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tv   Up Front  Al Jazeera  November 23, 2024 7:30am-8:01am AST

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is underground rights groups and the family say police are trying to stop the miners out by refusing to deliver food. malcolm lab reports from still fun to nobody here other than the informal mine is says to enter the deceased mind chopped . these mine rescue experts prepare a camera to find out what's below. nobody else is allowed on the sites, including volunteers from the minus community. he lost lowered food a week ago. please say the miners are refusing to come out. the gold things here are about 2 and a half columbus has the cameras meant to show how the rescue operation should proceed. right, scripts and relative state progress is too slow and the government still trying to stuff the miners out. politicians from the provincial parliament set the mind is, rights should be respected, but it's not the police responsibility to deliver food. some of them actually did not want to come out. so at one point,
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and i want this to be under the quote that the $1.00 lead through not to expect them to be negotiating with team enough. rights groups have been asking if those below really the mazda minds of organized crime will the victims this nearby township was built about 70 years ago under the apartheid government to house workers when the gold mines opened. most have since closed. one of the few ways to make a living is collecting, breaks from abundant, demolished shops and houses, which is what these women say they would doing. just to be able to afford a meal. a muscle into hot, solid, bony, told us how husbands been in the disused mine for 3 months to live outside because i never know which i am, whatever we kind of some others when our husbands go underground to some kind of thing. but right now, uh husbands a lot to him that shopkins summit that we don't know if they're among the dead or if they're alive. but the armies also being involved in the crack down on in full
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mining. is it decades on gangs have taken control of much of the multi $1000000.00 business in thousands of, of fund of mine shaft cameras, they pulled back off and the crane is now leaving the site. everyone's waiting to find out how many people have been said or lied for c minors. finally, say the crackdown taking away their livelihoods and possibly their loved ones lives . malcolm web, i'll just say era, still fontaine, south africa. well that's it from me donald jordan. so now you kind of course find more information on websites, i'll just say with dot com there it is on your screen. and he's continuing to say on how to 0 off the upfront state. you especially watching the the pursuit of endless economic growth has cost the planet. there's
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a number of things that threaten our civilization as we know. and that's the next the spend show for us. for us, us is overhauling entrenched economic systems can help rebecca, the damage we missed are from degenerative systems to regenerating the living. well, a need to businesses balancing the books by making the planet as important as profit. that is that dramatic change for society. how are we going to collapse or how we can arise these, these critical on a tuesday event. after months of backing donald trump one line and on the campaign trail, you unless it's set to play a key role in the incoming administration. but is his transformation from texting and jo to policy makers just the latest signs of the growing political power that major tech corporations and their leaders wield over our society. when this week's upfront, i'll ask that question to the world's leading thinkers on the influence of tech on democracy. the. do i mean to discuss the power of big tech and its future under a 2nd?
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trump administration, are you honest? verifax is economist author and former greek finance minister and rear risk. the nobel peace prize lauer and co founder of the filipino new site rattler. thank you both for joining me. i just want to start with you. it's nothing new that the wealthiest americans and corporations play in outsized role in us. politics in this election is no different. both campaigns were bank rolled by billionaires. but in the last decade, the tech industry has been growing in its power and its influence over politics. i mean, the lot must the ceo of, of tesla and twitter and the space ex was trump most high profile campaigner the seals of, of meta apple. and google had direct conversations with trump during his campaign. and they were among the 1st people to congratulate him over his victory. now in your book, taking a feudalism you argue that we're living in a new economic system that's controlled by big tech overlords. talk to me about the
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power of these tech giants. has their influence moved kind of out of the shadows and just it's out in the open now as you said, that is absolutely nothing new about being used as being able to buy politics in the united states has been happening since the time of the service. some of the fort 8, there is nothing new that what is up. secondly, fantastically novel is this new form of capital that people like just bases microsoft and google. and to some extent, 11 ask map was this. this is a new full of capital because what it does, it doesn't produce anything. so m as in the company has produced, has nothing to accept it. digital fix them in which produces and consumers have encased. and the owner faces has a capacity like um, a buy them from yesterday a to charge or rent for companies to sell you. why you have become kind of
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clouds of, since it is you and me who are producing a large part of the capital of this class capital that allows amazon to function. because every time you post a video or review or provide your own data, you're building up like a cloud. so if you're not being paid for it, it's actually bait with your money and with your pre labor to construct these new phones capital, which i like the capital of handling for which was what machine, any building the model, the and hands of photos and one openness of the model of the you want to sell it to you and she would buy some use bait. but in simple addition, in order to ensure that the time waste would be added to all of the household so that you would have to buy another b. but to day basis doesn't want doesn't produce anything. but what you all know how to, how does, how does that difference a shape or inform the, the role of big tech or, or just maybe money in tech and, and politics?
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well, you see, if you own could browse the carpet and you want people to be engaged with it. see whether you, are there any, i'm as an adult, calm or what, or indeed peter or x as it's called today. what are you sticking them or think talk, you really want people to be engaged with that. this is how you make them produce and they put the user on track the capital. and this is how you actually manage the target advertisements towards them and, and also sell to them directly, whether you do a to facebook or amazon or think so. now once you engage people like that and the money in which you do poisons democracy, why? because suddenly our conversation, everything we do online, we just now into the wind with this, or the production of cloud capital. the properly old does the manner in which we're communicating ideas. and the algorithm is simply primed to maximize that engagement
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. and this is human psychology. the best way of doing that is to keep us angry and to keep us in bubbles, and to keep us hurdling abuse with one another, or hurtling compliments of one another. and therefore, this is what the poison of the conversation, which is essentially democracy amongst the maria. as we talk about democracy and freedom, i want to turn to you. i mean, you're no stranger to the ways that authoritarian regimes can use social media to suppress freedom. 1 and you've said the former philippines president, i don't know if we go to a tab day, was actually a far smaller dictator compared to eli and musk and mark zuckerberg. very, very provocative idea there. that's a significant statement, especially coming from you. i mean, you were actually harassed and targeted and arrested by the 10th day of for exposing the abuses of his government in light of your experience in that analysis . what threat do you think that tech giant's polls and what bring to their products
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and platforms oppose to democracy? so let me like pick up from what the youngest had actually said, and you know, everything i tell you is backed by data we lived through with. i was targeted and then we took that data down and tracked it over time. exactly what the tech platforms do. but what it showed us was that, you know, i became a journalist because information is power. and when big data happen, which is what john is talking about in change to every thing, right? the 1st is that the social media, the 1st time we entered we, we kind of worked with artificial intelligence, social media, and this is an m i t c, a report from 2018. so it's significantly worse today. and mikey said the us lies spread 6 times faster on social media, us and our data in the philippines is in 2017. if you lease it would see or anger and hate, it spreads virally, it spreads even faster than it lies, are facts,
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right? and this i've said over and over since 2016, which was when i got hit with $98.00 messages per hour. right. something we've never felt before. but you know, at that point, well, i realized was, if you don't have facts, you can't have troops without, without twos, you can't have trust. without any of these 3. we have no shared reality. we can't begin to actually have journalism. you can't have anything, let alone try to deal with these excess dental problems like climate change, a big data winds in an environment like this. i've watched this in the philippines and the simple thing like the algorithm of growth or the american social media companies and used this before. tick tock came in. this is a friends of friends algorithm, right in the philippines. when do tend to rodrigo detector one in 2016, we weren't debating the facts, but we were one of the top facebook countries in the world. and as,
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as he took power, if you were pro detected friends of friends algorithm move do for the right. if you're anti detector, you move further left and over time. this is how filter bubbles worked and you know, several months later trump was elected. you can replace the name detector with every other digital authoritarians. the tests come to power sufficient. bring up trump yanez, i'm going to bring up the loud musk again because he was particularly close to donald trump. he followed at least $119000000.00 into trump's campaign, and his net worth has increased by around $70000000000.00 after trumps victory with tests of the share price surging 15 percent. the day after the election. trouble point must to go ahead a new department of government efficiency focused on restructuring federal agencies, which raises questions about conflicts of interest. considering 11 must hold billions of 1000 federal contracts for his businesses. so it seems
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a little bit like the facts over saying the hidden house, but uh, do you have any concern that not just the nations which the name of the world's richest man, is this close to the next us president? i'm very concerned but i think it was concerned by this ever since i was 11215 years old because we in the west we function and labor under the illusion of the living democracy. we don't live in democracy. we can only get a case with the occasion of elections. the wasn't the author feather, a very influential figure. it, you know, every american administration ever. so, you know, in the mosque is following a very long lineage of these core lessons between oligarchy power in the public sector in the private sector. and by the way, he's
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a slash and burn department of government deficiency. and i would, i would be very interested to see if it slashes and bugs the nasa budget from which space x gets all of it's context something we've been me designated. and that's probably what happened. i, i suspect you might be right. i'm are very, what do you make of this? and you see this is just an extension of a very longstanding condition in the united states and other countries where oligarchy, power kinda over determines the politics or do you see something unique or different? in this case, no, i think there are 2 reasons why this is significantly worse. one is the scale of the speed at which the information at which this kind of data can be pulled together that turns into power. and the 2nd is the reach, right? this is global, this isn't just the united states. you know, when you learn mosque decided that ukraine could not bomb rush us through
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through his satellite network. he wasn't elected, he wasn't the government official. this was something that the private sector didn't really do before. and now we're shifting into that, you asked, you know, how is the vote affected? well, technology essentially facts our biology changing the way we feel the changes, the way we see the world that changes the way we act. either way we both right there's, it's not a coincidence that as of this year, 71 percent of the world now is under authoritarian rule. and we are electing these authoritarians, electing these liberal leaders by choice. but you take a look anyway, let me know the other part of this, of course, is that checks and balances on power of power. what we've seen, you've heard of, talked about up top per seat. think cliff talk or see, think i've come from a country that had mark plus of people power revolt in 1986 for
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a mark of stealing $10000000000.00. and in 2020, to the filipinos, we, filipinos elected over woman, be his only son, and namesake bonke, ferdinand marcus, junior as our president. he's our president now. and, you know, part of the reason that happened was because of information operations that literally changed our history in front of our eyes. so there's a difference. there's a difference in the way the cellular level of a democracy works. it spreads faster and then there's, what is this talking about? is that a larger scale power in money? as we talked about must, i mean, it's not just that he's influencing us a politics and he was on trucks call to you creating president of a lot of mir zalinski. he's been a regular contact with pollutant in russia. he has extensive business interest in china with tesla is honest alluded to, you know, he has a space connection because of space ex, uh, and its satellite internet service star links. what's the potential consequences of this for the global kind of geopolitical landscape?
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i'm, this is no longer the world we knew, you know, at the nobel lecture in 2021 i said were stepping on the rubble of the world. that was, you have a man who he'd like to talk to iran without consulting anyone else. it's again an age of dictators, right at my power to stand up to a dictator, mark, sucker, bird, 11, musk. these men hold far more power over parts of the world that they never even heard of. and the winds, and it is, winds that goal in many ways, right? the way he bought twitter turned it to x. how would it played a role in the elections? these are all things that come come together and the checks and balances. they used to be part of democratic societies. these get around it, so it's going to be, i mean, the entire world is watching. what happens after president trump president elect trump? takes office. and you know, again, a lesson from the philippines. our constitution is patterned after the united
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states, 3 branches of government, and when rodrigo detective took office, he became the most powerful man bes, constant to our constitutions. give a powerful president. and within 6 months of taking office in 2016, president detective crushed the institutions he became all powerful ayana's. do you think that under trump the threat the big tech firm suppose to consumers have a chance of being contained, the federal government under trumpet bite and it's sued. uh amazon. apple met a google offer anti trust violations even proposing the brake of a google search engine monopoly. now trump, of course, have to brendan car, a critical big tech to share the federal communications commission for some. and there's reason to have hope that a truck, what else could lead to more oversight of big tech that there could be more
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accountability and that's fear. others say no. what do you say that has never been any accountability of big dec note under biden, and there was, of course, be on the trump look on on the of, to see dr violently. the various ways of proposing means by which to contain big tech. but none of them would come to bear. but one of the what about what about the, what about the anti trust suits? what about the proposal of breaking a group? i mean these feel like at least like that helps to to keep them in check. no. it isn't, they would have tense, but they had nothing else. how did you break up google the a deal breaking up google metal for that matter or facebook? it unless you have a way of influencing the i'll goodness. because you see the goods is ever so powerful, it doesn't matter. even if you take a little mosque out of the question, imagine a little mosque is subject to some by donald trump. you know,
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they may have a pulling out tomorrow. it won't make any difference because, you know, this cloud capt. i'll go to the cloud competence isn't just the good news, the hold, but it may be of cloud capital. you know what it does? we have a direct relationship with it. we have training it through our behavior online. so i like sell some cd with training to train us to train to train us the thing to know as well. so that it can give us good advice to suggest something to you that you want to buy. and then it says directly by possible markets that there's not even a company that has many more a very i see you nodding uh, vigorously, it also saw you sort of express agreement with the idea that the regulation that we've seen so far, we want to call it that was minimal at best. what, why do you see it that way? the designs and live platforms were never touched. right. and you know, you asked about this earlier, and this is for older folks, the kind of the way i think about the world today, the way we plug into these tech platforms. i think the matrix,
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remember the matrix takes all of our energy. we're sitting, we're, we're pumping our energy, they talk data into the matrix, and then we're each kind of doing our own truman show. we're being fed, except no one is watching you, except you in your bubble, right. this is personalization. this is part of the part of what the data can do. but i think the other part is, you know, i'll a, remind you in 2022 in april 2020 to 300 nobel laureates along with, you know, civil society groups largely in the, you signed a, what we called a 10 point action plan. and this didn't really amount to that much, it had just 3 buckets. the 1st is you have to stop surveillance for profit. none of us ever assigned the data. privacy is a mis nowadays, none of us signed up to be clued by any of these platforms. but that's what's happened, and that's how they, we train them, they train us, right,
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chicken or the egg in terms of behavior. the 2nd is coded bias, especially for me i live in the global south, right? if you're a woman l, g, b, t 2 plus. if you're a brown or black or marginalized in the real world, you're further marginalized online by these, by this code. and then finally, the last one will journalism, sir, by this time period journalism is the antidote to tyranny. but we have no distribution. people talk about news civil agents, are they avoiding the news or is the news not being distributed to them on the platform? janice, in your book, you write, paid labor performs only a fraction of the work that big tech relies on. most of the work is performed by billions of people for free as is marie, is talking about structures and systems and you have as of course, as well, i have to, i can help with asking how are people participating in their own exploitation?
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how is the current system structured in a way where people are undermining their own possibilities at economic prosperity? and what is the solution to this a, if, as you call it, the clouds reach is unavoidable. the, the worst kind of slavery is the one that we will in theater. let's not forget that most comfortable minutes. this fence around 85 percent of their revenues in the form of wages and saturdays. if you look at general electric, general motors, if you look at the folks i can, oh, this is more or less, maybe be anything between 8090 percent. right? facebook, one percent, one percent of exhibit is goes to what the salaries and wages now, how can it be? because it is all of us. we're producing the capital of facebook that has never happened before in human history. you know, when an industrial is at tech styles, manufacturing wanted a new machine in order to improve productivity, they would have to order that machine to some other capitalist. what would then
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have to employ wage labor to produce it? by today, we are all producing that cloud copy the of the good book of bases of google. now, and again, this is the model is the point of view, but it will be, you will allow me to say as an old fashioned boxes that in the end, no called boxes, right. the only way that you can regulate that, you can socialize these machines and not allow them to done you as it might be a said in the victims of them. ethics is if we have social ownership of those machines, glacial we look good because let's face it. there is no one understands how these outgoing things work unless they own the. it is impossible for the federal body or a state body to interfere with the actual code of the system. unless you have broken up unites, opened them, and the capacity to get into the ip. but that means
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a guy i social is home or a social form or a democratic form, that'd be more customization of capital. now that's a big old i know, but it is far more. you don't believe that you can civilize this new world in which social, in which prod, capital is owned by the 0.001 percent. so you'll have to choose or you'd up. it's do you want to choose like yourself? you're thinking that you can actually motivated the kind of the highest one thinks of living better. that's is what she told you. then to things that you can socialize the cloud. so korea helped me think toward one of these you're told me is already maybe a different one. uh, in your work uh, focusing on safeguarding freedom of expression one you the nobel peace prize and 2021. and your book have stand up to a dictator. traces your journey and doing just that. so help me think about ways that every day citizens can actually stand up to big tech. they can resist uh,
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the power and control of these, the, these huge structures that seem insurmountable. how do we find a way is everyday people to hold them account? it's impossible alone. right? so i'll of that. i'll defer with beyond this in one thing, i do think legislation can play a role in this because if you hold them accountable, i e criminally liable. right. what we're seeing from big tech is the kind of improve. ringback need that we are seeing from dictators to be all around the world, whether you look at food in or whether you looked at, at, at what israel is doing that. right. so take a look. i mean, nothing. yeah. let me be specific in that what you're seeing is, is a corruption of everything and a clip top proceed that's been allowed. so if you hold them accountable, then that can change a simple one, which i may or may not happen because because project 2025 is saying they want to
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get rid of section 230 for a whole host of other reasons. but if you hold the platform accountable, they will move quickly. the stop the lies from spreading. the stop the incentive structure, i think that's one. the 2nd one is one of the ways that we were able to survive 6 years of attacks of government attacks in the philippines was we moved into the real world. we moved outside of this kind of manipulative, insidious manipulation. that's that, as, as you heard from you on this, it's not just algorithms. it's literally micro targeting literally close you antiques, your weakest moment to a message and sells it. and it's not as if it's a personal thing. they just want to make more money audit. so surveillance for profit is the main goal. so the last one is how do you stop impunity? right? it's impunity to steal our content. for example, as of january this year, 57 point one percent of the internet today is low quality content. why once you introduced generative ai,
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you roll it out publicly. it's like rolling out the vaccine without ever testing it . tech companies have gotten away with impunity and that must stop. if i'm a coming ok, money for the 2nd you're right, i'm in the discussion is a state course, but it has to be the pickup. it can just be a very furbished ment of the sherman act. yeah, i agree with some of the whatever think you said and i would go further. so what is does he imagine if we legislate it instead of that ability? so you know, i kind of escape ex easily because i've got more than a $1000000.00. whereas in blue sky have got 5 thousands, right? but imagine if you forced x by low to make sure that you know, when i post something on blue sky, my photos on x, i receive it as well. now that would really seriously substantially reduce the, you know, the executive power of a loan, the must, all but x. this is just one example, but the, the main is set to provide because moves you can take. but of course,
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we don't have time to discuss more of them now. the yacht is very fact, is maria, rest of the thank you both so much for joining me on upfront. that is our show up for us. we'll be back the a full year of war in gaza, and now it is rarely troops invading lebanon or the us and israel working to reshape the entire region. now with trump back in the white house, what can america expect? and what can the world expand? quickly to look at us politics, the bottom line pod came in to be and they say that your government has repressive policies, respect of human rights, it is most important task. my tell them in facing realities. what you're saying is that you are restricted by the is released in terms of your movements of the time.
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that's right. to tell you just stick to the thoughts provided, hang on. so how much with the trip do you think impulse is right now to us? it seems to be spreading more easily. here the story on talk to how does era cultures solutions that gives us know for future that we have to find creative solutions, not just turn our backs on the. don't think that has a number, think about it as a person, person yourself and that person shoes. so as you can see for this is my us, my life, and at least in my life, those stages we want we want to break because the women and my country deadlocks we become about to on we are not. and neither ology, we are human beings on this earth to be trees and the coins we are in the process, our officers, whatever has been done before,
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can be done. as long as a human being is doing it, you just have to keep pushing because no one else can see. the vision is keywords you to the or the coming through the rubble in the hearts of living homes. capital is randy strikes, rock central bay route. the alarm dire in jordan, this is all to 0 life and also coming the rumbling for across the bread less to me and desperate since through this with you in the ones does that is on the brink of funding nowhere near enough from develop.

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