Toxic Digital Spills. Roger McNamee talks to Armstrong & Getty

Yale bribe or merit, you know. I actually it was worse than that. It was random dumb luck and uh no I was. I was. I was back in the days before bribe or merit even mattered. Really, you just got picked. I'm that old. Yeah, well you've done well, so so good for you. Hey, listen the title, that's a strong word, Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe. Do tell so you know guys. Here, here's what the issue is.

That we as consumers love using internet products, right. We love the fun, we love the convenience, we love the productivity that come from them. But our understanding of the deal that we have with them, which is that we give up our data. They give us this really cool personalized surface is not what's actually going on. What's actually going on is that these guys do that, but they are now building businesses that are designed to essentially manipulate

us in ways we're not aware. And I'll give you a couple examples, like Google. Right when you think about uh, Gmail, which is something so many of us use, right, we we originally signed up with a deal that said Google, you may scan our emails, uh, because you're gonna put targeted advertising in in order to pay for the service. But then we discover we didn't like the ads, so Google remove the ads, but they're still scanning our emails. Now, I want you to think about this for just a minute.

You know all of us send letters, we send packages with fat as, we use the phone company. In those cases, those company these are called common carriers. They transport. They're not allowed to spy on what we're doing. And Google would tell the federal government, hang on, We're a platform, not a media company. You can't hold us to the rules. Right. You guys are have all these rules because you're a media company, you're responsible for the content you put out.

Google says you can't hold a response to that. You have to treat us as a platform, which is like a telephone company or like a postal service. And yet they scanned the contents of the messages and we, you know, we're not aware that what they're doing is they're gathering data on our behavior in order to essentially affect our future, to give us choices that we're not aware that we're being limited to. And it's very harmful. With Pokemon going,

do you guys remember Pokemon Going? So that got created inside Google's labs, and we think we're going out there and just playing this really fun game. Let me tell you what's really going on. What's going on is they got a billion people going around with their cameras taking pictures of everything they were doing. So they would use it for image recognition, they would do it to follow roots.

But then they did a behavioral manipulation experiment. They wanted to see, if we put a Pokemon in private property, can we get you to knock on stranger's door, climb over a fence, yes we could. And if we put a Pokemon in a Starbucks, can we get you to go in and buy a cup? Of coffee. Yes, we could. Now, how about if we put it in the third Starbucks on the street further away and we gave you ten cents off, would you behave that way? And you know

when we use Google Maps, same thing. You know, the route says hey, take this weird looking route right, and we think, well, that's going to be faster, and it turns out it's not. Google's purpose with Google Maps is not to get us to our destination faster, is to make sure they gather all the data on the speed of all the roots, and so they need some people to take inferior roots some of the times. Well that's interesting.

I don't take that route, by the way, and I never have because I've always looked at and thought that's their system is flawed to think that's the best way to get there, better way to get it. They know it's not the best way to get there. Interesting. So my point is we think the deal we have us, we're given them data so we get a better service. And that is a small part of what's going on. But now increasingly what's going on is they're running these

manipulation experiments. They're essentially recognizing there's a lot of data in the world, and if they gather at all, they can make the world more efficient. The problem is when they make the world more efficient, they're taking choices away from us, and we're not conscious of that. And so a big part of what I'm trying to do is just say to people, wait a minute. The way they're doing this is they have said said they own all this data. Right, they take pictures of your house, they

say they own it. They take pictures of you know through Pokemon Go, they say they own that. They go and buy your most intimate financial data, health data, location data, They get your browser history, they scan your emails, they scan your documents, and they say they own all that and they can use it for their commercial purposes. And the problem is while they do all that kind of stuff, they set up an environment where we're all being controlled like lab rats, and bad guys can take advantage of

all those same tools. And that's how you wind up with terrorism in New Zealand. That's how you wind up with election interference in Brexit in the United Kingdom, That's how you wind up with ethnic cleansing in Mean Mar And so we've got this situation where the cost of these really fun Services is starting to get to be really, really, really high. Roger McNamee is on the line. The book

is zucked waking up to the Facebook catastrophe. Listen, we could talk to you all day about this, and we ought to drag you back for a longer form podcast, but I want to hit some highlights and the time we have and the manipulation of our animal brains, the tiny shots of endorphin, the hooking of stuff I find fascinating is it is scary. So the way it works is really simple. They got to get you. They're competing against all these other media, they compete against your show.

So how do they do that. They use the same things that markets have always used. They appeal to our need for rewards. They give us notifications. But the difference in radio, everybody gets same message. On Facebook and Google, they can tailor it precisely to you, and once they get you on right, they want to make a habit. But for many of us, the habit turns into an addition. Like I asked people, you want to know if you're addicted, when do you check your phone first thing in the morning.

Is it before you pee or while you're peeing? Right? Because for most of us that full range, right. I mean, by the time you've done peeing, you've been checking your phone for a minute. So once they get you, then they want to probably about two minutes. Well then you get to read a lot more, right, But basically, once

they've got you, then they got to keep you. And the way they do that is they find the stuff that most animates us, and it turns out, unfortunately that's going to be stuff that makes us afraid, or stuff that makes us outraged, or its conspiracy theories and disinformation. And the problem with this is that it just it's universal. You know, you see somebody's perfect vacation on Instagram, you know you might be jealous, but if some he makes

you afraid, you're gonna share it. And you're gonna share it because if you're afraid and others join you in that fear, you relax. It's a herd mentality and they're so good at it, like you. I mostly my weakness is YouTube around this, which is owned by Google, and they have figured out my life so well. When I throw on YouTube, it's just a list of things I'm interested in. I mean, they know all my favorite you know, history authors, guitar stores, just all my favorite stuff, baby monkeys,

the top swine, that sort. They've got me figured out completely as to what's going to get here around there, here's the problem with it. Okay, we said, were hang on, just get rid of the hate speech, get rid of the disinformation. But they can't because the business model is based on knowing who you really are, and when we're going out in public, we have our best selves on. But they need to get past that. They need to see how we react to outrage, how do we react

to fear? How do we react you know, if they show us something that's anti Semitic, how do we react to that. If they show us something that's anti immigrant, how do we react to that? And they need that information to make the business model work, and in the process, that causes polarization. Right, It causes to be angry at people who frankly have a lot in common with us, but we may disagree on one topic topic and that's what's unhealthy about it. And that's what I'm trying to

get people to do. Uh, to step back and just ask the question. The business model is based on having our most personal data. Why is it legal for Google and other people to scan our emails and documents. It shouldn't be. They should be treated like the postal service. Why is it legal for them to trade our personal health information in a doctor's office? They can't do that. Why is it legal for them to get our most

personal financial information without our understanding, approval and support. Well, the same thing for location. And I think once we have these conversations what I've discovered. If I'm on Fox, everybody agrees, If I'm on MSNBC, everybody agrees. Well, now that's interesting, right, this is about right and wrong, not right and left, And so everybody goes, yeah, you're right. I don't want to be controlled by some corporation. But

that's what's going on. They're manipulating us. And my point it's not because they're bad people, it's because there are no rules. Now, Roger, I don't know a lot about you, but I have reason to believe that that you're able to make your rent and have a little money left over to spend. We'll just leave it there. Um, but obviously you were really really motivated to write this book. Um. Was there a moment, was there a particular realization that made you think I'm going to spend the next several

years of my life fighting this stuff. There was so I was at one time a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg and UM. But that was early in the life of Facebook, back two thousand six two nine, and in I started to notice things violations of civil rights,

the Breggs, a referendum in the United Kingdom. There was manipulation going on there, and I reached out to my friends to warn them that I thought there was something wrong with the business model and algorithms at Facebook, and I spent three months trying to persu wait them to do with Johnson. And Johnson did after somebody poison bottles of talent on Chicago, which is to protect the people who used their product, to drop everything and just leap

to their defense. I spent three months pushing them. They said they weren't interested, and it was at that point I was faced with a moral choice. I've been involved here, I had profited from it, and I was retired, so

I could have just sat back and watched. But what I chose to do, I said, you know what, I owe it to myself and to everybody to see if I can spread the word to make people aware that that this thing I was involved in, which I loved so much has for a variety of reasons that are related to the culture of business and related to culture of Silicon Valley, you know, going into a really, really

bad place. So it's God. That's one question I want to I want to get to before we run out of time, is did it start as something else and become this as they realized how much money to can mak or was this the intent all along? Don't know. I I believe that that at the beginning they didn't

see where it was going to go. And I think Mark from the beginning, we wanted to connect the whole world, But I don't think he completely internalized what that meant and what that opportunity would create, because when he was in college, before he did this, you couldn't have created Facebook. Basically, they came along at the perfect time when suddenly all the limits on technology went away and you could make a global product. And it took them a long time

to figure this out. They did not figure it out while I was involved there. It came actually three or four years later than that. And you know, in Google's case, they figured it out much earlier, but I was not

an insider there, so I didn't see it. And at the end of the day, I think that in a culture of business where essentially we've removed the government as the center of rules and the enforcer of rules, you basically have smart people who have license to grab whatever they can grab, and the rest of us are powerless to stop them until we go to the ballot box, until we go to elected officials and say, hang on, what are you doing to prevent these guys from trading

my most personal information and manipulating my wife. You know, we tend to be of a libertarian bent around here, but the idea of value, including myself, right, right, But the idea of an individual having instantaneous global reach is kind of a new thing for mankind. Well, I would argue that this notion that I believe that when you wake up in the morning, you have a choice. Am I going to go to work? Am I going to stay home? Am I gonna have breakfast? Not at breakfast?

Exercise not exercise. That's called free will. If you're a libertarian, you believe each of us has the ability to control our own lives. And what I'm talking about is that these companies, in their pursuit of efficiency, want to take our right to choose away from us because it's more profitable to do it that way. And I sit there and go, hang on, pal, you're not elected, right, you're not accountable. We have to change that lack of accountability.

They have enormous power. There's no denying that huge power. And the thing is, if you're a libertarian, right, if you believe each one of us should be responsible for our own situation, each one us get to make our own choices, then you have to stand up and say stop this. Because the deal is they can still provide these services just with targeted advertising. They don't need to do the manipulation. They do not need to do the

kind of stuff that's coming. And I'm sitting there going, guys, I understand you didn't do this because you're bad people. You did this because nobody told you it wasn't okay. Well now I'm telling us, like, think of this the chemical industry, right, they used to be able to dump mercury and fresh water, leave mind tailings on the side of the hill, pour used oil into the sewer, and then we woke up and realized, wait a minute, those

externalities cast society a lot. People get sick, the environment's polluted. We should make the people who create that toxics bill pay for the cost. I'm saying now, we have toxic digital spills, and we need these guys to pay that cost and change the incentives, and we need to give each one of us control of our lives back. Roger mcne the book is zucked waking up to the Facebook catastrophe. We need to talk again, Rogers, my friends, you guys are the best. I love the show and you're just

an honor to be on with you. You're too kind. All right, Thanks, it's good to talk, and we do it. Let's let's make it happen. Yes, so he sounded like he met that too. I know he's brilliant actor nor sincere and I want to care. Frankly, I don't care. Which. We gotta follow up on this when we come back. Yeah, the book is fascinating. I mean it is great, and I got no reason to tout it other than I mean it. This could be the story of the future of the world dealing with this parents. I insist you

read it. You're listening to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Conscience of the nation,