January 1, 2025 • 49 mins
To kick off 2025, we’re releasing a conversation that Evolving Leader co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender had with Mark Weinstein. Mark is a tech entrepreneur, contemporary thought leader, privacy expert and one of the inventors of social networking. His work around social media, privacy, AI, free speech antitrust and protecting children online is widely published in publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fox, CNN and the BBC (to name but a few).
Mark has been listed as one of the ‘Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy’ and his book ‘Restoring Our Sanity Online’ was published in September 2024.
In this conversation, Mark talks about the profound impact of social media on society, politics and well-being, highlighting the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 where users became the product, leading to surveillance capitalism.
This is an important listen.
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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jean Gomes (00:03):
Social media's influence on society, politics
and our well being cannot beoverstated. It has literally
changed the world in the mostprofound of ways. Around 5
billion people, over 60% of theworld's population, now spend
their time there, and thatnumber is only likely to grow
faster in the coming years. It'san alternative reality for 30%
(00:24):
of users who express their mostextreme feelings and opinions.
It's also a transformativebusiness model harvesting our
data in ways we're only reallystarting to comprehend. In this
show, we're talking to one ofthe pioneers of social media,
Mark Weinstein, about hisconcerns and what we can do to
take back control. Tune in foran important conversation on the
(00:46):
evolving leader you
Scott Allender (01:08):
Hey folks, welcome to The Evolving Leader,
Jean Gomes (01:09):
And I'm Jean Gomes.
a show born from the belief thatwe need deeper, more accountable
Scott Allender (01:12):
How are you feeling today Mr. Gomes, what
and more human leadership toconfront the world's biggest
challenges. I'm Scott Allenderare you bringing with you today?
Jean Gomes (01:22):
I am bringing hope.
That's what I'm bringing. I'vehad a redefinition of the word
given an event I went to lastweek, which is making a big
distinction between optimism andhope from a kind of generational
perspective. And yeah, so I'mbringing hope. How about you,
Scott, how you feeling?
(01:43):
I'm ready to receive your hope.
I need some hope. I'm feeling abit activated. I'm feeling, I
don't know when this is going togo up, but you know, we've we're
facing a monumental election inthe US next week, and I'm
feeling a lot related to that,but I'm feeling along with that
gratitude to be back with youtoday in the studio and excited
(02:04):
to have the conversation we'reabout to have, because today
we're joined by Mark Weinstein.
Mark is a world renowned techentrepreneur, contemporary
thought leader, privacy expert,and one of the visionary
inventors of social networking.
His adventure in social mediahas lasted over 25 years through
three award winning personalsocial media platforms enjoyed
(02:25):
by millions of membersworldwide. Mark is the author of
several books, and today we'regoing to be speaking with him
all about his most recent book,restoring our sanity online. And
I can almost feel our listenersears perk up just at the thought
of that. His book asked thequestion, what would social
media look like if it nourishedour critical thinking, mental
(02:47):
health, privacy, civil discourseand our democracy? Mark has been
listed as one of the top eightminds in online privacy and was
named privacy by designAmbassador by the Canadian
government. He's also theinventor of 10 revolutionary US
patents that disrupt thetargeting and data collection
(03:08):
underpinnings of surveillancecapitalism. This is going to be
an important conversation. Mark,welcome to The Evolving Leader.
Mark Weinstein (03:17):
Thank you, Scott, thank you, John. It's
great to be with you guys. Youknow, you are such great
leaders, teaching leaders. Andyou know, today, we want to talk
to everybody, because everybodyuses the web. Everybody knows
about social media. Virtuallyall of us use some form of
social media, and we've got tofix it. So this is a great
(03:40):
conversation.
Jean Gomes (03:41):
Welcome to the show Mark. How are you feeling today?
Mark Weinstein (03:44):
You know, I'm just going to double down a
little bit on the hope andgratitude. Because, you know, I
love hope, and I think prayerthoughtful prayer is very
important too, and I liken hopeto being like prayer without
action. So when you put hope andaction together, magic happens.
(04:09):
So let's go for magic.
Excellent.
Jean Gomes (04:12):
Okay, cool. Well, let's allow our audiences to get
to know you a little bit. Mark.
What's the background to yourstory? And how did you come to
focus on social media andsurveillance capitalism. What's
the journey you've been on?
Mark Weinstein (04:26):
It's fascinating everybody, because as we all
walk through life, we're just,you know, attracted to and, you
know, inventive with our ownlives. And for me, it was 1997
in a hike with my 10 year oldnephew on a family vacation. And
(04:47):
we had started this dialogabout, you know, start with
Uncle Mark. He wouldn't be greatif we could. And my nephew was
just concerned about how wecould all stay connected. We all
were living all around theworld, working, playing. And 10
minutes to them. We were talkingabout using the web, and we're
not talking about emaileverybody. Because if you're old
(05:08):
enough to remember email in 1997and and don't worry if you're
not, because it's the same, it'sthe same in 2024 so it's one
dimensional. It's hard to figureout what the other person is
really thinking. And it's in aword, almost dysfunctional. And
(05:30):
so what we were looking at was,how can we use all this great
new technology, you know, toshare our lives together as a
family and with our friendsonline, and 10 minutes in the
conversation with my nephew, Ilooked at him, I said, I'm going
to start a company. I justthought it was, what a great
conversation. And this is how Igot into social media. I went
(05:51):
back to my home in Albuquerque,New Mexico. I received a grant
from the state government,$300,000 great offices. We built
the largest commercial serverinfrastructure in the state of
New Mexico. Bill Gates, by theway, had left New Mexico because
they wouldn't fund him severalyears earlier. So when I went to
the state master funding, theysaid, we let gates go. We're
(06:12):
keeping you anyway. That's howit starts. And that's web one.
And I built superfamily.com andsuperfriends.com and, you know,
listen, there was plenty oftechnology back then. You know,
the web was already eight ornine years old. The internet was
now part of it, and it was anexciting time, and there weren't
(06:34):
bots and there weren't trolls,and there wasn't boosted
content, and there wasn'tsurveillance capitalism. This is
web one.
Scott Allender (06:41):
So for our audience, let's, let's define a
little bit sort of web one. It'ssort of shortcomings, and then
the birth of web two, and yourinvolvement in all of that,
Mark Weinstein (06:50):
sure. Listen to me. Web one was pure capitalism.
Pure capitalism is when youideate, you come up with this
product or service that servespeople, serves your customer,
and they love it, and they giveyou their business pure it's
great capitalism. And that'sreally, yeah, in the free
market, you gotta have the freemarket. So, you know,
(07:11):
everybody's inventive, and youknow, who's ever doing well, you
know, gets the right solutions.
You know, becomes the winners.
So and interesting was calledthe new economy. So for our
listeners, web one was, therewas this whole catch phrase
called the new economy. And thenew economy was not based on
revenue in that moment, becausethe whole idea of the internet,
(07:32):
and you know, these servicesthen had all these eyeballs,
there was all new so the magicof web one, the the money of web
one were eyeballs, and we calledthem eyeballs back then, instead
of users, it was really, yeah,of course, you had members, but
it was how many eyeballs youcould get. And that was how you
measured your success, how manyusers you had. But the investors
(07:57):
weren't worried about revenue.
Revenue would come later. Firstyou had to grab as many users as
possible. Now, web one lastedfrom about 98 to 2001 in the
middle of 2001 you know,investing is emotional, and the
emotions changed. There was apanic. There was a panic, and it
was supported by the mediaabout, wait a minute. You know,
(08:17):
we've got these sites. Have allthese users, but how they can
make money? And we're alldependent on the investment
capital, because we had usersand super family and super
friends had plenty, but nobodyhad revenue. So if you read
about the history of web one, itimplodes. They call it the
bubble bursting in 2000 1000s,of companies went out of
(08:39):
business almost overnight,because without investor
capital, you didn't have acompany. We were still working
on, how were we going tomonetize those eyeballs? So
that's web one. And you know,super family, Super Friends, we
all said, super familiar, superteams up gone overnight, just
like everybody else. So that wasthe end. And this is where you
(09:03):
read about the bubble burst. Webone is over. Now. Web two
starts, you know, there's awashout for a while, a washout
lasting. And then, you know, insocial media, you look at places
like MySpace comes up in thisnew era called Web two, Facebook
comes up right behind them inthis new era called Web two. But
it's, it's MySpace first. Youknow, it's big one, of course,
(09:26):
there's Friendster and others.
And by the time in the mid 2000s2004 5678, Google, as a search
engine is becomes big. Facebookbecomes big. It's before they
were met everybody. It'sFacebook, MySpace, you know,
(09:49):
goes way up, but MySpace has afundamental error that they
never fix, and it starts withthe word my, because they missed
the week. So MySpace was allabout me. And even if you read
about Taylor Swift, you know,she got her social media, you
know, sea legs on MySpace.
That's where she really startedto get her following. But we
needed a we there, and this iswhere I Facebook came and ate my
(10:13):
spaces lunch. And by 2007 2008MySpace is, you know, really
starting to crater, but by 20102011 MySpace is essentially
gone, sold for $35 million andnever resurrected in any
meaningful way. But anyway,here's what happens. So users
(10:34):
become data in web two so, andthe masterminds figured out
that, wait a minute, we'regetting all this information on
our users. And you know, there'sadvertising. Well, let's make
advertising very effective, and,you know, very connected to our
(10:56):
users. So what happened was,this is the birth in the what I
call the data ecosystem, thesemassive data companies, which
include companies like Facebookand Google, but there are also
larger ones that aggregate allof it, and all of a sudden you
have a data packet of 1000s ofpages, And then you've got all
(11:17):
these psychologists, dataanalyst and surveillance
capitalism is born in a way thatwas never before, sure your
credit card company the old daysused to know what you bought
because, you know, actuallyyou're using their card so, but
now instantaneously, you Werebeing targeted, and, you know,
(11:38):
sold by so here's, here's theshift in Web, two users became
the product sold to thecustomer. So users are no longer
the customer in Web, two usersare the product, advertisers,
marketers, political operatives,anybody willing to pay to target
(11:59):
is now the customer. The user isthe product, and that, my
friends, is surveillancecapitalism, and that's where we
got off track in a rathermassive way.
Jean Gomes (12:14):
So we've had the human rights lawyer Susan
Allegre has joined us a coupleof times on the show to talk
about the risks to our freedomto think as a opposed to our
freedom of speech, which is amuch more profound thing,
(12:34):
because how social media caninterpret and then be
manipulated to tell other peoplehow to treat us. And what you're
you're talking about here, youtalk about how social media
platforms have been employed allthese psychologists and data
analysts to work together tomanipulate us in this way so
that as the product, we are moreattractive to the advertisers.
(12:54):
Can we look at the researchyou've been doing specifically
in that area?
Mark Weinstein (12:58):
So it the there is so much research on this. Now
here's, I want to speak to thisidea of free, you know, the
freedom of thought. Because, youknow, fast forward to today, and
this has been, you know, thisthe data for a long time. Half
of Facebook's users get theirnews on Facebook. Now, who
(13:21):
controls the news that they'regetting? Facebook does. So I
want to look at this idea ofcritical thinking. When you're
no longer selecting the newsthat you're receiving, you might
still be asking and looking, butthey're feeding you. They're
feeding you ideas. They'refeeding they're looking at what
they think you're interested in,and then they're targeting and
(13:43):
manipulating you, either tothink something different or
just to pigeonhole there. So youreally, when you look at the
idea of the freedom of thinking,you can't really have freedom of
thinking if your mind is beingmanipulated by the data you're
being served. And this has beenthe way it's been for a while.
(14:06):
Facebook's algorithms were comevery astute over the years, even
10 years ago, very astute attargeting you, manipulating your
purchase decisions, your selfimages. You know this idea of
teen suicides and things likethat. This has been going on for
quite a while, the harm ofsocial media. But when you fast
(14:27):
forward, gentlemen, to theadvent of AI, which is really
algorithms on steroids, becausethey're always quote self
learning. But now you know youthe whole algorithm idea is
supercharged with thisartificial intelligence that can
learn on the fly faster thananything in the history of
(14:48):
humankind. So at this point,it's it's anticipating and
knowing what you're going. Thinkbefore you think it. And I wrote
about this in I didn't writeabout I spoke about this in my
TED Talk in 2020 the rise ofsurveillance capitalism, a nine
(15:10):
minute talk, by the way,everybody. So if you want to
really fast primer onsurveillance capitalism, it's a
nine minute TED Talk. Boom. ButFacebook was already buying up
companies that could anticipateyour thoughts before you think
them, and that was all throughthis advent of AI. So when we
(15:31):
talk about what's going on inthe world today, and of course,
the bots and the trolls, thisgets complex in terms of the
question we have Nano,especially on a show like this,
is, how do we restore criticalthinking? Because that's where
we're at, and we're beinginterrupted and disrupted.
(15:56):
Democracy is being disrupted andour brains are being
interrupted, so you know, andpart of it is, and you can, you
can split it, split the egg, andF put it is products and
services. So the AI is beingreally intelligent about
figuring out what you need, whatyou want, what your worries and
(16:18):
concerns and emotions are, sothey can serve you, the product,
the marketing, everything thatmakes a social network money or
a search engine money, you know,etc, so. But the other piece is
that it's looking at what you'rethinking and then selling to the
political operatives and otherswho want to manipulate your
(16:40):
thought process and have youvote a certain way, or have you
hate somebody you know, I liketo say, Scott, you mentioned the
United States and the electionsin this country. I like to say,
we don't hate each other inAmerica, but we've been
manipulated to so and this iswhere surveillance capitalism
(17:01):
has served adverter adversaries,adversarial countries that you
know bots and trolls remarkablywell. The service that
surveillance capitalism providesto people who want to target and
manipulate your thoughts peoplewant to disrupt democracy. This
is medicine, and we've got a bigproblem.
Scott Allender (17:23):
So what can we do? Because I building on that
the democracy piece, which isobviously very front of mind.
You know, there's a Pew researchpaper that found that 64% of
social people found that socialmedia is bad for democracy. So
they're agreeing that it's badfor democracy, yet it's not
really slowing down engagement,right? So we kind of know we're
being manipulated, manipulated.
We know that the algorithm issending us the stuff we want to
(17:45):
see, and then perpetuates abelief, perpetuates
divisiveness, all the thingsyou're talking about. And it's
not really slowing downengagement, even though there's
a growing awareness of theproblem. Love to get your
thoughts on that
Mark Weinstein (17:58):
well, and let's, let's hit on that first piece as
the foundation. It doesn't slowdown engagement, because it's
actually enhancing it. At thispoint, on almost every interview
I do, I'm hearing about theparents and grandparents. Never
mind the kids are all addicted,but the parents who can't put x
down can't put because thealgorithm is so effective.
(18:20):
Because remember, everybody, howit works is keeping you engaged,
keeping you on your screen, andthe screens addictive already,
and the AI is so smart it canjust keep you hooked. Story
after story knows exactly whereto take you next. Keep you
hooked. You know, with theoutrage and with the whatever it
is. Now there's great news.
Scott Jones, there's great news.
(18:43):
Everybody, fixing this is notthat hard, you know. And this is
where Joe, we talk about thehope and the action together.
Because, you know, what we needand what we want is for the free
market to be restored. You know,we want the free market to work
again, because when I comparebig, AG, big energy and big
(19:07):
tech, and the word big, reallykind of means monopoly, big. And
so what happens in a capitalismis, in the early stages of a new
market, a new marketopportunity, there's a ton of
free market competition, whichis really healthy. And then what
can often happen is the earlysuccessors find investors,
(19:31):
because investors like to betunsafe bets. So in the case of
big tech, Facebook, you know, ofcourse, Myspace got successful,
and Murdoch bought it for 700million bucks, a lot of money at
the time. Eventually, he sold itfor 35 million when, you know,
he didn't help it evolve, andtheir team didn't know how to
(19:53):
evolve it properly. But Facebookwas funded with hundreds of
millions of dollars, and. In,just like Google was, and then
they box out the competition.
And this is why, you know, freemarket democracies really
require the government toregulate and break up the
monopolies to keep the freemarket system working. And
(20:14):
that's part of the American freemarket system. The government
has very strict antitrustregulations, and in fact, Google
was just found guilty, finally,of antitrust infringements in a
huge way that this, the data wasmassive against Google. But so
well, we need the government tohelp here, get the free market
(20:34):
working again, and they'reworking on it. They have meta in
their crosshairs, and I'veactually been deposed, been
subpoenaed and testified in thatcase. But also there's some
simple fixes. And we did this onme. We my last social network,
which I left about three yearsago to write the book, because
me, we is not big enough andstrong enough. Can't solve the
(20:55):
problem by itself, but we need areal you know, we need a lot of
help, and a lot of people takingaction, but no boost of content.
For starters, that's going totake care of, you know, the bots
and trolls on x now they can geta blue check, because bots and
trolls are funded often byadversarial countries, Russia,
(21:16):
China, etc, and they have, youknow, 10s of 1000s of them, if
not hundreds of 1000s of, youknow, bots and trolls and people
behind them. And of course, theycan all be programmed to have a
credit card, to plug it in to xto get a blue check, and then
their content gets boosted. Sowe really want to make it so
that the user chooses whatthey're following. It's got to
(21:39):
be user choice all the time,user choice, user choice. No
posted content, timeline, order,news feeds, data portability,
which is coming Sir Tim BernersLee, the inventor of the web,
everybody. He has invented a newsystem called pots, so that we
will control our data. Not youknow, it will no longer be
(22:00):
centralized in the huge dataecosystem where it's all
aggregated, and we'll have totalcontrol over it, and we'll
decide who gets it, and thenwe'll pull it back. Now, the
government is looking atregulations for data portability
so that we can, you know,because right now, if you want
to, you leave Facebook, let'ssay you go to me, where you go
to Mastodon, you know, you gosomewhere else, and then you
(22:23):
tell all your friends to comethere's a problem. It's called
the network effect. They're allin meta. They're all somewhere
else, and they cannot downloadtheir content easily, and even
if they can, have you noticedthat no one ever built an
uploader for your Facebookcontent that you downloaded,
because it's impossible, becauseFacebook's engineers can change
(22:44):
it the next day, if anybody everbuilt one. At me, we, when I was
a CEO, we built in a uploaderwhen Google Plus went out of
business, so people coulddownload their content from
Google Plus in that data packet,and then our engineers
engineered an uploader so wecould parse and put that up into
a new me, we account for you,put the data in the right
places, your photos, your text,your content, all that stuff. No
(23:07):
one's ever built an uploader forFacebook doesn't exist because,
first of all, the packet is somessy, and their engineers can
change the packet anytime theywant, if anybody try. But with
data portability and pods andthese are coming, everybody, we
will be able to say, you know,meta, I'm sorry, but you've lost
your right to have my business,and the whole family decides,
(23:31):
and then all family movessomewhere else, just like that.
Now that will encourage the freemarket, that'll help the free
market come back. So this iswhat, and this is Tim has been
hard work on this. And also, youknow, there's something called
Web three. And you've probably,many of you have probably heard
this phrase web three, andthere's still a lot of
(23:53):
mystification about what is it,you know, and it's involved with
Blockchain, and what isblockchain? And then
cryptocurrencies are there, andthe book has three chapters on
web three. So web three has alot of promises about data
portability, data privacy, fair,moderation, safety, anonymity,
unfortunately, most of thepromises are unfulfilled. And
(24:19):
web three has a lot ofbillionaires in the backing of
it, Andreessen, Horowitz, JackDorsey, you know, people that
are massively wealthy. So it'snot a necessarily, really the
democratic system it's supposedto be. So the book I talk about
web four, we got a catapult, sowe've got to move into a new
(24:42):
era, restoration networking. Icall it restoring our sanity
online, of course, is the book.
But you know where we cometogether, where users, you know,
are a big part. Remember,Facebook makes money because of
us, because of its users. You.
Same thing with X, same thingwith SNAP, same thing with this
(25:02):
and snap. And you know, ticktock is its own animal, which
would require a separateconversation, because tick tock
is owned by the Chinese and theChinese government is involved
with tick tock in a very deepway, which is why you saw our
government say several monthsago that the American version it
got must be sold to an Americancompany. There's there these
(25:25):
issues. But here's the thing,God and John there there's hope,
there's hope, and there's hoperight now, because there are
places you can start to move to,and also for your kids and
everything. Because, you know,social media is devastating for
our children. And you know,remember when I say kids, if
(25:47):
you're a 30 year old, you grewup with MySpace in Facebook. So
you know, our kids are nowgetting older, and you can see
the damage. And some of some, ofyou are now parents who have
young kids, and you know,really, the bottom line is,
every social media executive Iknow doesn't let their kids on
social media. So you know, youreally have to hold them back,
(26:11):
and there will be newregulations around that. And
when you're ready, guys, I thinkwe ought to talk about privacy
and anonymity, because there'ssome solutions here that are
really critical that we fixsocial media.
Jean Gomes (26:29):
So before we get on to that, you know, I'm thinking
here that we've a wholegeneration has been taught. You
know what Kevin Kelly said? Youknow, the price of social media
is transparency. If you're goingto get the benefits of social
media, you have got to give itwhat it wants, which is all your
information, all your attention.
And you're saying thattechnologies are now possible to
(26:51):
be able to keep you frombecoming the product, and make
the social media the productthat you experience and you have
control about what, what do weneed to start doing immediately
as individuals, to to kind of bepart of encouraging that to
happen.
Mark Weinstein (27:11):
Great question, great question. And really we
almost need to parse it into,what do we need to start doing
for ourselves and our children?
Because, you know this iscritical, and you know, you
guys, we've all heard of thisgreat book by Jonathan, hate the
anxious generation, because whatwe're perpetrating on our kids
by allowing these companies to,you know, manipulate and control
(27:34):
their minds and plant ideas andseeds in their minds that we
would never have. We have toaddress that. And so, you know,
one of the things that we wantto do is role model. And you
start by role modeling. Thisalso takes care of yourself. The
first thing is, the screen isaddictive. So much so that in
Sweden, they just came out witha the Pediatric Association just
(27:57):
came out with a very strongrecommendation endorsed by the
Swedish government, that kids,until they're two years old,
don't see a screen at all, likeyou don't use your phone in
front of them at all. You don'tlet them see a television screen
on at all, because the data isthat the screen is addictive,
and if you're you know, like me,Well, I grew up with televisions
(28:21):
and telephones. You know, myparents had to regulate those,
just like we need to regulatetoday. So we want to get back to
no phones at the dinner table,no phones in the bedroom for
everybody, you know, thinksimple things and also start
looking at your time your phonescan actually, you know, give you
a report. Apple will be apple,apple. You know, iPhones are
(28:45):
very good at this, telling youhow much time you're spending
every day on your phone, oncertain apps, etc. So number one
is you want to actually learn tolimit your time. Number two is
you want to start, you know,with your kids. Anyhow, you want
to delay, and we're seeing this,you know, in the United States,
the schools are also banningphones in schools right through
(29:09):
high school. You want to delaythe age that your kid gets a
smartphone. You know, get them aflip phone. Get them a phone
that takes cameras and can textyou and talk to you. You know
you want to make sure you'rebeing careful about, you know,
how they use their phones. Now,what you guys can do, also, what
we can all do, is look at theapps that we're using. So, you
(29:32):
know, by the way, we should talkabout turning off the metadata
on your photos. So most of youdon't realize that every picture
you take on your phone isstamped. It's stamped with the
time, it's stamped with thedate, it's stamped with the
location, and that stamp livesthere forever. So anybody who
has any good. Sense of how tofind it. Can find it once that
(29:56):
photos out in the world. So it'sreally easy to turn this off.
You can do this right now. Go toyour phones privacy and security
settings, go to the camerasettings in there and turn off
the timestamp, turn off themetadata. It's very easy to find
on both iPhone and Androids, sothat's something you just want
to do immediately. You don'twant people to know where you
(30:20):
are when you're there. You don'twant people to know where your
kids are, you know, where, when,etc. This is so easy. So
immediately do that, and thenstart to watch for parents. You
really need to watch thecontent, because, you know, tick
tock has a mission, tick tock.
And I apologize to all of youwho are maybe also making money
(30:43):
on tick tock, because Iunderstand that many of us
Americans have our ourbusinesses on tick tock. But
tick tocks purpose with ourchildren. If you put your 13
year old tick tock for the firsttime. Just take a look at the
news feed. Tick tock built forthem, and then you'll understand
what I'm saying. They aremuddying the waters. They are
(31:05):
not teaching your kids aboutscience, technology, engineering
and math. They're gonna, youknow, they're gonna throw
violence, they're gonna throwsex, they're gonna throw all
kinds of junk at the young linesof our children, and then
they're going to do their bestif through the feed, kids are
going to want to become socialmedia stars. And you know what?
(31:28):
There's not enough room in theworld for every kid that wants
to be a social media star inChina, the same app has a
different name. Is the contentis way different, and kids are
limited to 40 minutes a day. Sothink about that grown ups, if
China limits Tiktok to 40minutes a day for all their
kids, it's time for us to do thesame for our kids right here.
(31:51):
But we've got to do it becausethe Chinese government is doing
it there. You know, at 40minutes, that thing times out,
we're going to have to help timeit out for our kids. This is
really important, and it's notthat YouTube is that much
better, so you're really gonnawant to start to work with the
controls. And also remember,kids do what we do, not what we
(32:14):
say. Now listen, I know I've gotyoung kids, the last thing
they're going to do is, youknow, do anything that I won't
do myself, and they will set,you know, how kids are, they're
going to second guess you, andthey're going to, you know,
they're going to flag it foryou, right? They're going to put
it in your face. But Daddy,you're, you know, so and listen,
(32:38):
it's good discipline. And then,you know, guys, this is simple.
Some of these are not with thephone. It's like, put the phone
down, take your kids outside anddo something with them. Take a
walk, have a catch, do whateverit is. You know, all our kids
are fascinated. Go look atinsects. Whatever your kids into
(32:58):
doesn't have to be athletic.
It's just got to be stump,something that connects them to
the real world. So you reallywant to look at, you know, a
structure for connecting yourkids to the real world and
yourself. You know, watch themoon rise, watch his sunro
watches, you know, all thosethings that you know. Like you
look, oh, look at that. And thenyou're done. No, no pause. There
(33:20):
are many things we can do,including voting with you know,
where do we go? What apps do wechoose for ourselves? What do we
let our kids see that we'rewatching, etc? I hope that's
helpful, because there's so manythings the book has super
helpful, punch lists, punchlists, you know, of how we, you
know, get rid of Boston trolls.
(33:44):
You know, like 15 things you cando with your kids right now. You
Scott Allender (33:46):
that in a moment. I think so super helpful
know, with yourselves, you know.
And also there is, listen, Ifor me, the advice on parenting
and I the how to set thejust want everybody know. I love
social media. You heard thestory at the beginning of the
podcast about how it started. Ilove the connectedness. We can
stay connectedness and theevolving leader. What these
gentlemen are all about, I mean,connectedness is everything,
(34:08):
authenticity, love. You know,this is really the best use of
the web. And we want to get backto those uses, not to
disenfranchising, not todisrupting, not to hating so and
this is where we can, you knowwhen you're ready. We can talk
about the gladiator battlebetween privacy and anonymity
and how we're going to fix that.
controls in the phone and limitthe date stamps and all those
(34:32):
things super, super useful. Andyou talked about how even CEOs
of social media companies arelike, you know, preventing their
own children from coming on tothe very thing that is their
(34:52):
livelihood. And I'm thinkingabout organizations who have
dependencies on social media fora. Um, their organizations for,
you know, marketing all thesethings. What are the watch outs
and the strategies and thesuggestions you have for for us
now, you know, we're not at webfour. We're in this current
reality where Instagram andFacebook and Twitter are kind of
(35:15):
the, you know, vehicles of theday for much commerce. What is
the practical advice you havefor leaders? Listening right
now, going, I'm on social mediaall day because it's my job.
What do I need to think about?
Mark Weinstein (35:28):
You know, listen, and we understand this,
right? Because, you know, incapitalism, advertising is a
critical component. By the way.
I am a pure capitalist. I lovecapitalism. I think it's a great
economic system. I think it getsmuddied when we get into
monopoly power that, you know,squeezes out the free market. So
free market capitalism isbrilliant because it allows us
(35:49):
to be so innovative and creativewith our thinking. And I'm an
entrepreneur. I got my firstpatent, you know, geez, over 30
years ago. So I love ideatingabout how we can make the world
better and more interesting andserve people and for the
marketers, listen, that's thereality. That's the medium
(36:09):
today. It's no longer thenewspaper or the you know or the
billboard, as much as it's youknow, getting you know, one to
one with your customers. And youknow, we understand this. And
so, you know that marketer iskind of stuck in a box, you
know, that's a different, youknow, someone who's working for
Procter and Gamble or, you know,let's say you've invented a new
(36:30):
sports drink or something reallycool, healthy, or, you know, in
advance. And my first patent wason a bicycle accessory, you
know. So, so we're alwaysideating, and now we've got to
reach the market. So Iunderstand this. And so for you,
you know, first of all, you'renot doing anything wrong. You
know, you just you've got todeal with your reality. That's a
(36:54):
different reality than someonewho's perpetrating, you know, a
negative, false news story, inorder to create hostility and
change an opinion aboutsomething. So if you feel good
about your product and you feelgood that it's serving, this is
(37:14):
really about ethical capitalism.
This is where the B Corpmovement and the conscious
capitalist movement really comeinto play. So you know, if you
feel, even if your company isnot a B Corp or a conscious
capitalism Corporation, butyou're operating with with good
principles, you know you don'tfeel good about yourself and
(37:36):
what you're doing, becausethat's your current reality.
Now, you know, it's as theymentioned. I have actually 11
patents now that are assigned toscruples, Incorporated me, we,
which is me, we parent company.
But you know on how we canpersonalize and anonymize
advertising for people so it'snot dependent on their data at
on all. And I've been buildingthis portfolio since 2012
(38:00):
because I was interviewed on FoxBusiness the day before Facebook
went public. And I said, guys,they've got this wrong. This is
creepy, and people are going tofigure this out. At first we
thought, wow, that's cool. Theyknow I need dog food, and they
know I need some curated dogChow. You know, great. How cool
is that there's the my coupon.
(38:21):
It became creepy overnight whenit was like, Oh, they're reading
everything I'm writing. They'rethey know everything about me.
They know, you know how old mydog is, and they know
everything. And they being thedata ecosystem. So it got creepy
fast. So that's that'sdifferent. And so I've been
working for years on a veryimportant patent portfolio on
(38:45):
how we can serve advertisingthat, because we need to, you
know, we've got to reach ourcustomers, but how we can do it
where the customer is actuallyinvolved and completely
anonymized. I mean, you know, sothat there's no way for a hack
to break that anonymity unlessthe customer breaks it
(39:05):
themselves intentional. Givesyou their information
intentional. So anyway, but forthose listen for the corporate
world that I'm an MBA. I went toUCLA. I have an MBA, you know,
and my undergrad is inphilosophy and sociology. I
mean, this is all about ethicalcapitalism, by the way. I got to
(39:27):
see the only see in my graduateeducation, guys. And this is one
of those little stories. Was inmy ethics class, business
ethics. Okay, I got to tell you,everybody listening. I got to
just come clean. I got to see inmy ethics class, only see in my
graduate school history, andI'll tell you why, because the
(39:47):
professor taught us every day tofollow the law, and every day I
argued with him. That wasn'tenough. If the company's doing
something wrong, but it's legal,you still shouldn't be doing it.
So he gave me a seat for that. Iwear that badge of honor
proudly.
Jean Gomes (40:05):
You've been you've been making up for ever since
that's right
Emma Sinclair (40:10):
Here on the evolving leader. We're committed
to stretching the leadershipconversation in every episode,
and we invite you to help spreadthe word if you've learnt or
been inspired by somethingyou've heard on this podcast,
the chances are that otherswould too. Please consider
sharing your favorite episode onyour network, on LinkedIn,
Twitter or Instagram. Thanks forlistening.
Jean Gomes (40:33):
So let's go back to this gladiatorial battle then
talk to us about that.
Mark Weinstein (40:38):
All right. So listen, everybody. Democracy one
of the prizes for humankind indemocracies is the right to
privacy. So and this is veryimportant. And you know, when
you look at the Americanevolution of the democracy and
the Declaration of Independence,all the reason was that, you
know, the the British would loveto respect because they're one
(40:59):
of our greatest allies andfriends. But you know, the
British soldiers were kind ofcamping in the homes of the
colonial colonists, and peoplewere really offended by that.
There was no privacy. So we'veevolved, and the web, with the
development of the web,anonymity became a prize so you
(41:20):
could terrorize and bully andand still, you know, body
control, but also, human beingscould do lots of terrible things
on the web and be completelyanonymous. So here's what's
happened. What's happened is wehave this rather disrupted
where, you know, a 13 year oldkid can be, you know, targeted
by a 50 year old creep who'sbeing anonymous. And you know, a
(41:46):
10 year old kid can tellFacebook that they're really 23
and set up an account. Now,here's here, here's here's the
catch. They already know who weare. We're going to start with
this premise. Now, I am one ofthe world's leading privacy
advocates. I've argued againstuser ID systems for over a
(42:07):
decade. You know, 15 years I'vebeen on government committees
where I've said, You guys areloony. There's no way we we
should ever do this. Alright?
Now it's 2024 they know who weare. The government, the data
ecosystem, Google, meta, youknow the black, the black, the
dark web. They all know who weare. Cambridge, analytically,
(42:31):
220, data on two, 20 millionAmericans. Our data is there.
They all know who we are. So whydon't we throw away this idea
that we're anonymous. Let's justthrow it away because it's not
real anymore. It's a fantasy,and it doesn't work. It's
harming our kids. It's creatingmassive problems. Bots and
trolls are destroying ourdemocracy. Let's have a user ID
(42:54):
verification system. I'vechanged my mind, and I've
changed my mind, because theyknow who we are already. So
let's stop pretending, and let'sfix this problem. So the 13 year
old kid is not going to befished by a 50 year old creep,
and a 10 year old kid is notgoing to get on social media
(43:16):
because they pretended they were23 and the bots and trolls are
not going to be effectivebecause they're not real, and
this is going to take a while tosort out. This is where you use
AI for the good guys, becausethis is going to be very
sophisticated. But look,financial services companies
already have these things. Thisis not a new idea. And even MIT
(43:38):
and other places say this ispretty easy to implement, and it
doesn't have to be thegovernment. Just have to be the
government has to give sort of astamp of approval to make sure
that the verification is real,so that if you're not 13, you're
not on social media. Now the USSurgeon General says it should
be 16. I agree, but here's myasterisk, that's never gonna
(44:00):
work. So let's keep kids offsocial media until they're 13.
Let's get good user ID for allof us, verification. And then
let's make sure until a kid is18, they can't be targeted, no
boosted content, nothingmanipulative. They can only
connect with their peers, etc.
(44:21):
And but this is all doable. It'sall doable, and we do have some
good legislation in the UnitedStates, the kids Online Safety
Act, the American Privacy RightsAct, and Copa two, which are all
bipartisan, which have alleither gotten through committee.
Copa two and cosa the kids allday Safety Act have already
(44:42):
passed the Senate bipartisan,and we've got to get the House
to pass these so we need thegovernment to help. And in my
book, there's an appendix aboutwhat we need the government to
do. And of course, then there'sall the stuff we do, like keep
your kids off social media, stopgiving your kids a phone when
you. In a restaurant, becauseit's an easy way for you to have
(45:02):
a good time. Forget that you gotkids involved. I promise you,
you know, unless it's a reallylong drive in our house, the
rule is, if the drive is lessthan an hour and a half, you
don't get a screen. If the driveis more than an hour and a half,
you get 30 minutes on, 30minutes off. You gotta talk to
dad, you got to play games. Yougot to look out the window. We
(45:22):
got to see what's going on.
Jean Gomes (45:24):
How far away do you think we are from achieving
that? What are the obstacles toit? Because the the pressure
from the monopoly to not dothese things is huge. I'm
guessing
Mark Weinstein (45:35):
Jean, Jean, listen guy, everybody, what Jean
saying is exactly right. Youknow when the US government
surprisingly beat Google justrecently, about six weeks ago
now, and I wrote about this inNewsweek and explained why and
how what Google had done wrongand all the evidence that
supported the government.
Because Google has billions ofdollars to pay its lawyers, and
(45:58):
the government doesn't. That'snot the budget for the Federal
Trade Commission, meta hasliterally billions of dollars to
pay lobbyists and lawyers. Thegovernment doesn't. So, John,
you're making a very good point.
And of course, the governmentdoesn't, and the legislative
bodies are dependent on, youknow, funding from these
(46:22):
sources, from tech and fromother big investors, who, you
know, who, who fund theircampaigns. So the fact that some
of these are moving in abipartisan way, what I see now,
John, is that there's somemomentum now, after the US
elections, I think the firstquarter, we'll see, and then
(46:43):
we'll see, you know, who isreally, you know, going to help
the kids? If it's a Trump or aHarris? We don't know the answer
to this yet, because we alsodon't know the makeup of
Congress yet, and so we've gotto see this. So you're right,
John, there's interference,which is why it took this long
to get Google into the courtroomand find them guilty of
(47:06):
antitrust, and now there's goingto be decisions about how to,
you know, break up theirstruggle, because Google also,
if you're Googling for a producton Google, what one of the
things that came up was, everytime in the search, their
results, the top result is goingto be something that they get a
piece of the action on. Itdoesn't look like Google's
involved in it, but that's howit's working. And then Google
(47:28):
muscled out competition bymaking deals with Apple and
others about who uses theirsearch engine. So Google just
muscled everybody out. And then,like meta, they bought out
competitors. So you know, evenGoogle Maps, right? They bought
ways. They buy everybody youknow, or put them out of
business. Same thing with meta.
Why is there only snap and me?
(47:50):
We, according to the FederalTrade Commission in the
complaint against Facebook,they're the only two personal
social networks left. The otherones are not personal. They're
not about connecting yourfriends and your family at all.
So where are the other ones?
Well, if you're a monopoly, youbuy everybody out and you crush
the ones you don't buy out. SoJohn, good point. It's
encouraging that we're seeing,you know, and what it requires
(48:15):
is bipartisanship to stand up tothe big monopolies and say, Hold
on, guys, hold on. And thereason, in this case, it works
different than standing up tobig ag or big energy is because
the legislators see the impacton their children. They see it
directly, so they see it ontheir family members. And that's
(48:37):
different. And so it becomespersonal.
Scott Allender (48:43):
Excellent. Well we'll put the link to the book
in the show notes, and, somewhatironically, advertise it all
over our social media. But Ithank you so much for your
insights. I really, I really eyeopening with with so much of
your research, your book is aneasy read. I really enjoyed it.
So thank you for coming on andsharing just a part of it. And
folks, we barely scratched thesurface, so do make sure you
stop and order your copy today,and thank you for your time, and
(49:07):
remember folks Until next timethe world is evolving. Are you?
Social media's influence on society, politics
and our well being cannot beoverstated. It has literally
changed the world in the mostprofound of ways. Around 5
billion people, over 60% of theworld's population, now spend
their time there, and thatnumber is only likely to grow
faster in the coming years. It'san alternative reality for 30%
(00:24):
of users who express their mostextreme feelings and opinions.
It's also a transformativebusiness model harvesting our
data in ways we're only reallystarting to comprehend. In this
show, we're talking to one ofthe pioneers of social media,
Mark Weinstein, about hisconcerns and what we can do to
take back control. Tune in foran important conversation on the
(00:46):
evolving leader you
Scott Allender (01:08):
Hey folks, welcome to The Evolving Leader,
Jean Gomes (01:09):
And I'm Jean Gomes.
a show born from the belief thatwe need deeper, more accountable
Scott Allender (01:12):
How are you feeling today Mr. Gomes, what
and more human leadership toconfront the world's biggest
challenges. I'm Scott Allenderare you bringing with you today?
Jean Gomes (01:22):
I am bringing hope.
That's what I'm bringing. I'vehad a redefinition of the word
given an event I went to lastweek, which is making a big
distinction between optimism andhope from a kind of generational
perspective. And yeah, so I'mbringing hope. How about you,
Scott, how you feeling?
(01:43):
I'm ready to receive your hope.
I need some hope. I'm feeling abit activated. I'm feeling, I
don't know when this is going togo up, but you know, we've we're
facing a monumental election inthe US next week, and I'm
feeling a lot related to that,but I'm feeling along with that
gratitude to be back with youtoday in the studio and excited
(02:04):
to have the conversation we'reabout to have, because today
we're joined by Mark Weinstein.
Mark is a world renowned techentrepreneur, contemporary
thought leader, privacy expert,and one of the visionary
inventors of social networking.
His adventure in social mediahas lasted over 25 years through
three award winning personalsocial media platforms enjoyed
(02:25):
by millions of membersworldwide. Mark is the author of
several books, and today we'regoing to be speaking with him
all about his most recent book,restoring our sanity online. And
I can almost feel our listenersears perk up just at the thought
of that. His book asked thequestion, what would social
media look like if it nourishedour critical thinking, mental
(02:47):
health, privacy, civil discourseand our democracy? Mark has been
listed as one of the top eightminds in online privacy and was
named privacy by designAmbassador by the Canadian
government. He's also theinventor of 10 revolutionary US
patents that disrupt thetargeting and data collection
(03:08):
underpinnings of surveillancecapitalism. This is going to be
an important conversation. Mark,welcome to The Evolving Leader.
Mark Weinstein (03:17):
Thank you, Scott, thank you, John. It's
great to be with you guys. Youknow, you are such great
leaders, teaching leaders. Andyou know, today, we want to talk
to everybody, because everybodyuses the web. Everybody knows
about social media. Virtuallyall of us use some form of
social media, and we've got tofix it. So this is a great
(03:40):
conversation.
Jean Gomes (03:41):
Welcome to the show Mark. How are you feeling today?
Mark Weinstein (03:44):
You know, I'm just going to double down a
little bit on the hope andgratitude. Because, you know, I
love hope, and I think prayerthoughtful prayer is very
important too, and I liken hopeto being like prayer without
action. So when you put hope andaction together, magic happens.
(04:09):
So let's go for magic.
Excellent.
Jean Gomes (04:12):
Okay, cool. Well, let's allow our audiences to get
to know you a little bit. Mark.
What's the background to yourstory? And how did you come to
focus on social media andsurveillance capitalism. What's
the journey you've been on?
Mark Weinstein (04:26):
It's fascinating everybody, because as we all
walk through life, we're just,you know, attracted to and, you
know, inventive with our ownlives. And for me, it was 1997
in a hike with my 10 year oldnephew on a family vacation. And
(04:47):
we had started this dialogabout, you know, start with
Uncle Mark. He wouldn't be greatif we could. And my nephew was
just concerned about how wecould all stay connected. We all
were living all around theworld, working, playing. And 10
minutes to them. We were talkingabout using the web, and we're
not talking about emaileverybody. Because if you're old
(05:08):
enough to remember email in 1997and and don't worry if you're
not, because it's the same, it'sthe same in 2024 so it's one
dimensional. It's hard to figureout what the other person is
really thinking. And it's in aword, almost dysfunctional. And
(05:30):
so what we were looking at was,how can we use all this great
new technology, you know, toshare our lives together as a
family and with our friendsonline, and 10 minutes in the
conversation with my nephew, Ilooked at him, I said, I'm going
to start a company. I justthought it was, what a great
conversation. And this is how Igot into social media. I went
(05:51):
back to my home in Albuquerque,New Mexico. I received a grant
from the state government,$300,000 great offices. We built
the largest commercial serverinfrastructure in the state of
New Mexico. Bill Gates, by theway, had left New Mexico because
they wouldn't fund him severalyears earlier. So when I went to
the state master funding, theysaid, we let gates go. We're
(06:12):
keeping you anyway. That's howit starts. And that's web one.
And I built superfamily.com andsuperfriends.com and, you know,
listen, there was plenty oftechnology back then. You know,
the web was already eight ornine years old. The internet was
now part of it, and it was anexciting time, and there weren't
(06:34):
bots and there weren't trolls,and there wasn't boosted
content, and there wasn'tsurveillance capitalism. This is
web one.
Scott Allender (06:41):
So for our audience, let's, let's define a
little bit sort of web one. It'ssort of shortcomings, and then
the birth of web two, and yourinvolvement in all of that,
Mark Weinstein (06:50):
sure. Listen to me. Web one was pure capitalism.
Pure capitalism is when youideate, you come up with this
product or service that servespeople, serves your customer,
and they love it, and they giveyou their business pure it's
great capitalism. And that'sreally, yeah, in the free
market, you gotta have the freemarket. So, you know,
(07:11):
everybody's inventive, and youknow, who's ever doing well, you
know, gets the right solutions.
You know, becomes the winners.
So and interesting was calledthe new economy. So for our
listeners, web one was, therewas this whole catch phrase
called the new economy. And thenew economy was not based on
revenue in that moment, becausethe whole idea of the internet,
(07:32):
and you know, these servicesthen had all these eyeballs,
there was all new so the magicof web one, the the money of web
one were eyeballs, and we calledthem eyeballs back then, instead
of users, it was really, yeah,of course, you had members, but
it was how many eyeballs youcould get. And that was how you
measured your success, how manyusers you had. But the investors
(07:57):
weren't worried about revenue.
Revenue would come later. Firstyou had to grab as many users as
possible. Now, web one lastedfrom about 98 to 2001 in the
middle of 2001 you know,investing is emotional, and the
emotions changed. There was apanic. There was a panic, and it
was supported by the mediaabout, wait a minute. You know,
(08:17):
we've got these sites. Have allthese users, but how they can
make money? And we're alldependent on the investment
capital, because we had usersand super family and super
friends had plenty, but nobodyhad revenue. So if you read
about the history of web one, itimplodes. They call it the
bubble bursting in 2000 1000s,of companies went out of
(08:39):
business almost overnight,because without investor
capital, you didn't have acompany. We were still working
on, how were we going tomonetize those eyeballs? So
that's web one. And you know,super family, Super Friends, we
all said, super familiar, superteams up gone overnight, just
like everybody else. So that wasthe end. And this is where you
(09:03):
read about the bubble burst. Webone is over. Now. Web two
starts, you know, there's awashout for a while, a washout
lasting. And then, you know, insocial media, you look at places
like MySpace comes up in thisnew era called Web two, Facebook
comes up right behind them inthis new era called Web two. But
it's, it's MySpace first. Youknow, it's big one, of course,
(09:26):
there's Friendster and others.
And by the time in the mid 2000s2004 5678, Google, as a search
engine is becomes big. Facebookbecomes big. It's before they
were met everybody. It'sFacebook, MySpace, you know,
(09:49):
goes way up, but MySpace has afundamental error that they
never fix, and it starts withthe word my, because they missed
the week. So MySpace was allabout me. And even if you read
about Taylor Swift, you know,she got her social media, you
know, sea legs on MySpace.
That's where she really startedto get her following. But we
needed a we there, and this iswhere I Facebook came and ate my
(10:13):
spaces lunch. And by 2007 2008MySpace is, you know, really
starting to crater, but by 20102011 MySpace is essentially
gone, sold for $35 million andnever resurrected in any
meaningful way. But anyway,here's what happens. So users
(10:34):
become data in web two so, andthe masterminds figured out
that, wait a minute, we'regetting all this information on
our users. And you know, there'sadvertising. Well, let's make
advertising very effective, and,you know, very connected to our
(10:56):
users. So what happened was,this is the birth in the what I
call the data ecosystem, thesemassive data companies, which
include companies like Facebookand Google, but there are also
larger ones that aggregate allof it, and all of a sudden you
have a data packet of 1000s ofpages, And then you've got all
(11:17):
these psychologists, dataanalyst and surveillance
capitalism is born in a way thatwas never before, sure your
credit card company the old daysused to know what you bought
because, you know, actuallyyou're using their card so, but
now instantaneously, you Werebeing targeted, and, you know,
(11:38):
sold by so here's, here's theshift in Web, two users became
the product sold to thecustomer. So users are no longer
the customer in Web, two usersare the product, advertisers,
marketers, political operatives,anybody willing to pay to target
(11:59):
is now the customer. The user isthe product, and that, my
friends, is surveillancecapitalism, and that's where we
got off track in a rathermassive way.
Jean Gomes (12:14):
So we've had the human rights lawyer Susan
Allegre has joined us a coupleof times on the show to talk
about the risks to our freedomto think as a opposed to our
freedom of speech, which is amuch more profound thing,
(12:34):
because how social media caninterpret and then be
manipulated to tell other peoplehow to treat us. And what you're
you're talking about here, youtalk about how social media
platforms have been employed allthese psychologists and data
analysts to work together tomanipulate us in this way so
that as the product, we are moreattractive to the advertisers.
(12:54):
Can we look at the researchyou've been doing specifically
in that area?
Mark Weinstein (12:58):
So it the there is so much research on this. Now
here's, I want to speak to thisidea of free, you know, the
freedom of thought. Because, youknow, fast forward to today, and
this has been, you know, thisthe data for a long time. Half
of Facebook's users get theirnews on Facebook. Now, who
(13:21):
controls the news that they'regetting? Facebook does. So I
want to look at this idea ofcritical thinking. When you're
no longer selecting the newsthat you're receiving, you might
still be asking and looking, butthey're feeding you. They're
feeding you ideas. They'refeeding they're looking at what
they think you're interested in,and then they're targeting and
(13:43):
manipulating you, either tothink something different or
just to pigeonhole there. So youreally, when you look at the
idea of the freedom of thinking,you can't really have freedom of
thinking if your mind is beingmanipulated by the data you're
being served. And this has beenthe way it's been for a while.
(14:06):
Facebook's algorithms were comevery astute over the years, even
10 years ago, very astute attargeting you, manipulating your
purchase decisions, your selfimages. You know this idea of
teen suicides and things likethat. This has been going on for
quite a while, the harm ofsocial media. But when you fast
(14:27):
forward, gentlemen, to theadvent of AI, which is really
algorithms on steroids, becausethey're always quote self
learning. But now you know youthe whole algorithm idea is
supercharged with thisartificial intelligence that can
learn on the fly faster thananything in the history of
(14:48):
humankind. So at this point,it's it's anticipating and
knowing what you're going. Thinkbefore you think it. And I wrote
about this in I didn't writeabout I spoke about this in my
TED Talk in 2020 the rise ofsurveillance capitalism, a nine
(15:10):
minute talk, by the way,everybody. So if you want to
really fast primer onsurveillance capitalism, it's a
nine minute TED Talk. Boom. ButFacebook was already buying up
companies that could anticipateyour thoughts before you think
them, and that was all throughthis advent of AI. So when we
(15:31):
talk about what's going on inthe world today, and of course,
the bots and the trolls, thisgets complex in terms of the
question we have Nano,especially on a show like this,
is, how do we restore criticalthinking? Because that's where
we're at, and we're beinginterrupted and disrupted.
(15:56):
Democracy is being disrupted andour brains are being
interrupted, so you know, andpart of it is, and you can, you
can split it, split the egg, andF put it is products and
services. So the AI is beingreally intelligent about
figuring out what you need, whatyou want, what your worries and
(16:18):
concerns and emotions are, sothey can serve you, the product,
the marketing, everything thatmakes a social network money or
a search engine money, you know,etc, so. But the other piece is
that it's looking at what you'rethinking and then selling to the
political operatives and otherswho want to manipulate your
(16:40):
thought process and have youvote a certain way, or have you
hate somebody you know, I liketo say, Scott, you mentioned the
United States and the electionsin this country. I like to say,
we don't hate each other inAmerica, but we've been
manipulated to so and this iswhere surveillance capitalism
(17:01):
has served adverter adversaries,adversarial countries that you
know bots and trolls remarkablywell. The service that
surveillance capitalism providesto people who want to target and
manipulate your thoughts peoplewant to disrupt democracy. This
is medicine, and we've got a bigproblem.
Scott Allender (17:23):
So what can we do? Because I building on that
the democracy piece, which isobviously very front of mind.
You know, there's a Pew researchpaper that found that 64% of
social people found that socialmedia is bad for democracy. So
they're agreeing that it's badfor democracy, yet it's not
really slowing down engagement,right? So we kind of know we're
being manipulated, manipulated.
We know that the algorithm issending us the stuff we want to
(17:45):
see, and then perpetuates abelief, perpetuates
divisiveness, all the thingsyou're talking about. And it's
not really slowing downengagement, even though there's
a growing awareness of theproblem. Love to get your
thoughts on that
Mark Weinstein (17:58):
well, and let's, let's hit on that first piece as
the foundation. It doesn't slowdown engagement, because it's
actually enhancing it. At thispoint, on almost every interview
I do, I'm hearing about theparents and grandparents. Never
mind the kids are all addicted,but the parents who can't put x
down can't put because thealgorithm is so effective.
(18:20):
Because remember, everybody, howit works is keeping you engaged,
keeping you on your screen, andthe screens addictive already,
and the AI is so smart it canjust keep you hooked. Story
after story knows exactly whereto take you next. Keep you
hooked. You know, with theoutrage and with the whatever it
is. Now there's great news.
Scott Jones, there's great news.
(18:43):
Everybody, fixing this is notthat hard, you know. And this is
where Joe, we talk about thehope and the action together.
Because, you know, what we needand what we want is for the free
market to be restored. You know,we want the free market to work
again, because when I comparebig, AG, big energy and big
(19:07):
tech, and the word big, reallykind of means monopoly, big. And
so what happens in a capitalismis, in the early stages of a new
market, a new marketopportunity, there's a ton of
free market competition, whichis really healthy. And then what
can often happen is the earlysuccessors find investors,
(19:31):
because investors like to betunsafe bets. So in the case of
big tech, Facebook, you know, ofcourse, Myspace got successful,
and Murdoch bought it for 700million bucks, a lot of money at
the time. Eventually, he sold itfor 35 million when, you know,
he didn't help it evolve, andtheir team didn't know how to
(19:53):
evolve it properly. But Facebookwas funded with hundreds of
millions of dollars, and. In,just like Google was, and then
they box out the competition.
And this is why, you know, freemarket democracies really
require the government toregulate and break up the
monopolies to keep the freemarket system working. And
(20:14):
that's part of the American freemarket system. The government
has very strict antitrustregulations, and in fact, Google
was just found guilty, finally,of antitrust infringements in a
huge way that this, the data wasmassive against Google. But so
well, we need the government tohelp here, get the free market
(20:34):
working again, and they'reworking on it. They have meta in
their crosshairs, and I'veactually been deposed, been
subpoenaed and testified in thatcase. But also there's some
simple fixes. And we did this onme. We my last social network,
which I left about three yearsago to write the book, because
me, we is not big enough andstrong enough. Can't solve the
(20:55):
problem by itself, but we need areal you know, we need a lot of
help, and a lot of people takingaction, but no boost of content.
For starters, that's going totake care of, you know, the bots
and trolls on x now they can geta blue check, because bots and
trolls are funded often byadversarial countries, Russia,
(21:16):
China, etc, and they have, youknow, 10s of 1000s of them, if
not hundreds of 1000s of, youknow, bots and trolls and people
behind them. And of course, theycan all be programmed to have a
credit card, to plug it in to xto get a blue check, and then
their content gets boosted. Sowe really want to make it so
that the user chooses whatthey're following. It's got to
(21:39):
be user choice all the time,user choice, user choice. No
posted content, timeline, order,news feeds, data portability,
which is coming Sir Tim BernersLee, the inventor of the web,
everybody. He has invented a newsystem called pots, so that we
will control our data. Not youknow, it will no longer be
(22:00):
centralized in the huge dataecosystem where it's all
aggregated, and we'll have totalcontrol over it, and we'll
decide who gets it, and thenwe'll pull it back. Now, the
government is looking atregulations for data portability
so that we can, you know,because right now, if you want
to, you leave Facebook, let'ssay you go to me, where you go
to Mastodon, you know, you gosomewhere else, and then you
(22:23):
tell all your friends to comethere's a problem. It's called
the network effect. They're allin meta. They're all somewhere
else, and they cannot downloadtheir content easily, and even
if they can, have you noticedthat no one ever built an
uploader for your Facebookcontent that you downloaded,
because it's impossible, becauseFacebook's engineers can change
(22:44):
it the next day, if anybody everbuilt one. At me, we, when I was
a CEO, we built in a uploaderwhen Google Plus went out of
business, so people coulddownload their content from
Google Plus in that data packet,and then our engineers
engineered an uploader so wecould parse and put that up into
a new me, we account for you,put the data in the right
places, your photos, your text,your content, all that stuff. No
(23:07):
one's ever built an uploader forFacebook doesn't exist because,
first of all, the packet is somessy, and their engineers can
change the packet anytime theywant, if anybody try. But with
data portability and pods andthese are coming, everybody, we
will be able to say, you know,meta, I'm sorry, but you've lost
your right to have my business,and the whole family decides,
(23:31):
and then all family movessomewhere else, just like that.
Now that will encourage the freemarket, that'll help the free
market come back. So this iswhat, and this is Tim has been
hard work on this. And also, youknow, there's something called
Web three. And you've probably,many of you have probably heard
this phrase web three, andthere's still a lot of
(23:53):
mystification about what is it,you know, and it's involved with
Blockchain, and what isblockchain? And then
cryptocurrencies are there, andthe book has three chapters on
web three. So web three has alot of promises about data
portability, data privacy, fair,moderation, safety, anonymity,
unfortunately, most of thepromises are unfulfilled. And
(24:19):
web three has a lot ofbillionaires in the backing of
it, Andreessen, Horowitz, JackDorsey, you know, people that
are massively wealthy. So it'snot a necessarily, really the
democratic system it's supposedto be. So the book I talk about
web four, we got a catapult, sowe've got to move into a new
(24:42):
era, restoration networking. Icall it restoring our sanity
online, of course, is the book.
But you know where we cometogether, where users, you know,
are a big part. Remember,Facebook makes money because of
us, because of its users. You.
Same thing with X, same thingwith SNAP, same thing with this
(25:02):
and snap. And you know, ticktock is its own animal, which
would require a separateconversation, because tick tock
is owned by the Chinese and theChinese government is involved
with tick tock in a very deepway, which is why you saw our
government say several monthsago that the American version it
got must be sold to an Americancompany. There's there these
(25:25):
issues. But here's the thing,God and John there there's hope,
there's hope, and there's hoperight now, because there are
places you can start to move to,and also for your kids and
everything. Because, you know,social media is devastating for
our children. And you know,remember when I say kids, if
(25:47):
you're a 30 year old, you grewup with MySpace in Facebook. So
you know, our kids are nowgetting older, and you can see
the damage. And some of some, ofyou are now parents who have
young kids, and you know,really, the bottom line is,
every social media executive Iknow doesn't let their kids on
social media. So you know, youreally have to hold them back,
(26:11):
and there will be newregulations around that. And
when you're ready, guys, I thinkwe ought to talk about privacy
and anonymity, because there'ssome solutions here that are
really critical that we fixsocial media.
Jean Gomes (26:29):
So before we get on to that, you know, I'm thinking
here that we've a wholegeneration has been taught. You
know what Kevin Kelly said? Youknow, the price of social media
is transparency. If you're goingto get the benefits of social
media, you have got to give itwhat it wants, which is all your
information, all your attention.
And you're saying thattechnologies are now possible to
(26:51):
be able to keep you frombecoming the product, and make
the social media the productthat you experience and you have
control about what, what do weneed to start doing immediately
as individuals, to to kind of bepart of encouraging that to
happen.
Mark Weinstein (27:11):
Great question, great question. And really we
almost need to parse it into,what do we need to start doing
for ourselves and our children?
Because, you know this iscritical, and you know, you
guys, we've all heard of thisgreat book by Jonathan, hate the
anxious generation, because whatwe're perpetrating on our kids
by allowing these companies to,you know, manipulate and control
(27:34):
their minds and plant ideas andseeds in their minds that we
would never have. We have toaddress that. And so, you know,
one of the things that we wantto do is role model. And you
start by role modeling. Thisalso takes care of yourself. The
first thing is, the screen isaddictive. So much so that in
Sweden, they just came out witha the Pediatric Association just
(27:57):
came out with a very strongrecommendation endorsed by the
Swedish government, that kids,until they're two years old,
don't see a screen at all, likeyou don't use your phone in
front of them at all. You don'tlet them see a television screen
on at all, because the data isthat the screen is addictive,
and if you're you know, like me,Well, I grew up with televisions
(28:21):
and telephones. You know, myparents had to regulate those,
just like we need to regulatetoday. So we want to get back to
no phones at the dinner table,no phones in the bedroom for
everybody, you know, thinksimple things and also start
looking at your time your phonescan actually, you know, give you
a report. Apple will be apple,apple. You know, iPhones are
(28:45):
very good at this, telling youhow much time you're spending
every day on your phone, oncertain apps, etc. So number one
is you want to actually learn tolimit your time. Number two is
you want to start, you know,with your kids. Anyhow, you want
to delay, and we're seeing this,you know, in the United States,
the schools are also banningphones in schools right through
(29:09):
high school. You want to delaythe age that your kid gets a
smartphone. You know, get them aflip phone. Get them a phone
that takes cameras and can textyou and talk to you. You know
you want to make sure you'rebeing careful about, you know,
how they use their phones. Now,what you guys can do, also, what
we can all do, is look at theapps that we're using. So, you
(29:32):
know, by the way, we should talkabout turning off the metadata
on your photos. So most of youdon't realize that every picture
you take on your phone isstamped. It's stamped with the
time, it's stamped with thedate, it's stamped with the
location, and that stamp livesthere forever. So anybody who
has any good. Sense of how tofind it. Can find it once that
(29:56):
photos out in the world. So it'sreally easy to turn this off.
You can do this right now. Go toyour phones privacy and security
settings, go to the camerasettings in there and turn off
the timestamp, turn off themetadata. It's very easy to find
on both iPhone and Androids, sothat's something you just want
to do immediately. You don'twant people to know where you
(30:20):
are when you're there. You don'twant people to know where your
kids are, you know, where, when,etc. This is so easy. So
immediately do that, and thenstart to watch for parents. You
really need to watch thecontent, because, you know, tick
tock has a mission, tick tock.
And I apologize to all of youwho are maybe also making money
(30:43):
on tick tock, because Iunderstand that many of us
Americans have our ourbusinesses on tick tock. But
tick tocks purpose with ourchildren. If you put your 13
year old tick tock for the firsttime. Just take a look at the
news feed. Tick tock built forthem, and then you'll understand
what I'm saying. They aremuddying the waters. They are
(31:05):
not teaching your kids aboutscience, technology, engineering
and math. They're gonna, youknow, they're gonna throw
violence, they're gonna throwsex, they're gonna throw all
kinds of junk at the young linesof our children, and then
they're going to do their bestif through the feed, kids are
going to want to become socialmedia stars. And you know what?
(31:28):
There's not enough room in theworld for every kid that wants
to be a social media star inChina, the same app has a
different name. Is the contentis way different, and kids are
limited to 40 minutes a day. Sothink about that grown ups, if
China limits Tiktok to 40minutes a day for all their
kids, it's time for us to do thesame for our kids right here.
(31:51):
But we've got to do it becausethe Chinese government is doing
it there. You know, at 40minutes, that thing times out,
we're going to have to help timeit out for our kids. This is
really important, and it's notthat YouTube is that much
better, so you're really gonnawant to start to work with the
controls. And also remember,kids do what we do, not what we
(32:14):
say. Now listen, I know I've gotyoung kids, the last thing
they're going to do is, youknow, do anything that I won't
do myself, and they will set,you know, how kids are, they're
going to second guess you, andthey're going to, you know,
they're going to flag it foryou, right? They're going to put
it in your face. But Daddy,you're, you know, so and listen,
(32:38):
it's good discipline. And then,you know, guys, this is simple.
Some of these are not with thephone. It's like, put the phone
down, take your kids outside anddo something with them. Take a
walk, have a catch, do whateverit is. You know, all our kids
are fascinated. Go look atinsects. Whatever your kids into
(32:58):
doesn't have to be athletic.
It's just got to be stump,something that connects them to
the real world. So you reallywant to look at, you know, a
structure for connecting yourkids to the real world and
yourself. You know, watch themoon rise, watch his sunro
watches, you know, all thosethings that you know. Like you
look, oh, look at that. And thenyou're done. No, no pause. There
(33:20):
are many things we can do,including voting with you know,
where do we go? What apps do wechoose for ourselves? What do we
let our kids see that we'rewatching, etc? I hope that's
helpful, because there's so manythings the book has super
helpful, punch lists, punchlists, you know, of how we, you
know, get rid of Boston trolls.
(33:44):
You know, like 15 things you cando with your kids right now. You
Scott Allender (33:46):
that in a moment. I think so super helpful
know, with yourselves, you know.
And also there is, listen, Ifor me, the advice on parenting
and I the how to set thejust want everybody know. I love
social media. You heard thestory at the beginning of the
podcast about how it started. Ilove the connectedness. We can
stay connectedness and theevolving leader. What these
gentlemen are all about, I mean,connectedness is everything,
(34:08):
authenticity, love. You know,this is really the best use of
the web. And we want to get backto those uses, not to
disenfranchising, not todisrupting, not to hating so and
this is where we can, you knowwhen you're ready. We can talk
about the gladiator battlebetween privacy and anonymity
and how we're going to fix that.
controls in the phone and limitthe date stamps and all those
(34:32):
things super, super useful. Andyou talked about how even CEOs
of social media companies arelike, you know, preventing their
own children from coming on tothe very thing that is their
(34:52):
livelihood. And I'm thinkingabout organizations who have
dependencies on social media fora. Um, their organizations for,
you know, marketing all thesethings. What are the watch outs
and the strategies and thesuggestions you have for for us
now, you know, we're not at webfour. We're in this current
reality where Instagram andFacebook and Twitter are kind of
(35:15):
the, you know, vehicles of theday for much commerce. What is
the practical advice you havefor leaders? Listening right
now, going, I'm on social mediaall day because it's my job.
What do I need to think about?
Mark Weinstein (35:28):
You know, listen, and we understand this,
right? Because, you know, incapitalism, advertising is a
critical component. By the way.
I am a pure capitalist. I lovecapitalism. I think it's a great
economic system. I think it getsmuddied when we get into
monopoly power that, you know,squeezes out the free market. So
free market capitalism isbrilliant because it allows us
(35:49):
to be so innovative and creativewith our thinking. And I'm an
entrepreneur. I got my firstpatent, you know, geez, over 30
years ago. So I love ideatingabout how we can make the world
better and more interesting andserve people and for the
marketers, listen, that's thereality. That's the medium
(36:09):
today. It's no longer thenewspaper or the you know or the
billboard, as much as it's youknow, getting you know, one to
one with your customers. And youknow, we understand this. And
so, you know that marketer iskind of stuck in a box, you
know, that's a different, youknow, someone who's working for
Procter and Gamble or, you know,let's say you've invented a new
(36:30):
sports drink or something reallycool, healthy, or, you know, in
advance. And my first patent wason a bicycle accessory, you
know. So, so we're alwaysideating, and now we've got to
reach the market. So Iunderstand this. And so for you,
you know, first of all, you'renot doing anything wrong. You
know, you just you've got todeal with your reality. That's a
(36:54):
different reality than someonewho's perpetrating, you know, a
negative, false news story, inorder to create hostility and
change an opinion aboutsomething. So if you feel good
about your product and you feelgood that it's serving, this is
(37:14):
really about ethical capitalism.
This is where the B Corpmovement and the conscious
capitalist movement really comeinto play. So you know, if you
feel, even if your company isnot a B Corp or a conscious
capitalism Corporation, butyou're operating with with good
principles, you know you don'tfeel good about yourself and
(37:36):
what you're doing, becausethat's your current reality.
Now, you know, it's as theymentioned. I have actually 11
patents now that are assigned toscruples, Incorporated me, we,
which is me, we parent company.
But you know on how we canpersonalize and anonymize
advertising for people so it'snot dependent on their data at
on all. And I've been buildingthis portfolio since 2012
(38:00):
because I was interviewed on FoxBusiness the day before Facebook
went public. And I said, guys,they've got this wrong. This is
creepy, and people are going tofigure this out. At first we
thought, wow, that's cool. Theyknow I need dog food, and they
know I need some curated dogChow. You know, great. How cool
is that there's the my coupon.
(38:21):
It became creepy overnight whenit was like, Oh, they're reading
everything I'm writing. They'rethey know everything about me.
They know, you know how old mydog is, and they know
everything. And they being thedata ecosystem. So it got creepy
fast. So that's that'sdifferent. And so I've been
working for years on a veryimportant patent portfolio on
(38:45):
how we can serve advertisingthat, because we need to, you
know, we've got to reach ourcustomers, but how we can do it
where the customer is actuallyinvolved and completely
anonymized. I mean, you know, sothat there's no way for a hack
to break that anonymity unlessthe customer breaks it
(39:05):
themselves intentional. Givesyou their information
intentional. So anyway, but forthose listen for the corporate
world that I'm an MBA. I went toUCLA. I have an MBA, you know,
and my undergrad is inphilosophy and sociology. I
mean, this is all about ethicalcapitalism, by the way. I got to
(39:27):
see the only see in my graduateeducation, guys. And this is one
of those little stories. Was inmy ethics class, business
ethics. Okay, I got to tell you,everybody listening. I got to
just come clean. I got to see inmy ethics class, only see in my
graduate school history, andI'll tell you why, because the
(39:47):
professor taught us every day tofollow the law, and every day I
argued with him. That wasn'tenough. If the company's doing
something wrong, but it's legal,you still shouldn't be doing it.
So he gave me a seat for that. Iwear that badge of honor
proudly.
Jean Gomes (40:05):
You've been you've been making up for ever since
that's right
Emma Sinclair (40:10):
Here on the evolving leader. We're committed
to stretching the leadershipconversation in every episode,
and we invite you to help spreadthe word if you've learnt or
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the chances are that otherswould too. Please consider
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Jean Gomes (40:33):
So let's go back to this gladiatorial battle then
talk to us about that.
Mark Weinstein (40:38):
All right. So listen, everybody. Democracy one
of the prizes for humankind indemocracies is the right to
privacy. So and this is veryimportant. And you know, when
you look at the Americanevolution of the democracy and
the Declaration of Independence,all the reason was that, you
know, the the British would loveto respect because they're one
(40:59):
of our greatest allies andfriends. But you know, the
British soldiers were kind ofcamping in the homes of the
colonial colonists, and peoplewere really offended by that.
There was no privacy. So we'veevolved, and the web, with the
development of the web,anonymity became a prize so you
(41:20):
could terrorize and bully andand still, you know, body
control, but also, human beingscould do lots of terrible things
on the web and be completelyanonymous. So here's what's
happened. What's happened is wehave this rather disrupted
where, you know, a 13 year oldkid can be, you know, targeted
by a 50 year old creep who'sbeing anonymous. And you know, a
(41:46):
10 year old kid can tellFacebook that they're really 23
and set up an account. Now,here's here, here's here's the
catch. They already know who weare. We're going to start with
this premise. Now, I am one ofthe world's leading privacy
advocates. I've argued againstuser ID systems for over a
(42:07):
decade. You know, 15 years I'vebeen on government committees
where I've said, You guys areloony. There's no way we we
should ever do this. Alright?
Now it's 2024 they know who weare. The government, the data
ecosystem, Google, meta, youknow the black, the black, the
dark web. They all know who weare. Cambridge, analytically,
(42:31):
220, data on two, 20 millionAmericans. Our data is there.
They all know who we are. So whydon't we throw away this idea
that we're anonymous. Let's justthrow it away because it's not
real anymore. It's a fantasy,and it doesn't work. It's
harming our kids. It's creatingmassive problems. Bots and
trolls are destroying ourdemocracy. Let's have a user ID
(42:54):
verification system. I'vechanged my mind, and I've
changed my mind, because theyknow who we are already. So
let's stop pretending, and let'sfix this problem. So the 13 year
old kid is not going to befished by a 50 year old creep,
and a 10 year old kid is notgoing to get on social media
(43:16):
because they pretended they were23 and the bots and trolls are
not going to be effectivebecause they're not real, and
this is going to take a while tosort out. This is where you use
AI for the good guys, becausethis is going to be very
sophisticated. But look,financial services companies
already have these things. Thisis not a new idea. And even MIT
(43:38):
and other places say this ispretty easy to implement, and it
doesn't have to be thegovernment. Just have to be the
government has to give sort of astamp of approval to make sure
that the verification is real,so that if you're not 13, you're
not on social media. Now the USSurgeon General says it should
be 16. I agree, but here's myasterisk, that's never gonna
(44:00):
work. So let's keep kids offsocial media until they're 13.
Let's get good user ID for allof us, verification. And then
let's make sure until a kid is18, they can't be targeted, no
boosted content, nothingmanipulative. They can only
connect with their peers, etc.
(44:21):
And but this is all doable. It'sall doable, and we do have some
good legislation in the UnitedStates, the kids Online Safety
Act, the American Privacy RightsAct, and Copa two, which are all
bipartisan, which have alleither gotten through committee.
Copa two and cosa the kids allday Safety Act have already
(44:42):
passed the Senate bipartisan,and we've got to get the House
to pass these so we need thegovernment to help. And in my
book, there's an appendix aboutwhat we need the government to
do. And of course, then there'sall the stuff we do, like keep
your kids off social media, stopgiving your kids a phone when
you. In a restaurant, becauseit's an easy way for you to have
(45:02):
a good time. Forget that you gotkids involved. I promise you,
you know, unless it's a reallylong drive in our house, the
rule is, if the drive is lessthan an hour and a half, you
don't get a screen. If the driveis more than an hour and a half,
you get 30 minutes on, 30minutes off. You gotta talk to
dad, you got to play games. Yougot to look out the window. We
(45:22):
got to see what's going on.
Jean Gomes (45:24):
How far away do you think we are from achieving
that? What are the obstacles toit? Because the the pressure
from the monopoly to not dothese things is huge. I'm
guessing
Mark Weinstein (45:35):
Jean, Jean, listen guy, everybody, what Jean
saying is exactly right. Youknow when the US government
surprisingly beat Google justrecently, about six weeks ago
now, and I wrote about this inNewsweek and explained why and
how what Google had done wrongand all the evidence that
supported the government.
Because Google has billions ofdollars to pay its lawyers, and
(45:58):
the government doesn't. That'snot the budget for the Federal
Trade Commission, meta hasliterally billions of dollars to
pay lobbyists and lawyers. Thegovernment doesn't. So, John,
you're making a very good point.
And of course, the governmentdoesn't, and the legislative
bodies are dependent on, youknow, funding from these
(46:22):
sources, from tech and fromother big investors, who, you
know, who, who fund theircampaigns. So the fact that some
of these are moving in abipartisan way, what I see now,
John, is that there's somemomentum now, after the US
elections, I think the firstquarter, we'll see, and then
(46:43):
we'll see, you know, who isreally, you know, going to help
the kids? If it's a Trump or aHarris? We don't know the answer
to this yet, because we alsodon't know the makeup of
Congress yet, and so we've gotto see this. So you're right,
John, there's interference,which is why it took this long
to get Google into the courtroomand find them guilty of
(47:06):
antitrust, and now there's goingto be decisions about how to,
you know, break up theirstruggle, because Google also,
if you're Googling for a producton Google, what one of the
things that came up was, everytime in the search, their
results, the top result is goingto be something that they get a
piece of the action on. Itdoesn't look like Google's
involved in it, but that's howit's working. And then Google
(47:28):
muscled out competition bymaking deals with Apple and
others about who uses theirsearch engine. So Google just
muscled everybody out. And then,like meta, they bought out
competitors. So you know, evenGoogle Maps, right? They bought
ways. They buy everybody youknow, or put them out of
business. Same thing with meta.
Why is there only snap and me?
(47:50):
We, according to the FederalTrade Commission in the
complaint against Facebook,they're the only two personal
social networks left. The otherones are not personal. They're
not about connecting yourfriends and your family at all.
So where are the other ones?
Well, if you're a monopoly, youbuy everybody out and you crush
the ones you don't buy out. SoJohn, good point. It's
encouraging that we're seeing,you know, and what it requires
(48:15):
is bipartisanship to stand up tothe big monopolies and say, Hold
on, guys, hold on. And thereason, in this case, it works
different than standing up tobig ag or big energy is because
the legislators see the impacton their children. They see it
directly, so they see it ontheir family members. And that's
(48:37):
different. And so it becomespersonal.
Scott Allender (48:43):
Excellent. Well we'll put the link to the book
in the show notes, and, somewhatironically, advertise it all
over our social media. But Ithank you so much for your
insights. I really, I really eyeopening with with so much of
your research, your book is aneasy read. I really enjoyed it.
So thank you for coming on andsharing just a part of it. And
folks, we barely scratched thesurface, so do make sure you
stop and order your copy today,and thank you for your time, and
(49:07):
remember folks Until next timethe world is evolving. Are you?
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