blood in tears french take on, and i say shame on al-jazeera, be the hero, the world needs, right? washer 600 hours g.m.t. here on al-jazeera on come all santa maria, and these are the headlines ceremonies underway in tehran right now. ahead of the burial of iran's top nuclear scientist who was killed on friday most in fact, his other is due to be laid to rest in the coming hours. iran blames israel for the assassination and has vowed to retaliate more from us a big well, we understand the body of most and fathers are they will be brought here to, to her and to the most of the founder of the islamic republic on saturday. his body

was taken to the holy city of mashhad to a holy shrine there. yesterday, it was taken to the holy city of rome. i went to stand. it will be a quiet affair, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic. and partly because of security reasons . they could be minister defense officials attending there and also other scientists who may not want to be seen on camera. but i think that part of it will, be broadcast on state t.v., but the questions about the security of the country continue yesterday. we had fars news agency that's linked to the revolutionary guard, publish a version of events. they said that there were 3 security cause one went up ahead to scout the route and then there was a machine gun inside and pick up the pickup truck. the pickup truck that was remotely controlled and that began to fire. the pickup truck was then blown up and that was the cause. and they said that there were no gunman. now that is in stark

contrast to what we heard following the event state t.v. ran interviews with individuals. eye witnesses said that they saw gunman and why we're hearing these version of events is because there are questions being asked about the security services. how this was allowed to happen. what exactly happened because there's one thing in the nation with so many individuals inside the country, but there's another thing getting away with it. now the headlines and forces have shot down an ethiopian military plane and captured the pilots. a day after the prime minister declared victory in the region. state media says at least 70 graves have been found in the ticket in town of and it's $110.00 civilians killed in northeast nigeria in what the u.s. described as a gruesome massacre of farmers tending their crops. the armed group boko haram suspected of being behind this the deadliest attack in borno state this year. u.s. president elect joe biden is being treated for a fractured foot a day before he's to receive his 1st presidential briefing. wisconsin's 2 largest

counties of also finalized the recount of their votes and they've confirmed biden as the winner. well, for mike hanna in washington, it's now been confirmed that president elect biden actually fractured his ankle while playing in his garden with his 2 dogs, major and champion. his position says that he'll be in a boot for a number of weeks. so joe biden limping along, but is administration is not, it's going a pace with more appointments being announced in the course of the day. joe biden has announced his communications staff to sure operate in the white house, and that's headed by gender, highly respected communications. professional. she worked as the white house communications director in the obama administration. she will head a team of 6 within the communications department, all of whom are women for the 1st time in u.s. history. the communications team will be staffed entirely by women. putting out

a tweet pointing out too that all 6 have young children, so it will be a very different white house and a biden. it would appear certainly from a communications point of view. biden's receiving the personal daily brief. this is the intelligence information given to the president supposedly every day, although many reports indicate that president trump has not been receiving the daily briefing in recent days. president trump himself continues to insist that there was fraud in the election. he's repeated these allegations without providing any form of evidence whatsoever. and family farmers protesting in india have rejected the government's offer to hold talks with the anger, rises over new agricultural laws, thousands have been camping out on highways, new delhi, and blocking major roads. demonstrators say the reforms will leave them vulnerable . you have to look at the headlines on al-jazeera studio. b. unscripted from london is next. a look at the headlines and 25

why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack. now i realize i was working for something that was evil, and i had been a part of actually creating it. when mark zuckerberg essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie, that spells doom my name is maria ressa and i'm a journalist and author, the message that the government is sending is very clear. be silent or your next. i've received thousands of death threats on line. thank you. i'm christopher wiley. i'm a data scientist,

but most people know me as the cambridge analytical whistleblower. thank facebook. knew about cambridge analytical scheme since 2015. before the story broke, facebook threatened to sue the guardian and then banned me for whistleblowing. are revealed hard data is being manipulated to political gain without our consent. thanks. thanks. since rappers started reporting the president protect us that the drug war, i believe that she did leave, charged and arrested. it makes you feel vulnerable, but i think it's quite right. i'm inspired by how maria continues to stand up for the truth in the face of real danger. chrysis revelations lead to the largest danger crime investigation in history if we allow cheating in our democratic earth . and we allow this amount, what about next time? what about the time after that, we know firsthand what happens when social media is weaponize and the danger it now

poses to our democracies around the world. this is an existential moment. and it's time for us all to act it's so good to talk to you. you figured out and then you created a system, you taught yourself how to code, you learned the data. and then you built this whole system that was very efficient at modifying behavior. and then you decided to take it down. when did you decide it was wrong? when i 1st joined the company that later became cambridge analytic, a c l group. i joined a company that at the time was working on projects that were geared towards

countered stream ism encounter radicalization. looking at how extremism spreads online and we got discovered by a guy by the name of steve bannon, who won 3 short got a billionaire to acquire the company. and what i saw was that i had worked on a system that got essentially inverted to radicalize young men in the united states. and it's, you know, witnessing the inception of an insurgency, the already campaign. and so when i started seeing videos of people in focus groups who were so angry with things that were frankly untrue. you know, i realized i was working for something that was evil. and i had, you know, been a part of actually creating it. and i couldn't keep doing that. it's interesting when you said you were looking at it for

a counter radicalization at 1st. i came to it because i was looking at how social network analysis spread the ideology of terrorism. and we created rappler because if you can convince people to blow themselves up with this radical ideology, why couldn't you have some things that are for a good, right? that's why we created rappler. but then when you started seeing the negative parts, it's hard to pull yourself out. how to be a whistleblower. what gave you the courage to do that? yeah, i think it was for me, you know, growing up kind of as an outsider, i was partly in a wheelchair when i was growing up because of a invisible disability. and then i live on top of that sort of being queer. i came out as a with the war, but i've been coming out for my entire life and you know, for me it's that sense of otherness that and comfortable with being uncomfortable. yeah. that i think gave me a little bit of a notch to help me become, become

a whistleblower. but with setting up rappler and, you know, being on the outside, i think you're going out there every single day. pissing off a lot of people trying to do you find that you know, your life's journey sort of influence and thought, oh gosh. so i was born in the philippines and then moved to the united states when martial law was declared in 1972. but when i was with americans, i never felt completely american. and when i'm filled with for the peano's, i built feel completely filipino either. so i guess it's that it's that otherness part of it, right. and that, that's good training for journalists or whistle blowing or whistle blowing. but i mean, i do find that there's a bit of an overlap because not that i would ever call myself a journalist. but in some senses i feel similar. there's something similar about

that. you know, shoving uncomfortable information into people's faces and you, knowing you have to pay attention to this and then be viewing the consequences of that. so i was going say, that's the mission of journalism, right? you speak truth to power and you'll know power doesn't like that in your and i think you been speaking truth. i mean there's a cost to yourself, but you also seem to learn something more from each instance that you've done that . has this been a good experience or a bad experience? it's a mixed bag, i guess. i mean, i think it's been on the whole a good experience for i have learned a lot. so how, you know, you know, after watching 2016 happen and knowing so many things about what was going on. you know, i learned that i do feel compelled to speak uncomfortable truth. but at the same

time, you know, you know, getting called to testify. our congress, you know, as a 20 something game or living in london, it's not something that you really expects to be part of your life's journey. that was pretty intimidating, is pretty intimidating to have, you know, the department of justice and f.b.i. sitting behind me and you know, giving the a subpoena after that. but i think, i think on the whole, it's been a good experience. because if you think back before 28, seen the idea that privacy or data protection, you know, the internet would be a mainstream political issue in the 2020 election and the primary race would kind of be laughable. so i feel like at least in that sense, exposing wrongdoing and exposing the structures that facilitate and support that wrongdoing. with companies like facebook yet have at least opened up an awareness into

a conversation in our mainstream political discourse that i think is productive. how easy is it to manipulate mass and i'm asking you, i get frustrated a lot by the current sort of discussion about the election manipulation because it so focuses on the united states and to a lesser extent, britain. because britain and the united states. and i'm sure coming from the philippines. you know, this full well have been manipulating elections and democracy is around the world for hundreds of years. britain was a empire, a speck. and, you know, the reason why, you know, the national drink in britain is tea and you know, national animal is a lion and, you know, these are not natural things here. and so i think the reason why people are so upset in the united states or in britain or other parts of europe is an american voter now understands what it feels like to be an african voter.

because, you know, living in a country where you've got a gradually eroding information system where lies are everywhere, where you don't know what to trust. you've got foreign countries left right and center, trying to manipulate you trick you deceive you and corruption rife in the administration . looking at the philippines and something that i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on coming from an x. u.s. colony. where you had a large country dictating the terms of how government works if you know, to becoming independent. and now having a large american corporation run by a bunch of straight white dudes in america, starting to influence at least what information is allowed or not allowed to exist, or what gets amplified and promoted. or what does thing in the philippines do you, do you feel like there is

a sort of neocolonialism happening online? so you're the 1st person. i heard say that colonialism never died. it just moved on line. right. and i think in, we talked about facebook as a 1st level, which i mean, frankly, the collapse that roshan of our institutions began on facebook. what the description of the philippines stanley karnow wrote in our image and he described the philippines as a country that spent 450 years in a convent and 50 years in hollywood. we were colonized by spain and then the united states. and i think it's ironic that the country that gave democracy is also the, the place where silicon valley then has given someone like to tear down a bull. so narrow these types of authoritarian leaders who work who are killing democracy, the power to do it,

to manipulate people. but i think we all know that the, our countries in the global south bear the brunt of all the tech, this issue. and that have been made, right? i mean, how do we get power, how we've never really had a seat at the table in these things. and we've, they're the worst. do you think you should go see other people? sure. threats part. i mean, part of the reason i can speak about it is because i can articulate it in a way that the west can understand. you currently are, you know, challenging and allegedly, and arguably corrupt regime. what does it mean for you to say give us a seat at the table? do you give a corrupt regime a theater table to talk about now? so i think one of the things this time show us is exactly how human behavior is universal regardless of culture in many ways. because of very same things that

manipulate americans and europeans are the very same things that manipulate us in the global south. we just don't have the institutions to fight back and look how weak your institutions have gotten here. behavioral modification system. how do we fix it? i think i've been a journalist for this is almost 35 years. it's never been as hard to work as a journalist, as it is today. i have to post bail 8 times. my government filed 11 cases and invested 11 cases and investigations that year and then began arresting me and 21001st arrests was valentine's day. those over the valentine, 00, and my government seems to work very well in february this february. you know, they've, they've gone and filed a, a similar case against the largest broadcaster in the philippines. what would you say, you know, to, to your critics in the philippines about the charges that you know,

the government has lodged against you? did you break the law? oh my lord. no, i am challenging power, right? we continue to do our jobs and we will continue the line. i always use this. we are going to hold the line because the philippine constitution, like the united states constitution has a bill of rights where patterned after the united states constitution. and then let me ask you this, what the cambridge talladega do in the philippines, the company operated in many places around the world. this is something that also i learned, spending time there. that, you know, is it's really profitable to go in corrupt governments. because governments have, like really monetised that you've got sovereignty is something that's really hard for you, for a company to replicate. and you know, with you, karen, you can dictate, you know, mineral rights, resource rights, passports,

all kinds of things in the philippines. you know, they are not as there are, you know, the story of the philippines. you guys kind of got trumped before everybody else. ok. yes. but you're facing prison in quite serious charges, least 80 years. why do you care so much? because then when it be easier to just go somewhere else, i mean i could toss in question at you why you became a whistleblower right? because this is the time that matters. because if i didn't stand up for the standards and ethics, the mission of journalism, when it matters, then everything else i did beforehand doesn't matter. then i'm not who i am. defining who you are. i hate this time period. i hate that the baton was passed to me now, but that's why it matters. how do we get civic

engagement when people don't know the facts? i don't think we can. it's kind of like what we're doing right now. we're sitting on a stage. we're having a discussion, there is an audience they know that we're talking. and if i say something that's not true or somebody can call it, or a journalist can call it. what we have now is a situation where i can become invisible. and i can go and whisper in, so everybody's ear and they all hear something different. and i can do that now with the benefit of having followed everybody in the audience around for years and years and years reading through their text messages, listening to their phones, looking at everything that they look at, even when they don't realize that they're being watched. and i don't think that we can have a functioning democracy when there is no longer public discourse, because everything has become privatized. and oftentimes people can't,

don't even know if they're receiving something that is targeted or not, which again goes back to if you get rid of transparency, you get rid of accountability. you get rid of democracy. we can take questions from the audience. maria julie posetti from the international center for journalists. i've spent time with you and with your news organization, and i know that you have learned a lot as a result of the orchestrated dissin for measuring campaigns, the deliberate targeting of journalists and rappler in particular. given that we're talking particularly about what kristof has referred to as pushing, if these problems, you know, from the global south to the west. can you tell us sitting here in london? what journalists in particular, dealing with these problems now can do to prepare themselves. so if i think this is an excess tensional moment for democracy,

globally journalism, the death of journalism, i want to say the death of journalists with the death of journalism is only the 1st signal for the death of democracy. our dystopian president is your dystopian future . if we don't do anything right now, and of course, with the elections coming up in the united states, it's a huge problem. but what are the danger signals the fact that we don't know the facts. one the fact that you don't know whom to trust. because in the philippines, the 1st targets of attacks and these are exponential attacks, right? i was getting an average of 9890 hate messages per hour in the philippines. in 2016, our data showed that women were attacked at least 10 times more than men. so myside, ginny, sexists, i'm the kind of gender sexualized gendered attacks on

women. what's the end goal? you pound someone to silence so that a whole narrative collapses. and then the voice with the loudest megaphone is amplified, bottom up, and then top down our president, for example, the attacks against me and rappler. we were attacked for a year on facebook on social media. and then after that, a year later, president to tear to said the same exact thing which is like astroturfing it is, it lays the groundwork for what the government does. you are all living through something similar is just our institutions crumbled within 6 months . your institutions are a little bit stronger than ours, but human beings behave the same way. and the lack of trust is ushering in a whole new 193-0940 s.

. right. all of a sudden we're looking at fascism and i guess this is why i am so scared and i want silicon valley. i want the west who have stronger institutions to do something more about it. because if we don't, instead of a year or 2 years of this, or going to look at decades of fascism. my question to you, christopher, i am from kenya. you work for cambridge analytical, you know, robey over 70 people died may be directly or indirectly related to the role of cambridge in the data. my question then is, is it legal or moral for british or american firms to work in countries like what they take advantage of local regulations and yet continue to operate. this is something that i found most shocking. when you've got a, a company in country a, what they, if in britain engaging with multiple firms and contractors each

in their own jurisdiction, creating this information or a propaganda that were entirely in britain would be wholly illegal. and then disseminating that in another country. because you've got so many different players involved and so many different components of wrongdoing, it's actually really difficult to figure out where technically did a crime occur. in tax law, we're just starting to, you know, create principles and rules that prevent people from just hopping from one jurisdiction to another. but with data and the internet, we are what we know where tax law was in 1950, not realizing that the internet is global. that data is global, that this information can be global. we lack, you know,

not only the actual institutions to sue police, but we actually lack like principles in saw, a lawmaker start to understand actually how the internet works. i don't mean that sarcastically, as in that it is actually global and that we need to create principles that if that him embrace that global ness, lots of wrongdoing can happen. maria, you have been christened and yet continue your fight. and more recently from turkey and living in scantron for the last 20 years in my country, many journalists are in jail now. and many others are free of writing speaking. and so what do you see in journalism and for years we've never been as vulnerable as we are today? because power in countries like yours and mine has taken

what the internet, what social media, what companies like cambridge analytic and it is, it isn't only thing which analytical, we now have filipino companies like cambridge and great. they are the ones taking advantage of it. why is it that the bad guys are the ones who are taking these tack these tools of manipulation and using them against us for us, for someone like chandan dar, for example, he had to flee his country and he made the decision to do that. for fear of his life, others are dying. we see this and every single report that comes out about journalism . why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack because you attack the truth tellers because the integrity of facts is gone. right? we're not agreeing on the facts and the internet. the way social media is set up.

this one concept of growing it by having you choose friends of friends to grow has polarized our societies. so we have far more polarized societies and then we have no understanding of what the facts are. and then you attack institutions. and when you have someone like your leader and my leader, they become stronger in this environment. they hijack. and this is why democracy has dying in our areas of influence. we need to protect the facts because if you don't have the facts, you can't have integrity of elections. you can't have integrity of markets. how can we have a working society if we don't know how a public sphere where we agree on what the facts are?

we've always had the devil and the angel on our shoulders, right. but the way the social media platforms have been formulated. pants, the devil in your ear, why is that? but you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people like get killed, there are no actual consequences. a key figure of the early 20th century arab literary scene. 'd and a feminist writer had to have had time. so why did her story and in such tragedy al-jazeera weald expose the life and why? of maisie arda on al-jazeera. the u.s.

goal was opened by people who wrote the world to be gained by a number of what it can be report only through an international perspective, the crikey, their global audience. how did it impact being like this is an important part of the world. and i believe it's very good news for the world from here. studio b. unscripted is coming up, but 1st a check on the headlines and forces have been saying they've shot down an ethiopian military plane and captured the pilots. you must state media in ethiopia says at least 70 graves have also been found in the town of ceremonies underway in teheran ahead of the burial of iran's top nuclear scientist who was assassinated on friday. iran blames israel for the killing of most, in fact,

to retaliate in teheran, we understand the body of most and for his that they would be brought here to, to herat to the most of the khomeini, the founder of the islamic republic on saturday. his body was taken to the holy city of mashhad to a holy shrine there. yesterday, it was taken to the holy city of rome. now we understand it will be a quiet affair, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic. and partly because of security reasons . there could be ministry of defense officials attending then also other scientists who may not want to be seen on camera. but i think that part of it will be broadcast on state t.v. . but the questions about the security of the country continue. at least 110 civilians have been killed in northeast nigeria in what the u.s. described as a gruesome massacre of farmers tending their crops. the armed group boko her arms suspected of being behind the deadliest attack in borno state. this year.

protesting farmers in india have rejected the government's offer to hold talks in the dangler of a new agriculture laws. thousands of farmers have been camping out on highways near the capital, new delhi, and have been blocking major roads. demonstrators said the reforms will leave them vulnerable. u.s. president elect joe biden is being treated for a fractured foot a day before he is set to receive his 1st presidential briefing, also wisconsin's 2 largest counties to finalize the recount of their votes and no change. they have confirmed by the end as the winner and senior white house advisor, jared kush. no one reported to travel to saudi arabia and qatar in the coming days . a trip that's believed to be aimed at resolving the dispute between the neighboring countries comes amid tensions in the region with only weeks left, of course, the trumpet, ministration. once again, you are up to date with the headlines on al-jazeera adrian. we'll have your next bulletin in about half an hour's time. coming up now from london part of studio b. . unscripted.

thanks. i'm sure a lot of people in the audience, you know, have heard bits and pieces about what's going on in the philippines. but from your perspective, what's the big deal? why should we care about not only way you and your organization are experiencing, but what's more broadly happening in the philippines? i think that our organization, rappler, has been fighting impunity on 2 fronts that are relevant to everyone around the world. the 1st is the information operations, the manipulation on facebook, on social media. because when you say a lie, a 1000000 times, it becomes the fact. and then if you don't have facts, you then can create whatever narrative you want, including journalists are criminals, right? the 2nd is still connected to that, which is the impunity in the drug war president to tear down our president was

elected with the power of social media and 2016 may of 2016. actually this was the beginning of the dominoes. tumbling down may have 2016 who are before the all right, guard corps, but they're all connected now, i think, right?, i mean, our drug war, if you look at the numbers, the u.n., our own commission on human rights says in a little less than 3 years, at least 27000 people have died. place a huge numbers in 21 years of ferdinand marcos. you, you're talking about a death toll of a little over 3200, so impunity in the drug war, impunity in information operations. our institutions collapsed within 6 months because we didn't have facts and journalists like me are under attack and it's not just little rappler, which is a start up. although i guess i could go to jail for 80 some odd years because of

the cases that have been filed, they are politically motivated. i am not doing anything different than i used to do when i was working 20 years ago. what is different tech? and i think part of one of the recent, you're fascinating to me is because you came into this, you looked at the code, you looked at the data and you later realized its impact on society and waiting for silicon valley to realize that as well. do you think silicon valley which is predominantly run by white privileged men? a large, large number of whom are american? do you know, do you think that that plays a role with like if more people from the philippines or other countries were in leadership roles in tact? do you think that that would make a difference? i'd like to say if journalists were the ones making some of the tech decisions,

it would be a little bit easier. it would be better. so when mark zuckerberg essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie. that spells doom in this tech in the bold world right? that spells the end of democracy. because you cannot tell fact from fiction. the old, before you can create a marketplace, you have to have rules of the marketplace and the rules that we have in total media don't work. you also talked about values. what are the values? what are the values of tech optimization? monetizing? thank you. i right now, i think one of the things, lots of journalist, even celebrated by phone talk was quare was, you know, the mantra of facebook move fast and break things. and you know, they're not really thinking about, you know, what you could be doing is breaking democracy and not just in your own country,

but around the world and even with the evidence they're right. so it's interesting that, you know, you bring up the death toll of the current regime in the philippines. i think to, you know, myanmar yet there facebook was actually warned by, you know, journalists, the united nations about what was happening, where, you know, facebook's systems were being deliberately exploited to propagate hate messaging, which contribution. and this is not me telling is not nation sign contribution to, you know, ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing, you know, i would, would have thought that would be quite a big deal for any c.e.o. to sort of be told by when you look at facebook's response about where, well, the world's complicated will try harder and while thousands of people get murdered . do you think that there are parallels between what happened in myanmar and what either is happening or could even progress to happen in the philippines? it's in every country, right?

the ethnic violence is still continuing in myanmar. the information operations that's led by the military is still continuing in myanmar on facebook. the guy who led that u.n. that u.n. fact finding was much you can. there were some moneys and indonesian who used to head the commission on human rights that report to standing. facebook has a tone independent report and they say the same things. i'm shocked, not a thing yet is moving. and that's part of the reason. so here we go, like, what do we do? i mean, i'm not completely against facebook. other right now i am, i am, i, we were, you know, we're fact checking part, you're here against our behavior. i'm against impunity. you're right. if you look at it, every time facebook trice do the right thing, the market incentives actually punish is that, you know, i provided a lot of information to american regulators. facebook received the largest find

that a technology company had received in history. you know, 5000000000 from the f.t.c. and a 100000000 from the f.c.c. and the share value. we're not, we're in a weird situation now where you can be at the helm of a company that has received the largest financial penalty of a company in your industry, in all of history and shareholders. go, great, let's buy more stock because the worst that can happen is that much money, you know, when you do something really bad, sure is going to take a day off of this year's profit margin. but hey, ho, that's there. what do you think? you know, can be done or should be done using the regulatory action can even work if one country has this regulation, another country doesn't. i think some of the states in the u.s. are now talking about data portability. i think that's a potential solution. so if you own your own data,

you can take your data out of facebook and put it into another social media platform. do you think that people would actually move or do you think it would start to create potentially a 2 tiered system where truth and privacy become? what in a marketplace sting? interesting, that could be. but i'll tell you the behavior of filipinos given the, the police, and that's been injected into facebook, right. if you think of license poison for the, from the time rappler was set up in 2012 all the way until 2016. facebook was number one in alexa ranking, right? this is a ranking of all your websites. now it's back to like number 7. we know something is wrong, but there's no other option. i don't think data or information are moral, morally wrong or morally good. i think that there's sort of these rules that, yeah,

you know, i think about it in a kind of like electricity. you can, you know, power a studio. we can sit comfortably in a warm environment. we have lots of light even though it's night time. you can also electric, you can kill someone, you know, i remember when my, when i was little, my grandmother would always freak out if there was cutlery anywhere near the toaster because you could die making toast. so yes, electricity is dangerous. but would you want to live without electricity? yeah, and the way i sort of think about it is, well, what do we do about electricity to try to amplify the good things that dies and minimise the bad things that it does. and we have safety standards, we've got building codes, wiring code, i like this part in your book. yeah. imagine a facebook was a building you know, where the building has been designed deliberately to make it really hard to leave the building the maze. and you know, the building powers itself every time you open

a door. so there's lots of doors that go nowhere and you can't really leave. and at the front of that building, there are some terms and conditions in a book. you know, 20000 words, you know, a short novella exciting, read outside and then the door size. by the way, you agree that you've read this like work side and that you agree to everything that you know and we wouldn't tolerate by. right? and we also wouldn't say that the onus should be on people to avoid weird and wonky and perhaps dangerous building. we would be going, why are these buildings being designed the same way? and why aren't there rules to prevent people from designing these buildings in the 1st place? for me, what i find so frustrating about silicon valley is that they will continue to win, as long as they keep up the narrative, that the onus and burden of safety in our democracy is on regular people rather

than the people who design systems. this is the 1st thing i said, because i was like, when i was getting attacked, i was, they kept saying, you know, you're a public figure and you know, really we can't do anything about it. then i just thought, you know, hello. i'm protected by the constitution of the journalist. you've taken away that protection and why is it the user's fault? if you design it this way and who gets to let you choose? what is allowable and knowledgeable on this pot form? this is the thing that i find, you know, really scary is that, you know, we, we have kind of relegated our democracy to mark zuckerberg and i find that very terrifying but true. medium long term. and of course my in infested interests is in the short term because i could go to jail if we don't find the right solutions. right? yeah, i mean, i unfortunately, i don't, i don't think that

a solution because we have, it's a, it's an infrastructure. yeah. yeah. yeah, imagine if you had a pharmaceutical company regulated like a tech company where you don't actually have to do any kind of trials, you don't have to prove safety of your systems. you can just like experiment. and when something goes wrong, you can say, oh, sorry, like, pharmacy pharmaceutical business is complicated. you know, biology is complicated or an airline going, you know, sorrier plane crashed, it's hard to make things fly that are like really having something happen. but when it, when you look at it like the reaction that facebook has, you know, whether it was in me, jamar in the philippines in new zealand. but the list goes on during the press release is like a pro forma standard. the world is really complicated. we've got it wrong, this time we're going to work to do better. and i question why is that that you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people get killed,

there are no actual consequences. and you know, i feel safe mostly when i go onto a plane or take a drug from the doctor. so i, you know, i think that people should feel safe going on online as well. yes. agree. the gotten away with impunity so far also because old power looked away, they abdicated responsibility to the young guys who know what they're doing. do you think that mark zuckerberg is in his about the that a new editor, a new publisher? are they not publishing? right, and are they not allowing it? it's like they invited people to their house and they gave everyone guns and said it's the wild, wild west. so yes, i think the wow, i can tell you as they do you think the information is a weapon or isn't it, isn't the weaponization of information, isn't that what's coming out of art? i think if you look at donald trump, he has eroded the american constitution has,

you know, gotten away with impeachment and is at the same time, you know, putting children in cages at the american border and undermining, you know, civic cohesion in the united states. and i look at that, and i just think that there is destruction that is happening and it is the product of information or rather descend from a sharon absolute and that is dangerous. and so in that sense i, i think that information can be a weapon, but at the same time, you know, journalists also use information, you know, for goods, the gatekeeper in this public sphere, the world's largest distributor of news is facebook. you tube comes in a very close 2nd, right in terms of and the designs of both of these platforms are optimized to manipulate, to sell us and our data at our weakest possible moment to the person or company

that will pay for an intended result. it's like these are platforms now that are designed there behavioral modification systems, and we are pavlov's dogs going in there. oh, it will no not know. i know not perhaps let's open it up to pavlov's dogs. for some questions. a lot of these challenges were confronting right now, like, for example, epidemics, we've had a terrible measles epidemic in the philippines. got coronavirus right now, which is being significantly complicated by misinformation. do you see any hope that those kind of real world costs are going to start being recognized by even some of the more sober terry and activists? so in the philippines, i'll say yes, the government has now talked about how they're going to run after the, the fake news that's being said about the coronavirus, right?

but then again, the government's own machinery is the one pumping out news because it is pumping out lies because if it takes the attention, it refocuses attention from things going wrong. i guess i'm curious why the west always calls it misinformation. it's disinformation. it is meant to manipulate you, the dissent from aishah networks go bottom up from each of our countries in the global south and connect to this kind of nervous system that in my country now is combining russia and china. it is scary as all heck. but this is how information is weaponized for power and who can control this right now? silicon valley that needed solution. this is to christopher. so in

2013, while you're still with s.c.l. group, you had set up a similar company called us. and according to bust, a few do you had told an acquaintance of yours that you wanted to build the n.s.a. as a wet dream? and you also claimed that evil pays more. so that's not true. one of the things that i've learned is that you know, when you go up against a company that specializes in this information and it also uses that increase narratives about people who criticize. so i do, i don't take your assertion as valid and it's this simply, it's not true. i did not set up that company. i do not remember. and i have not seen any actual state of evidence to, you know, to substantiate this, this flippant comment. ok, well it seems to me that you helped create these tools which you admitted to

building and you know, eventually these tools were misappropriated and you know, day we used to hijack elections and undermine democracy. so do you understand why some people would question your motives today? of course i understand that, and i think it's healthy for people to, you know, have skepticism about anybody who talks about anything. you know, i understand i was involved in creating a company that, you know, ended up doing some really terrible things, not just in the united states,, but in many countries around the world. when i joined a c.r., i was, you know, 2324. i recognize that i did not know enough about what i was doing and you know, i have learned a lot in that process and if there were regulations in place at the time when i 1st started, that for example, required me as

a data scientist or as an engineer to make a proper assessment of risk where there would be consequences if that the not happen, not to say that came later. or other countries like it would never have existed or not exist in the future, but it would have made a lot of people think about what they're doing. considering the earth and the political situation in the philippines. what advice would you do a potential filipino wiesel blower. first bear i will say one thing, lawyers, lawyers, lawyers, lawyers talk to lawyers it's boyer's, have saved my life in so many occasions. that's, that's all i would say. whistleblowers in the philippines have

a horrendous track record. and part of the reason we have so few. and the reason why fear now works is precisely because it is the whistleblower who suffers versus who ever they blow the whistle against. i've submitted myself to the men and women inside the judiciary, who i hope will abide by the spirit of the constitution, but i am very cognizant that they have families to protect. they have reputations and ambitions, and this makes our justice system extremely flawed. but i submit myself to that. this is the christopher. you've recently been banned from facebook and there's been a study to show that when people deactivate their facebook accounts, they generally become happy. so i was wondering if this is affected your major school. so yeah, i'm banned on facebook. i'm also banned on instagram because it's on my facebook.

so my life no longer has well curated pictures of a lot of toast and 1st track. am i happier without using facebook? not really and here's why. it's really hard to stay in touch with people without using the 2 main systems that everybody else uses. facebook didn't just sort of deactivate my account and sort of a normal way. i got like completely or a stuff of facebook like i don't exist anymore. and my photos, you know, my memories, my friend groups all went away. and when you look at other examples in history of where the sort of collective memory of a person is a race to you had in, for example,

the soviet union. where if you spoke out against the regime, you would be disappeared, not just physically, but like literally your photos would go away. mentions of you would go away and it felt really weird to look at, you know, 10 years of my life disappearing. they didn't just ban me, they deleted me, and it felt really weird to be deleted. i am more broadly happier. i feel lighter. it is. i sort of gone through this somewhat on the scale in that sense, but i do miss being able to be in touch with people. i think for me, my final thought is diet. we've got a really serious problem. to me it feels like the kinds of excess dental crisis that we have in some ways, like climate change. you don't notice the incremental changes and democracy and tell you no longer have that. but i hope that people take that to heart and you

know that if, if you think that's worrying, than you know, make your voice heard and be angry about it. the 2 biggest battles and you mention them both is climate because we will die. and you can't fix climate if you don't have the information. the battle for world the battle for truth. these are the 2 battles that is pivotal this year is pivotal. if we don't do the right things, we will lose both. it is death by a 1000 cuts, and we must do more. i don't think it's being a debbie downer because obviously we have hope. we must have hope with us. we have to fix it. i think human values haven't changed. we've always had the devil and the angel on our shoulders, right. but the way that social media platforms have been formulated. fans the devil

in your ear and encourages us against them, splintering our public sphere part so each of us can take a role. we get rid of the lies in our immediate areas of influence. we look for what binds us together rather than what pulls us apart. we act a little bit like outsiders so that we can understand and analyze a little bit better. and i think for the journalists and the audience, there is no time that requires the mission of journalism of truth tellers no time. like now we need to do this and we need to do it. now.

when you play for england, i was never really getting to be as except it is my strike, a counterpart. his name is and why. if you raise fact historically great facts about the empire, people become hysterical. they say, if you don't like it, if you're not upsetting people you know, saying, you know what you want to iowa out of the immediate risk of flash flooding is more or less gone away. and that's of course a fairly common occurrence of thunderstorms. in the arabian peninsula, but still this blue line wandering iraq continues to produce showers in riyadh, possibly in bahrain, the heading back up again to q 8 which have flash flooding, or from the safe for the same reason,

the heaviest stuff appears to be the western side of saudi and they get good sunday storms could produce flash flooding here in this mountainous ground. iran has seen the weather improve greatly in the last 24 hours or so. so got showers forming in cyprus, sudden turkey easily on the high ground north of aleppo. it's going to be snow rather than right. now, given the onset of the northeast monsoon, we have an influence of the whole of africa. a bit more right there. also, i claim this time, but in the same area where the cycle past rain seems like to fall, mogadishu looks dry, in fact, much dry. now in kenya, an evening uganda throughout the rift valley, there's an increase in the likelihood of fairly heavy right in, in tanzania too. it looks fairly wet line if you take it a line unless you takes us to can show us are also wet, but maybe more welcome rain is to be seen further size where this line is moving up into mozambique for eventually, malawi. we've

never had a president who has literally for 4 or 5 years repeatedly attacked our democracy. you know loosely related to a complaint. i don't have a narrative, i have a question. you're getting there really where people can get treated and just feel sure even further. join me richelle carey and up front is my guess from around the world. take a hot seat and we debate the week's top stories and pressing issues here on al-jazeera. al-jazeera. every coded 19 is a public health crisis that has been compounded by capitalism, navigates the big questions, raised by the global pandemic housing system based on private ownership of the

pursuit of profit, the world in a time of busts, capitalism is the pandemic back to life of the exploited to protect the people for the profit episode, one of the full hail the meltdown on al-jazeera ethiopia's prime minister attends an extraordinary session of parliament as the conflicts in the all the great region shows no sign of deescalation. hello, i'm adrian. forget this is our 0 hour live from go. also coming up. a nation mourns iranians bid farewell to the country's top nuclear scientist who was assassin.