our system is to reflect what
the current social norms are. I'm not pushing society. I'm
changing Facebook to adapt to the changing social norm for
selling your data. Well, the funny that I've now realized
that Zuckerberg says a lot like, you know, like I
(23:03):
want to bring the world together, But that is code
for I want the world's information. I want every single
person to be on my website so I have their information,
I have their context. I gotta steal all of the
yell of all of them. It is weird to me,
like how long and I don't know at what point
this occurred to you. It took me a long time
to figure out what the concept of data mining and
(23:26):
big data was and like what it meant, because when
I was in college, I was like, well, who would
want my data? I don't have any money, like all,
I have a student debt, Like who cares if they
have my data? Because I have nothing to hide and
I have nothing, so who cares? And I wrote I
was a copywriter for big data companies for six months.
I would write ten thousand words a day about big
data and still couldn't understand why. I'm like, who gives
(23:48):
a fun unless you have money? But now I feel
like now it's very easy. But this was like five
years ago. I had no fucking clue and it was
my job to know. So I didn't my job. It
didn't make it all you're the true journal A yeah, no,
I do say. There's a great frontline documentary. You just
look up frontline Facebook on YouTube. It's all up there
(24:09):
that there's a journalist on there who was like the
first person to like request a copy of his data
from Facebook and realized how much was being logged. Another
good journalist, solid play because again I was the same
way I didn't pay any attention to what's happening. I
didn't care when going on and when you're taking like
I don't know, like especially in the era that was
(24:29):
super asinine, where you're like you've got bumper stickers and
there's you're taking quizzes all the time. You're like, well,
what would people do with this information? And now I
can't watch band or Snatch without being like they're taking
my opinions. Next, what's good? Yeah, TV is now going
to sell me personalized abs well, and I do think
Netflix is making a big mistake with like focusing on
(24:50):
like this. Many people watched the fucking bird Box movies like, well,
it's successful as Black Panthers, No, because nobody had to
pay Yeah, no, one would have seen gust making money.
People saw cumulatives eighteen minutes of bird Box where they
were cooking, checking their phone and pooping. What are the
(25:11):
rules of this world? Why they put birds in the box, guys?
And I think that that makes it worth hard time.
I do think that that quote from the tech Crunch
interview maps out Mark's ideology pretty well. The world wants
to be more connected. His only job is delivering that
connectivity and As long as Facebook is connecting more people faster,
he does not need to worry about anything else. This
(25:32):
was mapped out even more eloquently by the company motto,
based on a quote by Mark himself, move fast and
break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you aren't moving
fast enough. Now. The title of this episode, part two
is move fast, and the title of part three is
break things. Don't talk about that little genocide. Yeah, people
(25:56):
have ended their lives now. Now, it is important to
understand that at every level Facebook, the organization is programmed
to work this way. I'd like to quote from a
great CNBC article with the revealing title inside Facebook's cult
like workplace where the sin is discouraged and employees pretend
to be happy all the time. Solid title sounds like
(26:19):
one of those really long Fiona Apple. Oh yeah, you're
about to tell me a lot of stuff. I'm ready quote.
Employees feel pressure to place the company above all else
in their lives, fall in line with their manager's orders,
enforce cordiality with their colleagues so that they can advance
several former employees like in the culture to a cult.
This culture has contributed to the company's well publicized wave
(26:41):
of scandals over the last two years, such as government
spreading misinformation to try to influence elections and the misuse
of private user data. According to many people who work
there during this period, they say Facebook might have caught
some of these problems sooner if employees were encouraged to
deliver honest feedback. You can't deliver honest feedback if you're
moving fast and break and show well, you can't deliver
on his feedback with fucking Katana. Yeah. Well, Also, why
(27:02):
would you tell someone I think this product that we're
about to launch might break something If you're part of
half of your job is to break things right, you're
encouraged to and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook employees rate each other
and then managers give them final grades to determine whether
or not they'll be promoted, fired, or give them raises.
Never learns a lesson, never, ever, ever, ever ever. I've
(27:25):
quoted BoJack Horseman once before in this show, but another
one of the truest fucking things that show ever pointed
out one of the characters is an agent saying that
the age in which you get rich is the age
in which your growth is forever stunted. So if you're rich,
are twenty forever? Yes, buy a shirt at T public
so I can stop aging at age thirty and by
(27:48):
my own blimp. That's a reasonable Yeah, good age to stop. Yeah,
still optimistic enough. You want to want to have a
light bulb fight after that lightbulb steal in spirit. I'm
not keeping the light bulbs. I just like the way
they shatter when you throw them at people. That's better,
You're right, it's way better. I'm not taking these light bulbs.
(28:10):
I don't want them. Cricket, cricket, cricket. I don't need
your judgment. Magbert. You do this in groups or so
low groups? Okay, Yeah, it's come along next time there's this.
This could go a lot of dir if you're doing
it alone. It's like just drunkenly throwing. No. I throw
(28:33):
light bulbs at people I love, oh affection, just like
at the ground next to them. So it's like it's
like a little puff. It's fun like firecrap. I didn't
do this to be judged, Okay, I feel it's gonna
be a great behind the best you can be on
ethical and still be legal my life. What if I
(28:58):
prefer to be ethical buddily goal. Right there we go. Yeah,
that course, treat people well, break the law. Yeah. So
employees rate each other, managers give them final grades that
determine whether or not they'll be promoted, fired, or given raises.
These grades are issued by quota, so managers are pressured
to underrate perfectly good employees just because the quota of
(29:20):
good employees has already been met. It sounds like a
stressful mess. The article goes into substantial detail about the
review process. This quote in particular stood out to me. Quote.
These twice yearly reviews encourage employees to be particularly productive
around June and December, working nights and weekends as they
race to impress bosses before reviews, which are typically completed
in August and February. It's especially true in December, the
(29:41):
half Facebook predominantly uses to determine which employees will receive promotions.
This rush causes employees to focus on short term goals
and push out features that drive user and engagement and
improve their own metrics without fully considering the potential long
term negative impacts on user experience or privacy. Multiple former
employees said, wow, fast break the world. Wow, it sounds
(30:03):
like a guy that's too dumb to run a company.
It sounds like twenty year old shouldn't have much responsibility.
Yeah he was. He was stunted at like a man
learned something all the time from that show about the
sad horse, about the sad horse, depressed Horse Show. That
the depressed horse show has some has some truth in
(30:24):
it too. Yeah, And horses are inherently sad. You never
see a horse land and like looking happy. Yes, me too.
Oh no, sad was the same horse there? Like we
killed a horse, Jimmie Loftus and I murdered a horse
(30:44):
and a light bulb. I'm gonna believe how it in
our defense, the horse started it. Yes, yes, very sad horse.
So Mark Zuckerberg has never wasted much time I'm worrying
about the consequences of his actions. He's more of an
asked questions later kind of guy, And as he aged
into a tech titan, Mark Zuckerberg remained pretty cavalier about
(31:08):
people's privacy. This would all come to a dangerous head
for the first time in two thousand seven with a
Facebook product called Beacon. I would like to quote from
a book titled appropriately enough, Move Fast and Break Things,
which is a really good book about all of these monsters,
but not just a Silicon val grows. This was essentially
(31:28):
an alert system that told your friends you had purchased
something on a partner site. It was built as an
opt out system, so you had to actively tell Facebook
each time you didn't want the site to broadcast your
purchase to all your friends. It was a total disaster
from the outset, but Zuckerberg was so confident that he
knew better than his users that he refused to turn
it off for many weeks while the pr disaster escalated. Eventually,
he relented and posted a mia colpa on his blog saying,
(31:49):
We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but
we've made even more with how we've handled them. Spite
Zuckerberg's regret and a payment of nine point five million
for a class action suit over Beacon, many who worked
with him feel he doesn't really understand privacy. Charlie Cheever,
one of his key programmers, told Kirkpatrick, who's some guy.
I feel that Mark doesn't believe in privacy that much,
or at least believes in privacy is a stepping stone
(32:10):
to radical transparency. He The way he put out that
press release is the same way he talked to the
guy that he fucked over. I am so sorry. I
did something wrong here, I did something Go away away.
It means nothing to me, never has I've always been
rich and always will be. We'll have it resolved within
(32:31):
the year parentheses here now. Radical transparency is a buzz
term Mark brings up whenever he needs a high minded
ideological justification for doing precisely whatever the fuck he wants.
And two don twelve whatever the funk he wants included
fucking with people's emotions, just to see if that was possible.
(32:54):
Here is a quote from the hilariously named pen S
Scientific Journal. And it's p n A S but what
else could I call it? Plus they're a Penis journal.
It's a very serious scientific journal, the big dignat the
big swing science. We all got slapped with sciences. And
(33:20):
you don't go with the swings, you're gonna get slapped.
Here's Penas nice. In an experiment with people who use Facebook,
we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in person
interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content
and the news feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people
(33:42):
produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts. When negative
expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate
that the emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our
own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive scale contagion via
social networks. A k A. We used Facebook to see
if we could make people sad, and we can. It
(34:03):
works now. The researchers she carried out this study had
previously studied real life social networks to you know, to
study the same sort of emotional contagion, but with like
actual groups of friends. You know, your buddy sad, she
calls you, he called you know, you get sad too. Um,
this is the way people have always worked. They then
went to Facebook to see if the social network was
down to play guinea pig with its users. Facebook totally was.
(34:26):
They and the researchers found quote emotional states can be
transferred to others via emotional contagient, leading people to experience
the same emotions without their awareness. In other words, they
proved that emotional states like anger or hopelessness could be
spread via Facebook. Facebook proved this by determining what kinds
of content got pushed to the timelines of each of
its users effectively manipulating their emotions just to see if
(34:47):
it was possible. People got angry. Facebook responded with faux regret,
and Mark Zuckerberg kept pretty quiet about this whole thing.
But if you followed the guy's history and intellectual development,
you can understand why an experiment like this would be
pretty in line with his past behavior. It's just another
like a woman versus cow situation. It's like if one
girl is deemed unhot, then other people will agree unhot,
(35:10):
and then we'll just reshape what is hot. Yeah, so
that's fun. What else is fun is products also services,
consumable items that you can spend money on and then
have in your home. The big swinging Dick of Capital
of the Swinging Dicks or one the hanging Labia Heavy
(35:35):
Wonderful women's CEOs care about people. If you want to
support the heavy swinging Labia, that support their show by
these products, we're back. Maggie Mayfish just said something through
a mouthful of derritos. I'm about to do the same,
(36:00):
oh Man, better than us swinging Labia. I'd rather lick
these Yes. Yes. In June, all Facebook was in the
midst of playing with their users emotions. Glenn Greenwald published
an article to the Guardian based on Edward Snowden's releases.
The article revealed that the National Security Agency had been
given access to huge amounts of data from Facebook, Google, Apple,
(36:23):
and several other major Internet companies. When Mark Zuckerberg was
asked about Glenn Greenwald's article, he said, frankly, the government
blew it and lamented that the state had done a
bad job of protecting privacy. Why uh, you know what,
just because it's so bold, I'll give him that one.
I'll give him that now. In March of two fifteen,
(36:49):
the Guardian broke what would turn out to be a
critically important story. Millions of americans personal data had been
harvested through a Facebook app without their knowledge and handed
off to a little company called Cambridge Analytica. In an
interview Mark Zuckerberg gave with Ricode in two thousand eighteen,
he swore that as soon as Facebook was alerted to
the harvesting of their user data by Cambridge Analytica's Alexander
Cogan quote, we immediately shut down the app, took away
(37:11):
his profile, and demanded certification that the data was deleted. However,
further reporting from The Guardian showed that Facebook didn't suspend
Cogan or Cambridge Analytica until March of two thousand eighteen,
like two or three months before the interview in which
Zuckerberg swore they'd banned his ass back in two thousand fifteen. Now,
I'd say it has been proven beyond much doubt that
Mark Zuckerberg's attitude about the value of other people's privacy
(37:31):
has not changed much since the days when he stole
people's pictures to build an app where kids could vote
on which of their female classmates was hotter than a cow.
Thankfully we know how Mark Zuckerberg and the other Facebook
top brass really feel about the value of their users privacy.
Last year, the British government released an enormous cash of
internal company emails to the public. The data included this
bit from two thousand twelve. I'm going to quote Recode's
fantastic coverage and Kara Swisher with Ricode has done some
(37:54):
of the best reporting on Mark Zuckerberg in the best
holding of his in the in the front lane when
he yes, Harris Wisher is a really good ship in
the tech industry of the tech journalists. She's like, she's
she's solid. I'm gonna quote recodes coverage and two thousand twelve,
(38:14):
Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook charged some outside developers for accessing
and collecting data on users through the company's ap i
S software that allows Facebook to share data with other apps.
If we make it so debs can generate revenue for
us in different ways. That makes it more acceptable for
us to charge them quite a bit more for using
the platform, Zuckerberg wrote. He suggested that developers could offset
these charges by spending money on Facebook ads. Now. Facebook
(38:36):
said they didn't actually go through with that, but the
fact that Mark Zuckerberg himself suggested doing the same thing
Cabage Analytico would do three years later, Suggesse probably was
not that mfended by the concept. Mark published a Facebook
post to address this and other revelations. Quote, Like any organization,
we had a lot of internal discussion and people raise
different ideas. Ultimately, we decided on a model where we
(38:56):
continue to provide the developer platform for free and developers
could choose to buy ads a they wanted. This model
has worked well. Other ideas we considered but decided against,
included charging developers for usage of our platform. Similar to
how developers pay to use Amazon Aws or Google Cloud.
To be clear, that's different from selling people's data. We've
never sold anyone's data, but it kind of sounds like
that's exactly what Facebook did. Here's recode quote. In some cases,
(39:18):
Facebook granted other businesses like Netflix and Lift special permission
to access information that other companies didn't have, So they
didn't sell data directly. But people who paid Facebook a
shipload and ad dollars got access to more user data
which they didn't pay for, but they got access to
because they were paying more money to Facebook, which is
different from paying for data. Because a lawyer can argue
(39:40):
that it's legally distinct from selling access to people's data,
and I'm sure it is in a court of law
until it's proven not hopefully, it's like until the laws
need to be made to make the distinction clear, to
make it a crime what they did, which I think
is it ethically at It's like a crime in the
(40:02):
hearts of any decent person, but anyweah, well, we know
how Zucky feels about ethics. Zucky Zuck ha ha ha.
So that article also revealed that companies that Facebook found
threatening to their bottom line had their access to use
your data restricted. Quote. When Twitter launched the video service
(40:24):
Fine in two thousand twelve, Facebook cut off access to
its friend graph. That meant users who signed up for
Vine with their Facebook account couldn't see and connect with
all their Facebook friends inside Vine, and ability that would
have theoretically helped Vine create a network much faster. Yeah.
I don't feel that sorry for Twitter either, but you know,
just rap god, I mean imagine, I mean, and Vine
still managed to happen in spite of it all the Paul,
(40:46):
you know what the Vine is, how Alex Jones finally
flamed out, And I'm I'll always be grateful for that. Yeah,
he was finding when he was on Capitol Hill people. Yeah,
that was very sad to see. It was a fun day.
That was a fun day watching the news. Now the
(41:07):
emails that have been revealed make it clear that Suck's
issue was never with the selling of data. He doesn't
give one funk about that. He didn't seem to care
a lot about the fact that he wasn't able to
charge people to steal his customers data. And another email
Zuckerberg sent and two's and twelve, he complained that quote
not charging still means people were overuse and abuse our
a p I s and waste money for us. I
think we should implement some kind of program where you
(41:28):
have to pay if he used too many of our resources.
So by two fifteen, there was a lot of shady
stuff out in the world about Mark Zuckerberg, but the
lions share of the coverage of the man and his
brain baby was still unfailingly positive. That two thou fifteen
Business Insider article that I keep gleefully quoting is only
one example of a big fat pile of similar content.
Articles about Mark during this period tended to emphasize his
(41:49):
casual dress and down to earth personality. Many included a
quote from Tyler Winkle Boss stating that Mark is the
poorest looking rich guy he's ever seen since Tyler Winklevoss
was literally born a millionaire. I'm not super trusting that
he's a good judge of how poor people look. Yeah,
is like, well, not to make too fine a point
(42:12):
on it, but Mark Zuckerberg looks like shit, and he
looks like the guy who fixed my toilet the one
time that the rich person plumber wasn't available. Here's another
quote from that fantastic Business Insider article, but despite his billions,
Zack seems incredibly down there. He holds regular town hall
(42:34):
style Q and A sessions where he chats with regular
people from all around the world. I want to show
you guys a shot from one that took place in May, Maggie,
I think you're the person to describe this. Do you
just want a clip of me crying. He's just a
man of the people, you know, God, he's just beating people.
(42:59):
He was our struggles. Someone's doing a shakuh I didn't read.
During this time. He was like posting on Facebook about
all his meetings, and there's a post where he realizes
in real time that slavery still has lasting impacts. Yeah,
and you know, yeah, yeah, it's how many of those
(43:20):
people do you think are wax statues play one Mark
zuckerber I will note that there are not very many
black men in the audience, but one of the few
is right next to Yeah, the ones that yeah, I
don't know how they asked that in the room, but
somehow they got him to come to the front and
(43:42):
surround Mark Zuckerberg. Two fifteen would be Mark Zuckerberg's last
full year is being seen as mostly a good guy
by the outside world. The two thousand sixteen election brought
questions of fake news and Russian propaganda being spread through
the social networks. I wanted to ground these episodes as
much as possible on Mark Zuckerberg the and before we
get into the terrible consequence of some of his actions,
(44:03):
because the fact of the matter is that Facebook is
a tool and a tool someone was going to build
at some point. There is no version of network humanity
where we don't end up with something like this at
some point. But Mark Zuckerberg is the first guy who
got it right, and as a result, his personal characteristics
have had a huge impact on how this colossus has
impacted the world. Now Tomorrow, in part three, we're going
(44:23):
to discuss exactly how Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg production has changed
our world. Throughout parts one and two, we've talked about
him moving fast. In part three, we're going to talk
about what he broke. So everybody ready, let's do it.
You go okay? Oh oh dear uh. Well, you can
find me on Zuckerberg platform, in Stack Graham at Jamie
(44:47):
christ Superstar. You can find me on on Jack's website
and Jamie Lance's Help and listen to the Bechdel Cast
on Tim's platform. Yeah. Uh, that's a lot of man's names,
a lot of the Internet. Uh. Yeah. You can also
find me on all these male dominated spaces on Twitter
(45:08):
and Instagram, Maggie may Fish. Yeah, you can find me
inside of any bag of Dorito's you buy because they're
in my spirit resides m haunting. You can find us
on them on Twitter at bastards pot. You can find
us on the Internet at behind the Bastards dot com.
(45:29):
Do that. We're on every Tuesday. We sell t shirts
on t public, we sell cups, we sell the posters, stickers,
we sell they're not technically living sentient beings, but they've
been engineered to serve you. Uh and they don't have
any legal rights yet, so it's fine. So yeah, all
of that that sounds on the up and up on
the oup and up. The episode tomorrow
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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