EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,032 words- 0:02 – 1:38
The Social Dilemma’s reach and why it resonated
- JRJoe Rogan
(dramatic music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Tristan, how are you?
- THTristan Harris
Good. Good to be here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to have you here, man. Um, you were just telling me before we went on air the numbers of The Social Dilemma.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're bonkers. So what, say that real quick.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah. Uh, The Social Dilemma was seen by, uh, 38 million households in the first 28 days on Netflix, which I think has broken records. And if you assume, you know, a lot of people are seeing it with their family because parents seeing it with their kids, uh, the issues that are around teen mental health. Uh, so y- if you assume one out of ten families saw it with a few family members, we're in the 40 to 50 million people range, which has just broken records, I think, for Netflix. I think it was the second most popular documentary throughout the month of September.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think-
- THTristan Harris
Or, or course, or filmed throughout the month of September.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it was a really well done documentary. But I think it's one of those documentaries that affirmed a lot of people's worst suspicions about the dangers of social media, and then on top of that, it sort of a-alerted them to what they were already experiencing in their own personal life and, like, highlighted it.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, most people were aware. I think it's a thing everyone's been feeling that the feeling you have when you use social media isn't that this thing is just a tool or it's on my side, it is an environment based on manipulation, as we say in the film. And that's really what's changed, that, you know, w- (sighs) I, I remember, you know, I was gonna be working on these issues for something like eight or, eight years or something now.
- 1:38 – 3:24
Tristan Harris’ background: persuasion, design ethics, and “race to the bottom”
- JRJoe Rogan
Could you please tell people who didn't see the documentary-
- THTristan Harris
What it is, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what, what your background is-
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and what you, how you got into it?
- THTristan Harris
Yeah, so I, uh, the, you know, the, the film goes back as a, a set of technology insiders. My, my background was as a design ethicist at Google. So I first had a startup company, uh, that we sold to Google, and I landed there through a talent acquisition. And then, um, uh, started, uh, work, about a year into being at Google, uh, made a presentation that was about how essentially technology was holding the human collective psyche in its hands, that we were really controlling the world's psychology. Uh, because every single time people look at their phone, they are basically experiencing thoughts and scrolling through feeds and believing things about the world, this has become the primary meaning-making machine for the world. And that we as Google had a moral responsibility to, uh, you know, hold the collective psyche in a thoughtful, ethical way and not create this sort of race to the bottom of the brain stem attention economy that we now have. Uh, so my background was as a, as a kid I was a magician. We can get into that. Uh, I, uh, studied at a lab at Stanford, uh, called, or studied in a class called the Stanford Persuasive Technology, uh, Class that taught a lot of the engineers at, in Silicon Valley kind of how the mind works, and the co-founders of Instagram were there. And, uh, then later studied behavioral economics and how the mind is sort of influenced. I went into cults and started studying how cults work, and then arrived at Google through this lens of, you know, technology isn't really just this thing that's in our hands. It's more like this manipulative environment that is tapping into our weaknesses, everything from the slot machine rewards to, you know, the way you get tagged in a photo and it sort of manipulates your social validation and approval, these kinds of things.
- 3:24 – 6:11
Google’s “Don’t be evil,” moral ambiguity, and reducing harm vs ‘doing good’
- JRJoe Rogan
When you were at Google, did they still have the "Don't be evil" sign up?
- THTristan Harris
Uh, I don't know if there was actually a physical sign. Was there one?
- JRJoe Rogan
There was never a physical sign? I thought there was something that they actually had.
- THTristan Harris
I think it was, there was this guy, was it Paul T- not Paul. What was his last name? He was the inventor, one of the inventors of Gmail, and they had a meeting and they came up with this mantra, 'cause they realized the power that they had and they realized that there was gonna be a conflict of interest between advertising on the search results and regular search results. And so we know that, they knew that they could abuse that power and they came up with this mantra, I think, in that meeting in the early days to "Don't be, don't be evil."
- JRJoe Rogan
There was a time where they took that mantra down, and I remember reading about it online and, and I-
- THTristan Harris
They took it off their page, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what it was.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, when I read that, I was like, "That should be big news." Like, there's no reason to take that down. Why would you take that down? (laughs)
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why, why would you, why would you say, "Well, maybe it can be a little evil. Let's not get crazy."
- THTristan Harris
I- it's a good question. I mean, I wonder what logic would have you remove a statement like that. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That seems like a standard state- Like, it's a great statement. Okay, here it is. "Google removes 'Don't be evil'" clause from its code of conduct."
- THTristan Harris
In 2018?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wonder why. Did they have an explanation? Did it say anything? Uh... Underneath there? "Don't be evil" has been a part of the company's corporate code of conduct since 2000 when Google was reorganized under a new patent, uh, parent company, Alphabet, in 2015. Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto-"
- THTristan Harris
Do the right thing, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Do the right thing." Oh, that's a Spike Lee movie, bitch.
- THTristan Harris
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"However, (laughs) Google retained its original 'Don't be evil' language until the past several weeks. The, the phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google's company culture, so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters."
- THTristan Harris
I think I remember that, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- THTristan Harris
You get on the bus and you type in, "Don't be evil."
- JRJoe Rogan
I wonder why they decided...
- THTristan Harris
Well, I mean, they, they did change it to "Do the right thing." I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- THTristan Harris
... we always used to say that, um, just to friends, not within Google, but just, you know, instead of saying, "Don't be evil," to say, "Let's, let's do some good here," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's nice. Let's do some good heres. Yeah, think positive. Think doing good instead of d- don't do bad.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah. But the problem is when you say, "Do good," the question is, who's good? 'Cause you live in a morally plural society and there's this question of who are you to say what's good for people? And it's much easier to say, "Let's reduce harms," than it is to say, "Let's actually do good like this."
- 6:11 – 9:23
How platforms became attention competitors (not just data companies)
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Okay. Well, they still have Don't Be Evil, though, so maybe it's much ado about nothing. But, uh, having that kind of pow- ... We, we were ... Just before the podcast, we were watching Jack Dorsey speak to members of the Senate, uh, in regards to Twitter censoring the Hunter Biden story and censorship of conservatives but allowing dictators to spread propaganda, dictators from other countries, and why and what, what this is all about. One of the things that, uh, Jack Dorsey's been pretty adamant about is that they really never saw this coming when they started Twitter.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they didn't think that they were ever gonna be in this position where they were gonna be r- really the arbiters of free speech for the world.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is essentially in some ways what they are.
- THTristan Harris
I think it's important to, to roll back the clock for people, because it's easy to think, you know, that we just sort of landed here and that they would know that they're gonna be influencing the global psychology, but I think we should really reverse engineer for the audience, how did these products work the way that they did? So, like let's go back to the beginning days of Twitter. I think his first tweet was something like checking out the buffaloes in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Um, you know, Jack was fascinated by the taxi cab dispatch system, that you could send a message and then all the taxis get it. And the idea is, could we create a dispatch system so that I post a tweet and then suddenly all these other people can see it? And, um, the, the real genius of these things was that they weren't just, uh, offering this thing you could do, they found ways of keeping people engaged. Um, I think this is important for people to get, that they're not competing for your data or for, uh, you know, money. They're competing to keep people using the product. And so when Twitter, for example, invented this persuasive feature of the number of followers that you have ... If you remember, like, that was a new thing at the time, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
You'd log in and you'd see your profile. Here's the people who you can follow, and then here's the number of followers you have. That created a reason for you to come back every day to see, "How many followers do I have?" So that was part of this race to keep people engaged, as we talk about in the film. Like, these things are competing for your attention, that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product, but the thing that is the product is your predictable behavior, your using the product in predictable ways. And, um, I remember a conversation I had with, um, someone at Facebook, uh, who was a friend of mine, who said in a, in a coffee shop, uh, one day, "People think that we, Facebook, are competing with something like Twitter, that one social network is competing with another social network." But really, he said, "Our biggest competitor is YouTube because they're not competing for, uh, social networks, they're competing for attention, and YouTube is the biggest competitor in the digital space for attention."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
And that was a real light bulb moment for me, because you, you realize that as they're designing these products, they're finding new clever ways to get your attention. That's the, the real thing that I think is different in the film The Social Dilemma, rather than talking about, you know, censorship and data and privacy and these themes. It's really, what is the core influence or impact that the shape of these products have on how we're making meaning of the world when they're just steering our psychology?
- 9:23 – 20:52
Algorithmic feeds and the game-theory ‘arms race’ (Twitter, Netflix, TikTok)
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that it was inevitable that someone manipulates the way people use these things to gather more attention? And do you think that any of this could've been avoided if there was laws against that? If instead of having these algorithms that specifically target things that you're interested in, or things that you click on, or things that are gonna make you engage more ... if they just allowed these things to ex- ... They ... If someone said, "Listen, you can have these things. You can allow people to communicate with each other, but you can't manipulate their attention span"?
- THTristan Harris
Yeah. I mean, I think the ... So we've always had an attention economy, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Sure.
- THTristan Harris
And you're competing for it right now. Um, and politicians compete for it. Can you vote for someone you've never paid attention to? Never heard about? Never heard them say something, you know, outrageous? No. Um, so there's always been an attention economy, and so it's hard to say we should regulate who gets attention or how or-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's ... There ... It's organic in some ways.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, this podcast is an organic ... I mean, if we're in competition, it's organic.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I just put it out there, and if you watch it, you don't ... Or, or you don't ... I don't, you know, I don't have any say over it, and I'm, I'm not manipulating it in any way.
- THTristan Harris
Sort of. So, I mean, let's imagine that the podcast apps were different-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- THTristan Harris
... and they actually ... While you're watching, they had, like, the hearts and the stars and the kind of voting up in numbers, and you could, like, send messages back and forth. And Apple Podcasts worked in a way that didn't just reward, you know, the things that you clicked Follow on, it actually sort of promoted the stuff th- that someone said the most outrageous thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
Then you, as a podcast creator, have an incentive to say the most outrageous thing, and then you arrive at the top of the Apple Podcasts or Spo- or Spotify app.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
And, and that's the thing, is that we actually are competing for attention. It felt like it was neutral, and it was relatively neutral. And to progress that story back in time with, um, you know, Twitter competing for attention, let's look at some other things that they did. So, they also added this retweet, this instant re-sharing feature, right? And that made it more addictive, 'cause suddenly we're all playing the fame lottery, right? Like I could retweet your stuff and then you get a bunch of hits, and then you could go viral, then you could get a lot of attention. So then instead of, um, the companies competing for attention, now each of us suddenly win the fame lottery over and over and over again, and we're, we're getting attention. Uh, and then, um ... Oh, I had another example I was gonna think about, and I forgot it. What was it? Um, you can jump in if you want.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, Apple has an interesting way of handling sort of, uh ... The, the way they have their algorithm for their podcast app is, it's secret. It's kinda, it's weird.
- THTristan Harris
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
But one of the things that it favors is it favors new shows and it favors, uh, engagement and new subscribers, so comments, engagement-... and new shows. So, like, you-
- THTristan Harris
There you go. And that's the same as competing for attention, 'cause engagement must mean people like it. And that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
And there's gonna be a fallacy as we go down that road, but go on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's interesting because you could... Let's say if you have a podcast and your podcast gets, like, let's say 100,000 downloads, a new podcast can come along and it can get 10,000 downloads and it'll be ahead of you in the rankings. And so you could be number three and it could be number two, and you're like, "Well, how was that number two and it's got 10 times less?" But they don't do it that way.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And their logic is they don't want the podcast world to be dominated by, you know, New York Times and-
- THTristan Harris
The big ones, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And whatever, whatever's number one and number two and number three forever.
- THTristan Harris
We actually just experienced this. Um, uh, we have a podcast called Your Undivided Attention, and since the film came out, in that first month, we went from being, you know, in the lower 100 or something like that, to we shot to the top five. I think we were the number one tech podcast for a while. And so we just experienced this, through the fact, not that we had the most listeners-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
... but because the trend was so rapid that we sort of jumped, uh, to the top.
- 20:52 – 24:05
The ‘voodoo doll’ model: supercomputers targeting human self-control
- JRJoe Rogan
So there's a lot of... there's a lot of conversation about free will and about letting people choose whatever they ch- wha- wha- whatever they enjoy viewing and watching and paying attention to. But when you're talking about these incredibly potent algorithms and the incredibly potent, uh, addictions that people... that, that people develop to these, these things, and we're, we're pretending that people should have the ability to just ignore it and put it away.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And-
- THTristan Harris
Use your willpower, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that seems... I have a folder-
- THTristan Harris
Have your kids use your willpower.
- JRJoe Rogan
I have a folder on my phone called ADDICT, and it's all, all caps, and it's at the end of my all... you have to scroll through all my other apps to get to it.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so if I want to get to Twitter or, uh, Instagram, I gotta go there.
- THTristan Harris
The problem is that the app switcher will put it in the most recent. So once you switch apps and you have Twitter in a recents, it'll be right there, so that's the problem is if you... yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
If I want to go left and yeah. If I want to see that, yeah, you can do that. Yeah, it's, um, it's insanely addictive. And, uh, if you can control yourself, it's not that big a deal, but how many people can control themselves?
- THTristan Harris
Well, I think the, the, the thing we have to hone in on is the asymmetry of power. Um, you know, as I say in the film, it's like we're bringing this ancient brain hardware, the prefrontal cortex, which is like what you use to do, um, goal-directed action, self-control, willpower, holding back, you know, marshmallow test, don't do the... don't get the marshmallow now, wait later for the two marshmallows later. All of that is through our prefrontal cortex. And when you're sitting there and you think, "Okay, I'm gonna go watch... I'm gonna look at this one thing on Facebook because my friend invited me to this event, or it's this one post I have to look at," and the next thing you know, you find yourself scrolling through the thing for, like, an hour.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- THTristan Harris
And you say, "Man, that was on me. I should have had more self-control." But they're... behind the screen, behind that glass slab, is, like, a supercomputer pointed at your brain that is predicting the perfect thing to show you next. And you can feel it, like it's... This is really important. So like, if I'm Facebook, when you flick your finger, you think, um, when you're using Facebook, it's just going to show me the next thing that my friend said. But it's not doing that. It... when you flick your finger, it actually literally wakes up this sort of supercomputer avatar voodoo doll version of Joe. And the voodoo doll of Joe is, um, you know, the, the more clicks you've ever made on Facebook is like adding the little hair to the voodoo doll. And the more likes you've ever made adds little clothing to the voodoo doll. And the more, um, you know, watch time on videos you've ever had adds little, um, you know, shoes to the voodoo doll. So the voodoo doll is getting more and more accurate the more things you click on. This is in the film The Social Dilemma.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- THTristan Harris
Like, if you notice, like, the character, you know, as he's using this thing, uh, it builds a more and more accurate model that the AIs, the three AIs behind the screen are kind of manipulating. And the idea is it can actually predict and prick the voodoo doll with this video or that post from your friends or this other thing, and it'll figure out the right thing to show you that it knows will keep you there, because it's already seen how that same video or that same post has kept 200 million other voodoo dolls there, because you just look like another voodoo doll. So here's an example.
- 24:05 – 35:14
Recommendation rabbit holes: dieting→anorexia, WWII→denial, mom groups→anti-vax
- THTristan Harris
And this works the same on all the platforms. If you are... were a teen girl-... and you opened a dieting video on YouTube, um, 70% of YouTube's watch time comes from the recommendations on the right-hand side, right? So the things that are showing recommended videos next. And it will, uh, show you, it'll show... What, what did it show that the, the girls who watched the teen dieting video? It showed anorexia videos because those were better at keeping the teen girls' attention. Not because it said, "These are good for them. These are helpful for them." It just says, "These tend to work at keeping their attention." So again-
- JRJoe Rogan
These tend to work if you are already watching diet videos?
- THTristan Harris
Yeah. So if you're a 13-year-old girl and you watch the diet video, You- YouTube wakes up its voodoo doll version of that girl and says, "Hey, I've got like 100 million other voodoo dolls of 13-year-old girls," right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
"And they all tend to watch these, these other videos." I don't know what... I just know that they have this word thinspo, thinspiration is the name for it, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- THTristan Harris
... to be inspired for anorexia. Yeah. It's a real thing. Um, YouTube addressed this problem a couple years ago, but when you let the machine run blind, all it's doing is picking stuff that's engaging.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why did they choose to not let the machine run blind with one thing, like anorexia? And-
- THTristan Harris
Well, so now we're getting into the Twitter censorship conversation-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
... and the moderation conversation. So the real... This is why I don't focus on censorship and moderation, because the real issue is if you blur your eyes and zoom way out and say, "How does the whole machine tend to operate? Like, no matter what I start with, what is it gonna recommend next?" So, um, you know, if you started with, um, you know, a, a World War II video, YouTube would recommend a bunch of Holocaust denial videos, right? If you started, um, teen girls with a dieting video, it would recommend these anorexia videos. Uh, in Facebook's case, if you joined... There's, there's so many different examples here because Facebook recommends groups to people based on what it thinks is most engaging for you. So if you were a new mom, you had Renee DiResta, my friend, uh, on this podcast.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
We've done a bunch of work together, and she has this great example of, as a new mom, she joined one Facebook group, uh, for mothers who do do-it-yourself baby food, like organic baby food. And then Facebook has this sidebar. It says, "Here's some other groups you might recommend, you, you might want to join." And what do you think was the most engaging of those? Because Facebook, again, is picking on, "Which group, if I got you to join it, would cause you to spend the most time here," right? So for some do-it-yourself baby food groups, which group do you think it selected?
- JRJoe Rogan
Probably something about vaccines.
- THTristan Harris
Exactly. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- THTristan Harris
... anti-vaccines for moms. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- THTristan Harris
Okay, so then if you join that group, now it does the same, run the process again. So then, so now look at Facebook. So it says, "Hey, I've got these voodoo dolls. I've got like 100 million voodoo dolls and they're all, they just joined this anti-vaccine moms group." And then what do they tend to engage with for a very long time if I get them to join these other groups? Which of those other groups would show up?
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know.
- THTristan Harris
Chemtrails.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- THTristan Harris
The Pizzagate.
- JRJoe Rogan
Flat Earth?
- THTristan Harris
Flat Earth, absolutely. Yup. And YouTube recommended... So I'm interchangeably going from YouTube to Facebook because it's the same dynamic. They're competing for attention, and YouTube recommended flat Earth conspiracy theories hundreds of millions of times.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- THTristan Harris
And so when you, when you're a parent during COVID and you sit your kids in front of YouTube because you're like, "I'm, I've got to... This is the digital pacifier. Got to let them do their thing, I got to do work."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- THTristan Harris
And then you come back to the dinner table and your kid says, "You know, the Holocaust didn't happen and the Earth is flat," and people are wondering why, it's because of this. And now to your point about this sort of moderation thing, we can take the Whac-A-Mole stick after the public yells and Renee and I, you know, make a bunch of noise or something, and a large community, by the way, of people making noise about this. And they'll say, "Okay, shoot. You're right. Flat Earth, we got to deal with that." And so they'll, they'll tweak the algorithm. And then people make a bunch of noise about the thinspiration videos for, uh, anorexia for kids, and they'll deal with that problem. But then they start doing it based reactively. But again, if you zoom out, it's just still recommending stuff that's kind of from the crazy town section of YouTube.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is the problem the recommendation?
- 35:14 – 42:09
Teen mental health, negativity bias, and reputation cascades
- THTristan Harris
It, it's interesting 'cause, um, uh, Prince Harry and Meghan have, have become very interested in these issues and are actively working on these issues, and, um, getting to know them just a little bit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Are they really?
- THTristan Harris
Y- Well, they're, they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it affects them personally?
- THTristan Harris
Well, it's, it's actually interesting. I, I mean, I don't wanna speak for them, but, um, I think Meghan has been the target of the most vitriol hate-oriented stuff on the planet, right? From just the amount of sort of criticism that they, that they get-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- THTristan Harris
... and scrutiny. Yeah. She, I mean, she's just c- Like newsfeed's filled with hate about just what she looks like, what she says, just constantly. And I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Boy, I'm out of the loop. I've, I've never seen anything. She's-
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... pretty. Uh, what do they say that she looks like?
- THTristan Harris
I, honestly, I don't follow it mi- myself 'cause I don't fall into these attention traps. I try not to. But e- people ... She just faces the worst vitriol. I mean, this is the thing with teen bullying, right? So I think they work on these issues because teenagers are now getting a micro version of this thing where each of us are scrutinized.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
You know? And I think that's what's not ... I mean, think about what celebrity status does and, and screw, how it screws up humans in general, right? Like take an average celebrity, like it warps your mind, it warps your psychology, and you get scrutiny, right? When you suddenly are followed, each person gets thousands or project forward into the future a few years-... each of us have, you know, th- tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people that are following what we say. That's a lot of feedback. And, you know, as Jonathan Haidt says in the film, and I know you've had him here-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
... you know, it's made kids much more cautious and, and less risk-taking, and, um, and more bullied overall. And, um, there's, it's just huge problems in mental health around this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's really bad for young girls, right? Um, for, for celebrities-
- THTristan Harris
Especially 10 to 14-year-olds when, when this-
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I've had quite a few celebrities in here and we've discussed it, I just tell them that you can't read that stuff.
- THTristan Harris
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just don't read it.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, there's no good in it. Like, I had a friend, um, she did a show, she's a comedian, she did a show, and she was talking about this one negative comment that was inaccurate, you know, that said she only did a half an hour and her show sucked. She's like, "Fuck her," and this and that. And I go, I go, "Why are you reading that?" She's like, "'Cause it's mostly positive." I go, "But how come you're not talking about most of it then?" You're talking about this one person.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
This one negative person. We were both laughing about it. Like, she's, she's healthy, you know?
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
She's not, she's not completely fucked up by it, but this one person got into her head. I'm like, "I'm telling you, it's not... The juice is not worth the squeeze." But don't read those things.
- THTristan Harris
But this is, this is exactly right, and this is based on how our minds work. I mean, our minds-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- THTristan Harris
... literally have something called negativity bias. So if you have 100 comments and 99 are positive and one is negative, just a- where does the average human's mind go?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 42:09 – 47:04
From privacy to ‘climate change of culture’: attention extraction as the root cause
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't this also a problem with these information technologies being attached to corporations that have this philosophy of unlimited growth?
- THTristan Harris
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they're, they're... No matter how much they make... I, I'm, I applaud Apple-... because I think they are the only company that takes steps to protect privacy, to, uh, block advertisements, to make sure that, e- e- it, at least, like, when you, when you use their maps application, they're not saving your data and sending it to everybody. And it's one of the reasons why Apple Maps is really not as good-
- THTristan Harris
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... as Google Maps.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But, uh, I use it, and that's one of the reasons why I use it. And when Apple came out recently and there was, um, they were doing something to, uh, to, to block your, uh, information being, uh, sent to other places. And they, uh, I forget, what, what was the exact thing that it was-
- THTristan Harris
In the new iOS they released a thing that blocks the tracking identifiers.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's right.
- THTristan Harris
And it's not actually out yet. It's gonna be out in January or February, I think someone told me. And that, what that's do, that's a good example of they're putting a tax on the advertising industry, because just by saying you can't track people individually, that, you know, takes down the value of an advertisement-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
... by, like, 30% or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Here it is. It pops up when I- And you c- When I do Safari, (clears throat) I get this little privacy report thing- Right. ... that says it's like in the last seven days it's prevented 125 trackers from profiling me.
- THTristan Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And you can opt out of that if you'd like. If you're like, "No, fuck that. Track me."
- THTristan Harris
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
You, you can do that if you want to. Yeah. You can, you can let them send your data. But that, that seems to me a much more ethical approach, to be able to decide whether or not these companies get your information.
- THTristan Harris
I mean, those things are great. Um, the challenge is imagine you get the privacy equation perfectly right and you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at this. "Apple working on its own search engine as Google ties-"
- THTristan Harris
Oh, yeah. I saw this.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... could be cut soon." I started using DuckDuckGo-
- THTristan Harris
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for that very reason, just 'cause it's, it, they don't do anything with it.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They don't e- they give you the information, but they don't, they don't take your data and, and do anything with it.
- THTristan Harris
The, the challenge is let's say we get all the privacy stuff perfectly, perfectly right, and data production and data controls and all that stuff. In a system that's still based on attention and grabbing attention and harvesting and strip mining our brains, uh, you still get maximum polarization, addiction, mental health problems, isolation, teen depression and suicide, um, polarization, breakdown of truth. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- THTristan Harris
So that's... We really focus in our work, uh, on those topics because that's the direct influence of the business model on warping society. Like, we need to name this mind warp. We think of it like the climate change of culture, that, you know, when y- these seem like, these seem like different disconnected topics, much like with climate change that you'd say, like, "Okay, we've got species lost in the Amazon. We've got, we're losing insects. We've got melting glaciers. We've got, uh, ocean acidification. We've got the coral reefs, you know, uh, getting, dying." These can feel like disconnected things until you have a unified model of how emissions change all those different phenomena. Right? In the social fabric, we have shortening of attention spans. We have more outrage-driven news media. We have more polarization. Um, we have more breakdown of truth. We have more conspiracy-minded thinking. These seem like separate events, uh, and separate phenomena, but they're actually all part of this attention extraction paradigm that the company's growth, as you said, depends on extracting more of our attention, which means more polarization, more extreme material, more conspiracy thinking, and shortening attention spans. 'Cause it, we, we also say, like, you know, "If we want to double the size of the attention economy, I want your attention, Joe, to be split into two separate streams. Like, I want you watching the TV, uh, the tablet, and the phone at the same time, because now I've tripled the size of the amount of extractable attention that I can get for advertisers, which means that by fracking for attention and splitting you into more junk," (laughs) you know, "attention that's, like, thinner, we can sell that as if it's real attention." It's like the financial crisis where you're selling thinner and thinner financial assets as if it's real, but it's really just a junk asset.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow. (laughs)
- THTristan Harris
And that's kind of where we are now, where it's sort of the junk attention economy-
- 47:04 – 53:29
Regulation, antitrust limits, and the censorship trap
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Um, do, your organization highlights all these issues in, you know, in an amazing way, and it's very important. But do you have any solutions?
- THTristan Harris
(sighs) It, it's hard. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
So I just wanna say that this is as, is a complex a problem as climate change, um, in the sense that you need to change the business mod-... I think of it like we're on the fossil fuel economy and we have to switch to some kind of beyond that thing. Right? Because so long as the business models of these companies depend on extracting attention, can you expect them to do something different? Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
You can't, but how could you, is it, I mean, there's so much money involved.
- THTristan Harris
Correct.
- JRJoe Rogan
And now, they've accumulated so much wealth that they have an amazing amount of influence.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? And-
- THTristan Harris
And the asymmetric influence can buy lobbyists, can influence-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
... Congress and prevent things from happening. So this is why it's kind of the last moment-
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're protecting themselves.
- THTristan Harris
That's right. But, you know, I think we're seeing signs of real change. We had the antitrust case that was just filed against Google, um, in Congress. We're seeing more hearings that are gonna happen than ever-
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the basis of that case?
- THTristan Harris
You know, to be honest, I, uh, was actually (laughs) in the middle of, uh, The Social Dilemma launch when I think that happened and our f- our, my home burned down in the recent fires in Santa Rosa-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, no.
- THTristan Harris
So I actually missed, uh, that happening.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sorry to hear that.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah, sorry, that was a big thing to drop. But yeah, no-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
... it's, it's awful. Uh, there's so much that's been happening in the last six weeks that I've-
- JRJoe Rogan
I've been, uh, I was evacuated three times where I lived in California.
- THTristan Harris
Oh, really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So w- we... It cut real close to our house. "Justice Department sues monopolist Google for violating antitrust laws. Department files complain against Google to restore competition in search and search advertising markets." Okay, so it's all about search.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah, this is... Right, this was a case that's about Google using its dominant position to privilege its own search engine-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
... um, in its own products and beyond, which is similar to sort of Microsoft bundling in the, uh, Internet Explorer browser. But I, you know, this is all, uh, good progress, but really, it misses the kind of fundamental harm of like, these things are warping our society. They're warping-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- THTristan Harris
... how our minds are working. And there's no, you know, congressional action against that, because it's a really hard problem to solve. I think the- the f- the reason the film, for me, is so important is that if I look at the growth rate of how fast, uh, Facebook has been recommending people into conspiracy groups and, um, kind of polarizing us into separate echo chambers, which we should really break down, I think, as well for people, like exactly the mechanics of how that happens. But if you look at the growth rate of all of those harms, compared to, you know, how fast has Congress passed anything to deal with it, like basically not at all-
- 53:29 – 1:28:43
Global consequences: Free Basics, Myanmar, India, Brazil, and unmanaged information commons
- THTristan Harris
Um, and, and to be fair to all of that... But the problem is he created a situation where he is now in that position. I mean, he got there very quickly, and they did it aggressively when they went into countries like Myanmar, Ethiopia, uh, all throughout the African continent where they gave... Do you know about f- uh, FreeBasics?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- THTristan Harris
So this is the program that I think has gotten something like 700 million, um, accounts onto Facebook, where they do a deal with like a telecommunications provider, like a- their version of AT&T in Myanmar or something. So when you get your smartphone, it comes-
- JRJoe Rogan
Facebook's built-in.
- THTristan Harris
Facebook's built-in.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, I do know about that.
- THTristan Harris
And there's a, uh, asymmetry of, uh, access where it's free to access Facebook, but it costs money to do the other things-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- THTristan Harris
... so, for the data plan. So you get a free Facebook account. Facebook is the internet, basically, 'cause it's the free thing you can do on your phone. And then there's... We know that there's fake information that's being spread there.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the data doesn't apply to Facebook use?
- THTristan Harris
Yeah, I think like the cost, like you know how we pay for data here?
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- THTristan Harris
Like the... I think you don't pay for Facebook, but you do pay for all the other things, which creates-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- THTristan Harris
... an asymmetry where you're... of course you're gonna use Facebook for most things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. So you have Facebook Messenger-
- THTristan Harris
Yeah. And WhatsApp.
- JRJoe Rogan
... video calls.
- THTristan Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- THTristan Harris
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
WhatsApp.
- THTristan Harris
I don't know exactly with video, because different-... levels of ac-
- JRJoe Rogan
Facebook has video calls as well, right?
- THTristan Harris
In general, they do, yeah. I just don't know how that works in the developing world. But there's a joke within Facebook, where, I mean, this has caused genocides, right? So in Myanmar, which is in the film, um, the Rohingya Muslim minority group, um, many, uh, Rohingya were persecuted and murdered because of fake information spread by the government, um, on Facebook using their asymmetric knowledge with fake accounts. I mean, even just a couple weeks ago, Facebook took down a network of, I think, several hundred thousand fake accounts in Myanmar, and they didn't even have, at the time, more than something like four or five people in their extended Facebook network who even spoke the language of that country.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- THTristan Harris
So when you realize that this is like the... I think of, like, the Iraq War Col- Colin Powell Pottery Barn rule, where like, you know, if you go in and you f- break it, then you are responsible for fixing it. This is Facebook actively doing deals to go into Ethiopia, to go into Myanmar, to go into the Philippines or whatever, and providing these solutions, and then it breaks the society, and they're, they're now in a position where they have to fix it. There's actually a joke within Facebook that if you want to know which countries will be "at risk" in two years from now, look at which ones have Facebook Free Basics.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- THTristan Harris
And then you-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's terrifying that they do that and they don't have very many people that even speak the language. So they, th- th- there's no way they're gonna be able to filter it.
Episode duration: 2:21:32
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Transcript of episode OaTKaHKCAFg
