TFGL2021 - S4 - Ep 6 - Our Truth
Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.
Fay Schofield is your host and she is joined by TfGL regular Greg Ashton.
Our special guest this week is Ana Zarraga, Head of Digital and Content at Global Witness, an organisation that challenges the abuses of power to protect human rights, the environment and secure the future of our planet.
Transcript
Fay: Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast. If you're new here, we are a podcast that talks about what's new on the tech for good front, but more often than not we end up talking about how tech is being used for evil, which is quite timely because we are in Halloween week. Talking about Halloween. The lineup this week is pretty scary. We're going to be talking about the fact that Trump is making a comeback. Oh. The world is heating up and campaigners are keeping a close eye on global leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26 next week. And surprise, surprise. Facebook is back to its dodgy dealings. All that and more coming up on today's podcast. Joining me today we have Greg Ashton. So Greg carrying on the Halloween theme, here is a scarily bad warmup for you. Would you spend a night in a haunted house? Money could be involved so you could be paid to stay there. Would you spend the night in a haunted house? Yes or no.
Greg: What am I sleeping on?
Fay: Oh, it’s quite a luxurious haunted house. It's very haunted though.
Greg: Well, that's fine. Yeah. As long as I've got comfort, then that's.
Fay: Okay, cool.
Greg: Yeah. I’m happy with that. I mean, I live in a cold damp apartment anyway, so all those creepy cold spots, I'm pretty used to it by now. But as long as I've got a comfortable bed, I’m happy.
Fay: As long as you've got a comfortable bed, you don't care how haunted it is?
Greg: No. God no.
Fay: All right. Fair enough. And I'm Fay Schofield. I'm your host today. I am at the opposite end. I don't care if I'm staying in five-star luxury. If it's haunted, I ain't staying in it. I'm just, I'm a massive wimp. Ghosts truly do exist in my mind. They are terrifying. Small child ghosts tend to be the worst ones in my opinion.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: I'm just not doing it. I'm just not doing it. Uh, and, uh, our guest today is the raga from Global Witness. Anna is currently the Head of Digital and content for global witness. If you haven't heard of Global Witness before, where the hell have you been? They're an organization that challenges the abuses of power to protect human rights, the environment, and secure the future of our planet. So not a lot then really? Anna: Hello, thank you for joining us today. Same question. Would you spend a night in a haunted house if you were paid to do so?
Anna: Hello. Thank you for having me. Um, all my goodness. If I was paid, it depends. I think I'm also scared of children ghosts, like more specifically, but how much am I going to be paid and why kinds of ghosts am I going to find there?
Fay: Gosh I should’ve thought about this more.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: Okay. You paid £10,000 to stay there for a night, but it's really haunted we're talking kid ghosts, poltergeists.
Greg: Is it like The Haunting with Catherine Zeta Jones where it's a beautiful old house but there’s baby faces everywhere.
Fay: Yeah. Baby faces everywhere. You're on your own. You don't have your phone.
Anna: Goodness, terrifying. No, no, I think I'll pass. I think I would pass. Definitely. Baby faces. Doll faces. It sounds really creepy. Um, yeah. No.
Fay: Cool. You and me Anna, we'll just go to the pub and we'll just wait for Greg. We'll just wait for Greg to come and buy us pints when he's got his 10 grand. Right. First up, stat of the week. Greg, what's going on?
Greg: Yeah, I don't think it's a comeback. He's desperately been trying to stay relevant for awhile and realised that he can't just send handwritten notes to all of his fans that literally his popularity was driven by social media. So Trump has gone, okay, hang on a minute. Why don't I try and create my own social media platform? He's not just focusing on social media as well. He’s building a whole media venture. So in some respects, this has gone very well. In others iIt's gone very badly. So the very well aspect is the organisation which owns The Truth Social, this digital world acquisition court, which has merged with Trump Media and Technology Group basically was opened for investment and went from zero to 12 billion valuation in just a few days. The Trump media aspects of it was worth $8.2 billion based on the closing price, um, with the parent company being worth $12 billion. And it has real echoes of GameStop, where people have just gone crazy. It's one of those things where, you know, he's involved. So a lot of his fans have been funding it. But also what I found really interesting is some Republican supporters who aren't from fans have been funding it as well, cause they were like, well, we can make a ton of money off this. Because the price is going to go crazy. So you've had a few people funding it. So one great quote from a one supporter who didn't vote for Trump, who said it's Trump's social network going to work out? Probably not, but that doesn't mean you can't make some money in the meantime,
Fay: OMG.
Greg: [laughs] Which is brilliant. So what do we think about this funding? And then we'll move on to some of the more technical challenges that they have been having with the actual platform.
Fay: Oh, God, it's just, I mean, 2021, it hasn't been a great year for like multiple reasons all around, don't get me wrong. But it was kind of nice that there wasn't really like a public, I mean, I know as you say, Greg, I know Trump, isn't making a comeback. He's been trying to come back from bloody ages, but it's been quite nice to almost have a social media world free a little bit of Trump. So like now this has come back, it's like, oh God, are we here again? Is it, you know, is there going to be more attacks on the Capitol in the US that's kind of riled up by this sort of social media network? It just feels like we're on the hamster wheel of doom once more with this. Cause it probably, I don't know, will it pick up? Like this guy says probably not. But in the meantime, there's enough people behind it funding. Then there's the reality that it could. That it really could. And obviously when we're thinking, this is where I'm going to chuck you in anna but like when we're really thinking about kind of, you know, the danger to sort of like human rights and how social media is like all tied up in that, it just seems like the tip of the iceberg in terms of another problem that's waiting to kind of bite us all in the ass. What do you think Ana?
Anna: Definitely. It's just horrifying news and I was just trying to read a little bit more about the plans and why the heck is it called Truth Social? Like, is there any more off-putting name to a social network and something that claims that, you know, to have the truth? One of the things that I thought was quite horrifying about it is that apparently when you sign up to it and people have been able to say no, then they took down the URL. There was like some story around how they write to you to get people to wait in line or to have some sort of like a key or so on. But they prohibit people from making fun of content on that social network. How would you run a social media platform by forbidding the best part about social media? One of the best parts about social media, you know, you're not able to make fun within it, or to take anything off platform and do anything with it, like take screenshots and make fun of it. Like on Facebook, for example, you wouldn't be able to do so. So it's just, I can't really, I can't really picture how that's going to work. But on a more serious note, it's just hard. You know, how are people going to sign up for it? What language is going to be available? I'm guessing only English, if it's going to be available in the US? Who is going to be moderating? What kind of content is going to be amplified in this?
Fay: [laughs] Oh God.
Anna: What emojis are going to be available even? I can't even begin to picture how that's going to work. So there are lots of questions and so Facebook, Twitter, Google, to some extent as well, having the spotlight, basically to be held accountable for their kind of human rights responsibilities and how they're amplifying some content and how they could serve content in front of people according to their online behavior and so on. But where does truth [laughs]? Who is going to hold them accountable? Yeah, I can't even picture, even if Facebook is like a big black box. I can't imagine what it's going to be like.
Greg: Yeah, I think that's the whole point though. They're saying that they don't want things being held accountable. They talk about section 230. So saying is if anything goes on, you know, you're not going to sue us, that kind of stuff. But I think they've kind of miss interpreted some aspects of that, you know, where it's like, yeah, you can't be sued for sub section 230 but there's a lot of other stuff that could go wrong on this platform, which you probably haven't planned for. You know, like all those basic questions that you would just raise in there, like moderation, that kind of stuff. It's like, I think the realities of running a social network are going to bite them on the butt because look at others that have not, you know, done this from a political standpoint who have failed. Like, it's so hard to create a new social network, even with Trump's popularity, you know, there's a certain number of people that you need to have on there and even with his fans, I don't think he's going to hit that kind of level of, you know, the levels that they need to make it worth while. And, and that's a real risk to the investors. I don't know much about investment, but the way that they've invested in it is quite a risky route to investment. They're called SPACs. So Special Purpose Acquisition Companies. And apparently retail investors don't really like them because if the company then doesn't meet their ambitious financial goals, then they lose loads of money. So yeah, it's going to be a real risky move for them. I mean the whole truth thing as well. Have you seen some of the screenshots of how it's done? So it's not just called Truth Social. When you put a message out, it's called your truths. So you have your truths. You're speaking your truth and it's that play on words, which is like, it's not the truth, it's your truth. And everybody speaks their own truth. So they're not really interested in - but how does that work? If you've just got a bunch of people saying, this is what I believe, what even is that thing. Is it a news site, how do you connect with people?
Fay: It’s just an echo chamber, it's just an echo chamber at the end of the day. Fingers crossed it falls on its ass, to be completely honest [laughs]
Greg: There's other reasons why it could fail. So going back to the technical problems. So it's built on masterdom, I think. And basically they set up a test site and had a number of people access it and set up fake Donald J. Trump accounts because they left the test site open to public access which was weird. And they've had a number of different people do that. But because of the way that they've done this and they ran that test version, they violated licensing agreements with Masterdom. So they've got 30 days to kind of fix those issues or they'll have to take it down. So straight away they've run into these technical issues. So. Yeah, even from a technical standpoint, I question whether they've got the skills they need to make this thing work. And, you know, even with the crazy fans, are they going to stick around if they get really annoyed with this thing that just doesn't work for them. I don’t know.
Fay: Probably not. Yeah. Interesting one. I'm sure we'll be keeping an eye on possibly Truth social crashing and burning. Something else that's kind of crashing and burning at the moment is our planet. We are in a climate crisis. I'm sure everybody listening to this podcast hopefully knows that. Charity news of the week, Greg, we're doing a COP 26 special. Do you want to kick us off?
Greg: There's a lot going on here isn't there? As we get gear up to COP. There's a new story every day. There's a lot of action coming from various charities. A lot of conversation. A lot of embarrassing stories and various things. So I'll run through highlights and then we'll kind of go through in a bit more detail. So yeah, so we've got campaigning buildings. So there's people calling in for COP 26 to be cancelled due to the poorest nations being left out due to various reasons such as COVID and other events happening. So we've got that situation where we've got some of the countries which could be most hard hit, not being able to be involved. Global witness. Anna, you'll be able to tell us about this. Putting human rights. You know, we've had huge numbers of environmental activists who have been murdered for standing up for climate in their countries and you know, how those issues are being answered at this event. We've got sponsors who are responsible for more tons of climate and pollution than the whole of the UK who was sponsoring the event. And we've got clear signs that the pledges that we're already hearing about are just not gonna be enough to hit the target. So let's jump in with Global Witness Anna and what you guys have been been discussing and working on.
Anna: Yes. So like you said, COP26, it's going to be busy, busy, busy. Some people argue that this is going to be the most important COP of all humanity. It's probably our last chance to get it right. To get the record right on climate and finally fix it for the people and for the planet as well. So one thing is that I think a couple of immunes and stuff happening at the same time. I think one of them is it's literally who's in the room at COP. Who are the people who are going to be attending COP? As you know, it's not only kind of a gathering of world leaders, but also policymakers, civil society, businesses, corporations, etc. Everyone's going to be at Glasgow. And there's been like a big, big question around how are other people from all the countries, from all across the world are going to come and attend COP26 and be able to influence those talks directly, especially the most effective people by the climate crisis. Some of these questions, uh, we have been running a social media campaign to raise some of these questions of like, who is in the room. Who's going to be influencing these policymakers and all these very important people. You know, the UK has had very strict traveling restrictions to ensure that people coming from a number of countries will have to quarantine etc. And apart from that and apart from the way it has been organized etc. There has been, again, the question of like, how are people going to come here. If you're working in, you know, if you're working in South America and you are an activist or you're running an organisation and you want to come here, you have to lose days and quarantine, you have to spend money on testing. Lots of things that really make us question the accessibility of COP26. Second of all is our, um, our work really focuses on the people who are at the forefront of the climate crisis. So ordinary people who are facing extraordinary circumstances and doing extraordinary things to send up to climate wrecking industry. So we're talking about mining, logging and the same industries that are breaking our planet, they are threatening the livelihoods and the rights of many people across the globe. Last year, more than 200 people were killed when standing up to this very same business. So it's clear about when the asset climate crisis intensifies the violence against land and environmental defenders also intensifies. So this year they need to get it right. The word leaders need to get it right. They need to stop like listening to the polluters, listening to the fossil fuel industry, listening to the banks and listening to all of the corporations that have been telling them for years, for years, having influence over the conversation and policy, trying to say, you know, selling us false solutions like greenwashing and, and trying to make your more climate friendly than they are. And this year, we really need to stop listening to those industries. We're to blame for a really, really, really good chunk of the climate crisis and the root of the climate crisis and start listening to those people who are at the frontline. So that's our campaign. We have been, like a tongue in cheek type of campaign called Toxic Friends and asking leaders to break up with their toxic friends, who are the polluters. And yes. I don't know if you've been following Global Witness on social media, you have seen how activists around the world, like from Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines are calling on our leaders to step up and to do what they have to do and start listening to the people most affected by the crisis.
Greg: Do you think it would impact things if they were in the room? Or, you know, are we just going to have the same platitudes that we always get?
Anna: That's a really good question. There is, you can't, there are certain things that you cannot do on Zoom. You cannot do online, you know, online debates or online events. They're very useful to have. They’ve been incredibly, you know, lifesaving during the pandemic. If there's some, if there's an event like COP in person, not being in a room means that your voice isn't heard. So you can't influence anything. There is no space for your own voice, your ordinance. It's not only about, you know, having your own voice and being heard and about your rights, et cetera. It's also been proven that for example, indigenous communities have a lot of climate knowledge that hasn’t been tapped into. So there are lots of challenges from our relation with our planet, with nature that haven't been answered. That cannot be answered from a room in Glasgow, if the people who are most affected are not going to be there. Let's be honest, that's not going to happen. The results of that are not going to be what we're expecting. So I really hope or we really hope that the representation of voices from Southern countries is also strong and important enough within those talks for our planet to have a chance. To have another chance.
Fay: Yeah. It's a really interesting is not the right word, but what's happening, obviously, you know, with the climate crisis impacting the communities that obviously feel it the most, which are the folks that as you rightly say, Anna should be in the room to have their voices heard, are also the communities that have been. Hit the hardest when it comes to vaccine rollout. There's this phrase that's going around at the moment amongst campaigners called vaccine apartheid. Just because some of the communities that are most affected by the climate crisis are also the communities that have been left out of sort of pandemic prevention and not being able to get vaccines. You know, I think Greg, you topped it up at the top of this section where you would just sort of saying, you know, the rules that the UK has in place for people to come in, in terms of visas and quarantining and all this kind of stuff, not only are they getting screwed over every day by these big corporation companies, you know, like logging, mining, whatever else. They’re then being screwed over, because they're not able to have a seat at the table where these solutions are being talked about and being disclosed. Then they're also not able to get the bloody vaccine or whatever to actually come in to get, to have a seat at that table. So it just seems like a triple threat against the people that are feeling the heat of the climate crisis the most. It’s just a really depressing situation for those that are feeling it the most,
Greg: I was thinking about this the other day, cause I was like, you know, the Western governments are not really going to listen to the smaller governments. You know, they never have, they're never going to stop doing that book. They've never had a unified view on any topics. I'm just wondering what happens in 10, 20 years' time when it's literally their lives are on the line, what do these meetings look like, then? What does the UN look like then? And how does that change things? I think, you know, even if the whole of the Southern nations kind of combined together, they'd still be on a losing streak from a financial and military perspective. But I dunno, it just changes the conversation, doesn't it, if they're all united and saying the same things. But it's getting that unity that I think is really going to be the challenge. And you look at places like India who are facing some of the worst floods and many dead and they're still one of the ones who are refusing to even consider changing the dependency on fossil fuels. So, yeah. I think there's still work to do. I guess then it's like, well, if that's not working, what are our other options? What are the things that we could maybe do to push the needle a little bit further? Is there an opportunity with businesses to just teach them, you know, it's not just about greenwashing, what about this? Or are there other things that we can do?
Anna: You have a really good question there. I was going to say, very interesting, but because I'm not British, when I say something’s very interesting it’s because I do find it very interesting. Indeed.
Greg: [laughs]
Anna: Definitely there is a chance to change the system. It's a system that is broken. If the system is not working before the less privileged, the system is working for the most privileged and not only the richest people on earth, it's also working for the corporations who are able to keep, you know, extracting fossil fields, financing harmful projects everywhere. They're just not being held accountable. And how can you even start? One of our streams of work is influencing the European Union or getting the European Union to legislate and say, well, every company headquartered in the EU must abide by this law and because the damage they cause overseas, like some of these companies, the trail of destruction they leave overseas outside of the European union borders, it's just horrifying. It's just horrific what they have been doing. Human rights violations, environmental destruction. So the system needs to change. It's completely and absolutely broken. It is not possible for, again, our leaders to keep being influenced by the same corporations that are destroying our planet. It just doesn’t add up. It just doesn't work. So yeah, I wish I could say that a lot of what we do as individuals count. And it does. But when you look at the news and you see that fossil fuel companies have been working with PR and advertising agencies to make us believe that our carbon footprint is a thing and that it isn't. And it's our way of, you know, making sure that it's our fault as individuals, because of our choices, that the planet is just destroyed or is rigged, that you realize that these people need to be stopped. They can't be trusted. Corporations cannot be trusted to do the right thing. So how can we make them do the right thing? So millions of ways but first of all, we have to change the system.
Fay: As you say, the system is broken. It will be a very interesting COP26. I mean, again, Halloween theme. COP starts on October 31st. For Christ sake, of all the dates you want to start important climate talks, why pick Halloween?
Greg: What did everyone think of Boris's comments about recycling? Cause I was surprised to hear it but not for the reason that everybody else is because he's right. Because I've spoken to Tom. Tom Passmore, who has been on the podcast before and he agreed. He told me it was like recycling isn't the answer. Like, even if we switched to other materials, he said the biggest problem that we have with waste and waste production is we're creating too much waste. And Boris Johnson said exactly that. But the reality is he might believe that. He could staunchly believe that but no Prime Minister or any leader is going to say to people, by the way guys, you need to stop by and stuff.
Fay: I just look at his face and get annoyed to be completely honest. I just think the next two weeks with COP, Boris Johnson and obviously Biden and everybody else. It's going to be amazing for the memes. That's all I'm saying. You know what I mean? Like the amount of quotes that are going to come out of COP. I don’t know. I mean, Anna, you got any thoughts on what Bo Jo had said about criticizing recycling?
Anna: Sorry, the BoJo comment made me think of the haunted house again [laughs]
Greg: [laughs] Clown.
Fay: I’m going to say, would you stay in a haunted house but haunted by Boris Johnson? There you go.
Anna: Of course Boris Johnson is going to take every single opportunity to ensure that your key is front and center of everything, including COP. And now I read today about tTour de France as well. Just a bunch of things that he just wants the UK to be just right there leading on it. But in a way, of course, consumerism, waste management, like you pick the topic. I think COP is just going to be so crowded and so full of messages and very, um, wishy washy type of things and announcements and stuff. But I think us as civil society, as an activist as well, our role is going to be to go through them with a fine tooth comb and say, this is just posturing. This is not right. And a lot of myth debunking. Because it's the same thing with corporations. It’s going to be like, oh, companies are going to send us emails about how they're committed to net zero. The truth is that for example, for fossil fuel companies, they can't really plant trees out of the climate crisis. It doesn’t matter how many trees they plant. They keep striking fossil fuels and it's the same damage. So yeah, I think that's going to be our work after everything. And after we're probably going to be slightly disappointed with the outcome of COP and say, look, this is what everyone has committed to do, let's go through it. Let's start demanding more from our leaders. And, you know, Pride Is For Future have done a really great job at keeping that and the headlines and protesting and have been so inspiring. And yeah, I believe there's more to come. I don't think they’re going to stop.
Fay: Big TBC. And talking from one broken system onto another. Leads us quite nicely onto tech news of the week. Greg, what's Facebook been doing now? I swear to God, we will have one podcast that will be one episode of tech for good live where we're not talking about some evil shit that Zuckerberg has done. Greg, what's been going on?
Greg: I do, you know, sometimes I'm like, we're turning into a Facebook podcast and I've said that before. But I mean, it’s the gift that keeps on giving so why wouldn’t I keep talking about it.
Anna: [laughs]
Greg: I'll stop talking about him when he stops doing stupid shit. The problem is this isn't any new stupid shit. The problem is this is now, you know, real substance coming out to some of the things that maybe we suspected or we just didn't have evidence for. So there's two things that have happened over the last week. One is, another whistleblower came out and revealed more things and basically accused Facebook of knowingly hosting hate speech and illegal activity and referenced situations. So they referenced one case where a Facebook communications official dismissed concerns about the platform's role in the 2016 election manipulation. And he literally said it will be a flash in the pan, some legislators will get pissy, then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement and we are fine.
Fay: Jesus [laughs] OMG.
Greg: He wasn't wrong. He was not wrong. They got petty. They moved on to the next thing. So you know, it really, what we're moving away from now is this kind of ambivalent organization that sort of stumbled into some difficult moral questions. To an organisation that has quite clearly known what it's been doing for some time and actively made decisions, which put people's lives in danger and not just lives, the fabric of our society, they’re in danger. And that's Western countries. If you look at other parts of the world, they've literally just sprayed fuel on fires that have existed for ages and gone, well, we can't really afford to spend money on creating a safe social media and so we're just going to give them the tools and then let them kill each other. Which has literally happened. The other aspect that we've seen is, what is now known as the Facebook papers. So this is the information that Haugen, the first whistleblower or the most recent whistleblower has shared, and the press have had the time to kind of go through everything that's been shared. So there's all sorts. Presentations, research studies, discussions, threads, and we've started to see key information coming out of this. So things like, Zuckerberg testifying to Congress that 94% of hate speech was being captured or removed by Facebook, when in reality internal documents show it was less than 5%.
Anna: How does this happen? How does this happen? My goodness.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Money over, you know, profit over people basically. And now we're seeing the categorical information that that is what they've been doing. It's not kind of vague. How does social media affect us? Their own research has shown in several studies that they are having a detrimental impacs on society and they've gone, we'll just ignore it.
Fay: It's just mad. It's just, it's just pure insanity. And Anna, I know, I’ll pass the mic to you in a minute, cause I know, obviously this is another area of work that Global Witness has kind of weighed in before and sort of looking at the threats that Facebook sort of put on people, especially coming out of Myanmar and stuff like that. But you know, not only is Zuckerberg lying before Congress, number one, but even just, you know, even just stuff like just reading one of the points you've got here, Greg, about how the algorithm is giving more weight, like emoji reactions, like the angry face, the angry reaction and stuff like that. So people are more prompted to get riled up and be angry about it. And then as you said, it's just the platform is just adding fuel to the fire constantly. And it's not just Facebook, it's Instagram as well. And I know we've talked quite heavily on the podcast before about, you know, the impact that Instagram is having on the mental health of teenage girls. And that's been, you know, this was Haugen’s, you know, this was one of the things that she revealed. And it's just every which way you look at the Facebook empire or Metaverse, which I can't bring myself to say, because I throw up in my mouth every time. It's every way that you look, it's just leaking toxicity and it's just, is there a way to like dismantle it? Is there a way to control it? And it's just how much more stuff can come out of the woodwork? It's still a thing. It’s still existing. I don't even know where to start with this one, to be honest. Anna, like this was going to be your rant of the week anyway, so yeah, what's your take on all this?
Greg: Just before you get started on that. It’s just been announced, because they're kind of doing their profits and stuff, that they made nine billion in profit in the last year.
Fay: Jesus’
Anna: Wow.
Greg: Just thought I’d stoke that little fire a bit more.
Anna: Yeah, it just never ceases to amaze me that they can just get away with it. I think that's the main problem. Because the facts are there. The whistleblowers have been saying it for a while. It's not the first time it’s happened and they're still able to get away with it. To get away with hate speech. To get away with harmful content, to get away with, you know, having a platform that amplifies hateful content. Well, it's interesting because I do remember the first conversations in the charity sector about Facebook, which is still a really important tool, especially for organisers and for people protesting in many places in the world, in how fundamental it was. For example, for the Arab spring and all those are the sort of examples that always come up when we're, we're trying to kind of speak the truth about Facebook. I feel like Donald Trump there. Speaking my truth about Facebook [laughs]
Greg: [laughs]
Anna: There are countries like Myramar where Facebook, they can’t really deny and they can’t have their cake and eat it. That big responsibility they have in places like Myanmar, for example, Facebook is not a social media platform. It’s the social media platform. It’s what people use to get news and what people use for absolutely everything. At Global Witness, we had an investigation coming up this year, where we looked into how Facebook, right after the coup in February this year, how Facebook were amplifying content from the military. Loads of things that they shouldn't be. Like for starters should not be happening and should not be published on Facebook. And if they had the human moderators, which, by the way are consultants that Facebook has, and they keep claiming that, you know, this pool of consultants,grows and grows and grows, for them to be able to think about this hateful messages and hateful content, like it's just not happening in. Our investigation revealed that was the case. That all of this content was just flying in people's faces and where you weren't going to and imagine being in that position where that's the main tool that you use to get your news and to get updates. And then you're just basically having loads of stuff about the people who are taking over your country. It's just horrendous. Like how are they able to get away with that? And it's not the first time that has happened. I don't really know why this hasn't been picked up in a way that is just more alarming. I think probably more kind of Northern UK Europe, US media tends to pick up on the other aspects of Facebook's work. But the fact that they keep saying that they don't have enough people to moderate content in non-English like in all the languages, why are they running a company the size of the country, if they can’t do that? Like literally they're probably leaving out, I don't know how many people in the world, like I didn't get that fact before coming on the podcast but how are countries going to unrest like civil unrest, like maybe things are happening in your country. You can’t get the facts. You can't really rely on Facebook to give you or to amplify the content that is truthful or that is factual or because it gives the same weight to the New York Times to like, a post or something like that. It just doesn't make any sense. And it's just terrible that today, in this year, they're still able to get away with it.
Fay: That's a really interesting point you made Anna. Just about the lack of supposedly, you know, lack of human moderators for non English speaking countries. If you have a look at sort of the breakdown in terms of which countries have the highest number of Facebook users. It's like, you know, it's non Western countries that are in that top ten. Like India is number one. The US comes in at number two, according to this stat that I'm looking at. Indonesia at number three. Brazil at number four. Mexico, number five. Philippines, number six. The United Kingdom doesn't come in until past the top ten spot. Yeah, the US is up there, but most of the countries that have the highest number of Facebook users are non-English speaking countries. And I think we might have touched on this on the podcast a couple of episodes ago, but when there was the outage of Facebook, you know, a couple of weeks back, the internet infrastructure of certain countries. just fell apart because of the reliance on Facebook and it's kind of global estate. And there was, I know there was, um, I think it was coming out of South Africa. The outage actually prompted the South African government to promote, put a call forward for local developers to develop a local social media system that wouldn't crap out and wouldn't put the company to a stand still. There's a quote here from the South African Prime Minister, which is basically sort of saying we can't, we can't rely on social media, what networks coming out of the west to drive our internet infrastructure. I don't know. I don't know what you guys think but is that maybe, is it kind of thinking more about local solutions in the countries that are currently so heavily reliant upon Facebook, is that kind of a way to kind of cut through this crap that Facebook's pumping out at the moment? And is it investing more into kind of local solutions, but then again, as we sort of said abou Truth Social, if you don't have the user numbers, is anyone ever going to be able to take on Facebook?
Greg: I think the reality is you either have one massive organisation that rules them all, you have a really fragmented system that doesn't necessarily work because the whole point is say Australia had their own system and we had our own system over here. I wouldn't be able to speak to my sisters because we're on two separate systems.
Fay: Yeah.
Greg: There's a bigger question, which is, well, what is social media and who should own it and who should run it. Because of the huge amount of work that goes on in there, you know, like businesses, charities, that kind of stuff, it is so integral to the fabric of society now. Does it need to become a public service? Do we need to look at how the government and social media interact?
Anna: Did you wonder how as a company that size or any of the big social media networks, how can you claim that you don't have any responsibility of the things that are published there. It’s not a forum on Yahoo. Yeah. It's just beyond me that they keep claiming that they're not publishers because they just allow people, they’re hands-on. Right? And they keep saying it’s a freedom of speech argument but clearly they can. They did it with Donald Trump, allegedly, but no one is asking Donald Trump to not speak up right there. He just doesn't have a Facebook account. It's not a human right to have a Facebook account. But why are they hiding behind that argument? And why did they keep hiding on that argument that they're not publishers, that they just hands-off and that everything runs as it's supposed to run. Where we all know and there's groups and there’s stats and everything out there telling us that there is an algorithm based on engagement at all costs that it just gets, it keeps promoting content that shouldn't be promoted. So yeah, I do feel very strongly about it. You know, in some countries like where you go to buy a mobile phone, it has Facebook on it already. Like the same way you buy a mobile phone. And you're like, I dunno, another company says, this includes Netflix and this includes things like I said, it has Facebook and people ask whether something has Facebook already on it. Facebook Lite, which is the one that's most used in the south. But I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. But I just think that Facebook needs to be held accountable for everything that they allow on their own platform because they control their platform. It's not a public service yet.
Fay: Not yet.
Anna: Although it's going to be rebranded, I wonder what the new name is going to be.
Fay: What are they gonna call it? This is why I annoy myself though, because I’m really intrigued to find out what it's going to be called, but then I hate Facebook, but then I still want to know what it's called. They just control the reality.
Greg: He’s fucking dreaming if he things that's going to help. Like, guys we'll call it something else and then, you know, everyone will forget that they hate us. It's like, does anybody refer to Google as alphabet?
Fay: No.
Greg: No. The only people who do is when you're talking about the financial stuff. Like no one fucking calls Google alphabet. It's always Google. Oh, sorry. Alphabet. And then like, yeah, you can call it Metaface, whatever you want. It's still going to be fucking Facebook, you moron.
Fay: On that note. That was a great note. We can do it really quickly, Greg. What's your and finally, cause this just, this just sounds hilarious, to be honest.
Greg: So if you've not seen it as a video doing the rounds today of an interview on Talk Radio, where the interviewer is interviewing somebody from Insulate Britain. I don't care about any of the politics and stuff relating to that. What is hilarious is he clearly gets exasperated with the person he’s interviewing us. Asks him what he does. And he's trying to do that confrontational interview technique. The guy says he's a carpenter. And the interviewer decides to then be like, well, is that really sustainable? You're cutting down trees. And he's like, the guy has to explain to him that trees grow. And he's like, well, why is that more sustainable? And he's like, well, you can't grow concrete. At which point the interviewer hangs up. So I've ruined it for you but go and check it out.
Fay: [laughs] Brilliant. Well, that brings us to the end. What a wild ride. Anna. How was that for you? Will you come back?
Anna: Amazing. I loved it. I loved this. I feel I should have had a drink with me, like proper British.
Fay: Yes. So we used to do them in person in Manchester. All pre-pandemic.
Anna: Ohhh.
Fay: Maybe one day, one day, we can all get together and do a podcast live and we'll all have drinks in our hands. Anna, if any of our listeners are hopefully listening, where can they find out more about you online? Is there anything you want to plug? This is your opportunity to plug any website or Twitter handle or anything you want really.
Anna: Oh my gosh. I should’ve prepared for this. I cannot think of anything up.
Greg: [laughs]
Anna: Yes, follow Global Witness for more about our work, during COP, which is going to be really cool and really, really exciting with some surprises along the way. Global witness dot org. And yeah, I'm on Twitter, usually ranting in three languages and anna Ozette. That's my handle and yeah, come and find me if you're listening to this and are interested in how I take on British things from my own perceptive.
Fay: I love it. I follow Anna on Twitter already. It's top quality content. Hopefully listeners out there,you think this is top quality content too. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Please do get in touch with us on Twitter at tech for good live, or you can email us at hello a tech for good dot live. We’d love it as well if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your pals about the podcast. It really does help. Big thank you to our sponsors, Podcast.co for hosting our podcast. Also please don't forget this podcast is run by volunteers. You might be able to tell the quality of the hosting today. And we do survive on sponsorships and donations. Right now, one of our primary goals is to make sure that every single one of our podcast episodes is accessible by making sure that every single one of them, there's a lot of everys in this sentence, every single one of them is transcribed. Sadly this does cost money. We're in desperate need of your help to continue to make this a reality. So if you've ever tuned into one of our podcasts, attended one of our events, followed us on social, are part of the Slack channel or whatever else, please consider chipping in for the price of a cup of coffee and you can donate to us by visiting tech for good dot live forward slash donate. Thank you everyone. We will be back next week with more tech for good live. Bye.
Greg: Bye.
Anna: Bye.