>> that's just a few of the programs on booktv on c-span2 this weekend. for a complete schedule visit booktv.org. first up this weekend, professor siva vaidhyanathan argues that facebook is undermining democracy. >> welcome everyone to book launch for siva vaidhyanathan most recent book. i'm julie kudravetz from the new dominion bookshop. where selling books tonight. please support in as an author

fso bookshop by buying the book afterwards. thank you the c-span tv for being here tonight. you're going to be in the movies. [applause] >> many of you know siva from your work at the university but he is professor of media studies and director of the center for media and citizenship at the university of virginia. he's the author most recently of "antisocial media: how facebook disconnects us and undermines democracy." intellectual property, a short introduction. google is asian of everything we should worry, the atticus in libra, of the clash between food and clove is crashing the system common copyright and copy wrong. i love that. the rise of intellectual property and how it has creativity. he has co-edited with the

collection of rewiring the nation, the place of technology in american studies. we're so glad he could come at tonight and have this book launch. before we get started i like to think, now surviving this space, beautiful space tonight for us to have the reading. they do this as a service to the book community, so please stay rent, buy some drinks at the bar. they've opened up the house for us tonight. there's a beautiful rooftop deck. please stick around, have a drink, have dinner. we are grateful for them to have this peer we could not that fiu all in the shop, so thank you very much, and without further ado, siva. [applause] >> i'm going to play stage crew here and give myself some height. thank you for coming on this rainy night in a a rainy week n the rainy month. it's been very strange here in

seattle. [laughing] so i'm super thrilled about this event, more so than just about any of the book event i've done for this book or will do for this book. i have home field advantage. i have so many friends and family here so it's really cool. it gives me a chance to reflect on the whole process, why this book exists and why there seems to be significant interest which is certainly more about facebook fan is about me, but i'll take it. i'm happy to at least pretend it's a little bit about me. facebook, wow, et cetera really rough couple of years. you may have noticed that it has been involved in, , responsible for, or at least contributing or at least it has contributed to a number of very bad things in the world. everything from the leakage of

our personal data to an unsavory political consulting firm out of london to the perpetuation of all sorts of nonsense to the rest of people, to call for genocide in some parts of the world. all sorts of problems of various levels of horribleness. let's also remember there was a reason that we joined facebook. there was a reason that 2.2 billion people are regular users of facebook. that reason is my dog butter who appears on facebook pretty regularly and she is super cute and to get a tremendous response every time i post about butter. that just goes to show we all joined facebook for the puppies and the babies and the family news and updates on her friends from high school who just had a baby and the puppy or maybe one or the other, and that's the

good stuff. so if it were just good stuff we would probably be pretty thrilled with our experience on facebook. but it's not. it's not because of course we are more than that. we are more than our core relationship. we are secondary, tertiary relationships as well. we're eight degrees out. we are a bundle of interest, a bundle of passions, a bundle of hatreds often, and we are fascinated by our ability to share and connect with people. so there is a certain addictive nature to using facebook. that is, at the muddle up with say, they teach you. my mother-in-law is important to the story. because many years ago when i was sitting at her house staring at my phone, rudely, she started complaining about this thing called facebook and how it was

taking so much attention away from everything in real life and that it was, she had a facebook account. she wasn't really happy with her experience and she was afraid it was a fraying relationships rather than enriching relationships. i was a savvy digital son-in-law and i said, you know, you are overreacting. it's too early to tell. people have to figure out how to behave in this meeting ethics to get better and, of course, i should've listened to my mother-in-law. she knew what she was talking about and the first thing i did what i decided to write this book was call her and tell her how sorry i was for having that attitude. she was right all along. i decided to write this book at a very tender and difficult moment. you probably have this moment. oh, mid-november of 2016 -- [laughing] i wasn't sure what good i was to the world. i wasn't sure what good i was to

anything. my country had taken a turn i could not have predicted and certainly was not willing to accept. and i felt for the first time that i didn't understand my own country, even though i am a phd in american studies i didn't understand america. like, you know, clery that was a big waste of time. at least i thought at the moment, right? i had a friend who lives in new york and he was feeling the same thing. he'd been a magazine editor for years, and he quit his job and started trying to figure out what is going to do to make a bigger difference. he just didn't want to do magazine profiles anymore, like there'd been in a george clooney profiles in the world. it wasn't the way he wanted to contribute. he was driving up and down east coast visiting old friends trying to this conversation, what can we do differently? what should we do differently? what the heck is happen?

he was visiting me in charlottesville and went to dinner with a few friends. we were talking through some stuff, and we came back to my house and we're talking some more and my friend allison was in the room and my wife was in the room. he started asking, we started going back to what happened in the election cookie said so i just don't understand how trump could have snuck up and one wisconsin and michigan, almost minnesota, florida without running tv ads. all the stories right up to election was he wasn't spending any money. he wasn't really campaigning. what the heck happened? how did he window states? i said facebook him he put all his money and facebook and it doesn't take much money. the advertising system on facebook is so efficient and precise. it allows you to carefully target segments of the knee group of consumers, a group of

voters, a group of nonvoters, and you can target them and experiment with typical messages. so you can try out on 100 voters in dufault county in florida who might be really animated by gun rights but at have struggled bt for democrats. you can try at 45 different ads to see whether you get the reaction you want out of them. which in trump's case would be either not to vote or to vote for trump, right? you can do that surgical play with facebook. you can't do that with any other advertising medium. you buy television ads, everybody in the market season. every journalist has a chance to see and respond to it but facebook ads are so effective, so narrowly tailored, so testable. you can constantly test different versions come different colored backgrounds which the sun makes a difference in how people respond at. i was planning this how facebook at work, you can make sure you

talk to everybody in st. petersburg, florida, or everybody in fort lauderdale florida and illuminate all jewish people from that ad, if you want. imagine what you can get away with if you do that. they probably did but we will never know because these ads don't exist anymore. they hit the target, they cut the response and then they're gone and there's no oversight. as unexplained all this my friend said, you need to write that book. like you need to talk about what facebook does to our democracy. i had not at the point thought about doing that. i had been collecting work, research, that some amazing scholars have been putting together, work on a facebook is messed with politics around the world, how facebook is a source of tremendous dissension and hatred and other sorts of problems in places like

azerbaijan. russia use facebook to try to mess with estonia of all places, a very stable democracy. how russia had in concert with actual invasion of crimea flooded ukraine with propaganda through facebook. so i had all of these data points that i've been accumulating through other peoples scholarship and i had just been putting them in electronic folders. i teach a class on privacy and surveillance i had a lot of mutual of what facebook does with our data, and i started thinking, i could string this together. i sat down that weekend and i banged out a proposal and i send it out and i got a really strong response, because her going is coming around to the moment, to the id at that moment that facebook actually played a crucial role, not just an american politics, but in how politics work around the world. what have we seen since then?

we've seen very clear evidence that the very nature of facebook contributes to the distribution of the worst kinds of hate speech, actual calls to genocide in places like sri lanka and the places like myanmar. that it has contributed to the election, fact i was it was a major driver for the election of the leader in the philippines. that it is a phenomenon that locks governments into power in places like cambodia. that it played a huge role in the election in kenya last year. that it played a huge role in the brexit referendum before our elections of 2016. and everything i have been tracing for quite some time is the effect of the party in india and the way that it is used facebook and what sap which is owned by facebook to distribute

propaganda, to cut down critics and spread malicious rumors and lies about critics, to harass critics, to instigate widespread and repeated death threats, rape threats and kidnapping threats against academics, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, human rights organizations, journalists and opposition party leaders. that's been going on in india or three years and is a pretty frightening situation. putting all that together i had to conclude the u.s. got off pretty easily, not all americans have gotten off very easily and all people with ended up in this country have not gotten off easily. let's be clear about that, nonetheless things are worse in other places were facebook matters more. this place is to be the places where facebook instigated a philanthropic effort to spread high-speed data connection to the poorest people in the world. they created a system they call

internet.org and through that they created a set of applications like a suite of applications that they call free basics and if you are in one of these countries and you get into a contract with a telecommunication provider that is agreed to carry free basics, when you use free basics it does not count against your data for that month. you don't get charged. in countries where data is superexpensive and people pay month to month, which is most of the world, it makes sense, use the suite of applications. the suite of applications just lapsed include facebook and what sap and handful of applications that are screened by an approved by facebook. so that means in places like cambodia, the philippines, myanmar, facebook is the internet. in a place like myanmar which only recently got phones as recently as 2014, were it only recently got any sort of internet connectivity, facebook is essentially the entire media

ecosystem. not coincidentally it is the site of horrendous genocide against the muslim minority population. we have seen this sort of thing the time of the gentleman has expired again around the world moved acutely and most brutally and myanmar. how did this happen? that one number i'd like you to remember, 2.2 billion. i mentioned before, the most important thing you have to remember that facebook. as ephedra 2010 facebook add 2.2 billion users around the world. there is nothing that comes close. there's nothing that comes close bpc doesn't have that many listeners around the world. cnn international doesn't have that many viewers around the world. that is a stunning number, right? that also means at that scale is almost nothing facebook can do to alleviate the very problems i've already described. it's almost impossible to effectively filter out all of

the garbage out of the system that has 2.2 billion humans regularly contributing garbage, and some puppies come to it, right? it's a really unmanageable system at that scale. so to other aspects of facebook are important to remember. the advertising system i told you about, that so accurately and inexpensively targets any sort of content to just the right audience, and nobody else be onto it. that sort of laser pointing of advertisement has tremendous possibilities in the world of propaganda. it's great for selling shoes. it's terrible for democracy. the third aspect is the core algorithm of the news feed. the things that pop up in your newsfeed most often, and the things that pop up in your newsfeed the highest are things that facebook has judged or predicted to generate engagemen

engagement. because over years of use facebook europol facebook the sort of things you like. and the sort of thing from pp like or the sort of people you most interact with. it sort of structures your newsfeed experience to reflect what you already told facebook you care about. in addition, certain subjects will generate tremendous amount of attention and facebook knows it. and when they do, they rock it about facebook. those are the post the generate the strongest emotion and, therefore, the largest level of engagement which is the magic word in facebook. what is engagement? it's the combination of clicks and likes and comments and shares. and those little smiley face things and the sums up. -- thumbs-up. so if you post something that generates 100 comments, chances are almost every one of your friends and many people beyond your friends that post.

not a lot of things give the things that generate a lot of strong emotions do, like pictures of my dog butter which tend to rocket around the internet are two because people like butter and site i like butter. i often says butter like you back in the works out really well. so same applies to conspiracy theories. if i were a host and i post an article from the economist about our current meltdown at the italian political system is going to shake monetary policy in the european union, i know some of you are right now ready to read that article. if i posted it, that handful of you ready to read the article might go to my facebook page and click like, thumbs-up. thanks for sharing it. it would be a well reported, well thought out sober minded economist article, right? but it would not generate vitriol unless you were an active member of an active political italian party.

that article would sink like a rock on facebook. it's too reasonable. if i were to go home and post something about how vaccinations cause -- that would generate tremendous response. 99% 99% of my friends would sayt are you doing? you out of your mind. why would you spread such lies? are some links to the cdc showing how wrong you are and you're some articles for major newspaper showing the wrong you are and here are some peer-reviewed scientific journal article save how wrong you are and to be hundreds of common and get you one of them would show me how wrong onion and everyone of them would ensure that my conspiracy theory rocketed around facebook and got even more people to see it. if it reaches 100 people, maybe one of those people goes really? i might not vaccinate my kid. that's exactly what happens. every example of craziness, wackiness, hate speech, conspiracy theories generate reaction and they are the things a travel to far this on

facebook. this is why you can't argue against the creature facebook. if you argue against the crazy you amplify the crazy. it's the exact opposite of what we teach ourselves. about how we debate issues in the world, how we're supposed to disagree with people, often agreeably, sometimes disagreeably, and either arrive at some consensus or at least triumph in the public sphere. that doesn't happen in facebook. the opposite happens. the more reasonable your post, the less visible you are on facebook the more wackier your post are, the more influential you are on facebook. it's a terrible system. it's a terrible system for a democratic republic. it's not bad for hobbyists to accept that for making sure you follow niche interest. it's pretty good speaker like puppies but it was bad is going to require politics on facebook. because as aristotle tells us, we are political animals, we can't help ourselves.

we conduct our politics on facebook. so what can we do about this? very low. what can facebook do about this? almost nothing. he comes of those three things, 2.2 billion people, and advertising system that so surgically addresses the right people for the right product for the right candidate for the right idea. and an algorithm that amplifies things that you would strong emotions. the combination of those three things, that combination is facebook. the only way to clean up facebook is to address those core three things and that would mean not having facebook. facebook can't not have facebook and facebook can't address those three things because that is what makes it work. that is how it makes money. that is how it exists as an important thing in the world. they are trying the best to cosmetically address many of these problems. country by country. so they put extra effort into filtering out hate speech before the german election if they put extra effort into filtering out

fake accounts before the referendum in ireland over abortion rights, and they're trying to best to make sure that the congressional election in the fall of 2018 in the united states are not overrun by russian propaganda with the presidential election was in 2016 but this is actually a much harder public is we're talking about 435 house districts, at least half the state legislatures have seats up, good number of governors come so many elections that facebook has to monitor. it's almost impossible job in a country like this. so no, i spoke can't fix itself and there's little we can do. there's a couple interventions that like to see. i'd like to see stronger antitrust scrutiny of facebook. i wouldn't mind seeing instagram and what's at seventh of facebook. i wouldn't mind seeing the virtual reality system seven from facebook. i think that's, facebook is too much power into much data about all of us. it would be nice if those other

systems compete with facebook especially instagram, those mergers never should've been allowed. and i like to see the united states a strong data protection regulations much like in europe which would give us some. >> translator: , some a bill to see what facebook does with our data. right now we can't. we get facebook a blanket license to do it ever facebook might think of in the future to do with our data. like some plan in the future. that wouldn't happen under the european general data protection regulation. i i wish that in the united stas we had similar laws. unlikely to happen for many years it certainly not before 2021. it might not ever happen. i'd like to sit happen in canada and brazil, and us joy and other places in the world to rein in the power of facebook. these are long shots and the only really address some of the problem. the rest seem pretty unsolvable to me. but here's the thing.

i want to be wrong about that. i want smarter people than myself to fix the problem and show me i'm wrong. whether they work for facebook wonderworking washington, d.c. or brussels, i want them to fix the problem and i want live your some had to be able to say you know what, that book i wrote, don't bother with it, i was so out of line. it was so wrong. if that happens, i'll be super happy. i would be even happier if that happens after everybody bought the book, right? [laughing] so please do buy the book. once again i really want to thank common house for allowing us to have the space in this event here tonight. i like to think c-span booktv for the time to help you get my message out to an audience beyond my dear friends you. i want to thank my dear friend you but i especially want to thank julia was not only done a great service to charlottesville

by reviving and energizing the new dominion bookshop, but has for many years been a real central node in the cultural life of charlottesville. anyone who participates in writing community, artistic community and charlottesville news julia to or activities. she is done a fantastic job for so many years charlottesville would not be charlotte's do without her. and again shop at new dominion. the best bookstore in town and it will remain so with your loyalty. so thank you very much and i be happy to talk some more about this if you have questions. thanks. [applause] >> are right. what did i say wrong? what did i get wrong? nick. >> on your second point about advertising in the wood works on facebook, is this not a place that facebook can actually come

if they choose to, change the algorithm? this is something they control, right? i i understand there might be resistance to that because of the revenue stream or whatnot, what it using? >> facebook is doing something to address the advertising system in the united states before the election, and that is they are required anybody who post an ad that has any indication of having article content, like having a set of political keywords from abortion to fake to the economy, if you post an ad and get any of those words now you will be flagged by facebook and you will be asked to submit proof that you live in the united states. now, once that is screened and through, they will run your ad. and they also want to take a copy of the ad and keep it in a archive so in the future people can examine what that ad was all

about. but here's the thing. if you are working for the internet research agency in st. petersburg, russia, and you want to distribute the same kind as that you do without any problem in 2016, what you're going to do is find a few people who live in the united states. you don't have to prove you're a citizen. you just have to prove julie and the united states. there are plenty of people in the united states were willing to mess with the united states. it only takes a handful, maybe it only takes ten, you know? and you could get those people to sponsor that and have the same effect that they directly purchased, wrubel purchase internet agency add didn't get out in 2016. facebook is doing this and make a big deal about it to show it is taking the problem seriously. i think they are taking the problem seriously. the problem is there is no way to get around the fact that people get around the barrier.

again, because facebook is so big and so global and it's just so easy to get around these sorts of restrictions. so i don't anticipate it's going to that much of a difference. i think what is made a difference, the miller center here at uva trying to run facebook ads to promote anything but because the miller center happens to cover politics, the ad was flagged and denied because it had political terms in it. i tried to buy facebook add for this event and it was flagged and denied. because they are just been so careful. they don't want anything that might seem lyrical and i don't know what about this event seemed particularly political except that it was a book may be, i don't know who knows? my book title has the word democracy and so that probably was enough to flagged it, right? so those are the sorts of statements but again its country by country. that's what it is doing and the united states. facebook is doing nothing in india, zero in india.

facebook, in fact, india is probably the hardest problem. when you more than a dozen major languages and you need to our staff and create a machine learning or artificial intelligence system in each of these languages and be able to flag for all of the different forms of derogatory speech in each of these languages, imagine what that's like, and keep up with the slaying slang and alle languages, that alone, and how many people in india use facebook? 250 million. 220 million americans use facebook every month. 250 million people in india use facebook. that 220 million in the u.s., it's only 69% of u.s. that it's pretty much stopped up. probably will not see much growth there. that to undertaking than in india is only one quarter of the population. so not only is the future facebook in india, the present is in india.

the buying power were probably be on the american level. the pentagon kurds in whatnot. so in other words, what facebook is trying to his country by country kind of plug up their problems. as they see elections roll out. it's a whack-a-mole process. [inaudible] >> i'm wondering if you help me understand why, you're talking about how facebook is trying all these things to shore up this stuff. what does the pressure that is causing them to do this? what do you see as the global or national political pressure? >> they found out there's this book oxford university press

that his commitment they really scared. no, i mean the pressure is that what you had off the sort of regulation that they can write about themselves. so every industry and every major player in every industry wants to write the legislation. and if anger remains high and legislators in brussels or in london or in ottawa or in the u.s. maintain a high level of animosity toward facebook, then the regulations could be a real hindrance to facebook operates in the future. they want to get ahead of that. so to be able to get a a negote in good faith and be able to write the bill, which is what every industry wants to do, they would have to take the temperature down, to take the temperature down that to make it seem like they're making good-h effort. the thing is they are making good-faith effort. the people who work at facebook get this. they didn't get this until last year, which is madness.

had they come i know, like they were about to come read social media ship scholarship like my friend does can we live in the stuff and we knew this stuff was not only possible, it was actually happening but nobody was listening to us. so cambridge analytica got hold of the deep data on 150 american voters. on second 150 million american voters that's a lot of voters, right? that's almost all of the actual voters. and that was this massive scandal. it was this research at university of cambridge got the date and headed over to facebook because facebook had no control over who took the data out, and it seemed the way the story ran out that this was a massive meltdown, a big one off. but he wasn't. this was reflection of facebook policy between 2010-2015. facebook encourage application developers to take all the data

about all of us out of facebook and use it to retargeted ads and use it to use facebook anymore creative way to spread the little low facebook bug around the web. it turley encouraged other websites and other applications to connect itself to the facebook ecosystem and become dependent on facebook. that was its wonky. as a sip it was policy between 2010-2015. everybody to follow social media closely knew this. in 2012 the obama campaign had an application on peoples phone that you could use if you are a volunteer. you would log in with your facebook credentials and that only which are facebook data can be shared with the obama campaign but all of your friends would. pretty soon the obama campaign without even knowing they're getting it at all the data on all the americans. amazing how much data they had in 2012. the trump campaign could not do that in 2016. i'll get to that in second but in 2012 a lot of us raise our

hands and said this is not good. a head of state has intimate data on the citizens of that country, and that data is in the political wing of the person operation. forget whether i like that candidate or not like the president or not. this is an unhealthy situation in a democracy nobody could be we couldn't get anybody to write that story. nobody would write an op-ed about it. it just wasn't interesting. because the story was barack obama is really digitally savvy. of course it was. he got all this data from facebook. then came cambridge analytical run by on felons and it became this international story. because cambridge analytica was working for ted cruz to know what an texas even like him that help in the works for donald trump with 60, 70% of the country doesn't take you like and was working for the leave

campaign and brexit, all these bad people, it was too to say that cambridge analytica is a bad actor stealing data the way facebook magazine was cambridge analytica stole the data instead of facebook give the date of the weight really care who else got it, which wasn't the case. that's a long way of saying that facebook now has to deal with a series of crises that strike at the core of its business. and facebook would like you to believe and most importantly like our senator mark warner to believe that it is a series of fixable surface level glitches. they just need to sand the rough edges. mark warner is smart enough to know that is not the case and will see over the next couple of years a couple of good attempts to try to rain facebook in but as i said they were probably not go anywhere for quite some time.

[inaudible] >> so kind to speaking to that directly, having read the book, it seems like there's this, like, determinism you talked about in the book in terms of -- [inaudible] around lunch implement sort of technology is sort of like determine a certain outcome and then there's optimism which is this idea of everything would just keep getting better like once we make it -- can you talk a little bit about the idea of like the third way that i think you talk with in the book? >> there's technological determinism which is one of my mentors years ago wrote this with important book, and then you another follow-up book. he's very much a technological deterministic his mentor was marshall mcluhan. the idea was of course an is if you introduce the technology you change everything.

you introduce the lightbulb and human beings are suddenly completely different animals. they think about, actively, they run their digitally. that's a pretty powerful technology. if you're going to make a technological deterministic argument, the lightbulb is a pretty good case study. the problem is technological determinism doesn't actually map to human experience beyond a simple technology that has had profound effect, , like the lightbulb. if you take something less simplistic, much more complicated that is use more creative ways, like the turntable, , you'll see that by introducing a turntable to rent you don't necessarily change it in one particular way and one particular direction. because of course is supposed to rotate this way at 33.5 rotations per minute, but some people decide to move it this way, you know, occasion and create rhythm out of it. the very fact that human beings interact with the technologies

integrated ways and to impose as individuals and groups very different agendas on the technologies, that's an indication of the looking at technology, about the social shaping of technology. i find that a much more compelling way of looking at technology. how does that relate to facebook? facebook is a set of algorithms and interfaces that offer us structure and a card certain forms of behavior but they don't determine what we do. we change facebook as much as facebook changes us facebook was invented for the puppies in the babies and the graduation photos, and for college kids to keep up with each other over the lives. that's how it was designed. the social shaping part came when the nazis shut up and decided to use for very different purposes when misogynists showed up and decide use very different purposes. when anti-vaccination campaigns, when flight with groups, there

are about 1000 flat earth groups on facebook trying to convince anybody the earth is flat, when those people show up that's not what facebook was designed for the facebook and becomes shaped by those interventions, right? facebook is shared by us as much as we should buy facebook. mark zuckerberg doesn't know us, didn't get us, didn't even get curious about us before he created a system that he quickly connected billions of people too. he made a profound mistake by assuming that we were all the sort of people who hang out with mark zuckerberg, right? that we all went to prep school and harvard and silicon valley and now hang out at davos. if we were that kind of people, then, even use a harvard people, facebook would be fairly usable, right? but that's not the world. the world is nester than that, angry of the net, meaner than that.

and that's what we've seen. >> you mentioned facebook being motivated to bring the temperature down with what basically -- [inaudible] which they probably realized. but facebook also for like years and and years has had the reputation of purposefully being deceitful with the control other interfaces that you can't -- [inaudible] i'm curious with those kind of data points, , so that you also feel like facebook is making good-faith efforts, so like my intuition would be they are not making good-faith efforts. >> i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. i been in the room with a few people who are like really shaken up by what's been happening. that doesn't anybody shaken up by what's been happening. does me mark zuckerberg is shaken up by what's been happening. i get the sense he is. one of the things in this book,

one of my former graduate student, a brilliant professor at the university of wisconsin milwaukee cup he's been a couple years assembling an archive he called the zuckerberg files where he has catalogued every public statement mark zuckerberg is ever made, everything mark zuckerberg has posted on its own facebook profile and every speech he has made and every video interview he has appeared in. i went through hours and hours and hours and weeks and days of mark zuckerberg talking in price context, mostly with immediate training and very carefully structure but sometimes especially early in his career a little looser. i can't say i know mark zuckerberg but i think i know as well as anybody who hasn't met him, if that makes sense. my sense is that he is overwhelmingly naïve, fundamentally uneducated he just never ever confronted the inhumanity of human beings, the

potential cruelty of human beings. so in those areas i think he was caught by surprise and he does care very deeply but he only can look at the problem through his ideology, which he has solidified larger by getting so rich on the back of it, and that is an ideology that insist that the more we are connected to each other, the better we will treat each other. the closer we are to each other, the better we will be to each other. thousands of years of human history notwithstanding, right? there are plenty of cases where people living next door to each other are not good to each other. when it cases when people living in the same house are not good to each other. to think that the constant interaction between human beings is going to somehow lead to mutual understanding is so incredibly naïve, and yet time and time again that is how he is describing the mission the facebook, and its social mission fundamentally.

he's very committed to that. that's what gets them up in the morning. in terms of what he does with our data, yes, he has also said especially early in his career that he does not believe that we should at any control over our data and control over our own sense of our reputation. that we should be completely open in all cases to everybody because that's what he calls authenticity. he thinks we're an authentic when hold back information about ourselves. when we hold back aspects of our lives, right? so if you're not willing to tell all your friends that you are gay, that's an authentic to mark zuckerberg, even if not willing to do all your friends that you are gay because you might be afraid that some terrible consequence or you're not ready, that doesn't matter. the idea is of the got to the point answers about this, many people in silicon valley believe, if you get to the point where i don't want just with the exposure and are, we won't be

able to make everybody, right? because we realized just how many people are like us around us. again have some cost simplistic, terribly naïve, ignoring all of frictions in human relations but that is his core belief. he is still holding onto it. he is unshakable and when he says he gives us control over our data, he needs it and only the most cosmetic way. that when i i share a post i cn choose whether everyone i facebook has the potential to see it, whether just by friends at the potential to sikkim whether some subset of my friends has the potential to see, with everybody but my mother has the potential to sikkim which sorry, mom, i've done that a few times. to add the level of control, first of all you have to care about that level of control. you have to know i have some stuff i might not want to show my mom. not many people do that. they just post. the default is it's open to everybody. that doesn't matter. who you share stuff with

facebook is an issue but it is not as crucial an issue as a fact that you should everything with facebook and apparently with cambridge analytica as well. and who knows who else? hundreds of developers, the people who created mafia wars and words with friends, those app developers have all your data, , too. all of it. they know about all your breakups and everything,, everything your fred kempe everybody you've wanted to win an election. they know all that stuff, and we don't know with whom they share that data. >> you talk to mark zuckerberg personally but can you comment on the corporate culture facebook? >> the corporate culture, a lot of people are deeply upset was going on. many major people equate in the last year. leaders of projects, the guy who ran what's happened just quit, the top two guys. they were devoted to privacy.

there are lots of people have serious misgivings what's going on. i happen you know that there are a lot of people there who are taking the sort of attitude that you to think jim mattis takes every day we goes, which is if not me, then whom? they could get worse if i'm not one of the good cost china work on this problem. that's a tough position to be in and it's not an enviable position to be in. there are plenty people facebook are still true believers. i have former students who are working facebook most of them are true believers because i just got the i did i of not ben indoctrinated but they are fully vested, true believers. a lot of them are. and that is because they are in that bubble. that is the bubble. that is ideology. that's what gets them up in morning to go to work. there are people at facebook to still do believe that make everybody to everybody is answer to all of our problems.

one more question. >> the facebook app any real -- [inaudible] >> the top seven social media platforms, two of them operate in china and very little outside of china. the one that's most important of that is we chat. i could do that in a second. but if you take like out of the top seven, five of them operate outside of china, , to the opere in china can remove the to come here down to five. what are the in order number of users facebook number one at 2.2 billion. number two is youtube at 1.6 billion. youtube isn't really a social network system in the same way. it does a lot of things that face but doesn't do and doesn't do on things facebook doesn't do but let's keep it in the list anyway. facebook and youtube. youtube is owned by google. what about the three after that? facebook messenger, instagram and what's out all owned by

facebook. what outcome the loss of those has 800 million users around the world. 800 million. twitter only has about 300 million users. twitter is way down on the list. it's actually not that important. don't tell the president but it really isn't that important. in terms of how it affects peoples lives and he was on it. it is important descriptive within certain community. it's more important north america and western europe than is in the rest of the world. if the more important among celebrities and other groups within the united states. they use for certain purposes but in terms of like it's effect globally and its effect on politics, it is not as anywhere near the top seven -- four of the seven on by facebook. what about we chat? we chat has about 850 million users, which is a lot. it is an amazing surface. it does everything for you.

you lived through we chat if you're in china. through we chat you can take up library books, make doctors appointments, charge sodas at a machine. you can live through it basically for it is the operating system of your life. it just so happens that the government is watching everything you do, or least mining everything you do and keeping of records i don't misbehave. we chat engine social network does everything twitter does, everything instagram does, everything youtube does. it's everything picked if we are chat, a version of we chat in english operational in the united states, we would use anything else and this is what scares facebook. facebook sees we chat as a model. they are currently not directly competing. there are a lot of people in the world who use both facebook and we chat with our people in the chinese diaspora. you can't use facebook in china. these are two separate worlds. what does facebook want? facebook wants to be more like we chat which is what facebook

tries to become the operating system overlies. that's what you're seeing on facebook messenger. if you open up messenger, the outcome you see a bunch of mini apps at the bottom, a bank of america at, a starbucks at, mcdonald's, pizza hut at that these are attempts to get more of your friends actions filtered through the facebook ecosystem. in the hopes that someday you will use anything but facebook messenger/this book and that they might actually be integrated fully at one point and then facebook would do everything we chat. think of it all the things facebook is trying to do, it's trying to become more like we chat. they are trying to do that before we check comes outside of china. at the same time mark zuckerbere is learned man. >> translator: stride into china to compete there. that's really the answer to question. outside of china from your competition. if at some point we get to point where we chat and facebook are directly competing for attention been industries. 20 years down blinders cup edition because the idea of the operating system overlies

doesn't just happen unopposed. if avatar thermostats, and our cars and refrigerators and a close at her glasses. maybe the chips in our brain. at that point everything allies has data flowing through it, some company probably just one company will manage all that data, monetize all the data will be outsourcing decisions to the company and the company might be google or microsoft, amazon. it might be facebook. they all want to be operating system overlies. that is a long game. that's why they're getting more into virtual reality, more into artificial intelligence can more into self driving cars like google is, more into wearable, facebook has taken up a different route but amazon and google want to have those in help hell to manage everything that you think about and listen to everything you are doing. that's all part of the process to become the operative system of lies. it would has to be one company because there has to be some sort of standardization for the data to work for everything to

work together. that's the long game. that's what we have to watch out for. as citizens we should be very aggressive in forcing our leaders to try to assess the potential negative consequences of such a system. and the maybe positive consequences as well and i'm sure there are. it's really going to be about going to make healthy decisions as though sources of opportunities arrive in our lives and not just rushing to the shiny new thing because it's the shiny new thing. anyway, thank you so much. please hang around, get more to drink if you meet someone from common house, thank them for letting us hang out here, and let's thank julia again. [applause] >> we do need to mention that

siva will be signing his book in the back. i do and come back there, , have book, stick around, have a drink, have dinner. thank you all for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> over the years booktv has covered several books about the use and influence of social media, computer scientist and philosopher argued against the use of social media. >> you can watch any of these programs by visiting booktv.org and right social

media book in the search function. >> i don't want my kid reach stores that are set, disturbing, downbeat, whatever, right? that's like not a totally legitimate thing to say. i i want to choose as a parent when my kid understands stuff that might bring them grief but there's also certain point beyond which it's like they are 14, like when you're going to introduce them to the idea that not everything is perfect outside of your all-white suburb? so all of those factors swirled together to create the perfect dumpster fire of mass censorship books. >> science-fiction author will be our guest on "in depth" fiction edition live sunday, august 5 at noon discussing his latest book walk away. interact by phone, twitter or

facebook. our special series "in depth" fiction edition with corey sunday august 5th by from noon to 3 p.m. eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> booktv visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i have two main books on my summer reading list. the first is what the eyes don't see, , the story of the flint crisis. it's really a detailed look at what happens when there is a breakdown of regulatory oversight and when you basically an unelected official making decisions based on cost and not a long-term impact of a community, was absolutely devastating for the people of flint and especially the children. it's written by a person who is a key activist in bringing this whole thing to light. she really went out of her way and did some incredibly courageous things in order to get people to understand that

there was led in the water and is having a devastating impact on the community. i think it's a story of some of the dark side of life but it's also an inspirational story of how one individual also backed up by an entire committee, resulting community and many activists can bring justice where there was great and bimetal injustice. justice was brought to the community. the other book i'm reading is freedoms forge, which is about the arsenal of democracy in america and what happened in world war ii. i represent michigan. we were the arsenal of democracy because of our ability to build automobiles and to make things. it is one of them were untold story of why we won world war ii. it was because of the ingenuity and hard work of workers that were able to turn around and industrial system that was somewhat stagnant because of the great depression but was able then to turn up things like airplanes by the hour, able to

equip the allies and equip american soldiers and sailors and marines that led to victory and it's a story about how we came out -- cannot lose her manufacturing power, are manufactured capacity and how important the auto industry was to really to freedom and why we need to continue to be focused on manufacturing policy here in america today. >> booktv wants to know what o you're reading. send us your summer reading list @booktv on twitter, instagram or on facebook. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> sunday night on "after words", former white house press secretary sean spicer discusses his book. is interviewed by former republican national committee chairman michael steele. >> while reagan at him trump are about 180 degrees apart from each other and yet here we are

at this space. how did you navigate that? we are both reagan conservatives in that regard. was it a little bit of a dance once in a while or how did you do it? >> with respect to the president himself, look, there's no question he is not traditional entrance of how we speak. he's got his own vernacular but he connects to people in a way that most politicians never have and he talks very bluntly in his own style which i don't think he would've won the presidency or the nomination if it wasn't for that style. i think there's always this balance with elected officials, which is they say all the right things but they don't necessarily get anything done. in the case of trump there's a lot of he's getting all these things than a people are saying i just didn't like this tweet or how we interacted. i am a results oriented person or a look at other countries doing. are people doing better, making more money, is the country safer? i think net net i would think

most people would generally agree that if we can get the right things done for the country, then that is a better place than just talking about the right things to get done. >> watch sunday night at nine eastern on c-span2's booktv. ..