January 22, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how the latest "right-wing turn" for Mark Zuckerberg and Meta is really just formalizing policies on Facebook and Instagram that actively protected and elevated right-wing voices - and how we're entering a new era of rot for two of the world's largest social networks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
As Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zichron.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
What.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's been a shitty week for many obvious reasons, and
I challenge you at this time to be kind to
yourself and to the people around you. Be kinder, old,
I'm closer, be more supportive, say nicer things. But specifically
to my trans listeners, I love you, You're loved and accepted.
Fuck these people, Fuck the Executive Order. I'm so sorry.
And anyone who agrees with the that EO or is
(00:41):
against trans people, you can go fuck yourself. Like I
need you to download something else, go and do something
else with your time. I'm not interested in helping you.
You are not my friend. You will never be my friend.
If you're against trans people, I'm against you. Anyway, back
to the podcast. So, I've been back from CEES for
a week now and I'm finally recovering. And I appreciate
(01:01):
everybody who listened to the thirteen and a half hours
of audio we put out, and a big thank you
to the whole team there, Edward and Gwayso Junior, David Roth,
Phil Broughton, Matt Sowski and everyone else who came along.
Now we're back to our regular format, and it's likely
going to be a rotation between more of the talk
radio stuff you heard at cees and then heard with
Paris Martineau and Jeff Jarvis, and then stuff like this
(01:23):
spoken word. I'm back baby. But twenty twenty five it's
going to be a chaotic year. You're going to feel
a deficit of hope. I've said this before, but I'm
going to say it again. The best thing you can
do right now is to hold those people you love closer,
Treat everyone around you, like I said, a little more kindly,
Listen more keenly to the things that people are saying,
and put your heart and soul into the things you
(01:45):
do and the things you do for others. You may
not be able to change much at scale, but you
can improve your immediate orbit the bubble around you.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
In this week's two parter, I'm going to talk to
you about the people who choose to do the direct opposite.
They use their power on their platform to exploit and
hurt people for money, or they use another platform to
help maintain the status quo, usually at the cost of
other people's happiness. You see, in the last few weeks,
we've seen the emergence of what I call the true
Meta and of course the true Mark Zuckerberg As the
(02:16):
company chose to end its fact checking program in early January,
claiming that and I quote fact checkers have been too
politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created
on both Instagram and Facebook, the latter of which are
shown in a study from George Washington University to by
design and I quote again afford anti vaccine content producers
several means to circumvent the intent of misinformation removal policies.
(02:39):
Metas also killed its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, something
that I expect other tech firms to copy, unrestrained by
any kind of societal norms under an administration that seems
intent on destroying as many of them as possible. Shortly
after announcing the policies, Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan
experience and had what I would describe as a full
scale pissfit, claiming that corporate are culturally newted and that
(03:02):
companies should have both more masculine energy and have a
culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more, and then
he added that said culture would have its own merits
that are really positive. I none of this means anything.
Zuckerberg also believes that the modern corporate culture has somehow
framed masculinity is bad, something that he doesn't really attempt
to elaborate on or explain or frame with any kind
(03:24):
of evidence because he's on the Joe Rogan experience, and
because he also knows no one's going to fucking ask him.
And it's it's just this kind of directionless grievance, and
it feels me full of piss and vinegar myself. And
this means, by the way, that Metin has now and
I quote their own announcement, gotten rid of a number
of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity, and gender
(03:46):
that are subject to frequent political discourse and debate, which
in practice means that Meta now allows you to say
that being gay as a mental illness, or describe immigrants
as filth and as an immigrant. I find that disgusting.
I find all of this so fucking disgusting. They, as
I'll get to in this episode, they never really cared
that much. But to formalize this stuff is so utterly hurtful.
(04:06):
It's a template for worse people. And Facebook of Meta
is right down at the fucking bottom of a barrel.
This is going to give other companies something to borrow.
And it's just when I read this stuff, I just
I hear the Perry Mason music from kill Bill. Anyway,
moving on with the episode. Now, surprise here, Casey Newton,
(04:28):
a platformer who I have been deeply critical of and
will be very critical of in a later episode, has
done a really excellent job reporting on exactly how horrifying
these policies are, revealing how Meta's internal guidelines allow Facebook
users to say that trans people are both mentally ill
and don't exist. Which, to be clear, if you're listening
to this and saying that you agree with that, I'd
like you to stop listening for a second. I'd like
(04:50):
you to get your car keys of you to close
your garage, don and I'd like you to start the
fucking ignition just in case it's really it's not clear
enough how I feel about anti trans people. It also
included one of the most wretched things I've ever read.
Alex Schultz Meta CMO, who is a gay man, suggested
in an internal post that people seeing their queer friends
(05:11):
and family members abused on Facebook and Instagram could lead
to increased support for LGBTQ rights. This is, and I
don't say this lightly, one of the most disgusting and
offensive and stupid things I've ever heard a tech executive say.
But let's be abundantly clear, this is exactly the kind
of social network that Mark Zuckerberg wants, an unrestrained, unfiltered,
unrepentantly toxic, and noxiously heteronormative, one untethered by the frustrating
(05:35):
norms of making sure that a social network of billions
of people doesn't actively encourage hate of multiple different marginalized groups.
And I am so angry about this because it's all
so needless. It's all so needless. But everything, everything, has
to be thrown into the fire for growth. That's who
these fucking people are. But dear Listena, don't worry Mark Zuckerberg.
(05:58):
He's finally free. Finally, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of
Meta can do whatever he wants, as opposed to the
past twenty years, where it's hard to argue that he's
one of the most, if not the single, most punished
man alive. You see Marky Marx net worth recently hit
two hundred and thirteen billion dollars. He's running a company
with a market capitalization of one point five trillion, and
(06:20):
he can never be fired from it. He even owns
a fourteen hundred acre compound in Hawaii, And while dealing
with all of this suffering, he had to once, sorry,
I mean twice, sit in front of a Senate hearing
and lazily apologize for something non specifically he was tortured,
tortured only six years after having done it last. I
(06:40):
am being very sarcastic. Obviously this man has not suffered.
I don't want to say the next part of that sentence,
but he's not suffered at all. He's had the easiest
go of it, just like the rest of these fucking people.
Few living people have had it easier than Mark Zuckerberg.
He's a man insulated from consequence, risk, and responsibilit and
(07:00):
he has been for like twenty years. The sudden and
warranted alarm to this, by the way, and I will
say the media has acted with enough alarm here. Here's
this air of surprise, though it frames Meta and Mark
Zuckerberg like they just suddenly were like, hmm, what if
we were super bigoted? What if our new network could
(07:23):
what if it could be more racist. We need to
please Donald Trump, because that's not what Meta has been
doing before, right, They've never been Well, we'll get to
that in a bit, but I kind of want to
take you back in memory lane a bit a long
time ago, by which I mean August twenty twenty four.
The people in the media today saying, oh wow, Mark
(07:44):
Zuckerberg has suddenly gone conservative, He's suddenly right wing. Me
months ago, they were fawning over this guy. They were
fawning over his new look. They were desperate to hear
about his gold chains and why he was wearing them,
and they declared that he had the swagger of a
Roman emperor, and that he had and I quote the
Washington Post here, transformed himself from a dorky democracy destroying
(08:04):
CEO into a dripped out, jacked AI accelerationist. In the
eyes of potential Meta recruits, Zuckerberg was, until these last
few weeks, being celebrated for the very thing that people
are upset about right now. Flimsy, self conscious and performative
matro bullshit that only signifies strength to weak men and
those credulous enough to accept it, which in this case
(08:27):
means almost every media outlet. The only difference between then,
when Mark was with his chains in his big baggy
T shirt and he looked like Kevin Fedline and now
is that Mark Zuckerberg has finally decided to be honest
after all. Where was the punishment or judgment for his
last matro media bullshit? If anything, it kind of proved
that anyone will accept anything that Mark Zuckerberg does at all.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yet, I really want to be clear that what.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
We're seeing with Meta and by extension, Zuck is not
sudden at all. It's the direct result of a man
that has never ever ever been held in check. It's
utter fantasy to describe or even hint that these changes
are the beginning of some sort of unrestrained Meta rather
than part of the intentional destruction of this product and
all of their products in the market. Leader of rot economics,
(09:15):
this is the rot economy. This is everything I've been
telling you about growth at all costs. Except the costs
now are the safety of trans people, a safety of
LGBTQ people, the safety of immigrants. This hostile network that
was already pretty hostile, and I will get to that
is now basically saying thumbs up, go nuts, be as
(09:36):
bigoted as your fucking one. It's disgraceful. And as I
said in the middle of last year, Metas spent years
gradually making the experience of its products worse in pursuit
of perpetual growth. And if you go back to the
people Destroying Facebook that podcast episode that was actually from
Mark Zuckerberg, you wanted something like twelve to fourteen percent
perpetual year of a year growth. Insane stuff. But when
(09:58):
I say intentionally, I mean the product decisions like limiting
the information in notifications as a means of making users
click more and go around the page rather than I
don't know, being notified of something and knowing something, or
heavily promoting clickbait articles. This was all to keep people
on the site longer, and they've been doing it for
years in broad daylight, and it's led to this deterioration
(10:19):
of Facebook and soon Instagram that is just disgraceful, but
not as disgraceful as formalizing horrible hate field policies. And
some are touting Zuckerberg's current move as some sort of
master plan to appease Donald Trump and the conservatives, and
they're suggesting that this is a magification of these platforms
where conservatives will somehow be given I don't know, preferential treatment.
(10:39):
Perhaps maybe like Facebook's algorithm, it could promote more conservative content. Man,
wouldn't that be really bad? Wouldn't it be bad if
Facebook's algorithm was intentionally and repeatedly recommending conservative content. It's
been doing it for fucking years. Why are we pretending
like this is new? Why is everyone acting like this
is new? On going insane? I am actually going in
(11:00):
ain't because the actual problems here have been there a while.
The only thing that's changed is they formalize them.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And I am so.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Angry in this episode because I can't leave these people unaccountable.
I cannot have people that wrote about this pretend like
this is new, like this is sudden. It's time for
everyone in the media to take a little bit of
fucking responsibility for what we've done. But give me a second, though,
(11:38):
I actually want to lead you through someone who did
a pretty good job. And you're not gonna believe me,
but it's Kevin Russ of The New York Times.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You see.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
In twenty twenty, Russ created an automated Twitter account called
Facebook's top ten listening the top performing posts, So what
post was shared, viewed, and commented on the most on
Facebook by US Facebook pages, and he posted it on
a daily basis. He was able to do this using
something called crowd Tangle, a data analytics tool provided by
Facebook specifically for researchers and journalists to understand what was
(12:07):
happening on the world's largest social network at the time.
Ruce's reporting revealed that Meta's top performing links regularly skewed
toward right wing influences like Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, and
Sean Hannity, as well as outlets like Fox News and
the page of then President and I guess now President
Donald Trump. Internally, Meta was kind of freaking out, suggesting
that Ruth wasn't really getting what it meant because engagement
(12:30):
was a misleading measurement of what was popular on Facebook.
They suggested that the real litmus test was something called reach,
as in how many people actually saw a post. Ruce
also reported that the internal arguments of Meta led it
to suggest it'd make a separate Twitter account of its
own that had what they would call a more balanced
view of its internal data, which one hundred percent makes sense.
(12:52):
Meha even suggested the obvious answer sharing reach data, as in,
again how many people actually saw a post, and that
this would somehow vindercate their position. One nasty little detail
bone crowd Tangle CEO told them that well foursome misleading
news stories also rise to the top of the reach list.
In simpler terms, they didn't share the reach data because
(13:13):
it would prove that Facebook was in fact a misinformation machine.
The reporting around crowd Tangle, though, danced around in important detail.
They were just talking about posts and you know, these
are just the posts that happened to be on Facebook, right,
It just happens that Dan Bongino got to the top
all of these times. How did that happen? Well, let
me tell you how it fucking happened. They were likely
recommended by Facebook's algorithm, which is reliably and repeatedly skewed
(13:37):
conservative for years. A study in the Economist from September
twenty twenty found that the most popular American media outlets
on Facebook in a one month period were Breitbart and
Fox News, and that both Facebook page engagements and website
used heavily skewed conservative. This is quite old that this
has been happening a while.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Well, one could.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Argue that this might just be the will of the users.
What a user sees on face. This book is almost
entirely algorithmic now, and it certainly was back then, and
it's reasonable to assume that said algorithm was deliberately pushing
conservative content. At this time, metas head of public policy
was Joel Kaplan, a man whose previous work involved working
as George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff for policy,
(14:16):
as well as handling public policy and affairs for Energy
Future Holdings.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Really fucked up little story for you.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
This was a company, a private equity firm, kind of
Katamari situation, which brought up a giant Texas power company
called TXU forty five billion dollars and then immediately steered
it into bankruptcy due to the thirty eight point seven
billion dollars in debt that Energy Future Holdings was forced
to take on as a means of acquiring the power company.
It's private equity again. It's always fucking private Jesus Christ. Anyway,
(14:45):
this is the now, the policy headed META, and he
has been four years.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
It's all very good anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Jeff Horwitz reported in his wonderful book Broken Code that
Kaplan personally intervened when Facebook's health team attempted to remove
covid conspiracy movie plan from its recommendation engine, and Facebook
only did so once Kevin Roos reported that it was
the most engaged link in a twenty four hour period. Naturally,
Met's choice wasn't to fix things, or improve things, or
take responsibility or issue were comments saying hard we're going
(15:14):
to look into the conservative thing. No, no, no, why
would they do that. By the end of twenty twenty one,
Meta had disbanded the entire crowd Tangle team, and in
early twenty twenty two, the company had stopped registering new
users for crowd Tangle. In early twenty twenty four, months
before the twenty twenty four elections, crowd Tangle was shut
down entirely, though Facebook Top ten had stopped working in
the middle of twenty twenty three. What I'm getting at
(15:36):
is that Meta hasn't made a right wing turn. Meta
has been an active arm of the right wing media
for nearly a decade, actively empowering noxious, horrifying creatures like
Alex Jones, allowing him to evade bands and build massive
private online groups on the platform so that he could
still send his shit out even when he was banned.
A report from November twenty twenty one by medium Mattters
(15:57):
found that Facebook had tweaked its news algorithm into twenty
one to help right leaning news and political pages to
outperform other pages using and I quote sensational and divisive content.
Another medium Matters report from twenty twenty three found that
conservatives were continually earning more total interactions than left or
non aligned pages between January first, twenty twenty and December
(16:18):
thirty one, twenty twenty two, even as the company was
actively deprioritizing political content, by which I mean the algorithm
was allegedly showing year less politics unless, of course, you
were conservative. A report from last year from nonprofit Glad
found that Meta had continually allowed widespread anti trans hate
content across Instagram, Facebook, and threads, but the company either
(16:40):
claiming that the content didn't violate its community standards or
just ignoring the reports entirely. While we can and should
actively decry mes disgraceful new policies, it's kind of ahistorical
to pretend that this company gave a shit in the past,
or took it seriously, or just that they cared. It
pisses me off because if we act now like they've changed,
(17:04):
they don't get held accountable at all. But then again,
did they before? Have they ever been held accountable? Oh no,
the answer is no. By the way, there are reporters
who have done really good work on this, Russ Kevin Rus,
who've given a lot of shit. He did some really
great reporting on crowd tankled Jeff Horwitz from the Wall
Street Journal, along with the other tea but did the
Facebook files, which get too later. There are people doing
(17:26):
great work. The problem is there's just this kind of
weak and inconsistent approach that the media has taken to
Meta and to Mark Zuckerberg, and none of these changes,
none of these things that I'm saying here are particularly
hard to find. If you look this up, you could say, hey,
look exactly as I am right now. Hey, this doesn't
seem to be a new policy. This just seems to
(17:48):
be them deciding to formalize their lack of effort to
protect trans people, their lack of effort to stop conservative
demagogues doing stuff. I mean, it's just it's frustrating. It's
frustrating and annoying, and seeing them formalize it fills me
full of poison in my veins. It's just it's hateful,
(18:09):
it's racist, it's violent, it's cruel, it's bigoted, and it's
how it's been for so long.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Why are we not just able to call these people
what they are?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And they really will do whatever they want to or
need to for growth. And I'm going to quote something here.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Quote Facebook's old vice president Andrew Bosworth from an internal
email from twenty seventeen. I've may have mentioned before, and
I quote all the work that Facebook does in growth
is justified, even if it's bullying or a terrorist attack
carried out on their platform. And yes, that's exactly what
he said, by the way. And you'd think a guy
who's like, yeah, you know, growth just we need to
(18:49):
grow at all costs. And indeed, if something bad happens
as a result, at least we connected people. You'd think
that a letter like that getting out was in twenty seventeen, Yeah,
that would lead to him being probably putting a naughty box.
I won't get promoted, would he. He wouldn't become the
chief technology officer, would he? Because that's what Andrew Bosworth is. Now,
this is what this company is. It's time to stop
(19:11):
pretending that Meta was ever something noble or good or
well meaning. Mark Zuckerberg is a repressed coward as far
from manly as one can get. Because true masculinity, if
you can even fully I don't even know if you
can really give it a full definition, but I will
tell you what is masculine. It's a sense of responsibility
for both oneself and others and the things that we do,
(19:33):
and finding strength in supporting, en uplifting those close to you,
and loving more and caring.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
More for people.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I don't really want to put down a hard and
fast one, but that's part of what masculinity is for me.
It isn't being a fucking crybaby billionaire going on Joe
row and going where oom oh the company's not masculine enough. Coward, motherfucker.
It's disgusting and Meta as an institution has been rotten
for years, making trillions of dollars as it continually makes
(20:01):
their services work, all to force users to spend more
time on the site, even if it's because Facebook and
Instagram are our engineered to interrupt everything you're doing, your
decision making, your autonomy with a constant slew of different
forms of sponsored and algorithmically curated crap. The quality of
the experience, something the media has categorically failed to cover,
(20:21):
has never been lower on Facebook or Instagram. I'm not
sure how anyone writing about this company for the last
few years has been able to do so with a
straight face. The products suck, They're getting worse, and yet
the company has never been more profitable. Facebook is crammed
with fake accounts, AI generated crap and nonsense, groups teaming
with boomers pushing stupid greeny memes that say I wish
(20:43):
we had can to a culture of respect, as they
recommended their third racist meme of the day. Instagram is
a carousel of screen filling, sponsored nonsense and recommended crap,
and users are constantly battling with these products to actually
see the things that they log on to see. I
want to be explicit here. I do not believe enough
reporting is being done into the fact that Facebook is,
(21:04):
as a product both bordering on useless and run in
such a way that it's actively harmful for society. Some
important facts to begin with are that the initial feed
on Facebook is totally algorithmic, with large chunks of the
screen taken up by stuff that Facebook pushes on you.
We don't really know how their algorithm works, after all,
not like there's any legislation or regulation that requires them
(21:25):
to disclose it, but we do know that it's built
to get people to engage with the content, even if
said content is low quality in send, or a racist
or misleading. The biggest thing to know about the modern
Facebook experience, and I must be really clear here, is
that it's effectively unmoderated. I refer to Jeff Horwitz's Broken
Code earlier. It's a really powerful book. Everybody should read
(21:47):
it because it's the most clear eyed view of how
bad this company has been and for how long it's
been this bad. But the big thing that Jeff brings
up is that everything internally at Facebook is about remove friction.
Now you may think, I mean, oh, so that would
make a really good experience. No, Removing friction in this
(22:07):
case means allowing people to post whatever they want. Groups
that are giant scams which I'll get too soon, or
just nonsense, groups that spread misinformation, fake sports news memes
that make people pissed off and more racist. And some
of the shit I've seen on Facebook going back years
is horrifying. And while there are mechanisms that Meta has
in place to stop outright illegal things like pornography and violence. Effectively,
(22:31):
anything else is fair game. I have in preparing this script,
found fifty different groups that are nakedly scamming users, each
one with anywhere from one thousand to eighteen thousand different members,
each trying to work out why they can't access things
like their Facebook or PayPal account. And finding these groups
is super easy. Just type Facebook support and scroll down
into the search bar at the top of your Facebook account.
(22:55):
And by the way, the scam's fairly simple. People go
into these groups that are like, oh, I can't access Facebook.
They are on Facebook at the time, but perhaps they're
just locked into the app, and they go in there
and they say, hey, I need help, I need help
getting back in, and usually a scammer from the Global
South will be there and say, yeah, message me. They
get their password, they get their email, they get access
to something else, and then they start stealing shit. And
(23:18):
I really must be clear how easy it is to
find these scam groups and how many people are very
clearly falling into them. It's really worrying, and it's kind
of stomach turning as well, and it's time to accept
the Facebook has become a kind of open sewer run
with a complete disregard for the user. It's constantly battering
them with sponsored and recommended content as a means of
keeping them on the site for longer. The longer a
(23:40):
user interacts with the site, the more advertising impressions they're shown,
and in turn they make more money for Facebook and Meta,
even if there's not really a service being provided. And
you may think keeping someone on the site that means
giving them something they want, right negative, it means getting
in the way of the thing they want, putting a
bunch of things, jump over little obstacle. Course, it's extremely
(24:03):
annoying and pisses me off daily. Now, kind of like
in the episodes that did at the end of twenty
twenty four, I'm going to walk you through very practically
(24:25):
the experience of going through Facebook. I want you to
have as close to a play by play as hu
mainly possible, because I want you to understand how fucked
up this website is.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Okay, you open your Facebook app and you immediately see
a pop up for stories, kind of the Instagram thing
where you click them through and there's an entire phone
screen filling video. But once you've watched some of those,
you scroll down. You see one post from someone you know,
then a giant ad that takes up a third of
your screen and a carousel of people you may know,
Then a post from a page you don't follow, then
a series of recommended reels that show a two second
(24:56):
clip on repeat of what you might see, but not
enough for you to actually get an idea if the
video will be good, so that you click through more
advertising impressions, then another ad, then three posts from a
page you don't follow, then another ad, and I find
my app is hitching as I scroll too fast. It's
kind of getting a bit clunky. So I think, what
would someone do if they needed help? Though, So I
(25:17):
decided to search for Facebook Support, which leads you to
a thin banner for Facebook Support the top. It's like
a maybe a half inch banner, and then below that
is this giant, quarter screen long sponsored post about Facebook
and I quote bringing your community together. And this, by
the way, has nothing to do with support, it's a
completely different thing. And then you get a selection of
groups blow them, the first of which is called Facebook Support,
(25:39):
with eighteen thousand members, including a support number one eight,
one hundred and eighth four nine three ninety six that
does not work. The group is full of posts about
people having issues with Facebook, with one by an admin
called Oliver Green telling everyone that this group is where
they can and I quote discuss issues and provide assistance
and solutions to them. By the way, Olive Green's avatar
(26:01):
is actually a picture of political writer Oliver Darcy. It's
extremely fucking strange.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
One post on there says, and I quote, please don't
respond to messages from my Facebook comma I was hacked,
with one responder called deca tech fix, asking when was
it hacked and asking them to message him now for
a quick recovery of an account that they appeared to
be posting with. Another where a user says someone hacked
my Facebook and changed all password is responded to by
another account called retech Man, who adds inbox me now
(26:29):
for help. Another where someone also says that they were hacked,
has another account James Miles, responding saying message me privately.
There are hundreds of interactions like these. Seriously, just go
on this site and look, go and look. Type in
Facebook support is completely insane. This site makes them so
(26:50):
much may billions and billions of dollars from this site.
It's so fucking strange. So another group is called account hacked,
and it has eighty five hundred members, but I'll add
it hasn't been updated since the end of twenty twenty three,
but it immediately hits you with a post that says,
and I quote message me for any hacking services. Facebook recovery,
Instagram recovery, lost Funds, recovery, I cloud bypass, et cetera,
(27:11):
with a few users responding, along with several other scammers
offering to help in the same way. There's another group
with sixty seven hundred members, this time called recover an
old Facebook Account you Can't look into, and it offers
yet another one eight hundred number that also did not work.
A post from December fifth, twenty twenty three, from a
user claiming that their account was compromised and their email
and password was changed has been responded to forty four times,
(27:32):
mostly by scammers attempting to offer account recovery services, but
a few times by other people experiencing the same problem. Elsewhere,
a group promising to literally send you money on PayPal
has twenty four thousand members and ten plus posts a day.
Another called PayPal Problem Solution, which reminds me of a
hive song offer similarly scammy services if you can't get
into PayPal. Another called cash App Vemo PayPal Zel Support
(27:56):
has fifty eight hundred members now. I also, as of
my research for this, joined another group and it was
called Facebook Support. It is just every day people going
on and on and on and on about how they
can't get into accounts and then being told hey, call
our toll free number. And it sucks. It sucks because
(28:19):
this took me no effort to find. There are hundreds
of people every day just going on this thing, begging
for help and then being aggressively scammed. Someone here saying
live chat, can I get someone from meta live Chat
day later help me recover my disabled account. Plus, someone
stole my pictures from Instagram and is using the scam
men through offers of sexual content and meetups. Facebook won't
(28:39):
delete the account because they use a different name than mine.
Someone hacked my Facebook account now he changed all its
details and name too. I think the meds and I
send the complaint in Facebook help center. They restrict the
account and gave me a link to recover it. When
I tried that and recorded a video selfie. It didn't work,
and every time when I tried to make the video,
every time has failed to load. Anyway, some of these
(29:01):
people don't have the best English. I can't speak of
a languages. Not going to judge them for that, But anyway,
I have a product idea for Meta is this idea
of deleting every one of these groups so that people
don't get fucking scammed. Important detail though, Now, last year
Meta came up with a bloody interesting new idea, this
new feature. Not a big product company, Meta, but they
(29:22):
came up with this idea. It's called Meta verification. Now
do you know what you get for your fifteen dollars
a month where you get a little check mark and
they know who you are and they say you're the
real person.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You also get support, customer support. It's an actual kleptocracy.
It's an actual situation where they are making it so
that only those who pay will have help. Now there
may be an argument from some of you, You say, well,
that's just not particularly fucking fair, is it. These poor companies,
Poor Mark Zuckerberg, right, poor Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't make
(29:53):
anything from the poor, these horrible little free pigs who
oinchored him and say, Mark, Mark, please don't let me
get scammed, don't let people steal from me. And Mark says, ah,
I I couldn't possibly make because I make only forty
dollars are usual. He makes forty fucking forty dollars and
sixty cents per user. This is more valuable than a
(30:15):
regular subscription, though of course fifteen bucks a month would
be making more than that, But nevertheless, that's an insanely
large amount of money. That's an insanely large amount of
money for a service that is decaying and being decayed
by a lack of responsibility in stewardship from the fucking
burke who runs it and the scumbags who run it
(30:37):
with him. And this is what Facebook is, by the way,
It's just this whole of sponsored content and outright scams,
and Meta is not a steward of this product. It's
been fucking awful for years. They've been making it worse
to grow revenue, but also on top of that, they've
not been trying to keep it anything like a reliable product,
like a good product. It's like if you got on
(30:58):
the bus and one of the wheels fucking fell off
sometimes and they went, well, you know that happens with buses.
That just happens. Sometimes you sit on a bench in
a park and it just explodes, splinters all up in
your ass. Yeah, that's just what benches do. Mate, the
bench was free, you fucking ass whole. It's so annoying,
and I really must repeat myself that it's been like
this for years. Meta's been gradually and aggressively making the
(31:21):
experience worse, and they've just let this hellhole kind of decay.
It really is decay. That's the word I keep coming
back to because it sucks.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And some of you.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I've heard from a lot of you who say, oh,
I just don't use it. I just don't use it.
Even if you don't use this, even if Meta is
something you have cut out of your life, there is
a real consequence to a social network being used by
billions of people. That is this unregulated digital ecological disaster.
It's this open wound in the side of the Internet
(31:53):
where scammers and spammers the light in tricking and swindling
people without any fear of repercussions from Meta, and honestly,
they stop giving a shit years ago. Now, if I
get a comment from Meta about this, and by the way,
if you're listening from Meta, put Mark on my show.
Otherwise I don't want to fucking hear from you. I
don't care. I'm not interested. Actually, give me boss Worth,
give me Buzz. I'd love to have a chat with Buzz.
(32:13):
You and me, Buzz, Let's chat it up. But anyway,
I'm sure their comment would be, where we do stop scammers, Well,
you don't really stop them all. And indeed, if I'm
the one, one, one surly dipshit with the microphone that
can find this hive of scammers with really no effort,
why don't you have any automation to do this? Why
(32:33):
don't you have something to stop that? And the answer
is Meta doesn't care. Meta does not care. They stopped
giving a shit a while ago. And it's revisionist history
to pretend that Mark Zuckerberg has suddenly chose to take
the guardrails off. It's insane how many people I'm reading
who are acting as if this is new. But I
(32:55):
need you to realize a Meta all things are justified undergrowth,
like making the platform harder to navigate so that users
spend more time trying to find the things they actually
want to see, or allowing giant groups of scammers and
spammers to flourish, so there's always new content for people
to get lost in, even if it sucks or it's
harmful or it hurts them. And you can hear how
(33:17):
much distaste I have for all of this.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
But but it's me. I wouldn't be done after just one.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Now this is a two parter, and in the next episode,
I'm going to get into how Zuckerberg got away with
all of this, and he did so by taking advantage
of members of the media that were either asleep at
the wheel, hamstrung by their editorial side, or actually just
willing to help run air cover for Mark Zuckerberg. And
then once I've done that, I want to explain what
the actual consequences are, because they're not great. None of
(33:46):
this is great. But I don't want to leave you
completely depressed. Right now, you're probably you're seeing the inauguration
feeling pretty dark. I really do mean hold those closes
to you closer. I do mean be a little bit
more loving with the people around you. Big theme of
CES was love and companionship and solidarity with your fellow
human beings. Call your friends, Text your friends, tell me
(34:09):
you love them. Any of your friends whore like why
he's telling me, I love it, you love me. That's
a that in and of itself, is the symptom of
a society that has lost love. Everything feels really fucking dark.
Don't get me wrong, but you're still an autonomous human being.
You're still capable of talking to the people around you.
To quote ned Bta won't say write your congressman. I
(34:31):
don't know what I would tell you to tell them,
but I will tell you this. The people around you
need you. The people around you love you, and if
they don't, don't talk to them. But show more love
to those around you, Show more love to everything, and
put more love into everything you do.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
And you'll hear the next episode soon.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
He'll only be a few days, and I think you're going.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
To really like it. But I love you all.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and
composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You
can check out more of his music and audio projects
at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O s
O W s ki dot com. You can email me
at easy at better Offline dot com or visit better
Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of
(35:26):
course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to
chat dot Where's Youreed dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. School
As Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zichron.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
What.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's been a shitty week for many obvious reasons, and
I challenge you at this time to be kind to
yourself and to the people around you. Be kinder, old,
I'm closer, be more supportive, say nicer things. But specifically
to my trans listeners, I love you, You're loved and accepted.
Fuck these people, Fuck the Executive Order. I'm so sorry.
And anyone who agrees with the that EO or is
(00:41):
against trans people, you can go fuck yourself. Like I
need you to download something else, go and do something
else with your time. I'm not interested in helping you.
You are not my friend. You will never be my friend.
If you're against trans people, I'm against you. Anyway, back
to the podcast. So, I've been back from CEES for
a week now and I'm finally recovering. And I appreciate
(01:01):
everybody who listened to the thirteen and a half hours
of audio we put out, and a big thank you
to the whole team there, Edward and Gwayso Junior, David Roth,
Phil Broughton, Matt Sowski and everyone else who came along.
Now we're back to our regular format, and it's likely
going to be a rotation between more of the talk
radio stuff you heard at cees and then heard with
Paris Martineau and Jeff Jarvis, and then stuff like this
(01:23):
spoken word. I'm back baby. But twenty twenty five it's
going to be a chaotic year. You're going to feel
a deficit of hope. I've said this before, but I'm
going to say it again. The best thing you can
do right now is to hold those people you love closer,
Treat everyone around you, like I said, a little more kindly,
Listen more keenly to the things that people are saying,
and put your heart and soul into the things you
(01:45):
do and the things you do for others. You may
not be able to change much at scale, but you
can improve your immediate orbit the bubble around you.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
In this week's two parter, I'm going to talk to
you about the people who choose to do the direct opposite.
They use their power on their platform to exploit and
hurt people for money, or they use another platform to
help maintain the status quo, usually at the cost of
other people's happiness. You see, in the last few weeks,
we've seen the emergence of what I call the true
Meta and of course the true Mark Zuckerberg As the
(02:16):
company chose to end its fact checking program in early January,
claiming that and I quote fact checkers have been too
politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created
on both Instagram and Facebook, the latter of which are
shown in a study from George Washington University to by
design and I quote again afford anti vaccine content producers
several means to circumvent the intent of misinformation removal policies.
(02:39):
Metas also killed its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, something
that I expect other tech firms to copy, unrestrained by
any kind of societal norms under an administration that seems
intent on destroying as many of them as possible. Shortly
after announcing the policies, Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan
experience and had what I would describe as a full
scale pissfit, claiming that corporate are culturally newted and that
(03:02):
companies should have both more masculine energy and have a
culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more, and then
he added that said culture would have its own merits
that are really positive. I none of this means anything.
Zuckerberg also believes that the modern corporate culture has somehow
framed masculinity is bad, something that he doesn't really attempt
to elaborate on or explain or frame with any kind
(03:24):
of evidence because he's on the Joe Rogan experience, and
because he also knows no one's going to fucking ask him.
And it's it's just this kind of directionless grievance, and
it feels me full of piss and vinegar myself. And
this means, by the way, that Metin has now and
I quote their own announcement, gotten rid of a number
of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity, and gender
(03:46):
that are subject to frequent political discourse and debate, which
in practice means that Meta now allows you to say
that being gay as a mental illness, or describe immigrants
as filth and as an immigrant. I find that disgusting.
I find all of this so fucking disgusting. They, as
I'll get to in this episode, they never really cared
that much. But to formalize this stuff is so utterly hurtful.
(04:06):
It's a template for worse people. And Facebook of Meta
is right down at the fucking bottom of a barrel.
This is going to give other companies something to borrow.
And it's just when I read this stuff, I just
I hear the Perry Mason music from kill Bill. Anyway,
moving on with the episode. Now, surprise here, Casey Newton,
(04:28):
a platformer who I have been deeply critical of and
will be very critical of in a later episode, has
done a really excellent job reporting on exactly how horrifying
these policies are, revealing how Meta's internal guidelines allow Facebook
users to say that trans people are both mentally ill
and don't exist. Which, to be clear, if you're listening
to this and saying that you agree with that, I'd
like you to stop listening for a second. I'd like
(04:50):
you to get your car keys of you to close
your garage, don and I'd like you to start the
fucking ignition just in case it's really it's not clear
enough how I feel about anti trans people. It also
included one of the most wretched things I've ever read.
Alex Schultz Meta CMO, who is a gay man, suggested
in an internal post that people seeing their queer friends
(05:11):
and family members abused on Facebook and Instagram could lead
to increased support for LGBTQ rights. This is, and I
don't say this lightly, one of the most disgusting and
offensive and stupid things I've ever heard a tech executive say.
But let's be abundantly clear, this is exactly the kind
of social network that Mark Zuckerberg wants, an unrestrained, unfiltered,
unrepentantly toxic, and noxiously heteronormative, one untethered by the frustrating
(05:35):
norms of making sure that a social network of billions
of people doesn't actively encourage hate of multiple different marginalized groups.
And I am so angry about this because it's all
so needless. It's all so needless. But everything, everything, has
to be thrown into the fire for growth. That's who
these fucking people are. But dear Listena, don't worry Mark Zuckerberg.
(05:58):
He's finally free. Finally, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of
Meta can do whatever he wants, as opposed to the
past twenty years, where it's hard to argue that he's
one of the most, if not the single, most punished
man alive. You see Marky Marx net worth recently hit
two hundred and thirteen billion dollars. He's running a company
with a market capitalization of one point five trillion, and
(06:20):
he can never be fired from it. He even owns
a fourteen hundred acre compound in Hawaii, And while dealing
with all of this suffering, he had to once, sorry,
I mean twice, sit in front of a Senate hearing
and lazily apologize for something non specifically he was tortured,
tortured only six years after having done it last. I
(06:40):
am being very sarcastic. Obviously this man has not suffered.
I don't want to say the next part of that sentence,
but he's not suffered at all. He's had the easiest
go of it, just like the rest of these fucking people.
Few living people have had it easier than Mark Zuckerberg.
He's a man insulated from consequence, risk, and responsibilit and
(07:00):
he has been for like twenty years. The sudden and
warranted alarm to this, by the way, and I will
say the media has acted with enough alarm here. Here's
this air of surprise, though it frames Meta and Mark
Zuckerberg like they just suddenly were like, hmm, what if
we were super bigoted? What if our new network could
(07:23):
what if it could be more racist. We need to
please Donald Trump, because that's not what Meta has been
doing before, right, They've never been Well, we'll get to
that in a bit, but I kind of want to
take you back in memory lane a bit a long
time ago, by which I mean August twenty twenty four.
The people in the media today saying, oh wow, Mark
(07:44):
Zuckerberg has suddenly gone conservative, He's suddenly right wing. Me
months ago, they were fawning over this guy. They were
fawning over his new look. They were desperate to hear
about his gold chains and why he was wearing them,
and they declared that he had the swagger of a
Roman emperor, and that he had and I quote the
Washington Post here, transformed himself from a dorky democracy destroying
(08:04):
CEO into a dripped out, jacked AI accelerationist. In the
eyes of potential Meta recruits, Zuckerberg was, until these last
few weeks, being celebrated for the very thing that people
are upset about right now. Flimsy, self conscious and performative
matro bullshit that only signifies strength to weak men and
those credulous enough to accept it, which in this case
(08:27):
means almost every media outlet. The only difference between then,
when Mark was with his chains in his big baggy
T shirt and he looked like Kevin Fedline and now
is that Mark Zuckerberg has finally decided to be honest
after all. Where was the punishment or judgment for his
last matro media bullshit? If anything, it kind of proved
that anyone will accept anything that Mark Zuckerberg does at all.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yet, I really want to be clear that what.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
We're seeing with Meta and by extension, Zuck is not
sudden at all. It's the direct result of a man
that has never ever ever been held in check. It's
utter fantasy to describe or even hint that these changes
are the beginning of some sort of unrestrained Meta rather
than part of the intentional destruction of this product and
all of their products in the market. Leader of rot economics,
(09:15):
this is the rot economy. This is everything I've been
telling you about growth at all costs. Except the costs
now are the safety of trans people, a safety of
LGBTQ people, the safety of immigrants. This hostile network that
was already pretty hostile, and I will get to that
is now basically saying thumbs up, go nuts, be as
(09:36):
bigoted as your fucking one. It's disgraceful. And as I
said in the middle of last year, Metas spent years
gradually making the experience of its products worse in pursuit
of perpetual growth. And if you go back to the
people Destroying Facebook that podcast episode that was actually from
Mark Zuckerberg, you wanted something like twelve to fourteen percent
perpetual year of a year growth. Insane stuff. But when
(09:58):
I say intentionally, I mean the product decisions like limiting
the information in notifications as a means of making users
click more and go around the page rather than I
don't know, being notified of something and knowing something, or
heavily promoting clickbait articles. This was all to keep people
on the site longer, and they've been doing it for
years in broad daylight, and it's led to this deterioration
(10:19):
of Facebook and soon Instagram that is just disgraceful, but
not as disgraceful as formalizing horrible hate field policies. And
some are touting Zuckerberg's current move as some sort of
master plan to appease Donald Trump and the conservatives, and
they're suggesting that this is a magification of these platforms
where conservatives will somehow be given I don't know, preferential treatment.
(10:39):
Perhaps maybe like Facebook's algorithm, it could promote more conservative content. Man,
wouldn't that be really bad? Wouldn't it be bad if
Facebook's algorithm was intentionally and repeatedly recommending conservative content. It's
been doing it for fucking years. Why are we pretending
like this is new? Why is everyone acting like this
is new? On going insane? I am actually going in
(11:00):
ain't because the actual problems here have been there a while.
The only thing that's changed is they formalize them.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And I am so.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Angry in this episode because I can't leave these people unaccountable.
I cannot have people that wrote about this pretend like
this is new, like this is sudden. It's time for
everyone in the media to take a little bit of
fucking responsibility for what we've done. But give me a second, though,
(11:38):
I actually want to lead you through someone who did
a pretty good job. And you're not gonna believe me,
but it's Kevin Russ of The New York Times.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You see.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
In twenty twenty, Russ created an automated Twitter account called
Facebook's top ten listening the top performing posts, So what
post was shared, viewed, and commented on the most on
Facebook by US Facebook pages, and he posted it on
a daily basis. He was able to do this using
something called crowd Tangle, a data analytics tool provided by
Facebook specifically for researchers and journalists to understand what was
(12:07):
happening on the world's largest social network at the time.
Ruce's reporting revealed that Meta's top performing links regularly skewed
toward right wing influences like Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, and
Sean Hannity, as well as outlets like Fox News and
the page of then President and I guess now President
Donald Trump. Internally, Meta was kind of freaking out, suggesting
that Ruth wasn't really getting what it meant because engagement
(12:30):
was a misleading measurement of what was popular on Facebook.
They suggested that the real litmus test was something called reach,
as in how many people actually saw a post. Ruce
also reported that the internal arguments of Meta led it
to suggest it'd make a separate Twitter account of its
own that had what they would call a more balanced
view of its internal data, which one hundred percent makes sense.
(12:52):
Meha even suggested the obvious answer sharing reach data, as in,
again how many people actually saw a post, and that
this would somehow vindercate their position. One nasty little detail
bone crowd Tangle CEO told them that well foursome misleading
news stories also rise to the top of the reach list.
In simpler terms, they didn't share the reach data because
(13:13):
it would prove that Facebook was in fact a misinformation machine.
The reporting around crowd Tangle, though, danced around in important detail.
They were just talking about posts and you know, these
are just the posts that happened to be on Facebook, right,
It just happens that Dan Bongino got to the top
all of these times. How did that happen? Well, let
me tell you how it fucking happened. They were likely
recommended by Facebook's algorithm, which is reliably and repeatedly skewed
(13:37):
conservative for years. A study in the Economist from September
twenty twenty found that the most popular American media outlets
on Facebook in a one month period were Breitbart and
Fox News, and that both Facebook page engagements and website
used heavily skewed conservative. This is quite old that this
has been happening a while.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Well, one could.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Argue that this might just be the will of the users.
What a user sees on face. This book is almost
entirely algorithmic now, and it certainly was back then, and
it's reasonable to assume that said algorithm was deliberately pushing
conservative content. At this time, metas head of public policy
was Joel Kaplan, a man whose previous work involved working
as George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff for policy,
(14:16):
as well as handling public policy and affairs for Energy
Future Holdings.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Really fucked up little story for you.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
This was a company, a private equity firm, kind of
Katamari situation, which brought up a giant Texas power company
called TXU forty five billion dollars and then immediately steered
it into bankruptcy due to the thirty eight point seven
billion dollars in debt that Energy Future Holdings was forced
to take on as a means of acquiring the power company.
It's private equity again. It's always fucking private Jesus Christ. Anyway,
(14:45):
this is the now, the policy headed META, and he
has been four years.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
It's all very good anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Jeff Horwitz reported in his wonderful book Broken Code that
Kaplan personally intervened when Facebook's health team attempted to remove
covid conspiracy movie plan from its recommendation engine, and Facebook
only did so once Kevin Roos reported that it was
the most engaged link in a twenty four hour period. Naturally,
Met's choice wasn't to fix things, or improve things, or
take responsibility or issue were comments saying hard we're going
(15:14):
to look into the conservative thing. No, no, no, why
would they do that. By the end of twenty twenty one,
Meta had disbanded the entire crowd Tangle team, and in
early twenty twenty two, the company had stopped registering new
users for crowd Tangle. In early twenty twenty four, months
before the twenty twenty four elections, crowd Tangle was shut
down entirely, though Facebook Top ten had stopped working in
the middle of twenty twenty three. What I'm getting at
(15:36):
is that Meta hasn't made a right wing turn. Meta
has been an active arm of the right wing media
for nearly a decade, actively empowering noxious, horrifying creatures like
Alex Jones, allowing him to evade bands and build massive
private online groups on the platform so that he could
still send his shit out even when he was banned.
A report from November twenty twenty one by medium Mattters
(15:57):
found that Facebook had tweaked its news algorithm into twenty
one to help right leaning news and political pages to
outperform other pages using and I quote sensational and divisive content.
Another medium Matters report from twenty twenty three found that
conservatives were continually earning more total interactions than left or
non aligned pages between January first, twenty twenty and December
(16:18):
thirty one, twenty twenty two, even as the company was
actively deprioritizing political content, by which I mean the algorithm
was allegedly showing year less politics unless, of course, you
were conservative. A report from last year from nonprofit Glad
found that Meta had continually allowed widespread anti trans hate
content across Instagram, Facebook, and threads, but the company either
(16:40):
claiming that the content didn't violate its community standards or
just ignoring the reports entirely. While we can and should
actively decry mes disgraceful new policies, it's kind of ahistorical
to pretend that this company gave a shit in the past,
or took it seriously, or just that they cared. It
pisses me off because if we act now like they've changed,
(17:04):
they don't get held accountable at all. But then again,
did they before? Have they ever been held accountable? Oh no,
the answer is no. By the way, there are reporters
who have done really good work on this, Russ Kevin Rus,
who've given a lot of shit. He did some really
great reporting on crowd tankled Jeff Horwitz from the Wall
Street Journal, along with the other tea but did the
Facebook files, which get too later. There are people doing
(17:26):
great work. The problem is there's just this kind of
weak and inconsistent approach that the media has taken to
Meta and to Mark Zuckerberg, and none of these changes,
none of these things that I'm saying here are particularly
hard to find. If you look this up, you could say, hey,
look exactly as I am right now. Hey, this doesn't
seem to be a new policy. This just seems to
(17:48):
be them deciding to formalize their lack of effort to
protect trans people, their lack of effort to stop conservative
demagogues doing stuff. I mean, it's just it's frustrating. It's
frustrating and annoying, and seeing them formalize it fills me
full of poison in my veins. It's just it's hateful,
(18:09):
it's racist, it's violent, it's cruel, it's bigoted, and it's
how it's been for so long.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Why are we not just able to call these people
what they are?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And they really will do whatever they want to or
need to for growth. And I'm going to quote something here.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Quote Facebook's old vice president Andrew Bosworth from an internal
email from twenty seventeen. I've may have mentioned before, and
I quote all the work that Facebook does in growth
is justified, even if it's bullying or a terrorist attack
carried out on their platform. And yes, that's exactly what
he said, by the way. And you'd think a guy
who's like, yeah, you know, growth just we need to
(18:49):
grow at all costs. And indeed, if something bad happens
as a result, at least we connected people. You'd think
that a letter like that getting out was in twenty seventeen, Yeah,
that would lead to him being probably putting a naughty box.
I won't get promoted, would he. He wouldn't become the
chief technology officer, would he? Because that's what Andrew Bosworth is. Now,
this is what this company is. It's time to stop
(19:11):
pretending that Meta was ever something noble or good or
well meaning. Mark Zuckerberg is a repressed coward as far
from manly as one can get. Because true masculinity, if
you can even fully I don't even know if you
can really give it a full definition, but I will
tell you what is masculine. It's a sense of responsibility
for both oneself and others and the things that we do,
(19:33):
and finding strength in supporting, en uplifting those close to you,
and loving more and caring.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
More for people.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I don't really want to put down a hard and
fast one, but that's part of what masculinity is for me.
It isn't being a fucking crybaby billionaire going on Joe
row and going where oom oh the company's not masculine enough. Coward, motherfucker.
It's disgusting and Meta as an institution has been rotten
for years, making trillions of dollars as it continually makes
(20:01):
their services work, all to force users to spend more
time on the site, even if it's because Facebook and
Instagram are our engineered to interrupt everything you're doing, your
decision making, your autonomy with a constant slew of different
forms of sponsored and algorithmically curated crap. The quality of
the experience, something the media has categorically failed to cover,
(20:21):
has never been lower on Facebook or Instagram. I'm not
sure how anyone writing about this company for the last
few years has been able to do so with a
straight face. The products suck, They're getting worse, and yet
the company has never been more profitable. Facebook is crammed
with fake accounts, AI generated crap and nonsense, groups teaming
with boomers pushing stupid greeny memes that say I wish
(20:43):
we had can to a culture of respect, as they
recommended their third racist meme of the day. Instagram is
a carousel of screen filling, sponsored nonsense and recommended crap,
and users are constantly battling with these products to actually
see the things that they log on to see. I
want to be explicit here. I do not believe enough
reporting is being done into the fact that Facebook is,
(21:04):
as a product both bordering on useless and run in
such a way that it's actively harmful for society. Some
important facts to begin with are that the initial feed
on Facebook is totally algorithmic, with large chunks of the
screen taken up by stuff that Facebook pushes on you.
We don't really know how their algorithm works, after all,
not like there's any legislation or regulation that requires them
(21:25):
to disclose it, but we do know that it's built
to get people to engage with the content, even if
said content is low quality in send, or a racist
or misleading. The biggest thing to know about the modern
Facebook experience, and I must be really clear here, is
that it's effectively unmoderated. I refer to Jeff Horwitz's Broken
Code earlier. It's a really powerful book. Everybody should read
(21:47):
it because it's the most clear eyed view of how
bad this company has been and for how long it's
been this bad. But the big thing that Jeff brings
up is that everything internally at Facebook is about remove friction.
Now you may think, I mean, oh, so that would
make a really good experience. No, Removing friction in this
(22:07):
case means allowing people to post whatever they want. Groups
that are giant scams which I'll get too soon, or
just nonsense, groups that spread misinformation, fake sports news memes
that make people pissed off and more racist. And some
of the shit I've seen on Facebook going back years
is horrifying. And while there are mechanisms that Meta has
in place to stop outright illegal things like pornography and violence. Effectively,
(22:31):
anything else is fair game. I have in preparing this script,
found fifty different groups that are nakedly scamming users, each
one with anywhere from one thousand to eighteen thousand different members,
each trying to work out why they can't access things
like their Facebook or PayPal account. And finding these groups
is super easy. Just type Facebook support and scroll down
into the search bar at the top of your Facebook account.
(22:55):
And by the way, the scam's fairly simple. People go
into these groups that are like, oh, I can't access Facebook.
They are on Facebook at the time, but perhaps they're
just locked into the app, and they go in there
and they say, hey, I need help, I need help
getting back in, and usually a scammer from the Global
South will be there and say, yeah, message me. They
get their password, they get their email, they get access
to something else, and then they start stealing shit. And
(23:18):
I really must be clear how easy it is to
find these scam groups and how many people are very
clearly falling into them. It's really worrying, and it's kind
of stomach turning as well, and it's time to accept
the Facebook has become a kind of open sewer run
with a complete disregard for the user. It's constantly battering
them with sponsored and recommended content as a means of
keeping them on the site for longer. The longer a
(23:40):
user interacts with the site, the more advertising impressions they're shown,
and in turn they make more money for Facebook and Meta,
even if there's not really a service being provided. And
you may think keeping someone on the site that means
giving them something they want, right negative, it means getting
in the way of the thing they want, putting a
bunch of things, jump over little obstacle. Course, it's extremely
(24:03):
annoying and pisses me off daily. Now, kind of like
in the episodes that did at the end of twenty
twenty four, I'm going to walk you through very practically
(24:25):
the experience of going through Facebook. I want you to
have as close to a play by play as hu
mainly possible, because I want you to understand how fucked
up this website is.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Okay, you open your Facebook app and you immediately see
a pop up for stories, kind of the Instagram thing
where you click them through and there's an entire phone
screen filling video. But once you've watched some of those,
you scroll down. You see one post from someone you know,
then a giant ad that takes up a third of
your screen and a carousel of people you may know,
Then a post from a page you don't follow, then
a series of recommended reels that show a two second
(24:56):
clip on repeat of what you might see, but not
enough for you to actually get an idea if the
video will be good, so that you click through more
advertising impressions, then another ad, then three posts from a
page you don't follow, then another ad, and I find
my app is hitching as I scroll too fast. It's
kind of getting a bit clunky. So I think, what
would someone do if they needed help? Though, So I
(25:17):
decided to search for Facebook Support, which leads you to
a thin banner for Facebook Support the top. It's like
a maybe a half inch banner, and then below that
is this giant, quarter screen long sponsored post about Facebook
and I quote bringing your community together. And this, by
the way, has nothing to do with support, it's a
completely different thing. And then you get a selection of
groups blow them, the first of which is called Facebook Support,
(25:39):
with eighteen thousand members, including a support number one eight,
one hundred and eighth four nine three ninety six that
does not work. The group is full of posts about
people having issues with Facebook, with one by an admin
called Oliver Green telling everyone that this group is where
they can and I quote discuss issues and provide assistance
and solutions to them. By the way, Olive Green's avatar
(26:01):
is actually a picture of political writer Oliver Darcy. It's
extremely fucking strange.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
One post on there says, and I quote, please don't
respond to messages from my Facebook comma I was hacked,
with one responder called deca tech fix, asking when was
it hacked and asking them to message him now for
a quick recovery of an account that they appeared to
be posting with. Another where a user says someone hacked
my Facebook and changed all password is responded to by
another account called retech Man, who adds inbox me now
(26:29):
for help. Another where someone also says that they were hacked,
has another account James Miles, responding saying message me privately.
There are hundreds of interactions like these. Seriously, just go
on this site and look, go and look. Type in
Facebook support is completely insane. This site makes them so
(26:50):
much may billions and billions of dollars from this site.
It's so fucking strange. So another group is called account hacked,
and it has eighty five hundred members, but I'll add
it hasn't been updated since the end of twenty twenty three,
but it immediately hits you with a post that says,
and I quote message me for any hacking services. Facebook recovery,
Instagram recovery, lost Funds, recovery, I cloud bypass, et cetera,
(27:11):
with a few users responding, along with several other scammers
offering to help in the same way. There's another group
with sixty seven hundred members, this time called recover an
old Facebook Account you Can't look into, and it offers
yet another one eight hundred number that also did not work.
A post from December fifth, twenty twenty three, from a
user claiming that their account was compromised and their email
and password was changed has been responded to forty four times,
(27:32):
mostly by scammers attempting to offer account recovery services, but
a few times by other people experiencing the same problem. Elsewhere,
a group promising to literally send you money on PayPal
has twenty four thousand members and ten plus posts a day.
Another called PayPal Problem Solution, which reminds me of a
hive song offer similarly scammy services if you can't get
into PayPal. Another called cash App Vemo PayPal Zel Support
(27:56):
has fifty eight hundred members now. I also, as of
my research for this, joined another group and it was
called Facebook Support. It is just every day people going
on and on and on and on about how they
can't get into accounts and then being told hey, call
our toll free number. And it sucks. It sucks because
(28:19):
this took me no effort to find. There are hundreds
of people every day just going on this thing, begging
for help and then being aggressively scammed. Someone here saying
live chat, can I get someone from meta live Chat
day later help me recover my disabled account. Plus, someone
stole my pictures from Instagram and is using the scam
men through offers of sexual content and meetups. Facebook won't
(28:39):
delete the account because they use a different name than mine.
Someone hacked my Facebook account now he changed all its
details and name too. I think the meds and I
send the complaint in Facebook help center. They restrict the
account and gave me a link to recover it. When
I tried that and recorded a video selfie. It didn't work,
and every time when I tried to make the video,
every time has failed to load. Anyway, some of these
(29:01):
people don't have the best English. I can't speak of
a languages. Not going to judge them for that, But anyway,
I have a product idea for Meta is this idea
of deleting every one of these groups so that people
don't get fucking scammed. Important detail though, Now, last year
Meta came up with a bloody interesting new idea, this
new feature. Not a big product company, Meta, but they
(29:22):
came up with this idea. It's called Meta verification. Now
do you know what you get for your fifteen dollars
a month where you get a little check mark and
they know who you are and they say you're the
real person.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You also get support, customer support. It's an actual kleptocracy.
It's an actual situation where they are making it so
that only those who pay will have help. Now there
may be an argument from some of you, You say, well,
that's just not particularly fucking fair, is it. These poor companies,
Poor Mark Zuckerberg, right, poor Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't make
(29:53):
anything from the poor, these horrible little free pigs who
oinchored him and say, Mark, Mark, please don't let me
get scammed, don't let people steal from me. And Mark says, ah,
I I couldn't possibly make because I make only forty
dollars are usual. He makes forty fucking forty dollars and
sixty cents per user. This is more valuable than a
(30:15):
regular subscription, though of course fifteen bucks a month would
be making more than that, But nevertheless, that's an insanely
large amount of money. That's an insanely large amount of
money for a service that is decaying and being decayed
by a lack of responsibility in stewardship from the fucking
burke who runs it and the scumbags who run it
(30:37):
with him. And this is what Facebook is, by the way,
It's just this whole of sponsored content and outright scams,
and Meta is not a steward of this product. It's
been fucking awful for years. They've been making it worse
to grow revenue, but also on top of that, they've
not been trying to keep it anything like a reliable product,
like a good product. It's like if you got on
(30:58):
the bus and one of the wheels fucking fell off
sometimes and they went, well, you know that happens with buses.
That just happens. Sometimes you sit on a bench in
a park and it just explodes, splinters all up in
your ass. Yeah, that's just what benches do. Mate, the
bench was free, you fucking ass whole. It's so annoying,
and I really must repeat myself that it's been like
this for years. Meta's been gradually and aggressively making the
(31:21):
experience worse, and they've just let this hellhole kind of decay.
It really is decay. That's the word I keep coming
back to because it sucks.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
And some of you.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I've heard from a lot of you who say, oh,
I just don't use it. I just don't use it.
Even if you don't use this, even if Meta is
something you have cut out of your life, there is
a real consequence to a social network being used by
billions of people. That is this unregulated digital ecological disaster.
It's this open wound in the side of the Internet
(31:53):
where scammers and spammers the light in tricking and swindling
people without any fear of repercussions from Meta, and honestly,
they stop giving a shit years ago. Now, if I
get a comment from Meta about this, and by the way,
if you're listening from Meta, put Mark on my show.
Otherwise I don't want to fucking hear from you. I
don't care. I'm not interested. Actually, give me boss Worth,
give me Buzz. I'd love to have a chat with Buzz.
(32:13):
You and me, Buzz, Let's chat it up. But anyway,
I'm sure their comment would be, where we do stop scammers, Well,
you don't really stop them all. And indeed, if I'm
the one, one, one surly dipshit with the microphone that
can find this hive of scammers with really no effort,
why don't you have any automation to do this? Why
(32:33):
don't you have something to stop that? And the answer
is Meta doesn't care. Meta does not care. They stopped
giving a shit a while ago. And it's revisionist history
to pretend that Mark Zuckerberg has suddenly chose to take
the guardrails off. It's insane how many people I'm reading
who are acting as if this is new. But I
(32:55):
need you to realize a Meta all things are justified undergrowth,
like making the platform harder to navigate so that users
spend more time trying to find the things they actually
want to see, or allowing giant groups of scammers and
spammers to flourish, so there's always new content for people
to get lost in, even if it sucks or it's
harmful or it hurts them. And you can hear how
(33:17):
much distaste I have for all of this.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
But but it's me. I wouldn't be done after just one.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Now this is a two parter, and in the next episode,
I'm going to get into how Zuckerberg got away with
all of this, and he did so by taking advantage
of members of the media that were either asleep at
the wheel, hamstrung by their editorial side, or actually just
willing to help run air cover for Mark Zuckerberg. And
then once I've done that, I want to explain what
the actual consequences are, because they're not great. None of
(33:46):
this is great. But I don't want to leave you
completely depressed. Right now, you're probably you're seeing the inauguration
feeling pretty dark. I really do mean hold those closes
to you closer. I do mean be a little bit
more loving with the people around you. Big theme of
CES was love and companionship and solidarity with your fellow
human beings. Call your friends, Text your friends, tell me
(34:09):
you love them. Any of your friends whore like why
he's telling me, I love it, you love me. That's
a that in and of itself, is the symptom of
a society that has lost love. Everything feels really fucking dark.
Don't get me wrong, but you're still an autonomous human being.
You're still capable of talking to the people around you.
To quote ned Bta won't say write your congressman. I
(34:31):
don't know what I would tell you to tell them,
but I will tell you this. The people around you
need you. The people around you love you, and if
they don't, don't talk to them. But show more love
to those around you, Show more love to everything, and
put more love into everything you do.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
And you'll hear the next episode soon.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
He'll only be a few days, and I think you're going.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
To really like it. But I love you all.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and
composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You
can check out more of his music and audio projects
at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O s
O W s ki dot com. You can email me
at easy at better Offline dot com or visit better
Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of
(35:26):
course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to
chat dot Where's Youreed dot at to visit the discord,
and go to our slash Better Offline to check out
our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. School
Host
Ed Zitron
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