0:02

What digging

0:04

graves for my democracy?

0:07

I'm Robert Evans. Uh. This is Behind

0:10

the Bastards podcast about the worst

0:12

people in all the history. UH.

0:14

My guest this week for a very special

0:16

two parter UH is the

0:19

Inimitable Um which I've introduced

0:21

you as the Inimitable the the very close

0:24

to Emmy winning Jamie Loft. I

0:28

lost a fokey, Robert, and

0:30

I don't know who that is, which means

0:32

you one in my in my book.

0:34

I knew. I was like, there's no

0:37

way that Robert knows who Forky is

0:39

and that is going to give me piece. Yeah,

0:41

I never heard of, never heard

0:43

of? Is

0:46

it someone the teens like? Because I you

0:48

know what I hate is the teens. I don't

0:51

hate the teens. The teens

0:53

are obsessed with four key. They

0:57

need their TikTok if they need their their cold

1:00

route, and they need their forky. Does this have

1:02

something to do with whatever A hundred gus

1:04

is? What is that? It's

1:06

some it's some music thing that the teens love.

1:09

The teens who are always starting the fires love

1:11

love hundred gus and I love

1:13

the teens who are always starting the fires

1:15

from the teens from the fire

1:18

Team from the fire Team.

1:22

He was No, he was a spork. I just

1:25

looks like I ordered

1:27

a quirky and I'm gonna throw it. I'm

1:29

gonna like smash it up. I

1:31

don't need to be a good sport about losing

1:33

to no no funk that noise. Let's

1:36

find his home address and commit

1:38

federal I mean, sorry, wreaky down and I'm going to

1:41

commit a crime like yeah, I

1:43

was when I was like, I wonder how mine craft.

1:46

Oh the teens love their Minecraft.

1:49

No, I mean, I'm just saying you should only talk about

1:51

committing crimes in Minecraft because then you

1:53

can't get in trouble if you do commit the crime

1:55

later. That's the way the law works. Well,

1:58

I've been kicked off of Twitter for ename

2:00

the life of someone fictional before, so

2:02

wondering if it if it would happen with Forky.

2:05

But it seems like Jack is in full

2:07

agreement that Forky's gotta go. Yeah,

2:10

you know who else has to go Jamie about

2:14

crimes and definitely have to go.

2:16

I opened this episode, you

2:18

know, saying, who's who's the digging

2:21

graves for my democracy? You know, and

2:23

sort of the you know, that's kind of a will play

2:25

on my One of the ways I introduced the show,

2:28

Well, the person who's digging graves for our

2:30

democracy is Mark Zuckerberg, and we have another

2:32

two parter about him today. Yeah,

2:35

that's right. I can't believe you're doing

2:37

this. Yeah. Yeah, I

2:39

wrote another like ten thousand words about

2:42

Mark Zuckerberg, just for you, Jamie, just

2:44

for you. So it's worth of crime since we last

2:47

spoke, I think about him. Yeah, he's

2:49

done more than that. I had to leave, like

2:51

there's I just finished writing last

2:53

night and there was still like four articles

2:55

worth of stuff to conclude that. I was just like, well,

2:58

I'm not getting to this because I have to sleep.

3:02

Listen, we're all we're all entitled to sleeve.

3:04

I have wear this. I ordered a

3:06

horrible shirt with Mark Zuckerberg on it the last

3:08

time we covered him, You did, I wear

3:11

it all the time. It's all worn in. What with

3:13

all the crimes? What with all the crimes?

3:15

YEA, well, Uh, let's

3:17

talk about Mark Zuckerberg. So

3:20

we've talked about Mark and his creation

3:22

Facebook quite a lot on this show already.

3:24

Last year we did a three part series on the Son

3:27

of a Bitch. Uh, but a lot has happened

3:29

since then, and Mark himself has only grown

3:31

more dangerous and I so, yeah,

3:33

we have to talk about him again and his

3:35

company. And I think that in order

3:38

to properly tell

3:40

this story, we're going to need to actually go

3:42

back to Mark's backstory because

3:44

there's a rather critical part of it, um

3:46

and a part of his psychological profile that

3:48

I left out during the last series of episodes

3:51

because I'm a hack in a fraud, so I missed

3:53

this last time well known, but

3:55

it it connects some dots that I

3:57

think are important, especially in the context

3:59

with him fucking at Harvard. No

4:02

um, I mean a lot has to do

4:04

with him not fucking at Harvard, but this is not

4:06

specifically about that, although it probably played

4:09

into the fact that nobody wanted to fuck him at Harvard

4:12

um slash. Ever, So

4:15

yeah, let's we're gonna go back in time

4:17

to what I think is Jamie's favorite period

4:19

of history, the childhood of Mark Zuckerberg.

4:22

Oh, yeah, I go, there are my dreams. Yeah,

4:24

we all ye. In particular, we're gonna

4:26

be talking about his high school years at Williams

4:29

Exeter Academy. Now um

4:31

at present tuition, their costs

4:34

a little less than forty five thou dollars

4:36

a year for the day school, which is

4:38

more than the average American makes.

4:42

Um. Yeah, as

4:45

you might expect, young Mark spent

4:47

a lot of his time their coding, fencing,

4:49

and studying Latin um,

4:52

which is like two out of three things that I

4:54

did in high school too. So you

4:56

know, yeah,

4:58

the crime of being for us to study Latin,

5:01

I'll never get over it. Yeah, No, it

5:03

ruined my life, except for that one time

5:05

we got to watch Life of Brian in class

5:08

um, which I feel like the

5:10

teacher was stretching and justifying, but

5:12

I was grateful for. So Mark

5:15

was in particular a really big fan of studying

5:17

Latin, unlike us. He he loved

5:19

it in his study of the language, bread

5:21

a fascination with the history of ancient rome

5:24

Um. And again, I kind of find this interesting because

5:26

that's like the opposite of how it happened to me.

5:28

I took Latin because I was a huge

5:31

history nerd about Roman history,

5:33

and then I stopped liking Roman history as

5:35

much because I was so bored of Latin class

5:38

um. Yeah, so

5:41

Mark fell in love with the language because learning

5:43

it was fairly similar to coding, and then

5:45

he kind of fell in love with the history next,

5:47

and he later explained to a reporter, quote, you

5:49

have all these good and bad and complex figures.

5:52

I think Augustus is one of the most fascinating.

5:55

Now, Jamie. The Augustus he's talking about

5:58

was Augustus Caesar, who was, uh,

6:00

the guy who became the very first Roman emperor

6:02

in thirty one b c. He was Julius

6:04

Caesar's hair air and

6:07

uh, yeah, he was Julius Caesar's air um.

6:10

And he was just seventeen years old when

6:12

his mentor died um. And suddenly

6:14

he founds himself in control of like Caesar's

6:17

armies and like fighting for uh

6:19

control of Rome. And he basically kind

6:21

of as a result of this, spent almost his entire

6:23

life in power um.

6:25

And by the time he was finally emperor

6:28

um his which like took some years. You know,

6:30

Caesar dies and there's a bunch of wars and stuff

6:33

um like, so by the time he's

6:35

like emperor in his twenties, um.

6:38

Like the idea, like any memory

6:40

of his life, Like think back to when you were like twenty

6:43

five, how well you remembered being fifteen,

6:45

right, um, sixteen years old?

6:47

Not at all? Um? So by the time he's emperor,

6:49

Like Augustus is like everything

6:52

that isn't commanding armies and controlling

6:55

the destiny of millions would have been like a dim memory.

6:57

Um. You can

6:59

see why. You can see why Mark

7:01

has continued after getting out of high

7:04

school to kind of identify with this guy,

7:06

because both of them are people who, like, while they're you

7:08

know, very young adults, uh,

7:10

come into unbelievable power um

7:13

and misuse

7:16

it and largely misuse it. Yeah, Mark

7:18

would not say that Augustus largely misused

7:20

it, of course not Now. Augustus

7:23

did go on to become one of the longest serving emperors

7:26

in Roman history, and he's generally

7:28

remembered as one of the best, although this

7:30

is mainly because he hired all of

7:32

the like a bunch of broke authors and poets

7:34

to write the history of his reign um

7:37

as opposed to like, historians are increasingly

7:40

critical of Augustus as they

7:42

analyze actual history and not just

7:44

like read whatever I think it was Swetonius

7:46

like just wrote about it. Yeah, it's

7:48

like a hiring like fan fake writers

7:51

on five Like, hey,

7:54

that's literally what the India it is, you know, the

7:56

India is like the poem like it's it's it's

7:58

a rip off of the Iliad that's

8:00

supposed to be about the founding of Rome

8:02

that connects it to the sacking of

8:04

troy Um and was written largely

8:07

as like a largely to

8:10

glorify Augustus because it was like shaking

8:12

the case that his ancestors were all these fucking

8:15

cool ass people. It's also frustrating

8:17

to me, like when when things

8:19

like the Anid are treated as like

8:21

unquestionable primary source, where it's

8:23

like, no, people were fucking around with the

8:26

portrayal of history always.

8:28

It was propaganda, even more shallow

8:30

than our propaganda is today.

8:32

Um. I fell asleep reading it

8:35

when I was fourteen. It's it's also

8:37

bad. It's a bad book. M boring.

8:40

It's boring as hell, unlike

8:42

the Iliad, which which

8:44

absolutely slaps um

8:47

like pretty good book, all things

8:49

considered. Good ship in there, some

8:51

good ideas, good ship in there. And

8:56

Virgil I don't know, I only remember like half

8:58

of this stuff, and I didn't check that he had a

9:00

ghostwriter. Fuck Virgil. I

9:02

mean he kind of was the Emperor's ghost

9:05

right anyway. Whatever, So yeah,

9:07

Augustus like propaganda like hires

9:09

a bunch of propagandists to to make

9:11

it look like he was. He was like awesome,

9:15

UM, and that's part of why we remember

9:17

him as being amazing and part of why Mark is

9:19

obsessed with him. UM.

9:22

And you know, one of the things that's interesting about Augustus

9:24

is that his birth name was actually Octavian. He

9:26

took the name Augustus because it meant lofty

9:28

or serene, and he needed everybody to

9:30

know how cool he was. So it's not it's

9:32

not hard to see why young Mark would have liked both idolized

9:35

and um identified with this guy.

9:38

By the time he was thirty, Augustus controlled basically

9:40

the entire Western world. UM

9:43

and Mark Zuckerberg, by the time he was thirty

9:45

controlled an online empire larger

9:47

than the entire Western world. He controlled

9:49

my entire self esteem for a good half

9:51

a decade. Yeah, and destroyed all

9:54

of journalism anyway. So he

9:57

uh so again, you can see like

9:59

why why Mark idolizes this

10:01

guy, because he's had a lifelong fascination with

10:03

him. In an interview with The New Yorker, Zuckerberg

10:05

explained, quote, basically,

10:08

through a really harsh approach, he being

10:10

Augustus established two hundred years of

10:12

world peace. What are the trade offs

10:14

in that? Zuckerberg said, growing animated.

10:16

On one hand, world piece is a long term goal

10:18

that people talk about today, two hundred

10:20

years feels unattainable. On the other

10:23

hand, he said that didn't come for free,

10:25

and he had to do certain things.

10:31

Very funny. Honestly, I

10:33

gotta be you kind of lost me for a second

10:35

it becoming animated, because I cannot

10:38

really imagine. I can imagine

10:40

for him, the only thing that makes him,

10:43

that makes him show human emotion is

10:45

thinking about dominating the entire

10:47

world and forcing it into

10:49

to act the way he wants it to. Um

10:52

like imagining himself as dictator

10:54

of the planet is the only thing that brings him

10:57

excitement. It's what It's what his wife

10:59

has to like with spur into his ears in order

11:01

to help in order to make a child with him.

11:04

I guess. I guess world leaders

11:06

can have very weak arms. I

11:08

don't know. Do you think he spits when he talks?

11:10

Yes, yes, it's

11:13

either it's I feel the same way about

11:15

how I always think of like does beetle

11:17

juice come wet scabs or dry scabs?

11:19

I could picture of having a very wet mouth

11:22

or a very dry mouth. He's

11:25

a heavy breather. Yeah,

11:28

it's it's a nightmare all around. I think we can

11:31

all agree on that. Um But what's

11:33

most important to note at this point is that Mark

11:35

Zuckerberg number one, Augustus

11:38

and this idea that he brought world peace for a two

11:40

hundred years very important to Mark.

11:42

Important for him to talk about two journalists

11:45

and stuff, something he really makes a point of getting

11:47

out completely inaccurate, wildly

11:50

inaccurate. There's a number of reasons

11:52

it's wildly inaccurate. For one, thing,

11:55

like he's talking about

11:57

he's when he says two hundred years of peace, he's talking about

11:59

two hundre years of peace. And like the

12:01

Mediterranean and Western Europe,

12:04

he's not talking about China, he's

12:06

not talking about Southeast Asia, he's not talking

12:08

about Japan. He's not talking about North America,

12:10

South America, the Caribbean,

12:13

all of which were places that had wars

12:15

and conflicts during this period. Because again,

12:17

Mark is fundamentally incapable

12:20

of, like like a lot of Americans, fundamentally

12:22

incapable about thinking of thinking

12:24

about those places as as real as

12:27

as Western history. Um

12:29

So, number one, that's that's a problem

12:31

right from the jump. But even within the context, even

12:34

if we give him credit and saying like he's saying

12:36

no, no, he had two hundred years of peace within

12:39

sort of the classical ancient world,

12:42

that's also complete horseshit um.

12:45

Because yeah, I'm gonna just read a short

12:47

list of some of the wars that Rome got involved

12:50

with during the two hundred years after

12:52

Augustus came to power. The

12:55

Roman Partian War of fifty eight to sixty

12:57

three, Buddhica is Uprising. This

12:59

was like that that that English queen who

13:02

like led an uprising against Rome in

13:04

the sixty sixty to sixty one

13:06

UM. The First Jewish Roman

13:09

War sixty six to seventy three, these

13:11

is a d sorry, the Roman Civil War

13:14

of sixty eight to sixty nine, a d Damitian's

13:17

Decklin War eight six to eighty eight,

13:19

The First Dation War one

13:21

hundred and one to one hundred and two,

13:24

the Second Dation War one hundred and five

13:26

to one hundred six, The Roman Persian

13:28

Wars which started in the middle or in the early

13:31

hundreds, the Quito's War, the

13:33

Second Jewish Revolt from one thirty two to

13:35

one thirty five, the Marco

13:37

Manic Wars from one sixty six to one

13:39

eighty, and of course the Roman Civil

13:41

War of a hundred and ninety three to one hundred and

13:43

ninety seven. And again, well, I mean,

13:46

I think if you put those twenty or

13:48

so other

13:53

than all of the wars I just listed,

13:55

it was a period of total peace. It's

13:58

like saying after war war to the

14:00

US presided over like half

14:02

a century of global peace if

14:05

we ignore the millions who died in Vietnam

14:07

and Cambodia and Lao in Korea.

14:10

Um, and of course all of the hundreds of thousands

14:13

potentially millions who died in Latin America.

14:16

Um. Half a century of peace,

14:18

complete total peace?

14:21

What what I mean? To be fair? He went to Phillips

14:24

Exeter Academy, So his brain is a bunch

14:26

of worms and a few empty D batteries.

14:28

Yeah, his history education was his

14:31

teacher jacking off with a flag and asking

14:33

if the class had any questions. Academy

14:37

sucks. There was a boy that was supposed to take me to

14:39

a skating rink from there once and then he he

14:41

didn't show up. Well, that's

14:43

all I have to do to urge

14:46

that people burned down Phillips

14:48

Exeter Academy. This is, in fact

14:50

incitement to a crime. Please um on

14:52

behalf of Jamie, not for the Mark Zuckerberg

14:54

stuff. To defend your avenge

14:57

my date from two thousands from

14:59

two wow, two thousand seven, I forget you're

15:01

younger than me. Um, so

15:05

yeah, and so those are that's that is

15:07

a short list of some of the wars that occurred

15:09

in that two hundred year period that Mark describes

15:11

as world peace. Um, those

15:14

were not the only violent

15:16

conflicts during that period. And outside

15:18

of those wars, that were a funkload of battles and campaigns

15:21

that Roman soldiers fought and died in during this

15:23

period, because there were just a lot of times we're like Romans, there

15:26

would be like a battle that was this conflict.

15:28

And you know, anyway, my favorite

15:31

of these conflicts, and I think one that we need to talk

15:33

about before we get back into the story of Mark Zuckerberg,

15:35

because I think this is relevant. My favorite

15:37

of these battles that happened during Augustus

15:39

is two hundred years of Peace is the Battle

15:42

of Tudeberg Forest. Um, have

15:44

you ever heard of the Battle of Tudeberg Forest? No

15:46

good name though yeah, you you might

15:49

also call it why you should never funk

15:51

with the Germans um. And

15:53

this happened kind of later on in Augustus

15:56

reign when he was an older man, And the basic story

15:59

is that the general named Virus

16:01

leads three entire Roman Legions,

16:03

which the whole nations have

16:06

been were destroyed by forces of that side.

16:08

Three Roman Legions is a is a It's about

16:10

eighteen thousand men and a massively

16:12

competent armed force, like the Roman

16:15

Legion is the deadliest weapon in the world of this

16:17

period of time. So this guy Virus

16:19

in order to kind of push the Roman borders

16:22

eastward and basically is

16:24

a way to like they've been having issues with these Germanic

16:26

tribes, Like Virus is going in there with this

16:28

massive army to just like function

16:30

up and show the Germans who is boss um.

16:34

But they wind up in the middle of these deep, dark

16:36

German forests and they're led into

16:38

an ambush by a German soldier guy named

16:41

Armenius, who actually had gained Roman citizenship

16:43

but was like, yeah, working for the other team.

16:47

And it's this horrible one of the one

16:50

of like the five or six great

16:52

military disasters in all of human history.

16:54

The entire Roman army is massacred,

16:57

leaving behind a pile of bones that are

16:59

still being discovered to this day. Um.

17:02

It was one of the great defeats in Rome's long

17:04

history, and it basically stopped Rome's expansion

17:07

to the east. Um, Like this is

17:09

this is a an incredibly like

17:12

it's it's just a nightmarish military

17:14

defeat, and it's an incredibly significant

17:16

battle. And it came after decades

17:18

of what had been continuous expansion for

17:20

Augustus. Right, he'd gotten used to everything

17:23

working for him militarily, and

17:25

then there's just this complete calamitous

17:28

defeat. Um. And the loss of

17:30

so many of Rome's best soldiers in a single

17:32

battle is said by historians

17:35

to have kind of broken the emperor's mind.

17:38

Um. One of his own like private paid historians

17:40

wrote that for weeks afterwards, he would

17:42

just wander around his palace in a day's

17:45

slamming his head into doors

17:47

and screaming, varus, give

17:50

me back my legions. Okay,

17:52

I will say that this is very

17:54

similar to what I've been doing with Forky for

17:56

the past. Yeah. Yeah,

17:59

you can really empathize with Augustus here. Yeah,

18:01

Okay, now, I'm starting to see see his side

18:03

of things in a way. Haven't we all gotten

18:06

eighteen thousand Italians killed in

18:08

the woods of Germany? Thousand

18:11

Italians living in my mind?

18:13

Yeah, we're all Italians

18:16

anyway. So yeah,

18:18

So this, this is this is a

18:21

battle that's important I think to understand,

18:23

in part because it occurs during the two years

18:25

of Peace, and in part because Um

18:28

Augustus is a figure that reminds me a

18:30

lot of Mark Zuckerberg and what

18:32

happened to him in

18:35

this defeat the Hubrists that led

18:37

him. There is something that I think will

18:39

happen to Mark eventually. I don't know what Marks

18:41

teudeberg Wold will be. Um.

18:44

I don't think it was Cambridge Analytica, but

18:46

I think it is coming. Um. Yeah.

18:49

And I'm sure Mark knows that story.

18:51

He has to. It's one of the most famous stories in all

18:54

of Roman history. He's a nerd about this stuff. He absolutely

18:56

knows about that battle. I've never seen him

18:58

talk about it though, Um, but he talks

19:00

about Augustus a lot. Um. He did

19:03

note that during that New Yorker article

19:05

that he and his fiance now wife Priscilla

19:07

spent their honeymoon in Rome quote.

19:10

My wife was making fun of me, saying she thought

19:12

there were three people on the honeymoon, me her

19:14

and Augustus. All of the photos were

19:16

different sculptures of Augustus. They

19:20

go on vacation to Rome for their honeymoon, and

19:22

he just keeps taking pictures of sculptures

19:24

of this dead asshole um because

19:27

he thinks that he's he's the

19:29

new emperor of the world, just

19:32

like just Priscilla having

19:35

her bad decisions shoved in her face over

19:37

and over, averaging the past. She's a billionaire

19:40

now, so she I mean, she's also the worst.

19:42

You know. I don't have any sympathy for

19:44

her, really, Yeah,

19:48

but I do believe. I do believe, like a

19:50

lot of you know, you always have to kind of second guests

19:52

things that Mark says in interviews because

19:55

he's a liar um and because he's

19:57

trying to get out a propaganda narrative, much

19:59

like Augustus was by hiring all of those

20:02

those UH poets to write his

20:04

story. Um. But I think Mark's

20:06

being honest when he talks about his fascination

20:08

with Augustus UM, because number

20:11

one, have you seen the picture of him getting

20:13

that fun He keeps getting the haircut. He keeps getting

20:15

the fucking haircut that like Augustus has,

20:17

like the Roman emperor haircut. That why he

20:19

has that shitty haircut. Yes, it is.

20:22

He makes his wife give it to him. I'm

20:24

going to send you it's

20:26

it's the worst thing that's ever happened. And there's

20:29

a photo as a result of the coronavirus

20:31

epidemic, he had his wife started giving him

20:33

the fucking weird Roman haircut

20:36

that he gets, the weird Augustus type haircut,

20:38

the Octavian or whatever. I'm sending

20:40

you a picture right now. We'll have it up on the site.

20:43

And it's just his eyes or he

20:45

has the dead it's like that. It's

20:48

like that scene in Jaws, like dead

20:50

eyes, like a doll's eyes, not

20:53

a little like Chuck has a more

20:55

emotive character than him. It's that is

20:58

so, but

21:00

it is. It's horrible funny.

21:03

He does not have the hairline for that haircut. No

21:06

one, no one has, like it was a bad haircut

21:08

for the emperors to have. I've seen

21:10

I've seen this question kind of asked about

21:13

a few times. I saw it, most recently asked by

21:15

Julia Claire. But like, why are

21:18

all billionaires, Like why can't they afford

21:20

to like look okay? Like

21:23

why can't they not ani look okay?

21:26

Because I don't think any of them. There's

21:29

a couple of them that I think generally, like

21:31

like Richard Branson and Mark Cuban all

21:34

are able to like dress like human beings.

21:37

Um. But then you have the guys like you

21:40

have like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark

21:42

Suckerberg, who all looked like they were like poured

21:45

into um, like a skin

21:47

suit. And I don't know what the differences

21:50

um, because there there are clearly some

21:52

of these guys who are able to at least like imitate

21:55

being like a person. Um. Mark

21:57

Cuban does a decent impression of

21:59

a human being, but he knows how

22:01

people are supposed to dress. He

22:05

is a basic concept of like human beings

22:07

do this. He says words in

22:09

an order. Yeah,

22:13

in a way, we all pretending to be John

22:15

Cena. Yeah, yeah, I would. I

22:17

would like Mark Zuckerberg a lot better if he were

22:20

pretending to be John Cena. But he's pretending to be

22:22

an emperor with a shitty haircut.

22:24

I mean that does answer questions

22:26

that I had. That is helpful information. Yeah,

22:28

I don't know what's going on, but yeah, so he's He's

22:31

just also the name their second daughter, August.

22:33

So like whatever, Mark, this is marked weird things.

22:35

I think he's being honest about it. Um.

22:38

Yeah, and it it's it makes sense

22:41

for him to this to have been like a childhood

22:43

fascination of him, because one of the things

22:45

you find when you look into people who knew Mark is that kind

22:48

of since he was a kid, he has

22:50

always seen himself as rising

22:52

to greatness. Um, which

22:54

is this kind of narcissism that I think is born

22:57

from growing up in a growing

22:59

up male white,

23:02

an upper middle class in a

23:07

place where mostly affluent people live,

23:09

and then going to a school where they tell you

23:11

you're gifted. Um, Like

23:13

a lot of kids wind up with the same

23:16

sort of delusions of grandeur. Reality

23:18

has indulged Marks for so for

23:20

some time. But like one of his childhood friends

23:22

told that interview with the New Yorker quote, I

23:24

think Mark has always seen himself as a man of

23:27

history, someone who is destined to be great.

23:29

And I mean that in the broadest sense of the term,

23:32

which is a terrible thing to be because when you're

23:34

that kind of person, you will do almost

23:36

anything to try to make the reality

23:39

outside your head correspond with the expectations

23:42

within it. Um, and

23:44

Mark has done that. So speaking

23:46

of history, Jamie, since we just

23:49

talked about some of that, Mark or Facebook

23:51

at least, has made a bit of history since we last

23:53

discussed Mark in his creation. Uh, there's

23:56

been new milestones for for membership

23:58

and for page engagement that have been hit, which I'm

24:00

sure you're very excited about, especially

24:02

with this big election coming up. I cannot

24:04

wait all sorts of good stuff. UM.

24:07

But I see some really productive,

24:09

useful conversation going on as well. It

24:11

seems like things are very healthy. And speaking

24:14

of healthy, I think the thing that I want to talk

24:16

to the history that Facebook has been responsible

24:18

for that I want to talk about right now is

24:20

um is what it's brought to Ethiopia. UM.

24:23

Have you heard anything about Facebook's

24:25

recent performance in Ethiopia and

24:27

what's happened there. I've heard a little

24:30

bit. I've heard a little bit. I've heard, I mean Facebook,

24:32

um in in

24:35

in any way I learned most about, which

24:37

I think we talked about last time was Facebook and Meanmar.

24:40

But the Ethiopics stuff I've

24:42

got to catch up. Yeah, I don't want to like spoil

24:44

it right away because it's a fun story. But

24:46

it rhymes with schmith nick cleansing.

24:49

Um, oh that was what they were doing over in That's

24:52

yeah. Yeah, it keeps happening to

24:54

countries you have Facebook and interesting

24:56

yeah so uh. Facebook

24:59

has been pop layer and a number of African nations

25:01

for for quite a while now, and in many

25:03

of these countries, like Ethiopia, the Internet

25:06

is basically a synonym for Facebook

25:08

to millions of people because it's just like the way they interface

25:11

with the Internet, like Facebook and the Internet are

25:13

the same thing. They don't use a browser, they see everything

25:15

through Facebook. Um. And despite

25:18

the popularity of Facebook in Ethiopia

25:21

the country and in Africa in general, because

25:23

it's it's become increasingly popular across the entire

25:25

continent. But despite its popularity,

25:27

Facebook only opened its first content moderation

25:30

center on the continent in two thousand

25:33

nineteen, which is a problem

25:35

because Africa is enormous, like it fits

25:37

a couple in North America's in there. You

25:40

probably should have had a content center

25:42

somewhere on the fucking continent, like you should

25:44

have one in every country you're doing business in.

25:46

But they only added one to just just

25:49

one on the fucking continent in two thousand

25:51

nineteen, which is I'm

25:54

not frising from that comp but like that's

25:56

just yeah. Now, they

25:58

promised to hire a hun drew people to work

26:00

there through third party companies. Um,

26:03

and we don't know if they've actually done that.

26:05

Number one, it's sketchy that it continues to be through

26:08

third party companies, which is what Facebook does so that

26:10

they can interesting that they're

26:12

just continuing this whole third party company thing.

26:14

Doesn't seem like it's gone very well for them in the past.

26:16

Yeah. That way, if an employee makes a decision that gets

26:19

people killed, it's not a Facebook employee that

26:21

made a decision that gets got people killed, and

26:23

so they don't have to care about it, um, which

26:25

is very ethical. And then they can release

26:27

a really cute statement that they're like, we had no idea

26:30

and we're really random. Person made

26:32

a mistake. How could we have? Yeah,

26:35

human error? Yeah? Um.

26:37

You know what doesn't make errors jamie

26:40

products or services products

26:42

services. Uh. And you know our

26:45

longtime sponsor, Raytheon.

26:48

You might have heard some news lately Jamie about

26:50

has had a lot of employees go uh

26:55

okay, you know. So if you're antipathy

26:58

towards the Raytheon Corporation is all

27:00

noted um. But I want

27:02

to ask you to imagine a world without

27:04

Ray Theon. Imagine a world where

27:08

children in Afghanistan are able

27:10

to go to bed at night and not live

27:12

in terror that clear skies will bring

27:14

the attack of a predator drone that could wipe

27:16

out the entire family. Imagine

27:18

school buses in Yemen not being

27:21

blown up by missiles fired

27:25

by people in control stations

27:27

somewhere in a desert in Nevada using Raytheon's

27:29

wonderful technology. Imagine

27:32

missiles that aren't full of knives. You

27:34

know, I don't want to live in that world, which

27:37

is why I choose to buy Ray Theon

27:39

and why I think you should choose listeners

27:42

to buy Raytheon. Sorry, I didn't hear anything.

27:45

I was thinking about Nacho cheese

27:47

Derito's. You know, if

27:49

ray Theon made derritos, they

27:52

would kill a lot of school children

27:54

in Yemen. Anyway, here's products. Oh

28:03

we're back. Oh my

28:05

gosh. I don't know about the rest of you, but those

28:07

products and services. Really I

28:10

just took a hit of Raytheon.

28:13

Yeah, I've been huffing Raytheon so hard

28:16

that I I

28:20

keep my right on a little rag and I just

28:22

put it in a rag like the paint that

28:25

I also once I'm out of paint

28:27

and glue, Raytheon and huffing

28:29

paint allies in. That

28:33

sounds like a reality abas, that sounds

28:35

like a really rich person's name. Paint.

28:38

Yeah, that's how the rich people huff. So

28:42

yeah. Facebook sets up this data

28:44

center. It's first and only one in Africa.

28:47

They promised to hire a hundred people, and we don't

28:49

know if they even hired a hundred people to work.

28:52

Is there any confirmation that no, no, because

28:54

they don't have to be open about any of this. We also

28:56

don't know which regions of the country

28:59

any of those folks have specialized in, which languages

29:01

they might have spoken. Again, Africa

29:04

is the size of several North America's.

29:07

There's an enormous variety of

29:10

nations and cultures and conflicts

29:13

like like like, I would

29:15

say anything less than a couple of thousand

29:17

people focusing on content in

29:20

that continent would seem just just

29:22

so irresponsible as to be purely

29:26

ornamental. Um and

29:28

like thousands, like a couple of thousand

29:30

people probably honestly isn't enough because of how

29:32

many millions of Like, yeah, it's too

29:34

big a responsibility for a few hundred employees

29:37

to even that's

29:39

absurd. Yeah, yeah, it's

29:42

it's just unbelievably

29:45

shoddy worksmanship they had. And yeah,

29:48

so again and because there's Facebook

29:50

doesn't have to be open um about anything,

29:52

we don't even know like which areas of

29:54

the country were represented by the content moderation

29:57

team. Uh VICE reports

29:59

though that Facebook community standards,

30:01

like the list of their standards has not been

30:03

translated into either of Ethiopia's

30:05

two main languages, which suggests

30:07

they don't have anybody in the continent who can

30:10

functionally monitor what's happening in

30:12

Ethiopia. The company has

30:14

no full time employees in the country.

30:17

Now this is a problem

30:20

UM because Ethiopia,

30:22

like many countries, has a number of bad

30:24

actors in its national political scene

30:27

and a lot of ethnic conflicts that

30:29

have been exacerbated by Facebook. UM.

30:32

One of the bad actors in Ethiopia

30:34

is a guy named Jawar Mohammed, who is

30:36

an Ethno nationalist and Aromo Ethno

30:39

nationalist from the Aroma region of the country.

30:41

The Aroma are like like one of the people's

30:43

in in the region or in the country

30:45

that that we call Ethiopia. Um

30:48

and, and Jamar has started like a private

30:50

TV network based on his success

30:52

and Facebook. He's got like one point seven or five

30:55

million followers on the site. Um

30:57

so he's extremely popular. Um

31:00

He's a big content creator who basically

31:02

got famous as a result of his ability to

31:05

use and manipulate Facebook. Um

31:08

And one of his big things is

31:10

regularly urging people to do horrible

31:12

violence to folks who are not a Romo in

31:14

Ethiopia on our popular

31:16

approach. Yeah, it keeps happening all over

31:19

the world, and Facebook keeps failing it handling

31:21

it. On October nineteen,

31:23

he took to Facebook and fired off a series

31:25

of posts claiming he was about to be arrested

31:28

by the police for some of his political

31:30

statements. This appears to have been

31:32

a lie, but it brought huge crowds

31:35

of his supporters out into the street,

31:37

like massive numbers of people, and they

31:39

start. The horrible violence starts right

31:41

the cops come out, and the police

31:43

wind up killing more than a dozen people, and

31:45

your supporters wind up committing a bunch

31:48

of race based sectary in murders and

31:50

something like seventy folks die by

31:52

the time this is all over. Um,

31:55

so yeah he yeah, so this guy like

31:58

like incites a series of pace

32:00

riots that kill like nearly seventy

32:02

people, which is a problem,

32:04

you might say. Yeah, single

32:07

Facebook post. Yeah that isn't. Yeah,

32:09

so Facebook at this point, if not before,

32:12

because they hadn't even thought about it for a single

32:14

second, Like Mark Zuckerberg had never, for

32:16

a moment in his life considered Ethiopia

32:19

prior to this, the fifteen

32:21

years of this company's existence. Yeah, get

32:23

good. Well you it's not a major company.

32:25

It's one of the places. It's like, it's like all of the

32:27

world outside of the Roman Empire that he

32:30

assumes was also at peace, because he's sure

32:32

as hell, I'm not going to give a funk about their history.

32:34

Yeah, asked Mark Zuckerberg for how how long

32:36

Ethiopia has been at peace? Yeah,

32:39

I will, I will let I will let fucking

32:42

China know that. Um, they were completely

32:44

at peace and had no wars for the two years

32:47

after Octavian came to power. They will be happy

32:49

to have this information. Yeah, they'll be able to

32:51

edit their history books. Yeah, so

32:54

Facebook, you know, after this

32:57

race riot that kills almost seventy people, knew

32:59

they had a proble bloom in Ethiopia. Yeah,

33:03

and in true Facebook fashion, they took no

33:05

action. Um. As a result

33:08

deaths, um, they shifted no meaningful resources

33:11

into the country as ethnic and political strife

33:13

there continued to heighten, uh, fanned by

33:15

the flames of viral Facebook memes.

33:18

Now, I'm not going to pretend I have much expertise

33:20

over what's happening in Ethiopia, because,

33:23

like Facebook's executives, I know very

33:26

little about the country, which is perhaps why I

33:28

have not launched a massively influential

33:30

media product that completely restructures the

33:32

way a great deal of the nation's communications

33:35

occur, because that would be irresponsible,

33:37

Jamie, that would bears. But you would maybe want to

33:39

hire let's say more than a hundred people

33:41

too. I would want to hire a lot of people

33:44

if I were attempting to change the entire

33:46

way this country I don't understand communicates.

33:49

Um, Yeah, that would be the responsible

33:52

thing to do. But

33:54

yeah, so as

33:57

I do understand the conflict, A

33:59

lot of the ethnic tensions in the country

34:01

have kind of broken down around the president who

34:03

was in a Romo and a large number

34:06

of people, many of whom voted for him, who

34:08

are a Romo, and who hate the fact that he has

34:10

not been a giant

34:12

piece of ship to members of other ethnic groups,

34:15

Like he hasn't been racist enough for a lot of people,

34:17

and they're very angry about it. Um. And

34:20

these folks have gotten very like used

34:22

the vast hate machine that is Facebook

34:25

to assault the people that they deem a fault for

34:27

their country's problems. And one

34:29

of these people, one of the people they assaulted

34:32

was a backer of the president named Hachallo

34:34

Jundessa, who was an Aromo singer

34:36

who supported and raising up marginalized

34:39

voices within the Aromo ethnic group. Um.

34:42

So he seems like he was a pretty decent dude,

34:44

um, Hachallo Jundessa. So obviously,

34:47

this massive internet hate mob that has formed

34:49

in Ethiopia turns

34:52

its sights to this guy because he's a supporter

34:54

of the president. Earlier this year, they

34:56

decided he was like at the center of some weird

34:59

conspiracy. Think of it as like what happened to Tom

35:01

Hanks with Q and on right, Like, this

35:03

famous person becomes the center of an online

35:06

conspiracy and hundreds of Facebook pages

35:08

start filling up with misinformation about this

35:10

guy. Um and I'm gonna quote next

35:12

from a write up and vice about what happened

35:15

next quote. Hondessa

35:18

was assassinated on June twenty nine while driving

35:20

through the capital Atisa Baba. The man

35:22

police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors

35:25

that he was working as an assassin for the Aroma Liberation

35:27

Front, an armed nationalist group linked to

35:29

numerous violent attacks, and who told

35:31

the shooter that a Romeo would benefit from the death

35:34

of one of its most famous singers who

35:36

Hondessa's death at age thirty four set off

35:38

a wave of violence in the capital and his home

35:40

region of a Roma. Hundreds of people were

35:42

killed, with minorities like Christian m Harres,

35:44

Christian Aromos and garage people suffering

35:46

the biggest losses. The bloodshed was

35:49

supercharged by the almost instant and widespread

35:51

sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence

35:53

on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger.

35:56

Mobs destroyed and burned property, They lynched,

35:58

beheaded and dismembered their victims. Jesus

36:01

Christ, So yeah,

36:03

who could have predicted this after the last race

36:06

riot that killed huge numbers of people,

36:08

Not I Robert and not Mark

36:10

Zuckerberg. It is I mean,

36:12

it is truly shocking that this this is I

36:14

mean, I guess not shocking isn't even the word. But this

36:17

is all happening within about what eighteen

36:19

months of the like a very similar

36:22

horrific ethnic cleansing being pushed less

36:25

than that October of June.

36:28

Oh well there you go. Not very very

36:30

short span of time. This is occurring in um

36:34

and again Facebook does basically

36:36

nothing. Now, finally, after these race riots that kill

36:38

hundreds, Um, they

36:42

they do take some action. Um

36:45

yeah, they sent a couple of executives

36:48

to Ethiopia on a fact finding mission and

36:50

they yeah, yeah,

36:52

they went looking for some facts, looking

36:55

for some facts, magnifying glass.

36:57

Yeah. And the company issued a statement

36:59

that it is quote aware of the complexities

37:02

both within and outside the country.

37:04

These Facebook apologies

37:07

for cleaning it's just yeah

37:09

complexities. Yeah, yeah,

37:12

what we did we could be described as

37:15

complex. Yeah. Facebook says

37:17

that is deeply concerned about the issues

37:19

flagged by human rights groups. Meanwhile,

37:21

human rights groups in Ethiopia are less than

37:24

positive about what the social network has actually

37:26

done so far. According to Vice, quote, activists

37:29

say Facebook is instead relying on them in a network

37:31

of grassroots volunteers to flag content

37:34

and keep the seven hundred and fifty billion dollar

37:36

company up to speed about what's happening on the

37:38

ground. They ask you to jump on a call so

37:40

that you can give them more context. But fuck

37:42

no, I said, I'm never going to do that again. One

37:45

Ethiopian activist who has been repeatedly

37:47

asked to speak to Facebook employees told Vice

37:49

News. The activists, yeah, like they're

37:52

they're basically like, hey, we're almost

37:54

worth a trillion dollars. But can

37:56

you people who are under the gun and it individually

37:59

in day injured by our service provide

38:01

us with free labor to understand how we're

38:04

endangering you. That would be great right

38:06

there, Like we forgot to put

38:10

any protections in, but so could you

38:12

actually do this on the back end because we're getting some rough

38:14

pr right now? Are you being shot

38:16

at right now? Yeah? Anyway, we're not

38:18

going to pay you. There's

38:21

that we don't. We just don't have the money. It's

38:23

been a rough year for us. A

38:25

trillion dollar country. Mark Zuckerberg,

38:28

who bought forty five million dollars of houses

38:30

that surrounded his house so he could live in property

38:33

can't afford to pay more fact checking

38:35

teams. We're so sorry. Um,

38:38

yeah, so this is horrific.

38:41

You think Facebook might have learned

38:43

something after the last ethnic cleansing their

38:45

product helped to enable, which, if you'll remember

38:48

from our last episode, was in Myanmar. Yeah,

38:50

yes, yeah there, Uh yeah,

38:53

I didn't know about the extent of what was

38:55

going on in Ethiopius. Pretty

38:57

bad, pretty bad bad

39:02

um. And of course they helped fuel a

39:04

genocide and the master resettlement of nearly

39:07

a million people in me and Marthoro like

39:10

a Muslim people. It's shocking how

39:13

beat for beat similar a lot of the exact

39:16

same like steps and failures,

39:21

and what's happening in Ethiopia sounds

39:23

exactly like what's happening in India, where Facebook

39:25

bullshit like nonsense on Facebook lies

39:28

spreading virally have been responsible for massive

39:30

like mobs doing racial

39:32

violence that's caused hundreds of deaths. It keeps

39:34

happening. And the complete oversight

39:36

of not even having the terms and

39:39

conditions in every language

39:41

where the service has provided. It's just like, I

39:43

don't know, why would you why would

39:45

you think for even a second about a country

39:48

that you're introducing a product into

39:50

that will have a massive impact on

39:52

the society. Like, why would

39:55

you for even a second consider that and take

39:57

any actions to respond

40:00

posibly do that? Why why would you the

40:03

country that exists just a second, Mark

40:05

Zuckerberg's frame of reference. It's

40:08

part of the two hundred years of PC's bringing

40:10

us. Yes, yes,

40:13

um so yeah, we're talking about me an marm

40:15

because we have to actually go back to me and Marcus.

40:17

Some new stuff to happen there. So remember Facebook

40:20

again fuel the genocide there? Uh

40:22

and and in fact, a UN report on the genocide

40:24

and me and mar said that Facebook's failure to deal

40:27

with the spread of misinformation turned

40:29

it into a beast complicit

40:31

and mass human slaughter. The UN called

40:33

Facebook a beast for its what

40:36

it contributed to in Myanmar, which is

40:38

at least I I like it when the UN doesn't

40:41

pull their punches because they often do. That's

40:43

that's a fair appreciate

40:46

the directness. Yeah, um

40:48

so the hubbub around all this forced Mark

40:51

to actually sit down and in an interview

40:53

with Ezra Kline and engage

40:55

directly with some of the criticism for the genocide

40:58

that his company enabled. He admitted, well,

41:01

he admitted that his network had been used to incite

41:03

real world harm. Um. He did, he

41:05

did, he did, He did admit that, and

41:08

he also stated, quote, this

41:10

is certainly something that we're paying a lot

41:12

of attention to. It's a real

41:15

issue, and we want to It's a real

41:17

issue, Jamie. The genocide

41:19

is a real issue, and we want to make sure that all of the

41:21

tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech

41:24

and citing violence and basically protecting the

41:26

integrity of civil discussions that we're doing in

41:28

places like Myanmar as well as places

41:30

like the US that do get a disproportionate amount

41:32

of attention, Jamie.

41:34

Let's think back to that guy on his porch

41:36

firing blindly into the neighborhood

41:39

around you. Say, he hits your child in

41:41

the throat and she bleeds out slowly

41:44

over the course of about you know, let's say five and a

41:46

half minutes um as you desperately

41:48

try to stop the bleeding, but the ambulance doesn't

41:50

arrive in time, and you you approach this man

41:52

who's continuing to fire blindly into

41:54

the neighborhood and say, you just murdered my child,

41:57

and he says, you know, I'm paying a lot of attention

41:59

to what happened to your kid. It's a

42:01

real issue. Serious, Yeah,

42:04

and I'm going to bring tools to bear on eliminating,

42:07

you know, some of the problems that might have

42:09

caused the death once we figure out what

42:11

they are. So that's

42:13

what Mark said. But Mark, you know,

42:15

to his credit, after using all

42:17

those weasel words, did did agree that Facebook

42:20

had been used to incite harm in me

42:22

and Mark just the absolute smug

42:24

assholary of like addressing

42:27

a genocide, you are beyond

42:30

it an issue it in so

42:32

seeing there's a lot of negativity

42:35

surrounding this that you're just like, shut the

42:37

funk up. Oh my god. Yeah,

42:39

it's like somebody going to the Germans in

42:41

like n and being like, you

42:44

know, it seems like this Auschwitz thing is is

42:46

getting real ugly and we're like, yeah, we agree, it's an

42:48

issue. It's definitely an issue. It's

42:52

an issue. So my

42:54

blood pressure. Yeah, but Mark did,

42:56

he did admit that that there was a problem

42:59

with his service, So there was an issue. I

43:01

wonder what will happen if we check back in on

43:04

the story of Myanmar and Facebook. I

43:06

bet Facebook has turned a new leaf in this.

43:09

Oh, Jamie, it turns

43:11

out there's a Time magazine article on the matter

43:13

from August of this year.

43:16

You know what the title is, hit It Facebook

43:20

wanted to be a force for good in Myanmar.

43:22

Now, what is rejecting a request to help with

43:24

the genocide investigation? No,

43:28

I mean yes, totally.

43:32

Yeah. So the

43:35

issue seems to be that the Gambia, which

43:37

I didn't realize I think is the proper way

43:39

you're supposed to say it is the Gambia, not Gambia.

43:42

So it's kind of the opposite of Ukraine. It seems

43:44

like that. That's what I'm gathering from this article.

43:46

So the Gambia, which is a West African nation,

43:48

is attempting to hold me Amar accountable

43:51

for its ethnic cleansing, and they filed

43:53

an application in a US federal court seeking

43:56

information from Facebook that would help them build

43:58

their case for the International Court of Justice.

44:01

So they want to take um, they

44:03

want to take leaders in Myanmar to the International

44:06

Court of Justice and hold them accountable, and they're

44:08

they're looking for info from Facebook to help them build

44:10

their case that basically military and governmental

44:12

leaders in Myanmar were manipulating

44:15

Facebook in inauthentic ways

44:17

in order to drive violence deliberately

44:20

uh so quote. Specifically,

44:23

the Gambia is seeking documents and communications

44:26

from Myanmar military officials, as well as

44:28

information from hundreds of other pages and accounts

44:30

that Facebook took down and preserved because Facebook,

44:32

to its credit, when they took down a lot of these

44:34

things associated with pages that were associated

44:36

with the violence in Myanmar, they did preserve those

44:38

pages so that they could be potentially used

44:41

in an investigation like the Gambia

44:43

is trying to do so. The Gambia is also seeking documents

44:45

related to Facebook's internal investigations

44:47

into the matter, as well as a deposition of a relevant

44:50

Facebook executive. All of this information

44:52

could help to prove Meanmar's genocidal intent.

44:55

Back in May, the Gambia filed a similar

44:57

application in US court against Twitter uh

45:00

and the case was pulled immediately because

45:02

Twitter pretty much instantly agreed to cooperate.

45:04

Um. Which is you know that's

45:08

so embarrassing too that if Twitter

45:10

is like, no, we would love to do the right

45:13

thing. Uh. Jack

45:15

Jack Dorsey is somebody I

45:18

have intense antipathy for, and he

45:20

is also objectively the most responsible

45:22

social media ahead. When when

45:25

Jack has that's

45:27

such a bleak sentence when jack Ersey

45:29

has the moral high ground on you. You're Mick

45:32

fucked Like, that's just like

45:35

he is. He is the only person who is

45:37

in that position, a similar position

45:39

of power to Mike Mark Zuckerberg, who isn't

45:42

just like like drunkenly

45:45

driving towards the apocalypse

45:47

like Jack Dorsey clearly

45:49

is capable of feeling guilt and thinks

45:52

genocide is bad. That's

45:55

all I'll say about Jack Dorsey. But that's

45:57

what that he is capable of of of

46:00

caring to some extent, which is why his

46:03

company cooperated immediately

46:05

in an investigation about a genocide.

46:07

Well, and if you're listening to this episode in the

46:10

future and you're like, how could that be true, just just

46:12

check the date and maybe he's done something horrible

46:16

and yeah, he may have finally computed

46:19

his robot suit and be carrying

46:21

out genocide against all of Portugal or

46:23

something. I don't know what Jack Dorsey's secret desires

46:26

are, um, but you know,

46:28

but yeah, I do know what you do know, Robert,

46:31

I don't know where I'm what I do know? Yeah, what

46:33

do you know? Yeah? I know a lot

46:35

of things that I think would be fun to do in Minecraft.

46:38

But I guess we shouldn't ye product,

46:51

We're back. We're earlier

46:55

this month, UM, Facebook UH

46:57

filed its opposition to the Gambias application

47:00

that they received basic information about,

47:03

you know, to help them prosecute a genocide.

47:05

Facebook complained that their requests were extraordinarily

47:08

broad and unduly intrusive

47:11

or burdensome, and they called upon

47:13

the U S District Court in the in d C to reject

47:15

the application. UH largely because

47:17

the Gambia failed to quote identify accounts

47:20

with sufficient specificity. Now this

47:22

is interesting because the Gambia was

47:24

incredibly specific, and in fact, they named

47:27

seventeen officials to military units

47:29

and several dozen very specific pages

47:32

and accounts that they wanted the information for. They

47:34

really could not have been more specific

47:37

about what they wanted. Um yeah.

47:40

Facebook also takes issue with the fact that the Gambia

47:42

is seeking information that dates back to two thousand

47:44

twelve, UM, saying that, like, that's not really

47:47

relevant, and the Gambia is pointing out that, like,

47:49

well, but the desire of groups

47:52

of people to commit genocide doesn't just happen

47:54

overnight. It builds over time,

47:56

and Facebook is where it built over

47:58

time. And this is something we have

48:01

to document both for our court case against

48:03

the people who committed that genocide and for

48:05

history's sake. And Facebook is saying

48:08

that like, well, no acknowledging that acknowledging

48:10

that basically means acknowledging we're currently

48:13

contributing to what will become genocide

48:15

in the very near future, and that's

48:17

gonna be bad for us. So like

48:19

the fucking hubris of Facebook

48:22

attempting to call the shots of like, well, that's

48:24

not relevant. It's like, well, you your whole

48:26

thing is, You've clearly demonstrated you have

48:28

no idea what's going on or what the context

48:31

of this conflict is. But sure, yeah,

48:35

by all means, by all means. So

48:37

if you actually try to take stock of the scale

48:40

of the problem of political manipulation on Facebook,

48:42

you quickly find yourself spiraling

48:45

into just overwhelmed horror

48:47

um. Because it's not just like the

48:50

cases that we've kind of talked about so far where

48:52

hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people have

48:55

been murdered. Those are the most spectacular

48:57

cases, and they're the easiest to be like, here

48:59

is the harm. This number

49:01

of people were killed in race riots that started

49:04

on Facebook. Um, But it is

49:07

contributing to the death

49:09

of democracies worldwide

49:11

on a scale that staggering when

49:13

you when you start to lay it out. In

49:15

a year by jan and Honduras, corrupt heads

49:18

of government and political parties have been caught operating

49:20

networks of fake accounts to manipulate public

49:23

opinion. In India, Ukraine,

49:25

Bolivia and Ecuador, there have been

49:28

coordinated campaigns caught operating in

49:30

violation of the social networks rules to

49:32

influence elections. One of the

49:34

reasons we know about all this is

49:36

a former Facebook data scientist named

49:38

Sophie Zang. Sophie wrote

49:40

a sixty six hundred word memo to

49:42

her former co workers after she was let go

49:45

for desperately blowing the wisht whistle on

49:47

Facebook's ethically criminal behavior,

49:50

and plus Feed obtained a copy of that memo

49:52

and they published a really good article on it just

49:54

days before I started work on this article. It's actually

49:57

what kind of made me feel like a new

49:59

episode on Mark was necessary. And

50:01

I'm gonna quote from that article now. This

50:04

is Sophie writing. In the three years

50:06

I've spent at Facebook, I found multiple blatant

50:08

attempts by foreign national governments to abuse

50:10

our platform on vast scales to mislead their

50:12

own citizenry and caused international

50:14

news on multiple occasions, wrote

50:17

Zaying. Her LinkedIn profile said

50:19

she worked as the data scientists for the Facebook

50:21

site Integrity Fake Engagement team.

50:24

Um so that was her job. Now. BuzzFeed didn't

50:26

publish her letter directly because it contained a

50:28

lot of personal info, but they included

50:30

a a bullet point list summarizing

50:33

her allegations. And I'm going to read that

50:35

now because again it's so it's a nightmare

50:39

quote. It took Facebook's leaders

50:41

nine months to act on a coordinated campaign

50:43

that used thousands of inauthentic assets

50:46

to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez

50:48

of Honduras on a massive scale to mislead

50:50

the Honduran people. Two weeks after Facebook

50:53

took action against the perpetrators in July, they returned,

50:55

leading to a game of whack a mole between Zaying

50:57

and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which

51:00

are still active. In a Jeer

51:02

bay Jan Zang discovered the ruling political

51:04

party utilized thousands of inauthentic assets

51:07

to harass the opposition and moss. Facebook

51:09

began looking into the issue a year after Zang

51:12

reported the investigation is still

51:14

ongoing, saying in her colleagues

51:16

removed ten point five million fake

51:18

reactions and fans from high profile politicians

51:21

in Brazil and in the US in the two thousand

51:23

eighteen elections. In February

51:25

two thousand nineteen, a NATO researcher informed

51:27

Facebook that quote he'd obtained Russian

51:29

inauthentic activity on a high profile US

51:32

political figure that we didn't catch. Zang

51:35

removed the activity, dousing the immediate

51:37

fire. She wrote, Zang discovered

51:40

inauthentic activity, a Facebook term

51:42

for engagement from bod accounts and coordinated

51:44

manual accounts in Bolivia and Ecuador,

51:47

but chose not to prioritize it

51:49

due to her workload. The amount of

51:51

power she had as a mid level employee

51:54

to make decisions about a country's political

51:56

outcomes took a toll on her health,

51:59

so she consciously realized she was

52:01

ignoring actions

52:04

that were shattering the democracies

52:06

of whole nations because she had

52:08

bigger fish to fry, and

52:11

that was the decisions she got to make without

52:13

asking anybody as a midlevel employee

52:16

at Facebook, because they cared so

52:18

little about what was happening

52:20

in these countries, right, I mean, even the fact

52:23

that that would be delegated to one year

52:25

is absurd. It's unspeakable.

52:28

Yea. After becoming

52:31

aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish

52:33

Health Ministry's Facebook page during the current COVID

52:35

nineteen pandemic, Zeyg helped find and remove

52:38

six hundred and seventy two thousand fake accounts

52:40

acting on similar targets globally, including

52:43

in the US. In India, she worked

52:45

to remove a politically sophisticated network

52:47

of more than a thousand actors working to influence

52:49

the local elections taking place in Delhi in

52:52

February. Facebook never publicly disclosed

52:54

this network or that it had been taken down.

52:58

So I want you to remember he yeah,

53:00

what are you? Are you just trying to cope

53:02

with all that right now? I'm

53:05

looking through this story as well, and yeah, four

53:07

days ago. It's it's unbelievable.

53:10

I mean, just this should be the number one

53:12

story in the world, and Mark Zuckerberg should

53:14

be in custody as a result of it. I have no

53:17

fucking clue this just happened

53:19

there. I mean, just this

53:23

is and I am not first off, I understand

53:26

that Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. I am not exaggerating

53:28

when I say most of the Nazis,

53:31

individual Nazis tried in Nuremberg.

53:33

We're not personally guilty of

53:35

crimes on this scale. Absolutely,

53:38

I mean. And and the fact that I just

53:41

I'm wrapping my head around

53:43

the fact that if you know, while she

53:45

was employed there, if this, if this employee

53:48

got a cold, if

53:50

this employee like caught a bug,

53:53

Yeah, people, there would be a body count

53:55

attached to it like that is just fucking

53:58

unconscionable. And put

54:00

that on I just yeah, it's it's

54:03

unbelievable. Remember is he

54:06

a free man? Right now? We're just

54:08

getting started, Jamie. I

54:13

want you to remember Zang was just one

54:15

employee whose time was severely

54:17

limited. This is just a selection

54:20

of the things she uncovered. Um

54:23

and these a

54:26

mid level employee. Now, the

54:29

scale at which Facebook is being used

54:31

by a variety of actors to manipulate

54:33

and hack global politics is

54:35

truly unprecedented. The social

54:37

network feels so little responsibility

54:39

to deal with this that Zang was essentially alone

54:42

in her work, and her findings were never publicized

54:44

unless doing so brought some material

54:47

benefit to Facebook. While attempting

54:49

to lay out the scale of the problem. Zang

54:51

noted, quote, there was so much

54:53

violating behavior worldwide that it was left

54:56

to my personal assessment of which cases

54:58

to further investigate, to file tasks,

55:00

and to escalate for prioritization afterwards.

55:03

Now, despite the fact that Zang

55:06

found evidence of vast influence networks

55:08

actively subverting dozens of democratic elections,

55:10

the higher ups and Facebook showed basically no interest

55:13

in this, and she was again left alone

55:15

to make decisions that would influence the lives

55:17

and futures of tens of millions of people.

55:20

Zang wrote, quote, with no oversight

55:23

whatsoever. I was left in a situation

55:25

where I was trusted with immense influence.

55:27

In my spare time, a manager

55:29

on Strategic Response mused to myself

55:32

that most of the world outside the West was

55:34

effectively the wild West, with

55:36

myself as the part time dictator.

55:38

He meant the statement as a compliment,

55:41

but it illustrated the immense pressures on

55:43

me. Well, it's and and how many people were

55:45

working in this capacity and other regions.

55:48

I guess, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean

55:50

that. The fact is, I don't think very many. She was

55:52

basically the only person dealing with the world

55:54

outside of the West on this at

55:57

this level of responsibility because

55:59

they care so little about having anyone

56:01

monitor it, And like the fact

56:04

that one of her managers just kind of blithely

56:06

walked by and said like

56:09

casually, oh, you're kind of like the dictator

56:11

of the entire world outside of the West right

56:13

now, neat and then walks off

56:16

like that's the problem.

56:20

Do you want to go to an oxygen bar later?

56:22

Like this is just on. It's

56:27

struggling to rout my head around and

56:29

the the outrageous I

56:31

am without you know, I can't go into too much

56:33

detail at this, but I've known a lot of

56:35

Facebook employees and I've worked

56:37

with a number of them. I've I've been to

56:40

Facebook facilities. I've spent a lot more time

56:42

around the people who work at Facebook than a lot of people,

56:44

and they're very They tend to be very nice

56:47

people. I like almost everyone I've met who is

56:49

a Facebook employee, very intelligent,

56:51

motivated, um people who

56:53

care a lot about what they do in the ethics

56:55

of it. The problem is the people

56:58

at the top UM who refuse

57:01

to allow this to be hard

57:03

to who have the resources to

57:06

do what they are doing with at least a modicum

57:08

of responsibility and refuse

57:11

to do it and actively stymy their

57:13

employees, who again are mostly decent

57:16

people from acting responsibly.

57:18

Well sure, I mean decent people enact

57:21

the agendas of indecent

57:23

people all the time. Like there's I

57:26

just I mean it speaks to We

57:28

talked about this the entire last I recovered

57:31

fucking guy too. But just like the fact

57:33

that something so gigantic can exist

57:35

with such little oversight

57:39

period, it's just like what

57:41

body count? Does that start

57:43

to matter to anybody?

57:46

Yeah? Now, the reason Mark Zuckerberg

57:49

and his executives felt safe ignoring many of these

57:51

individual cases of abuse is that they

57:53

tend to occur in foreign countries that Americans

57:55

didn't care about. And again, all Mark Zuckerberg

57:58

gives a shit about as the West and I in China

58:00

to We'll give him credit for that. He cares it,

58:02

clearly cares about what happens in China. He

58:04

does speak great Chinese like, so the Western

58:07

China and everything outside of it might as well be

58:09

a fucking dial tone to him. Yeah,

58:11

we've got about three people on the rest

58:13

of the pet I'm gonna quote from

58:15

Buzzfeeds right up of Zang's letter again quote

58:18

it is an open secret within the civic integrity

58:20

space, which is where she worked in that Facebook

58:23

short term decisions are largely motivated

58:25

by pr and the potential for negative

58:28

decision. She wrote, noting that she was

58:30

told directly at a summit

58:32

that anything published in the New York Times

58:34

or the Washington Post would obtain elevated

58:37

priority. It's why I've seen

58:39

priorities of escalation shoot up when

58:41

others start threatening to go to the press, and

58:44

why I was informed by a leader in my organization

58:46

that my civic work was not impactful,

58:48

under the rationale that if the problems

58:51

were meaningful, they would have attracted attention,

58:53

became a press fire, and convinced the company

58:56

to devote more attention to the space. So

59:00

when less white journalists write about

59:02

something Facebook's done that got people killed,

59:04

it doesn't matter. Don't care. Yeah, I

59:06

mean it's I

59:09

mean, we did, we did,

59:11

We did know that. But I mean, just on

59:14

on this. But she was told that by

59:16

someone who was her boss. Yeah, yeah,

59:19

yeah, that is just I

59:22

it's a lot of pressure on the Post in the New York

59:24

Times too, Okay,

59:28

So I guess I I hope

59:30

I speak for everyone when I say I

59:32

care about this, Yeah it's important.

59:35

Yeah, I give a shit about Ethiopia.

59:37

Please stop enabling race riots.

59:40

Mark um So. In

59:42

February of two nineteen, a NATO

59:44

strategic communications researcher, like

59:46

I said, reached out and like warned the company that he that

59:49

was the thing about, like he'd seen evidence of

59:51

inauthentic Russian activity backing like

59:54

a high profile US figure and

59:56

yeah, the researcher warned them that

59:58

he would be briefing Congress with his findings the

1:00:01

next day. And this the company cared

1:00:03

about, so Zaying was sent in to minimize the fallout.

1:00:05

She was able to investigate the case, figure out what was

1:00:07

going on, and remove the activity immediately,

1:00:09

so that by the time this guy went up in front of Congress,

1:00:12

they had taken care of the issue. Um

1:00:15

And shortly thereafter, the same researcher

1:00:17

tried another experiment um

1:00:20

where he like made a report to them but

1:00:22

didn't include a threat, and nothing

1:00:24

happened for six months. Um So eventually

1:00:27

he sent a report to the press and it finally caused

1:00:29

a pr fire. But he just like like just

1:00:31

kind of approved that, like, yeah, they don't care unless

1:00:33

there's a chance that they will get publicly yelled

1:00:36

at the actual harm means

1:00:38

nothing to them any and even so when

1:00:40

someone publicly yells at them, you'd get that fucking

1:00:43

speech again. Of like to realize that there

1:00:45

is a problem. There is a problem.

1:00:48

So Zang came to feel that the main focus of her

1:00:50

job, rather than actually combating this

1:00:52

behavior in reducing harm, was to help

1:00:55

the company deal with what she called large

1:00:57

scale problems. And this doesn't

1:00:59

mean a more serious problem. It means

1:01:01

a problem that affects enough people that they

1:01:03

have to care about it. So we're actually not talking about

1:01:05

genocides here. We're talking about spam

1:01:08

networks. Because spam networks impact

1:01:10

a lot of people, and so they're a larger priority

1:01:13

than disinformation going viral and leading

1:01:15

to race riots. Uh, spam is

1:01:17

a big problem, so it outweighs

1:01:19

tiny problems like say election fraud

1:01:21

by the president of Honduras. Zaying

1:01:24

came to feel the main focus of her job, rather

1:01:26

than combatting this behavior reducing harm,

1:01:28

was to help the company deal with these problems.

1:01:31

Um and yeah, this meant that spam networks

1:01:33

were a bigger issue than than things

1:01:35

that cause death. Uh. Yeah,

1:01:38

it's it's so

1:01:41

let's let's talk. Let's zoom in on Honduras,

1:01:44

on the thing that is less of a problem than spam

1:01:47

networks. So they don't say

1:01:49

this lately. This is the most upset I've ever

1:01:51

been during this show. It's horrible.

1:01:54

So saying finds evidence

1:01:56

that the president of Honduras and his party

1:01:58

are using multiple fake accounts

1:02:00

to boost engagement and spread content that is

1:02:03

benefiting them in the lead up to a presidential

1:02:05

election. Um and Zane was

1:02:07

able to make a connection to the Honduran leader

1:02:09

because an administrator for the president's Facebook

1:02:12

page had been was caught. She caught

1:02:14

him basically running hundreds of fake assets,

1:02:17

not even trying to hide it. Uh.

1:02:19

And she reported all of these thousands of

1:02:21

fake accounts and a clear attempt to manipulate a

1:02:23

national election to Facebook's threat intelligence

1:02:25

and policy review teams, both of which

1:02:28

took months to give any sort of response.

1:02:30

Um and yeah it

1:02:33

So it took almost a year to take down this operation,

1:02:35

which Facebook announced in July of two thousand

1:02:38

nineteen. Um and taking

1:02:40

it down didn't actually do anything because the operation

1:02:42

got set back up again, which

1:02:44

Facebook never disclosed, and they didn't take

1:02:47

it down again. So it took about

1:02:49

two weeks. Yeah, and it's still

1:02:51

going on right now. Uh. And this president

1:02:54

who created this massive you know, or who

1:02:56

had this massive fraudulent network

1:02:59

set up to help him regain election

1:03:02

one reelection under circumstances, international

1:03:05

monitors and basically everyone describes

1:03:07

as fraudulent. Um. Facebook

1:03:10

felt comfortable letting the slide after their first

1:03:12

sweet because in the grand scheme of things, Honduras

1:03:14

is a small country. As Zang wrote,

1:03:16

the civic aspect was discounted

1:03:18

because of its small volume. It's disproportionate

1:03:21

impact ignored the civic aspect, of

1:03:23

course, being that a president

1:03:26

with dictatorial ambitions uh,

1:03:28

fraudulently won an election um

1:03:31

in part due to what he was able

1:03:33

to do on Facebook. So yeah,

1:03:38

that it's it's

1:03:40

frustrating that the civic aspect is

1:03:43

like the term Facebook uses for entire

1:03:46

nations democracies, which are

1:03:48

less of a priority to them than like a spam

1:03:50

network. And this is something Zang came

1:03:52

to understand. She she got a pretty good

1:03:54

eye for how Mark and her other bosses

1:03:57

thought during her time doing this job and

1:03:59

how long would she in this position? Sorry years?

1:04:03

Yeah, so face she figured out over

1:04:06

time kind of how to manipulate Mark and

1:04:08

other executives in the company in order

1:04:10

to get them to act on certain things they would

1:04:13

otherwise ignore Facebook. Yeah,

1:04:17

I mean mainly making them think

1:04:19

that there might be some sort of like

1:04:23

outcry against them. Facebook uses an internal

1:04:25

company messaging app for employee communications,

1:04:28

and since reporting her concerns about potential

1:04:30

genocides didn't seem to matter, Zang

1:04:32

started skipping the steps to officially report

1:04:34

problems and just posting openly to

1:04:37

her coworkers about specific things she

1:04:39

was finding, because if she could get her colleagues

1:04:41

outraged and talking, she could force management

1:04:44

to care. Quote in the office, I realized

1:04:46

that my viewpoints weren't respected unless I acted

1:04:49

like an arrogant asshole. So Zaying

1:04:51

asked Facebook to do more in terms of finding

1:04:53

and stopping malicious activity related to elections

1:04:56

and political activity um and She

1:04:58

says that she was turned down because human

1:05:00

resources are limited. She was then ordered

1:05:02

to stop focusing on civic work. I was

1:05:04

told that Facebook would no longer have further

1:05:07

need for my services if I refused.

1:05:11

Okay, okay, so stop talking about the genocide

1:05:14

or fire you or you don't

1:05:16

have health insurance? Got it? Another terrifying

1:05:18

case she ran into was a year by Jan

1:05:21

Now in that country, Zang discovered another vast

1:05:23

network of an authentic accounts being used by the president

1:05:26

and his party to spread propaganda and

1:05:28

influence an election. The whole operation

1:05:30

is very similar to the one run by Russia's Internet

1:05:33

Research agency. It involved quote dedicated

1:05:35

employees who worked nine to six Monthey through Friday

1:05:37

work to create millions of comments targeting members

1:05:39

of the opposition and reporters critical to

1:05:42

the president. Uh Facebook never publicized

1:05:44

what Zang found there, nor did they take any action against

1:05:46

it. Zang wrote that they didn't care enough

1:05:49

to stop it because it's like it's sucking a jerby Jan.

1:05:51

Do you even know where jearby Jan is? No? Fuck them,

1:05:54

fuck their democracy. Buzz

1:05:58

yeah, two hundred years apiece, that's what we're um.

1:06:01

BuzzFeed actually reached out to some journalists in a

1:06:03

Jerbaijan about their experiences with this

1:06:05

network and about Facebook, and those

1:06:08

journalists pointed out that, in addition to not

1:06:10

stopping this inauthentic activity network,

1:06:12

uh Facebook sometimes removed the pages of Humans

1:06:15

Rights Act human rights activists due to reports

1:06:17

from trolls and ignored journalists

1:06:19

begging them that, like, this is a real person doing important

1:06:22

work, please restore their account, because

1:06:24

like, why would they care now? None

1:06:26

of this is unique to jer Baijan, and in fact,

1:06:29

all of it happens to some extent in the United

1:06:31

States. To Facebook just feels

1:06:33

more pressure to act here. Um the

1:06:35

difference with the United States, yes again

1:06:37

that they have to pretend that they care here now.

1:06:41

As soon as they operated somewhere off the beaten path.

1:06:43

From an American's perspective, anything goes.

1:06:46

In Bolivia, for example, Zang found inauthentic

1:06:48

activity supporting an opposite the opposition

1:06:51

presidential candidate in two thousand nineteen.

1:06:53

She chose not to focus on it because she just

1:06:55

had so many other genocides to deal with, and

1:06:58

a month later, a coup racked the nation, leading

1:07:00

to widespread protests and dozens of deaths

1:07:03

um great

1:07:05

She made the same call in Ecuador after

1:07:07

a two thousand and seventeen election that many claim

1:07:10

was fraudulent. Prior to the vote, Zang

1:07:12

found massive and authentic activity supporting

1:07:14

the ruling party, who later won the election

1:07:16

under suspicious circumstances. There

1:07:18

were horrifying consequences to this. Three

1:07:21

years later, the coronavirus hit and this fraudulent

1:07:24

government was in charge. They did not do

1:07:26

a good job of being in charge. And I'm gonna

1:07:28

quote now from a New York Times article on are

1:07:31

on Ecuador's response to the coronavirus. Quote

1:07:34

with bodies abandoned on sidewalk, slumped

1:07:36

in wheelchairs, packed into cardboard coffins,

1:07:38

and stacked by the hundreds and morgues. It is

1:07:40

clear that Ecuador has been devastated by the coronavirus,

1:07:44

but the epidemic is even worse than many people

1:07:46

in the country recognize. The death toll

1:07:48

in Ecuador during the outbreak was fifteen times

1:07:50

higher than the official number of COVID nineteen deaths

1:07:52

reported by the government, according to an analysis

1:07:55

of mortality data by The New York Times. The

1:07:57

numbers suggests that the South American country

1:07:59

is suffering one of the worst outbreaks in the world,

1:08:02

thanks in large part to the

1:08:04

incompetent government that was fraudulently

1:08:07

elected, thanks in a significant

1:08:09

part to the Facebook campaign, the illegal

1:08:12

and fraudulent Facebook campaign. It ran that

1:08:14

Facebook and didn't have time to care about

1:08:16

where One midlevel employee was threatened

1:08:19

with having a livelihood removed

1:08:21

if she didn't shut the hell up

1:08:23

about it. I am certain Mark

1:08:25

Zuckerberg lost no sleepover Ecuador,

1:08:28

O Bolivia, or any of these other places. But

1:08:30

Sophie Zang definitely did and

1:08:32

probably will for the rest of her life. As

1:08:35

she wrote in that letter, I have made

1:08:37

countless decisions in this vein, from

1:08:39

Iraq to Indonesia, from Italy to El

1:08:41

Salvador. Individually, the impact

1:08:44

was likely small in each case, but the world

1:08:46

is a vast place. Although I made the best

1:08:48

decision I could based on the knowledge available

1:08:50

at the time, Ultimately I was the one

1:08:52

who made the decision not to push more or prioritize

1:08:55

further in each case. And I know that

1:08:58

I have blood on my hands

1:09:00

by now. That's I

1:09:03

mean, she's not wrong, but

1:09:06

that's just yah she's doing. Before

1:09:09

she was fired, Facebook offered

1:09:11

Sophie's sixty four dollars in

1:09:13

severance if she would agree to sign a non

1:09:15

disparagement clause, which would state that

1:09:18

she basically couldn't talk at all about her work, which

1:09:20

is just putting a price

1:09:22

on the lives of people, like

1:09:25

it's just yeah, and not a high one.

1:09:28

She turned down the money, so

1:09:33

that should be able to sleep at night in the future.

1:09:36

Yeah, yeah, I mean, well,

1:09:39

I mean getting

1:09:41

into the ethics of that is just a fucking

1:09:47

she. I mean she definitely should

1:09:50

not be sleeping well. And

1:09:52

then on the other hand, if she was

1:09:55

not the one point the lovers on some on

1:09:57

something like that, they would have found someone

1:10:00

to do it, and probably someone worse at

1:10:02

it who cared less. Like I don't. I

1:10:05

actually don't attribute much moral

1:10:07

blame to her, other than maybe not blowing

1:10:09

the whistle earlier, just because like, when you're in that

1:10:11

position, there's a strong case to be made

1:10:14

that like I if I, if I'm here, I can

1:10:16

at least do something, and if

1:10:18

I leave even less will be done. Um,

1:10:21

which seems verifiably true. And

1:10:24

yes, yeah, yeah, anyway,

1:10:28

Jamie, that's part one. Awesome.

1:10:34

What could I'm like, well, could

1:10:36

well? Could? I don't Well, I guess

1:10:38

I'll find out. Yeah, this

1:10:42

has been truly horrible.

1:10:45

Yep, do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah?

1:10:49

What do you want to What do you want to sell today? Jamie?

1:10:51

Absolutely fucking not. Well. Okay,

1:10:54

uh wait does this come out next week? When does this

1:10:56

come out? Yeah? This is next week. We have no backlog

1:10:58

anymore. I decided

1:11:01

to spend sixty or seventy

1:11:03

nights out rioting just okay,

1:11:05

well, you know, things come up, things come

1:11:07

up. To put it like Mark Zuckerberg would

1:11:10

things come up. There was an issue, There

1:11:12

was an issue, and we're actually keeping

1:11:14

a really close eye on it. That's you right

1:11:16

now that I uh, yeah, you

1:11:18

can. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram if you want.

1:11:21

Um. The Bechtel Cast, my podcast,

1:11:23

is doing a fundraiser

1:11:26

for a candidate named

1:11:28

Fatima like Ball zubertful,

1:11:31

she's the best. She's running in District sixty

1:11:33

four, California. So we're doing a fundraiser

1:11:35

for her. We're reading the entire script

1:11:37

of Twilight uh this Friday,

1:11:40

So if you donate to her play.

1:11:44

I purchased all of my Edward

1:11:46

Cullen cosplay Extremely

1:11:49

Tall and incredibly toxic. These

1:11:52

are traits that we share and so I

1:11:54

am playing Edward Cullen.

1:11:57

Um, so yeah, I would just say

1:12:00

go to that, donate to Fatima's campaign,

1:12:02

and funk quarky baby yeah

1:12:06

right. Aimed

1:12:08

on that note, I don't know who four B is,

1:12:10

but episodes

1:12:14

gone