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Sounds Music Radio podcasts,

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Where. Would you not lose? All.

1:47

The do yours though. no problem.

1:49

Thanks or we would we would

1:51

produce a Caitlin and I are

1:53

in a hotel conference room in

1:55

Minnesota in the American Midwest. We've.

1:58

Come to me a young he. European called

2:01

Abram. Limits. On this

2:03

phone Off. As we set up

2:05

all recording equipment, abraham quietly weights,

2:08

Double checking the documents and screen grabs

2:10

his brought along to show us. All.

2:14

The evidence he's meticulously collected ever

2:16

since he fled Ethiopia and his

2:18

now abandoned family home a couple

2:21

of years ago. And

2:23

that was because of to Facebook posts

2:26

that changed his life. It.

2:29

All starts in October. Twenty Twenty

2:31

One. Abrahamic. Just

2:33

turned thirty and is midway through

2:35

a Phd on peace and development.

2:38

It's more than just study. Fab ran

2:40

his family of from two grades an

2:42

area or in the far north of

2:44

Ethiopia. For. Almost a

2:47

year, a war has been raging

2:49

between forces allied to the Ethiopian

2:51

Federal Government and militants from the

2:54

T. Gray and People's Liberation Front.

2:57

There's. Extreme brutality on both sides,

2:59

but now ordinary to Graham's

3:01

are being targeted and murdered

3:03

sometimes with the support of

3:05

the Ethiopian government. It

3:08

was supported by. A

3:11

lot deeper than a the media

3:13

says specially the social media. Those

3:16

people with that aside

3:19

and another feather com

3:21

swear spreading hate. Opera

3:23

Harm sees how the conflict is

3:25

being amplified on social media. Rumors.

3:28

Swirled about to gray and plotting

3:30

to overthrow the government and need

3:32

to be eradicated. When.

3:34

Of that I scrolled is look at a

3:37

stop to see some classics. Past.

3:39

Six. Bodies didn't

3:42

get them as such. see. This,

3:45

as did what is. It

3:47

was of the. The.

3:49

Violence offline is so bad the

3:52

Human Rights Watch say that he

3:54

grains are being ethnically cleansed. I

3:56

think for him in the way

3:58

on country though. It came to.

4:02

Really nice to the to glass.

4:04

as if we can phone. But.

4:09

Opera him and his family lived far away

4:11

from the fighting. And his

4:13

father my irate Amery upper house is

4:15

a renowned professor of chemistry at the

4:18

University of had done. He's

4:20

not involved in politics. That alone,

4:22

Militant groups, I remember

4:24

that he was really sad by

4:26

the war. That

4:28

he never thought that things wouldn't wins

4:30

since for him and but that with

4:33

who was busy in his support him

4:35

he's a professor of Chemistry. respected chemistry

4:37

professor is not going to be involved

4:39

in the bloodshed. And

4:42

then one day Abram gets a message from

4:44

his friend. Go on

4:46

Facebook right now he says as

4:48

talking about your father. It

4:58

all started with a dream to

5:01

connect the world. we are as

5:03

gods so we damn well better

5:05

get good at it for the

5:07

obsession with growth and engagement caused

5:10

problems, bleak posts of life sucking

5:12

content for push to her often

5:14

algorithmically social media company started policing

5:16

their sights more than ever. We

5:19

realize we have to do this

5:21

and then we did it. The

5:23

wine. Everyone was watching the Us

5:26

and Europe a much. Bigger problem

5:28

was unfolding in other parts

5:30

of the world. Places where

5:32

was posted online can turn

5:34

entire societies upside down. I'm

5:53

Jamie Balls It and for Bbc

5:55

Radio Four this is the gatekeepers.

5:58

Episode Seven: Rest of

6:01

World. The

6:06

first boss he. And

6:09

his name is. Profits. Of

6:11

martyrdom out of others are

6:13

working in Panda University. When.

6:15

Opera. Hum. Log into Facebook in

6:18

October. Twenty Twenty One. He knows

6:20

immediately that his father's life could

6:22

be in danger. A

6:25

popular Facebook page called B

6:27

D use staff is posted

6:29

the professors photograph and accused

6:31

him of carrying out abuses

6:33

and fleeing to America. The.

6:36

Accusation is vague but in

6:38

the comments some a demanding

6:40

action. The. Other comments with.

6:44

Why you with your time by the icing

6:46

on his be go and take action. They.

6:49

Were calling action. He's a snake.

6:52

Go and drink his blood. Another

6:56

reads you sit idly by

6:59

if you are a true

7:01

man, get organized and clean

7:03

them. I knew that

7:05

online posts do have of land

7:07

Christmas. And

7:10

images that reading your father's

7:12

death sentence on fiscal. I

7:16

knew that it, it was, It is it. A

7:21

second post soon appears on the

7:23

same Facebook page. It's saying that

7:25

the professor is embezzling funds for

7:27

to grade militants secretly financing and

7:30

supporting them. That post includes the

7:32

name of the neighborhood where he

7:34

lives. None.

7:37

Of was posted about Abrahams father is

7:39

true. But in the midst

7:42

of a violent conflict, even friends who'd

7:44

known the professor for years start to

7:46

wonder as he been living a double

7:49

life. From. My background

7:51

of people, Believe.

7:55

What? they just traded on system could

7:57

not only hit another any any any

7:59

for on Facebook. Abraham

8:02

is away at university but he immediately

8:04

phones his father to tell him he

8:06

needs to hide out for a few

8:08

days. His response

8:11

to my comment to my worries was

8:14

Abraham this

8:16

is how people get between on Facebook

8:18

and I'm

8:20

not a criminal person. His

8:24

father's not even on Facebook so

8:27

Abraham starts reporting the posts to

8:29

the platform requesting that they be

8:31

deleted. How often

8:34

did you try and report the

8:36

stuff? Multiple times. So I was

8:38

trying to catch the attention of

8:41

Facebook. Did you think

8:43

when you reported to Facebook to

8:46

say remove this please did

8:49

you think they would remove it were you

8:51

expecting it to be deleted? I

8:54

was expecting them to take serious

8:57

measures but no

9:00

I never get any response. Abraham

9:03

begins to wonder why

9:05

isn't anyone deleting these posts?

9:08

Is anyone even seeing my complaints?

9:15

I go with the flow. I've learned that I'm just

9:18

a leaf in a river. I try not to

9:20

pay too much attention to

9:22

what's before or what's behind me because otherwise I go crazy.

9:25

I meet Francis Haugen in a small

9:27

pokey room at an Oxford University College.

9:30

It's one of those cold drizzly

9:32

autumn days suddenly made atmospheric when

9:34

you're sitting in a creaky old

9:36

building. Maybe that's why

9:38

Francis is in a reflective mood. I like

9:41

the philosophy. Oh

9:45

sorry, yeah a bit closer. So well

9:47

then we can just start. Hi I'm

9:50

Francis Haugen. I'm an algorithmic expert

9:52

and a former product manager at

9:54

Facebook. You might know me as

9:56

the Facebook whistleblower from the Facebook files. It

10:00

took a while to get Frances to speak to us.

10:02

She mostly lives in Puerto Rico, but

10:05

she's in the UK giving lectures

10:07

about why she decided to copy

10:09

and send thousands of pages of

10:12

internal Facebook documents to the Wall

10:14

Street Journal, including

10:16

what she knows about the impact

10:18

of Facebook in Ethiopia. The

10:21

only thing that I wanted when I decided

10:23

the public needed to get involved was

10:25

I just didn't want to carry the

10:27

burden of knowing that I had a

10:29

secret that could cost people their lives. When

10:33

Facebook asked Frances in 2019 if

10:35

she wanted to work for them,

10:37

she was already a Silicon Valley

10:39

veteran. She'd spent years at

10:41

Google and then at Pinterest. Facebook

10:44

didn't appeal to her much at first, but

10:47

then she started to reconsider, because

10:49

years earlier Frances had become sick,

10:52

really sick, with celiac disease.

10:55

A friend called Jonas had helped her piece

10:58

her life together again. And

11:00

so he came into my life initially just as like

11:02

a helper, as I like

11:04

literally relearned to walk. And

11:07

we ended up becoming really good friends. And

11:10

during the 2016 election, something

11:12

strange happened to Jonas. He

11:15

started getting stuck down online rabbit

11:17

holes, buying into crazy

11:19

conspiracies. After Bernie

11:21

Sanders lost in 2016, he went online

11:24

to find people who could commiserate with

11:26

him. And some of

11:28

those places ended up being kind of dark. It

11:30

was heartbreaking for me. And

11:33

I lost him. And

11:36

if I could keep one other person

11:38

from feeling that pain, it felt like it

11:40

was worth it. And so I

11:42

wrote back and said, the only thing I would

11:44

be willing to do at Facebook is work on

11:47

misinformation. Initially,

11:51

Frances was meant to work on

11:53

misinformation in the United States, but

11:56

soon her role changed. early

12:00

days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had

12:02

dreamt of connecting everyone on the

12:05

planet. To attract

12:07

new users, the company had set

12:09

up an initiative called Free Basics,

12:12

which gave low-income populations free access

12:14

to Facebook. It was

12:16

rolled out in several countries, especially in

12:18

Africa and Asia. Thanks

12:21

to Free Basics, in some places,

12:23

Facebook was the internet. And

12:26

even though Ethiopia didn't have Free

12:28

Basics, Facebook became the most popular

12:30

social network there, too. But

12:34

with that came problems. The

12:37

year before Francis joined Facebook, a

12:39

UN report into the genocide in

12:41

Myanmar had said that Facebook could

12:43

be a useful instrument for those

12:45

seeking to spread hate, and

12:48

had been slow and ineffective at dealing

12:50

with it. Francis was

12:52

asked to figure out how to

12:54

make Facebook safer in what she

12:56

describes as more fragile places around

12:58

the world. And

13:00

it was a much bigger job than she

13:02

expected. I

13:05

had a panic attack after six months on this job,

13:08

because the thing that I was carrying around was

13:10

this idea that I had

13:12

never really thought about until I

13:14

joined Facebook, that Facebook is the

13:17

internet for at least a billion

13:19

or two billion people. These are people in

13:22

African countries and Southeast Asia, places where

13:24

Facebook went in and said, if you

13:27

use our applications, your data is free. If

13:29

you use anything on the open internet, you're

13:31

going to pay for it yourself. And because

13:33

the only thing that everyone had access to

13:36

was Facebook, people didn't get

13:38

their own websites. They got Facebook pages.

13:40

There weren't big news outlets. There were

13:42

really big Facebook groups. And

13:45

I used to attend this meeting

13:47

called Virality Review every two weeks.

13:50

They would take the 10 most popular

13:52

posts every week In each

13:54

of the, quote, at risk countries. So

13:56

These are countries at risk of violence

13:58

caused by social media. Yeah, and

14:01

in bringing translators to

14:03

explain. To us, what to each of

14:05

these posts mean? And

14:07

every one of those posts

14:09

was horrific. He always asking severed

14:11

heads are talking accusations that

14:13

on beer put opponent as

14:15

doing things of children's Like every

14:18

single post was horrible. After

14:21

months of seeing boiling content

14:23

spread on Facebook in places

14:25

like Ethiopia, Francis started secretly

14:27

copying and sharing thousands of

14:29

face but files with the

14:31

Wall Street Journal and then

14:34

later with the American Securities

14:36

and Exchange Commission. Just

14:40

a few days before Abraham

14:42

first reads those posts about

14:44

his father, Francis testifies in

14:46

front of a powerful Us.

14:48

Senate committee. They. Have

14:50

admitted in public engagement a straight is

14:53

dangerous without integrity and security systems, but

14:55

then not rolled out those integrity and

14:57

security systems. Most of the languages in

15:00

the world. And that's

15:02

causing things like ethnic violence in Ethiopia.

15:05

My. Fears that without action. Devices.

15:08

And extremists behaviors we see today are

15:10

only the beginning. What? We sign

15:12

me and Mar and are now seen in

15:14

Ethiopia. Are. Only the opening chapters

15:16

of a story so terrifying no one

15:18

wants or he The end of it.

15:22

But. Despite international coverage of

15:24

France's testimony, dangerous posts are

15:27

the ones about Abrahams father

15:29

remain on the site. We're.

15:34

Pretty sure I perhaps reports

15:36

asking those posts to be

15:38

removed ended up in a

15:41

content moderation center in Nairobi,

15:43

Kenya. a contractor

15:45

called summer ran met his giant

15:48

content moderation hub which covered most

15:50

of east in southern africa nathan

15:52

the kinsey was working there at

15:55

the time along with four hundred

15:57

or so others reviewing hundreds of

16:00

posts covering all sorts of stuff.

16:02

Graphic images, threatening language,

16:05

hate speech, sexual abuse,

16:07

exploitation. These were

16:09

the people making difficult decisions every

16:11

day about whether content should

16:14

be taken down. Now

16:17

these actually would take someone a whole

16:19

year training but you can guess this

16:21

was a three weeks training. None

16:24

of us have really got

16:26

the necessary capacity to even

16:28

go through this whole you

16:30

know toxic kind of

16:32

job. Meta told

16:34

us that it requires all

16:37

of the companies they work

16:39

with to provide 24-7 on-site

16:41

support with trained practitioners, an

16:44

on-call service and access to private

16:46

health care and Sama

16:48

says it fully complied with all

16:50

of Meta's requirements and proactively

16:52

looked out for the team. But

16:55

Nathan says that wasn't his experience when

16:57

he worked in the Nairobi office. So

17:00

one of the things that's important for people

17:02

to understand is that Facebook does not allocate

17:04

resources based on need when it

17:07

comes to safety systems. They invest them based

17:09

on their fear of consequences.

17:12

One of the most shocking things

17:14

that Francis Haugen's files revealed was

17:17

how Facebook prioritized content moderation

17:19

in some countries over others.

17:23

The year before Abraham saw those posts

17:25

87 percent

17:27

of Meta's misinformation budget

17:29

was spent in English-speaking

17:31

countries. Thirteen percent

17:33

of the budget was for the rest

17:35

of the world. That's 53

17:38

African countries, Latin America, the

17:40

Middle East. And then because

17:42

these were markets where Facebook was losing money

17:45

they didn't spend money on safety

17:47

systems. And so in places

17:49

where people had nothing else to turn

17:51

to because Facebook had become the internet, they

17:53

were forced to use the most raw, most

17:56

dangerous version of Facebook. In

17:59

The Nairobi center. Only twenty

18:01

five content moderators were responsible for

18:03

the whole of Ethiopia, a country

18:05

of a hundred and seventeen million

18:07

people in the middle of a

18:10

violent conflict in which a tsunami

18:12

of hateful content was flooding the

18:14

site. No.

18:17

I don't know what happened to

18:19

Abrahamic Reports that Nathan remembers the

18:21

stress the Ethiopian team was under

18:23

the sort of stuff they were

18:25

dealing with. And we

18:27

had people from Ethiopia specifically from

18:29

the T gray area we'd swat.

18:31

What some of these Very practical.

18:34

Let's add content you could see

18:36

a people screaming on the floor.

18:38

When did you meet? you know

18:40

only on this clean People been

18:43

murdered people. They know people from

18:45

their families. Met

18:49

a say that they provide

18:51

technical solutions to limit exposure

18:53

to graphic material as much

18:55

as possible, and it's working

18:57

on developing it's capabilities to

18:59

catch violating content in the

19:01

most widely spoken languages in

19:03

Ethiopia. Thus, I'm hiring a

19:05

row most Somalis and to

19:07

Green yeah, But. That's

19:10

only for of Ethiopia's eighty

19:12

five languages. You.

19:17

Can't blame face, but for starting

19:19

the war in Ethiopia, the roots

19:21

of the division run deep and

19:23

the company should get some credit

19:25

for the good things. it does.

19:28

The reason face but became so

19:31

popular in Ethiopia is the same

19:33

reason it became popular everywhere. It

19:36

was a new way to communicate.

19:38

A place for new voice is

19:40

a new ideas to be hard

19:42

to circumnavigate the old gatekeepers who

19:45

controlled information which in Ethiopia was

19:47

often the government. A lot of

19:49

activists loved the freed him Facebook

19:51

gave them. And still gives

19:53

them today. Content.

19:56

Moderation is always hard, even in

19:58

the Us. And

20:00

in countries with several languages,

20:03

multiple ethnic groups, a government

20:05

run media, and explosive tensions,

20:07

it's even harder and even

20:10

more important, yet less money

20:12

is spent. Their. On

20:22

the morning of Nov the third, Twenty Twenty

20:25

One. Abrahamic Dad's leaves

20:27

university and starts his journey

20:29

home. Maybe those posts

20:31

got to him after all, just

20:34

five days before he told his

20:36

boss he was going to retire

20:38

early. He.

20:40

Doesn't notice that Following him through

20:42

the back roads and side streets

20:44

are armed militants on motorbikes. And

20:47

there are more waiting for him outside

20:49

his house. He

20:51

just packet the car. And.

20:55

Can I sue the much to

20:58

these articles? How

21:02

did they find out if there were

21:04

people are already there waiting when he

21:06

for back? How did they know where

21:08

he lived Because every to it is

21:10

listed on Facebook his home address on

21:13

Facebook. Everything everything was stated on Facebook.

21:17

Says approached him. And

21:19

tough to shoot. First.

21:21

And the disease. Such. As

21:24

it's legal of. And

21:27

you collapsed. And

21:29

lot on the streets in

21:32

shorts. Or father

21:34

was not screaming. He

21:37

lost his life probably. Abrahamic

21:44

father is shot twice in broad

21:47

daylight. Armed militia point Gums the

21:49

anyone who tries to help even

21:51

the local police are too afraid

21:54

to do anything. Over

21:56

seven hours Professor my are a

21:59

camera opera. Slowly bleed to

22:01

death, Abrahamic

22:06

away at university when he hears

22:09

the news. The

22:13

Sega Professor is that. The

22:31

song. They

22:34

just have. A

22:38

The has on fandom to remember that

22:40

things. Were

22:49

most hello to play.

22:51

Note: because were still

22:53

like someone knocks on

22:55

door and Texas. His

22:59

mother tells him the militants called

23:01

the Professor Giunta the same anti

23:03

to Grand Slam from the Facebook

23:05

posts. They

23:08

were quoting what they have

23:10

great from the fiscal boss.

23:12

This. Two posts were

23:14

a decent a store feather.

23:17

Eight days later Abraham finally

23:19

his back from met his

23:21

moderators about those posts. They

23:24

don't know was just happened to his father.

23:27

One post has been removed. they're

23:29

leaving the other one up. They've

23:31

decided it doesn't break company rules.

23:35

Abrahamic Fleece to Paris and then

23:37

on to Minnesota where he's now

23:39

seeking asylum. They're

23:42

letting a to flourish

23:44

be zero. Continued. It's.

23:49

Due to such issues.

23:53

Will. Have lost our beloved to us.

23:56

The. tragedy a fragmented

23:58

the whole dreams

24:00

we had. It has to be

24:03

stopped. It's now or never to take measures. On

24:09

the face of it, Abraham's story is very

24:11

different to the others you've heard. 14-year-old

24:14

Molly Russell in north-west London, fake

24:16

news in the 2016 US election,

24:20

Sophie Nedembro, Maria Ressa, that

24:22

journalist from the Philippines. But

24:26

dig a little deeper, they're all the

24:28

same story, taking place in different parts of the

24:30

world at different times. It's what happens when you

24:32

set information free and

24:34

no one is responsible for

24:40

the consequences. In

24:42

pursuit of a connected utopia, no one

24:45

thought to put up the guardrails that could stop us

24:47

falling over the edge. I'm

24:55

back in the UK. It's early

24:58

in the morning, around 7am, and I'm heading

25:00

to a house in south London. Somebody has

25:02

broken that door handle, I won't bore you

25:04

with it, you know. I've

25:07

come to meet Corey Crider and

25:09

Rosa Curling, both co-founders and

25:11

directors of a legal firm

25:13

called Foxglove. I'm

25:15

Corey Crider and I'm with Rosa.

25:17

I'm one of the co-founders and

25:20

directors of Foxglove. We're a non-profit,

25:22

we set ourselves up in 2019

25:24

with the mission to make tech

25:26

fair, and to sue when it isn't. Corey

25:29

used to sue the CIA. Now

25:31

her sights are set on big tech. This

25:36

morning we're huddled around a laptop

25:38

watching a live stream of Kenyan

25:40

court proceedings. Everybody is OK,

25:42

37, sir. In

25:45

December 2022, Abraham became

25:47

the lead complainant in a

25:49

$2 billion lawsuit supported by

25:51

Foxglove in the High Court

25:53

in Kenya. His target

25:56

is meta. The

26:00

for an earlier and ends

26:02

with the paper has guests

26:05

against Matter is ah very

26:07

first court appearance so we've.

26:09

Now been listed for another date a miniseries do

26:11

have a significant box. Full of took

26:13

on his case on a supporting

26:16

a second involving a hundred and

26:18

eighty four com said moderators including

26:20

Nathan The Kinsey once employed at

26:22

Summer Center in Nairobi. Abraham

26:25

thinks met her should take

26:27

some responsibility for what happened.

26:30

He believes that inaction led

26:32

to his father's death. And

26:35

that inaction he thinks is because

26:37

an Ethiopian Facebook user is just

26:39

not worth as much as an

26:41

American one. Accord

26:44

petition accuses the company of a

26:46

woeful failure to address violence on

26:49

the platform. And of being

26:51

responsible for the murder of his father.

26:54

We. Know from all this the

26:56

documents of France's Haugen disclose

26:58

that there is a success

27:00

at the horribly discriminate trade.

27:03

Neocolonial approach to what face the called

27:05

the Rest of the World which they

27:07

consider to be him known us Canada

27:09

and they think the Rest the World

27:11

is a place they don't need to

27:13

invest it or take care of in

27:15

any way. It says silicon Valley that

27:17

they even take out the that life

27:20

is Not times. As. A rest of the

27:22

world As rest of world that. Anywhere on

27:24

the that the a means of the basic

27:26

problem as they say. oh. Well you know

27:28

if we don't make enough money in advertising

27:30

out of these people them are not going

27:32

and destined safety systems. But they're still

27:34

collecting people stayed other, still collecting advertisers money.

27:37

They still pushed very aggressively into all of

27:39

these markets because they're written as a. Value

27:41

to them and their service of having a third of

27:43

the planet on as. Foxglove.

27:46

Believe that message can invest money

27:49

in safety systems A say really

27:51

want to. See.

27:53

More violent soft The January Twenty

27:55

Twenty One rides in Washington D

27:58

C Facebook made rapid change to

28:00

be algorithm. Matter. Staffers

28:02

called it break the glass measures

28:04

a list of ten interventions to

28:07

keep his platform, saying. That

28:09

included reducing the visibility of

28:12

posts and comments that might

28:14

incite violence. Again, On

28:16

a thing as of has prevailed was

28:18

that after Capitol Hill protests they sit

28:20

within two to three hours. Took a

28:22

number of steps to change its software

28:24

design as far as we can tell

28:26

and it's not on any of that

28:29

in relation to Ethiopia. Seven

28:32

people lost their lives after the

28:34

Capitol Hill rights. Between.

28:37

Twenty Twenty and Twenty Twenty

28:39

Two. It's estimated six six

28:41

hundred thousand people died in

28:44

the Ethiopian conflict. Look

28:46

January six was a problem. It is

28:48

not good for people to storm their

28:50

see of government and saved incorrectly that

28:52

there are like son was done. This

28:54

is bad. But in terms of the level

28:57

of violence, It looks like a picnic compared

28:59

to what happened in Ethiopia. Six.

29:01

Hundred thousand people are Dead. Six.

29:03

Hundred thousand. And what we're

29:06

hoping is that these cases will

29:08

force the company to make changes

29:10

based and saddened that employing enough

29:12

people to in fact keep the

29:15

platform safe and making sure the

29:17

software design is radically changed seconds

29:19

longer play this role of signing

29:21

flames. Abrahams

29:24

Court case and the Compton

29:26

Moderation one from Nairobi. Are

29:28

ongoing. So.

29:31

I I think up a major

29:33

cultural challenge at Facebook is there's

29:35

only one person whose opinion really

29:37

matters, and that's Mark Zuckerberg. And

29:39

I think it's almost impossible. To

29:42

spend your. Whole adult Life answers

29:44

Been doing since he was nineteen years

29:46

old just for him Facebook It's almost

29:48

impossible to hold the idea in your

29:50

head that what. You felt his is

29:53

hurting people. and as a

29:55

result there's an internal philosophy that percolates is

29:57

a company of the idea that is because

29:59

credits much good, of course

30:01

a few eggs are going to get broken

30:04

when you make an omelet. And it's okay

30:06

because we've created so much good that there's

30:08

always collateral damage any time you change the world as

30:10

much as we have. And so I think

30:12

there was a feeling that all communication

30:14

technologies are disruptive and

30:16

that this was just kind of the cost of

30:19

doing business or the cost of bringing this kind

30:21

of change to the world. This

30:28

time on the final episode of The

30:30

Gatekeepers, turmoil in the

30:32

world of technology as Elon Musk

30:34

takes over. Elon sort

30:36

of faulty tower style kind of popped his

30:39

head in the door at one point and

30:41

he said anyone need anything coffee? You know

30:43

and then popped out. And

30:45

I ask if we're really ready for

30:47

what's coming. 2024

30:49

is a tipping point. There's no shared

30:52

realities. Democracy can't stand

30:54

this. Democracy will fail.

31:15

The Gatekeepers is presented by me

31:17

Jamie Bartlett. It was written by

31:19

me and Caitlin Smith. The producer

31:22

is Caitlin Smith. The

31:24

story consultant is Kirsty Williams, sound

31:27

designer is

31:29

Jeremy Warmseley. This

31:31

was a BBC Scotland production for BBC

31:34

Radio 4. The

31:39

post office horizon scandal has shocked Britain.

31:41

Post office IT scandal which has so

31:43

much good publicity over the last few

31:45

years. This is a scandal of historic

31:47

proportions. I've been following the story for

31:49

more than a decade, hearing about the

31:52

suffering of sub postmasters like Joe Hamilton

31:54

and Alan Bates. It was just horrendous.

31:56

The whole thing was horrendous.

32:00

afford to take on post office. And

32:02

about their extraordinary fight for justice. What

32:05

was motivating you? Well it was wrong

32:07

what they did. Listen

32:10

to the true story at first hand

32:12

from the people who lived it in

32:14

the great post office trial from BBC

32:16

Radio 4 with me Nick Wallace. Subscribe

32:19

on BBC Sounds.