Mark Zuckerberg: Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and the Metaverse | Lex Fridman Podcast #267

1. 0:00 – 5:36

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      Let's talk about free speech and censorship.

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg0:02

      You don't build a company like this unless you believe that people expressing themselves is a good thing.

   3. LFLex Fridman0:07

      Let me ask you as a father, does it weigh heavy on you that people get bullied on social networks?

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg0:13

      I care a lot about how people feel when they use our products, and I don't want to build products that make people angry.

   5. LFLex Fridman0:19

      Why do you think so many people dislike you? Some even hate you. And how do you regain their trust and support? The following is a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, now called Meta. Please allow me to say a few words about this conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, about social media, and about what troubles me in the world today and what gives me hope. If this is not interesting to you, I understand. Please skip. I believe that at its best, social media puts a mirror to humanity and reveals the full complexity of our world, shining a light on the dark aspects of human nature and giving us hope, a way out through compassionate but tense chaos of conversation that eventually can turn into understanding, friendship, and even love. But this is not simple. Our world is not simple. It is full of human suffering. I think about the hundreds of millions of people who are starving and who live in extreme poverty, the one million people who take their own life every year, the 20 million people that attempt it, and the many, many more millions who suffer quietly in ways that numbers could never know. I'm troubled by the cruelty and pain of war. Today, my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. My grandfather spilled his blood on this land, held the line as a machine gunner against the Nazi invasion, surviving impossible odds. I am nothing without him. His blood runs in my blood. My words are useless here. I send my love. It's all I have. I hope to travel to Russia and Ukraine soon. I will speak to citizens and leaders, including Vladimir Putin. As I've said in the past, I don't care about access, fame, money, or power, and I'm afraid of nothing. But I am who I am, and my goal in conversation is to understand the human being before me, no matter who they are, no matter their position. And I do believe the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. So this is it. This is our world. It is full of hate, violence, and destruction. But it is also full of love, beauty, and the insatiable desire to help each other. The people who run the social networks that show this world, that show us to ourselves have the greatest of responsibilities. In a time of war, pandemic, atrocity, we turn to social networks to share real human insights and experiences, to organize protests and celebrations, to learn and to challenge our understanding of the world, of our history, and of our future. And above all, to be reminded of our common humanity. When social networks fail, they have the power to cause immense suffering, and when they succeed, they have the power to lessen that suffering. This is hard. It's a responsibility perhaps almost unlike any other in history. This podcast conversation attempts to understand the man and the company who take this responsibility on, where they fail and where they hope to succeed. Mark Zuckerberg's feet are often held to the fire, as they should be, and this actually gives me hope. The power of innovation and engineering coupled with the freedom of speech in the form of its highest ideal I believe can solve any problem in the world. But that's just it. Both are necessary, the engineer and the critic. I believe that criticism is essential, but cynicism is not. And I worry that in our public discourse, cynicism too easily masquerades as wisdom, as truth, becomes viral and takes over, and worse, suffocates the dreams of young minds who want to build solutions to the problems of the world. We need to inspire those young minds. At least for me, they give me hope. And one small way I'm trying to contribute is to have honest conversations like these that don't just ride the viral wave of cynicism but seek to understand the failures and successes of the past, the problems before us, and the possible solutions in this very complicated world of ours. I'm sure I will fail often, and I count on the critic to point it out when I do. But I ask for one thing, and that is to fuel the fire of optimism, especially in those who dream to build solutions, because without that, we don't have a chance on this too fragile, tiny planet of ours. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Mark Zuckerberg.

2. 5:36 – 25:36

   Metaverse

   1. LFLex Fridman5:38

      Can you circle all the traffic lights, please? (paper rustling) You actually did it. That is very impressive performance. Okay, now we can initiate the interview procedure. Is it possible that this conversation is happening inside a metaverse created by you, by Meta, many years from now and we're doing a memory replay experience?

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg6:10

      I don't know the answer to that. Then you're, then I'd be some...... some computer construct and not the person who created that Meta company. But that would truly be meta.

   3. LFLex Fridman6:21

      Right? So this could be somebody else using the, the Mark Zuckerberg avatar, who can do the Mark and the Lex conversation replay from four decades ago when, when Meta fir- it was first sort of-

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg6:33

      I mean, it's not gonna be four decades before we have photorealistic avatars like this, so I think we're much closer to that.

   5. LFLex Fridman6:40

      Well, that's something you talk about is, uh, how passionate you are about the idea of the avatar representing who you are in the metaverse. So I, I do these podcasts in person, you know, I'm a stickler for that because there's a magic to the in-person conversation. How long do you think it'll be before you can have the same kind of magic in the metaverse? The same kind of intimacy and the chemistry, whatever the heck is there when we're talking in person? How lo- how difficult is it, how long before we have it in the metaverse?

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg7:10

      Well, I think that's... This is, like, the key question, right? Because the, the thing that's different about virtual and hopefully augmented reality compared to all other forms of, of digital platforms before is this feeling of presence, right? The, the feeling that you're right, that you're in an experience, and that you're there with other people or in another place, and that's just different from all of the other screens that we have today, right? Phones, TVs, all this stuff, it's, you know, they're, they're trying to, in some cases, deliver experiences that feel, um, high fidelity but at no point do you actually feel like you're in it, right? At some level your content is trying to sort of convince you that this is a realistic thing that's happening but all of the kind of subtle signals are telling you, "No, you're looking at a screen." So, the question about how you develop these systems is, like, what are all of the things that make the physical world all the different cues? So I, I think on visual presence and spatial audio, we're making reasonable progress. Spatial audio makes a huge deal. I, I don't know if you've tried this experience, um, work rooms-

   7. LFLex Fridman8:20

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg8:20

      ... that we, that we launch where you have meetings and, you know, I, I basically made a rule for, you know, all of the, the top, you know, management folks at the company that they need to be doing standing meetings in, in work rooms already, right? I feel like we gotta dog food this, you know, it's, this is how people are gonna work-

   9. LFLex Fridman8:34

      Yeah.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg8:35

       ... um, in the future, so we, we have to adop- adopt this now. And there are already a lot of things that I think feel significantly better than, than, like, typical Zoom meetings, even though the avatars are a lot lower fidelity, um, you know, the idea that you have spatial audio, you're around a, a table in VR with people, um, if someone's talking from over there it sounds like it's talking from over there, you can see, you know, the, the, the arm gestures and stuff feel more natural. Um, you can have side conversations which is something that you can't really do in Zoom, I mean, I guess you can text someone over, uh, or, like, o- ou- out of bound, but... And if you're actually sitting around a table with people, um, you know, you can lean over and whisper to the person next to you and, like, have a conversation that you can't, you know, that, that you can't really do with, um, in, in, um, in, in just video communication. So I think it's interesting in what ways some of these things already feel more real than a lot of the technology that we have, even when the visual fidelity isn't quite there, but I think it'll get there over the next few years. Now, I mean, you were asking about comparing that to the, the true physical world, not Zoom or something like that, and there, I mean, I think you have feelings of, like, temperature, um, you know, olfactory, um, obviously touch, right? We're working on haptic gloves, um, you know, the, the sense that you wanna be able to, you know, put your hands down and feel some pressure from the table, um, you know, all these things I think are gonna be really critical to be able to keep up this illusion that you're in a, a world and that you're fully present in this world. But, I don't know, I think we're gonna have a lot of these building blocks within, you know, the next 10 years or so, and even before that I think it's amazing how much you're just gonna be able to build with software that sort of masks some of these things. Um, I, I, I realize I'm, I'm going long but I, you know, I was told we have, uh, a few hours here.

   11. LFLex Fridman10:25

       Yeah.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg10:25

       So it's, um-

   13. LFLex Fridman10:25

       We're here for five to six hours at the very least.

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg10:27

       Yes, I mean, it's, uh... Look, I mean, that, that's, that's on the shorter end of the Congressional testimonies I've done. Um, but it's, um, but, you know, one of the things that we found with, with hand presence, right? So the, the earliest VR you just had the headset and then, um, you know, that was cool, you could look around, you feel like you're in a place but you don't feel like you're really able to interact with it until you have hands. And then there was this big question where once you got hands, what's the right way to represent them? And initially all of our assumptions was, okay, when I look down and see my hands in the physical world I see an arm and it's gonna be super weird if you see, you know, just your hand. Um, but it turned out to not be the case because there's this issue with your arms which is, like, what's your elbow angle? And if the elbow angle that we're kind of interpolating based on where, um, your hand is and, and where your headset is actually isn't accurate, it creates this very uncomfortable feeling where it's like, "Oh, like, my arm is actually out like this but it's, like, showing it in here," and that actually broke the, the feeling of presence a lot more. Whereas it turns out if you just show the hands and you don't show the arms, um, it actually is fine for people. So I think that there's a bunch of these interesting psychological cues where it'll be more about getting the right details right and I think a lot of that will be possible even over, you know, a few year period or a five year period and we won't need, like, every single thing to be solved to deliver this, like, full sense of presence.

   15. LFLex Fridman11:54

       Yeah, it's a fascinating psychology question of what is the essence that makes in-person conversation, um, special? It's like emojis are able to convey emotion really well even though they're obviously not photorealistic, and so in that same way, just like what you're saying, just showing the hands is able to, uh, create a comfortable expression with your hands. So I wonder what that is, you know, people in, in, in the world wars used to write letters and you can fall in love with just writing letters.

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg12:24

       Mm-hmm.

   17. LFLex Fridman12:24

       You don't need to see each other in person, you can convey emotion, you can be...... depth of, uh, experience with just words. So that's a- I think a, a fascinating place to explore psychology of, like, how do you find that intimacy?

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg12:39

       Yeah, and you know, the way that I come to all of this stuff is, you know, I basically studied psychology and computer science. So, all of the work that I do is sort of at the intersection of those things. I think most of the other big tech companies are building technology for you to interact with. What I care about is building technology to help people interact with each other, so it's- I think it's a somewhat different approach than most of the other tech entrepreneurs and- and big companies come at this from. Um, and a lot of the lessons in terms of how I think about designing products come from some just basic elements of psychology, right? In terms of, you know, our brains, you know, you can compare to the brains of other animals, you know, we're very wired to specific things. Facial expressions, right? I mean, we're- we're very visual, right? So compared to other animals, I mean, that's- that's clearly the- the- the main sense that most people have. Um, but there's a whole part of your brain that's just kind of focused on- on reading facial cues, so when we're designing the next version of Quest or the VR headset, a big focus for us is face tracking and basically eye-tracking so you can make eye contact, which again, isn't really something that you can do over a video conference. It's sort of amazing how much, um, how far video conferencing has gotten without the ability to make eye contact, right? It's- it's sort of a bizarre thing if you think about it. You're like looking at someone's face, um, you know, sometimes for, you know, an hour when you're in a meeting and like you looking at their eyes to them doesn't look like you're looking at their eyes, so it's- it's a...

   19. LFLex Fridman14:11

       Yeah, you're always looking, I mean, past each other, I guess.

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg14:14

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman14:15

       I guess you're right. You're not sending that signal...

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg14:17

       Well, you're trying to.

   23. LFLex Fridman14:17

       Right, you're trying to, right?

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg14:17

       You're- you're- like a lot of times I'm- or at least I find myself, I'm trying to look into the other person's eyes.

   25. LFLex Fridman14:21

       But they don't feel like you're looking into their eyes.

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg14:23

       Yeah. So then the question is, all right, am I supposed to look at the camera so that way you can, you know, have- have a sensation that I'm looking at you? I think that that's an interesting question. And then, you know, with VR, um, today even without eye-tracking and knowing what your eyes are actually looking at, you can fake it reasonably well, right? So you can look at, like, where the head pose is and if it looks like I'm kinda looking in your general direction, then you can sort of assume that maybe there is some eye contact in- intended and- and you can do it in a way where it's, okay, maybe not it's like a- maybe it's not a, you know, fixated stare but, um, but it's- it's somewhat natural, but once you have actual eye-tracking, you can- you can do it for real. And I think that that's really important stuff. So when I think about Meta's contribution to this field, I have to say it's not clear to me that any of the other companies that are focused on- on the metaverse or on virtual and augmented reality are gonna prioritize putting these features in the hardware because like everything, they're trade-offs, right? I mean, they- it- it adds- it adds some weight to the device, maybe it adds some thickness. You could totally see another company taking the approach of, "Let's just make the lightest and thinnest thing possible." But, you know, I want us to design the most human thing possible, um, that- that creates the richest sense of presence and, um, 'cause so much of- of human, um, emotion and expression comes from these like micro-movements. If I like move my eyebrow, you know, a millimeter, you will notice and- and that means something, um, so the fact that we're losing these signals, um, in a lot of communication I think is- is- is a loss and it's... So it's not like, okay, there's one feature and you add this, then it all of a sudden is gonna feel like we have real presence. You can sort of look at how the- the human brain works and how we- we express and- and kind of read emotions and you can just build a roadmap of- of that, you know, of- of just what are the most important things to try to unlock over a five to ten year period and just try to make the experience more and more human and social.

   27. LFLex Fridman16:12

       When do you think would be, uh, a moment, like a singularity moment for the metaverse where... There's a lot of ways to ask this question, but, you know, people will have many or most of their meaningful experiences in the metaverse versus the real world? And actually it's interesting to think about the fact that a lot of people are having the most important moments of their life happen in the digital sphere, especially now during COVID. You know, like even falling in love or meeting friends or getting excited about stuff, that ha- it's happening on a 2D digital plane. When do you think the metaverse will provide those experiences for a large number, like a-

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg16:54

       Yeah, I- I think it's a really...

   29. LFLex Fridman16:55

       ... majority of the population?

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg16:56

       ... good question. There was someone, you know, I read this piece that framed this as a lot of people think that the metaverse is about a place but one definition of this is it's about a time when basically immersive digital worlds become the primary way that we- that we live our lives and spend our time. Um, I think that that's a reasonable construct. And from that perspective, you know, I think, um, you- you also just want to look at this as a continuation because it's not like, okay, we are building digital worlds but we don't have that today. I think, you know- you know, you and I probably already live a very large part of our life in digital worlds, they're just not 3D immersive virtual reality, but, you know, I do a lot of meetings over video or, you know, I spend a lot of time writing things over email or WhatsApp or- or whatever. So what is it gonna take to get there for kind of the immersive presence version of this, which I think is what you're asking. Um, and for that I think that there's just a bunch of different use cases, right? The- and- and, um... You know, I think when you're- when you're building technology, I think you're m- a lot of it is just you're managing this duality where on the one hand you want to build these elegant things that can scale and, you know, have billions of people use them and get value from them, and then on the other hand, you're fighting this kinda ground game where it's just- there are just a lot of different use cases and people do different things and, like, you want to be able to unlock them. So, the first ones that we basically went after were gaming, um, with Quest, and social experiences. And this is, you know, it goes back to when we started working on virtual reality. My- my theory at the time was basically...... people thought about it as gaming, but if you look at all computing platforms up to that point, um, you know, gaming was a huge part, it was a huge part of PCs, it was a huge part of mobile, but it was also very decentralized, right? There wasn't, you know, for the most part, you know, one or two gaming companies. There were a lot of gaming companies, and gaming is somewhat hits-based. I mean, we're getting some games that are, that have more longevity but, um, but, but in general, you know, there were a lot of, a lot of different games out there. But on PC and, um, and on mobile, the companies that focused on communication and social interaction, there tended to be a smaller number of those, and that ended up being just as important of a thing as all of the games that you did combined. Um, I think productivity is another area. That's obviously something that we've historically been less focused on, but I think is gonna be really important for this.
3. 25:36 – 37:45

   Identity in Metaverse

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg25:36

      that exist today.

   2. LFLex Fridman25:37

      Let me ask you about identity. We talked about the avatar. How do you see identity in the Metaverse? Should the avatar be tied to your identity or can you be... Can I be anything in the Metaverse? Like can I be whatever the heck I want? Can I even be a troll? So there's, there's a, there's a exciting freeing possibilities and there's the darker possibilities too.

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg26:00

      Yeah. I mean, I think that there's gonna be a range, right? So we're working on for expression in avatars, um, on one end of the spectrum are kind of expressive and cartoonish avatars, and then on the other end of the spectrum are photorealistic avatars. And I, I just think the reality is that they're gonna be different use cases for different things. Um, and I guess there's another access... So if you're going from photorealistic to expressive, there's also like representing you directly versus like some fantasy identity, and I think that there are gonna be things on, on all ends of that spectrum too, right? So you want photo... Or like m- in, in some experience you might wanna be like a photorealistic dragon, right? Or, um, or, you know, if I'm playing Onward or just this military simulator game, um, you know, it's... You know, I think getting to be more photorealistic as a soldier and that, um, could enhance the experience. Um, there are times when I'm hanging out with friends where I want them to, um, you know, know it's me so a kind of cartoonerish or, or expressive version of me is good, but there also experiences like, um, you know, VRChat does this well today where a lot of the experience is kind of dressing up and wearing, um, a fantastical avatar that's almost like a meme or is humorous. You-

   4. LFLex Fridman27:20

      Yeah.

   5. MZMark Zuckerberg27:20

      You come into an experience and it's almost like you have like a built-in ice breaker because like you, you see people and you're just like, "All right. I, I... Like I'm cracking up at what you're wearing because that's funny."

   6. LFLex Fridman27:30

      Okay.

   7. MZMark Zuckerberg27:30

      And it's just like, "Where did you get that?" Or, "Oh, you made that? That's..." You know, it's, it's awesome. Um, whereas, you know, okay, if you're going into a, a... Into a work meeting, maybe a photorealistic version of your real self is, is gonna be the most appropriate thing for that. So I think the reality is there aren't going to be... There is... It's not just gonna be one thing. Um, you know, my, my own sense of kind of how you wanna express identity online has sort of evolved over time in that, you know, early days in Facebook I thought, "Okay, people are gonna have one identity," and now I think that's clearly not gonna be the case. I think you're gonna have all these different things and, and there's utility in being able to do different things. So, um, some of the technical challenges that I'm really interested in around it are how do you build a software to allow people to seamlessly go between them? Um, so say... So you could view them as just completely, um, discrete points on a spectrum, but let, let's talk about the Metaverse economy for a second. Let's say I buy a digital shirt, um, for my photorealistic avatar. Um, which by the way I think at the time we're, we're spending a lot of time in the Metaverse doing a lot of our work meetings in the Metaverse, et cetera. I would imagine that the economy around virtual clothing, as an example, is going to be quite as big. Why wouldn't I spend almost as much money, um, in investing in my, my appearance or expression for my photorealistic avatar for meetings as I would for the, whatever I'm gonna wear in my video chat? But the question is... Okay, so you... Let's say you buy some shirt for your photorealistic avatar, wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to basically, um, translate that into a more expressive thing for your kind of cartoonish or expressive avatar? And there are multiple ways to do that. You can view them as two discrete points and, okay, maybe, you know, if a designer sells one thing then it actually comes in a pack and there's two and you can use, um, either one on, on that, but, but I actually think this stuff might exist more as a spectrum in the future.

   8. LFLex Fridman29:25

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MZMark Zuckerberg29:26

      And that's what... I, I do think the direction on some of the AI advances that is happening to be able to... And especially stuff around like style transfer, being able to take, um, you know, a piece of art or, or express something and say, "Okay, paint me, you know, this photo, um, in the style of Gauguin," or, you know, whoever it is that you're, you're interested in. Um, you know, take this shirt and put it in the style of what I've designed for my expressive avatar, um, I think that's gonna be pretty compelling.

   10. LFLex Fridman29:57

       And the... So the fashion, you, you might be buying like a generator, like a closet that generates a style and then to... L- l- like, like with the gowns you'll be able to infinitely generate outfits thereby making it, uh... So the reason I wear the same thing all the time is I don't like choice. You've talking about... You've talked about the same thing, but now you don't even have to choose. Your closet generates your outfit for you every time. (laughs) And so you have to (laughs) live with the outfit it generates.

   11. MZMark Zuckerberg30:23

       I mean, you could do that, although I, I...

   12. LFLex Fridman30:25

       (laughs)

   13. MZMark Zuckerberg30:25

       No, I think that that's... I, I think some people will, but I think like... I think that there's going to be a huge aspect of...... of just people doing creative commerce here. So, I, I think that there is going to be a big market around people designing digital clothing. Um, but the question is, if you're designing digital clothing, do you need to design... If you're, if you're the designer, do you need to make it for each kind of specific, discrete point along a spectrum, um, or are you design- are you just designing it for kind of a photorealistic case or an expressive case? Or can you design one and have it translate across these things? Um, you know, if I d- if I buy a style from, you know, a d- a designer who I care about and now I'm a dragon, you know, is there a way to morph that so it like goes on the dragon in a way that makes sense? Um, and that, I think, is an interesting AI problem, because you're probably not gonna make it so that i- i- like that designers have to go design for all those things. But the more useful the digital content is that you buy in a lot of uses, um, in a lot of use cases, mm, the- the more that economy will just explode. And th- that's a lot of what, you know, all of the, um, you know... You know, we were joking about NFTs before, but I think a lot of the promise here is that if the digital goods that you buy are not just tied to one platform or one use case, they end up being more valuable, which means that people are more willing and more likely to invest in them, and that, um, that just spurs the whole economy.

   14. LFLex Fridman31:44

       But the question is... So that's a fascinating positive aspect, but the potential negative aspect is that you could have people concealing their identity in order to troll, or even not people, bots. So, how do you know in the metaverse that you're talking to a real human or an AI or a well-intentioned human? Is that something you think about, something you're concerned about?

   15. MZMark Zuckerberg32:07

       Well, let's break that down into a few different cases.

   16. LFLex Fridman32:10

       Sure.

   17. MZMark Zuckerberg32:10

       I mean, 'cause knowing that you're talking to someone who has good intentions is something that I think is not even solved in-

   18. LFLex Fridman32:16

       Right.

   19. MZMark Zuckerberg32:16

       ... in pretty much anywhere. But, um, if you're talking to someone who's a dragon, I think it's pretty clear that they're not representing themselves as a person. I think probably the most pernicious thing that you want to solve for is, um, i- i-

   20. LFLex Fridman32:30

       (laughs)

   21. MZMark Zuckerberg32:30

       ... I, I think probably one of the scariest ones is, how do you make sure that someone isn't impersonating you? Right, so-

   22. LFLex Fridman32:35

       Yeah.

   23. MZMark Zuckerberg32:35

       ... y- like, okay, you're in a future version of, of this conversation-

   24. LFLex Fridman32:39

       Yeah.

   25. MZMark Zuckerberg32:39

       ... and we have photorealistic avatars and we're doing this in work rooms or whatever the future version of that is, and someone walks in who, like, looks like me.

   26. LFLex Fridman32:48

       Yeah.

   27. MZMark Zuckerberg32:48

       Um, how do you know that that's me? And one of the things that we're, that we're thinking about is, you know, it's this i- i- it's still a pretty big AI project to be able to generate photorealistic avatars that basically can like... They work like these codecs of you, right? So you, you kind of have a map from your, your headset and whatever sensors of what your body's actually doing, and it takes the model and it, and it kinda displays it in VR. But there's a question which is, should there be some sort of biometric security, so that like when I put on my VR headset or I'm going to, you know, go use that avatar, I need to first prove that I am that? And I think you probably are gonna want something like that. So, um, so that's... You know, as we're developing these technologies, we're also thinking about the security for things like that, um, because y- you know, people aren't gonna want to be impersonated. That's a, that's a huge security issue. Um... then you just get the question of people hiding behind fake accounts to do malicious things, which is not gonna be unique to the metaverse, although, you know, certainly in a environment where y- where it's more immersive and you have more of a sense-

   28. LFLex Fridman33:58

       Yeah.

   29. MZMark Zuckerberg33:58

       ... of presence, it could be more, uh-

   30. LFLex Fridman34:00

       Painful, potentially.
4. 37:45 – 42:10

   Security

   1. LFLex Fridman37:45

      uh... I use QNAP, uh, NAS storage, so just storage for, for video and stuff, and I recently got hacked. It's the first time for me with a ransomware. It's not me personally, it's all QNAP (laughs) devices. Uh, so the, the question that people have about... is about security in general. Um, because I was doing a lot of the right things in terms of security, and nevertheless, ransomware basically disabled my device.

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg38:10

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman38:11

      Is that something you think about? What are, what are the different steps you could take to protect people's data on the security front?

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg38:17

      I think that there's different solutions for... And, and strategies where it makes sense to have stuff kind of put behind a fortress, right? So the centralized model, versus, um, decentralizing. And I think both have strengths and weaknesses. So I think anyone who says, "Okay, just decentralize everything, that'll make it more secure," I, I think that that's tough because, you know, I mean, the, the advantage of something like, you know, encryption is that, you know, w- we run the largest encrypted service in the world with WhatsApp and, you know, w- we're one of the first to roll out a multi-platform encryption, um, service. And, and that's, you know, something that I think was a big advance for the industry. And one of the promises that we can basically make because of that, our company doesn't see, um, when you're sending an encrypted message, um, and an encrypted message, what the content is of what you're, what you're sharing. So that way if someone hacks Meta's servers, um, they're not gonna be able to access, you know, the WhatsApp message that, you know, you're sending to your friend. And that, I think, matters a lot to people because, um, obviously if someone is able to compromise a company's servers and that company has hundreds of millions or billions of people, then that's... That ends up being a very big deal. The flip side of that is, okay, all the content is on your phone, um, you know, a- are you following security best practices on your phone? If you lose your phone, all your content is gone, so that's an issue. You know, maybe you go back up your content from WhatsApp or, or some other service in an iCloud or something, but then you're just at Apple's whims about are they gonna go turn over the gover- the data to, you know, some government or, or are they gonna get hacked? So a lot of the time it is useful to have data in a centralized place too because then you can train systems that, um, that can just do much better personalization. I think that in a lot of cases, um, you know, centralized systems can, can offer, you know, especially if you're, if you're a, you know, serious company, you're, you're running the state-of-the-art stuff and, um, and you have red teams attacking your, your own stuff and, um, and you're putting out bounty programs and trying to attract some of the best hackers in the world to go break into your stuff all the time. So any system is gonna have security issues, but, um, but I think the best way forward is to basically try to be as aggressive and open about hardening the systems as possible, not trying to kind of hide and pretend that there aren't going to be issues. Which I think is over time why, um, a lot of open source systems have gotten relatively more secure, is because they're, they're open and, you know, it's not... Rather than pretending that there aren't going to be issues, just people surface them quicker. So I think you want to adopt that approach as a company and, and just constantly be hardening your- yourself.

   5. LFLex Fridman40:56

      Trying to, uh, stay one step ahead of the attackers.

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg41:01

      It's an- it's an inherently adversarial space.

   7. LFLex Fridman41:03

      Yeah.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg41:03

      But I think it's an interesting... Security is interesting because of the different kind of threats that we've managed over the last five years. There are ones, um, where basically the adversaries keep on getting better and better, so trying to kind of interfere with, um... You know, security is certainly one area of this. If you have like nation states that are trying to, you know, interfere in elections or something, like they're kind of evolving their tactics. Whereas on the other hand, I don't know, I don't want to be too, too simplistic about it, but like if, um, you know, if someone is saying something hateful, people usually aren't getting smarter and smarter about how they say hateful things, right? So, um, maybe there's some element of that, but it's a very small dynamic compared to, um, you know, how advanced attackers in some of these other places get over time.

   9. LFLex Fridman41:50

      I believe most people are good so they actually get better over time at not being less hateful 'cause they realize it's, it's not fun being hateful. That's at least the belief I have. But first, bathroom break?

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg42:05

       Sure.

   11. LFLex Fridman42:05

       Okay. So we'll come back to AI, but let me ask some difficult questions now.

5. 42:10 – 1:04:16

   Social Dilemma

   1. LFLex Fridman42:11

      Social Dilemma is a popular documentary that raised concerns about the effects of social media on society. You responded with a point-by-point rebuttal titled What the Social Dilemma Gets Wrong. People should read that.I would say the key point they make is because social media is funded by ads, algorithms want to maximize attention and engagement, a- and an effective way to do so is to get people angry at each other, increase division, and so on. Can you steel man their criticisms and arguments that they make in the documentary as a way to understand the concern and, uh, as a way to respond to it?

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg42:53

      Well, yeah, I think, uh, I think that that's a good conversation to have. Um, I, I don't happen to agree with the, the conclusions and I think that they make a few assumptions that are, um, just very big jumps that I, I, I don't think are reasonable to make. But I, I understand overall why people would be concerned that our business model and ads in general, um, we do make more money as people use the service more in general, right? So as a, a kind of basic assumption, okay, do we have an incentive for people to, to build a service that people use more? Y- yes, on a lot of levels. I mean, we, we think what we're doing is good, so, um, you know, we think that if, if people are finding it useful, they'll use it more. Um, or if you just look at it as this sort of if, if the only thing we cared about is money, which I, I, is, is not for anyone who knows me, but okay, we're, we're a company, so let's say you, you just kind of, um, simplified it down to that. Then would we want people to use the services more? Yes. But then, and then you get to the second s- question which is, does kind of getting people agitated make them more likely to use, um, the services more? And I think from looking at other media in the world, especially TV and, you know, there's the old news adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." Like I, I think that this is, there are ... I think that there are a bunch of reasons why someone might think that, um, that kind of provocative content would be the most engaging. Now, what I've always found, uh, uh, is, is two things. One is that what grabs someone's attention in the near term is not necessarily something that they're going to appreciate having seen, um, or going to be the best over the long term. So I think what, what a lot of people get wrong is that we're not ... now I'm not building this company to like make the most money or get people to spend the most time on this in the next quarter or the next year, right? I'm, I've been doing this for, you know, 17 years at this point and I'm still relatively young and have a lot more that I want to do over the coming decade. So like w- I, I think that it's too simplistic to say, "Hey, this might increase time in the near term, therefore it's what you're gonna do," because I actually think a, a, a deeper look at, at kind of what my incentives are, the incentives of a company that are focused on the long term, um, is to basically do what people are gonna find valuable over time, not what is gonna draw people's attention today. The other thing that I'd say is that I think a lot of times people look at this from the perspective of media, um, or, or kind of information or civic discourse, but one other way of looking at this is just that, okay, I'm, I'm a product designer, right? Our company, you know, we, we build products, and a big part of building a product is not just the function and utility of what you're delivering, but the feeling of how it feels, right? And we, we spend a lot of time talking about, um, you know, virtual reality and how the, the kind of key aspect of that experience is the, the feeling of presence, which i- it's a visceral thing. It's not just about the utility that you're delivering. It's about like the sensation. And similarly, I care a lot about how people feel when they use our products and I don't want to build products that make people angry. I mean, that's like not I think what we're here on this Earth to do is to, you know, build something that, you know, people spend a bunch of time doing and it just kind of makes them angrier at other people. I mean, I think that that's, that's not good. That's, you know, that's, that's not what I think would be, um, s- sort of a good use of, of, of our time or a good contribution to the world. So okay, you know, it's like people, they tell us on a per content basis, you know, does this thing, uh, do I like it? Do I love it? Does it make me angry? Does it make me sad?" And, you know, based on that, I, I, n- we, we choose to basically show content that makes people angry less, um, because, you know, of course, right? (laughs) I f- if you're, if you're designing a product and you want people to, to be able to, um, to, to connect and, and, and feel good over, over a long period of time, then that's, um, you know, naturally what you're gonna do. So I don't know. I, I think overall I, um, I understand at a high level if you're not thinking too deeply about it why that argument might be appealing, but I just think if you actually look at what our real incentives are, not just like, you know, i- is, uh, if we were trying to optimize for the next week, um, but like as people working on this, like, "Why are we here?" And I, I, I think it's pretty clear that's not actually how you would want to design the system. I guess one other thing that I'd say is that, you know, while we're focused on the, the ads business model, I, I do think it's important to note that a lot of these issues are not unique to ads. I mean, so take like a subscription news business model, for example. I think that has, you know, just as many potential pitfalls. Um, you know, maybe if someone's paying for a subscription, you don't get paid per piece of content that they look at, but, you know, say for example I, I think like a, a, a bunch of the partisanship that we see could potentially be made worse by ... You have these, these kind of partisan, um, eh, news organizations that basically sell subscriptions and they're only gonna get people on one side to basically subscribe to them. So their incentive is not to, um, print content or, or, or produce content that's-... kind of centrist or down the line either. Um, I, I bet that what a lot of them find is that if they produce stuff that's, that's kind of more polarizing or more partisan, then, um, then that is what gets the more subscribers. So I, I think that this stuff is all... Um, there's no perfect business model. Everything has pitfalls. Um, the thing that I think is great about advertising is it makes its- the consumer services free, which if you, if you believe that everyone should have a voice and everyone should be able to connect, then that's a great thing, um, you know, as opposed to building a luxury service that not everyone can afford. But look, I mean, e- every business model, you know, you have to be careful about how you're implementing what you're doing.

   3. LFLex Fridman49:02

      You responded to a few things there. You spoke to the fact that, you know, there is a narrative of malevolence, like, uh, you know, you're leaning into the making people angry just because it makes more money in the short term, that kind of thing, so you, you responded to that. But there's also a kind of reality of human nature, just like you spoke about. There is fights, arguments we get in and we don't like ourselves afterwards, but we got into them anyway. So our long-term growth is... I, I believe, for most of us, has to do with learning, challenging yourself, improving, being kind to each other, finding a community of people that, uh, you know, you, uh, connect with on a real human level, all that kinda stuff. But it does seem, when you look at social media, that a lot of fights break out, a lot of arguments break out, a lot of viral content ends up being sort of outrage in one direction or the other. And so it's easy from that to infer the narrative that social media companies are letting this outrage become viral, and so they're increasing the division in the world. I mean, perhaps you can comment on that or, further, how can you be... How can you push back on this narrative? How can you be transparent about this battle? Because I think it's not just motivation or financials. It- it's a technical problem, too, which is, how do you improve long-term wellbeing of human beings?

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg50:43

      I think that going through some of the design decisions would be a good conversation, but first I actually think... And I think y- y- y- you acknowledge that, you know, that narrative is somewhat anecdotal, and I think it's worth grounding this conversation in the actual research that has been done on this, which, eh, by and large, eh, finds that social media is not a large driver of polarization, right? And, um, you know, I mean, there's been a number of ic- um, economists and social scientists and folks who have studied this. Um, you know, a lot of polarization, it varies around the world. You know, social media is basically in every country. Facebook is in pretty much every country except for China and, you know, maybe North Korea. And, um, and you see different trends in different places, where, you know, in, in a lot of countries, polarization is declining. Um, in some, it's flat. In the US, it's, it's risen sharply. So the question is, what are the unique phenomena in the different places? And I think for the people who are trying to say, "Hey, social media is the thing that's doing this," I, I think that that clearly doesn't hold up because social media is a phenomenon that is pretty much equivalent in all of these different countries. And you have researchers like this economist at Stanford, Matthew Gentzkow, who has just written, um, at length about this. Um, and, um, you know, it's, uh, a bunch of books by, you know, political scientists that... You know, Ezra Klein and folks wr- "Why We're Polarized" basically goes through this decades-long analysis in the US, you know, before I was born, basically talking about some of the forces in, in kind of partisan politics and Fox News and different things that predate the internet in a lot of ways, that, that I think are, are likely larger contributors. So to the contrary on this, not only is, is it pretty clear that social media is not a major contributor, but most of the academic studies that I've seen actually show that social media use is, is correlated with lower polarization. Um, Gentzkow, the same person who, who just did the study that I, that I cited about longitudinal polarization across different countries, um, you know, also, uh, did, did a study that basically showed that if you looked after, you know, the 2016 election in the US, the voters who were the most polarized, um, were actually the ones who were not on the internet. So... And, and there have been recent other studies, I think, in, in Europe, um, and, and around the world, basically showing that as people stop using social media, they tend to get more polarized. Um, then there's an- a, a deeper analysis around, okay, well, what... Polarization actually isn't even one thing, um, 'cause, you know, having different opinions on something isn't... I don't think that that's by itself bad. What, what people who study this say is, um, most problematic is what they call affective polarization, which is basically are you... Do you have negative feelings towards people of another group? And the way that a lot of scholars study this is they basically ask a group, "Um, would you let your kids marry someone of Group X?" Whatever the, the groups are that you're, that you're worried that someone might have negative feelings towards. And in general, use of social media has corresponded to decreases in that kind of affective polarization. So I, I just wanna... Uh, I think we should talk through the design decisions and how we handle, um, the, the kind of specific pieces of content, but overall, I think it's just worth grounding that discussion and the research that's existed that I think overwhelmingly shows that the mainstream narrative around this is just not right.

   5. LFLex Fridman54:21

      But the, the narrative does take hold, and, um, it's compelling to a lot of people. There's another question I'd like to ask you on this. I was looking at various polls and saw that your...... one of the most disliked tech leaders today, 54% unfavorable rating. Elon Musk is 23%. It's basically, everybody has a very high unfavorable rating that are tech leaders. Maybe you can help me understand that. Why do you think so many people dislike you? Some even hate you. And how do you regain their trust and support? Given everything you just said, why are you losing the battle in explaining to people what actual impact social media has on society?

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg55:12

      Well, I'm curious if that's a US survey or world.

   7. LFLex Fridman55:16

      It, it is US, yeah.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg55:18

      So I think that there's a few dynamics. One is that our brand has been somewhat uniquely challenged in the US compared to other places. It's not that there are... I mean, other countries we, we have issues too. But I think in the US there was this dynamic where if you look at, like, the net sentiment of, of kind of coverage or, or, or attitude towards us, you know, before 2016 I think that there were probably very few months, if any, where it was negative. And since 2016, I think that there have probably been very few months, if any, that it's been positive. And-

   9. LFLex Fridman55:51

      The politics.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg55:53

       So, but I think it's a, it's a specific thing, and this is very different from other places. So I think in a lot of other countries in the world, um, you know, the sentiment towards Meta and, and our services is, is extremely positive. Um, in, in the US w- we have more challenges. And I think compared to other companies, um, you can look at certain industries, I think, if you look at it from, like, a partisan perspective, um, not, not from, like, a political perspective but just kind of culturally, it's like there are people who are probably more left of center and there are people more right of center, and there's, you know, kind of blue America and red America. There are certain industries that I think maybe one half of the country has a more positive view towards than another. And I think we're in a, um... One of the positions that we're in that I think is, is really challenging is that because of a lot of the content decisions that we're, that we've basically had to arbitrate, um, and because we're not a partisan company, right? We're not, we're not a Democrat company or a Republican company. We're trying to make the best decisions we can to help people connect and, um, and help people have as much voice as they can while, you know, having some rules because it, we're, we're running a community. Um, the net effect of that is that we're kind of constantly making decisions that piss off people in both camps. Um, and the effect that I've sort of seen is that when we make a decision that is, that's a controversial one that's gonna upset, say, about half the country, um, those decisions are all negative sum, um, from a brand perspective because it's not like... Like, if, if we make that decision in one way and, you know, say half the country is happy about that particular decision that we make, they tend to not say, "Oh, sweet. Meta got that one right." They're just like, "Ah, you didn't mess that one up," right? But th- their opinion doesn't tend to go up by that much. Whereas the people who, who kind of are on the other side of it, um, are like, "God, how could you mess that up?" Like, "How could you possibly think that, like, that piece of content is okay and should be up and should not be censored?" Or, um, and so I think the, where- whereas if y- okay, if you leave it up and, um, you know, it's, or, or if you take it down, the people who thought it should be taken down, or, you know, it's like, "All right, fine. Great. You didn't mess that one up."

   11. LFLex Fridman58:14

       Yeah.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg58:14

       So our internal assessment of, of, and kind of analytics on our brand are basically any time one of these big controversial things comes up in society, um, our brand goes down with half of the country. And then, like, if you, and then if you just kind of extrapolate that out, it's just been very challenging for us to try to navigate what is a polarizing country in a principled way where we're not trying to kinda hue to one side or the other. We're trying to do what we think are, is the right thing. But, I mean, that's what I think is the right thing for us to do though, so, I mean, that's, that's what we'll, we'll, we'll try to keep doing.

   13. LFLex Fridman58:47

       Just as a human being, how does it feel though when you're giving so much of your day-to-day life to try to heal division, to try to do good in the world, as we've talked about, that so many people in the US, the place you call home, have a negative view of you as a leader, as, as a human being, and, uh, the company you love?

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg59:14

       Well, I mean, it's not great. Um, but-

   15. LFLex Fridman59:16

       (laughs)

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg59:17

       But I, I mean, look, if I wanted people to think positively about me as a person, um, I don't know. I'm not sure if you go build a company. I mean, it's like, like I-

   17. LFLex Fridman59:28

       Or a social media company.

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg59:30

       I mean, it's, I, I just think-

   19. LFLex Fridman59:31

       It seems exceptionally difficult to do with a social media company.

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg59:32

       Yeah, so, uh, I mean, I don't know. There is a dynamic where a lot of the other people running these companies, internet companies, have sort of stepped back and they just do things that are sort of, I don't know, less controversial. And, um, and some of it may be that they just get tired over time. But, you know, it's, um, so I don't know. I, I, I think that, you know, running a company is hard. Building something at scale is hard. You only really do it for a long period of time if you really care about what you're doing. Um, and, yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's not great but, like, but look, I, I think that at some level whether 25% of people dislike you or 75% of people dislike you, your experience as a public figure is gonna be that there's a lot of people who dislike you. Right? So, um-

   21. LFLex Fridman1:00:24

       Yeah.

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg1:00:24

       So I, I actually am not sure how different it is. Um, you know, certainly, you know, we've, th- the country's gotten more polarized and, and we in particular have gotten, you know, more controversial over the last five or, years or so. But, um, but-I don't know. I kind of think, like, as a public figure and, and leader of one of these enterprises, you-

   23. LFLex Fridman1:00:48

       It comes with a job.

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg1:00:49

       Part... Yeah. Part of what you do is, like... And, and look, you, you can't just... The answer can't just be ignore it, right? Because, like, a huge part of the job is, like, you need to be getting feedback and internalizing feedback on how you can do better. But I think increasingly what you need to do is be able to figure out, you know, who are the, the kind of good faith critics who are criticizing you because they're trying to help you do a better job rather than tear you down? And those are the people who I just think you have to cherish and, like, and, and, and listen very closely to the things that they're saying. Because, you know, I think it's just as dangerous to tune out everyone who says anything negative, um, and just listen to the people who, who are kind of positive and, and support you, you know, as, as it would be psychologically to pay attention trying to make people who are never gonna like you, like you. Um, so I think that that, that's, that's just kind of a dance that, that, that people have to do. But, but, I mean, I... You know, so you kind of develop more of a feel for, like, who actually is trying to accomplish the same types of things in the world and who has different ideas about how to do that and how can I learn from those people? And like, yeah, we get stuff wrong and when the people whose opinions I respect call me out on getting stuff wrong, that, that hurts and makes me want to do better. But I think at this point I'm pretty tuned to just, all right, if someone... If I know they're, they're kind of, like, operating in bad faith and they're not really trying to help, um, then, you know, I don't know. It's n- it's, it doesn't... You know, I think over time it just doesn't bother you that much.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:02:15

       But you are surrounded by people that believe in the mission, that love you. Are there friends or colleagues in your inner circle you trust that call you out on your bullshit whenever your thinking may be misguided as it is for leaders at times?

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:31

       I think we have a famously open company culture-

   27. LFLex Fridman1:02:33

       Yeah.

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:34

       ... um, where we sort of encourage that kind of dissent internally, which is, you know, why there's so much material internally that can leak out-

   29. LFLex Fridman1:02:43

       Yes.

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:43

       ... with people sort of disagreeing, is because that's sort of the, the culture. Um, you know, our, our management team, I think it's a lot of people, you know, there, there are some newer folks who come in, there are some folks who, who h- who've kind of been there for a while, but there's a, a very high level of trust and I would say it is a relatively confrontational group of people.
6. 1:04:16 – 1:09:01

   Instagram whistleblower

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:16

      to be.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:04:17

      You've talked about you have a famously open culture which comes with, uh, the criticism and the painful experiences, so let me ask you another difficult question. Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, leaked the internal Instagram research into teenagers and wellbeing. Her claim is that Instagram is choosing profit over wellbeing of teenage girls so Instagram is "toxic" for them. Your response titled, "What Our Research Really Says About Teen Wellbeing on Instagram," says, "No, Instagram research shows that 11 of 12 wellbeing issues teenage girls who, uh, said they struggle with those difficult issues also said that Instagram made them better rather than worse." Again, can you steel-man and defend the point and, uh, Frances Haugen's characterization of the study and then help me understand the positive and negative effects of Instagram and Facebook on young people?

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:21

      So there are certainly questions around teen mental health that are really important. It's hard to... You know, as, as a parent it's, like, hard to imagine any set of questions that are sort of more important. I mean, I guess maybe other aspects of physical health or, or, or wellbeing, um, will probably come to that level. But, like, these are really important questions, right? Which is why we dedicate teams to studying them. Um, y- you know, I don't think the internet or social media, um, are unique in having these questions. I mean, I think people... And there have been sort of magazines with... Promoting certain body types for women and kids for decades. But, um, you know, we really care about this stuff so we, so we wanted to study it, and, and of course, you know, we didn't expect that everything was gonna be positive all the time. So, I mean, the reason why you study this stuff is to try to improve and, and get better. So, I mean, look, the, the place where I disagree with the characterization... First, I thought, you know, some of the reporting and coverage of it just took the whole thing out of proportion in that it focused on... As you said, I think there were, like, 20 metrics in there and on, you know, 18 or 19 the effect of using Instagram was neutral or positive on the, on the teens' wellbeing. And there was one area where, where I think, um, it showed that we needed to improve and we took some steps to try to do that, um, after doing the research. But, but I think having the coverage just focused on that one without focusing on the... You know, and I, I think a, an accurate characterization would have been that kids using Instagram... Or not kids, teens, um-... is, is generally positive for their mental health. Um, but of course that was not the narrative that came out, so I think it's hard to... That's not a kinda logical thing to straw man, but I sort of disag- or, or, or steel man, but I sort of disagree with that overall characterization. I think anyone sort of looking at this, um, objectively would. Um, but then, you know, I mean, the, the, there is this sort of intent critique that I think you were getting at before which, which says, you know, it assumes some sort of malevolence, right? It's like, um... Which it's, it's really hard for me to really wrap my head around this because as far as I know it's not clear that any of the other tech companies are doing this kinda research. So why the narrative should form that we did research, you know, because we were studying an issue 'cause we wanted to understand it to improve and took steps after that to try to improve it, that your, your interpretation of that would be that, that we did the research and tried to sweep it under the rug. It just, it sort of, um, is like... I don't know, it's beyond credibility to me that, like, that's the accurate description of the actions that we've taken compared to the others in the industry. So I don't know. That, that's, that's kind of, that's, that's my view on it. Um, these are really important issues and there's a lot of stuff that I think we're gonna be working on related to teen mental health for a long time, including trying to understand this better. Um, and I would encourage everyone else in the industry to do this too.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:08:17

      (sighs) Yeah. I would love there to be open conversations and a lot of great research being released internally and then also externally. It, um, it doesn't make me feel good to see press obviously get way more clicks when, um, they say negative things about social media. Let's, uh, objectively speaking, I can just tell that there's hunger to say negative things about social media and, um, I don't under- understand how that's supposed to, uh, lead to an open conversation about the positives and the negatives, the concerns about social media, uh, especially when you're doing those ki- that kind of research. I mean, I don't know what

7. 1:09:01 – 1:14:26

   Social media and mental health

   1. LFLex Fridman1:09:01

      to do with that, but, th- let me ask you as a father, does it weigh heavy on you that people get bullied on social networks? So people get bullied in their private life, but now because so much of our life is in the digital world, the bullying moves from the physical world to the digital world. So you're now creating a platform on which bullying happens and some of that bullying can lead to, uh, damage to mental health and some of that bullying can lead to depression, even suicide. Does it weigh heavy on you that people have committed suicide or will commit suicide based on the bullying that happens on social media?

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg1:09:48

      Yeah. I mean, this is, uh... There's a set of harms that we basically track and build systems to fight against and bullying and, um, you know, self-harm are... You know, I mean these are, these are some of the biggest things that we, that we are most focused on. Um... For bullying, like you say, it's gonna be... While this predates the internet and it's probably impossible to get rid of all of it, um, you wanna give people tools to fight it, um, and you, and you wanna fight it yourself and you also wanna make sure that people have the tools to get help when they need it. So I, I think it... This isn't like a question of, you know, can you get rid of all bullying? I mean, it's like, all right, um, I mean, I have two daughters and, you know, they, they fight and, you know, push each other around and stuff too and the question is just how do you, how do you handle that situation? And, um, there's a handful of things that I think you, you can, you can do. Um, you know, we talked a little bit before around some of the AI tools that you can build to identify when something harmful is, is happening. It's actually, it's very hard in bullying 'cause a lot of bullying is very context specific. It's not like you're trying to fit a, a formula of like, you know, if, if, if like looking at the different harms, um, you know, someone promoting a terrorist group is like probably one of the simpler things to generally find because things promoting that group are gonna, you know, look a certain way or feel a certain way. Bullying could just be, you know, someone making some subtle comment about someone's appearance that's idiosyncratic to them and-

   3. LFLex Fridman1:11:27

      And it could look as just, like, humor.

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg1:11:29

      Yeah. Exactly.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:11:29

      So humor to one person could be destructive to another human being.

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg1:11:32

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:11:32

      Yeah.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg1:11:32

      So with bullying I think there are, there are certain things that you can find through AI systems, um, but I think it is increasingly important to just give people more agency themselves, so we've done things like making it so people can turn off comments or, you know, take a break from, um, you know, hearing from a specific person without having to signal at all that they're gonna stop following them or, or s- or, or kind of make some, some stand that, "Okay, I'm not friends with you anymore, I'm not following you." I just, like I just don't wanna hear about this, but I also don't wanna signal, um, at all publicly that, um, or to them that, that there's been an issue. Um, and then you get to some of the more extreme cases like you're talking about where someone is thinking about, um, you know, self-harm or, or suicide and, um, in there w- we've found that that is a place where AI can, can identify a lot as, as well as people flagging things. You know, if people are, um, expressing something that is, is, you know, potentially they're thinking of hurting themselves, those are cues that you can build systems in, you know, hundreds of languages around the world to be able to identify that and one of the things that I'm, uh, a- actually quite proud of is we've, we've built these systems that I think are-... clearly leading at this point that, not only identify that, but then connect with local, um, first responders and have been able to save, I think, at this point, it's, you know, in, in thousands of cases, be able to get first responders to people, um, through these systems who really need them, um, because of specific plumbing that we've done between the AI work and being able to communicate with, with local first responder organizations, and we're rolling that out in more places around the world, and, um, and I think the team that, that worked on that just did awesome stuff. So, uh, I think that that's a long way of saying, yeah, I mean, this is, this is a, a, this is a heavy topic and there's, you want to attack it in a bunch of different ways, um, and, and also kind of understand that some of nature is for people to, to, to do this to each other, which is unfortunate, but, um, but you can give people tools and, and build things that help.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:13:40

      It's still one hell of a burden though. A platform that allows people to fall in love with each other is also, by nature, going to be a platform that allows people to hurt each other, and when you're managing such a platform, it's difficult. And I think you spoke to it, but the psychology of that, of being a leader in that space, of creating technology that's playing in the space, like you mentioned psychology, is really damn difficult. (chuckles) And, uh, I mean, th- the burden of that is just, it's just great, I just wanted to hear you speak, um, to that point. I have to ask about the thing you've brought up a few times, which is making controversial decisions.

8. 1:14:26 – 1:31:35

   Censorship

   1. LFLex Fridman1:14:26

      Let's talk about free speech and censorship. So there are two groups of people, uh, pressuring Meta on this. One group is upset that Facebook, the social network, allows "misinformation" in quotes to be spread on the platform. The other group are concerned that Facebook censors speech by calling it misinformation. So you're getting it from both sides. You, um, in 2019, October, at, uh, Georgetown University eloquently defended the importance of free speech, but then COVID came and the twenty, and the 2020 election came. Do you worry that outside pressures from advertisers, politicians, the public, have forced Meta to damage the ideal of free speech that you spoke highly of?

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg1:15:14

      Just to say some obvious things upfront, I, I don't think pressure from advertisers or politicians directly in any way affects how we think about this. I think these are just hard topics. Um, so let me just take you through our evolution from kind of the beginning of the company to, to where we are now. Um, you don't build a company like this unless you believe that people expressing themselves is a good thing. Right, so that's sort of the, the foundational thing. You can kind of think about our company as a formula, where we think giving people voice and helping people connect creates opportunity, right? So it's th- those are the two things that we're always focused on are sort of helping people connect, we talked about that a lot, but also giving people voice and ability to express themselves. And by the way, most of the time when people express themselves, that's not like politically controversial content, it's like expressing something about their identity that's more related to the avatar conversation we had earlier in terms of expressing some facet, but that's what's important to people on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes when people feel strongly enough about something, it kind of becomes a political topic. That's sort of always been a thing that we've focused on. There's always been the question of safety in this, wh- which, you know, if you're building a community, I think you have to focus on safety. We've had these community standards from early on, and there are about 20 different kinds of harm that we track and try to fight actively, and we've talked about some of them already. So it, so it includes things like bullying and harassment, um, it includes things like, um, like terrorism or, or promoting terrorism, um, inciting violence, intellectual property theft. And, and in general, I think, call it about 18 out of 20 of those, there's not really a particularly polarized definition of that. Um, you know, I don't, I think you're not really gonna find many people in the country or in the world, um, who are trying to say we should be, um, fighting terrorist content less. I think the, the, the content where, th- there are a couple of areas where I think that this has gotten more controversial recently, which I'll, which I'll talk about, um, and you're right, the misinformation is, is basically, is, is, is up there, and I think sometimes the definition of hate speech is up there too.

Episode duration: 2:00:13