The Exchanges

Q that you make about outrage and, and the loss of the center are so strong that I do wonder if we need to Think about like AI power, Chinese propaganda and, you know, Russian disinformation where we're just not seeing it as, as a, you know, concrete program, uh, problem that we're dealing with today. So can you explain a little bit about why you bring them into the argument?

A Yeah. So, um, so this question, this is question, uh, this is question five in the review. Does social media enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? And you, if you go there, you'll find that there are a number of studies, uh, giving evidence that they have been active, uh, and they have been working on it. And you'll find some studies, um, in section 5.2 is where we collect the ones that are contrary that seem to say that, well, actually the reach may not have been that big. And most of the people who encountered this stuff already believed it. So, so if you operationalize it as the effect on the average user, How, what percentage of, let's say Facebook users are actually influenced by Russians. And it's, you know, I don't know what the number is, but it's not 10%. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a very small number. So you say, oh, it's a small number. I guess we don't have to worry. That's one way to operationalize it. But look at it this way. Um, the story that AIDS was created by a government lab in, I think Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was one of the Russians many successes in the twenties century. They put it into an Indian, a small Indian newspaper, which I think they funded or fronted. It was a little English language thing in India. That's where the story started. And then other newspapers report it and…

AI assessment note: “Does social media enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States”

Q And now why is social media responsible for the structural stupidity? I mean, the, the. Yeah, well, okay, go ahead. And then we can talk about it.

A I mean, you know, look, if, if we lived in a place where people could just literally stab you with a knife, if you said anything wrong, we'd all be walking on eggshells and we wouldn't ever want to offend. But we don't live in that world. If somebody stabs you with a knife, then they'll, they're going to go to jail. So that's not an issue. Um, but having your relationship ruined or damaged, uh, being publicly shamed or called names, um, is really scary for people. Um, uh, the Romans observed that people were often less afraid of death than they were of social, uh, of, of, of social slandering and social ruination. Uh, and so what Twitter in particular, Twitter is the worst here, but it's, it's also on Facebook and Slack and other channels. Um, what Twitter did is it essentially gave everybody a dart gun where anybody could shoot a dart into anyone else. Like imagine if you literally, if I were to question anything about police violence or the gender gap in pay or anything, if I were to question that, instantly I would get shot with 20 darts, like physical darts penetrating my flesh, like really, really hurt. Um, I'd be very careful what I said about any of those topics. And that's, I'm arguing, that's what happened. Social media gave everybody a dart gun, and as a result, Because most people don't want to shoot anybody, but the far left, the far right, trolls, a few groups of p…

AI assessment note: “what Twitter did is it essentially gave everybody a dart gun”

Q two gentlemen, uh, with ties to Saudi Arabia worked for Twitter and ended up passing along information to an organization close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Um, so you do run that risk if you're ending up tying every, every account to a phone number or a license, uh, you know, whether, you know, whether, uh, that's public or not. So what's your thought about that?

A Sure. So, um, so first, thank you. You're one of the first interviewers who has understood that authentication does not mean using your real name in public. Um, so, um, so if you go to, if, if, if listeners go to the Google doc and go to section 11.2, user authentication, we lay out how there are, there are five different levels of authentication. Um, level zero is nothing. That's what we have now. Not anyone can do anything as much as they want. Level one is what Elon Musk tweeted, authenticate humans. You just have to prove you're a human. You have to pass a hard CAPTCHA before you can start an account. So that's at least something that would cut down on the bots. Um, level two is authenticate unique identity once and untraceably. Uh, and this would solve the problem you're talking about. You just have to prove that you're a person once And then whatever this third party authentication thing is passes back to Facebook or Twitter, whatever, like, yes, this is a real person. Um, and maybe there may, you know, what I'd like to see is this is a real person and they're over 18 and they're in a particular country. Uh, but there's no record kept of it just that they passed this check. So now there's nothing, you know, even if that thing got hacked, all it would be is yeah, there's a person, but you know, I mean, It's easy to tell that John height is a person and in America, like the…

AI assessment note: “level two is authenticate unique identity once and untraceably. Uh, and this would solve”

Q the links as opposed to just hitting retweet. That will create much more thoughtfulness. It's surprising to me that this hasn't caught on at all. Um, After having read the story and written about this dart throwing that you mentioned in your story, what's your view on virality? How, how do you think it needs to be changed if at all to, uh, bring this stupid a little bit less.

A No, I mean, virality. Yeah. So virality is the, you know, is what, um, is what brought down the tower of Babel is my argument, um, that, you know, social media wasn't the whole problem. A lot of the polarization problem predates social predates social media. But the ability of anything to go viral at any moment means that people are walking on eggshells. Even seventh graders are walking on eggshells because any little thing they say could blow up within their school or beyond their school. So virality is, is the problem. And so my one thought about that, because yeah, I agree with you. I mean, it would be great if we put friction in, make people copy and paste, but in a competitive marketplace, if customers don't like that, they'll go to a market that, uh, you know, that doesn't require those hassles. But I like to think about it this way. At present, uh, on some platforms, particularly Twitter, um, the more of a jerk you are, the more successful you are. Now that, I mean, obviously in some sub subsets, that's not true. And in some senses it is, but, um, but the, but the, the, the hyper virality of Twitter shapes, I mean, you can see people losing their minds and I can see professors who used to be reasonable people. They get trained in almost a behaviorist reinforcement mechanism. They turn into jerks. Well, that's because Twitter incentivizes being a jerk in order to go viral…

AI assessment note: “what I'd like to see is an alternate platform, um, compete with Twitter”

Q content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels or encountered via links from external sites. Now, of course we understand that the folks who are extremists, like, uh, you know, they, they are the ones that are like committing lots of the crimes, like you mentioned earlier in the show. However, like, you know, again, like, is that a social media problem or is that an extremist problem?

A Well, it's so there are always extremists. They're always conspiracy theorists. They're always people who are so motivated by their political values that they want to kill other people. Um, and social media makes it easier for them to find each other. So, you know, I divide things up into the growing pains of any new technology and the, the harms that are, um, not necessary or the harms that, um, That are, are, are, um, things we really need to focus on. So, so put it this way, um, the internet, it's so important to always distinguish between the internet and social media. So the internet, um, is the greatest boon to mankind since electricity or fire, I'm not sure which. Um, and of course the internet makes possible all sorts of bad things as well. Those I consider to be growing pains. Um, when automobiles came out, a lot of people got killed. Uh, but we gradually got better regulation of automobiles, and now the death rate is, is, you know, way lower than it was even 30 years ago. Um, and the same thing is gonna happen with the internet. Um, so if it's, you know, the, the issue of extremists finding each other, that is intrinsic to the internet, and, and especially as things get encrypted, there's no way to stop that. Um, but at the same time, there are, there are tools, there are things that really, really help extremists for no good reason. And Facebook and other platforms, …

AI assessment note: “there are always extremists... and social media makes it easier for them to find each other.”