In this episode, we examine a series of Sam’s conversations centered around social media’s impact on the information landscape.
We begin with Sam’s second conversation with Tristan Harris, which was conducted shortly after the release of Tristan’s documentary, The Social Dilemma. The documentary lays out Tristan’s thesis on how social media is causing the deterioration of both individual and societal welfare. Author and technologist Jaron Lanier follows, echoing Tristan’s concerns and shifting the conversation to social media’s unique business model, addressing how perverse incentives reliably produce such detrimental outcomes.
We then hear from Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter. Sam and Dorsey’s conversation took place when Dorsey was still working at Twitter, and Sam still had an account. However, the questions they pose—relating to issues of content moderation and corporate transparency—are even more relevant today.
Next, psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents the alarming findings from his research on the psychological effects of social media, detailing how teenage girls are bearing the brunt of a mental health crisis.
Shifting to a more political lens, Sam and Cass Sunstein discuss Sunstein’s book, #Republic, and Sunstein addresses one of Sam’s most pressing fears of the last seven years: how social media is warping our opinions on politics. We then narrow down on this issue, with Zeynep Tufekci explaining the real-life consequences of social media’s influence on protest movements.
Finally, Sam and technology analyst Nina Schick dive into one of the most urgent concerns of the AI boom: deepfakes and how they might be weaponized to further pollute and degrade our information landscape.
About the Series
Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.
Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
The making sense podcast sam Harris just a note to say that if you're hearing this you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of the making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe at sam harris dot. Org. There you'll find our private rss feed to add to your favorite podcaster, along with other subscriber only content. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one the a
welcome to the essential sam harris, this
Making sense
of social media and the information landscape, the guy
of the series is to organise, compile an juxtapose conversations hosted by sam Harris, indisposed
big areas of interest, this
Is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of sam's perspectives and arguments, the various
explorations and approaches to the topic, the realm
the agreements and disagreements and the push
acts and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced. The
purpose of these compilations is not to provide a complete picture of any issue.
But to entice you to go deeper into these subjects.
Along the way or point you too,
episodes with each featured guest at the conclusion,
will offer some reading listening.
And watching suggestions which range from fun and light to dense.
academic one.
To keep in mind for the series
Sam has long argued for a unity of knowledge where the barriers between fields of study are viewed as largely unhelpful artifacts of unnecessarily partition thought the four
suit of wisdom and reason in one area of study, natural
we bleeds into an greatly affects others. You'll hear plenty of.
Cross over into other topics, as these dives into the archives unfold and you're thinking,
about a particular topic, may shift
as you realize, is contingent relationships with others in this town.
You'll hear the natural overlap with theories of moral and political philosophy.
Belief and unbelief free will.
an artificial intelligence so get ready. Lets me
sense of social media and the information landscape
one very important update before we jump into this compilation.
Since the initial writing and recording of this episode, SAM.
wit twitter entirely
recorded a solo episode entitled why I left twitter, which explain
his reasoning and thought process for that decision? We of
we recommend listening to that? In addition,
to the included conversations here then
I wish that sam eventually walked away from social media platforms, places an
trusting lens over his conversations on the subject from the previous decade, though, as you're here
this compilation extends the considered issues of social media. Well. Beyond
personal engagement in it
to the many ways in which the surveillance economy generally has worked, our politics,
social relations and morals
psychology? Is
Why I left twitter is episode three or four, and now back to the episode.
Social media is one of those topics that everyone seems to have strong opinions about that fact in itself, the
dear, that our feelings on just about everything seemed to have gotten stronger in flame
by the advent of social media, is something
we'll fold into the discussion during this compilation, like
about all of us same
has gone through and continues to go through
Strained relationship with social media, apparently even
The most practiced meditated can be hijacked by algorithms that target our propensity for outrage. Adulation, annoyance,
discussed the
East of social media is strong, but of
horse. Social media also has positive potential and its own success stories. There
We are an ignoble societal benefits that must be evaluated and considered.
This compilation contains plenty of critique and perspective regarding the darker sides of social media and the ecb
model, which has provided at scaffolding
The criticism should not completely crowd out or invalidate the defenders and believers and its positive possibilities.
we are also going to be situating the social media question in a broader context of the business model, which enables it something
that's been called surveillance. Capitalism by its critics and
personalized advertising by its more supportive advocates.
Will also be zooming in on some of the specific technologies upon which all of this is built
The introduction to an episode with jerry lanier, which is
klute in this compilation,
Sam identified three main lines of inquiry for this topic, the first
Is economics and the question
of incentives in the face of automation, an artificial intelligence, the sec,
and is politics, and the question of how we can cooperate and co here on ideas in a space were true
it is being hollowed out and the third
psychology and how
attention and well being, are being assaulted by the power of the surveillance economy and social
media will be one
during through that same road map. Through these clips, their will
be a ton of deep philosophical lessons and thought experiments to walk you through in this episode, much of what
we'll be tackling is plain for most people to see and experience for themselves. We're going
the here, SAM's conversations with defectors from the ranks of the architects of information ecosystems in silicon valley,
Tristan Harris and jeering lanier
we're going to hear some of sam's conversation and pseudo interrogation of jack dorsey himself. The co founder of twitter.
Was also it ceo at the time of their conversation and we're going.
here from authors like jonathan height and cast sons who have studied and contain
to investigate. The m
acts of social media on individuals and the health of democracy.
we are also going to broaden our lens and listen in on a conversation with Zena to factory an author
focuses on global movements and geopolitics
and consider how social media fuels diverts or other
as confuses political efforts and finally,
when to tiptoe into the emerging deep, fake technology which threatened
the poor even more fuel on the fire of the collapsing integrity of global information, so
Let's start with sam talking to Tristan Harris. No relation
by the way, Tristan
has been called. The closest thing. Silicon valley has to a conscience.
Tristan had just appeared and documentary entitled the social dilemma when he spoke to SAM, so much
their conversation references, the film, which is certainly recommended viewing for this topic,
done has been laser focused on the problems of social media
spending years, working as a designer for google and seeing first hand the potent attention, harnessing techniques that
behind the apps on your phone. If you
listen to our compilation about artificial intelligence. You'll be familiar with the concern about our strengths and competencies being squash.
Technology here you'll
Here, Tristan flick that concern around with a sharp
observation tuesday.
has appeared on making sense twice:
this from the more recent conversation from episode to eighteen, welcome to the cold factory was taken from the top here. What's wrong with social media at this point,
if you could boil down to the elevator pitch answer. What what is the problem that we are going to him on spool? Let's find because the film actually opens with that
prompt, the blank stairs of any technology insiders, including myself, because I think it so hard to define exactly what this problem is. There is clearly a problem of incentives, but beneath that there's a problem of what those incentives are doing and where the exact harmed show up and the way that we frame it in the film and in a big presentation, we gave a dash of jazz centre back in April. Twenty nineteen
to you know a bunch of the top technologists in, and people in the industry was to say that, while we ve all been looking out for the moment
when the ai would overwhelm human strengths and when we get the singularity, when with a I take, our jobs won't be smarter than humans. We missed this much much earlier point when technology didn't overwhelmed human strengths, but it undermined human
weaknesses and you can actually frame the cacophony of grievances and scandals and problems that we ve seen in the tech industry, from distraction to addiction, to polarization to bullying, to harassment, to the breakdown of truth
all in terms of progressively hacking more and more of human vulnerabilities and weaknesses. So we take it from the top. You know our brains, short term memory system have seven plus or minus two things that we can hold when technologies
it's to overwhelm are short term and working memory. We feel that as a problem called distraction. Oh my gosh, I can't remember what it was
When I came here to open an email, I came here to go to facebook to look something up and I got stuck down into something else. That's a problem of over
roaming. The human limit and weakest have just started are working memory when it overwhelms are don't mean systems and our rewards systems that we feel that is a problem called addiction when it taps into an exploits our reliance on stopping cues. That, at some point, I will stop talking in that's a queue for you to keep going when technology doesn't stop talking, and it just gives you the indefinite bottomless bull. We feel that as a problem called addiction or addictive use when technology exploits our social approval and giving us more and more social approval,
We feel that as a problem called teen depression, because suddenly children are dosed with social approval, every few minutes and are hungry for more likes and comparing themselves in terms of the currency of likes and when technology hacks the limits of our heuristics for determining what is true, for example, that that twitter profile, who just commented on your tweet five seconds ago, that photo looked pretty real, that got a bio that seems pretty real that got ten thousand followers. We only have a few cues that we can use to discern what is real and bots and deep fakes and I'm sure we'll get into Dpt three, actually
overwhelmed that human weakness. So we don't even know what's true. So I think that the main thing that we really want people to get is through a series of miss incentives which will further get into
technology has overwhelmed and undermined human weaknesses and many of the problems that we're seeing as separate are actually the same and just one more thing on this analogy, it's kind of like you know. Collectively this digital fall out of addiction, teen depression suicides, polarization, a breakdown of truth. We we think of this as a collective digital fallout or a kind of climate change of culture that much like the oil extractive economy that we have been living in an extractive race for attention. There's only so much when it
running out. We have to start fraction your attention by putting your attention to multiple streams. I want you watching an ipad and a phone and the television the same time, because that lets me triple the size of the attention economy, but that extractive race for attention creates this global climate change of culture and much like climate change. It happens slowly, it happens gradually. It happens chronically its
this sudden, immediate threat, it's this slow erosion of the social fabric and that collectively we call them at present
Is she human downgrading, but you can call it whatever you want. The point is that you know it if you think back to the climate change movement before there was climate changes it as a cohesive understanding of emissions and linking to to climate change
We had some people working on polar bears, some people working on the coral reefs. We had some people working on
he's lost in the amazon and it was
So we had an encompassing view of how all these problems get worse, that that we start to get changed, and so we're really hoping that this film can act as a kind of catalyst for a global response to this really destructive thing. That's happened to society,
ok saw me play devils advocate for a moment. Using some of the elements have already put into play
because if you and I are going to impressively agree throughout this conversation on the nature of the problem, but a channeling a sceptic here,
is actually not that hard for me to empathize, with a sceptic because
you point out: it really takes a fair amount of work to pry the scales from people's eyes. On this point and in the name,
for the problem, though it really is everywhere to be seen. Its surprisingly elusive right idea of you reference. Something, like you know, a spike in
in depression and self harmony.
suicide,
There's no one who's going to pretend not to care
at that and then a really just the question of iraq.
The cause I'll here and is really a matter of exposure,
social media that is driving
and- and I think I don't think people are especially skeptical of that- and that that's as a discrete problem that I think most people will easily understand and be concerned about. But the more general problem for all of us is
is harder to keep in view, and it's so when you talk about things again,
are things you ve already conceited and
why so much attention has been a finite resource. Always
and everyone has always been competing for it, so you, but if you're gonna published a book, you are part of this race for people's attention of you. If you will
we're going to release something on the radio or television. It was
always a matter of trying to grab people's attention, as you say, would try and do a right now with his podcast? So it's when concern
through that lends its heart
To see what is fundamentally new here right, yes, this zero sum, and then the question is: is it
good content or not. I think people want to say right. It's just this is just a matter of
interfacing, in some way with human desire and human, carry
osity and,
either doing successfully or not, and what's so
at about really succeeding. You know just fundamentally succeeding in a way that yummy
call it addiction, but really is just what people find captivated. What people
want to do they want they want to grant their attention to the next video. That is absolutely
enthralling. But the house
different from it'll leafing through the pages of a hard copy of vanity fair. At me, in the year nineteen, eighty seven and
Elaine that you really want to read the next article rather than work or do whatever else you are you. You thought you were going to do with your afternoon. So there's that and then there's this sense that the fan,
good advertising is hidden.
Evolved and really that really that the foundation of everything we're gonna talk about? What's about about that? So really, it is a story of ad
just getting better. You know I don't have to see ads for tampax anymore right, I'm a guy. They go online and I see ads for things.
Probably want were, or nearly want, because I abandoned them in my zappos shopping. Cart right. So it what's wrong with that.
I think most people are stuck in that place. Likely just
We have to do a lot of work to bring them into the place of the conversation where the emergency becomes salient, and so yet, let's start their cash. You so much good, stuffed unpack your so
the attention economy. Obviously we always had it. We ve got television competing for
tension radio, and we had evolutions of the attention economy before competition between books, competition between newspapers, competition between television
into you more engaging television to more channels of television. So in many ways this isn't new, but I think what we really need to look at his word:
was mediating where that attention, whence you mediating that big word smartphones. We check out
check our smartphones. You know a hundred times or something like that per day. They are intimately woven into the fabric of our daily lives and ever more so because of we re establish, a dictionary
addictive checking that we have been any moment of anxiety. We turn to our phone to look at it. So it's
intimately woven into where the attention starting place will come from its also taken over our fundamental infrastructure for our basic verbs like. If I want to talk to you or talk to someone else, my phone is become the primary
vehicle for just about from many many verbs in my life, whether its wearing food or speaking, to some one or figuring out
where to go on and on a map. We are in
recently reliant on the central knowed of our smartphone to be around
As for where all of our attention goes, so that's the first part of this intimately woven nature and the fact that it's our social, it's part of the social infrastructure by which we rely on. We can't avoid it and part of what makes technical
today in a humane is that were reliant on infrastructure, that's not safer contaminated for many reasons that we will get into later. A second reason: that's different is
degree of asymmetry between. Let's say that
newspaper editors journalists to his writing that enticing article to get you to turn to the next page versus the level of a similar.
free of when you watch a youtube video and you think out his times. Can I watch one video and then I had to go back to work and you wake up from a trance. You know two hours late,
or- and you say man what happened to me- I should have had more self control. What that misses is there's literally the Google Google's billions of dollars of supercomputing infrastructure on the other side of that slab of glass, in your hand, pointed at your brain, doing predictive analytics on what would be the perfect next video to keep you here, and the same is true on facebook. You think okay, I've sort of been scrolling through this thing for awhile, but I'm just going to swipe up one more time.
and then I'm done each time you swipe up with your finger. You note your activating a twitter or a facebook or a tick tock supercomputer, that's doing predicted analytics, which has billions of data points on exactly the thing. Little keep you here and I think it's important to expand this metaphor in a way that you ve talked about on.
Begin. Your show before about just the power, increasing power and computational power of of ai, when you think about a supercomputer, pointed at your brain, trying to figure out. What's the perfect next thing to show you that's on one side of the screen on the other side of the screen, as my prefrontal cortex, which has evolved millions of years ago and doing the best job
can't do: goal articulation, goal retention and memory and sort of staying on task, self discipline, etc so
who's gonna win in that battle. Well, good metaphor, for this is let's say you or I were to play gary kasparov at chess,
like. Why would you or I lose it's because you know there? I am
s board, and I'm thinking. Ok, if I do this he'll, do that, but if I do this hildy this and I'm playing out a few new moves ahead in the chess board. But when Gary looks at that same chessboard he's,
playing out a million more moves ahead than I can write, and that's why gary is going to win and beat you and I every single time, but when Gary the human is playing chess against the best.
Supercomputer in the world, no matter how many million moves ahead, that gary can see the supercomputer conceit billions and moves ahead and when he beats gary, who is the best human chess player of all time, he's beaten like the human brain at just cause. I was kind of the best one that we had
and so when you look at the degree of asymmetry that we now have when you're sitting there innocuous they saying. Ok, I'm just gonna work
one video and then I'm out. We have to recognise that we have an exponential degree of asymmetry,
Indeed, no us in our weakness is better than we know ourselves.
That part of the conversation set the stage for us well. But we reckon
the full. Listen to that episode as sam.
Continued to skilfully play devils advocate throughout and allow
I trust on to flesh out the nuanced and complex considerations.
But Tristan remain steadfast and his effort to sound the alarm about the power of algorithms to target our weaknesses, and so that
where we're going to stay in this track through social media. You
her it sam while channeling a sceptical view, point to the economic
model that serves as the oxygen that keeps the social media monsters breathing advertising.
Here is an open question for the health of democracy and individual psychology. Is there a point
into an advertising, can become too effective,
and has social media push just over that threshold.
Advertising is certainly nothing new, of course, and the profit motive has always encouraged persuasion and attention grabbing wherever possible, but turned back there
Lock a few hundred years and imagine a handcrafted colors, the painting
The wooden sign hanging
of arrival, blacksmith shop in a town square and compare
its influence to a perfectly timed
snow. Targeted
advertisement. That was crafted
And custom moulded to your taste in music attraction, color
preference current mood polluter
cool persuasion, and just
everything else, the law
or does seem to suggest, a deep shaft and the power to persuade effectively if there
something like an objective measure of the effectiveness of persuasion.
Immorally encroaches on a notion of personal autonomy,
fair to wonder. If we blown right past it
an old adage and marketing that goes like this
I know I'm wasting half of my marketing budget.
Just don't know which half
built in uncertainty, might be eroding in the face of data collecting machines, which promised more and more of a sure thing to advertisers to explore,
This area a bit more we're going to hear from Jaron lanier linear
the computer scientist and silicon valley pioneer who launched virtual reality, companies in the mid eighties. He was
An early wave of bright eyed idealistic technologists,
and he's among those who have since begun to question what they may have been missing when
spoke with sam. He had just written a book.
which was not shy about its suggestion. It was called ten
Governments for deleting your social media accounts right now, for it
compilation we're going to be tapping. This interview for linear thoughts on the economic models that are run a mark on the internet,
and listen in on some of his nascent suggestions on how different models might improve the situation worse
with sam and the near revisiting the early days of silicon valley and the seemingly uncontroversial notion that information should be free. This is from
beside one. Thirty six digit,
humanism.
Many of the worst decisions we ve made here- and this is something you point out in your books in creating this technique-
we are not on their face
decisions emanated, certainly not sinister decisions, and so and one of the first decision
we've made it
is around this notion that that information should be free- and that just seems like a very
generous in an idealistic way. To start it seems quite noble. So perhaps we can start here with
with with the digital economy. What what could possibly be wrong with information being free right,
this idea that information should be free was held in the
in the most profound and intense way, was something that was believed so intensely during a period
starting in the eighties and in some ways it still holds for a lot of people and to defy that was very, very difficult. It was painful from my friends who couldn't believe that I was defying it. It was painful for me. I did loose friends over it and on its face it sounds very generous and fair and proper and freeing, but there are put there are proud
It was with it that are so deep as to, I think, threaten the survival of our species. It's actually a very, very, very serious mistake so that the mistakes happen on a couple of levels. Here, I would say the first one: has
to do with this idea. That information is totally weightless an intrinsically something: that's free in an infinite supply, and that's not true, because information only exists to the degree that people can perceive it and processes,
understand it. It ultimately only has a meaning when it grounds out as human experience the slogan east
back in the eighties roofers debating these things is that in for me,
She is alienated experience, meaning information is similar to stored,
energy that can be released. You put energy into a battery, then you can release it or you lift up a weight, and then you look over the weight and it goes back down and you've released the energy that was stored in the
the same way. Information ultimately only has meaning as experience at some point in the future and the problem.
experience or maybe the benefit of experiences at its of it's only a finite potential. You can't experience everything, and so, therefore, if you make the mistake of assuming that information is free,
you'll have more information than you can experience, and what you do is you make yourself vulnerable to what with it.
denial of service attack in other contexts. Up a denial of service attack means that malicious people, since so many requests to website that its is effectively knocked out off the web,
can't reach it any, and every website that you used reliably actually has to go through this elaborate structure of other resources created becoming.
like aka, my that defend it from the denial of service attacks, which it is infinitely easy to do
but in the same way, when you hear
of services like twitter, facebook or anybody can post anything without any cost to themselves and there's no postage an email and everything can just be totally
filled up with spam and malicious spots and crap to the
right where reality and everything,
Good about the world gets squeezed out and you end up amplifying the worst impulses of people. There's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as free information. There's no such thing is infinite attention
There has to be some way that serious miss comes into play if you want to have anything
it's reality or quality or truth or decency, and unfortunately, we have
created a world in which that so, but then there's a flip side to it, which is equally important, which is sir,
we ve created this world in which were talking about technology, often as something that's, if not opposed to humanity opposed to most of humanity.
Well, there's a lot of talk and a lot of this comes from really good technologies. So it's not from like malicious outsiders who are trying to screw us up. It's our own fault, where we'll say well: a lotta,
go away because of artificial intelligence, my robots, and that might either be some extreme case where a super intelligent ay I takes over the world and
prices of humanity or it might just be that only the most elite, smart techie people are
still needed everybody else becomes. This burden on the state may have to go on some kind of basic income, and it's just a depressing. It's like
I think everybody's going to become this useless burden, and so, even if that means, oh we'll all get basic income, we won't have to work for a living there's. Also something fundamentally,
dignified, like you, won't be needed, and any situation like that. It's just bound to be a political disaster.
an economic disaster on many levels we can go into if it is an obvious. But the thing to see is that this economic, the whole that we,
to be driving ourselves into his one and the same as the information wants to be free cause. The thing is, ultimately, all these
a eyes and robots and all the stuff they run on information that, at the end of the day, has to come from people and each instances a little
different, but for a lot of them, there's input from a lot of people, and I can give you some examples. So if we say that information is free, then were saying in the information age everybody's worthless
so they can contribute to suit from hey sympathetic, the example I like to use as just an entry point of it
the idea is that the people who translate between languages, so they ve, seen their careers, be decimal.
their tenth of what they were in the same way that recording
positions am in oh, get, invest
negative journalists and many other classes of of people who have an information product that they have all been kind of reduced under this weird regime we ve created,
The thing is in order to run the the so called a
translators. That places like being
google offer. We have to scrape ten
of millions of examples from real life. People translating thinks every single day in order to keep up with slang in public
language is alive. The world is alive. You can't just stuff a language
later, once you have to keep on refilling it, and so on
totally reliant on the very people that were putting out of work so fundamentally like a form of theft through dishonesty. Ok, so
so, we ve hit the ground running here. I want us back up for a second and too
spider, perform a an exorcism on some bad intuitions.
because I think people come into this way with with trained ourselves to expect. Much of
our digital content, to be free and free forever, and it now seems just
the normal state of the world and, of course, podcast and blogs, and
journalism and ultimately, music should be free or if it's not free, it should be subsidized by ads, and I think it
The sense that either tv and radio were free. So there's this this precedent and advertise
has its excesses, but I think people feel aware what what's you know what's wrong with add? Some ads are kind of cool
well in an amusing and stylish. So
live with him for forever
and then there's these other elements like you're having a personal,
eyes news feed watch what's wrong with that. Why can't facebook just give me
what I want so at last spring this the concept of
the role of ads back in here too.
Most people have decided that, in the face of this, the way to
monetize work and inspire good work is too
build an add economy, and this answers the need.
Have information, be freight. All of the the young
people who who want to get it that way and and internet were now you we who used to be
still want to get it that way, and this is something that many of us have a fight against- have been paying attention to the key
Sequential of of relying on ads and the united decided that I did. I can't credibly
red ads on this podcast. I know that you're you're, more sanguine about the state of podcasting than most
The media at the moment- and I should say as that for many podcast, because I've taken up
Dixon against ads on my own pike, ass, many people come to me wanting to.
the same, and the truth is I don't actually even
know what to tell other podcasters at this point because
think I'm an outlier in this space where it with works. For me, I found an audience who and- and some percentage of of the audience will support this work, but it's you mean by no means straightforward to say that
that any podcast her who wants to will will find an audience to support their work, and I think that, given the current expectation
I think, anyone who does decide to to forego adds, will be
an economic price for doing that. I read with with whatever audience at whatever scale given given the expectation that podcast should be free. So it's kind of hard to
to advise people. Even when I'm successfully implemented,
ad free model here? Well, I need to correct you about something. My objection is not to advertising, but to continue
this behaviour modification by algorithm, wainwright,
a very different thing. So,
What went overlaps overlaps in one case in that? Well, I saw
I'm worried as a pot her about the the
behavior, modification or or the perceived behaviour modification that can happen
to me as a as eight just a broker of information. I don't you know like a credibility concern. I just can't you know, given what I'm too,
trying to do here. I don't feel that I can personally shill for any products, but I think other podcasters can. I,
completely convergent with the brand of other pot castors to sail. Listen, the here's, the here's, the greatest juno teacher,
I've ever found. You know you, you know you you're gonna, want this t shirt and that that work. I know I've heard some really I'm listening to some of the podcasting
you have to read their ads. Would its clearly bizarre if it's actually kind of entertaining, but the thing is as long as every listener here
is the same. Add reynard
we can understand. What's going on, that's ok, I mean the reason podcasting
still, in my view and unmolested authentic medium is that there are
algorithms calculating what somebody here is on a pod cast. It still is,
crafted by you and if it includes adds people can tell it includes, as it is. If there is in some met a pod cast, that's taking snippets in creating a feed for people,
there isn't some algorithm, that's in at least so far,
it is. I got changing what
he say with you know, I audio signal processing technology to suit the needs of somebody who's paying from the side. Some advertiser, there's not a calculation of a feed designed by behaviour,
is theorists to change people and as long as it's just a crafted thing. Even if it, and if it includes commercial communication ever think it destroys society, I think it does start
try society when everything becomes really manipulative and creeping in a way that people can't possibly follower understand. Then it's
to undermine human dignity and self determination, and that's exactly what's going on with social media
companies and the way, searches, tristram and of the way up each videos are selected for
when fed to admit many other examples and an end. That's that's where we are
we have the most serious problem so
What is the solution now? What if you could reboot the internet? But how would you do it? I would do if he thinks the first thing I would
you is some incur
everybody involved are gradually bring money back.
into the world of information instead of expansion, and I think people should be earn able
Earn a living when what they add to the network is valuable.
I mean right now we are creating the most valuable companies in history based on the information people add to them and meanwhile were creating more and more economic separation.
more inequality and obviously I can't go on for
when the only way to correct it is to start paying the people who are adding.
information. That's the value and grow the pie.
It doesn't mean that I think the big tech companies should be shut down or that their evil actually kind of like a lot of them, just means that we have to get back to work,
world, where when people add value they get paid for it and honest and of course, so that that the flip side of that is just as netflix prove
and for that matter, apple with the app store and many other examples. We have to encourage business models where people pay for what they want. So you know, Google said google should say: Hastert won't be free,
after ten years for going to gradually start removing the free option and what you get in exchange for that
is no more commercial bias and crap on our search results. So this is just going to be serving you you're, going to pay for it. Facebook same thing we're going at where we're going to,
commit to not having any ads in ten years and yeah you'll start paying for it, but it'll be a great deal to be affordable. You'll get you'll get peak facebook and, just like you got peak tv from places like. Ah you know, H, b, o and netflix we're going to give you peak social media where you can get better information and less crap, but the the the other part of that is a little more complicated, which is
If you keep your eye out for a peace, I have coming out with a colleague in the harvard business tree view. Sorry, too, I know it's. A small b
but anyway, now after it is the place to start we're starting to two scope out how to do this in much more detail than before, and a lot of it has to do with creating in between institutions.
As of right now, if there's nothing but a bunch of individuals in one giant tech platform like a facebook or google. There's this bizarre situation, where we're petitioning the central authority that we have
other power over that we didn't vote for two to police are and speech and to please her behaviour, and it's just not ten.
All were demanding authoritarianism.
and the way around, that is to create middle sized organization centre analogous to things like scientific journals or universities or trade unions, or many other examples where you can voluntary. You can vote
terribly join these things and they collectively bargain, for you say you can get paid decently instead of having a giant race to the bottom and they can become brands in themselves, had enforced quality and become trustworthy, and so we have to create this. This
sense of intermediate structures and remember that in the past, before the internet, the place where excellence and compassion and trustworthiness came from was not the central government declaring it. But rather things like universities and scientific journals and high quality news outlets, developing reputation and being selective and
but that was all voluntary voluntary set, was an authoritarian it in an answer. If you have in between sized organizations, you can have all these effects that would go through
korean if they were global indirectly from the centre and all of those institutions are exactly the
once they were weakened and destroyed when facebooks africanist, move fast and break things, suffer was broken, wealth is in between organisations, and so we have to
build them in any way. In order to have this more humane and sustainable internet.
It's worth reminding ourselves after those two clips that social media is not entirely destructive. It has potential to do plenty of good
and it has realised some of that potential. There are
personal stories of friendships, recollections knowledge, growth, business up,
countries and meaningful
the change which can credit themselves to the advent of social media, and it can
for a valuable, real time information. So what
Try are best to emphasise a hope to not throughout the perennial baby, with the bathwater and the criticism on that.
I will listen and now to sam's conversation with jack dorothy doors.
Cofounded twitter and his cognizant of the monster which has created, and the struggle
the harness it for good.
Since this conversation with SAM dorsey stepped down from his role as ceo of twitter,
though, he still the ceo of square, which is a finance.
The tool he also found in wars
the temptation to read into the move away from twitter as admitting defeat and his efforts to attain the beast in this post.
Of their conversation, sam
and dorsey discuss how twitter has entrenched itself into the political and journalistic environment for better
worse,
dorsey mentions the echo chamber or filter bubble phenomenon which describe
only seeing and hearing news and opinion which coheres with your particular perspective, this
nominal intends to warp ones, worldview and exacerbate partisanship after we,
from dorsey will offer an
alternative analogy which.
Maybe even more potent and poisonous tore psychology and democracy.
we're going to allow this clip to get into some of the specific policy. Not they get tied when any experiment like social media gets under way.
Here is sam with jack dorsey from episode one forty eight received
To massive companies, which at least from them, the public facing view seem.
I am opposed in the level of controversy they name they bring to the world and to your life. Presumably may square is eva seems like a very straightforward, successful, noble pursued which about which
I can't imagine there's a lot of controversy and further sum then, and then I haven't noticed, but it must be
nothing like what you're dealing with with twitter,
How're you tree
Jeanne. The need
survey a big company that has just
jane like a normal big company and twitter, which is something which,
on any given day can be just freeing up front page news every,
where given, how a given the sense of either howitzer,
helping the world. Today, the thing at this amazing twitters at its clayton
able maybelline area
resolutions that we might want to support right or the empowerment
of dissidents and mistresses. One saudi teenager who was eaten tweeting from us
a hotel room, the bangkok airport, that her shoes were that her her parents would kill her, and I think it's too much to say
twitter may have saved her life. In that case, I'm sure there are many other cases like this where she got she was
Asylum and in canada- and so
did these. These stores become front page news and then the antithetical story becomes front page news, so we know that you know I says: recruits terrorists on twitter were their fears that misinformation-
spread their undermines democracy.
And how are you
You deal with being a new
mosquito and being a ceo and his other channel, which is anything but normal were both companies and both spaces are day credit and have their own share of controversy.
but I find that in the financial realm it's a lot more private, whereas with communication it has to be open and I would prefer them both to be out in the open. I would prefer to work more in public. I'm fascinated by this idea of of being able to to work in public. Make decisions in public make mistakes in public, and I get there
Because of my childhood I was, I was a huge fan of punk rock back in the day and night transition that hip hop and dallas
me to a lot of open source where people just get up on stage and do there
and there are terrible on his arm
months later, and there were a little bit better and then a month later, they're a little bit better and we see the same thing with open source which led me to technology all to me. But so I I approach it with with that understanding of that you know we're not here just
make one single statement that stands the test of time, that our medium at twitter is conversation in conversation, evolves and
Ideally, it evolves in a way that we all learn from it does not
a lot of people in the world today? That would walk away from twitter saying I I learned something, but that would be my goal and we need to figure out what elements
of the service in one element of the product. We need to bolster or increase her or china
and in order to do that. So I guess in my role,
see or twitter its
How do I led this company in the open, realising none
We're gonna, take a lot of bruises along the way, but in the long term, what we get out of that ideally, is his earnings and trust and
we're not there yet, but the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe that sam Harris network once you do you'll get access to all full length. Episodes of the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber only content, including bonus episodes and a amaze, and the conversations I've been having on the waking up app. The making sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at sam harris dot, org the.
Transcript generated on 2023-05-12.