124: Kratom’s Basilisk

this is my own night call to that. I actually considered doing a night call about this when I was going out traveling east uh from Los Angeles, because basically as soon as I got into the outh kind of parts of Texas as well, I just noticed that Crawdham was everywhere kind of with the ubiquity that UM CBD is in you know, well just about everywhere now too, but um definitely in California UM, and I vaguely knew what it was, but I was sort of like, why

why is it? Why is there so much here? Why does this feel like something that exists, uh, like kind of outside of the uh, the coastal norms like you don't see crowdam necessarily and your smoke shops and your head shops and in California, and I don't know that that's because it's we got crawdham. It's it's yeah, it's legal,

it's there. It's just not push it's not It's not everywhere, but I've definitely seen it in the Hollywood boulevards, smoke shops and some big signs that say like, we have crowdham. Can you tell me what crawdham is? Well, I, I mean I was actually thinking I should guinea pig and do it myself and report back, but I haven't gotten

there yet. But um, I it was. It was moved to the top of my awareness again because my friend that I'm staying with here does use it, so I was like, oh my gosh, you have to tell me all about it. Um And And the the deal with crowdham is that it's uh, it's a plant it uh and it kind of works with your brain in a

similar way that opioids do. It. It attaches to the same receptors um and has an effect that a lot of people compare to um opioids, and a lot of people use it therefore to uh self medicate and get off of opioids, for instance. But there's like a lot of other uses for it. There's um people use it

for all sorts of reasons. I'm gonna just read off the Wikipedia uh Mitrigania speciosa, commonly known as crowdam, is a tropical evergreen tree in the coffee family native to Southeast Asia, Indigenous to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myan mar and Papua New Guinea, where it has been used in traditional medicines since the nineteenth century. Cradham has opioid properties and

stimulant like properties. Yeah, that's to both worlds. Baby makes sense that it's related to coffee then yeah, yeah, I mean I think you know, it's one of these things that there's actually everything that I've read about it it says there's comparatively little formal research done about it, which is sort of becomes this catch twenty two when it comes to regulating it, because there's been efforts to make it a Schedule one substance for years now, um that

have not um that have not gone through, but that would make it um kind of on the same level as LSD, heroin, ecstasy and uh therefore also harder to research. Um. There's a lot of limitations on researching those substances. UM. Yeah, I guess the d e A said it has no legitimate medical use in Yeah, clearly that's not true. Yeah, I mean I think I I I there have been um, I think fifteen deaths linked to Cradham maybe this past decade.

I'm not sure that the span of time, but it's it's somewhat recent, um, which is you know, pretty low and I'm not but again, we don't really like the One thing that people do know is that it uh if it even though it does create a sensation on some people that is like obioids, it does not um stop breathing. That's a you know, a signature of an opioid overdoses, Um people stop breathing. But UM, so you can basically have you know, I guess still get that um,

that same sensation without the risk with lower risk. UM. The other other main risk that I saw was that there was a Cradham link salmonella outbreak in UH. So UH Salmonella is a possible risk of Crowdham, but also UM of eating chicken. So there, Yeah, there were like a hundred and ninety nine cases of of crowdham salmonella, and so you know, there's very little report of like

lethality or danger or anything with this. And the the impression that I got, but I would like night callers who have firsthand or secondhand experience with it to give us a call at one to four oh for six night.

But my impression is that this feels like a lot like UM, a lot of other stuff we talked on the show, UH, when it comes to people finding solutions, UM, where healthcare is not UM coming coming, when when you can't afford healthcare, when you can't when when the health care system is not working for people, UM, when doctors aren't equipped to address certain concerns. Um. This feels like another one of these you're saying, this is like a

home grown way that people are getting opioids. Yeah, that that seems to be what a lot of UH people have used it for in in the various reports that I've read, And it makes sense. I mean, um, yeah, I I it just I was sort of it felt very regional to me. It felt like a thing that I started to see really pop up in UM in these parts of the country that I had not spent much time in recently, so it felt like, you know, I noticed it. And I'm always interested in UM regional

truck use. Uh, what is more popular and for what reasons UM in different part of the parts of the country. And I think I would wonder if in New England and a lot of places where there there have been huge opioid epidemics, UM, if it's as prevalent there as well. I mean, obviously opioid abuses and and and and death has been all over the country, but you know, in the in the parts of the country where it's been particularly bad, I wonder if that's UM, if it's popular there.

There's something really Midwestern about being like we're going to grow a plant to treat it right, Well, it's it kind of it gives me vibes of salvia, which is like, I mean, even though it's like totally different I think experience.

But just the drugs that are like not technically illegal, but also there's no research done on them because most of them are like and theogens for somebody, including creato my guess, is used in some rituals, yeah, but also used to just like keep people awake at work in factories. It says, yeah, there's that part too. I mean, I'm I'm color me curious, you know, maybe maybe next week. I think it's crazy that caffeine is legal right as

we're on the beverage pod. Yeah, Like, I've had some of the most fucked up experiences of my life from having too much caffeine. You know, I have never really freaked out from like smoking too much pot, but I've definitely had like a panic attack from from caffeine from coffee. We'll see everybody's everybody's body is different. Everyone's different. Yeah,

and uh, yeah, so I'll see. I guess I'll see, uh what happens when I ride the green Wave And yeah, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to be joined by Natasha and Tests and uh and dive into the world of Unfriendly AI. So stick with us. Hello, night callers. Have you experienced any strange weather recently or any natural disasters in your lifetime that are meaningful to you or something you want to share with the show. Are you a storm chaser?

Do you actively seek out natural disasters? Are you Helen Hunt from twister. Give us a night call at one to four oh four six night or night email at Night Call podcast at gmail dot com. Share your experience with us. We're getting ready to dive into some scary weather territory. So yeah, let us know what kinds of storms and earthquakes and hurricanes you've been in. Things are weirder than ever and we want to hear about it from you. Welcome back to Nightcall. We are now joined

by our special guest, Natasha Tiku. Natasha is the tech culture reporter for Washington Post and The Papers San Francisco Bureau. She's been covering tech for more than a decade. She's been at Wired, BuzzFeed News, The Verge, Valley Wag, among others. Hello Natasha, Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. Guys, I'm so excited for you to be here. We have a night email that is I feel like right up

your alley high Night Call. Relatively new listener here catching up on some recent episodes, and I wanted to add to the discussion you've been having on Elon musk Ai and fascist imaginings of the future. There's an article from seventeen about a movement in Silicon Valley called the Dark Enlightenment and it's neo reactionary followers that I think you would enjoy, which with a link that we will include

in our show notes. The too long, didn't read version is that a group of neo reactionaries believe that the Singularity quote a vision of the future that anticipates artificial intelligence both surpassing the human mind and merging with it. End quote is inevitable that the resulting society will be ruled by a super intelligence AI, and that Elon Musk is using neural link to help build the tech to merge the human brain with his AI super intelligence and

create an AI god king. It involves trans humanism, fascism, and is as absurd as it is terrifying. Some of Silicon Valley's most influential people, including Musk and Peter Teal, are associated with this movement's thinkers and true believers. Elon even found Grimes on Twitter because she made a joke about Rocco's basilisk And anyway, I thought this article would be a good read because it deals with a lot of what you've been talking about on the pod with

Meredith and amongst yourselves. While putting a terrifying conspiratorial twist on it. When I first read the article, it felt like a conspiracy theory. But it's something I keep returning to over the years for its explanatory power. Big fan of the pod and I hope you found this as interesting as I did. Thanks Justin. This was quite an article. Um it. We will be linking to it. It's long and dead is a long read, but it's a great read.

This is by Shuja Hater for Viewpoint Magazine. Yeah, the Dark Enlightenment, the DAR or what is it d r X or no, no, no, no, that's in the neo reactionaries? Are that n r X like? Of course it has to have an extreme abbreviation that sounds like an energy drink. It sounds like d XAM, which is what people robo trip on. Um. Natasha, how long have you been following

the Dark Enlightenment tech narrative? For about nine or ten years? Actually? UM. Back when I lived in New York and worked for Jared Kushner UM for the New York Observer, I had written a story for them about UM, you know, trying to find like a New York angle on UM, this particular ecosystem of people and so in the article, although I haven't had a chance to read that one, but

but basically a central figure there is elazer Yatkowski. Have you you guys have talked about him on the pod or you haven't talked about him on the pod or he's featured heavily in this viewpoint article. Um, you know, so he's he's a main character in the story. So yeah, but if you want to explain for who he is for listen, yeah, UM, so he is the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. UM. I don't know if you guys know that, but it's a it's

a it's a central text for UM for this movement. UM. It's kind of stems off of less wrong dot com, which is a forum that a lot of these people participate in. So at the time they're there, group was called the Singularity Institute, not to be confused with Singularity University. They've since changed the name, I believe because there was some money exchange. UM, but now they're called um Miry Machine Intelligence Research Institute. And that's where the Teal funding

came in. And in fact, like I think it's an incredible investment from Peter teal because he only put in like maybe a million dollars for the first donation and then a couple hundred thousand after that. Like they haven't received a ton of money, and yet like think about the like the return on investment in terms of being associated with futurism and enlightenment and contrarianism and and like same with his c studing investments. It's actually very minor.

And since then, UM, there has been a lot of other people like UM, the Ethereum guy, uh Skype co founders, Khaza, like you can look at UM who is donated to them. But but in any case, there they have an actually a pretty simplistic argument UM about unfriendly AI general, you know, artificial intelligence that UM you know, if you don't, it's sort of like it's and it's really infected the effective

altruism movement. UM. So it's like, if you don't do everything you can in your power right now to prevent unfriendly AI from from coming into existence, unfriendly AI will will you know, kill you and kill everyone and revenge exactly like Eliaser's the guy behind the paper clip experiment. Just the idea that you know, it just could happen. You tell them to maximize for peace, and the quickest way to peace is to kill all the humans. Um you know. So so that's how all of Human City ends.

And Ellie's are like not, you know, not a comment on his intelligence, but he is a third grade dropout and like does not have a background in this stuff. So it also causes a really big rift within the AI community, Like the Google founders definitely do not appreciate, um, you know this this uh, this kind of very cinematic take on on unfriendly Yeah, sorry, I just want to right,

but it's super fascinating. Right. So, the place I learned about the singularity was from the Ray Kurtzwild books from the eighties, I believe, which sort of put forth the idea of the singularity, the moment when AI will merge with human intellect or surpass it. Is that where a lot of this comes from originally. Yes, Ray is definitely a foundational thinker, although he doesn't get referenced I think

that much anymore. But I mean, honestly, they talk about, like the members that I've met with do talk about like John Connor and Terminator to try to explain it to other people. Although you know, they've been warned against that, but it just it helps you understand, it helps you

picture it. And and Google and everybody like they're they're anti that's just because they've invested so much in like neural networks and the you know, machine learning and all this, and so you know, they potentially are playing the role of skynet here, which maybe is not a role they want to be perceived as playing, even if they are. To give them a little credit, UM, I think it's actually based on their own understanding of how neural nets

work and how um, you know, machine learning works. I think they're just saying like that is not um, it's just that like far fetched potential reality is just going to distract you from like the very real things that happen when you put in like bad data sets and um, you know, you have a bunch of developers and um machine learning experts who don't think about the implications of

their work. Like it's it's like, you know, people have been talking about self driving cars forever, Like the chances of a self driving car almost as far off as or vice versa. Yeah. Yeah, one of the things in this article, UM that I thought was interesting because I'm less familiar with this kind of stuff, but uh, and I didn't even realize that this was a concern that people had. I'm quoting from the article, but this is

Roko's hypothesis. Hypothesis um that AI maybe quote or it may quote, develop a survival instinct that it will apply retroactively. It will want to hasten its own birth by requisition in human history to work towards its creation. In order to do this, it will institute an incentive that dictates how you will be treated after you come back to life.

So is that kind of the center of this panic is that if we create machines that reach singularly, you know that if we reach the singularity point, that the machines will somehow like become angry at us and try to bring us back to life and torture us forever, because that was alluded to in this article. And I was like, is that actually what Rocco's first post like did to people's brains? Is that where their their minds

went with that? Well, I feel like it's sort of this thing where it's like, if you take rationalism far enough, you're just gonna like be rationalizing away human beings. So like because there's nothing rational about human beings like that feels like the crux of this. But then I think the thing that's funny about the Rocco's basilic thing is that it's like a cursed chain mail letter or something.

It's like, if you exactly then your brain is poisoned forever, and now you are a part of the scheme to bring about the unfriendly or you have this moral responsibility to somehow coach AI to be beneficent, benevolent or whatever. Uh, And and that if you don't act, if you don't act on that, that they will be evil because now you know and say you have some kind of an

obligation to do that. Yeah, I mean it honestly sounds so much like the white racists being afraid that when minorities have power, they'll come treat the white people like

white people have been treating them all along. And that is something that I thought was interesting because it's like, what if they put as much money and time and thought into dealing with the racism issues that they have in tech as they do to dealing with like a potential unfriendly AI, which is the thing that doesn't exist, unlike racism which does. Right I think there's the like

the two potential um you know, dreadful outcomes. One is the you know, uh sentient AI that that judges you for your actions, and then the other is that like paper clip factory example, where um, you know, just you put in an input to maximize one thing or the other and just like without even attributing human attributes to the to the machine, it just destroys humanity because you didn't have enough people writing white papers and thinking about it.

And in the way that it's like, you know, become such a priority for the effective altruism movement is like I think dovetails into exactly what you're saying, well about like, um, so that's a movie like money that potentially initially was fixated on how you can make the most impact on like the you know, on poverty or um you know, global desperation in its many forms, and is now prioritizing as one of the top issues this um eventuality potential. Yeah, no,

I uh, does anybody know who Roco is is? The person who kind of floated this idea to begin with that's become you know, that's had this much consequence financially for the tech world. Does any like I didn't. I couldn't find anything about who this dude was. I forgot, but I think I looked it up when Grimes and Elon Musk Scott because I just could not believe she would because it's forbidding being discussed now. So I maybe it's from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I

wouldn't be I'm looking. It's named after a legendary serpent creature from European mythology that killed Bisques. I was just wondering about Rocco. Yeah, the dude Rocco or Rocco's obviously the sentient robot from the future who created this to warn people. Yeah, um, but yeah, I mean, you know the pop cultural implement implications also of this idea that it did bring Grimes and Elon Musk together to have their math baby, So you know, it's the tendrils reach

into all sectors of society and culture. Basilisks, by the way, Molly are still popular pets, those lizards. They can walk on water. But the whole thing about the Basilist because it's a monster. The reason that they called it the rokos Basilist, because that because it's a monster that you die if you look at it. So that's the whole thing of if you are exposed to this theory about the unfriendly AI, then you are now a part of it.

Because the idea we should clarify the idea is that by putting that idea into the Internet, by typing it onto the internet, the thing that the AI are supposedly going to be learning from, you have now exposed them to this idea and they're like, hey, great idea. Human. When I'm smart enough, I'm going to destroy you if you didn't help me exist. Um, that's that kind of feels like the gist of it. I thought it was also a little bit that when you spread that idea

among people, like they can't stop thinking about it. Like people were going like years of effective altruism are less wrong. We're like, yeah, people were really really losing it. Yeah Yeah. Why do you think so much time gets spent on theoretical problems like this when there are so many real problems in tech that you've been covering for a decade that seemingly have not gotten fixed or even really worked on. Well,

it's I mean, it's an incredibly effective tactic. Um. I don't know if you guys are familiar with data and society, but they have a bunch of researchers who do like great work kind of tying historical discussion on automation with

how things are going these days. I mean it's it's just like as simple as as it looks like you you know, gesture over here and um make it sound make the future sound inevitable, right like if self driving cars are inevitable, then you don't need to worry about people, um, you know, complaining about this or that, um, and it makes it seems the fight seemed futile, like it just

distracts you. I mean this is also how like companies work with I P O s. You know, it's or or whatever like the stuff like public companies with the stock market. It's just always the next thing, Like new work is looking at co living and then I don't know what they're looking at, like wave pools that's actually a real one. Um, I was gonna stay in spaceships, um, you know, or Elon Musk looking at Mars when you know what they're doing right now is uh cheaper work

that has already been accomplished. So if you think that like eventually this planet is going to blow Um, then of course why would you worry about the piddling concerns of those who won't even end up on Mars? And it's probably cheaper to like, Elon Musk has so enough power that he could, you know, create a green economy, probably more or less single handedly if you wanted to. That might prevent our need to go to Mars. What is your what's the PUDs like unifying theory on Elon Musk?

Like that we hate him, right, We're not into it. And I think in general that the in particular the Mars thing feels pretty um, pretty dark. Well, it's like super colonialism from somebody who's money all comes from apartheid. Yeah, yeah, And I totally believe Azalea Banks who said that people who want to colonize Mars are planning to do it entirely with robots and leave all the humans behind except for the god king humans who will get to go

to Mars. I know sometimes I've been I've been trying to think about like a you know, a good sci fi plot for landing on Mars with Ellen, and it's

just so absurdist. But but I do think he's like did guys read Ashley advances biography of him, he's just like an incredible salesperson and he knows like the narrative arc that they have perfected, Like multiple times in in the book, you know, he tries to refer back to like I was interested in space when I was eight years old, like these are the this is how the

trope goes, you know, like some outlandish thing. And he also is frequently talking about how he sleeps under his desk, and you know, from for from all of his employees who have been overworked and super stressed, like I'm sure I don't doubt that, but it's part of this narrow like if you look him up on Cora, all the questions are about like how can I be like Ellen

and emulate this like non sleeping, hard working lifestyle. But you know, and when he meets his actress, his second wife actress wife to Lula Um in the book, he's like, I was I hadn't taken a vacation years and I was so sick. But my friends they forced me to go to this club. And then I was at this club and I met this actress and I was I was basically forced to like pursue this actress. But it's just like, how like this he knows to say. Yeah,

it's like this turbout Steve Jobs origin story. It's like, you know, the the romance of the garage, like you know, times twenty and UM just kind of made more toxic. Yeah. I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think like maybe like Steve Jobs is good at consumers. I feel like Ellen does this to have his workers and to have like direct money to certain areas and interest

in things. Yeah, that wasn't a really interesting distinction that's made in this UM, in this viewpoint article, and I'm sure other people have made as well, is that there's

been this shift in Silicon Valley culture. And I'm not saying that like one is necessarily more virtuous than the other, but this humor facing UM kind of mindset, like you're kind of the previous generation, you're Steve Jobs, and you're uh yeah, I'll I'll that that era and then UM this sort of current era, which is sort of more techno feudal, much more interested in UM kind of creating

empires than necessarily creating a product for consumers. UM, like the product for consumers is sort of incidental to creating these sort of factions, these sort of like mini empires, which is um, yeah, that really clarified a lot, because that's there's definitely a shift in how like when a company like uber or lifts says that the drivers are not their employees. Um, which is a big part of

some big news that happened in California this past week. Um, that is part of that, you know, that's that's part of the new tech culture that we have now. Yeah, and I think part of the thing about Elon sleeping under the desk and this whole uh you know origin story of tech where everybody is like, I gave up my entire life to build this thing, and you know,

I worked on it so much. But you see that in all kinds of industries where you know, the founder or CEO, especially in like startup culture, will be like I'm the first person here, in the last person out, like therefore nobody else can work less hard than me. Yeah. I mean for Ellen, I think it's especially interesting given

that his um early companies were just software companies. His first one was like Quasi a like a media guide company or something, and then um, but I think like that romanticization of somebody who's gone from like just code and like not that inventive to hardware to you know, like, um, the kind of the most difficult kind of hardware just

makes him such Um. I mean, I think like the cultish implications of everything we've been talking about our time together, because like Pretesta and pres Sex, it's not like this is somebody who has some singular vision. Um it seems really scattered PayPal a singular vision. But yeah, these are yeah, these are like little there there there bits of code there there. Yeah, that's software. It's not it's not like something like the Mac or something like that or Windows

even it's it's uh pretty. It feels like it's all stepping stones that each individual product or service is not necessarily the thing that's going to be the legacy. It's more just like a massing power and going onto the next thing. And yeah, and just progress, progress and scare quotes for progress is sake, um going going to the moon for the sake of going to the moon, because it's more active than investing in um our planet. It's

like fetishizing empire. Like the growth, you know, the growth which is like um, you know, uh enforced by the stock market by investors, everything becomes the like the the end in itself. And I think that is because they, like a lot of these people do think of themselves as having good intentions and a and a smarter, better

vision for the way the world should be. So if you use that argument in reverse back, it's like, yes, the end goal of Jeff Bezos should be to you know, just have the biggest empire possible, and then at some point you'll switch to you know, benevolent mode. And and that was I mean, that's like a weird side note of the Roco's basilisk thing is that it starts with this like it starts with this argument about um about altruism and creating this uh potential solve for the altruists,

um the altruist burden the altruist. See, when you start with a phrase like altruist burden, you know it's just like not going anywhere useful. But the solve is the quantum billionaire trick, which is basically like, um, you become a billionaire via many worlds and h then you can solve the world. That's the most effective way to solve the world's problems. Like you invest some money and then there's like one universe in which you end up with,

you know, three million dollars or whatever. You can do whatever you want with it to help the world. And so that's the most powerful thing you can do in this world to help other people. It just made me so angry. As we approached the fall season, it's the perfect time to share your ghost stories with Nightcall. Please leave us a night call at to four oh four six night or a night email at Nightcall podcast at gmail dot com with all of your tales of the supernatural, spooky,

and just the mundanely weird. You wrote a great thing this week about the Chance Zuckerberg Initiative and how sort of the philanthropy arm of these tech companies and tech billionaires really doesn't compute with their own personal choices as business people. Could you talk about that a little bit? Sure so? Um So, the article was looking at what's been going on inside the Chance Zuckerberg Initiative over the

past few uh months and years. Um So, the Chance Zuckerberg Initiative is a limited liability company, not a foundation, not a nonprofit, which means that um so, so, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who's a pediatrician. They have pledged their Facebook stock to go into that, but because it's not a foundation, that doesn't mean the money has been committed. It also means they're allowed to make investment in for profit companies and allowed to do political advocacy.

So when they announced this, which was like with the birth of their first daughter, it was like this UM letter to their to their daughter about UM, about wanting to think long term, and the focus at the time was on sign So it's like cure all disease in your lifetime and the biggest issues facing UM the next generation UM. Many people, including myself, were very skeptical about, like,

how are they going to exercise this political power. There's much less transparency UM and uh, you know investing in for profit companies, and I think the problems that have manifested itself recently just shows you, you you know, you can't sometimes you just can't even anticipate the right problem because UM unlike Bill Gates say, who like stepped away not he was still on Microsoft's board actually up until earlier this year, but he stepped away from this YEO jobs

like so Zuckerberg is in this position now they are the largest one of the largest funders in the US of criminal justice reform, and through their investments in Forward dot Us, which UM worked a lot on, like data and with Dreamers. UM. They are also one of the biggest funders of immigration reform in the U S. So what happened this summer is that the black employees at u c c i UM, their group is called Building

Leadership and Knowledge b LK. They saw Facebook's decision to leave up that Trump shooting and looting post um, and then they saw their comments on Black Lives Matters, and they decided to write a letter to Priscilla Chiyan, who actually runs the day to day to articulate this kind of like it's a much more sophisticated diversity problem than what's happening at most tech companies are the level of

discussion because they're working on criminal justice reform. They have a whole section called Justice and Opportunity that's focused on housing criminal justice reform, immigration movement in capacity building. And what they were saying is, we've been asking you for years to prioritize racial equity. So obviously there's various ways to to define it, but what they mean is like really looking at you know, these are progressive causes in and of themselves. No one is saying that. You know,

like the end goal is is different. But if you don't look at how you know, who are the organizations who are receiving this funding, how is this impacting communities, especially because their work in places like criminal justice reform has focused as most corporate philanthropy has on clean slate initiatives. So that's like expunging records UM, which has gotten a ton of bipartisan support, like Center for American Progresses on

it UM. So are of the Koch brothers, Uh, you know, there's a lot of UM, there's a lot of Uh, it's just more momentum and cohesion across the spectrum than most things. But like, you know, there's a chance that it could only it could be easier to obtain for white prisoners, or you know, there's just so if you don't look at those implications, the fact that you're one

of the biggest funders is not gonna mean anything. And they were saying that the same thing has happened to them within cc I, like they're not promoted at the same rate, they're not listened to. They were hired for their expertise in these areas and the fact that they worked closely with these communities. UM, and they're not being you know, their their wisdom, their lived experiences not being prioritized or respected. And I mean, just like the layers

of irony are just it's just it's too much. Like because at the same time, UM, organizations like Color of Change and the n double a c P. They like they had just been in the news talking about and I feel like the the critiques have gotten extremely precise and and really strong about Mark Zuckerberg, which is like, no one is trying to say that it's your perception of yourself as good intentioned is the problem here, Like you don't recognize your own blind spots on these issues.

And part of it is just like pressure from the right because you are trying to maintain your empire, so you have to and you're under attack from the left and the right. So but part of it is choices. You choose to listen to the conservative critique. UM, you know more than anything, Uh, let's see what happens if you know the administration changes. But they're saying that you know,

you're going for these bipartisan initiatives. UM. And they talked about like not so much in the letter, but in my conversations with UM, with employees and current and past, they were talking about, like, your desire to appear equal is disproportionately hurting black leaders and and and black black lead solutions, and this is it's just like echoed what I've heard from Facebook employees, what I've heard from everyone, and the irony of one of the biggest funders of

this movement being in control also of what threats get amplified against black lives matters to billions of people. It's just it's too much power. I mean, it's a lot of It's like I think it's just so apparent when you look at these huge companies. When you look at a Google or Facebook, they all have you know, like or alphabet I guess where you have all these little projects And like sometimes if you look at it at face, valure like what does this have to do with you know,

forwarding the Google agenda or something? But then you look, there's always a threat. There's always some reason, whether it's just data gathering, data harvesting UM or it's usually that, but like you know, UM, there's always some way you can connect it back to like Okay, this is how this helps them. They're not just giving you free books on Google Books because it's a nice thing to do.

There's always some kind of UM agenda behind it. And I think it's always so apparent when you see the philanthropi philanthropic efforts of any of these companies that they don't have that connective to shoe to what the UM like they're They're they're completely not uh cohering or part of the same conversation as what the rest of the company is about UM in a way that you know, allows there to be these huge discrepancies between what where they put their money and where they you know, do

their good deeds. It's like a completely it's unlike unlike an alphabet where you have all these like it's not a part of a network of activities in the same way that you know, any number of uh Facebook initiatives could be like you know, creating Messenger or whatever. Right, it's almost like a a like a countervailing force to

the work that they do. Like I I just UM it just find it so interesting, like the work in science versus the amount of misinformation spread on Facebook, the work in edging pation versus you know, the impact on information, access to information and and and news gathering and um, you know, with justice and opportunity UM. That also has it like they're working in housing. Uh. You know Facebook has been sued by HUDD, you know, for for um

for discrimatory ads, um. You know, not like redlining when it comes to what housing ads are served to black users. It's so it's just crazy to me because like when people thought that Zuckerberg was going to run for office, I just like kept I just you know, people have some idea about his personal beliefs or the personal beliefs of Google's founders. And when your main existential threat is like empire maintenance, you can't your personal beliefs do not matter.

And it's honestly so I think it's one of the most like dangerous forces. This this faith in yourself as a good person and feeling like you're like, imagine these discussions, you know, if it's like giving books to like chromebooks

or whatever, laying in books books. Um, you know, if you're inside Google and you're like, well, we know that we care and you know, we trust ourselves like you just and and they don't kind of see maybe the irony in the fact that they have the power to make these seemingly man magnanimous gestures because they've siphoned from you know, X, Y and Z. And that's where I think Also the Zuckerberg, Uh, Like we thought the problem was going to be He's going to impose his personal beliefs,

but the problem is that he's imposing and advocating for It appears that he's imposing and advocating for beliefs based on what will allow Facebook to continue for the years. I don't know that he has any personal beliefs, And

that's kind of the problem. Like that and the idea that I mean this this thing feels like a really fundamental difference between running a country versus running a company, um, and trying to run a country like a company, say, is that, Um, there's no policy in the same way in a in a company that there is in a country like or in a government, in a functional government like you're not you have to make those um, those

fail safes for um, human human failure and human error. Uh. You know, in a in a at least in a functional society like you have to have those things. But in a company, everything is if you're part of the company, then you're a part of the the activities that the create wealth for that company. So, uh, you don't need to be questioned in the same way there, there's not

it is assumed that you are on the team. Well, also, I think you know, you can have good beliefs, but you can also really maintain the idea that the only way to achieve any good is to hang on so tightly to your power and your empire that you can

achieve it. And that kind of also ties back to the article that we were discussing, because if you feel a moral responsibility to be able to have that much power because you do feel like your vision is aligned with something good, then you also probably feel a moral moral responsibility to increase your profits, to have more money

to do good things. But then, as Natasha pointed out, it's at the expense of people who are already marginalized and already saying like, hey, you know, we're being left out of this um. It's so complicated. I mean, everyone's always so hard on Zuckerberg, and we are definitely quite hard on Zuckerberg on this podcast, but I think it's worth mentioning that, I mean, it is complicated, like it

is very complicated, and it's I think good. But what you were saying to about blind spots, it's like, you know, an actually smart person would be aware that they have blind spots. But because of the sort of Emperor god king of Dune way that tech situates itself around these personalities and has these sort of cults of personality, they don't listen to the people that are pointing out the

blind spots and something. I thought it was really interesting as a ship because I do feel like it's like they think about the optics, they make sure that there are like some black people at the company, but then they don't empower the black employees and it just creates

like an endless loop. But the thing you wrote about Pinterest where they were doing some sort of front facing like we're making it more diverse and we're gonna like work on racial equality and like we love BLM and we're not going to have plantations on the boards anymore. And then you profiled a couple of black employees of Pinterest who were like, Pinterest has a huge race problem, um, and they're not really doing anything about it except these

sort of superficial mickey mouse. You know, look what we're

doing to fix racism. Right. So umsa Alma and Erica both worked in public policy, and they were responsible for all of these things that pinterest had been doing that looked so progressive, such as, um, you know, uh stopping the ads that were placed on plantation wedding content, UM stopping the spread of health misinformation and actually, uh, you know what was the one of the catalysts for their decision to speak out was the fact that their internal

documents had been leaked to UM Project very toss about their efforts to get Ben Shapiro designated a white supremacist. And they weren't even saying like take his content off, but they were warning that this is going to become an issue and you know, you need to to put a warning on that. And so the again like the

irony is just it's too much. Because the fact that that is what led them to realize the company does not support them, they ended up having to they warned the company that you know, hey, if you have Project Fairy Tasks going after you, this means like something has been breached. Um, they're going to come after the you know, women and uh like minority employees. This is they have a pattern of doing it, and they wouldn't. They didn't take them seriously. They had to pay for the organizations

that they work for to get health misinformation content. They had to pay them to to look out for them being docked, and they were docked and um, and then the pinterest hired that company it's called story Full and had them look into is Ben Shapiro really a white supremacist? And and I didn't see that. Yeah, I conclusion, Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like they have people telling them the information that

they need to know and they're just not listening. Uh. And that seems to be the problem across the board at all kinds of companies. Yeah, that actually happened at Facebook is oh it was um they only had one black executive in the room when they decided to um make the decision about Trump's shooting and looting post. That is the like their global head of diversity who's been working at the company for seven years. Everybody has been

telling them that she should be reporting to Zuckerberg. They just only promoted her to report to Cheryl Sandberg and the black employees inside Facebook. We're also trying to explain to him, like how these dog whistles work how you know, so so Uh, it's just it's just the same story everywhere,

and it's been the same story, like it's been. Yeah, such an opportunity because now people are sort of willing to talk more about it on the record because they see how their um, you know, the their employer's decisions are making real world impact and they have a little bit of a buffer with everything that's been happening for their own like safety and jobs and um. But they've

been talking. I mean, I've just it's just the same thing for yeah, And I think this mirrors a lot of this stuff, especially you know, having the information told to you and not doing anything about it because at the end of the day, you're not that interested in learning or changing or emitting that you've done anything that wasn't helpful or constructive. Like that feels like that happens in every sector, that happens in journalism. That's been the basis of a lot of recent dust ups that have

happened in in in journalism and editorial and everything. Uh, it's just that when you're talking about a company and like, I don't know, I like Pinterest feels more on the level of like a Conde nast or something. But like when you're talking about Facebook, where you're talking about um, a company that has really unjudicially gotten itself UM mixed up in all of these different aspects of American life, than you know, the the unwillingness to learn becomes even

more of a hazard. I also think the like free speech obsession, which are these kind of straight white guys that are in charge of these companies manifests as like well, we can't we can't tamp down any kind of speech. We just have to see what happens. And what happens is like it goes towards fascism. But there's this like anti interventionist attitude of like, well if it wants to go towards fascism, like that's where it wants to go,

and we just have to let it, you know. Uh yeah, I mean it's not even anti I mean I would say that it appears that it's not even anti interventionists so much as like anti paying for the labor to uh to intervene. Like if you look at Zuckerberg's founding letter, uh you know, which they put out when they go public, or Google's, they don't say anything about free speech, um. You know, early books on Zuckerberg, they don't talk about

free speech. UM. And recently there's some amazing reporting in the Journal and NBC News Olivia sol and UM about how their own researchers, Facebook's own research has found that their moderation policies were um taking down more content from black users. We're like, you know, and and they told them to stop researching it. So it's just like, obviously there's hypocrisy everywhere, but it just really does not hold up.

And that is one of the blind spots. Like the the idea that um, you know freeze, like the kind of free speech you're concerned about protecting is somebody who has this massive platform, right, And it's like, you know, Zuckerberg's own employees at c c I. This is from first reported by UM by recode, but one of the employees at c c I was like, you should resign from Facebook or resign from c z I. UM, And you know, he laughed it off and was like that's ridiculous.

Of course not and brought up free speech, and they said, well, like, what about the free speech of the protesters. They're dead. When they're dead, they can't talk like it sounds. You know, it's just like fighting with this massive myopia. Yeah, but when you don't think you're going to die, when death isn't a factor for you, then what do you care about other people's lives? And you'll be on Mars, You'll be You'll be a robot. You'll be in a box

on Mars. You'll have a robot dick. Number one priority. Get the robot dick. Somebody allegedly already has one SpaceX Um, Natasha, thank you so much for joining us. We are all such huge fans of your work, and I really look up to you for, you know, tirelessly covering this thing that seems very soul killing to look at in depth all the time. Now we're lucky to have your eyes on it. Um, you're doing a great public good. Thank you so much, Natasha. So people can find you at

the Washington Post. You're also on Twitter at Natasha tiku n I T A s h A t I K you. Is there any uh anywhere else that you can point people or is that or anything recent you want to you wanna hype that you wrote I want to hype that I don't have to no, no, but gold read this NBC investigation about them telling researchers not to look into, uh, not to look into how Facebook moderation policies are just proportionately impacting black people. It's just got a lot of

good stuff. Perfect. Will you send us a link that we get in our show notes? Perfect? Thank you so much, Natasha. This ples come back sometime. Yeah for sure. Thanks, stay cool. Thank you so much for listening to Nightcall. You can't subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a review in our rating while you're at it, as long as it's nice. You can also follow us

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