00:00:00
Mark Zuckerberg has begun his process of
00:00:04
effectively pledging falty to Donald
00:00:07
Trump and make his
00:00:10
big pivot to sort of being Elon Musk too
00:00:16
and he has released this video on
00:00:19
Instagram in which he lays out sort of
00:00:24
some of his mistakes from the past and
00:00:26
his plans from the future in ways which
00:00:28
are very clear respons es to not only
00:00:32
Trump's
00:00:34
Victory but sort of betray a certain
00:00:37
amount
00:00:38
of
00:00:40
jealousy of the way in which Elon Musk
00:00:44
has managed to use Twitter now X to gain
00:00:50
a certain cultural cache among
00:00:53
conservatives and right- wiers Mark
00:00:56
Zuckerberg has donated a million dollars
00:00:59
to the Trump transition fund apparently
00:01:01
yeah I believe Bezos has oh we might be
00:01:03
we might be incorrect oh okay no we we
00:01:06
might have been incorrect okay on the
00:01:07
12th of December he said he plans to
00:01:10
donate a million dollars to the trans to
00:01:12
the inauguration MPS devil saying are we
00:01:15
approaching the preh Hitler stage of
00:01:16
History where the big capitalist line
00:01:18
with the farite in and come in equality
00:01:19
at record levels Etc um I
00:01:24
mean we are seeing all of the big the
00:01:27
big Tech uh the big big Tech guys uh
00:01:32
lining up to throw their weight behind
00:01:34
Trump so I was first sent this link with
00:01:38
the caption the explanation the framing
00:01:42
that this was Mark Zuckerberg taking a
00:01:44
bit of a pivot to try
00:01:46
and Curry
00:01:48
favor partly with Trump voters I guess
00:01:51
but particularly with Trump
00:01:53
himself uh and nothing quite prepared me
00:01:56
for for exactly how true that was going
00:01:59
to be
00:02:01
let's let's give it a little bit of a
00:02:04
watch shall we hey everyone I want to
00:02:06
talk about something important today
00:02:08
because it's time to get back to Our
00:02:09
Roots around free expression on Facebook
00:02:11
and Instagram I started building social
00:02:14
media to give people a voice I gave a
00:02:16
speech I will say I'm not entirely sure
00:02:18
what free expression means on Instagram
00:02:21
which like is taking photos of sunsets
00:02:24
at Georgetown 5 years ago about the
00:02:26
importance of protecting free expression
00:02:28
and I still believe this today but a lot
00:02:31
has happened over the last several years
00:02:33
pretend name saying
00:02:35
poke that's why he invented it to do
00:02:38
free expression through the medium of
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you've been
00:02:42
poked there's been widespread debate
00:02:44
about potential harms from online
00:02:46
content governments and Legacy Media
00:02:48
have pushed to censor more and more a
00:02:51
lot of this is clearly political but
00:02:53
there's also a lot of legitimately bad
00:02:55
stuff
00:02:57
like like how
00:03:00
on the
00:03:02
nose is is this as kind of just taking
00:03:06
the language of Elon Musk um it's it's
00:03:10
kind of sad in a
00:03:12
way it's it's sort of one of the
00:03:15
slightly nerdy kids in your class has
00:03:17
seen something that the cool kid is
00:03:19
doing and is kind of trying to wear that
00:03:22
coat out there drugs terrorism child
00:03:26
exploitation these are things that we
00:03:28
take very seriously and want to make
00:03:30
sure that we handle responsibly so we
00:03:32
built a lot of complex systems to
00:03:33
moderate content but the problem with
00:03:36
complex systems is they make mistakes
00:03:38
even if they accidentally censor just 1%
00:03:41
of posts that's millions of people like
00:03:44
this like the language of censorship in
00:03:47
particular I me again like I've not used
00:03:50
Facebook in a very long time so I can't
00:03:53
really talk to
00:03:56
the ways the the experience of using it
00:04:01
at the
00:04:03
moment um you know one of Facebook's
00:04:09
big scandals however
00:04:12
was the ways in which it was used as a
00:04:15
medium for encouraging political
00:04:18
violence
00:04:22
right uh in Myanmar like the times where
00:04:26
Facebook has failed
00:04:30
to have like good
00:04:33
moderation and the times in which it has
00:04:36
like allowed more political content
00:04:39
which is one of the things that Mark
00:04:40
Zuckerberg has said they want to do um
00:04:44
it has had disastrous consequences but
00:04:47
you know we we' hate for 1% of posts to
00:04:50
be censored and we've reached a point
00:04:51
where it's just too many mistakes in too
00:04:53
much censorship the recent elections
00:04:56
also feel like a cultural Tipping Point
00:04:58
towards once again prioritizing speech
00:05:01
so we're going to get back to our roots
00:05:03
and focus on reducing mistakes
00:05:05
simplifying our policies and restoring
00:05:07
free expression on our platforms and
00:05:09
we're going to make Farmville cool again
00:05:12
we're going to bring back Farmville
00:05:14
pretends name saying is his argument
00:05:16
about to be based on accidentally
00:05:17
censoring things I mean that's a really
00:05:19
good like point of different
00:05:20
differentiation between Elon Musk and
00:05:24
Mark Zuckerberg is that Elon Musk could
00:05:26
do this thing of going old Twitter old
00:05:28
Twitter was sent in and I'm like the new
00:05:31
guy that's taking over and I'm going to
00:05:33
make it cool and free speechy again
00:05:35
whereas Mark Zuckerberg has been running
00:05:37
this company the whole time
00:05:40
um so he's sort of trying to paint it as
00:05:44
like the man like Legacy Media and big
00:05:49
government or whatever forced me into
00:05:53
doing basic content moderation which is
00:05:56
interesting cuz he he must have seen
00:05:59
what has happened happened with x in the
00:06:02
ways in which advertisers have deserted
00:06:05
it and in
00:06:07
which there has been an outflow of users
00:06:10
it's dangerous to assume that because I
00:06:14
or or you if you have stopped
00:06:17
using Twitter or X whatever that
00:06:19
everyone has I'm sure it still has many
00:06:21
users however so like yeah lots of
00:06:25
people still do however there has
00:06:26
clearly been an outflow of users and
00:06:29
there has been an outflow
00:06:32
of many of the users who
00:06:35
were like professionals who
00:06:40
were using it who who would who sort of
00:06:43
brought it a certain level of prestige I
00:06:46
guess you know journalists
00:06:49
um artists like people who are sort of
00:06:52
making stuff and using were using
00:06:55
Twitter as place to share it there has
00:06:57
been an outflow of some of the most
00:06:59
people at
00:07:01
least I guess Mark Zuckerberg is hoping
00:07:04
that
00:07:06
his
00:07:08
um that Facebook's Monopoly is strong
00:07:13
enough that people sort of can't give it
00:07:16
up more specifically here's what we're
00:07:19
going to do first we're going to get rid
00:07:21
of fact Checkers and replace them with
00:07:23
Community notes similar to X starting in
00:07:26
the US I wonder how much it pains him to
00:07:29
have to to say similar to X we're going
00:07:31
to do exactly the same thing that X does
00:07:35
because I'm I'm not cool now and I want
00:07:38
to be in a musk it is worse than having
00:07:42
a fact checking system which sometimes
00:07:46
has to ER on the side of more status
00:07:49
quoy responses I would say that you can
00:07:53
just end up with complete nonsense and
00:07:55
it's presented as though it were a fact
00:07:59
CH after Trump first got elected in 2016
00:08:02
the Legacy Media wrote nonstop about how
00:08:05
misinformation was a threat to democracy
00:08:08
we tried in good faith to address those
00:08:09
concerns without becoming the Arbiters
00:08:11
of truth but the fact Checkers have just
00:08:14
been too politically biased and have
00:08:16
destroyed more trust than they've
00:08:18
created again it's worth saying he has
00:08:20
been running this company the whole
00:08:23
time he's like oh the the newspapers
00:08:26
made me do
00:08:27
it uh but I but he's just using the
00:08:30
language of um he's using the language
00:08:33
of of trumpism and of musk and of you
00:08:36
know the mainstream media was trying to
00:08:38
get me down especially in the US so over
00:08:41
the next couple of months we're going to
00:08:43
phase in a more comprehensive Community
00:08:45
notes system second we're going to
00:08:48
simplify our content policies and get
00:08:50
rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics
00:08:52
like immigration and
00:08:54
gender and here's where it
00:08:56
gets every bit of this sort of get gets
00:08:59
worse as you watch
00:09:01
it specifically calling
00:09:05
out
00:09:07
immigration which let's be
00:09:09
clear here is being used as a standin
00:09:13
for for racism right for conversations
00:09:16
about race at the very
00:09:20
least and gender which he is using as a
00:09:23
stand in for transphobia like the
00:09:27
implications of what he is saying is we
00:09:29
are going to allow more racism and
00:09:32
transphobia I I don't think there's any
00:09:34
other way of reading that he is kind of
00:09:36
putting it within the language that
00:09:39
liberalism has allowed to exist around
00:09:42
those topics but that is that is what he
00:09:44
is signaling is on topics like
00:09:46
immigration and gender that are just out
00:09:48
of touch with mainstream
00:09:50
discourse what started as a movement to
00:09:52
be more inclusive has increasingly been
00:09:55
used to shut down opinions and shut out
00:09:57
people with different ideas and it's too
00:09:59
far so I want to make sure that people
00:10:02
can share their beliefs and experiences
00:10:04
on our
00:10:05
platforms third we're changing how we
00:10:08
enforce our policies to reduce the
00:10:10
mistakes there is just let you know
00:10:12
there is a particularly fantastic bit
00:10:14
coming up in a moment as that account
00:10:15
for the vast majority of censorship on
00:10:17
our platforms we used to have filters
00:10:20
that scanned for any policy violation
00:10:23
now we're going to focus those filters
00:10:25
on tackling illegal and high severity
00:10:27
violations and for lower s violations
00:10:30
we're going to rely on someone reporting
00:10:32
an issue before we take action the I do
00:10:35
wonder how much of a difference that
00:10:37
really makes um presumably any content
00:10:41
which gets any kind of traction probably
00:10:44
at least one person reports like I
00:10:47
suppose the the distinction really there
00:10:50
is like does something get flagged even
00:10:54
if no one's likely to see it I guess is
00:10:56
probably the difference yeah Star
00:10:58
Spangled chit saying oh wow even trying
00:10:59
to hide it I mean yeah this is very much
00:11:02
him going I'm actually B on board with
00:11:04
the kind of Maga agenda now I'm in with
00:11:08
the you know the anti-woke the anti-
00:11:13
elite kind of gang even though I'm
00:11:16
effectively a modern day media Baron
00:11:19
problem is that the filters make
00:11:21
mistakes and they take down a lot of
00:11:22
content that they shouldn't so by
00:11:24
dialing them back we're going to
00:11:25
dramatically reduce the amount of
00:11:27
censorship on our platforms
00:11:30
we're also going to tune our content
00:11:32
filters to require much higher
00:11:34
confidence before taking down content
00:11:36
the reality is that this is a trade-off
00:11:39
it means we're going to catch less bad
00:11:41
stuff but we'll also reduce the number
00:11:43
of innocent people's posts and accounts
00:11:45
that we accidentally take down fourth
00:11:48
we're bringing back Civic content for a
00:11:51
while the community asked to see less
00:11:53
politics because it was making people
00:11:54
stressed so we stopped recommending
00:11:56
these posts but it feels like we're in a
00:11:59
new era now and we're starting to get
00:12:01
feedback that people want to see this
00:12:02
content again so we're going to start
00:12:04
phasing this back into Facebook
00:12:06
Instagram and threads while working to
00:12:08
keep the community's friendly I wonder
00:12:10
whether that particularly threads has
00:12:13
maybe just Fallen
00:12:15
between um cuz blue sky is really
00:12:17
interesting I mean somehow my blue sky
00:12:20
the stuff that seems to get recommended
00:12:22
to me on Blue Sky is
00:12:24
really like hardcore British centrism so
00:12:28
it's people who are really into being
00:12:31
anti- brexit and being anti-trump and
00:12:35
being anti- Tory but that's like their
00:12:39
whole politics they don't really have
00:12:42
a don't really have a positive politics
00:12:45
they don't really have a um thing that
00:12:47
they campaign for they just they just
00:12:50
don't don't like the baddies um and sort
00:12:54
of hearken back to a a fictional era in
00:12:58
which politics was sort of nice I guess
00:13:02
um
00:13:04
and uh and that's really interesting
00:13:07
right that there are very clearly people
00:13:09
who are on Blue Sky because they see it
00:13:14
as a sort of liberal space but there are
00:13:17
clearly people who are choosing to use
00:13:20
um Blue Sky because they see it as
00:13:26
a space for extreme
00:13:29
centrism just as there are people who
00:13:31
are using
00:13:34
um X because they see it as the Free
00:13:38
Speech Warrior space for the right-wing
00:13:40
truth tellers or whatever um and I do
00:13:44
wonder
00:13:45
whether Mark Zuckerberg is noticing some
00:13:47
of that and going okay what do I make
00:13:49
threads
00:13:51
like no one is like Oh I'm a kind of
00:13:53
threads person like there is there is
00:13:58
culture War
00:14:00
there is a cultural logic to being able
00:14:02
to pick blue sky or X threads doesn't
00:14:04
really have a place for that and
00:14:08
positive fifth we're going to move our
00:14:11
trust and safety and content moderation
00:14:13
teams out of California and our us-based
00:14:16
content review is going to be based in
00:14:18
Texas this is like the funniest one to
00:14:20
me it's just real
00:14:23
um it's just real uh I've thought of
00:14:28
I've i' like I can't even put it into
00:14:32
words it's just real like picking the
00:14:34
Republican Place Stone cob was saying
00:14:36
labor laws are worse in Texas I'm
00:14:38
certain that that is part of it as well
00:14:43
um but you know the real win here is the
00:14:47
pr win of Texas is seen as Republican
00:14:53
and it's in this kind of geographical
00:14:56
polit like there is a geographical lens
00:14:59
to how we talk about politics these days
00:15:01
you know um California and New York
00:15:04
right the the coastal the coastal
00:15:07
Elites or in the UK it's sort of the
00:15:11
London Centrist Elites the sort of
00:15:13
London lovees right whereas real people
00:15:17
live in Texas as we work to promote free
00:15:20
expression I think that will help us
00:15:22
build trust to do this work in places
00:15:24
where there is less concern about the
00:15:26
bias of our teams finally we're going to
00:15:29
work with President Trump to push back
00:15:32
on governments around the world they're
00:15:33
going after American companies and
00:15:35
pushing to censor more the US has the
00:15:38
strongest that feels that feels like a a
00:15:43
push against the EU and some of the
00:15:46
digital B constitutional protections for
00:15:48
free expression in the world Europe has
00:15:50
an ever increasing number of laws
00:15:52
institutionalizing censorship and making
00:15:55
it difficult to build anything
00:15:56
Innovative there Latin American
00:15:58
countries have secret courts that can
00:16:00
order companies to quietly that's really
00:16:02
interesting that there's a cut there I
00:16:04
don't think
00:16:05
there China has censored our apps from
00:16:07
even working in the country the only way
00:16:10
that we can push back on this Global
00:16:12
trend is with the support of the US
00:16:15
government and that's why it's been so
00:16:17
difficult over the past four years when
00:16:19
even the US government has pushed for
00:16:21
censorship by going after Us and other
00:16:23
American companies it oh I hadn't
00:16:26
watched this far through but he is
00:16:27
really making a break for this he is
00:16:30
really like I'm I'm on board with the
00:16:32
don't worry guys
00:16:36
um has emboldened other governments to
00:16:39
go even further but now we have the
00:16:41
opportunity to restore free expression
00:16:43
and I am excited to take it it'll take
00:16:47
time to get this right and these are
00:16:48
complex systems they're never going to
00:16:50
be perfect there's also a lot of illegal
00:16:53
stuff that we still need to work very
00:16:54
hard to remove but the bottom line is
00:16:58
that after a year years of having our
00:16:59
content moderation work Focus primarily
00:17:02
on removing content it is time to focus
00:17:04
on reducing mistakes simplifying our
00:17:07
systems and getting back to Our Roots
00:17:09
about giving people voice I'm looking
00:17:11
forward to this next chapter stay good
00:17:13
out there and more to come soon I mean
00:17:16
this is this
00:17:17
is fascinating on so many levels right
00:17:20
there's the aspect in which uh Mark
00:17:24
Zuckerberg is very clearly trying to ape
00:17:27
Elon Musk he's late to the party right
00:17:30
but he's trying to he's trying to get
00:17:31
there too there's an aspect in which he
00:17:33
is saying I'm a useful
00:17:36
like asset in terms of foreign policy
00:17:39
where he's talking
00:17:41
about um you know Facebook has put
00:17:45
Facebook pushing back against other
00:17:47
countries attempts to to censor or
00:17:50
whatever um you know he's effectively
00:17:52
saying actually we're going to if there
00:17:56
are legal challenges to
00:18:00
what
00:18:02
we are doing or are not doing in other
00:18:04
countries we're going
00:18:06
to fight back against them we're going
00:18:09
to ignore them whatever but one of the
00:18:11
really interesting aspect about Trump's
00:18:14
term last time was that he did do a
00:18:18
reasonable
00:18:20
amount um
00:18:23
of antitrust stuff right so like
00:18:27
anti-monopoly
00:18:29
actions in which um his um Department of
00:18:34
Justice went after certain companies for
00:18:37
being
00:18:39
monopolies now it's worth saying what
00:18:43
companies they went
00:18:45
after was very much uh influenced maybe
00:18:50
entirely influenced by whether Trump
00:18:54
likes those companies or
00:18:56
not so Google you know is seen as
00:19:02
a
00:19:04
Californian um hot bed of liberals right
00:19:08
Silicon Valley
00:19:10
liberalism and so uh they went after
00:19:16
Google there is always there was always
00:19:18
the danger that they might go after
00:19:20
Facebook right Facebook is also a bed of
00:19:24
Silicon Valley liberalism right very
00:19:26
much has that vibe and so one of the
00:19:30
reasons that all of these CEOs whether
00:19:34
it's um Mark Zuckerberg making this very
00:19:38
clear pitch that he is part of um the
00:19:45
the Maga Coalition right that's what
00:19:46
he's saying he's saying I am part of
00:19:49
this political movement too right uh
00:19:52
We've also seen Jeff Bezos um well a
00:19:57
cartoon featuring Jeff Bezos uh which
00:20:01
was drawn for the Washington Post was
00:20:07
not published whether that is that Jeff
00:20:10
Bezos himself has stepped in and said
00:20:11
that's not going to get published
00:20:12
whether whether someone further down the
00:20:15
line has gone well I don't want to upset
00:20:18
Jeff Bezos or I don't want to upset my
00:20:19
boss who doesn't want to upset his boss
00:20:20
he doesn't want to upset Jeff Bezos um
00:20:23
you know there is
00:20:25
a bit of political thinking that has
00:20:28
gone on there which has gone you know as
00:20:29
an organization The Washington
00:20:33
Post
00:20:35
and the Washington Post in and of itself
00:20:38
but also as part of a family of
00:20:40
companies that are associated with uh
00:20:42
Jeff
00:20:44
Bezos doesn't want to upset
00:20:48
uh Donald Trump right because Amazon
00:20:51
doesn't want to get broken up as a
00:20:52
monopoly Facebook doesn't want to get
00:20:54
broken up as a monopoly um Apple has
00:20:56
also made a donation to the inauguration
00:20:59
um fund so in this video in all those
00:21:04
donations what
00:21:05
we're what we're seeing is all is
00:21:08
actually all of these companies who are
00:21:09
all of these CEOs who are CEOs of
00:21:11
companies which are monopolies or you
00:21:14
know just to split hairs
00:21:18
have Market have power within the market
00:21:20
which is monopolistic or oligopolistic
00:21:23
or whatever we want to say um they are
00:21:27
genuinely worried
00:21:29
that if they're not seen to be on
00:21:32
side that Elon that uh Donald Trump and
00:21:36
maybe with Elon Musk will try to break
00:21:39
them up as monopolies right will use the
00:21:41
antitrust powers that he tried that he
00:21:44
was sort of in the process of using last
00:21:45
time and in which you know Joe Biden was
00:21:48
fairly enthusiastic on some antitrust
00:21:51
stuff as well because it's hard not to
00:21:54
be in an era
00:21:57
where there are so many companies which
00:21:59
are clear um you know clearly
00:22:03
approaching Monopoly status at the very
00:22:06
least um and in ways that
00:22:10
are advanced in comparison to the way in
00:22:13
which monopolies could have
00:22:16
worked 30 or 40 years
00:22:18
ago right
00:22:21
because um Facebook being a
00:22:25
monopoly it's not just
00:22:29
it's not the same as if there was only
00:22:32
one news you know if we view Facebook as
00:22:34
a kind of media
00:22:36
organization it's not akin to there only
00:22:39
being one TV channel or one newspaper in
00:22:42
a country it's akin
00:22:45
to effectively there only being one way
00:22:49
of broadcast like it's like there being
00:22:53
multiple newspapers but all of the shops
00:22:55
that sell newspapers and could possibly
00:22:58
sell newspapers are owned by the same
00:23:00
company Amazon is not just a monopoly in
00:23:04
the sense of being one company that
00:23:07
sells one product and is dominant in
00:23:09
that particular Market it is a monopoly
00:23:12
in the sense that imagine if all of the
00:23:15
supermarkets in in your country were the
00:23:18
same
00:23:19
Supermarket I mean there is sort of an
00:23:21
argument that what what we've built for
00:23:24
ourselves
00:23:25
is kind of like an an even
00:23:30
worse maybe that's maybe may maybe
00:23:33
that's contrarian to say we have sort of
00:23:37
built East
00:23:39
Germany again yeah there's a book about
00:23:43
uh it's called The People's Republic of
00:23:45
uh Walmart which looks at the idea that
00:23:47
you know we have
00:23:49
a we have a
00:23:53
uh centralized as cat pig saying we have
00:23:56
a we have a planned economy
00:23:59
rather than a free market it just
00:24:01
happens to not be planned by governments
00:24:04
it's planned
00:24:06
by the the Mark zuberg or particularly
00:24:08
the Jeff Bezos of this world what we're
00:24:11
seeing is CEOs of companies that are
00:24:15
aware that Donald Trump kind of has
00:24:18
antitrust crackdowns as a stick that he
00:24:23
might beat them with and therefore in
00:24:25
the interest of their own preservation
00:24:27
if nothing else they are donating to his
00:24:29
funds they are making it clear that they
00:24:32
are on side and it's going to be
00:24:34
interesting to see where this goes from
00:24:35
I mean it's going to be interesting
00:24:37
given how International so many of these
00:24:40
companies are you know Mark Zuckerberg
00:24:42
talking in
00:24:43
that video there about how you know
00:24:48
Facebook is this International Company
00:24:49
we we're going to push back against the
00:24:52
EU we're going to push back against
00:24:54
other countries that are going to try
00:24:55
and tell us what to do in their
00:24:57
jurisdiction
00:24:59
he's sort of saying you know we can be a
00:25:00
I don't know whether he's saying we can
00:25:01
be a vector for you know U us propaganda
00:25:04
across the world or whatever but he is
00:25:06
saying you know we can make sure that
00:25:08
American Norms around conversation and
00:25:11
around the ways in
00:25:14
which speech is elevated or suppressed
00:25:17
or whatever or or
00:25:19
moderated um
00:25:21
Can Exist Elsewhere regardless of what
00:25:26
governments or or voters
00:25:29
in those countries uh want to
00:25:32
happen um and so one yeah one one does
00:25:36
wonder what the international impact of
00:25:38
some of that are going to be because as
00:25:42
we're seeing with musk there are some
00:25:44
quite
00:25:46
direct political
00:25:49
consequences of that if musk and
00:25:53
Zuckerberg are in order to please if if
00:25:56
if in order to please Trump they are
00:25:58
redesigning their platforms in ways
00:26:00
which are going
00:26:02
to um encourage and allow and enable
00:26:06
more anti-immigration
00:26:10
and convers conversations and
00:26:12
conversations around gender
00:26:15
right these kind
00:26:19
of euphemisms that Zuckerberg is
00:26:23
using that has the potential to have
00:26:25
quite direct political consequences in
00:26:28
terms of electing parties and
00:26:31
politicians who are Trump likee in other
00:26:34
countries so whether that's the afd and
00:26:36
Germany whether that's reform in the UK
00:26:39
whether that's the front National
