Welcome to the Nonprofits the show where we discuss current events from an atheist, SECU humanist perspective.
In our first story, we look at the.
House wise and now what's of some policy changes Mark Zuckerberg is implementing at Meta? Chris Mallard, what is zuck up to?
Mark Zuckerberg has announced he's going to stop third part party fact checkers from checking facts at Meta and move to community notes because quote experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives end quote in an attempt to return to the commitment of free expression. That's great, because what the world really needed was more misinformation and less accountability. I mean, who needs fact checkers when you have Mark Zuckerberg and other facebooker's gut feelings about what's
true and what's not. It's not like he's ever been wrong before Cameron Analytica in case you were there for that. But seriously, folks, who needs to verify information when we can just let the community decide what's true and what's not. It's not like that's ever led to the spread of conspiracy theories or the erosion of trust and institutions. And hey, if a few people get hurt or misled along the way. Well,
that's just the price of progress. And what could possibly go wrong with letting a bunch of random people on the internet decide what's true and what's not. I mean, let's be real. Fact checkers were just so restrictive. I mean, who wants to be limited by things like facts and evidence when you can just make stuff up and see what sticks. It's like Mark Zuckerberg said, or is saying, you know what, We've been too careful for too long. It's time to let our hair down and just see
what happens. And the best part, it's obviously just a coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg is making this announcement right after Trump's team gave him a heads up that they were going to do to be cracking down on social media companies for saying things the administration doesn't like. So to all the fact checkers out there, don't worry. You'll be just fine. I'm sure you'll find plenty of other work, maybe as a journalist or something. Journalists they still have
those just kidding, I've heard those of disappearing too. Yeah, But in all seriousness, this is a dark day for truth and accountability. And to Mark Zuckerberg, I say, congratulations, you've managed to make a bad situation even worse. That takes skill, dedication. Maybe you can add it to your resume expert. It's spreading misinformation and undermining trust and institutions. Yeah,
that's a real selling point. This story is from Slate magazine by Natishpawa on January eighth, twenty twenty five.
Well, if you're going to do something, be the best at it. That's right, Isn't that the Isn't that the goal there? So, Chris, we are hearing cries of doom and gloom from the left, and we're hearing more of the nothing to see here from the right. How much do you think that these changes are going to change the face of social media?
Well, you know, really, to be honest, how much did the the fact checkers really do before? I mean, they were there and they did to some degree, But I don't know. I don't think it's going to help. I don't think in the beginning it's going to change a lot. But it sounds like it could be front for because, like you mentioned, or is mentioned in the reading that
Donald Trump. This is right after Donald Trump threatens to start cracking down on you know, and there seems to be a lot of misinformation that comes specifically from that area of the political sphere, and so by taking out the misinformation checkpoints in Meta, it actually kind of gives certain individuals a free ride, if you will, to spread whatever lies and nonsense they want.
So it's almost like an open invitation for mayhem and prosolutely Yeah, yes, well let's.
Jump over to ELI here. ELI.
Restricting language on the surface seems to go against democratic philosophy of free speech. However, on the other hand, protecting the vulnerable is also a philosophy that's worthy of our efforts.
So will this.
Policy change upset the balance at all between those somewhat conflicting goals. Is it going to tip the scales towards one way or the other?
I mean, I do have mixed realized I think it is definitely going to like we're going to see a lot more hate speech, a lot of that. Like even it says that I think it was Mark Zuckerberg that was quoted as saying for the article, some bad stuff is going to be missed by the sensors, like some stuff is going to get through. So some people are going to be more exposed and vulnerable to the hate speech and then degrading language and things that they shouldn't
have to deal with. And I think that's definitely something that we need to help protect those vulable people who are vulnerable to that against. At the same time, I don't like censorship, Like it's really really easy to trigger the Facebook sensors right now and get like a thirty
day you know, can't partici group sort of thing. And so what I think the other thing that I'm thinking as I'm sort of sitting here listening to it, is that the people who are getting fact checked or like getting something removed because like, hey, this is inaccurate, they
don't think they're being fact checked. They think they're being censored because, you know, it mentioned in the article, you know conservatives, it's it was worried about some of the fact checkers, you know, removing content based on like political bias whatever, because conservatives are being fact checked more than you know, liberals or or you know, Republicans more than Democrats.
But and that just goes to show it's like they don't see it as like, oh, what I'm saying is not correct, and here's the information they're giving me to show me why they're seeing it as like, oh, they're just silencing me because you know, I'm not a you know, I'm not a lib I'm not you know whatever, and they just think that they're being censored. So, you know, the fact checkers. I don't think we're doing what they were intended to do, at least not to the degree in the first What.
Are you saying it just wasn't it wasn't syncing in? Is that like if they said, you know, this is incorrect, it was a challenge to their ideology or a challenge to their position, right, is that?
Yeah? I mean yeah, I think I mean probably for a lot not everybody, of course, but it's not there's no like monoliths really, but I think for a lot of people. Yeah, which is more like, oh, like the truth is being hidden or like I'm being censored because I'm not agreeing with the status quo kind of thing.
Yeah.
Well, I suppose if you're getting there, if safeguards are put in place and you get called out more often than anyone else, blame the system, right, it's it's don't look in. We'd never look at your reflection in the mirror, you know. Figure out how there must be some kind of external problem here. I guess that's kind of that's
pretty a natural human response too. I mean, humans are naturally inclined to take credit for themselves but put blame on others, and so that's kind of kind of what's happening here.
Maybe.
Huh yeah, I guess rarely do we see ourselves as the villain, always the hero.
Right yeah, exactly, We're all the hero of our own stories. Right well, Chris, since we're back on you right now. The press makes this sound like it's a huge shift in direction for meta, But is it?
Is this a major change?
You were talking a little bit before about did the fact checkers really do anything? Is this just fluff and lip service? Or is this a substantive change here?
You know again, I really don't think it's that much of a change yet. I believe it will develop into more of a change as certain things unfold over the next few years. However, at the moment, I really don't think it is when you stop and look at what well, like I guess, I guess for people like Eli was saying, who get into two forums and comments and they really run into the sensors a lot I myself don't tend to run into them. I just post my crazy atheist
hate speech. They don't ever bother me. I don't know why, but yeah, but what I have noticed is in influx a huge increase in these fake Mark Zuckerbergberg posts. Other people posting images of Mark Zuckerbergberg, you know, like kissing Donald Trump or somebody else, and talking about how they're now coming out of the closet and this is they're putting this, as you know, and they're just filling Facebook with these misinformation stories and images right about Mark Zuckerberg.
I just feel as the Schodenfreud. I mean, I hope he gets to enjoy some of it myself.
True, well, I think he'll enjoy it all the way to the bank. I think. I think that's either way.
There's really, you know, there's a single concern I think on his mind. It's not necessarily the flourishing of humanity or well, I don't know. I suppose I shouldn't judge Mark Zuckerberg, but based off of things I see, that's the way certainly.
The way it seems to me.
Is that there's more of a focus on profitability and on business success and not so much on uh, you know, development and promoting goodwill and healthy interactions with people and so on.
Unless I'm mistaken, the definition of fascism is the marriage between politics and business, I mean essentially, and that would be where we would be going with some of the notions anyway. Yeah, one of the things though, in my opinion about that fact checkers on, there's some things that platform algorithm has been getting wrong. Have you has anybody else noticed this? Sure they claim to have fact checkers, and yet running up to the election, I'm a left
wing pardon the expression, liberal nutbag. Everything I do on my Facebook is liberal craziness, atheist blah blah blah. And yet when you scroll down my Facebook, especially during before or during the campaign and whatnot, when you scroll down my Facebook, you see these ones that say follow you know, theirs, suggestions their friends you see, and then there's they're trying to shove on you, and they are all these right wing misinformation. It was it was almost made my Facebook
unusable completely. And where were there checkers there? Yeah, we're going to get rid of the fact checkers, right, Well, wait a second, you.
Know, oh darn, now, how will we filter out the misinformation.
Yes, yes, interesting, the call is coming from the house, from the house, get out.
Of the house, exactly right. All right, good one, that's a good one. I like that.
On that note, let's let's hop back over to Eli here for a second.
Eli.
So we've seen people just leaving Facebook and other meta platforms in droves, you know, due to these policy changes. Do you think that that will uh people leaving those platforms? Do you think that's going to help us to accomplish those goals, you know, get away from the things that they're that they're leaving.
Sure, I mean, I.
Think they're there are probably there are plenty of good reasons to leave Facebook or leave you know, any of the meta platforms. But I think as far as like if if it's in response to to this move, I think, like, yes, the absence of fact checks and like and like the absence of the fact that we're not removing inaccurate information is something to be spoken of. But I kind of
compared it to like book learning, right. I think if we were to have some like apocalyptic event and like society collapses that we don't have like, you know, technological access to information anymore. We ran a point at like we come to a point where people start talking about, like should we burn the Bibles, Like let's say the rapture happens and there's no more like religion religious people, like should we burn the Bibles? I still don't think I would want to because I just want to keep
that for like the historical significance of that information. I don't necessarily believe in removing in accurate information. I just believe in like learning how to learn what's good information, what's a good source, what's not a good source, and
making sure people are like better. I think given that we have like the you know, the AI systems that we use to gather information that I'm guilty of it to use it all the time, we have these fact checkers, people aren't really like worried about fact checking themselves anymore. They don't really look for like to make sure what they're reading is true. They see it and they're like, oh, that must be that way, and then they just kind
of move on. So I think to leave the platform because there's the for for this reason, I think it just leaves an echo chamber of like unreason, like on Facebook, where if all the reasonable people are gone because you know, everybody who disagrees with them isn't being censored anymore. That just leaves all the people that have the ideas we consider kind of shitty.
And you know, just.
Right, So yeah, and it just and and it's sort of and it's going to grow. The sentiment is going to grow and grow more powerful because there's only people there that agree with them.
Now there's no interesting interesting Okay, well here's a question for both of you. And and so I'm gonna get a little deep here. So in my opinion, this advent of AI and other megavolume mass processing of personal data. And that's really all the AI is. It's just mass processing of data. It's a major milestone in our ability to manipulate others. Right if you know, if you know the right buttons to push, you can get somebody to do anything you want. Just in my mind popped in
there was a Darren Brown. I don't know if you've ever heard of Darren Brown. He's an illusionist and a mentalist, and he did a show once called The Push where the theme of the show was that he was going to try to convince a human being, to just a regular random person off the street. He was going to
try to convince them to murder another person. And so over the course of a day or two, they they he staged these different interactions with these people, and the idea was that they would each each step kind of psychologically nudged the person in a different direction, and so eventually things would build up to a climax and then we would we would see whether or not at work.
Now I'm not gonna I won't spoil the ending for you, but it really, I think open my eyes as to just how much people can be manipulated by somebody who knows the right things to say. And so when we're looking at this mass processing of our of our personal data, we that's what we see.
I mean, that's what advertising is, right.
It's basically trying to manipulate you by showing you things that you like or showing you things that you don't like, et cetera. So that's kind of what we're what we're seeing here. And really the only way that we can stop this is regulation, right, It's it's has to be regulation of the types of data that can be gathered and what can you what can you do with this?
So let's start with Chris on this what are your thoughts on that, and what, if anything, do recent shifts in the political climate signal about the future of our data safety and sie security. You know, let's take a let's take a leap forward five years into the future.
Are things going to be different?
Are we at risk of blowing all chance we have of having any kind of meaningful security?
You know, yes, but not because of the political nature or because of the political any of that kind of thing. I think that whenever you combine the computing power or the raw computing power that we have with Google just announced a few days ago that they've developed some kind of new CPU that can do more in a flash of an instant than all the other supercomputers can do
in a thousand years or some business like that. A computer like they just announced can rip through any kind of security or I mean, if we're talking about personal security, you know, to that question now, as far as people's data and their own personal information and being manipulated by AI, man, I use AI too, you know, and I actually use I recently made a commercial where I used AI to help me change my voice to the voice of Ian McKellan so I could read a thing. Yeah, and then
I made a commercial that's funny. It's hilarious. But that's what AI has got so much power, you can do so much with it. There needs to be regulation, There needs to be some kind of control. I'm just I don't feel qualified to be the kind of person to make those kinds of guidelines. There needs to be you know, it's like you need to go to educated people who
are educated in that field. You don't hire a lawyer to be the head of the Department of agriculture agriculture, for example, Go find somebody who's got an education in years of experience being in agriculture and so things like that. Although I am for regulation, I also see the benefit of how these things could take us to the next
level as a society. But then you've also we've got this purity of that knowledge and that power, and like you're mentioning with the political environment, the political atmosphere, you take and it's like pouring any kind of the wrong color into your pure white paint and start it around and everything starts getting money, and the more of that you taint it with, the worst it becomes. So Yeah, in a few years, I think it really could without any kount of checks become a horrible, a horrible tool
for control of people. We just have to, like Eli said earlier, people just have to be educated in how to defend themselves, right, you know, use their reason to to not fall for this stuff. You can't remove all the misinformation. You can't. You just can't, no matter how much you want to. But by educating people how to avoid it, you can extemporaneously take care of that all right, right, right, and work out those situations.
That's that's funny, cool cool, Eli. Let's build on what Chris was saying there. Do you think we're coming up to some kind of point of no return? You know?
Is is that is there? Do we have a chance to turn things around at this point?
Or is there some kind of inevitent conclusion that we're that we're heading towards?
Is there? Is there a waterfall ahead of us?
I think yeah, I think it is. I think there's a waterfall ahead of us. And it's basically at the point where like, yeah, if somebody would pick up a paddle and start paddling the other way, or like if enough people would do that, yeah, you could probably get out. But I don't think enough people are going to do that. I saw something and I'm not sure how I.
Feel about like whether this is the case about how AI is being used, but basically saw this thing that suggested that the purpose of AI is to build, you know, such a dependence on it that people cannot tell what is truth.
And what is reality without AI and then basically just flood the Internet with AI. And so then that leads to this speculation that then you can, of course like just decide whatever you want to be is the truth. And then we have like a North Korea type situation going on here, and I think that the possibility that is definitely scary and something that we want to watch out for. I don't know if I think that that
is the path that AI is going to take. I think I've seen a lot of really really cool things that we're doing with AI as well that are like helping people and society. So I definitely want to see, like I really enjoy kind of playing with it and seeing like what I can, like, you know, what types of things I can you know, learn from it or make it do. But it's yeah, I would there's definitely and we've always known there's definitely ways that it can
be used to manipulate and to take advantage. So it's you would hate to see it. It's important to find ways to prevent that.
Yeah, and you know it's so tempting to use too, because it's so easy. I mean, human beings are lazy. I mean, I'm a math teacher. Nobody knows that human beings are lazy more than a math teacher. And so people don't want to think about things. People don't want to sit down and figure things out. And so we're talking about our only defense now is our own sense of desire for truth and our own sense of willingness to put in the work to make sure that what
we believe is true. But human beings don't, naturally, I mean, we're naturally against that. We want to take the easy way out. If we can have the computer do the thinking for us, then we'll just do whatever the computer says.
Chris, did you have any thoughts on that?
Well, I was gonna go on Eli's analogy there about trying to row away from the waterfall if you can get enough people to do that. But at the same time, you've got people over on the shore selling barrels going right over the waterfall, and there's people like me going, let's get in the waterfall. Come on, everybody, you know, because I'm embracing the AI world, but I also recognize that there are dangers.
Right, you know, But as you can paddle, it depends where on the river you are. If you're going down the waterfall, you can paddle all the fuck you want, and you are not going back. You know, you're not turning things around at that point. You are over the edge, right.
But some people that like a carnival ride, they're ready to go. Let's go. Come on, let's go over the water a lot. I've been over the waterfall. Let's do it again. Come on, everybody, let's go.
It depends on how much surface area you have on your oars and how quickly.
All right, this is quickly devolving into a physics exercise, right, Okay, what's been a great discussion.
Guys.
We're almost out of time here, but I want to throw one last thing out there, and can we blame Mark Zuckerberg for this? I mean, is he the responsible person here?
Is maybe? Is he just being a prudent business person?
I mean he he does stand to lose a lot of money if he goes, If he if he butts up against this incoming regime, although on the other hand, he might lose a lot of money from people vacating Facebook and other platforms. Let's start with Elio, just give a just give a quick answer. Do you think who's responsible for keeping track of this and and for protecting the public.
I think for protecting the public, Like that's you think that's what the government is originally intended to do, is not to control so much, but to just protect and care for and steward over. I think that.
Yeah.
I think it's just business for him. He knows that things are going to get a harder for him if he doesn't comply, and I think he would lose more by not complying than he will by complying.
And I think I'm sure he's crunching the numbers. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Chris, do you have any thoughts on that to wrap things up for us?
Well, you know, I I kind of feel the same way. It's probably just political again, he's got the pressure coming from that side that they're fixing to really engage.
Uh.
The political force that's coming into power is fixing the really butt heads with his moderators and his fact checkers.
And we can't have that, right, Okay, well so maybe politic So so what you're saying is that for some getting rid of the fact checkers, you know, changing changing his policies is a feature, not a bug necessarily.
Oh absolutely absolutely all.
Right, all right, well, if you want to see more of the featured nonprofits.
Way worst segue ever, by the way, if you