TFGL2021 - S4 - Ep 8 - Misinformation By Design

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

Host Bex is joined by Tech for Good Live podcast team members Greg Ashton  and Jonny Rae-Evans.

Our special guest is Andrew Wilding-Smith, Product lead at Parkinsons UK.

Transcript

Bex: Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast. It's a podcast all about using technology to have a positive social impact. I take this podcast very seriously, which is why I absolutely did not show up ten minutes late tonight and forgot to write an intro. We're super professional. We have an action-packed agenda this week. We'll be talking about stop funding heat and climate misinformation on Facebook. In charity news of the week. We'll be talking about the way that the terror attacks are reported on the news. Facebook is overhauling facial recognition on its platform due to fears of misuse. If Facebook is worried, Jesus, it must be bad. And we end on a heartwarming story about a soothing radio for dogs on bonfire night. All that and more coming right up. Joining me today, we have Greg Ashton. He's once again on the podcast. Greg, it's just been Bonfire Night, which is a big deal in the UK. Do you have a favorite day of the year? 

Greg: Honestly, Bex. I feel like every day is a gift. 

Bex: [laughs] Thanks, Greg.  Jonny Rae-Evans has graced us with his presence. Jonny, the same question. 

Jonny: The same answer. I turned 40 last week, which I did not expect to get to. So yeah, just, you know, any day where I wake up, still alive, is a gift for me. Maybe not for those around me, but they just gotta get through it. That's my view. Tuesday's. I quite like Tuesdays. They’re my day off. Yeah, just very happy to be Rebecca. 

Bex: And me, I’m,  stop talking now. It’s my turn. And me, I’m Bex. Christmas is my favorite holiday, mostly because there's a load of glitter. Also Halloween. That's a complete lie. I don't write these intros. Bonfire Night is my favourite day of the year. Thanks. Anyway, Johnny. We have a guest with us today. Andrew Wilding-Smith, Product Lead at Parkinson's UK. Hello, Andrew. 

Andrew: Hiya folks. Thanks for having me. 

Bex: Thanks for being here. Would you like to answer the question about your favorite day of the year? 

Andrew: Yeah thanks for having me., cause I have sort of three days, specifically what I like to call the dead zone between Christmas and New Year. So broadly from the 27th to the 29th of December, where you don't know what day it is and you can go to the pub and it's great.

Bex: They are a very good and underrated three days. Particularly because of the amounts of cheese that I consume. 

Andrew: Yeah. Loads of great food knocking around. Yeah. Just brilliant. 

Greg: And time becomes meaningless. 

Jonny: We spoke to some people at the weekend. We went for lunch withthem, and they were talking about how their family is just all over the UK. Those few days felt like a nightmare. It felt like work. Like, they traveled up there to see them, up there to see them. So yeah, I enjoy those three days of not having to really do anything. It’s wonderful. Yeah, it's a good choice.  It’s the right answer I think.

Bex: It’s a good choice.  So Product Lead at Parkinson’s. That sounds great. What do you do there? Tell us more about that.

Andrew: Yeah. So I guess sort of overall responsibility and accountability for all of our digital products and the experiences. So it could be someone's first interaction with Parkinson's UK. Maybe they’re concerned that they might be diagnosed with Parkinson's, they might be recently diagnosed, they might be a potential supporter, a professional who's kind of looking in for their resources or all of those things. So we need to make sure that whoever they are in that moment are able to find the right information and support for them and their needs to fulfil what they need to do in a way that generates trust so that they can come back to us and know that we're there for them from that point forwards. So overall, that kind of overall sort of digital estate is kind of within my remit. And I guess something that's been cool, like this week we've got some wireframes that we have been looking at and kind of getting some feedback and we will be putting in front of users, I think next week, to improve some experiences on our platform.

Bex: Fun fun. I was, I was gonna ask you that question. So I have no follow-up now. 

Andrew: Sorry. 

Bex: That was literally what I was going to ask you. What you’re up to this week. Anyone else got any questions before we go on to stat of the week? Greg or Jonny? No, it all makes sense. I'm just distracted because Harvey, our cat, who's joined us on Jonny’s screen and she's very intently looking at us all and she's putting me off. On to stat of the week then. An estimated range of 8, 1, 8 0, 0, 0. I have no brain capacity to read out numbers right now, and 1.36 million daily views of client misinformation on the platform. Wait, on what platform? Greg, please explain this in words, because I clearly cannot. 

Jonny: You explained it wonderfully.

Greg: Let’s just move on.

Bex: Cool. Okay. Charity news of the week. 

Greg: So between 800,000, that's what that number means. 

Bex: Thank you Greg [laughs]

Greg: And at 1.3 million daily views of climate information occur on Facebook. 

Bex:  You see, that’s your fault.  I was just reading what was written. You wrote, the platform. 

Greg: Yeah. Well, I mean, what other platform is there? It's just Facebook. 

Bex: [laughs]

Greg: But this is 13.6 times more views of misinformation that Facebook itself claims to send to its climate science center. So this is the place where they would review those things to prevent that misinformation going through. So this is from a new report from Stock Funding Heat. 

Bex: Sorry, can I just ask some questions about that? Facebook has a climate science center? Is that what you're saying? 

Greg: They've got….. 

Jonny: What it is, is the, on the main Facebook campus, I've seen it. There's a storage cupboard. It’s got buckets and mops.  

[Everyone laughs]. 

Jonny: And it’s an intern called Jerry, who sits at a desk and he checks Twitter and stuff. Working really hard. Punching some big numbers. He doesn't have a manager to report to. I'm not even sure it's on payroll anymore. He just can't get out because the handle isn't on his side of the door.

Greg: [laughs]

Jonny: I think that's what, how it works, isn't it Greg? 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Occasionally it sets on fire for no other reason than climate. 

Jonny: Climate. Climate Crisis. It’s heating up.

Greg: Yeah. So there you go.

Bex: Ok. That clears that up, so carry on Greg. 

Greg: Yeah. So this is the report from Stock Funding Heat. The second report this year, I think. So they've generated this report using tools and expertise from the Institute for strategic dialogue and CASN technology. They've looked at a number of reactions, comments shares per post from pages and groups dedicated to climate misinformation and found it's increased 76.7% since the start of the year. And 113 climate misinformation adverts on Facebook's Ad library between January and October; 78% of the estimated spend on these adverts came from seven pages, which were actually flagged over a year ago and Facebook's done fuck all about it. So yeah, it's basically indicating that there is a huge problem of misinformation about the climate crisis. We know that misinformation causes real serious harm and causes people to ignore the realities of what's happening. And it sounds like Facebook's up to its usual tricks of ignoring the problem.

Bex: And directly lying about it as well. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. 

Bex: And directly lying to itself, which I don't understand.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. It's like Zuckerberg looking at himself in the mirror every morning and telling himself he’s a beautiful human being, when we all know both of those are false. 

Andrew: [laughs] So what I don't understand here is you've got 78% of this was from seven pages and nearly 50,000 posts were from 195 accounts. What the thing that's stopping them? Why are they not wanting to do anything that would make quite a big impact on these accounts? Llike, hundreds of accounts and seven pages. It's not much. 

Greg: I think it comes back to that whole freedom of speech thing where they're just terrified of being the ones to make any kind of decision. They don't want to have any responsibility in saying you can't say this. 

Bex: Is it also though, the first line of this report is marks that the bag is on record and missing that sensationalist content and misinformation on Facebook is good business. So is it just that they want it to stay there? 

Greg: Yeah. 

Bex: Dunno. 

Andrew: Yeah, I guess if that's what works in the algorithm and it generates those reactions, which creates engagement and keep people on the platform, then that’s pretty depressing. But what's the line as well that they have, is that we're not editorial in any way because then they'd have different guidance, right, and different regulations that they'd need to follow. So I guess in some sense, could that be editorialising their content? 

Greg: That is the argument. A lot of people are arguing now that the algorithm actually is an editorial tool and that it selects and pushes certain things and by that it makes them a publisher. So they should be responsible for the actions of a publisher because they're making those things. 

Jonny: Yeah, it's a bad situation where  I don't think in any way, the reason why they have these issues is because they're incompetent because there's a extraordinary team of really talented people who work there. So it's a bad situation when the best-case scenario is that they don't care about the misinformation. I imagine is actually the worst case, which is it's, you know, like you were saying, it's really good business. It is the sort of engagement that they want. We've seen them before in the way that they have really happy to peddle hate on the platform because it's a really powerful motivator for engagement. But they also want positive content as well, don't they? So I would imagine them saying everything's fine and we're not all going to die, is the kind of positive content opposed to, everything is not fine and we're all going to die. So yeah, misinformation by design, I would imagine. 

Bex: Hmmm. They just want to share animals and disasters basically. Not anything else. Andrew, I have a question for you. I always feel like it was like misinformation and disinformation around charities and the cause that they have. Do you suffer from this much at Parkinson's? 

Andrew: I think where there's a genuine sort of risk and that might be a strong word, is about people seeking information that you know, it might be more soothing, but it might not be actually the best verified sort of information and support that's out there. I thin that trust element is so, so important that we, as Parkinson's UK and as charities in general, are able to be that trusted source of quality information and support. And I think what's difficult in this space is that that can mean that we don't have definitive answers to things. And it might also mean that there's not a ‘‘this will be different in eight weeks if you do just do these things’’. um, whereas you can then compare that to a guru who's done, you know, X, Y, or Z and their lives are transformed. That's obviously potentially a much more positive space to be in because there's an element of certainty with it. So I think having to be comfortable with always having that wholly positive message is something that is quite difficult for charities. But I think it's uh, and that's in regards to information and support specifically. But I think it's something that we really should hold ourselves to and we do. But I guess there's other sort of areas around like whether it's campaigning or sort of fundraising activities, which the lines are getting maybe a little bit blurred or charity causes are being sort of manipulated for less than less the gracious gains by certain folk. Yeah, fortunately, you know, that's not come our way. But it's impactful massively on the charities and, and, and their supporters and service users and the staff that work there can be really impactful for them. So yeah, there's probably more that could be provided to charities to kind of navigate that a little bit, as something that could be sort of utilised as a tool. Not necessarily against charity but as a cause or a mission, which would could be propelled in a certain way. Yeah. Lots of different thoughts on that.

Bex: Yeah. And I guess there's something about how media report on things, you know, we know for a while, there's been a lot of discussion in the charity industry about how we talk about things and what the long-term effects, particularly on the people that are affected by the cause. If you’re, you know, constantly going out there with that kind of like negative side of things, how are those people affected by that? I think it's a real, really interesting topic and it kind of leads into our charity news of the week as well. So thank you for that, Andrew. Really helpful. About how the media is reporting on terror attacks. Greg, do you want to tell us a little bit more about this?

Greg: Masterclass in the segue there, Bex. Fantastic work.

Bex: Smooth. Smooth.

Greg: Yeah. So survivors against terror have produced a new report calling for changes in the way that the media reports on terror attacks. So Survivors Against Terror are a group of survivors. So you've got the, Brendan Cox, Jo Cox’s husband, relatives of the victims of the Manchester Arena and Fishmonger Hall attacks and a number of others. And they've gone and done a survey with 116 survivors and come back with loads of information and loads of recommendations for how the press could improve the way that they, report on these things. I won't go through everything straight away, but you know, there are a couple of things like having a grace period. So giving the victims at least two days to kind of come to terms with what's happened before going to them for comment. Stopping printing photos of attackers and, you know, publishing their demands or videos that they may have made, reducing the amount of reporting of those attackers and their details are kind of front and center of that.

Nine in ten of the people surveyed supported reducing the focus on the terrorist and eight in ten said videos made by terrorists should never be shown, even in part. From my perspective, they all seem like fairly rational comments. I'll get your thoughts on this first before I move on to the response from The National Union of Journalists because I've got some choice words on that. But I thought I'd hear about what you guys think about some of these requests and whether you think it'll help.

Jonny: There was something years ago. I can’t remember if it was for Columbine. I can't remember his name. The documentary about the school shootings in America. 

Andrew: Michael Moore. 

Jonny: Michael Moore, yeah. And in that they had some experts who they'd interviewed, maybe it was about something else, but it was around the idea of how do you help stop those things as well. And all of the experts were saying similar lines around, do not, and also mentioned the understanding that diabetes, that requirement of news organisations to inform the public, outside of local news. For example, in those instances, do not talk about the attacker, talk about the victims of the crime, but do not focus on the attacker was a very simple thing. And of course, it's ignored. And you also hear similar things, I've seen it quite recently in the UK, I think in terms of charities like Samaritans and Suicide Prevention charities, who constantly seem to have to say to the media, this is the way you should talk about suicide, as well. Again, even the more reputable news organisations seem to ignore that. So, yeah, it all seems to make sense and to be in line with other things that you hear and said elsewhere.

Greg: Bex, Andrew? 

Bex: My only reference was going to be a West Wing reference switch. What rewatching it again? I know we had a whole season of Tech For Good Live, where all I did was reference the West Wing and I'm rewatching it and I'm trying my best not to do that again. We don't want the secondary West Wing season of Tech For Good Live but there is a really, just more generally, I mean, this guidance is all right and I 100% agree that media outlets should definitely like listen to this. There is like a fascinating, a whole narrative through the whole of the West Wing about, you know, where the media should be reporting to the public on certain things and where it shouldn't. And there was always like a real blurred line on that. And obviously, in the West Wing, these are very reputable news sources on the whole, and everyone's grappling with that kind of challenge of, should we talk about this or should we not talk about this, which is fascinating. But I suppose as well, it's like a very competitive industry now, where we used to think of journalists having codes of ethics. I don't know if that even exists anymore or if they ever abide by them? Because even in the most reputable places, they still try to like sell stuff. And if they're not reporting on this, you know, they’re not going to sell the paper or the subscription as it is more likely to be nowadays. The online subscription. Yeah. I just find it a very interesting thing, the whole media debate, generally. 

Greg: Or is it about attitude? Well, they're going to do it so we might as well.

Bex: Yeah, shitty. 

Andrew: So my only sort of thought on this one is what, let's say there that the traditional media chose to like follow these rules, is there a greater risk of what is then visible and public anyway but is not through the prism of kind of, you know, journalists. You know, I think this is all completely 100% valid, but what's, you know, how important are those outlets, particularly with something like that, where I think that there's the real voracity of kind of videos that have been grabbed or photos that have been taken by the public,. Dunno. 

Jonny:  There is that massive public appetite for it in the sense, you know, everybody slows down when they see a full car crash to have a look at it as well as the safety concerns. So there is that voyeuristic nature and we probably all tell ourselves it’s because we want to be informed about those things, but there’s definitely is a macabre fascination in those extra details as well. It's a really difficult one. I never know as well with these things, is it that that public demand what's driving the way that people report on it or is it a response to how things are reported on? 

Bex: Yeah. And I think that's what I was trying to get to the competitive angle, Andrew, but you said it much more succinctly. What's the output of that? If there's loads of really great journalists only write in about things later on because that's the ethical thing to do, what does that space leave? A lot of lies, crap, misinformation, stuff being put out there in a really bad way. Yeah, tough one. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, there's an interesting idea in here as well about a survivor's supporter hub. So kind of like a middle party, like a third party, who kind of gets involved to kind of create a barrier between the individuals and the journalists and they would have powers like, the ability to exclude media, the breach guidelines from briefings and interviews. It's quite an interesting idea. It's kind of giving them like having an agent, you know, if you're a celebrity and you've got someone who has that knowledge to kind of feel those kinds of questions and gives you the support, when, you know, a normal person wouldn't know how to handle those things. 

Andrew: And I think that points to probably what, you know, the most little diamond statistic though, about nearly 50% of people personally experience media intrusion. That's not about reporting, you know, facts and instance. That's about intrusivity and that survivor hub sounds like. Daria. Um, well, I really should be like action taken. 

Bex: Hmm.

Greg: Yeah. So the response from the end UJ, uh, we've got a quote here from Professor Chris Frost, who’s the Chair of the Ethics Council. Uh, while the NUJ is sympathetic to the survivor's concerns and certainly can not condone the harassment of witnesses and the bereaved. Many of the reports’ recommendations are unrealistic and are a danger to the freedom of speech. We are disappointed that the survivors’ group didn't consult with the NUJ for advice during this process. We welcome the setting up of the survivors’ hub to assist those involved in terror events or disasters but not with the powers proposed by this group. So not every journalist or media outlet is News Of The World. They're not all assholes. There are some fantastic publications out there. But Chris, Professor Chris Frost can suck a shitty cat's asshole for this comment. Group didn’t consult with the NUJ for advice during this process. Advice? You arrogant fucking asshole. Like, I agree. They should have been consulted for a collaborative discussion about the realities of reporting. But to say that they should be giving advice is just so arrogant. And we talked about this on the podcast previously, when we were talking about suicide and the way that it's reported and mental health in general. And we said that the press and journalists need to look at themselves and really think about, do they need to change their habits as the world in general, comes to recognise mental health more and adapt to it more. Then journalists need to as well. And this is the exact same story. Things have changed. They need to realise that the world isn't the same and that they need to get with the program and modernise and saying that they are completely wrong because they don't agree with it. I agree there needs to be a carefully considered conversation where you have both sides of the arguments to go over that topic of freedom of speech, but fucking, this really pissed me off.

Jonny: The freedom of speech thing, as well, this is some Trumpy and bullshit. And that man has absolutely no place working in journalism. He doesn't have an understanding of what that even means as well. Ethics and freedom of speech do not compete in this space. It's not an infringement of your freedom of speech to make a decision around what is the ethical way to say this thing or ethically, what should I say or not? That's just like basic human decency and filtering. Nobody is infringing on my freedom of speech when they say, John, you shouldn't have called Greg that name, you know what I mean? Like, it's just a complete misunderstanding and again, kicking the issue away in the direction that they know that it'll gain popular support for it as well. But it's not a freedom of speech issue. It's a ethics in journalism issue. And I think he's deliberately confusing, which is really, really frustrating. Yeah. What a shame. 

Bex: So there Professor Chris Frost. Take that. 

Jonny: He listens to the podcast as well. He's one of the listeners.

Greg: [laughs] 

Bex: So while you're mad Greg, let's move on to the tech news of the week. So Facebook's done something. What have they done? Are you mad about the thing?

Greg: Good thing and a bad thing.  So they've ended their facial recognition on the platform and deleted the records, citing potential risk of misuse. So this is an odd one. Interested to know what we think here. Let's make some assumptions. Let's come up with ideas about why we think Facebook may have done this. So they've deleted about 1 billion face prints that it used as part of its facial recognition system. So this is the photo tagging thing. So if you signed up and said, yeah, I want you to recognise my face. It would identify images with your face and say, do you want to tag yourself in this. So that would be in your own images or your friends’ images and things like that. It's been around for a while. And now they're saying, oh, this could be misused, so we're gonna get rid of all the pictures and stop doing it.

And their Vice President of Artificial Intelligence, Jerome Presenti, said that while facial recognition technology is a powerful tool to verify identity, it needs strong privacy in transparency controls to let people limit how their faces are used. There were many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society with regulators still playing catch-up, amid this ongoing uncertainty. We believe that limit in the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate. Now, this sounds totally out of place for a comment from Facebook and there's a couple of things I'm wondering. Is it, you know, an attempt to impart to save face, by removing something that actually doesn't really make them much revenue. You know, it's a nice thing to have but I wonder how many people are still using it. o that's my main wonder really. Is this just a sacrificial lamb as a way of value signaling and saying, look we're good and we're really worried about people's security, by removing something that doesn't really impact their service. 

Jonny: Maybe they got a new lawyer. Cause I’m aware they recently abandoned that Godawful idea of Instagram Kids, do you remember? To kill people on its own dedicated platform rather than the main one. So yeah, maybe they’re going into a big risk meditation exercise. I don't think it's because they care about any of this stuff. Maybe they can't monetise it or they’ve seen some legal or regulatory risk down the line. It'd be lovely if it is a ‘‘hey we think we need to relook at the way that we've been doing privacy this whole time’’. If that is the case, we'll know, because this must, that be the first, in many, many, many changes that we're about to unwell because this isn't the one privacy concern [laughs] they’ve all been, and uh, Meta as a parent company either. So I guess the proof would be in that. Dunno. 

Greg: Hmmm. I mean, is anyone gonna miss it? 

Bex: I'm really glad it's going. Although the first thing I thought about when you said this was actually, I don't think it's Facebook scanning recognition but I was like, I wonder what happens. They did have that protecting children they were scanning. And that is the second link that you've put in here Greg, that actually, they’ve abandoned that as well. So they had a software that we're looking for child abuse images, which I was worried that they were turning this off, which would turn off because it's maybe a linked technology and that's really important. It's not ideal. It's not perfect. There's loads more they should be doing but that was good and was identifying loads of images that shouldn’t on this site. And it isn't linked but they have turned it off anyway, which is great. Awesome. Well done Facebook. Yeah. 

Greg: Yeah. They, they turned this off last December. 

Bex: Wow. Cool. 

Greg:  So they've turned it off due to EU privacy laws, eprivacy directive but Microsoft and Google carried on their version of this. Didn’t pause it, cause they were like, well, we've read it and we know that privacy is not an issue when it's used in the aims of protecting lives and it doesn't unduly damage the rights of others involved. Because they have common sense apparently. Whereas Facebook not only decided to turn their version off, even after the EU clarified to say, no, no, you can have this on, in April they've still not turned it back on. And Andy Burrows, Head of Child Safety Online Policy at NSPCC, has said that there are an estimated 1600 child abuse reports going on unchecked every day. 

Bex: I don't really know what to say about any of this. I'm really confused about the decision-making process. I would love to be on the fly on the wall in that meeting. 

Greg: That's it. That's why I wanted to include these two stories. So we've got, you know, the stop funding hate where we've got, you know, they're clearly mismanaging the removal of misinformation. Then we've got the story about them saying, oh, we're going to remove this facial recognition because after many, many years we've decided that this is a privacy risk. And then we've got this thing where they've turned it off, been told that they didn't need to and are still yet to turn it back on and it could have a real positive impact in stopping child abuse. So, yeah, what the fuck is going on? 

Andrew: Doesn't it just make you think, like what, what the hell was I doing signing up to that in the first place and kind of those sort of motivating factors in the early years. We had no clue that there was like, all of these, what we were actually enabling with this kind of company. And I think about that kind of facial recognition and just like, some of the photos that you get tagged in over the years and it's just like, I don't know what I was doing. Did sort of any of us and when did it become beyond the point of no return and now they are seemingly, you know, just all over the place. I dunno. I dunno what they were about really as a global company. 

Bex: Yeah. And it's terrible. Cause I suppose it's good that they've done this right. And that should be the final line of it. Yay. Good. I guess that you've done that. I suppose. I'm just worried that it's mitigating for something that they know is coming round the corner rather than for any real purpose. Right, onto rant or nice of the week. Unfortunately, it's another rant [laughs] and Andrew, you have supplied this. So do you want to introduce what you want to rant about this week? 

Andrew: Yeah, it just kind of ticks me every time I see it and it ticked me off I think it was the last week, there was an article on BBC news about should you recycle your pizza box? And I had a takeaway pizza box that I needed to recycle and I was like, oh, okay, interesting. I'll click on that, read about it. And then there was a. A bit of blurb, are you a wish recycler, whereby do you as an individual want and wish that you could recycle more but you sometimes don't quite know what to do? And it really peed me off because yeah, obviously I want to recycle, I want to do my small bit, but the article was explaining or seemingly explaining that if I just removed the leftover cheese within the pizza box and did that every single time alongside these other things, with these quite confusing products, which are sometimes recyclable and sometimes the lid is recyclable, but the rest of it isn’t. Then if I just followed all of those rules and everyone else did the same, then we'd be totally fine. And I find that pushing the climate agenda onto individuals and away from seemingly those that do have the power to do things: governments and mass companies is a terrible place to be in as we are facing a climate crisis. Because I can recycle to the best of my abilities and I will. I just don't think that really has much of an impact truly and I think that's a bit depressing personally to think about. So maybe they don't want us to think about that too much either. So, yeah, that's kinda what's kinda grinded my gears this week. 

Greg: Yeah. I certainly agree. It is that thing where if you do care, you don't want to be like, Oh, well, I can't have that much impact because you want other people to do it. Cause you know that if everybody does it, it will have impact but when you know a bit about it, you realise we would, we can have impact. But the fucking, I mean, recycling industry is corrupt as fuck and you know, the biggest polluters; look at Shell, they've come out and said, oh, hey guys, we're going to use fossil fuels to invest in green energy because we can't do it without the money from that. And you're like, you fucking assholes.

Bex: [laughs] 

Greg:  And then what was announced this week that if the fossil fuel industry was an a nation, they would have had the most delegates at COP26. They had 500 delegates there. And you're just like, you're just banging your head against the wall. Then there was the story last week or the week before, which was basically saying the whole carbon footprint thing was invented by the fossil fuel industry to push the responsibility away from industry on to individuals, because it was like, if we can get people thinking about that, then they'll focus on that rather than focusing on systemic change.

Jonny: It's so confusing as well. We've done loads of projects around recycling and working with waste providers and stuff. And there's such a lack of standardisation as well. So where you lived is the answer to what you can recycle can vary as well. And there were numerous different messages around, can you recycle a pizza box? Which is maybe confusing cause that's confused messaging. So maybe it's different for each local authority as welll, which isn't particularly helpful and there's a weird supply and demand. So we recently did a project that was around how do you make the actuator part of an inhaler, so the plastic bit more environmentally friendly. Cause those things get thrown in the bin and they can't be recycled. And people don't know as well. So the whole aspirational part of recycling. Some people put them in the bin. Some people don't put them in the bin. If you put the gas bit in the bin, that can be like really, really toxic and all that sort of stuff. Just such mixed messaging around these things. But when Bex and team were looking at different materials that you could use, the fascinating bit was as well that even if they're all the same materials and if that material was recyclable, like it could be recycled, if everyone did put them in the recycle bin, the volume wouldn't be high enough for it to be profitable for the recycling companies.

Bex: So just to be clear, is it is recyclable. It is in theory, the material is a very recyclable. It has, you know, the ability to be recycled. And I just like, you know, you think of certain industries and think they are socially good for. Recycling, the whole point of it is to do a social good thing but it's a super commercial industry in the UK and there's lots of fake recycling as well. There’s loads of stories where we've had people collecting crisp packets to be recycled and actually just put htem in a warehouse. But all the companies that sign up to the scheme pay this company and it makes them sound more environmentally friendly. Like the whole thing's a racket. Hashtag not all recycling companies I assume. Anyway [laughs] 

Greg: [laughs] But keep doing it. 

Bex: Keep doing it.  Anyway, and finally.  Let's end on a cheerful note. There's been some soothing music for our furry friends over Bonfire Night.  That sounds nice. Greg, tell us more. 

Greg: So Classic FM, clearly have some dog lovers. So they decided they were going to put a bunch of music on that would help soothe our furry friends through music. So, Andrew, you said you'd tried this out with your new poppy. Did it work? 

Andrew: It really did work. Yeah. She's been with us a week and we actually play Classic FM every evening to help her go to sleep. So it was on, which I realised is just the most like ridiculous sort of statement. But yeah, it really did work. She was not bothered and there were tons going off around here. So good on them. I mean, to be honest, they could tell us anything really. If this is going to soothe your dog on Bonfire Night, yeah that really works. 

Bex: What’s your puppy’s name? 

Andrew: Heidi. 

Bex: Heidi. Awww. 

Andrew: [laughs] 

Bex: Who doesn’t love a puppy and finally. That is everything we have time for.

Greg: I was going to tell you about my dog Bex. 

Bex: Oh fine. Okay. Tell me about your dog. 

Jonny: Nobody cares about your dog. 

Greg: Everybody cares about my dog. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about bonfires but if you move a plate in the kitchen, he cracks it. Go figure. 

Andrew: {laughs] 

Bex: Andrew, how did that go? Was that alright? Did you have a nice time on the podcast? 

Andrew: I had a great time. Yeah. Slagging things off [laughs] Brilliant. 

Greg: [laughs]

Bex: [laughs] Not a lot of tech for good. Just a lot of bad tech. Anything you want to plug or tell people about that you're working on at the minute?

Andrew: Yeah, so our service transformation program, Parkinson’s Connect, to transform our services so they are centred around people affected by Parkinson's, blended between online and sort of face to face, in-person support and information. If you're interested in how we've done that, we have a medium blog, which is sporadically updated as these things are we've kind of progress or insight or new things that we're learning. So much recently about integration with the NHS a point of referral, which is something where we're looking scale next year.

Bex: Awesome. 

Greg: Really important. Really important.

Andrew:  So check out either Polly Cook on Twitter or myself on Twitter at A Wilding Smith. But yeah, Polly is probably the best person to hook into there. 

Bex: Brill. Well, thanks very much for joining us. Listeners, what did you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Get in touch on Twitter at tech for good live or email at hello at tech for good dot live. We'd love it if you gave us an iTunes review and told your pals about this podcast if you have any, because you're listening to this podcast, so it’s very unlikely. Thanks to Podcast.co for hosting our podcast. And I'll stop saying the word podcast now. Bye.

Greg: Bye. 
Bex: Thanks. Bye.