10/23/19 10/23/19 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now!w! >> the algorithms are tuned to keep users on-site and active, preferably by presesng emotionol buttons that reveal each user's true self. for most this means content that provokes fear or outrage. hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theorieies are catnip

fofor these algorithms. amy: as 47 attorneys general probe facebook for violatingng antitrustt regulations, we speak with one of mark zuckerberg's former mentors, the early facebook investor roger mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." i was so proud of facebook. i thought mark was different, so i was blissfully a fan. i mean, a huge fan. i got to dinner my career and i retired before i realized there was something wrong. amy: as facebook ceo mark zuckerberg testifies on capitol hill today, we spend the hour with roger mcnamee. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman.

in an explosive testimony, the top u.s. diplomat in ukraine, william taylor, told congressional lawmakers tuesday the trump administration held up $391 million in aid to ukraine for the purpose of pushing ukraine to incriminate trump's political rivals, particularly presidential candidate vice president joe biden and his son hunter. in taylor's opening statement, which has been made public, he lays out his interactions with gordon sondland, the u.s. ambassador to the european union and a wealthy oregon hotel magnate who received the ambassadorship after donating a million dollars to trump's inauguration. taylor says ambassador sondland told him that everything, including security assistance, was dependent on ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy announcing an investigation into burisma, the gas company where joe biden's son, hunter, was a board member. taylor said --

"ambassador sondland told me that president trump had told him that he wants president zelensky to state publicly that ukraine will investigate burisma and alleged ukrainian interference in the 2016 u.s. election." taylor's testimony offers the most damning evidence so far in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. on tuesday, amid taylor's explosive testimony, president trump sparked widespread criticism by tweeting that the impeachment inquiry is a "lynching." the comment was widely condemned as racist and grossly historically inaccurate. this is democratic congressmemember hakeem jeffrie. >> thousands of african-americans were slaughtered during the lynching epidemic in this country for no reason other than the color of their skin. compareident should not the constitutionally mandated

such achment inquiry to dangerous and dark chapter of american history. it is irresponsible for him to will, and i hope that he apologize. amy: the turkish military has halted its invasion of northern syria after reaching an agreement with russia tuesday that would force syrian kurdish forces to retreat from a wide swath of the syrian-turkish border. the deal came after the turkish ogan met with russian president vladimir putin. syrian kurdish civilians have continued to flee amidst aand into iraq conflict that began after president trump spoke to erd ogan the telephone october 6, then abruptly withdrew u.s.

troops from the region, clearing the way for the turkish invasion. this is a kurdish refugee. houses are still destroyed. people are displaced. people don't have money. so many people left for other countries. amy: conys of thes u.s. troops have been departing northern syriaor western iraq wherthe pentagon initially id they y would be re-stationed. at the iraqi government responded that the u.s. does not have permission t to station as troooops in iraq. on tuesday, defee secretary mark esper met with the iraqi defense minister who says the u.s.s. troops will leaeave iraq within four weeks. we are conducting a phase withdrawal from northeast syria. we will temporarily reposition anorak pursuant to bringing the troops home. it is one part of the continuing faith but eventually those troops will come home. amy: protests have erupted in bolivia over claims sunday's

presidential election was rigged in favor of longtime leader evo morales. preliminary election results showed the election headed for a runoff, with morales leading his opponent, former president carlos mesa, with less than the 10% margin required to win the election outright. but then election officials abruptly stopped the ballot count four 24 hoururs. when the count was resumed, morales had suddenly surged far ahead of mesa, with enough of a lead to avoid a december runoff. protesters have raided two electoral tribunal buildings and burned ballot boxes. the vice president of the bolivian supreme electoral court has announced his resignation amid the fraud accusations, and the organization of american states is meeting today over the situation. chilean president sebastian pinera has announced new reforms aimed at ending weeks of nationwide protests in response to a subway fare hike, rising inequality, high cost of living, and privatization. pinera vowed tuesday to increase

the basic pension by 20% and proposed a h health h care law t would mandate the state cover the costs of expensive medical treatments. it's unclear whether the reforms will halt the massive demonstrations. at least 15 people have died and more than 5000 have been detained since the protests began. pinera has declared a state of emergency in the capital of santiago and five other cities, imposing a curfew, and sending the military into the streets in response to civil unrest for the first time since dictator augusto pinochet's regime. british prime minister boris johnson lost a critical vote tuesday in his quest to fast track a brexit deal and withdraw britain from the european union by october 31. johnson's government has now requested a three month extension to get brexit approved by the british parliament. the president of the european parliament's has he supports the extension. the latest results from the

canadian national elections show canada's newly f formed anti-i-immigrant pararty failedo win a single seat and monday's election. the people's party of canada fielding more than 300 candidates, but received only 1.5% of the vote. even the party's leader, a former conservative party politician, lost his parliamentary seat. prime minister justin trudeau held onto power in monday's tight elections, although his will party did not win a majority. in tennessee, a striking united auto worker union member was hit by a car and killed outside the general motors plant in n spring hill where workers were maintaining an active picket line. the uaw said in a statement that 55-year-old union member roy mccombs "tragically lost his life today on a picket line standing up for a better life for himself and his coworkers." the uaw's strike is entering its 38th day today. workers are remaining on strike as they vote on a tentative

agreement between the union and general motors reached on saturday. it is the longest national strike at gm by the united auto workers in nearly half a century. in chicago, teachers are heading into their second week of strike as schools remain closed across the city. the teachers are demanding better pay and benefits, smaller class sizes, and more nurses, counselors, social workers and librarians. chicago is the nation's third-largest school system, with more than 350,000 students. on tuesday, democratic presidential candidate senator elizabeth warren joined the teachers on the picket line. >> everyone in america should support you in this strike. and the reason is because when you go out and write, you don't just fight for yourselves. you go out and fight the children of this city and the

children -- amy: new york state attorney general leticia james announced the states probe f facebook for violating antitrust regulatatios anand now backed by attorneys u.s.s. from 40'0's other states and tererritori. jamemes said the probe is loloog at whether facebook puput consur data at riskk, reduce the qualiy of consumemers choices, and increase the price of advertising. this comes as facebook ceo mark zuckerberg will be testifying on capitol hill today. we will have more on facebook after the headlines. a 49-year-old mexican immigrant who was in bororder patrol custy died monday reportedly of a pre-existing heart condition. the man, who has not yet been identified, was detained on sunday afternoon in southern arizona. he was later taken to a hospital in tucson where he was pronounced dead monday morning. the man is the second immigrant to die while in u.s. custody this month. the fifirst was an i immigrant m cameroon, , who died under the custody of immigration and

customs enforcement. at least 11 other immigrants have died while in customs in border patrol custody so far this year. in more news from arizona, phoenix police chief jeri williams has fired the police officer who threatened to shoot an african american family after their four-year-old daughter took a doll from a family dollar store. the incident w was captured in a viral cell phone video that shows phoenix officer christopher meyer, who is white, pointing a gun at the family'ss car with them inside and threatenining to shoot the gir's father, dravon ames, in the face. the girlrl's mother, iesha harp, is heard saying she is unable to hold her hands up because she is holding a bababy and that she is pregnant. this is dravon ames speaking to democracy now! in june. i was in the driver's seat.

my door.came to he opened the door, no problem. he tells me to put my hands up. i do that instantly because he had a gun drawn. we don't know who he is. i'm just taking commands from anyone at this point. i don't know if i'm being mugged, robbed, or anything. i'm just hands up, trying not to die on my family. amy: to see the full interview, go to democracynow.org. the decision to fire officer meyer comes as phoenix police announced tuesday the firing of another officer who was involved in a facebook group that advocated for violence against latinos, muslims, and women. 95% of baby foods contains either lead, arsenic, mercury, or cadmium. that's according to a shocking new national study by healthy babies bright futures, which tested 61 different baby food

brands purchased across 14 different metropolitan areas from san diego california to albany, new york. the study found that nearly all of the baby foods tested were contaminated with at least one of the developmental neurotoxins. one in four of the tested baby foods contained all four types of the heavy metals, which are each linked to iq loss from exposures early in life. in response to the study, new york democratic senator chuck schumer is calling on the federal drug administration to examine the study and release a public statement on its findings. in sports news, major league baseball is investigating the outburst houston astros assistant general manager brandon taubman to three female journalists saturday night as the astro celebrated their win against the yankees in game six of the american league championship series. he yelled at sports illustrated reporter who was wearing t the purples domestic violence

awareness bracelet and other female reporters "thank god we got a pseudo-. i'm so glad we got a sooner." the astross signed him from the toronto blue jays in 2018, only weeks after the leak handled -- handed him a 75 game suspension for violating its domestic violence policy. he is being accused of assaulting the mother of his child. mamajor league baseball has launched an investigation into whether the three female journalists were subject to a hostile work e environment. boeing has ousted one of its top executives, marking the first high-level management change since the fatal crashes of two 737 max 8 site combined killed 346 people. the acid executive, kevin mcallister, had led the commercial airplanes division of boeing. the plane crashes in indonesia and ethiopia have provoked global outrage and sparked questions about the trump administration's close ties to boeing. on monday, boeing announced it

will begin paying out $50 million in financial assistance to the families of the victims of the two pressures. a new york, two members of the far-right hate group the proud boys have been sentenced to four years in prison for attacking a group of anti-fascist protesters outside their metropolitan republican club in manhattan last year. proud boys members max o'hair and john kinsman were convicted of attempted gang assault, attempted assault, and riot. stay supreme court justice mark dwyer said the sentencing was intended to deter future violence saying "i know enough about history to know what happened in europe in the 1930's, when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system." and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. facebook ceo mark zuckerberg is

testifying today on capitol hill as his company's actions are facing escalating criticism. the focus of today's house hearing is on facebook's plan to launch a cryptocurrency called libra that could reshape the world's financial system. zuckerberg will reportedly tell legislatorors he supports delayg the e launch of libra until u.s. regulators approve it. according to his prepared remarks, zuckerberg will say -- "i believe this is something that needs to get built, but i understand we're not the ideal messenger right now. i know some people wonder whether we can be trusted to build payment services that protect consumers." today's hearing comes as facebook faces intense scrutiny on a number of grounds. on tuesday, new york attorney general letitia james announced that her probe of facebook for violating antitrust regulationos is now backed by attorneys general from 46 other states and

u.s. territories. james said we are "all concerned that facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers' choices, and increased the price of advertising." facebook is also facing criticism from several democratic presidential candidates for refusing to ban political ads containing false information. meanwhile, massachusetts senator elizabeth warren has repeatedly called for facebook and other big tech companies to be broken up on antitrust grounds. well, today, we spend the hour with a man who once helped mentor mark zuckerberg and was an early investor in facebook but has since become one of facebook's most vocal critics. roger mcnamee joins us from pittsburgh. he has been an investor in silicon valley for over 35 years and advised bill gates, steve jobsbs, and many others. earlier this year, he published the book "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." roger mcnamee, welcome to

democracy now! can you start off by explaining why you call facebook catastrophe? thank you very, much. it is such a privilege to be here on democracy now! with you today. facebook really simply began its life in a very innocent way, connecting friends to friends and allowing people to share what was going on in their lives. the challenge really developed when the company needed to make money, so it began creating a bubusiness model that was babasn effectively monopolizing attention. they sell advertising. they need people to watch the ads. and the way they did that was to use two things -- the techniques of slot machines and propaganda that prey on the weakest elements of human psychology, then they use smart phones, which basically were on peoples bodies 24 hours a day and

created the ability to generate first habits and then later addiction. and facebook, along with google and other products like instagram and youtube, played this game incredibly effectively . and they did so at a time when there really were no rules for businesses. essentially, the american economy has been deregulating for 40 years. so there's nobody watching the store. and smart people take what they can get. the people at facebook and google are really smart. they basically made a play for a global consumer internet product that would essentially touch everyone around the world and bring them into a single network and manipulate their behavior for profit. it has been amazingly successful in economic terms, but it has ,aused huge harms to democracy public health, t to privacy, and frankly, to the structure of the economy itself. in my minind, we have a huge challenge because as users, we

really like these prododucts. we like facebook. we like instagram. we like youtube. but we have to learn to accept that things we like can sometimes do great harm to society, and that is what is happening. amy: expxplain its right to democracy, roger. >> very simply put, the way that facebook works -- the same would be true of instagram and youtube and google search engine -- they need you to spend a lot of time. the first thing they do is use notifications to build a habit. once you are addicted, once you're coming back multiple times a day, they have to find ways to keep you on the site. in the simplest way to do that is to reinforce whatever content gets you to share oror like or comment. it turns out for most of us, the content that does that is stuff that triggers flight or fright, which is essentially a part of

our psychology that is so deeply wired, we can't avoid it. the content that does that best is hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. effectively what happens on facebook is they bombard you with the stuff you react to. it blocks out all other forms of communication. so you wind up being and what is called a filter bubblble, whichs essentially an artificial reality where everytything appes to reinforce the things you already like were the things you alalready y believe. it blocks out any new ideas. it a a democracy, that is tetere because it increases polarization. essentially, each one of us is an our own truman show. if we are not careful, we wind up having our own set of facts. you see this every day. one third of americans do not believe there is any relationship between human activity and climate change. that is demonstrably false. there's another 7% more a person who believe there is a linkage

betweenutis which is clearly not true. in a democracy, if you can't agree on the facts, you can't have debate, you can't t have compromise.. facebook has played a larger role than ot platform at increasing this polarization. they have had a lot of help from youtube and instagram, but facebook has been the one that has been the worst.. amy: and why a threat to public health? >> there are a bunch of things going on in public health. it people live in a fantasy world, if they live in a truman show and they are angry all the time, if people are constantly being bombarded with stuff that triggers fear and outrage, that is not going to be good for the mental health. let's think about children. you have huge issues on products like instagram with bullying and body shaming. we have seen a very mysterious but alarming increase in teen suicide, and it has been suggested there may be a link to social media in terms of

increasing that p pressure at ts iny vulnerable time children's lives. products thatir facebook has an especially google and microsoft have, that are aimed at really little kids. microsoft has minecraft. kids,ok has messenger for and google has chrome books and all of their educational products. and those things are designed essentially to train really little kids for this world of surveillance that t is so core o the business model of internet platforms. amy: in a moment, we're going to talk about how you came to know mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandbeberg, what you said to th, the direction they're going in today, the signinificance of ths testifying on capitol hill, talking also about cryptocurrency. but i just want to get your comment on the latest news that a 47 states and u.s. territories

are now joining with new york investigating facebook, charging it w with antitrust violations. important a really initiative. if you had asked me two years ago whether i thought it was likely we would see antitrust acts against google or r facebo, i would have said it was very, very unlikely. essentially, the republican party has had as a poor strategy to dismantle antitrust as one of thegovernments functions ass arbiter of capitalism. so we reduced the opportunities for antitrust to something so small, that effectively it appeared internet platforms like google and facebook would be untouchable. in reality, they can antitrust violations every single day. the good news is that statee attorneyeys general are in a position to act on this because many states have privacy laws,

many have consumer protection laws that these companies have violated every single day. we see 47 states and territories going after facebook. we see 50 going after google. this is incredibly important. this is the very beginning of a process that is likely to take several years, but in my opinion, this is the most likely to have success in. i think it is super important that it work because these companies act as though they are not accountable to anybody. in that contexext, they dodo grt harm and escape in a kind of punishment foror it. that is wrong. amy: we're going to go to break. when we come back, we want to find out exactly how you got zucked, how you met mark zuckerberg, and the evolution of that relationship along with the evolution of facebook. we are talking to roger mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." career in a 34 year

silicon valley, was an early investor in facebook. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: "nothing to hide" by yo la tengo. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we continue with roger mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." he has had a 34 year career in silicon valley and was an early investor in facebook. talk about how you met mark zuckerberg and talked about the evolution of the company. inwhen i met mark, it was 2006. i had already spent 24 years, nearly half of my life, investing in silicon valley. it was a normal thing for me to

be consulted by young entrepreneurs who just wanted some perspective on how silicon valley worked. i got in email from one of mark's colleagues send my boss has a crisis, would you be willing to take a meeting with him? i was really excited about the idea because while i could not use facebook at that time yet to be a student with an email address from your school, i was convnvinced facebook was the net big thing. i was convincedd that the requirement that you had to be who you said you were with authenticated identity from your school, lead address, and the ability to control who can see your private information -- i thought those two things changed everything and would allow facebook to eventually be bigger than google was at that time. i was excited to meet mark. he comes in my office. i tell the story the book -- i will give you the short version of it. i said, mark, i have to tell you why i took this meeting most of i said, i think you're the most

important thing since google, but before long, either microsoft or yahoo! is good offer a billion dollars for facebook and everybody you know is going to tell you to take the money. i am here to tell you that if you want to see your vision come to fruition, you have to do it yourself. what followed that, amy, was the most painful five minutes of my entire life. mark, one of his great strengths as he does not act without thinking things through very carefully. in this s particular context, he decided to think about what i said before he reacted. he wanted to decide if he trusted me. but it took five minutes. you know from television how painful silence can be when you are expecting a response from someone. long story short, it turned out yahoo! had offered $1 million. as i predicted, everyone tolold mamark to sell the company and thatat is the reason he was thee to see me. he wanted to find out how he could keep the company independent. i helped him solve that problem. for three years thereafter, i

was one of his mentors. my role was very narrow but important to both of us becausee everybody in the company wanted to sell l out, so he needed to rebuild his managementnt team. the most important person i recommended to him and helped to bring g another cocompany was sl sandberg. i had known her for a number of years because she introduced me lead singer, who became a business partner after she introduced him. i knew her really, really well and i helped her get into google and we were very close. i thought she would be a good fit for mark. i thought the two of them would balance each other and provide complementary skills. for many years, that was true. amy: so talk about when you started to get disillusioned. -- it took place in two phases. the first part was i got dissolution with silicon valley.

beginning around 2010, with the financing of spotify, and then fting on to airbnb, uber, ly and then juul, i started to see companies that were the best of silicon valley had to offer, but whose essential being violated my values. lyftairbnb and uber and were about breaking the law, juul was about addicting young people to nicotine. i just said, i can keep investing other people's money if i'm not willing to invest in the best stuff coming out of my community. i decided it was time for me to retire. when i made the decision in 2012, my funds still had a few years t.

generate 2016 come in the context of the democratic primary in new hampshire, i saw hate speech being circulated from facebook grououps that were associated with the bernie sanders campaign. it was obvious that bernie had nothing to do with it, but the thing that was also obvious was that the hate speech was spreading so virally that someone had to be spending money to get my friends into these groups. that disturbed me. then i saw civil rights violations relative to black lives matter taking place using the advertising tools of facebook. but the clincher for me came in june 2016 with the brexit referendum in the united kingdom. that was the first time i realized, oh, my god, the same advertising tools that make facebook so useful for a marketer can be used to undermine democracy in an election. that was when i started looking for allies. i could not find russians were interfering in the election. at that point, i scrambled to

finish the draft and i sent it to mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg. they were my friends. i had been their mentor. i was really worried that something about the culture, the business model, and algorithms of facebook was allowing bad actors to haharm innocent peopl. i could not believe they -- that facebook would do this on purpose. i went to warn them nine days before the presidential election. itortunately, they treated like a pr problem, not a business issue. they were nice enough in the sense that they had one of their colleagues work with me for three-month to let me try to lay out my case. so between basically the end of october 2016 and february 2017, i was begging facebook to do what johnson & johnson did after the tylenol poisoning in chicago in 1982. the ceo dropped everything. he withdrew every bottle of tylenol from every retail shelf until late invented tamperproof

packaging. i thought facebook should do something like that, should work with the government to find out everything the russians were doing, to find out every other way the platform is being abused either to violate civil rights or to undermine democracy. but for whatever reason, maybe i was the wrong messenger, maybe something about the way i delivered the message did not work, but they did not take it seriously. i realized i was faced with a choice. i was so proud of that company and had been so closelely involvlved, but i felt like i hd something that i needed to share with everyone, that it could not just sit back and be retired and let it go by so i decided to become an activist -- which i never anticipated doing. i spent essentially the last three years every day doing nothing but trying to make the world aware the dark side of internet platformsms like facebook, like google, and to help people both protect themselves but to protect their children, to protect democracy,

and to protect the economy. amy: let me go to facebook ceo markrk zuckerberg speaking durig a press call last year during which he dismissed claims facebook ignored russia's election meddling or undermined investigations. beforeve said many times we were too slow to spot russian interference, too slow to get on top of it. we certainly stumbled along the way. but to suggest we were not interested in knowing the truth or we wanted to hide what we knew or we try to prevent investigations is simply untrue. amy: your response to that? >> i think in mark's mind, he is doing the right thing. but here's where the problem comes in. mark believes the mission of connecting the whole world on one seamless frictionless platform is the most important thing anybody can do on earth. and it justifies any means necessary to get there. i am sure in his own mind they

felt like they had been open with people, but the reality is quite differerent. facebook is designed to be opaquque. google is designed to be opaque. in a sense, they work together because google manages all of the infrastructure behind digital advertising. so they play a role in that whole ecosystem that allows companies like facebook to prevenent anyone from inspectitg what is going on. the truth is, they had to know before the election that there was something really wrong because i'm sure i was not the only one who brought it to their attention. but at the end of the day, their view of the world is that they should just connect everybody and not be responsible for the consequences. they said, roger, the law says we are a platform, not a media company. we are not responsible for what third parties do. this is ark, sheryl,

trust business. the law does not protect you if your users believe you're theymining democracy, if believe you're harming civil rights, if you're harming public health, if you're harming privacy. there is no protection against that. and that is what we're seeing today. the issue i run into is in 2016, i am willing to accept that maybe they did not pick up the right signals. god knows i didn't. but once they were informed, once people like me, once president obama went to mark, there was no excuse. and they have clearly spent the entire time since then trying to use misdirection to keep us from seeing what really happened there, denying, deflecting, delaying any kind of investigation. if they were really since your about this i'm a they would have the trump every ad

campaign showed on the platform. they would have shown everything the russians did. they would have given us all of the billing records. they would have done all of that kind of stuff. they clearly have not done that. it goes way beyond just elections. in have terrorism christchurch, new zealand. you have ethnic cleansing in the asian country of myanmar. you have hate speech around the world. thehave mass killings in united states. all of these things were enabled by internet platforms like facebook. and they did not go out of their way to cause it to happen, but they never put in place any safety nets, any firewalls, anythihing to protect users from the bad actors who are empowered by the way the algorithms and the culture in the business model of facebook work. amy: roger mcnanamee, i want to turno

mark zuckerberg speaking last week where he invoked frederick douglass, martin luther king jr., black lives matter movement, argued that a attempto reduce false information on facebook could censor free speech. >> in times of social tension, our impulse is often to pull back on free expression because we want the progress that comes from free expression, but we don't want the tension. we saw this when martin luther king jr. wrote his famous letter from a birmingham jail where he was unconstitutionally jailed for protesting peacefully. we saw this in the effort to shut down campus protests during the vietnam war. we saw this way back when americans deeply polarized about its role in world war i and the supreme court ruled at the time the socialalist leader could be imprisoned for making an antiwar speech. in the end, all of these decisions were wrong. pulling back on free expression

wasn't the answer. in fact, it often ends up hurting the minority views that we seek to protect. amy: that is mark zuckerberg. civil rights leaders quickly criticized his reach. mark luther king junior's daughter tweeted -- heard #markzuckerberg's 'free expression' speech, in which he referenced my father. i'd like to help facebook better understand the challenges #mlk faced from disinformation campaigns launched by politicians. these campaigns created an atmosphere for his assassinatioion." king is reportedly visiting the facebook headquarters this week. your respoponse, roger? >> i am with bernie's. i have to tell you, i think what mark said therere was horrific. it was disingenuous. it was not an honest telling either of what facebook does or how history works. here the issue. mark wants us to treat facebook with respect on first amendment

grounds. that this is an issue of free speech. here's where the problem comes up. the western we're talking about here is whether facebook should falsehoodsto have and pluggable advertising. they had a role for the longest time they could not have false advertising anywhere. when they were called out on this issue recently, instead of fixing the problem, they changed the rule to say fromom now on, we're n not going to have fact checking of political acts. the question is, does that constitute free speech? is that about free expreression? i would argue that is not anything at alall about that. the reason is because facebook ads are micro-targeting. the only people who see them are people who are carefully selected. so in an issue of free speech, if everyone got to see every single add in the political context, then mark's statement might have little bit of

viability. but they don't. this is all about organized campaigns designed to manipulate vulnerable populations. the second problem we have here is that mark's business, based on advertising, requires him to amplify the most engaging content that people see. and the problem is that the most engaging content on any internet platform is the stuff that triggers fightht or flight. her most basic human instinct. in that context, we about heat speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. there is no way on gods green earth you can convince me that free expression is aided by the amplification of heat speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories over fax or any kind of neutral conversation. i just think everything mark is saying is completely self-serving. it is not intellectually honest. and none of us should take it

seriously. amy: on capitol hill lester, cambridge analytica whistleblower chris wylie told the senate judiciary committee that the voter profiling company sought to suppress turnout among african-american voters and preyed on racial biases. he testified that cambridge analytica harvested the data of up to 87 million facebook users, without their permission, and used the data to "fight a culture war." cambridge analytica was founded by billionaire robert mercer. trump's former adviser steve bannon of breitbart news was one of the company's key strategists. wylie said he left the company due to efforts to disengage voters and target african americans. this is s chris wylie. topayment analytica sought identify mental vulnerabilities and votersrs and work to exploit them by targeting information designed to activate some of the worst characteristics in people suchch as neuroticism, pararano, and raracial biases.

the work of cambridge analytica is not eququivalent t to traditl marketing. they specialized in disinformation, spreading rumors, propaganda. amy: t that is cambrididge anala whistleblower chris wylie testifying before the senate judiciary committee. you can talk, if abouout the whole explosive -- e whole expose of camber to analytica and its relationship with facebook and how zuckerberg dealt with it. >> the thing to understand is cambridge analytica was in the political psychological operations business. they were willing to sell their services to anyone, and they sold them in many countries around the world -- they essentially had some kind of lead. unitedto the kingdom, and they had a relationship with the trump campaign, originally with the ted cruz campaign, but in the trump campaign.

their goal was very simple, it was to identify groups whose votes could be suppressed. in the context of the trump campaign, that was suburban white women, people of color, and idealistic young people. essentially, the goal was not to coconvert them from being clintn voters to being trump voters, but impact to find clinton voters who could be with a targeted micro-targeted focused campaign, discouraged from voting at all. it was demonstrably successful. there is no law against it today. the way things are set up, we never anticipated the ability to thatthe level of addiction a smartphone would create and therefore the ease of emotional relation that that would allow in a political context. micro-targeting is practiced by facebook and instagram, google, youtube and the context of a political campaign is asymmetrical in the most extreme

form because an ethical campaign will not use that kind of technology, only an unethical campaign will. at the end of the day, we are left with the situation where it empowers people who have bad intentions at the expense off democracy itself. we need to have laws that reflect the impact t of technoly in our democracy, and that is one of the highest priorities come in my mind, that congress should have both as an election issue in 2020 and then for the period immediately following. amy: is mark zuckerberg goes to capitol hill today to testify, we're speaking to roger mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." he was an early investor in facebook, new mark zuckerberg very well. when we come back, i want to ask about the presidential candidates and their position on the issueses of trust in antitrt and facebook, what should happen to it and other companies.

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amy: "nobody knows" by our guest roger mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." i want to go to lasix presidential debate in ohio. this is mark lacey. >> let's turn to the growing concerns over the power of big tech companies. mr. yang, senator warren is calling for companies like ace book, amazon, and google to be broken up. is she right? does that need to happen? >> as usual, senator warren is 100% right in diagnosing the problem. there are excesses and technology and in some cases having them divest parts of their business is the right move. we also have to be realistic that competition does not solve all of the problems. it is not like any of us want to there's a reason why no one is using bing today.

sorry, microsoft, it is true. it is not like breaking up these big tech companies will revive main street businesses around the country. breaking up the tech companies does nothing to make our kids healthier. we have to hone in on the specific problems we're trying to solve and use 21st century solutions for 21st century problems. using a 20 century antitrust framework will not work. we need new solutions and a new toolkit. >> senator warren, is he wrong? >> i'm not willing to give up and let a handful of monopolists dominate our economy and our democracy. it is time to fight back. inc. about it this way. when you talk about how it works in competition, about 8%, 9% of at retail sales happen walmart. about 49% of all sales online

happen in one place -- amazon. it collects information from every little business. and then amazon does something else. it runs the platform, gets all the information, and then goes into competition with those little businesses. look, you get to be the umpire and the baseball game or you get to have the team, but you don't get to do both at the same time. we need to enforce our antitrust laws, break up these giant companies that are dominating big tech, big pharma -- amy: that is elizabeth warren and before that andrew yang. now i want to go to a clip from earlier this month. the technology website the verge published a leaked audio recording of mark zuckerberg saying in elizabeth warren presidency would "suck" for the company and he may sue the u.s. government if it attempts to break up facebook. says theeth warren

right answers to break up the companies, she is elected companies, i would bet we would have a legal challenge and i bet we will win the legal challenge. does that still suck for us? yeah. i don't have a major lawsuit against our own government. that is not a position you want to be in. we care about our country and want to work with our government. but, look up at the end of the day, somebody is going to try to threaten, go to the mat and you fight. amy: that is linked recording of facebook ceo mark zuckerberg. senator elizabeth warren responded on twitter by writing -- "what would really 'suck' is if we don't fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like facebook engage in illegal anti-competitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy." early this year, facebook byporarily took down ads

elizabeth warren the call for the breakup of big tech companies including facebook. the ads directed supporters to petition for her antitrust proposal. roger mcnamee, respond to all of that. >> the first thing to think about is this come in a country as polarized as the united states is, and it is arguably polarized it has been since the civil war, the one issue that seems to cut across the entire political l spectrum is this on. people of all political stripes understand there is a problem. they may not understand exactly what the problem is or what to do about it but they recognize there's something wrong. this is encouraging. if you are me, and activist, i try to work with policymakers across the full spectrum. i have been fortunate. the antitrust division of the federal trade commission with trump appointees have both been surprisingly supportive of

looking at antitrust and other regulatory forms here. that is good. in relative to congress, i have had lots of people to talk to. the people running for president, elizabeth warren amy klobuchar, have shown real leadership on this. for a early senator warren. she has identified this issue from before she was a candidate. we and the summer of 2017 had long conversations about this and i was simply blown away by the depth of her understanding. senator klobuchar has a very clear understanding of antitrust issues. i think she is very committed there. i think corybooker is a person who has shown a lot of interest. we're seeing from senator sanders gas of interest as well. there are couple of candidates who really concern me deeply on the issue. senator harris, because she is from california, feels a loyalty

to facebook and google that has kept her from being a leader on this issue. i am deeply concerned about the relationship between mayor buttigieg and facebook in particular. you may have seen the story this week that mark zuckerberg was surreptitiously helping the hire keyg campaign personnel. this is going on at precisely the same time that mark is openly criticizing senator warrenin which senator has correctly posted ads on facebook that are mocking facebook's policies of allowing falsehoods. i look at this whole thing and i'm deeply concerned because there is a lot of evidence that facebook and google, even if they do nothing conscious to effect the outcome, will still have a profound impact because they do amplify the most

negative voices in any political struggle. more than they amplify the others. a messagehere was sent by senior facebook executive to a former employee that said that trump had had a pero one advantage of reach dollar spent for his advertising on facebook. over clinton. some of that was just because they were clever. 17 to one. you don't get that just by being clever. a lot of that has to do with the content of the messaging income the fact it was filled with disinformation, conspiracy theories, and heat speech, really helped those messages spread. not because everybody always liked them, but because it made people angry so they share them a lot. when i look at this in a political sense, i think facebook owes the country more than just its best effort. it actually should be held accountable for the outcome of this election.

in my opinion, if the company 2020, weprotect us in should be open and notions like shutting the platform down. i think the same thing should be true of google. these countries had a profound negative effect on democracy, not just in the united states, not just in the united kingdom, but in brazil and many other countries. in my parents generation, any company that had enabled the russians to interfere in u.s. election? i suspect they would have been shut down. he would not shock me if the executives had been criminally prosecuted. we did not allow foreign countries toto undermine our democracy and yet these companies seem to think that is acceptable. as americans, we should be better than that. amy: let me ask you quickly before the end of this hour, libra, the cryptocurrency a

facebook, that is why ostensibly mark zuckerbayis testifying befe foreign services committee, though i assume they will ask a lot t more questionsns than tha. briefly explain that and say what you think congress members should be asking. >> libra is a cryptocurrency designed to compete against the swiss, franc,ro, and yen. it is a terrible idea. would you think about national sovereignty for the u.s. or any other country, it is based on the control of legitimate force -- military and police, it also control of currency. if private cporationare allowed to create their own currencyhat operates globally, what i think you will see happen is rich people will move their transactioions under the cryptocurrency so they can escape detecection, escape taxation, and escape curncncy contntro.

thats so destatabiling for t rest of us come it should not be permitted. my hope is members of congress will blow up libra in the first two minutes of the hearing and then move on to t dozens of other issues that facebebook should be legimately forceto daer for. amy:he most important question? >> in my mind, mark, should we allow you to continue to operate if there is any interference at all after 2020? amy: are you still invested in facebook? you're one of the early investors. >>, to conscious choice when i began my activism to hold remain my position, which was substantial to me, because i did not want to be accused of speaking negatively about a stock i had sold. that was a year and half ago. i have recently unloaded almost all of my remaining position. there are a few shares left. but i do not want to be a shareholder any longer. i think -- join amy: we have to leave it there. thank you very much, roger

mcnamee, author of "zucked: waking up to the facebook catastrophe." democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning.