she said she was convinced there would be a good relationship as long as the us respected that mexico. it's a free and southern country. same. and that her 1st 3 months of government with nearly 80 percent popularity, which along with our overwhelming mandates and both chambers have government pay the way for some $16.00 constitutional reforms. now a 100 days, while as symbolic milestone, it isn't actually very much time in a 6 year term. so a lot of what was spoken today and the speech by president came down sounded great . it's certainly it's a long road ahead for this administration. got here and i'll just be here at mexico city for which has incumbent president is or on the front of it shows one re election in a line slide which took more than 74 percent of the bites of sunday's run of basing is conservative vive of god, rocks who is supported by the governing age, the said party, the president same pro, a show as long as the symbolic for sunday's result is

a huge set back for the booting conservatives. that popularity nosedive dr. corruption scandal in november. thousands of people took to the streets and sylvia is cap who bow grade to honor the victims of a faithful railway station that protests was organized by students at the state university today because i have some corruption insulting and substantive construction recently renovated roof office station. and the city is another set collapse to november, putting 14 people in the main year, tens of thousands of monitoring component in protest over the cancel the presidential election moves that says otherwise, but it has remained, is top court, cancel the election in december 2 days before the 2nd round is due to be held in the decision comes off, the state document showed front runner, and they took critic credential. jessica, it's a benefit to, to form an alleged russian back social media campaign. as well as

biggest known gathering is on the way in northern india, up to 400000000 in do diversities, are expected in the city of the front yard rugs in the coming days and weeks. the come festival takes place, set the confidence, solve to how many rivers, the ganges i'm the human. and do is believe they think this spot during that come helps cleanse lessons and bring salvation and that's it for me. carried jobs can find more information on our website out. come to me say on the upfront state, but the scan the colleges when

the 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 you to a policy maker just the latest time 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 government to discuss the power of big tech and its future under a 2nd. trump administration. arianna's verifax is economist author and former greek finance minister and maria rest, 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 an outside 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, you on 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 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, there is absolutely nothing new about 1000000000 as being able to buy politics in the united states has been happening since the time of thomas edison. henry ford, 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 capital because what it does, it doesn't produce anything. so i'm, as the company has produced has nothing to accept it. digital fix them in which produces and consumers have encased and the owner get bases has the capacity like um, a buy them from yesterday a to charge or rent for companies to sell you. why you have become kind of 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 are building up like a cloud. so if you're not being paid for it, it's actually bait with your money and with your free 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 the you wanted to sell it to you and you would buy some use bait. but in simple addition, in order to assure that the time ways would be added to all of the household, so that you would have to buy and will do the but to day basis, this one 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. really easy, if you own could proud carpet that you want people to be engaged with that see whether you are. but i mean, i'm as an adult, calm or what, or indeed twitter 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 produce your own child's capital. and this is how you actually manage to target advertisements towards them and, and also sell to them directly, whether you do it through facebook or amazon or think, talk. now, once you engage people like that, and the moment in which you do poisons democracy, why? because suddenly our conversation, everything we do online, which is now into the wind with this, or the production of cloud capital, properly old does the manner in which we're communicating ideas. and the algorithm is simply primed to maximizing engagement. 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 um, compliments with one another. and therefore, this is what the voice of the conversation, which is essentially with 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. and you've said that the former philippines president with regal detect 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 and platforms, post a democracy? so let me like pickup from what is it actually said and yeah, 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 with 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, 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 20. 17. if you lease it would fear anger and hate its friends, virally. it spreads even faster than if lies, are facts, right? and this i've said over and over since 2016, which was when i got hit with $98.00 messages per hour break, 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 choose, 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 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 tech 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, 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 to have come to power sufficient. bring up trump yanez, i'm going to bring up the lot musk again because he was particularly close to donald trump. he followed at least $119000000.00 in a 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 truck appointed 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 a little bit like the fax over thing, the hidden house, but uh, do you have any concern that not just the nations which maybe 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 that we live in democracy. it's. we don't live in democracy's, we can only get a case with the occasion of elections. it wasn't the author further, 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, she's 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 its context. some thing we've been, we've designated, 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 most decided that ukraine could not bomb rush us through, 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 are 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 anyways, let me go there. the other part of this, of course, is the checks and balances on power of power. what we've seen, you've heard of talk of a tough proceeding clip talk receipt inc. i come from a country that had mark plus a people power ruble in 1986 for a mark of stealing $10000000000.00. and then 2020 to the filipinos we filipinos elected over whelming, be his only son, and namesake bonke, ferdinand marcus of 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 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 me. he was on trump's call to you printing president of a lot of mir zalinski. he's been a regular contact with pollutant in russia. he has extensive business interests in china with tesla. uh, and is the honest alluded to, you know, he has a space connection because of space ex, uh, and its satellite internet service star link. what's the potential consequences of this for the global kind of geopolitical landscape. and this is no longer the world we knew, you know, at the nobel lecture and 2021. i said we're 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 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 states, 3 branches of government. and when rodrigo detected, took office, he became the most powerful man. these constants are constitutions give a powerful president. and within 6 months of taking office in 2016, president detective crossed the institutions he became all powerful ayana's. do you

think that under trump, the threat the big tech of firms suppose to consumers have a chance of being contained, the federal government under trumpet bite and it sued uh amazon. apple made 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, there's reason to have hope that a trap. what else could lead to more oversight of big tech that there could be more accountability and that's fear. others say no. what do you say the has never been any accountability of big dec note under biden. and the one of course be on the trump. look on, on the if 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 ideal breaking up google metal for that matter or facebook to eat, 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, 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 cabinet. 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 it to paying us the same

day 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 copy of this manual, right. 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. if 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, 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 ex up. 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 to the 1st is you have to stop surveillance for profit. none of us ever assigned the data parentheses a mid nowadays. none of us signed up to be closed by any of these platforms. but that's what's happened, and that's how they, we train them, they train us, right, 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 to plus. if you're a brown or black or marginalized and the real world, you 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 avoidance, 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, as 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? 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 or the, the, the worst kinds of sleep. but he's the one that we're holding fee of to let's not

forget that most comfortable minutes. this fence around to 85 percent of the revenues in the form of wages and saturdays. if you look at general electric, general motors, if you look at the volkswagen. this is more or less, maybe be anything between 8090 percent. right. facebook, one percent, one percent of the traffic is goes to the salaries and wages. now, how can it be? because it is, all of us were producing the capital of facebook that has never happened before in human history. you know, when an industrial is a tech style, manufacturing wanted a new machine in order to improve productivity, they would have to order that machine to some other capitalist who would then have to employ wage labor to produce it. by today, we are all producing the cloud, copy the of the good book of basis of google. now and again, this is the more or less the point of view. but if you will allow me to say, as an old fashioned boxes that in the end, you know, kind of 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 the matrix is if we have social ownership of those machines collection, we look good because let's face it there is no one understands how these algorithms work, unless they own the it is impossible for the federal body or a state body to interfere with the actual code of a system. unless you have broken a few nights or put them in the capacity to get into the ip. but that means it's got a socialist form or a social form, or the democratic form. i'd be more complex ation of capital. now that's a big old. i know, but it is far more. you don't big to believe that you can see the lies this new world in wage social in which cloud capital is owned by the 0.001 percent.

so you have to choose or you dump yes. do you want to choose like yourself, you're thinking that you can actually motivated these 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 maria helped me think toward one of these utopians, or maybe a different what you work uh, focusing on safeguarding freedom of expression. one you the nobel peace prize and 2021. and your book, how to 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. they can resist 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 l differ with the honest and 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 impunity 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 y'all, let me be specific in that what you're seeing is, is a corruption of everything and a clip talk, 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 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 think 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 introduce generative ai, 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 good money for the 2nd, you're right, i'm going to just solution is a state course, but it has to be the pickup. it can just be a very furbished ment of the sherman act. and i agree with the some of the,

the whatever thing you said, and i will go further. so what is does he imagine if we legislated instead of that ability? so, you know, i kind of escape ex easily because i've got more than and we can follow is what as in blue sky have got 5000 right. but imagine if you forced x by low to make sure that you know when i post something with blue sky, my photos on x receive it as well. now that would really seriously substantially views the, you know, the executive power of a loan, the must, all but x. this is just one example, but the main is set to provide because moves you can take. but of course, we don't have time to discuss more of them. no yacht is very fact. is maria, rest of the thank you both so much for joining me on upfront. that is, our show up 1st will be back the

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