Rust Shooting, Facebook Papers and Other Grim Things

a trash. Yeah. So you fish by tossing needles like like shooting them kind of like like like just throwing pile handfuls of them, just handfuls of needles into a creek until I get a fish. Okay, it's like a trap kind of like you put it down and then hope they swim into the needle. Yeah, they swim into the needles. Like how we used to fish, Yeah, like the old times. Yes, you say, like the ancient ancients. Yeah, the old days they used to fish with needles. That's

how it works. Yeah, basic anthropology here. Well, it's so nice that before we've even started recording, you're done with your work for the week. That's so nice for you. Yeah, no, I'm done. All right, Well, you guys have a good recording. Wait oh wait, wait, wait oh? How was your weekend? Can I fish too? It was? How was my weekend? What did I do? I don't even know? You can do a party at my house? I did go to a party of your house? Right? How much time is

meaningless to? Yeah? Yeah? How's your weekend? Did you go to a party at your house? I did? I threw a party at my house. It's tiring. It's fun. It was tiring parties, am I right? Anyway, Sophie, you how was your weekend? This is fun? This is what people tune in for. Right. I got my flu shot and then I got a fever, and mom hurt, But I got my flu shot. She gives me fever. Thanks, fever, fever, when you touched me fever, when you hold me tight ve. My goal is to pety sing songs on most episodes.

Remember when this was a news podcast barely. I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about the evolution of this show a lot. There's a lot the devolution, that's the right term, because now there's a lot of crossover between what we're doing in all the various other projects. But it's such a nice podcast. Too many pod podcast But like, I like this group of people, you know, and so it's fun. I like talking about the news with you guys. But it is interesting to be like,

what are we gonna talk about this week? How do we space ou out other other shows? Who has the time when we all show up and we're like, hey, it's friends that we get to talk to you about chaos? Um, But it was I was messaging with Robert at some point. I don't know. Time is funny like that, um, and recalling that the original mandate for the show was to unpack the election and to travel around and talk to people, and now I mostly talk to you from I am hopeful that we can start to branch out and do

some projects here like that. Maybe one day you guys want to talk quickly about the giant tungsten cube. Um, you go more than anything. So I got no plans. In the crypto world, oh, a minor tungsten shortage, at least within one or two companies, has been caused because, for reasons of basically just a meme, crypto bros have been buying tungsten cubes. Tungsten is an extremely dense metal you make like army piercing amm o out of it.

For one thing, because like a little bit of tungsten, like a four inch tungsten tungsten cube, it's like forty pounds.

It's just like a weird dense metal. Some people have been buying cubes just because they think it's neat, and it became kind of a crypto meme, and so this company, Midwest Tungsten, decided to capitalize on it by making the biggest tungsten cube they possibly could, which was like, I want, I'm trying to look at the it's it's uh fourteen inches UM around and it weighs almost two thousand pounds UM,

and they wanted there. They're selling it, but because it's would be a nightmare to actually move anywhere, they're not really selling it. They're selling it as an n f T UM starting at two grand. It will probably go for much for millions UM. But you don't actually own the cube. But if you buy the cube as an n F t you can come see it once a year at their off time share. Yeah. Well, no, only one person gets to see it once a year, and if you later sell it, if that person is already

visited and touched the cube earlier that year. You can't do it for a whole other year. Don't understand. I'm going to be honest, and I'm sure a lot of people will lose respect for me. I don't understand it. It don't understand. I don't I don't understand bitcoin mining. I don't understand. Okay, So here's what you need to understand.

If you man in illegal drugs, or if you made it and you just want to avoid taxes on it, if you've committed a bunch of crimes and you need a way to like kind of wash and scrub your laundry your money the way you would like your laundry, you can use crypto to do that. And that's that's why. That's what all of these like Giant Crypto Transaction are

a somebody trying to launder money. Um, it's it's it's all a big fucking sketchy grift propped up by a handful of true believers and a bunch of more people who recognize that pretending to be true believers is a great way to keep a pretty good money laundering scheme going. Um So that's all I need to understand. Yeah, it's not nothing else matters. Um. We did a two parter about it that will come out that everyone's going to find as frustrating as I found researching it. But it's

it's just dumb and it's it's stupid. Um uh yep on Bastards or shows on Bastards. I read a Yeah, it's it's just all dumb. But the fucking yeah, it's sucking cube. It's just like it's the fucking cube. Yeah, good, good for you guys. Like that's what you want to do. And that's what because like money is stupid and fake. It is it always is, like currency is fiat currency. That's why I like the fucking pressure metal. People are just like, Okay, well what's gold worth? Really? What's gold worth?

Like making a space suit? Then gold's worth nothing like exactly, so like so like whatever whatever there and this kind of like points to that. So in a way, I'm like, good for you guys, You're you're illustrating how stupid money is. Um. But maybe the cube isn't worth it. Yeah, maybe the cube isn't worth it. Maybe the fucking terrible ape drawings aren't worth it. Maybe the the the automatically generated lion pictures aren't worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

Maybe it's all very dumb, but at the same time, if people will pay for something, that's what it's worth, because that's how capitalism works, which is why Tim Pool owns a big house so and Hassan owns a big house too. It's it's whatever, it's how, it's the entire it's the system we live under. The two genders Hassan and the reality is that in ft are really really dumb, but also when you really think about it, not inherently

dumber than in the rest of currency. It's it's a sideshow. Yeah, David read David Graber's debt the first five thousand years, Um, I have to. Yeah, you'll like it's actually written, it's it's it will clear up an enormous amount of important questions you have about the way that currency works. And it's also very well written because David Graber was a genius. Um, I'm either getting less smart smart or I'm just so oversaturated that it's hard to sit down and read things.

But that's the recommendation, and I'll do it. You have to force yourself to rece myself to do everything. Robert, so do I. Sophie will tell you the only thing human condition. Yeah, the human condition. I thought, being an adult, it would be better than this, just the problem with the only difference. When I was a kid, there was somebody else making me do stuff, and so it was easier than it. Now I gotta go read a goddamn book because I used to have so much fucking ability

to focus on books. And yeah, now I have to read like three at a time in order to read one. Yeah, it's really hard. It's a d h D is what it probably is. Yeah, but my a d h D medicine doesn't seem to help. It just makes me ready to go garden instead. It makes me really ready to focus on anything other than the thing I have to do. Gardening is vastly better anyway. We've we've drifted from and I blame myself. Tokyo. We've drifted. We've Tokyo drifted away

from the the cube, the cube, the cube. We've we've cube stopped gleaning the cube, romancing the cube, romancing the square stone, romancing the cube. Once a year, Yeah, once a year. In a supervised visit, only one trending on Twitter at the fucking cube. Yeah, i'd better be I mean, actually one trending. Yeah, we'll talk. I guess we should talk about that. Now, go ahead about I know you you want to do this only in theory. We talked about it last week and again we're a culture show.

Now we only we talk about movies. Can we talk about succession later? Because I'm finally yes, we may? Um? Is he? Well, so, I guess my question is is Timpole trending because of his additional thread on squid Game or is it about his tweets about Dune yesterday. It's a good question. Let's both are silly. It's probably both. Yeah, Timpoles just a very funny little character. Um, and sometimes is he doing a character? Is he? Oh? Here? It is? Okay.

It's surprising that people who think a show about people being forced into equality stand in food lines where they are underfed and used as fodder for the elites does not represent communism in any way. If squid Game was about capitalism, then rich people would start off disadvantage and not equal to the other players advantaged. Whatever. The rich people aren't aren't playing in the squid Game, are there? Here's the thing. Here's the thing, And I'm not gonna

spoil anything. Um, I don't know who's hurt. Who's watched it all, not watched it all. You don't watch I have to catch up on Succession. That's fine. I can't watch squid Game before I can watch Dude. That's fine. I'm not gonna spoil anything. Um. The statement if Squid Game was about capitalism and rich people would start off advantage and not equal to the the other players. First of all, Tim finished the show to finish the fucking show. Watched

to the end of the fucking show. Tim. Second of all, they're all in debt. That's the plot to the show. They're all in massive debt. So there are that's the plot of the show. They're all they're all in massive debt, and they're and they have to play the squid Game. So so what's your point, Tim? But um, and this is not I just some players would have inherited advantages toward winning the money. First of all, Tim, they kind

of do. Second of all, there are games in the squid Game that is set up like a race, and there are some people in the front that start, and there's some people in the back and it's presented as being an equal game, even though you can literally look and it's not. Physically you can see that it's not equal because they're not all starting at the same time. It's just very silly. Um and he closes this threat out by saying, there are critiques of capitalism if you

try hard enough. And again, first of all, there's an episode I'm I'm trying Katie close your ears. The second episode. The second episode spoilers. The second episode they leave the squid games. They're like, oh wow, the squid games are dangerous. Well, we're all gonna die, so they leave, and then the second episode is them going back to the capitalist world. They're all in debt, they're all miserable, everyone around them

is going to die. The episode is called Hell, and they go back to the games for the rest of the show. Yeah you can, you can, you can put your yes, you can put your headphones back on. It's just so silly to pretend like, if you try hard enough, they're critiques. No, they are very specific critiques of it. You can misinterpret it all you want, but you can't claim that that. You have to try very hard to

get to that critique. Even Ben Shapiro today did a whole video reviewing squid Game, and he's like, it's about how communism is good, and like, I mean kind of like not but they specifically attack North Korea in it too. Yeah, no, yes, And and also like by critiquing like all the problems with capitalism, you're not inherently saying like communism is good, Like that's not how it works. Um. So Like even then he's it's like not a very good review, but

he at least says it's a good show. It's politics are bad. He gives it a seven out of ten for watchability and a one out of ten for politics. So like, at the bare minimum, you have to be able to recognize what the show is. Um. And it's just very silly. It doesn't matter. None of this matters. I don't know why I care so much. Um, it's just like dislike disingenuous grifters. It's kind of thing. I don't know if disingenuous or not, like part of it. Just like, do you think is this how you think?

I think is how you absorb media? He does? I think that. I think it's his tribalism. Of here's another thing that I can say us versus them, here's another way that I can like just argue against you. I I do think that this is um purposeful ignorance. I don't know, I won I guess so, like because even like with Done, he's like, I didn't like it was boring and slow, and I fell asleep a bunch and didn't even finish it and it's bad, and like, even that is so silly to me. First of all, it's

not a slow movie. I don't understand that critique. It's like it's pretty uh engaging the entire time. But it's the kind of thing where he can't come up with like, oh, it's like it's woke, so I'm gonna talk about it. So he has to fall back on like I didn't watch it was boring, um, which you totally could because it is woke, like from the sixties, like sixties woke ism.

But like they're very clear themes that he's talking about. Yeah, I mean, the overall theme of the of the books is that number one, colonialism inherently destroys everything, not just the colonized, but the colonizers. That heroes are a trap uh and inherently uh. Just the concept is inherently destructive and that given enough time, the oppressed will become the oppressors. Uh,

there's a lot going on in Dune. All of it is in fact very woke because Frank Herbert ate his body weight in psychedelic mushrooms while wandering the Oregon Dunes every month. Uh that's what That's what the other parts of the bookers are about, Like, um, big mushrooms fan is a huge mushrooms fan, spice um. And it's just yeah, it's very silly, like because you could watch that movie and go the s j w's got to Dune. We would be inaccurate because it's always been Dune. But like

it's just like if you can't. I've even seen people like oh it's boring, Like they cast they cast as black woman as his character's not and then like they reply back to their uh their threaded like I saw it as a really good is faithful and like beautiful stuff and she did a great job. Like yeah, you just want to get mad, like they the book where the first special Boy hero counts how many people he's murdered in multiples of Hitler and then kills himself and

his son becomes a giant worm. Like, it's just I haven't participated in much of this because I took my headphones off for a while and never quite caught up. I think this is a perfect time for some products and services in the other things that we've definitely figured out already together. Everything area are and we are not talking about movies or TV anymore, right or all about that time Alec Baldwin killed that lady. Yeah, this is we really should have led with this um segment, but

it's actually so it's awful. It's hard to lead from jokes straight into this story. But yeah, the headline is

that Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed their DP. Yeah, the the you know that meme where it's like the galaxy brains, the brains going bigger, Like the tiniest brain version of this is Alec Baldwin killed somebody, and then the medium one is actually the armor on set killed somebody, and then the biggest galaxy brain is actually Alec Baldwin helped to kill somebody because he was the producer on a movie that deliberately cut corners leading to this person's death.

In the series of yeah, there's there's a lot to go over here, there's the rights reaction, there's what's happening, what happened on set. There is what happened on set against the backdrop of the IoTs negotiations. Um, it's a lot and it's been hard. You know, I I Cody and I both know a lot of people in the entertainment industry. You guys do too, You've lived here, but this has just really hit everybody pretty hard. So as most people probably are aware or maybe aren't of the

little details. Um. This set was a somewhat low budget set, I guess comparatively speaking, but not really, but they mean still tons of money. Um, but they were rushing to get production done, especially in case IoTs did strike. Uh. They're halfway through this shoot. There had been multiple multiple instances of gun of safety concerns, three misfires I think

three missfires with this one gun in the week prior. Um. Uh even outside of that, they the crew had been promised accommodations near set, but instead, once they arrived, they were told that they would be housed fifty miles away. So they are driving back and forth fifty miles every day to set and schedule and safety concerns and the

morning of the accident. I don't know have the number in front of me, but the majority of the crew, camera crew walked off, walked off set UM as well as yes, the armorers, the people that the props masters had left UM. And so instead of meeting the demands of their crew or you know, being responsible, they brought in local non union props masters and an armorer. And I feel very bad for this young armor and I

don't feel very bad. I have to see the I I'm sure this is a horrifying moment for these people that were these non careers and she's young and you know, been brought in for this opportunity, and they're being rushed

as well. Like I, Ultimately, the responsibility does lie with production, and it lies with the a D. The a D who apparently had been fired from other sets for the same thing, like actually on another set of his and he has been known as the guy that comes in when the real a D leaves, when people leave because of it. He's willing to come in and do what it takes. And the a D, if you guys don't know, is the assistant director. And it's not about directing UM

the action on camera. It's basically running the set. Your a D is the person running the safety. Every a D I've worked with is militant about safety, and they run the whole cruise. So the buck does stop there. But even more than that, the buck stops at the producers, I e. Alec Baldwin, who hired this person and made that choice. And I'm I am so fucking furious, And yes, I feel terrible for him, because my god, you have to live with that for the rest of your life.

But also, yeah, you have to live with this for the rest of your life. Yeah, I mean it's it's there's so much that went horribly wrong that shouldn't have back in our cracked days. I interviewed somebody who was like one of the most well known armorers in uh in Hollywood. Like he's he's worked with Keanu Reeves, he's worked with like Tom Cruise, like he's one of he not not just like provides Union armors, but also provides weapons.

And when you have those people who are like the proper iotsy armors, it's been decades since a fatal incident with a firearm as a result of like a Union armor. Um God, I think like maybe a D sometimes the eighties is the last one I remember hearing about. And it's because they have all of these different redundancies. Like, for one thing, when you're doing a scene like this, Number one, the barrel of the of the of the functional firearm is never supposed to be pointed at a person.

Even in scenes when it looks like that's happening, you have like the you have it canted to some way, especially since like they're pointing at a camera right, which is a dangerous set. But number one, you make sure the barrel is not pointed directly at a person. That's an armorer's job. And number two, even if the barrel isn't supposed to be pointed directly at a person, you have a sheet of bulletproof plexiglass in between the camera

and the gun. Um there's a bunch of ships that's supposed Like for one thing, the way the transfer of the gun was done, the a D just picked it up and said cold weapon and handed it to Baldwin. Number one, the a D is never, ever, ever, fucking ever supposed to put a gun, a functional firearm in the hands of an actor. That is the job of the armor And when the armorers does it, he is supposed to open the cylinder or drop the magazine, whichever kind of weapon it is, and show you down the barrel.

The actor is supposed to look down the barrel and see, Okay, there is nothing in this gun. This is not a loaded firearm, in order to know that it's a cold weapon. Another like, the most fucked up thing about this is that it is now coming out so one. For one thing, there are some situations in which you might use a live round like a functional bullet as opposed to a blank UM, and a blank is pretty close to a live round, it just doesn't have like a full bullet

on the end. Um. There are some situations in which you would fire a live round from a gun UM on a movie set, but you would never keep the blanks and the live functional bullets in the same place. They were kept in the same place next to each other in the case of this. And what's come out now is that members of the crew were going out and shooting actual ammunition out of these guns off hours and that's how Yeah, that's the thing that's coming out.

And I don't know, it hasn't been hard confirmed, but there's been a couple of articles on it. Because the live bullet was in the gun. It went through a person in another person. That's what's so confused, because people say it's a live ammunition, or then it's a blank, but it's still live. Here's one thing I need to say, though, Go ahead, Robert, clarify one of the things it can't have. Because obviously a blank can kill. People have died from blanks.

It has happened before. A blank can absolutely kill someone, but not this bullet killed someone and hit another person, went through them. A blank will never do that. A blank is not going to pierce another person's body and go into a separate person. Yeah, this was an actual Here's the thing. The gosh, there's so much there's so many things. You do not need to have a firing gun on set at all at this point, we don't.

You don't. There are arguments about like, oh, you want that flash, you want this, all of that for the majority, And I've been watching all the seeing all these posts from cinema pographers. It's almost impossible to capture that on camera. They always try, and they almost always do it in post anyway. Um, the training, the fact that it actually spooks most actors out and it's much easier. They want

to talk about the noise and the reaction. You can bang something together and it gives that jolt to get an authentic performance. It's it's it doesn't make sense. Yeah, we are any capacity popular movies, the most popular movies in the they're all cd I, Marvel movies. So you do a fake gun. I hope that that's not the only lesson that's learned, though it seems like no, I know.

I'm just saying, like I see a lot of like just do the special effects special effects, Like, yeah, there are other aspects of like the safety of workers on these sets that need to like what I already said about how they left because of the safety conditions in

general set. One of my issues people being like we should just never have actual guns on set is that, well, that's kind of like saying we should destroy the career of all of the iatsy armors who never made a mistake and who in hundreds of movies were perfectly safe

because that's what they trained to do. Because a crew hired someone who never should have been in armor and wasn't with AATSI like, we should destroy this entire career field, um, because like which I like, I would say I wouldn't, But that's you would still have a need for these skilled people. Um, because there's other types of weapons that are used on set. We're talking specifically about guns that would still need to have a professional handling them, but

do not need to actively be fired. That's it. Like you're not c G eyeing a whole gun in you know what I mean? Like, but like the fact that there's firing happening shouldn't be happening, do you know what I mean. I mean, that's my perspective. It's been done. Like I guess my issue would be like this, The issue here isn't that, Uh, The issue here is that like things that should never have been done if they

followed the industry standard, were why somebody died here. Absolutely absolutely people are missing the bigger picture point of what this is about. Yeah, there's been a bunch of fucking Westerns filmed with old timey guns where you don't have as many of the options for like sim munitions and

stuff with these antique guns. And it's fine because they don't do the variety the huge variety of things that would horribly awry in this I don't know It's one of those things where like, um, I just I'm I'm comprehensively frustrated at every aspect of this because the thing that got people killed was that decades of best practices

were ignored. Like the people whose jobs are going to be eliminated by this switch, which if you, I don't know, fine, maybe that's the way it always was going to evolve.

But the people whose jobs are going to be eliminated are the people who spent years developing a series of best practices to make this not possible when they are involved, And I I do agree with both of you guys about this, and I agree completely that the energy in the outrage is being misspent and again we're missing the actual point of Again again again this is said against the backdrop of the Ions negotiations, which is all about this exact thing. I would want to look into, um

what removing firing web firing gun. I think it's certainly what actually mean, but I mean, I mean, I would like to look into what that would mean, um in terms of armorers and how that affects their jobs, because my gut would be that there is still other jobs, like they would still have a job, you know, it's just changing slightly. However, if I'm wrong, I might I mean, I could be wrong, you know. Um to me, the

that's but yeah, I agree with you guys. Um. Should we also talk about how the right is reacting to this? Oh God, how's the rights and guns? Guns don't kill people. Alec Baldwin with a gun kills people. Yeah, that's okay, gross, but also yeah, but you're missing again, missing the point. You're not understanding the way. It's not the fact that he held the gun. It's the choices he made. It's

the union busting that kills people. It's it's removing the trained professionals who actually know how to function with the And you could even like they're like the actual fucking if you wanted to take an actual right wing tact on this, that wasn't like completely batshit stupid and wrong. It could be like, well, this is partly what happens when you have a bunch of people who rail against

firearms but don't functionally understand them. Because if Alec Baldwin um had any understanding of guns, he would have known instinctively number one, you always check to make sure the gun is loaded. And number two, even if you know what's unloaded, you treat it like a loaded gun, which

means not pointing the barrel at a human being. That's the actual like if you're if you want to take the reasonable gun culture approach, it's that if he had been raised with firearms and understood them in any kind of functional capacity, this also wouldn't have happened because you don't point a gun at a person and pull the trigger,

because there's no such thing as an unloaded gun. Like that, that that's the actual reasonable thing you could take about it as as opposed to what they're what they're doing, well, yeah he's the Trump he's the Trump impression guy. So yeah, they're just trying to get their little dunks in. Yeah, every everything about this is just comprehensively heartbreaking, especially since this is like everything turning into a goddamn culture war issue.

While a woman who had two children is dead and they're not going to get to see their mom anymore, and she's not going to get to live the remainder of her what probably would have been a long life for for what amounts to a stupid cost cutting decision and a series of careless actions. Bio completely a whole lot of people, A tremendous number of people had to be careless for this to happen. Um, it's just it sucks, really bad. I just now started to feel bad, you know.

Um No, I didn't just now start to feel bad, but thinking about her camera crew who walked off that day, and she'd been really torn because she'd been advocating and fighting for them and really fighting for the safety conditions on set. But it was she was the deep p you know, cinematographer and this was her first DP, like so she needed to stick around and see this project through.

But she was in a bad And so then I just thought about all the people that left and how they must feel that the day they walk out this happened. And not that this is in any way their fault. They're doing the thing they need to do, you know, they were in fact trying to stop this from happen, stop this from happening. Yeah, it's everything is terrible. And also everything about this is terrible. Yeah, and I don't and again and it's so just like everything literally everything,

the government, climate change, COVID, all of it. You see the writing on the wall as to what the problems are, and you also see how the people in charge spin it or take the wrong point, purposefully obfuskating things so that they can continue on, continue on, and things don't change. Like will this change the negotiations? I don't know. Will this affect anything in the long run? I don't know. I mean in terms of the actual set conditions that need to be fixed. Um, does that make sense? Yeah,

I'm rambling. All right, let's take an ad break, right, breather everything, So don't don't yeah, baby, yeah, suck on that. I don't know why I told people to suck on that. Yeah, I mean, I mean they can. That was weird, right, I shouldn't cut it out? No, no, no, no, keep it in. Um, not necessary contact weird just like maybe not necessary, maybe unnecessary, a little aggressive, not necessarily necessary, not necessarily Now what you guys got what you want

to talk about? Um? I don't know. Uh. Facebook killing everyone? The website? Yeah, the website, the website that is committed to destroying the world. Um, that one. Is it because they want to or because they have to? Because it's because destroying the world increases engagement on their platform? Okay, so this does and that's the only way they make money. Now Yeah, so the world has to go because they're pivoting to kids. Yeah, they are interested. Kids are interested

in perhaps fire bombing the Facebook offices. Um, which where that to happen? I don't encourage it, but where that to happen? These days? I think it would be funny. Um where that to happen? Um? Yeah? I like, what how are we doing on that? Is that incitement to that cross the line? Where are we ignoring? You? What what just just said? Are we bleeping that entire thing? Or are we believing that? Did that go too far?

All I'm gonna say is if things were just Mark Zuckerberg would be taken into custody by an international group of shall we say, a vengeance squad. He would be tried in the Hague right where right where um you know Herman Garring was tried, uh, And then he would be hung where Herman Garring would have been hung if Garring hadn't snuck opiates into an an overdosed in order

to avoid um. Anyway, Mark Zuckerberg should be legally executed by the international community is what I think actually, along with Cheryl Sandberg and most of the most of the people who have been running Facebook for the last decade or yeah, sure, give him a bunch of opiates. Yeah, whatever, I don't care how it goes. One of the fun facts. So basically, a bunch of shipload of stuff came out recently about Facebook, perhaps too much, all at once. I

want to throw that out. All the kind of stuff came out on on Monday, all this stuff, I mean, and it's so much to sift through that it's almost like people aren't touching it, you know. Anyway, go ahead, Roberts. A lot of journalists are going, but it's going to

be like the general public. Yeah, there's so much. UM. One of the things that came out that's most immediately relevant is that in April of two thou and twenty UM, like the early days of the pandemic, Facebook internal Facebook employees started looking at the spread of coronavirus related misinformation UM and they found out that if they if they limited serial resharers because serial resharers, people who reshare a

lot of content, tended to be resharing mostly misinformation. So Facebook internal employees were like, hey, what if we uh limited people from boosting content UM that like our news feed predicts kind of falls into this category because that stuff tends to be misinformation, and their early tests showed that if they had done this, it would reduce the sharing of coronavirus misinformation by thirty eight percent, and Mark

Zuckerberg said no. Um. The exact quote was from Anna Stepanov, who's director UM, who's a director at Facebook, who was supposed to who was like speaking for Zuckerberg. She said, Mark doesn't think we could go abroad. We wouldn't launch if there was a material trade off with m s I, which is like there um uh engagement statistic, so that

that's like one of a billion different examples. But like they knew that, oh hey we could do this one thing that would reduce coronavirus misinformation by but it's going to reduce our profitability, so we will not take that step. Yeah, it's the it's like with Twitter, how they're like, yeah, we could get rid of some Nazis, but it also

get rid of some Republican politicians, so we can't. But at least Twitter put like caveats, you know, or Twitter also does like if you're going to retweet and you haven't clicked the link, if you're just knee jerk resharing, they say you haven't read the article yet, could you do that? That's another thing that what's the something whistleblower's name Dayana Facebook? She mentioned that specifically, like like that's

been talked about. Um, yeah, so much going through you pointed out, Um a few things that feel true to me and are true. So much of this, I mean, not just COVID, but just the disinformation in general is because Facebook, in their quote unquote attempt to seem like nonpartisan. They've actively been I mean Mark Zuckerberg has actively been taking meetings, you know, with different members of the Republican Party. He routinely courts them, and you know, it's all part

of this. It's all part of that positioning and their choices that they make. But yes, money is that the thing is the be all end all here and that's where they make their money because I know they're focusing on they're gonna you know, Facebook for kids, but the

youths don't go on Facebook. It's for the olds get grabbed with racist ship that they can reach is like there, like, yeah, we're retooling to with the quote that he said, retooling to make serving young adults the north star rather than optimizing for older people and like, so you're just gonna

like poison kids more instead of poison adults. Like that's the goal, right, Like we already know that, Like Instagram is destroying like young girls and uh like all all the things that like these apps are doing by their albums them and feeding. It's like if you're so, if you're optimizing for young people instead of older people, then you're just getting them earlier. You're fucking them up earlier instead of doing it to boomers. So maybe that's not good.

I mean, all of it's not good. Also, it's not even about um banning topics or removing the topics from Facebook. I mean, I mean that's all, but it's also from their yes, actively promoting those things, and they know that it increases their bottom line. They know, I will go even further, Katie, they are actively promoting toxic, untrue, and violent content because doing so damages the brains of their users in a way that keeps those users on and

engaged to the website. And so damaging the brains of their users permanently is profitable to Facebook. So they made a a distinct, uh documented choice to cause brain damage to millions of people in order to abuse their profitability. We're talking about it through the lens of how this affects us here in America, but also to be unpacked

and sifted through with all of this is internationally. The influence in other countries is even ethnic cleansings in India and myan mark just as a start, uh in Ethiopia, um in in Egypt. H Yeah, pro government propaganda another place, you know, like anyway, it's truly the destruction of the world. Yeah, there's a really good Ryan Brodrick article on his sub stack. I think, well, is this a substack or not? And

his blood garbage day um. Yeah. And and Broderick is someone who's kind of reported in some of the same like we we're both some of the only like English language writers have written about fucking degola chan, which was like Brazil's eight chan kind of equivalent. It's like a

mass shooter fan site. He wrote like a short little thing about the Facebook papers, um, which you can also find, by the way, if you're interested in kind of learning how to start looking into the Facebook papers protocol you go to protocol. If you just type protocol Facebook Papers into Google, it'll bring you to protocols. They've got like an aggregation thing that's aggregating all of the articles so far written about the Facebook papers. It makes it easy

to kind of see what's actually happening here. Um. But Ryan Broderick wrote a short little article about this that I think gets at how everyone who's been I've been reporting around the edge of this issue, like a bunch of people like Ben Collins, like Brandy's a Drawsney, like like there's about a million of us. Well, there's at least a few dozen of us who have been like writing around the edges of these stories and trying to

like prod at this stuff for a while. And Broderick gets that, I think how we're all feeling and about how everyone should feel about this, about the Facebook papers leak quote. I'll be honest, I'm not sure what to do with all this. I'm not sure what more we need to know before something is done, nor am I even sure anything can be done now after almost a decade of writing about it and talking about it, I honestly feel number the whole thing. It's why I don't

write a lot about Facebook and garbage day. There are simply other parts of the Internet that need attention. Just think about how different things would be if an entire generation of reporters and technologists weren't forced to be unpaid janitors for a bloated tech monopoly. My hope is that the sheer scale of these leaks isn't too much for the average reader or Paul Petician to wrap their heads around. But they haven't affected the company's stock price. But this

much is clear. Facebook knew all along. Their own employees were desperately trying to get anyone inside the company to listen as their products radicalized their own friends and family members, and as they were breaking the world. They had an army of spokespeople publicly and privately gas lighting and intimidating reporters and researchers who were trying to ring the alarm bell. They knew all along, and they simply did not give

a ship. Yeah I don't know. Um yeah, they still don't. Uh. Zuck said, Yeah, what we're seeing is a coordinated efforts selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company. Um did the are the documents false? Yeah? Mark? Is everything in here saying such blatant pr bullshit corporate spin? And I could say that with confidence because I'm almost caught up on succession good good again, and I understand how this works, you know, I'm seeing it happen anyway, Katie,

love that for you, Thank you. I had to contribute something. I've talked plenty of this episode. I've talked, I've had thoughts that we want to end the episode. We're talking about the written house thing or now yeah, just sucks as the um Yeah, the judge is um saying that they can't refer to as victims as victims, terrorists, terrorists, arsonists.

I thought that Republicans hated activist judges. Yeah, it's it's fun because the argument, which isn't a completely fallacious argument, is that, Okay, if you call them victims, then you are convicting someone while they're in trial on trial, which okay, but then you're if you can call them arsonists, which none of them are convicted of arson, none of these the people he killed or convicted arson, then you are

convicting someone else. Even yes, if you were just saying the people that he shot, and if that was the only way you allowed anyone to refer to them, I think that would be fine. That's that's at least yes, No, one's arguing that he shot these people. That's accurate, and you're not You're not convicting anyone by saying the people that he shot because he objectively shot them. Um. I would, I would. I would say, Okay, well that's someone being fair.

But this is obviously like clearly not that this is clearly an activist to call them terrorists instead like the it's like the opposite of what he's trying to avoid and also even more intense. Yeah, I'd like to read this tweet from Ben she In, the Kenosha County judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Bruce Schroeder has been serving since nine four. He keeps getting re elected to six

year terms, running unopposed. He's one of those six hundred judge elections on your ballot where you're like, who is this? Does this matter? It does? Um? Yeah, I think that's a very good point and little reminder this man has been has run, he's been serving since four and his rant unopposed. Yeah, I know, it's great. Yeah, that said, often the choices between one judge and another judge, both of whom are the kind of people who want to be judges. Yeah, And how can you know, it's just

how can you know? I don't know. I would like to see Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg and most of the Facebook executives from the last decade or so arrested by an international um tribunal and uh and and executed in the eg. I think that would be rad I think that would be judging the verdict, but the trial. You know, we will get all of the kids on board with your company. If you were hung in the Hague, the kids think that's pot they think that's one d gecks

of cool. Yeah, yeah, the Mark real chugy, Yeah, very chuggy. If you were to not be hung in the Hague, I think we did it. That is that? Yeah, that's that's the episode. That's how we're ending this ship. Oh good, I love based. Yeah, baste ending. I'm like desperately trying to think of some slang to throw at you, but I mean I think it. You know, there is another

thing that's just happened recently on the TikTok's that's pretty funny. Um. The random fucking targeting matrix that is TikTok memes has landed on the Mountain Goats song No Children, which if you've ever been in a divorce that nearly killed both parties? Is a pretty good song about a divorce that nearly kills both people involved. UM, and now the kids are into it. Yeah, they've landed on an incredibly dark anthem about being like a divorce that cripples you emotionally for

the rest of your life American metaphor for kids. That's cool. Listen to the rest of their catalogs, really good music, yeah stuff. Yeah, The Mountain Goats have a lot of bangers. Not just about one song that's fine, but just like expands, you know, yeah, go for the rest of the Goats. They got a song about D and D in there. Yeah, great bard. Yeah, TikTok's doing that and also like making young girls to like think that they have to rest. Yeah, there's lots of stuff that's less good, but I do

like that. When someone went to I think it was Vice went to the Mountain Goats, you know, the main guy who was at some point it's been the only guy in the Mountain Goats. UM went to him for comment. He was like, yeah, I'm not getting on TikTok, absolutely not. I'm doing I'm taking no actions as a like all these their song goes viral on TikTok and they suddenly like fucking um Fleetwood Mac gets a TikTok and he's just like, no, I am I'm doing that. I am

fifty four goddamn years old. I'm not getting on TikTok now. I'm just going to continue doing the thing that Yeah, alright, guys, come back next at where by oh wow bye, weeping so dull and it's not again, I tried. Daniel. Worst Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.