- [narrator] compare prices to get the best discounts. - goodrx, smart. - [narrator] stop paying too much for your prescriptions. download the free app today. ♪ emily: it is part documentary, part drama, all daunting. tristan: we built these things and we have a responsibility to change it. emily: netflix's hit film, "the social dilemma," has soared to the top of most watch lists in multiple countries, waking the world up to the perils of technology. the indictment is unforgiving that social media is a drug creating an epidemic of addiction and manipulation and generations more anxious, depressed, and unhealthy than ever before. the film profiles multiple silicon valley veterans, including tristan harris, former design ethicist at google, now

co-founder for the center for humane technology. tim kendall, former director of monetization at facebook and former president of pinterest. now ceo of moment. they join me for a virtual conversation on this edition of bloomberg studio 1.0 along with safiya noble, an associate professor at ucla and author of a best-selling book on bias in technology, to talk about what the movie got right, wrong, and chart a path toward the social solution. each of you has been a voice in the conversation around big tech's unchecked power, and i am curious, when was the lightbulb moment for you? what was the moment that sparked your desire to speak out? tristan: i think the moment for me was when i was at google and it was about 2012, having studied at this lab at stanford called the persuasive technology lab, i saw more and more of my

friends' decisions were about building engagement and growth and less and less about a genuine, sincere intent, or how do we build technology that empowers people and does good in society. that was the lightbulb moment for me. emily: tim, you were focused on how facebook makes money for five years and then five more years at pinterest. that is a decade. when did things shift for you? tim: it really shifted when i had my first child and i realized, i think, as i was trying to manage a job at pinterest, trying to be a dad, and then my phone, i realized i had just lost control over my phone and realized it was controlling me. maybe what we were up to in terms of extracting attention, as tristan will say, might not have a very happy ending in a lot of different dimensions, including, you know, our own mental well-being, but also the impact that ultimately, it could

have on society. emily: tim, you recently testified before congress and said that you believe social media is driving us to the brink of civil war, which is quite dramatic. what do you mean by that? tim: well, i just think that the services are polarizing us. really on almost every dimension. they are polarizing us politically, they are polarizing us in terms of how we view health issues like covid, they are polarizing us racially. in a sense, like, i think it is fair to say that all of these issues around polarization existed, to some degree, before social media, but i think we can all agree that that polarization has accelerated. in fact, i would say the acceleration is accelerating, which is really scary. it seems to get worse every year and every month. we seem to be more and more divided. and i think the violence and

division that we are seeing, i believe these are precursor events to broader civil unrest that could ultimately lead to civil war. emily: i mean, that is quite -- that is a huge statement. i mean, safiya, would you agree? safiya: what we are talking about are histories of violence and oppression in our country that social media exacerbates and weaponizes against the most vulnerable, against people who have historically been in the crosshairs of violence in this country. it's really about the society and the people and then what the technology is contributing to or not. emily: there is a tragic irony in that most of the people tasked with talking about the problem, the social dilemma, in the film are white men and white men are overrepresented at the companies that are building these products and creating part of the problem.

as a woman of color, what would you have added? safiya: well, i would have backed up probably 20 years in their research. again, i think that women, in particular, and people of color have been doing the research in this area a long time. it is a little bit disheartening for some of us to see the makers of the problems in terms of people really actually working on product development, all of a sudden see the light, when it starts to affect their own communities or their own experiences or maybe their own moral barometer and then narrow the conversation. i think there is an opportunity with this film to open up the landscape for 50 more films and books and graphic novels and television shows for many more voices, and i think that's the opportunity with a film like this. you know, it has kind of cracked open the can, but there is a lot more to pour out. emily: how much of this is technology and how much is human nature that technology and these social platforms simply amplify? tim: there's a point in the film

where tristan talks about how it's not so much the technologies, per se, it is that the technologies really bring out the worst in people and amplify the worst tendencies in people. racism is endemic and it has been around for thousands of years, but, you know, we have really started to see hate and violence around these issues just explode by virtue of these tools that bring out sort of the worst tendencies or at least bring out tendencies that are there but are now being brought out into the light in a way that is really corrosive. emily: now, we do have a statement from facebook on the film. facebook saying, "we should have conversations about the impact of social media on our lives, but 'the social dilemma' buries the substance in sensationalism.

rather than offer a nuanced look at technology, it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems." tristan, what is your reaction to that? tristan: we would expect facebook to respond in this way. the -- i think the claim that facebook would make in that statement is we are holding up a mirror to your society. if you don't like what you see in the mirror, we are really sorry to tell you that was already there. but the mirror they are holding up is a fun house mirror that warps society because it amplifies certain characteristics and makes some way more visible than others, specifically conflict, outrage, moral righteousness, etc. because those things get more clicks. it is this race to the bottom of the brainstem, this race to the lizard brain, whether it is racism, inequality, poverty or climate change, people are walking around as outraged, narcissistic and addicted people with low mental health and

feeling overwhelmed, that's not a society that can heal itself. it amplifies whatever gets the most attention which is just like driving down the 101. if we sort by what gets the most attention, if i look at a car crash, facebook and google say you must love car crashes. they give you more and more and more car crashes. that is why our society looks like it has sort of gone crazy because that has not become just a virtual reality, we have started making choices on that reality. even if you don't use these platforms, you still live in a country living in that virtual reality and voting based on those decisions and making and bringing guns to those street corners based on those decisions. i think we have to look at the entire consequences here. safiya: if we stay on the current path where there's no oversight, no regulation, no laws, we can be guaranteed this is just the tip of the iceberg. ♪

>> what i want people to know is that everything they are doing online is being watched, is being tracked. every single action you take is carefully monitored and

recorded. a lot of people think google is just a search box and facebook is a place to see what my friends are doing. what they don't realize is there are entire teams of engineers whose job it is to use your psychology against you. >> i was the coinventor of the facebook like button. >> i was the president of pinterest. >> google. >> twitter. >> instagram. >> there were meaningful changes happening around the world because of these platforms. >> i think we were naive about the flip side of that coin. emily: a number of guests in the film are asked is there one bad guy and they all say, no, no, no there's not just one bad guy. at this point, let's take mark zuckerberg for example. he can see the consequences of what he has built but he is still building it. does that mean he is a bad guy? tim: i think it means he is negligent. his understanding is absolutely not keeping up with the impact that his technology is having on

the world, and i think the best illustration of this is the election happens in 2016. facebook, in a number of ways, through bad actors and algorithmic bias, tips the election. a month later, he is asked, what do you think about that? he thinks it is preposterous. two years later, he acknowledges the impact, acknowledges that facebook likely did tip the election and then apologizes in front of congress, but that is two years later. emily: tristan, what do you think about mark, about the google founders who have recently left the company? are they bad guys? tristan: i think i agree with tim that there is a lot of negligence. each company is different and the personalities that are involved are different. i think that even if they were as enlightened as they possibly could be, when they speak, they sound like hostages trapped in a hostage video. where nothing that a hostage is saying makes any sense until you see the person offstage holding a gun to their head, which is

their business model. i would say jack dorsey appears to be doing the best that he can but in a very complex and unfortunate circumstance. so that is why we need a global cultural movement to address these problems because the state has to bind the market. this film is exciting to me because it is the first time we have 190 countries and 30 languages, i think, all becoming awake to these problems at a massive scale. emily: safiya, here in silicon valley, we often glorify the founders of these companies. as a silicon valley outsider, how do you think we can hold them accountable? safiya: i think we've got to have big time structural intervention that is going to require regulation, repatriation of the trillions of dollars they have made off of making these problems, and putting them back into the systems that can actually take care of society. we cannot be so dependent upon this sector or its leaders. emily: tim, i am sure you are still friends with a lot of people who work at these companies. tim: less and less it seems

like. [laughter] emily: how have your former colleagues reacted? tim: i don't think, fundamentally, anyone is a bad person who works there. i do believe they are negligent. i think they fundamentally believe that their platforms are doing net good in the world. and so, they look for the data that reinforces that. emily: now, you have had your critics. a tech communications veteran said of a number of the folks interviewed in the film, "most of them made a great deal of money from the companies they are now criticizing. i mean, they made plane money, guys." she means enough money to buy a plane. when you have a g5 at your disposal, it is really easy to sit there and criticize. i asked them, why not give a bulk of your wealth away to undo the damage you yourself helped create? tim, you made some money in that decade. how do you reconcile that? tim: it is a fair criticism.

i have read some. i had not read brooke's exact statement. i put $10 million-plus into this issue and we have given away millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations that are helping around this issue and our intention is to keep giving away a lot of money, and a big chunk of the money that we made from these platforms. so look, i think it is really fair criticism. emily: let's say mark zuckerberg wakes up tomorrow and says i am done. shuts down facebook, no more facebook. what happens? is the world better or worse off? safiya: i think it would be perfectly fine for facebook to shut down. i am on the real facebook oversight board. you know, i think we are really interested in seeing some important interventions happen quickly before democracy continues to collapse as we pummel towards the next presidential election in the united states.

but you know, i think it is more complex than just saying facebook should shut down, although there are many people that agree it probably should. if we stay on the current path where there is no oversight, no regulation, no laws, no responsibility, we can be guaranteed that this is just the tip of the iceberg. emily: what should the laws be? what should the government do? if these companies are not going to change on their own, then should they be broken up, should there be new laws? tristan: i look at the amount of regulatory reform that we need here as being on parallel with the financial crisis, in the sense that in the financial crisis, you had thinner and thinner slices of junk bonds being sold as if they were high quality bonds leading to a full-scale house of cards collapse. i think we've been selling fake thinner and thinner slices of junk attention assets, fake attention sold for fake clicks, selling to fake reporting for fake advertisers and we have an

entire democratic collapse sitting on top of the fact that this has been a predatory economy that has -- based on high risk activity. recommending random things to users you don't know and you don't speak the language to, leading to a genocide. if you think about the scope of reform, we are not just saying let's pass this law or that law. we are saying how do you get something more like dodd-frank, comprehensive, humane technology reform? how do you have comprehensive reform that enables competition, has transparency, accountability for harms, tax justice, as safiya was talking about, repatriating some of the money back into institutions that have fallen apart, and have that add up to a system of technology that reports to the people as opposed to reporting to the board of directors and have them work in the service of people. ♪ this has so entangled itself into our social fabric and into our social status pipeline and into the development of children that even if you opt out, that is not enough. ♪

emily: true to its name, the movie talks a lot about the social dilemma, but not a lot about the social solutions. as the credits start to roll, tristan, you are allowed to offer one suggestion about turning off notifications, but really, in the short term, while we wait for these big changes that could take years to happen, what do we do? do we delete? do we get rid of our phones? like, how do we navigate the day-to-day? tristan: even if you decide not to use these platforms and you delete your accounts, people who are not on these platforms can still experience life or death consequences because other people who live in their country do. the muslim minority group the rohingya in myanmar who were murdered did not have to be on facebook to experience the consequences and persecuted because of fake news that was spread about them on facebook. the mob lynchings in india that were spreading fake news about a

particular minority group that led to lynchings, they did not have to be on facebook to experience that. and when you think about teenagers who say i would like to opt out of being on instagram and i don't want to do that anymore or be on tiktok anymore, they still go to a school where all of the kids are ranking each other by who is popular based on how successful they are on tiktok. the point is this has so entangled itself into our social fabric and into our social status pipelines and the development of children that even if you opt out, that is not enough. one thing that can change at a fast enough clock rate is culture, meaning a common cultural doctrine for a humane way to live in an inhumane technology infrastructure. and i think that is something we have to kind of co-create together is a nonviolent communication protocol or a protocol for living on non-humane platforms. there are many more recommendations on humanetech.com. safiya: there are a lot of ways we need to intervene. i will tell you that putting it back on the public and saying it is your fault you did not take

the phone out of your kid's hand, or you, parent, are wrong because you have too much screen time with your kid. i think it is really the most powerfully disingenuous kind of framing there is. it is like, you know, if you don't have any healthy food in your community and you don't have any grocery stores and all there is is fast food and then you say, shame on you for feeding your kid mcdonald's or corporate industry food, it is just not fair. you know? it only took a small handful of people to really convince congress and state legislatures and local municipalities that smoking was terrible. you now, my students cannot even remember -- they were not alive at the time, but some of us on this call maybe were. i'm sure that my mom probably smoked a pack of cigarettes after she gave birth to me. it is probable that the doctors and the nurses were smoking in the hospital in the 1970's when i was born. so we have to ask the question like, how did we go from that to what we have now, which is a

total paradigm shift? and so i agree we need cultural shift, but that was just strategic public policy that said even if you are not a smoker, there are still tertiary negative effects that happen from secondhand smoke or from these systems that neglect the broader public concerns. that is the kind of model we need to think about and i think look at as we are looking at the larger tech sector and i think there's a lot of promise and opportunity to make change. emily: you have got the house and the senate scrutinizing big tech right now. should these companies be broken up? tim: yeah, i think there's a, you know, monopoly conversation that needs to happen. i also think there is an interesting page to be taken out of, sort of, auto manufacturers. and what i mean by that is that auto manufacturers were addicted to the fossil fuel industry and they were incentivized to move to electric because it was better for the world and better for people.

and so i do wonder if there is a possibility and a path that could be co-created between these tech companies and governments all over the world where incentives could be put in place to segue off of an attention-based business model, i.e. fossil fuels, in hopes of finding what is the electric and solar and green model and how do we work together to get there? emily: if technology is advancing exponentially, only going to get better at manipulating us, can we actually intervene? safiya: i am sorry. i don't think that companies will change from within. i think that when you have a product that creates so much consumer and public harm, it is actually an unsafe product. until those are regulated and contained as unsafe, they will continue. why wouldn't they? i mean, again, we are talking

about billionaires adding billions to their coffers right now, so there is no incentive for them to stop the model and they are also, quite frankly, so insulated, you know, with their wealth from ever even being affected by the harms. they don't even let their own children engage with the technologies that they make. so we know that the makers are not going to be the source of the intervention. it is going to require an informed public, electorate, policymakers, regulators around the world. it is going to take those kinds of actions and of course, the kind of culture shift that we need in order to see the changes that we want. emily: tim, if you could say something to mark zuckerberg right now, one thing he could do, what would it be? tim: change your business model. start having the conversation at facebook about how the business model is corrosive and what could be the path to segue off of an attention-based business model to something else that is aligned with the public good. emily: like a subscription model?

tim: possibly a subscription model. with governments all over the world subsidizing in the same way that they subsidize fossil fuels shifting to, you know, more green technologies. i think that may be our only path out of this. emily: where are we in 5-10 years? do you believe we will be better off or worse off? tristan: i don't know if we are going to make it another year, frankly, if we don't change these things immediately. i am deeply concerned and i think that this thing has eroded faster than any of us have ever anticipated. as tim says in the film, the changes we have seen and developments we have seen in the last few years, i did not think we would get to a world where fringe conspiracy theories would make up a third to half of major political parties. we are now 10 years into this mass hypnosis, this mass warping effect on the collective psyche. even if we vote in this election, we have to realize that the basis for that vote, the basis for the way we are thinking and seeing reality, has been warped for many decades

because of the forces and the business model. tim: i think we are better off. i am ultimately optimistic given some of the things that we all talked about. i believe in 5-10 years, much like what happened with tobacco, much like what happened with seatbelts, which, by the way, were incredibly controversial and automakers did not want to put them in, and now, we have seatbelts in every car. it is not controversial. hopefully, we will get on the other side of this in the same way we did with those historic issues. safiya: i think of abolitionists in my own community, i think of women struggling for the right to vote, i think of so many different movements that have changed paradigms, and again, it doesn't take millions of people, but it does take enough people of conscience, of determination, of love and of care, to organize and stay persistent and relentless. and i think we have been there and we are going to continue to be there in this domain, too.

emily: all right. well, with that, we will leave it there. tristan harris, safiya noble, tim kendall, thank you so much for joining us. ♪

yousef: you are watching "best of bloomberg daybreak: middle east." major stories driving headlines this week. joe biden declares victory in the 2020 election. what might that mean for middle eastern policy? turkish troubles deepen as a finance minister quits a day after the removal of the central bank governor. and a serious boost as pfizer is helpingaccine with 90% of infections. is this the beginning of the end of the virus? yousef: