April 11, 2018 • 7 mins
Rich DeMuro takes a look at what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said to Congress in his testimony and offers thoughts on his statements.Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontechNEW! You can add the Rich on Tech Daily Update to your Alexa Flash Briefing! Just search for the "Rich on Tech" skill in your Alexa app and add it to your briefing! You'll get a daily dose of tech news each day and a longer show on the weekends!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Zuckerberg gets grilled. I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on
Tech Daily. Well, if you're watching the news at all,
you saw that Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg talked
to Congress yesterday and also today, and man was that
interesting to watch. If you watched any of it, well,
you realize several things. First off, well, I think our
(00:26):
lawmakers are a little bit in the dark about how
the internet works, how Facebook works, how they track us,
how they make money. But also I think it also
showed another side of things aside that what these tech
companies are doing is not always transparent to the average person.
And I can't knock these guys in Washington for not
knowing the inner workings of the Internet and how technology works,
(00:49):
because let's face it, most people don't when you think
about it. Back in the day, we had newspapers, they
were a trusted source. If something was published in the
newspaper or a magazine, well you knew an editor went
through it. Now with Facebook, people post stories from all
kinds of sources. You don't really know where they're coming from.
We have to be the editor at the end of
the day. And that's a big job for a lot
(01:09):
of people. Most of us have a normal job. We're
sitting there working. We don't have time to fact check
every single article or story or posts that we see,
so we take it at face value, and as we've seen,
that has sort of backfired. Let me go through some
of the remarks that Zuckerberg made and I'll kind of
comment on some of them. First off, he said, Facebook
is an idealistic and optimistic company. From our existence, we've
(01:32):
been focused on all the good that connecting people can do.
As Facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful
new tool for staying connected to the people they love,
making their voices heard, and building communities and businesses. All
of that is very true. So when you think about Facebook,
I mean, it really is connecting people in new ways,
(01:52):
connecting people in different ways, in ways that we never
really really thought of. But as they went down that line,
we've seen it's been a tough road because we think
about the ways that Facebook has always been trying to
connect people, but they've come under a lot of heat
for the ways that they do that. So these are
all things that they're learning from. Zuckerberg then goes on
to say, it's clear now we didn't do enough to
(02:13):
prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.
That goes for fake news, foreign interference and elections, hate speech,
as well as developers and data privacy. And right there
he's really talking about what happened with Cambridge Analytica. And
here's the thing. When you're something like Facebook, a large
organization that's building these tools, you don't necessarily know how
everyone's going to use them. Now, you might have an
(02:35):
idea how they're going to be used, but you can't
figure out every possibility in the world. And I think
that's what he's saying here. So now Facebook, and since
twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, when they change a lot
of these things, they have done better, and I think
they will now with the spotlight being on them, continue
to do better. Zuckerberg goes on to say, it's not
just enough to connect people. We want to make sure
(02:55):
those connections are positive. So that's a big one too,
because this really deals with fake news. And here's the
thing when it comes to Facebook, they want to spread information.
It is an amazing place to spread information. If you
have an announcement, if you ever had a kid, you
put a birth announcement on there, or you say you're
going to the hospital. It's amazing all the people that
come out of the woodwork to offer you congratulations or
(03:18):
to give you some information, or if you're traveling somewhere,
you know how people can tell you, oh, I've been
to that place. You can't possibly pull every single one
of your friends and say, hey, have you been to France?
Tell me the best restaurants. But on Facebook you can
do that. And so again they're saying here that there
are tools that really do connect people, but you have
to make sure that they're not used to spread misinformation.
(03:41):
And that's a tough thing to do because Facebook can't
fact check everything that's posted to their site, but they
can create some tools that let them figure out what's
good and what's bad. Zuckerberg goes on to say, I
believe deeply in what we're doing, and I know that
when we address these challenges, we'll look back and view
helping people and connecting and giving people voice as a
positive force in the world. I remember when I first
(04:03):
got my access to Facebook. It was such an honor.
I mean, I remember I used my alumni email address
to get access to the website, because you had to
have an edu email address to get access to Facebook
back in the day, and when I did that, it
was like a whole new world had been unlocked to me,
and a lot of people thought that way, and we've
gotten away from that. Now we take Facebook for granted,
(04:25):
but the reality is it has done a lot of
good for people. But at the same time, it has
become a huge force in our lives, and Facebook needs
to know that. They need to be cognizant of the
strength that they have and of the power that they have.
And that's part of this learning situation. By the way,
So what's the point about all this tracking? Why do
(04:46):
these companies want to track us so badly? It all
comes down to one thing money. I've said this before.
They want to sell us stuff, whether it's Facebook selling ads,
whether it's Google selling ads, whether it's Target getting us
into their store to buy stuff. The more that they
know about us, the easier it is to sell us stuff.
And the more that companies know about us, the better
(05:07):
it is for advertisers who want to target us. And
that's really what's going on here. So when you think
about Facebook, what they're doing is they're trying to collect
as much data on us as possible because that way
marketers can sell us stuff in an easy way. If
you're on Facebook back in the early days, you would
see a bunch of ads in your news feed, and
the biggest complaint about those ads on the side was
(05:28):
that they meant nothing to you. They'd be for products
that you just didn't care about. Well, now, obviously Facebook
has gotten really good at targeting us, so a lot
of the ads you see are for products that a
lot of people say, Oh, I was just thinking about
that product, or I search for that product. Same thing
with Instagram, same thing with pretty much any website that
uses Google Ads or any sort of online major online
(05:50):
ad provider. In reality, this is kind of a good
thing for us because think about it, it's bad for
your wallet because you're probably going to spend more money,
but it's a good thing because you're interested in the
products that you see, or you could be interested in
the products you see back in the day. Let's just
use the hypothetical of watching a national telecast, right, so
millions of people would be watching that show. You'd probably
(06:11):
see an ad for a really broad product like Colgate toothpaste.
Millions of people would see that ad. It would build
brand awareness. Yes, maybe a percentage of those people would
purchase it. Now we're getting highly targeted ads for products
that we may like, that we may be interested in
for the time period in our lives. And this is
really nothing new. It just happens to be on the Internet.
(06:32):
So it's much more optimized. Think about when you went
to the mall. You saw that big shiny car in
the center of the mall that you can win. Well,
guess what it wasn't just hey, let's just pick someone
out of a raffle, No, it was fill out this
card that asked you everything, where you live, how much
you make, what your email address is, what your cell
phone number is. Well, they're given away that car that
(06:53):
might cost thirty thousand dollars, but they're gathering thousands of
dollars worth of data on the individuals that enter the raffle.
I Guess what happens to that information? It's all sold
and resold to marketers, and that's what it's all about.
So this has been going on from the beginning of time.
It's just that companies like Facebook and Google have gotten
extremely good at it. Overall, putting all this stuff on
(07:15):
TV and having this all come to light is a
good thing for all of us, because tech companies in
general are now going to realize that they can't get
away with all the crazy stuff that they might have
been able to get away with in the past. There
you have it. Thanks so much for listening, rich Demiro
rich on tech dot TV. Tell me what you think.
You can tweet me on Twitter or on Facebook as well.
(07:38):
I know you're still on there because I am so
Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon.
Zuckerberg gets grilled. I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on
Tech Daily. Well, if you're watching the news at all,
you saw that Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg talked
to Congress yesterday and also today, and man was that
interesting to watch. If you watched any of it, well,
you realize several things. First off, well, I think our
(00:26):
lawmakers are a little bit in the dark about how
the internet works, how Facebook works, how they track us,
how they make money. But also I think it also
showed another side of things aside that what these tech
companies are doing is not always transparent to the average person.
And I can't knock these guys in Washington for not
knowing the inner workings of the Internet and how technology works,
(00:49):
because let's face it, most people don't when you think
about it. Back in the day, we had newspapers, they
were a trusted source. If something was published in the
newspaper or a magazine, well you knew an editor went
through it. Now with Facebook, people post stories from all
kinds of sources. You don't really know where they're coming from.
We have to be the editor at the end of
the day. And that's a big job for a lot
(01:09):
of people. Most of us have a normal job. We're
sitting there working. We don't have time to fact check
every single article or story or posts that we see,
so we take it at face value, and as we've seen,
that has sort of backfired. Let me go through some
of the remarks that Zuckerberg made and I'll kind of
comment on some of them. First off, he said, Facebook
is an idealistic and optimistic company. From our existence, we've
(01:32):
been focused on all the good that connecting people can do.
As Facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful
new tool for staying connected to the people they love,
making their voices heard, and building communities and businesses. All
of that is very true. So when you think about Facebook,
I mean, it really is connecting people in new ways,
(01:52):
connecting people in different ways, in ways that we never
really really thought of. But as they went down that line,
we've seen it's been a tough road because we think
about the ways that Facebook has always been trying to
connect people, but they've come under a lot of heat
for the ways that they do that. So these are
all things that they're learning from. Zuckerberg then goes on
to say, it's clear now we didn't do enough to
(02:13):
prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.
That goes for fake news, foreign interference and elections, hate speech,
as well as developers and data privacy. And right there
he's really talking about what happened with Cambridge Analytica. And
here's the thing. When you're something like Facebook, a large
organization that's building these tools, you don't necessarily know how
everyone's going to use them. Now, you might have an
(02:35):
idea how they're going to be used, but you can't
figure out every possibility in the world. And I think
that's what he's saying here. So now Facebook, and since
twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, when they change a lot
of these things, they have done better, and I think
they will now with the spotlight being on them, continue
to do better. Zuckerberg goes on to say, it's not
just enough to connect people. We want to make sure
(02:55):
those connections are positive. So that's a big one too,
because this really deals with fake news. And here's the
thing when it comes to Facebook, they want to spread information.
It is an amazing place to spread information. If you
have an announcement, if you ever had a kid, you
put a birth announcement on there, or you say you're
going to the hospital. It's amazing all the people that
come out of the woodwork to offer you congratulations or
(03:18):
to give you some information, or if you're traveling somewhere,
you know how people can tell you, oh, I've been
to that place. You can't possibly pull every single one
of your friends and say, hey, have you been to France?
Tell me the best restaurants. But on Facebook you can
do that. And so again they're saying here that there
are tools that really do connect people, but you have
to make sure that they're not used to spread misinformation.
(03:41):
And that's a tough thing to do because Facebook can't
fact check everything that's posted to their site, but they
can create some tools that let them figure out what's
good and what's bad. Zuckerberg goes on to say, I
believe deeply in what we're doing, and I know that
when we address these challenges, we'll look back and view
helping people and connecting and giving people voice as a
positive force in the world. I remember when I first
(04:03):
got my access to Facebook. It was such an honor.
I mean, I remember I used my alumni email address
to get access to the website, because you had to
have an edu email address to get access to Facebook
back in the day, and when I did that, it
was like a whole new world had been unlocked to me,
and a lot of people thought that way, and we've
gotten away from that. Now we take Facebook for granted,
(04:25):
but the reality is it has done a lot of
good for people. But at the same time, it has
become a huge force in our lives, and Facebook needs
to know that. They need to be cognizant of the
strength that they have and of the power that they have.
And that's part of this learning situation. By the way,
So what's the point about all this tracking? Why do
(04:46):
these companies want to track us so badly? It all
comes down to one thing money. I've said this before.
They want to sell us stuff, whether it's Facebook selling ads,
whether it's Google selling ads, whether it's Target getting us
into their store to buy stuff. The more that they
know about us, the easier it is to sell us stuff.
And the more that companies know about us, the better
(05:07):
it is for advertisers who want to target us. And
that's really what's going on here. So when you think
about Facebook, what they're doing is they're trying to collect
as much data on us as possible because that way
marketers can sell us stuff in an easy way. If
you're on Facebook back in the early days, you would
see a bunch of ads in your news feed, and
the biggest complaint about those ads on the side was
(05:28):
that they meant nothing to you. They'd be for products
that you just didn't care about. Well, now, obviously Facebook
has gotten really good at targeting us, so a lot
of the ads you see are for products that a
lot of people say, Oh, I was just thinking about
that product, or I search for that product. Same thing
with Instagram, same thing with pretty much any website that
uses Google Ads or any sort of online major online
(05:50):
ad provider. In reality, this is kind of a good
thing for us because think about it, it's bad for
your wallet because you're probably going to spend more money,
but it's a good thing because you're interested in the
products that you see, or you could be interested in
the products you see back in the day. Let's just
use the hypothetical of watching a national telecast, right, so
millions of people would be watching that show. You'd probably
(06:11):
see an ad for a really broad product like Colgate toothpaste.
Millions of people would see that ad. It would build
brand awareness. Yes, maybe a percentage of those people would
purchase it. Now we're getting highly targeted ads for products
that we may like, that we may be interested in
for the time period in our lives. And this is
really nothing new. It just happens to be on the Internet.
(06:32):
So it's much more optimized. Think about when you went
to the mall. You saw that big shiny car in
the center of the mall that you can win. Well,
guess what it wasn't just hey, let's just pick someone
out of a raffle, No, it was fill out this
card that asked you everything, where you live, how much
you make, what your email address is, what your cell
phone number is. Well, they're given away that car that
(06:53):
might cost thirty thousand dollars, but they're gathering thousands of
dollars worth of data on the individuals that enter the raffle.
I Guess what happens to that information? It's all sold
and resold to marketers, and that's what it's all about.
So this has been going on from the beginning of time.
It's just that companies like Facebook and Google have gotten
extremely good at it. Overall, putting all this stuff on
(07:15):
TV and having this all come to light is a
good thing for all of us, because tech companies in
general are now going to realize that they can't get
away with all the crazy stuff that they might have
been able to get away with in the past. There
you have it. Thanks so much for listening, rich Demiro
rich on tech dot TV. Tell me what you think.
You can tweet me on Twitter or on Facebook as well.
(07:38):
I know you're still on there because I am so
Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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