The Exchanges

Q Ok. What, what do you think of the oversight board? I mean, the, the, the meme about the oversight board among Facebook critics is that it's a public relations stunt that's a shield that, you know, will make it look like Facebook actually cares what the public has to say, but it doesn't. Do you subscribe to that?

A I find the name deeply, deeply, deeply manipulative. So, so if we were to ask, like, what does the Facebook oversight board do? You know, if you believe in the theory of what's in what, what's on the labels in the can, you'd be like, oh, I mean, they, they, they do oversight. You know, they, they, they look after Facebook as a whole. Um, it really should be called the content moderation appeals board because that is the entire scope of what they can do. They can't ask about the performance of the content moderation systems. They can't even ask, like, what language are the content moderation systems in? They can't ask about how systemic or, like, how sim, are there other examples of the ones that get appealed to them? They can't do anything. They can't ask about the algorithms in general. Um, and so I, I, my heart really goes out to the oversight board because it is full of a number of very conscientious people who I think genuinely try very hard But because they are, um, so limited by what Facebook allows them to do, um, uh, they, they get put in a very hard position. Mm-hmm.

AI assessment note: “I find the name deeply, deeply, deeply manipulative.”

Q You looked at a lot of Facebook research. Some of that research said, ah, that people feel worse if they scroll and don't participate. Just passive consumption makes people feel worse. If that was the internal Facebook research, how do you think it is that TikTok, a app that literally has people scroll passively, ah, is making people feel good?

A But they, but they actually don't. Like, like you, you have to, you have to choose to move on with TikTok. TikTok, if you, if you are truly passive, like you're not engaging at all, if you're not choosing to do a next gesture, It just replaced the video, right? And, and I think it's also a thing of, um, uh, TikTok's algorithms because it is, like, I think I keep trying to flag for people is TikTok is a very manipulative experience algorithmically, right? They bias towards happiness. They bias towards humor. Like, they don't want you talking about sad topics because political topics often are sad topics, right? And, um, and so, you know, funny dances If you can be passively, you can be not really engaging, not having a conversation, and watching funny things, and you're gonna feel laughter, laughter makes you feel better.

AI assessment note: “They bias towards happiness. They bias towards humor.”

Q Over that app. So if American I know we're gonna get into global stuff. Let's talk about US. If American social media users, you know what, let's just go global. If global social media users are in an app that has these major liabilities, isn't that worse than, than being inside Facebook?

A Inside Facebook. Well, I think it's this question of, um, you know, like, what we, I, I think we need to have a, um, I, I think we should have Facebook of 2008. Like, if I was going to, if we're going to do any kind of magical hypotheticals, you know, social media that is about our family, our friends, our communities, contact, connecting with people is better than anything where you have hypervirality. Um, the things that are, are good about TikTok are TikTok acknowledges they have power, and Facebook really doesn't want to acknowledge they have power, right? They like to be like, oh, no, we can't do anything. Like, we have no ability to, we have no ability to do anything. Um, the secondary thing is, um, you know, if we had to choose between, you know, an app that has had two genocides, so, you know, we have 200,000 people dead in Myanmar. This is not my opinion. The UN has a multi-hundred page report detailing what Facebook did that was negligent. If we see the same thing happen again in Ethiopia, um, with lots of warning, if we see this happen over and over again, I think there's this question of at some point we have to decide When do we have to hold Facebook responsible for being an app that seems to have a pattern of causing genocides? Because I have not seen any TikTok genocides yet.

AI assessment note: “Because I have not seen any TikTok genocides yet.”

Q had Brandon Silverman on the show, who was the founder of CrowdTangle, um, which is this great software tool that let you see what was moving inside Facebook, public links in particular. And he made a great point that Facebook actually is deprioritizing news within its newsfeed. And, you know, now we don't see as many news links. I'm curious what you think. Isn't, is that something to be applauded?

A Uh, so part of, part of what frustrates me so much about, um, about that is so, like, the reason why they're deprioritizing news is because they're scared, right? Like, they're getting all this criticism about things like, you know, ethnic violence, and they're like, they're kind of, you know, taking a card from TikTok, where they're like, you know, at TikTok, if you're not a funny dance, you're not, like, humorous. If you don't, like, aren't, like, you're, like, you're not gonna get distributed. Um, And the, the thing that's so sad for me is it, it really illustrates, you know, you can either choose to design for human scale, human modeled communities, right? So I always say like, is it a dinner party? Is it a cocktail party? Is it a church parish? Is it a conference? Is it a university? You know, we have, we have models on how people can exchange ideas. They've lasted for thousands of years. Um, I, Or you end up with AI censorship. And the problem is, ah, if you must insist on content moderation, I think you should have to be transparent about it. And that means things like you should have to put out samples of the output of your scoring systems so we can see what's getting labeled as any of these categories and what the consequences of that is. Because when we take down, when we don't let news get distributed, That's news by the definition of Facebook's AI. We don't know wha…

AI assessment note: “part of what frustrates me so much about, um, about that is”

Q Not needed anymore. Yeah. But at the same time, you're working on a book. You signed with CAA, which is a big Hollywood agency, so how do you square those, that, your hope and, and the action?

A Well, I, I, right now, I don't see very many people who are on the stage who are proposing and pushing for things like, you know, let's solve the product, not the content. Um, uh, at the same time, I'm, I'm someone who's almost died, right? Like, I spent two months in the hospital when I was 29. Um, I am fully sensitive to the idea that, like, life is fleeting and precious, and the way we solve real problems in ways that have the highest chances of, of, um, of working is you cannot be reliant on individuals, right? We, we have a hit by the bus problem right now. Like, we should be wary of, like, Facebook employees driving buses around New York, right? Like, you can imagine nothing that would be more convenient for them. We need a 100,000 people who can speak as detailedly about the choices we have with regard to social media as I can. Right? A world where there's only one person talking this way is not a safe world. And I, I think anything, I, I had a lot of people pushing me really hard when I first came out to be like, give us the five point plan. How do we fix Facebook? Um, and I, I have said repeatedly, any world where, you know, I am the solution is just as autocratic as the world we live in right now with Facebook. And, and I really believe that the process of, process of democracy is about having a lot of different people with different interests and different stakeholde…

AI assessment note: “We need a 100,000 people who can speak as detailedly about the choices”

Q big tech advocacy, where there's so much dark money that gets spent, um, all over the place, and No one ever discloses where that money's coming from, and so we don't know where the agendas lie. So, um, can you, I don't know if you have or not, but are you going to commit to share the list of your funders moving forward when it comes to running this nonprofit?

A You know, I, I am totally willing to entertain that idea. I want to put a quick caveat, which is I would like to check in. So we've only taken, uh, we've only taken two checks ever. Like we, McCourt is, we're in the process of getting the check from then, but they made a public announcement of it yesterday. Um, I would want to check with those two other funders on whether or not they would want their names publicly, but for context, um, prior to McCourt, we'd only raised, um, uh, a very low, uh, six figures. Um, like, I've, I've, I've gone by on a shockingly small amount of money, and part of my book advance is all that has funded me since I came out. Um, the people who tell me, oh, it's easy, they'll just give you a check for 300,000 dollars, I, I don't know how that actually works, because it has never happened for me. Um, not gonna complain though. Um, but I, I, I like that idea, and I can, I want to double check first, but we've been public about our funding, at least, ah, in the last, ah, our, after those first two checks. I feel like you should make it a prerequisite, and maybe that's putting a. Yeah, but if I start saying that, that I could, going forward, I can talk to them and be like, hey, like, we need to have your name out in the open.

AI assessment note: “I am totally willing to entertain that idea. I want to put a quick caveat”