171: Meta's Not Better

Yeah, it's the latest.com data that was published last week, into UK media uses specifically online media, showed that, basically we all hate social media now, or at least we are not engaging with it in the same way that we used to. the numbers of people who are actually going online and posting, for example, to Facebook or to Instagram, commenting, liking has dropped to just under half of people.

And this has led to a spate of articles that kind of hand ringing saying, is that it for social media? oh, now that we are banning it, are we all just gonna stop using it after all? But that's not quite what the data shows, I think it's important to, to push back. Ever so slightly against this narrative because I dunno if you notice people, still look at their phones a lot. I dunno. I like, I presume you still look at Instagram. is it fair to say? Well, I've only just joined.

I'm a bit embarrassed about it. Just as everyone else is leaving, it's, not too late to stop No. you can, get out. Andy's a proper content creator. And isn't this current a part of, this? What's happened Is that the casual How dare are you Oh, you are though. I've seen you on there. But the, kind of casual, like you might just post something for your friends kind of stuff is dying away and it's becoming more professionalized. part. I think That's basically it. there's, a longstanding trope here.

The media, all media will eventually, in the same way that all life forms on earth become krabs eventually. So all media, what? You just threw that one in threw that one. Is that true? Hey, you can go look it up. Ation is a real fact. but all media eventually ends up being video and fundamentally social media.

If you think that Facebook has been around for 20 years now, more or less, And when it started, it was a place where you went to connect with friends, to attempt to flirt with people that you went to school with, break up your marriage and post pictures of your holidays. it is not that anymore. it has become a far larger, far more complex platform series of platforms. And effectively, fundamentally, most social media platforms are now like television.

Whereas before they were lean forward participatory things. Now they simply tend to be lean back. So for example, you will log onto Instagram and rather than posting to your grid of pictures or seeing the things that your friends have posted to their grid of pictures, you'll instead be served a vast quantity of video content made by people that you don't know that is designed to entertain you much like TikTok does, which is exactly what Snapchat does, which is exactly what, YouTube shorts does.

Everything is basically now short term video. And so it's not that people are using social media less, it's just the manner in which they are engaging with it has changed significantly from being something, as I said, participatory to something that is fundamentally about consumption. we should say private. I, as a traditional news organization, will never, ever pivot to video. But your mention of TikTok iss interesting. Because that is I think where the pivot really happened.

Everybody decided that the kind of the for you algorithm was just a much infinitely superior way of content. when it's one of the, one of the oddities of social media, and whenever you read people's surveyed about this, people always say in conversations, you know what? I really miss the old days of Instagram where I just go on there and it would be the things that my friend had posted. And I would scroll through and it would go backwards in time.

And then there would be, and people always say this, but every single study that has ever been undertaken by social media companies shows that's bollocks. And what people actually is the algorithmic feed because they really, being served this continual stream of infinite content that's tailored to their very specific desires. And that is basically a post TikTok, as you say, Helen thing, they were the first people to perfect that.

And everybody's followed, suit with this, but people are posting a bit less, people are partly, because making video is A faff as opposed to words or pictures fundamentally that there's a slightly higher barrier to entry. Not everybody feels comfortable doing it. And also we are now a little bit more attuned to the fact that having your face all over the internet possibly isn't a great thing for lots and lots of people.

Yeah. women, it turns out, tend to have actually often quite a bad time when they post pictures of themselves on the internet for a variety of reasons, whether it be abuse or whether it be someone using Elon Musk's magical Uni unification tool. to turn them into porn stars.

so you can see why people might be somewhat reticent, and what are the other elements of the Ofcom study that was out last week or the, their survey is the proportion of people saying social media is good for their mental health. That has come down to 36%, which I would say is, still who are these people? remarkably high. if you use it a little bit and you just check in, see some funny videos.

most of my usage, apart from the dead Eyed brand extension that I'm up to is, just checking into seeing sketch comedy and which I, don't mind, but. two years ago, 42% of people said it was good for their mental health. Now it's 36. It does still seem very high, but it brings us onto one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you today, Matt, which is of course, the chat about social media bans, the huge lawsuits that have been happening against Meta and YouTube, those are over in the States.

But here people are saying, do we need to regulate this quite firmly and in particular stop children, under the age of 16 from using it? So can you tell us law is on that, at the moment. So currently the government is undertaking its one third of the way through a three month consultation. so there are soliciting responses. basically on the question of yes, should there be a ban for under sixteens, what would be the positive consequences of this?

What might be the potential negative consequences of this? so far they've had somewhere in the region, they've say they were saying a couple of weeks ago of 30,000 responses, which by the standards of government consultations Is a fairly big, big uptake and it's got another two months left to run. There obviously, there's a lot of interest behind this. anyone respond to it? Is it any member of the any member of the public? can do it. There are three separate consultations.

One is for parents, one is for younger people, and one is for any other interested parties who may have skin in the game for whatever reason, whether it be professional or personal. Exactly what's going to happen. To what may well be a hundred thousand responses. How they're gonna be triaged and to what extent it's just going to be fed into an LLM because that's almost certainly what's going to happen. Yes, of course.

Don't you think it'd be like, they'll do a sentiment analysis on it, essentially, and they'll go, they'll, ask the LLM to say, what percentage of these said, I hate social media and I want it banned, if get a word cloud, aren't we? Yeah, Without, a shadow of it. doubt, a beautiful dashboard. just a beautiful thing for showing you what it would've been like if everyone said those words in a different order and and I'll just say like in the middle of it, I'll just say feet.

What If I don't like large language models, where do I express my views about that? In a way that will mean someone reads it. are really not going to like the future. very Okay. Gosh. Gosh. Okay, so this consultation's running. Am I right in thinking I've read that there are trials that are happening in 300 homes, they're gonna actually experiment with. Cutting social media usage for children. That's absolutely right.

Yes. So the, these are limited trials that are happening around the UK simultaneously. There's another study that was launched last week, in Bradford, I believe, which is an exceptionally large longitudinal study over the course of a year that's going to track or seek to track the impact of social media usage on young people's, emotional wellbeing. that's going to run until 2027.

which does rather make one, wonder, okay, so we gonna take a decision on this before we have all of this evidence, because, it does feel possibly slightly premature, But the interesting thing about this, and one of the really interesting things about the debate as a whole is that over the course of the 13 years that I've been writing about these godawful companies and the terrible things that they've done to the world, there has been a lot of research that has passed across my desk.

Debating the impact of these technologies on the mental wellbeing of both adults and younger people. And what's been striking about it is the complete lack of any sort of consensus for every single piece of research that says, these things are the worst thing for young people since we got rid of child labor. there's another that says actually they have no discernible impact at all when you take into account all of the other things that are going on in young people's lives.

And this kind of comes to the recent rulings in the states, which while ostensibly can be seen as very, bad news for social platforms, probably aren't quite as definitive as the media has wanted to paint them, We, we should say what those are. There's, a case in California where Meta and YouTube were fined $6 million for designing deliberately addictive, algorithms to get children in particular. In, and the other was in New Mexico, which was a $375 million Fine.

Just, to point out Andy, that's not 0.62% of meta's income from 2025. Okay. It's a start. that was over. Claims that the products led to things like child sexual exploitation Exactly. And that the platforms weren't protecting children from being approached by creeps or potential abusers online, Exactly. that kind of thing. meta and YouTube are appealing those verdicts, but the aim is to try and launch as many of the cases as possible to try and reign them in basically, yes.

the big one whilst the New Mexico one has a very big headline figure. meta themselves have laughed off defined frankly. The one that's more significant is the LA case, primarily because there are potentially thousands of other cases waiting in the wings that were this verdict to be upheld after the inevitable appeal.

Would set obviously a precedent that could then actually prove quite significant in terms of potential liabilities for the companies and requirements on them to modify their services to frankly, potentially avoid any sort of huge long tail legal kickback. The difficulty, of course, is that a meta is going to appeal and YouTube, has a very strong ground for appeal because I think they can make a reasonable case that they're not actually a social platform in a meaningful sense.

They are, They really are just, they're a video streaming platform and I think they can probably do that. Meta is a little bit harder, but the case rests on the fact that meta's products are addictive and that's quite a contentious thing to prove. So for example, there are literally no studies out there, no studies whatsoever that show the technology products of any sort, but specifically social media have the same effects mentally.

As actually addictive products, Like it is not the same as smoking or doing heroin. Right. It does not light up the it is, they are fundamentally designed to keep you looking at your screen and keep you on that platform, aren't they? I was talking to a, an anti-gambling campaign, or recently who made a really interesting point, about even WhatsApp, which you think of as being a sort of relatively innocent one, the two tick thing.

is designed to have you there, you've sent your message, you've done whatever you're gonna do. No, you're gonna stay there. You're gonna keep looking if you're, oh, have they read it yet? Has everyone in the group read it? Has anyone, oh, someone's typing. Everything is about keeping you on that path. And you can feel that, I feel it myself when I'm scrolling through my phone. There's a point where I just go put it down, Adam put it down and, I just There's A bit more. you are entirely right.

They are designed specifically because fundamentally speaking, that's what venture capitalists demanded when they invested very heavily in these services and they wanted to see user retention and all of Interesting. They're not very well designed for that these days. I find, 'cause I'm, I was on Facebook for a long, time. Left it last year. Again, exactly the same problem coming up with Instagram. Now that all I seem to be getting are sponsored posts.

About things which the algorithm is convinced that I'm interested in, I'm, a bit of a geek, but I don't need to see 1 million posts about those two episodes of Dr. Who that turned up in someone's last week, which seems to be all Instagram is giving me at the Do you also get heavily owned by the adverts? I do. 'cause it's obviously clocked that I'm a woman between the ages of 40 and 50, so all it wants to talk to me about his hair loss and dry vaginas. And you're just like, Oh, Viagra. Viagra.

Viagra. I'm afraid. Yeah. Middle-aged men. Yep. Yeah, I'm getting is Soler panels and heat pumps. I had a very interesting experience last year where, for reasons that I can't adequately explain, the algorithm on Facebook decided that I was a gay man for about a week. And it was a genuinely fascinating insight into a world that I don't personally experience lots of very beautiful, muscled men and incredibly handsome knitwear. It was, Yeah, It was a nice time Turn to at all, or Not, not yet.

I'll, see how it limits, the powers of social media. Can I, drag us back to the prospect of a ban, which would stop us seeing Australia have just banned it for under sixteens. They and we have, we've had our first kind of little glimpse of how it's going. It's early, isn't it? It's incredibly early. It's been a couple of months effectively. And the first big proper government mandated, data on this is gonna come out, I believe in May from Australia.

So that's gonna be the first proper official cut. But, anecdotal evidence, reports that came out again last week suggested that about 70% of Australian kids were just swerving this. The age verification stuff doesn't work particularly well. It is actually quite easy to bypass. And we've all been teenagers at various points in the distant past, and we all know that there is nothing more powerful than a motivated teenager that wants to do something you don't want them to do.

you always find a way around and social media bands are no exception. So firstly, there's the difficulty in actually enforcing this in any meaningful sort of way. secondly, there isn't a coherent evidence base that suggests that it is necessarily a factor in young people's mental health Thirdly, there's also an argument to suggest that by implementing a ban for under sixteens, what you're effectively doing.

Is, letting these companies off the hook slightly because rather than requiring them to make meaningful changes to the manner in which they operate, you're instead just cutting off a sway of people from using them.

Whereas it could be argued, that it would make more sense to attempt to make them change the way in which, for example, algorithmic, content delivery functions or the concept of an infinite scroll, which would theoretically benefit all users rather than simply preventing one contingent from using the platforms. I don't know how I feel about this. 'cause I think my analogy for this always is, tobacco and you are right there.

It is different in the sense that we just had ev straight up and down evidence eventually by a certain point that was killing people. Yeah. But you could say all the same things, which is that kids, would send their mate, their older mate to the shop to buy, cigarettes for them or or actually, should we ban it for kids or should we try and drive the tobacco companies outta business altogether?

and I think all those things are true, but I think there is some social power in saying we think these things are poisonous and we are against them even if people get round that this is completely fair. And I completely agree with you. I suppose the other point that I would make, which is I think slightly ignored in this debate, is the extent to which, over the course of the past decade, these platforms have become infrastructural. they're not elective really anymore.

There is a certain extent to which. Significant sways of modern life require the ability to navigate these platforms, whether it be for social reasons or increasingly for administrative reasons. There's also the fact that, okay, so 16 year olds are going to be given the vote, right? Where, do most young people currently get their news from? Oh, it's social media.

Do you wanna, cut off the place that they are informed about the world, whilst at the same time giving them the power to affect the movement of that world in a more significant sense? I dunno, it, you're not being socialist enough here, Matt. What you need to do is mandate them all to receive a copy of private Eye state issued copy of Private Are you somehow telling me that 15 year olds don't all private eye? Helen?

I hear there maybe some of them don't, they're not meant to, but you can send someone into the shop to get for you. so what, happens next? We wait for the consultation to end. Although, the Prime Minister has been making increasing noises, about the likelihood of that being a ban in some way, shape or form. the House of Lords is obviously mad keen on this Baroness Kidron keeps slapping amendments onto every single bit of legislation she seems capable of doing.

Yeah. she's she, this is very much her hobby horse and so this is be beam Kidd on the filmmaker isn't it? Who made a film IRLA few years Yes, Exactly. Which effectively radicalized her into believing that all of these companies should be fundamentally torn apart. so many of these attempted amendments there was one that was almost put through a couple of months ago that would basically abandon under sixteens from using Wikipedia. because it was so broadly written.

there's currently one about chatbots that Barron's Kidron attempted to implement into a piece of legislation which would, I think seemingly ban, ban kids from using, any sort of AI related thing, which if you consider how much AI has been injected into all sorts of products becomes problematic.

and this was also in evidence at a common select committee the other week when, once again the charming, I need to remember this ma name will Freda Fernandez, who is, the spokesperson for X on safety and thankless job. You You know what? I get the impression that he's very well remunerated. and I think he probably sleeps quite well at night.

but he was quizzed about, X's algorithm and whether or not it's right wing or whatever, and he gave some very smooth sounding answer about the fact that the algorithm was transparent and. It wasn't challenged by anyone. And that's because people don't really unders, They use the word algorithm as some sort of complexity thing as though they actually know what that means. and in most cases they don't.

And so currently, for example, the way the algorithm on X works is that basically it, it throws stuff into gr. and ize, and no one knows how AI works. So literally nobody on the planet you can write, you can make that transparent. But there's a whole big black box in the middle that nobody understands. And lots of algorithms are like that now. Like the major social platforms are all built on math.

recommendation maths that is so complex that even the people who built it can no longer really get a comprehensive picture of exactly how it functions in any given way. we haven't really talked about X being now a. full of very euphemistic CSAM child sexual abuse material. Which is, it's stuffed with it. This is grok produced stuff. Is there any appetite to tackle that in a legislative way? I presume this is in off comm's remit. Because it's AI services Yeah.

That isn't currently under the terms of the Online Safety Act. Come again. Yeah. Ai, AI and chatbots don't currently fall within the remit of the Online Safety Act. So it'll require the online safety Act to be tweaked. which even though they're within X but it's a separate, it's, ai so it's different. child sex abuse material is illegal. is that not just a fairly straightforward, should there not be prosecutions under existing law? Does it matter how it's produced?

One might, one might argue out the, you. I'm, I'm very to, yeah. I'm very prepared to, yes. But, I suppose there are also questions about, and without wishing to get into. Fairly unpleasant conversations about gravity of imagery and things like that. There are questions about the extent to which it is technically falling foul of CSAM legislation as it is. Whether it's a gray area, et cetera. And that, is very unclear. It's also riven with code words, right?

It's all like liter or whatever it might be. Like people make these arguments that what they're actually doing right. It's like an ambiguous teenage person. And I think that's something that the AI thing is also quite bad for, 'cause people can argue that I never prompted it to produce child sex. I, I simply said, I want an extremely young looking girl, but of, legal age. It seems like there is an appetite in the UK to dish out a beating to plenty of these companies.

It doesn't feel like it's a vote loser to say, certainly I want these, things dealt with. that's probably why Stama is leading on it. it's something people want to It's, one of the few areas where he can do something that people seem to want and the difficulty of course is that, and This is something we're gonna come up against again and again, is that there's an extent to which one could argue these companies are fundamentally too big to regulate.

What meaningful sanction can you place on a company that is worth literally trillions of dollars? I hesitate to say something Polyannish, but I'm about to some sort of global coalition that, where all the world's countries come together and decide to regulate in parallel. And that's definitely not gonna happen. When We've got a White House we've aligned themselves completely with any sort of restriction on, social media. Is a, is an attack on free speech? isn't it?

the State Department and the decline of the West. The State Department was quoted I think a week ago. Specifically calling out X as a positive vector in the war against foreign influence and propaganda. what are you gonna do? that's oh, I'm depressed, It's a cheering note to move us it's Why you bring me, everyone? Oh, am I going look at Instagram for a bit to cheer myself up. Look at some cat videos, let's come now to the local elections, which are happening in a month's time.

I know anyone watching or listening to this would've been, excited already. You'll have been watching all the launches, collecting all the pamphlets you can get your hands on already. But they are going to be very interesting and they're gonna be interesting partly because this is, I think, the first big electoral test in a nationwide sense of Reform UK and the Greens. we had a little bit of it in the last general election, but since then their numbers have absolutely shot up.

we thought it might be worth finding out what reform and the greens actually propose in policy terms. obvious place to start on this is the fact that, reform have, said that they would keep the triple lock on pensions, which is a kind of really interesting, move for them because I, it was, I, thought it was a brave and good and therefore I couldn't really understand why they had done it. They'd said they would scrap the triple lock up till now.

Essentially the issue with triple lock, it was brought in 2010, As a way of saying we think that pensions have not kept up with inflation. We're gonna introduce these three measures by which it will always rise It's whichever is highest out of inflation wage increases. Or 2.5%. Exactly. So even if inflation and wage increases are both on the floor, it'll still go up two and a half percent.

Yeah. Then what happened is obviously the acts as a ratchet and not quite often you can get two bumps in a row from the triple lock. So one, one measure goes up one year and the next measure goes up next year. Yeah. And actually it goes up way above inflation. So we have this post-financial crash situation in which, in real terms, working people's incomes have been really stagnant, but there has been this constant ratchet effect. And this, the triple up brought in for very good reasons.

Pension of poverty was, extremely high. We've now got a situation actually where I think if you take into account housing costs, pensioning comes, are on higher than working income. So in one respect, what ev someone she should be going is, thank God no, many fewer grannies are freezing in winter. Well done the triple lock job done. Unfortunately there is a problem, which is that the older people who get the triple log also vote in enormous numbers.

So no party is willing to put any expiration date on this constant up rating. Essentially that outpaces inflation. And it's the only benefit that's pegged that way, isn't it? is that, Yeah. in fact, working age benefits were for a long time under the coalition were frozen. They weren't even being uprated by, inflation. So actually losing money in, real terms for those. so yeah. Yeah. So reform have just said within the last week, oh actually no, the triple lock is a lovely, is a good idea.

And it's, they're not the only party being dishonest on this. See, also. Labor, the Conservative party, the liberal Democrats, the greens have been dangerously radical in that they propose only a double lock. They proposed removing the two point a half percent, and I think it's gonna be whichever is higher out of, earnings increases or inflation. Has anyone gone for the quadruple yet? Is it gonna be like razor blades Just more and more.

I think there was something, wasn't that the last general election? I'm sure Cak proposed. Yeah. So it's giving me vibes. I remember this. The really interesting thing is, I know I'm addicted to sticking my hand in wall sockets in terms of things I talk about that the amazing defensiveness about this subject is really extraordinary to me because as soon as you say, maybe we should have a double lock or a single lock, maybe it should just go up with one measure of inflation and Yeah.

And track the economy in that way. People say, I've worked hard all my life, I've paid in. Why don't you take it off immigrants instead, like the level of defensiveness that you might slightly tweak this benefit Yeah. Is really extraordinary. People clearly take it in a spirit of you don't value me.

Anymore if you say you're gonna take away the triple lock, like I see one of those things where it feels like a very emotional response, whereas I think it sounds like you're saying is that it's just not sensible to say for every square on this chess board, I will put on double the number of grains of rice. At some point that's gonna become an unsustainable thing to do. Yeah. If you follow the projection, there would be a point at which it would consume a hundred percent of GDP.

Okay. If we, we logically take it I don't see a problem with that. and I think it's pretty weird and a bit, age phobic that you do. I'm just as the eldest in the room. Sounds good to me. Yeah, I know. the thing that's really interesting about it is actually it has good support throughout all age categories. This is not a situation in which absolutely. Pensioners love it and young people think, sold you actually most people are in favor of the idea of the triple lock.

Okay. But it's one of those things that obviously at some point it's gotta end and it's really fascinating game of chicken to see who will be the one who actually finally does it. Yeah. and given the mess that we've talked about before in this podcast, that labor got into with even means testing winter fuel payments or restricting them. still that's now in, that's now come no radioactive, completely toxic. Yeah. there have been various other kind of gimmicky, events from reform.

Nigel will pay all your electricity bills for a year. Nigel will give you some cheap petrol, but just you, and it's become a very lotfi event, in exchange for lots of your data about your voting habits.

Which has been very useful, learned off Vote Leave, who did an incredible job where they had a, essentially like a pools competition for predicting, I think it was a football thing, and it was like the chances of anybody correctly predicting all of the games was infinitesimal, but in order to sign up for it, you had to hand over yes, very important, valuable data about your address and email and, then you could get text messages from the campaign seen as one of the great campaigning innovations

of the 2010s then, because a lot of people who weren't really interested in politics, but were the kind of people who might vote leave if they could be got to turn out right, registered and signed up for it. So clearly Nigel Farage has learned, a lot of stuff about campaigning over the last decade and a half. That's learning from social media as well, isn't it? To go back to our first talk, the, the email address point is actually a really interesting and important one.

So if you run adverts, on social media platforms, you can create what are effectively called lookalike audiences. So the idea is that you have a database of people. You have their email addresses, you feed them into for the sake of argument, what, let's say meta. so to advertise across Facebook and Instagram. Meta will look at all of these email addresses it has data about all of those people. And you can say, find me people who are like that.

So if you have a database of reform voters, you can give them to meta and meta will go out and find you people who it thinks are like those people and who therefore are also likely to vote reform. So it becomes an excellent way of multiplying your potential reach with very, highly targeted advertising. which is also how MRP polling works, right? Is you essentially correct for sampling binds by looking at the type of people demographically that are in every constituency.

And then you can have more a sense of what those kind of people you, where you'd expect them to vote to check your waiting. Okay. But this is, which was now I think, it's very hard to talk about how politics has changed just due to the huge amounts of data that we have on people, but they, those are two very obvious examples. Yeah. However, there is also still a place for the brute force, 'Would you like some free money?' Approach to politics also still very popular. Very popular, yeah.

But the problem that is still dogging reform is personnel. related. That's a bit of a euphemistic way of putting It They will keep on recruiting those Nazis. do you mean the Welsh candidate who did the Hitler salute? the one I was thinking Yep. there's also Simon Dudley, the housing spokesperson, who told a discussion of Grenfell Tower, that everyone dies in the end. Do you know what I just because again, wall socket Wow. Wow. You're going to- that wasn't, that comment was abhorent.

He shouldn't have said it. It was a casual, flippant, cruel thing to say when lots of people lost their lives. Yeah. The point he was making, which is that post Grenfell housing regulations mean that we haven't built a lot of housing and that has caused a lot of misery and unhappiness from people who are stuck in moldy, horrible temporary accommodation because of the missing houses that haven't been built. Yeah. Was a fair one. Oh yeah. And it annoyed.

The hell outta me that everyone got their free hit in on how terrible. It's, we will never have the sensible conversation that actually, for example, the staircase requirements and things like that Yeah. Are stopping houses being built. And that is a huge crisis. That means kids are growing up in hotel rooms. Anyway, so that's my, I'm today I've defended a reform Look spokesman. I at you're sticking forks into every socket. you can find. let's keep playing. I love this. but Hitler salute guy.

I'm against that just for clarification. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. but they, I mean they keep having these, they've got their, they've got their grab bag of former Tories. many of the, best and brightest you're talking about Bobby J aren't Zha wick Braman, which set do you think puls, boas, voters the most, do you think it's the sort of Nazi salutes and, Grenfell appalling tasters or the, the many members of Boris Johnson's cabinet?

I I I don't think either of those are winners in terms of attracting voters. so I read Matt Goodwin's book. I've done my, I've done my Time in the Minds. Yeah. And one of the things that was really interesting to me about that book a, it's terrible, it's just a, wine of white grievance and like it is actually, it's x in book form in that it's very poorly sourced, overtly racist, and actually just dull. Not even the interesting racism, Andy, that's what I really object to.

But what's interesting about that is he got absolutely slaughtered for that book in the Spectator, in the critic, in Unheard in all of the GB news. On GB news. He did a debate with Andy. 12 as a guy came. And I thought, that's fascinating that there is no solidarity on the right for this guy who is, who's just run as a reform suggesting to me that the most repellent figure in reform is actually, it's Matt Goodwin.

Clearly other people who have people who agree with his politics hate him personally. And I think that's very impressive. Do you think we can expect to see Goodwin caping for restore. no. They really, hate him. Is he not racist enough for that? They think he's a liberal squish who's no. 'cause they think you were in 2016, which is true. He was writing articles for The Guardian about how terrible Islamophobia was. They think you are just, you are just, you've just switched for, a tension.

Astonishing unanimity across the right for the h Matt Goodwin. Very impressively done. So maybe it's something we can all agree on. I, thought it was a bad book and it turns out people who agree with the politics thing's a bad book that, that's, but it's selling like the clappers Andy, Sold more than my book. So who's the real winner here? Should we come to the Greens? why not come to green? Okay. their policies are. double lock on pensions. Very exciting.

And they've got a range of other interesting proposals, haven't they? Which I went back and I read the Greens 2024 manifesto and the Reform 2024 manifesto. And they are interesting mirror images of each other. So the reform is basically, we'll have tax cuts, huge tax cuts for both individuals and businesses and we'll pay for that by scrapping all this net zero bollocks. So essentially let's have loads of carbon and that's how we make our sums work.

Also, they claim they were gonna get 50 billion of savings from waste, which is one of those ones that I love. It's like planks constant. You just put it in there to make your sums work. So their one is basically tax cuts for people we like funded by more carbon. The Green manifesto was direct money transfers for people we like; pay rises for doctors more money into the care system. Teachers funded by a tax on carbon.

Huh. So there there is like giveaway money in exchange for, I think they were talking about 120 pounds a ton tax on carbon. Okay. And, obviously this wealth tax of 1% on people who have more than 10 million or 2% on people who have more than 1 billion. Yeah. Of whom they're only, they think 171. So it's questionable.

But they were just very interesting of two big money giveaway packages in various ways, either through tax cuts or direct spending funded for by things involving carbon, which I thought you'd appreciate. Yes. That's very interesting. They've both got a, carbon based thesis of the, of the economy. and the other thing that's really interesting is that they've both now got podcasts. the so both reform and the Greens. I've listened to the new Reform UK podcast, which is fascinating to me.

The first one's out, it's about 30 minutes. It is produced and sounds exactly like a Radio Four documentary. So it follows Nigel Farage. It even has some criticism of him. It has protestors blocking him. It's never really said quite what they object to about him, but there's, but then Boo Protestors and it follows him giving a speech at a venue where it's a 900 capacity venue and there's 300 people in the overflow. So he goes and gives a speech to those guys and does a q and a with them too.

So the message throughout it is, the thing that's also funny is it's voiced in A, B, the same. thing. The same thing happened after the Sermon on the Mount. There was actually an overflow The mount. yeah, Small there was A spin room as well. the spin doctors told you what he actually went, Why he'd come out. Christ has done a terrific job tonight. He's really shown that the peacemakers are gonna be blessed. Yeah. Big night for the Meek.

but the thing that was interesting about that was also the thing funny, if you listen to it, you're waiting for it to turn into a kind of Look Around You style spoof, because it sounds so exactly like a, BBC dock around you. And he goes, 'Nigel is coming down the road.' You are waiting for it to go, like 'he's got an enormous fish', but something completely bizarre and random. So that's one approach, which that it is not visualized.

So it's up on YouTube, but me's audio, imagine old school podcasting, whereas the Green's version of podcasting is Zack Polanski's Bold Politics. And this is much more what you have come to expect from the world of vodka casting. So say bold, politics. I'm sorry, I had bold like keys in a bowl and I thought, oh, that's another green I'm not totally sure about. Okay. Compulsory swinging. Yeah. It's bold, but I think it's got something.

Anyway, so it's, Zach Polanski interviewing people, basically. Which is the classic. Matt, you've probably listened to a million of podcasts in this genre and you see it in the Sphe a lot, right? The same circulating group of people all just interview each other And Endless Or Gavin Newsome Yeah. You Is there a nice brick wall behind him with Yeah. the standard podcast setting. Yeah. And the kind of slightly oste and the Branded microphone.

Yeah. but, it's, what's fascinating about that is a, it puts him in a slightly kind of beater role, right? 'cause he's the interviewer, whereas Nigel would never do that, Nigel is the star. So it's a slightly more humble approach in that sense, but also he has basically transplanted the Corbe Knight intelligentsia wholesale lock stock, and burial into it. So it is James Medway who advised John McDonald on economics, grace Blakely, Rachel Shabby, Owen Jones.

the, failure of Your Party becomes even more stark in this context, right? Because there was clearly an establishment there and a group of outriders and thinkers and the Green Party has just got them like they are now, all of them, much more into Zach Polanski than, and, essentially it's gonna be interesting, we'll rerun this election with a Jeremy Corbin who doesn't complain all time. You know what I mean though, but like you do.

Yeah. In the same way that, that, Reform podcast is Nigel far going and speaking to people. 'cause he loves doing that. He loves Jason. People going, oh, the Guardian won't like this. Zach Polanski loves going and talking to people saying, oh, the Daily Mail won't like this. Yeah. Both of them have got that always on content creator ability.

And David ppl, who ran the Obama campaigns and the ka the Harris campaign, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last week that said essentially this political candidates now are content creators. You need to have a studio, you need to be 24 7 pumping out your messages, owning your audience. Yeah. Like on, And that is, to me, is what distinguishes Nigel Farra and Zack Polanski from Chemi, badnock and Ki it all comes back to social media again. To square the circle slightly.

because it's all about video now. You need to be punting out video because that is what fills these platforms, and that is where people get their news. And that's cross demographic now. Fine. Okay. So older audiences still go to mainstream media first. Yeah. But for pretty much every other Coterie 50 below, like it's, mostly social based discovery now. It's, it's in feed.

You see your headlines or people commenting on the headlines, or podcasters pretending to podcast about the headlines that they might have read yesterday or heard about from some other podcaster. It's, a soup, basically. Yeah. And the politicians that do well are the ones who are good talkers. That is the kind of table stakes now to entry, which is why So Angela Rain is going to launch a podcast, which is exactly what you would do if you wanted to be labor leader. Is it her and gov?

the first episode? I wouldn't bet against that. That sounds like the kind of thing that would happen. It's very interesting. This is a separate point really, but podcasting has a reputation or a feeling of being authentic. And that's why you often get people to say controversial things. Stick their fingers in wool sockets on podcast is 'cause people think, no one's listening.

Or I don't mean that about, I don't mean that about their, this podcast, which gets terrific numbers, it's more conversational. It's more intimate a medium. It's cozier. I think that's the co thing. So both the things interesting is that Nigel Fr was like a fake documentary. that was essentially, it was, designed to sound like BBC content, but it was all about how great Nigel Farage was. Which is really interesting for that audience.

Yeah. Whereas the, Zach Polanski one is basically look at all these people who are terrific friends. You are among friends. being on the left is not a minority opinion. Lots of us are socialists. We should come out and say it. And, creating that idea of a kind of here is a, gang that you can be part of, I think is really, It's really interesting, again, it's, all things are fundamentally tied together. But what we were talking about with the changes in social media in the first part.

are Moving from a, social connection where it's your friends and you're seeing what they've done and, what that and their holiday pictures to a sort of parasocial one where you are following these, high profile, celebrities or politicians, whoever. And it's exactly the same thing with that, isn't it? It's you are being invited into the gang and invited to, to, come along with the person rather than it be the politician at the lecter and who's just making speeches and things. And it does well.

there is an Army out there of people, you will probably see some of 'em in the comments under underneath this, this very podcast as we speak, who are absolutely vehement a bit like they were with Jeremy Corbin. they're fully signed up to the calls and will accept no criticism I see even legitimate things.

and Zach Klan's been very good at this when there have been legitimate things in, in the right winging press about, his stances and his background, absolutely said, these are smears and I will not be cowed by, the right wing media. And it's, that's a great narrative, isn't it? I will not be cowed by the right wing. Media is a very good phrase under almost any circumstance, no matter what you've been caught doing.

and I, and my big criticism is Zach Lansky, I think he's incredibly talented political performer in a lot of different ways, but that he has got a, an appetite and a talent for reinvention. Yes. he was Lib Dem. He was at Lib dem at the height of austerity. Yeah. His, he changed his name because he wanted to embrace his roots more authentically. he's somebody who, he was an actor. I think you find out all the criticisms that people made about Tony Blair, he was a bit too slick.

I feel like there's a journey of discovery that people are gonna be gone when they, in 10 years time, they might go, oh yeah, that guy, he was a bit too slick, but works very well now. Works very well. Can I give you my personal scoop on Zach Polanski? Yes. Yes. I was in the same gay pub as him on Saturday night. Get out out that's what they said to me. No brilliantly with my top investigative journalism hat on. Didn't notice. Hang a minute. He didn't notice you?

no, you wouldn't expect him to notice me. Okay. I didn't notice him, We went in, had a look round thought. Oh no. It's all straight women. It's all head nights. We'll have one point go home. Zach Polanski was there on the dance floor the entire night. Apparently. The only scoop I can give you, 'cause of a friend of mine is very nice shoes. What was he dancing to? I do, I do not know. I was, you're Can you go away and do a journalism on this, one. It's good playlist at the, food and Fruit.

Sam, Island. Free drinks, please. Lovely. There we go. We've entered this with Pon Con, so that's good that we brought this house full circle. We're finally going the proper podcast. route. Yeah. We've got a very exciting new format. this week we are going to be doing a play. Adam, you have been following.

The very convoluted, long Messi and expensive trial between Prince Harry and colleagues and associated newspapers, the daily mails, publishers, and I believe you have got a dramatic extract us.

we've talked a lot about this on podcast three, so I'm not gonna go into all the ins and outs of it, but essentially the story of this at the, end of the trial last week, David Sherborne, who was the kind of inevitable barrister as he is in all of these celebrity cases for the, the, claimants was reduced to, a closing speech in which he said that he needed, although he couldn't offer a lot of specific evidence for instances of, unlawful activities being undertaken on behalf of Associated,

he asked the judge to extrapolate from what evidence he had been able to find. his on. That's, not allowed, is it? this has been the ongoing argument in fact between, Mr. Justice Nicklin and David Sherborne throughout the trial. and I do mean argument though, have been, days I was in court, there was some extremely, TSE words exchanged between the judge, and, the barristers for Prince Harry and his pals.

what, Sherborn said in his, in, his final speech, and this lovely image, but I'm not sure it's a winner. It's a bit like playing pin the tail on the donkey with us being partially blindfolded. That is happened. the Tel donkey traditionally would well fully blindfold. Yeah. Yeah. Partially, it just becomes a very easy game a look if you're Very, it's not the it's backend with us being partially blindfolded and there being very little donkey left for us to pin the tail on.

which Does not sound like the best party game ever does it. But what he was saying in that case was that, that they've been unable to, to find a lot of specific evidence for instances of unlawful, un unlawful information gathering.

Which he pins, if you like, on the fact that, there is very little paperwork remaining from the period in question, which does initially look very, suspicious until you remember that the period in question is going right back to the 1990s and, into the early noughties. And the point that Associated lawyers made, when they were on the stand was that, you don't retain documents for all that long.

Can I ask you a question, which is, were there perhaps any amazing emails or text messages between Prince Harry and members of the press reveal during this trial? I see what you are doing. Objection. She's leading the witness. She absolutely is. Harry's evidence right at the outset of this case, when, everyone was taking a lot of, a, lot of notice of who was turning up at the high court, was that, he said it was heartening.

He genuinely was on the verge of tears in the witness box on the 21st of January. He said that the mail on Sunday had a campaign and obsession of having every aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me, and probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers.

It was suggested to him at that point, actually back in the day, he was quite keen on talking to, journalists himself and members of his social circle, his kind of friends who he, he was ping about with back in the, early noughties. were, leaky that they, were giving stuff to the press. He, said, absolutely not insist they weren't leaky. He said he would immediately cut off anyone he even suspected of talking to the press.

"For the avoidance of doubt," he said, "I'm not friends with any of these journalists and never have been". Now in a sort of mic drop moment in the last week of the trial. Yeah. A tranche of Facebook messages we're back to Facebook and social media again were revealed between Harry and Charlotte Griffiths, who was, the diary editor on the Mail on Sunday, kind of high society diary that she used to run. they did.

Appear to show quite a lot of evidence of him being friends with her, certainly for a period the period in question in December, 2011 to January, 2012. Now we have to specify, 'cause Harry is now recreate, he's the sinner that repented. he's entirely a campaigner against the press. he's very right on now him and Meghan supporting all sorts of progressive causes. This is not that Harry, this is Harry back in the days of, partying.

This is not long before those infamous pictures of in Las Vegas, questionable, fancy naked billiards, fancy dresses is a bit before that. This is bu out Vegas. har. this is Slightly pre bu Mount Vegas, Harry. This is when he is training to apply Apache helicopters, between two stores of service in Afghanistan for the Army. But specifically it's exactly the period of the frost bitten penis, ah, frost nipped.

I think you'll find technically Frost nipped penis, which he revealed a, a, that sounds wrong. That sounds really, wrong. he revealed the existence of his frost nipt penis in, his autobiography spare a couple of years ago. So we cannot say we are invading his This is a privacy. invasion. he did himself with the peon detail that he treated it with Elizabeth Arden cream, which was the same, smelled like his mum, smelled like his mother. Why Have you written this down?

Is Yeah. Is a point to this line of of questioning? There is. I am merely, your honor, setting the context for which the following exchange of emails should be, considered. I have for you a script. Great. Oh, would you oblige by being Charlotte Griffiths? In this scenario. Should I go like 10% posh. I've highlighted. Go. I would p posh it up? I would absolutely posh it up. What she said was that, she got the bulk of her stories from her high society friends. Matt, this is very unusual.

We don't normally have dramatic readings. I'm, here for the Amra. Yeah, This is great. You've got a partner. Hang on. Oh. whoa. Wow. Sherlock Griff's evidence in her witness statement on the 6th of March was that she had high society contacts from school days, and she continued to socialize in high society and with the, with the aristocracy, throughout her, journalistic career. I am gonna take the part of Prince Harry in this, if that's all right.

Matt, appropriately can you take the role of Facebook and, and give us the concept. So we're reading from the bottom here. This is the full exchange of messages. I, really, emphasize it. There isn't a role for you. You just have to sit one out. I'm sorry. You? be, if you wanna be Mr. Justice Nicklin. You can simply sit there and huff and puff a bit at this if you like. Oh, okay. okay. But I just do have to emphasize, this is not something we've made up.

This has not been written by the private eye jokes team. Like the WhatsApp messages from the Prime Minister. This, these are genuine. I asked for these from, from, the lawyers last week, right back to my school play where I didn't get a good job role in that either. I was the narrator every year in the nativity. Still, Scott, that's switch. It's noble profession. No, narrat. No. You don't get, no, it's just like you can read, but you're at acting.

it prefigures a journalism career, doesn't it No, Yeah. Source, yeah. Okay. Okay. Right far away. I'm so excited. And action. December 4th, 2011. 8:36 PM. it's h in case you're confused by name and picture. kiss. December 5th, 2011. Hello, Mr. Ms. Shave was indeed confused by both effing. Awesome pick. Do you get home okay slash did you actually find your car and did you beat Arthur down the motorway? More importantly, what a fun weekend of naughtiness.

Can't we all get up to No good in the countryside every weekend? Jam it smooches CG string kiss December 5th, 2011, 4:15 PM Ha It was you and the blue girl that pulled over to let me and Arthur Pass know I did beat him, but by accident, I think drove most of the way. my eyes closed, I found myself eating pizza with Skip of all people. Two exclamation marks was without doubt the best of those weekends I've been to what a crowd never lost. So, much in 24 hours, Mr. Mischief.

How do I get that title? I was surely no worse than anyone else. Ooh. Apparently a Cinderella shoe was found outside that door, so it can relax. Please stop panicking. Three exclamations. You've got a bit. Terry Thomas at the end of August, terrible. hour. December 6th, 2011. 12:17 Yeah, that was me. My windows were so steamed up and I'm afraid my little golf GTI was just no match for your bloody Audi. I had a children of moment. This is inexplicable.

Presumably by this she means she looked out the window and saw Pam Ferriss being brutally in a refugee camp in Beck I dunno, I can't. I think that's a bit where, yeah, where the car and that one continuous shot where they're being shot at rather than, or she looked out the window and realized there were no babies in the world anymore. Who can say, how did you not end up eating Chinese? You must be mad. I dominated a duck pancake or two or five.

Wow. I respect that Mr. Mischief is definitely a compliment. By the way, you weren't worse than anyone else. We were all competitively out, naughty each other, which is why we all had so much fun. Few about the shoe. I was very worried you'd have to spend a fortune picking up the phone and ordering a new pair of freebies from Amanda Yes. ps. Speaking of which did you manage to get your new phone number organized? Good that she's doing the journalism.

I respect that she slipped that in December 6th, 2011, 2:29 PM Wish it had been Chinese, but Skip wouldn't allow it sadly emoji. No new phone number yet, but sticking with redacted phone number, but yet handed over for now serious withdrawal symptoms. Still had to make polite conversation with strange people at a dinner last night begging them for money for charity. Really fun. Not reunion with Josh. Sounds fun. Hope work wasn't too dull. Wherever you are. Just to specify at this point.

He said he was completely unaware that Charlotte Griffith was a journalist when he first met her and wanted nothing more to do with her when he found out at that point. December 7th, 2011, 6:57 PM we have been missing out on some serious bans on the group email front. I'm gonna go in big with an amazing Marco Snapped to make up for lost time. Few this week. Hibernating in the frozen waste under Parson's Green is, it would be Parsons Green, wouldn't it?

New Ham was heading towards this conversation. Almost thirsty Thursday though. Sounds good. Josh is such a ledge. Oh my God. This is like just a, you get his flashback. Purest infernos in 2011. calming any of anything to make anything better, but January's oh, so far away. I think a team reunite might be an origin before the weeks' out, non December 14th, 2011. 7:34 PM. Okay, I'm very unimpressed. Your Skippy surfing seems to have inadvertently trumped all of the scandal on our weekend.

Damn, you bloody maverick. And now you are all heading to BVI. British Virgin Islands. Double trumped. Double hump. Thirsty Thursday. Plans kiss December 15th, 2011. 3:00 PM I win right me. New heading to the B thes. eyes Got too much shit to do. Got dinner with some friends. Gonna be hung over again for the third day running. You missed a good party Last night, Skippy was on great form Ma. January 22nd, 2012. 11:00 PM hbo, bomb. we missed you so much at Arthur's last week.

Skip cracked out some serious moves, but I did pack for my three week skiing holiday after a night with him at the box and forgot to pack skis, boots, jumpers basically. I've been very cold since. God damn drunken packing. Any who after some chirping in Valdi and Maribel. Yeah. Casual whatever. No. What Eves, sorry. important. Yeah. I've arrived in clusters and been watching some center barley snow polo.

Does that mean you are here and I can dominate you off the black runs slash steal one of your ski boots and feel tres non guilty. Is there much more of that? You got one more message? and it's a goodie January 22nd, 2012, 11:00 PM Haha. Charlie. I wish I was there. Sugar but unfortunately stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff. Sad face emoji. Otherwise I would've been there playing and then drinking you under the table of three exclamation marks.

The whole thing raised a load of money, so I'm pretty happy. Just wish I could have been there, especially now that you are there. Do you ever work? Double exclamation mark, question mark. Bummed beyond belief to have missed authors as well. I've been seriously busy since I last saw you, but plan on getting back in the mix for Feb. You best be around hope you're really well Griff, miss arm movie, snuggles. I'm off comms all week in case you think I'm being rude, but keep posted.

kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. Wow. And we have it. Little insight A tour de force. So what you're saying, Adam, is he, did hang out with journalists and he was communicating and having movie snuggles with them. This would certainly appear to suggest that at that point in his life, he had a, we could go so far as, say, quite intimate relationship with certain journalists?

I think who among us has not had movie snuggles for the journalist, so that he was without sin cast the first another, And so now the case has ended. the. The. what's the upshot? Mrs. Justin Nichol has retired to, consider his verdict. he said it's gonna take him some time Betty wishes he could We're expecting it at some point in the summer. In the end of it, I come back to the point which, we made on this podcast the outset of the trial in January, when Ian said, can't they both lose?

and after that, that dramatic rendition, I really would quite like them to, essentially I would be very surprised if the case goes in, Harry and the others direction. And there is, beyond all this, there is a really, serious issue in this, which is Baroness Lawrence, which a part of this case. , the evidence on which her part of the case was based largely came from Jonathan Reese and Gavin Burrows to very discredited, private detectives.

There were, there are rumors, certainly within the mail camp that she was not keen to, as she was trying right up to the last minute to drop out of this this litigation. She was the, imp premature on this, the, bit that made it serious, if you like. this, was the, just as with the original phone hacking scandal, which Les we forget, did start off with royals.

It was the hacking of Harry and Williams, Royal household at that point, and, their, and their kind of communication secretaries and, and senior staff that kicked the whole thing off with the news of the world in 2006. No one got really, excited about that scandal in 20 until 2011 when it emerged that news of the world journalists were also hacking the of Millie Dowler, the Missing School, G, who later turned out to been murdered. The hacking and illegal activities.

and taking to target, Doreen Lawrence would be of a similar kind of, gravity, I think. if that verdict goes against Doreen Lawrence. And it's discovered that the male were not doing that. Not only is it completely destroyed a relationship which was extremely strong between the daily Mail, and the Lawrence family, who, the male famously championed them right the way through in a way that surprised quite a lot of people.

that, that, front page that said, murderers, it names the, five suspects, two of whom have since been found guilty and sent to prison for Stephen Lawrence's murder. Yeah. I've said before that Paul Daker literally had that front page in his office, To him, that was the c crowning pinnacle of his editorship. He stood up for a young black guy who got murdered by, as he saw it, thugs and and like to, to him. So I think this case was extremely personal.

the result of that one, I think is the really interesting one to watch. 'cause that's outside of the sort of realm of celebrity tittle tattle, however, upsetting these people may have found intrusions in their privacy. So there is quite a lot at stake within this, and it will be very interesting to see, that judgment when it finally comes through. Yeah. Okay, we'll wait and see. And of course it's gonna be in private eye when it happens. That's it for this episode of page 94.

We'll be back in a fortnight with another one. Until then, thank you to Helen, Adam, and Matt. Thank you to you for listening. If you would like to get more jokes, stories, journalism, cartoons, all of that private eye is available now. If you would like to subscribe, you can Do so@privatehyen.co.uk. that's it for now. Until next time, the only remaining, thanks, go to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing. Bye for now.