0:00

So you wanna marry my daughter? Yes. I did.

0:02

So do you hang out in the hood all the time, or do you

0:04

just come up here for our food

0:06

and women? This January. Your

0:08

family, I think, Emily. I

0:10

don't know how this is gonna work.

0:12

I like your braids.

0:13

Thank you. Exhibit ad Brads. Jona

0:15

Hill, Lauren London, David Dubney,

0:17

Neil Long, with Julie Louis Drive Fast

0:20

and Eddie Murphy. What's up with white guys?

0:22

Am I white guys? Well, I'm not.

0:24

White people directed by Can you bear F

0:26

rated r streaming January twenty seventh

0:29

only on Netflix. It's

0:34

Thursday, January twenty sixth twenty twenty

0:36

three from Peach Fish Productions. It's the jest

0:38

time, Mike Pesca. And here's the

0:40

problem with personification. Everything

0:43

becoming not a thing talking geckos,

0:45

talking garden gnomes, talking waffles, talking

0:47

mochi, basically every Pixar movie.

0:49

What if bugs talked? What if cars talked? What

0:51

if fish talked? What if toys talked? Four times

0:53

plus a spin off. See, today,

0:56

Oreo introduced what they are calling

0:58

the Oreo Oreo. And the

1:00

thing is if you haven't been following Oreo,

1:03

or aren't what insiders call

1:05

or you know files. They don't call it

1:07

that I made that up. Oreo has

1:09

a lot of flavors, almost hundred flavors.

1:11

Toughy crunch, snicker doodle, hot and

1:13

spicy cinnamon, nineteen seventy three chateau

1:16

Montalina, chardonnay, fudge covered,

1:19

carrot cake, birthday cake. Now

1:21

one of those might have been conjured up in an Oreo and

1:23

do sugar combo, but really And also

1:25

let's point out birthday cake is not a flavor of

1:27

cake. It's an occasion four cake. I

1:29

always have chocolate hazelnut sandwich is on

1:31

my birthday. That by the way, literally another

1:33

flavor of Oreo. But now there's this.

1:36

The newest Oreo variant is

1:38

called the most oreo oreo.

1:41

It has a larger portion of cream filling

1:43

and the filling is stuffed with

1:46

ground oreos. They're

1:48

being called Oreo stuffed Oreo's, and

1:51

as a result, Oreo Twitter was on

1:52

fire. Here's YouTuber, Marki Divo's

1:55

reaction. The Oreo gods are

1:57

back at it again. They drop this huge

1:59

ass. Oreo. This is the most Oreo

2:01

Oreo cookies and cream. It

2:03

was so big that they had to name it Oreo,

2:06

freaking Oreo. It's got loaded

2:08

cream. It's like two cookies deep and it has

2:10

cookie pieces. So no problem. Right? Other

2:12

than our national diabetes problem. And where does

2:14

personification come in? Is

2:16

that a person talking, character,

2:19

Oreo? It's just an Oreo filled with Oreo's all

2:21

the way down. It's that in every

2:23

article about the Oreo stuff, Dorio.

2:25

There was a link to an article about

2:27

M and M Spokes Candies. These

2:30

sexy or relatable or also

2:32

human candies that once asked us

2:34

to eat them. And so now,

2:36

when I think of Oreo stuff, Oreo's,

2:38

can think of nothing else other than cannibalism,

2:41

which puts me in the minds of some things I once

2:44

read about chickens who started pecking each

2:46

other and end up eating

2:48

each other a quote from the

2:50

Penn State University extension

2:53

school, poultry cannibalism, prevention,

2:55

and treatment guide. Quote, cannibalism

2:58

usually occurs when the birds are stressed by

3:00

poor management practice. One's

3:02

becoming stressed, one bird begins getting

3:04

the feathers comb toes or vent of another

3:07

Once an open wound or blood is visible

3:09

on the bird, the vicious habit of cannibalism

3:12

can spread rapidly through the entire

3:14

flock. If you notice the problem

3:16

soon after it begins, cannibalism can

3:18

be held in check. Yes. Yes. We

3:20

all need to manage our chicken

3:22

cannibalism, and that's why I take Fowl

3:25

don't. For moderate to severe outbreaks

3:27

of chicken cannibalism, don't take foul don't

3:29

if you're already on Koopa or allergic

3:31

to foul don't. They list why

3:34

chicken cannibalism occurs over

3:36

crowding brightly lit nests,

3:39

quote, allowing cripples, injured, or

3:41

dead birds to remain in the flock they say

3:43

Cripples, their not mine.

3:45

And then you ask the chickens. How could you guys do

3:47

such a thing? And they just answer, I don't know. I kind of taste

3:49

like chicken. The last reason

3:52

that they give is something called prolapse

3:54

pecking. It is the most disgusting food

3:56

related thing I've ever heard about, and yet

3:58

I still eat chicken. No problem. I'm

4:00

going to eat chicken tonight. I ate chicken

4:02

last night. You have got to go out of your way

4:04

not to eat chicken in America. But

4:07

I do think of rampant disgusting

4:09

cannibalism when I think

4:11

of the new Oreo stuffed Oreo

4:14

because everything is alive, except

4:17

my appetite and any pleasure that's

4:19

left for a sweet taste that doesn't

4:21

try to be another sweet taste or some

4:23

sort of infinite regression of the same

4:26

sweet taste. Sweet taste. That's

4:29

our advanced computer assisted

4:32

effects. What I'm saying

4:34

is, and please hear me clearly and don't

4:36

miss my point what if they

4:38

just put the green M and M in sensible

4:40

flats? Aspadrills, something that wouldn't

4:42

upset the Fox hosts or Katherine

4:44

McKinnon. Why can't we have nice

4:46

things is getting more and more

4:48

complicated every day. On the

4:50

show today, I should feel about those

4:52

exhausted activists and how to

4:54

burn it all down whilst avoiding

4:57

burnout. But first, Ravi

5:00

Iyer is a data scientist and a moral

5:02

psychologist He worked for

5:04

Facebook. He's now the Managing Director of the

5:06

Psychology of Technology Institute at

5:08

USC's Neil Lee Center. We're gonna talk about

5:10

on this day after Donald

5:12

Trump was restored to

5:14

Meta, Ravi's old company.

5:16

We're gonna talk about what he thinks

5:19

social media should do to try

5:21

to stop the spread of misinformation, the spread

5:23

of angry reaction posts, and if he

5:25

thinks we can content moderate ourselves.

5:28

Out of this situation, Ravi Iar,

5:30

up next.

5:41

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at factor seventy five dot com

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slash the gist sixty to

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get sixty percent off your first

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box. Couple

7:13

weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal had a

7:15

very well reported story. Facebook

7:17

wanted out of politics, It was

7:19

messier than anyone expected.

7:22

And the basic thrust of the article

7:24

was when Mark Zuckerberg just said,

7:26

this isn't worth it. Turning the

7:28

spigot from wherever it was to

7:30

zero had, like the article said,

7:32

some add on effects. People didn't

7:34

like it. Donations to Facebook's sponsored

7:37

charities went well. Facebook didn't get any

7:39

credit for being less toxic. Excellent

7:42

news outlets were de prioritized

7:45

in place like mother Jones found that fewer

7:47

people were reading its articles. And and

7:49

this was a little buried in the article, but I

7:51

thought the worst add on effect

7:54

that the percentage of just

7:56

poorly sourced stories was

7:58

higher in users feed after

8:00

Facebook tried to correct for what

8:02

people saw as it toxicity. There

8:05

seems to be no good

8:07

answer for what Facebook can

8:09

do to satisfy all constituencies.

8:12

But a person quoted in this article

8:14

and someone who worked for Mehta, which

8:16

is what I think when he worked there, it was called

8:18

Facebook. Now it's Mehta. Was

8:20

offering I thought the best insight and I

8:22

wanted to have him on. Ravi Iyer is

8:24

the managing director of the psychology

8:26

of technology institute at

8:28

USC's nearly center for ethical

8:30

leadership and decision making. Ravi,

8:32

welcome to the Jist. Thanks, Mike. I'm glad

8:34

to be here. is an impressive at least

8:36

the organization is impressively

8:37

titled. So, well, you know,

8:40

universities, you know, we we like to

8:42

explain what we're doing in

8:44

detail. I mean, is your journey a little

8:46

like Alfred Nobel invented dynamite?

8:48

And then said, oh god,

8:48

I gotta I gotta found the peace prize

8:50

now. I've either

8:52

you know, I tried I try to figure out what

8:54

my path is, you know, as I go.

8:56

So this is this is the place for me to be at

8:58

this moment. No. But seriously, and we'll

9:00

get to Pacifics, but did you look back at

9:02

your time at meta and from what I understand

9:04

of your tenure there, you were on

9:06

the side of trying to advocate

9:08

for Lex less toxicity and

9:11

greater actual engagement, but do

9:13

you look at it with

9:15

enough either regret or

9:17

just I don't know,

9:19

just clear eye on this that this was

9:21

the next obvious role

9:23

for you to play societally.

9:25

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, so I'm

9:27

grateful for my time at Meta. You know, it

9:29

wasn't easy. You know, I went to battles. I lost some

9:31

battles. But you

9:33

know, I really did learn some things. You know,

9:35

one thing I say to people is that we made things

9:37

three percent better, and three percent is not an actual

9:40

number. I just it it's meant to illustrate

9:42

that we made a measurable difference for a

9:44

large number of people, but there's a lot

9:46

of things that are still left to be

9:48

done. And there are some things we learned that I think

9:50

apply not just to Facebook, they apply to TikTok,

9:52

they apply to YouTube. And so I

9:54

wanted to take a shot, take a swing at that other

9:56

ninety seven percent There's

9:58

some decisions to be made that I think aren't just meadows.

10:00

I don't think people what meta want to make those decisions. I

10:02

think they'd be glad if people in the world

10:05

understood the decisions we made and help them

10:07

with them. So I do

10:09

think that's the next step. It's it's I

10:11

think there's a lot of good to be done.

10:14

And there's a a some kernels, you know, the

10:16

the one thing I might slightly disagree with from

10:18

your intro is that I do think there are some

10:20

things that we did that made a

10:22

difference that we're like positive. And

10:24

III wouldn't argue that they solve the problem,

10:26

but I think we can learn from those things and implement

10:28

them more widely. Yeah. That seems true. And if

10:30

I gave the impression, another impression

10:32

in the intro will correct it

10:34

as listeners hear this interview.

10:36

But as they hear the interview, just give them

10:38

if you would some idea

10:41

of your background. I know you worked for

10:43

ranker, but which is RANKER,

10:45

not the rank or that maybe we

10:47

associate with some social media. But I

10:49

also see you as a Google scholar, and did you

10:51

work with Jonathan Hite in

10:53

the NYU psychology department? Just

10:55

tell me about yourself a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I

10:57

started my career as a programmer. I

11:00

decided that it was

11:02

meaningless to some degree. I would program,

11:04

like, you know, some banks phone systems

11:06

so they could keep track of all the phones that they

11:08

they had with all their employees in. And so I

11:10

decided I wanted to be more meaningful and so I got a

11:12

degree in psychology. A lot of

11:14

people in grad school end up setting themselves to some degree. So I

11:16

studied myself. I studied like, what does it all mean? Why am

11:18

I doing anything? Which led me to John

11:21

Hite, and he was doing a lot of interesting work

11:23

on moral psychology. We

11:25

together so I was actually got my speech at

11:27

USC, but I met him at

11:29

a conference. With numerous

11:32

other collaborators. And we together,

11:34

we built psychology or morals. We studied,

11:36

you know, people's psychology,

11:38

how they make moral decisions. We

11:40

wrote about them from a more descriptive perspective versus

11:42

a judgmental perspective. So people who are

11:44

interested in understanding

11:46

the other side as opposed to demonizing the other

11:48

side would often read our work.

11:50

You know, John obviously became

11:52

more well known. So when I graduated,

11:54

we had a small nonprofit civil

11:56

politics. Where we actually helped

11:58

bring Liberals and conservatives together and measure the

12:00

effects alongside many partners in the

12:02

community. And then while I

12:04

was in grad school, I also was working

12:06

at Ranker. So a friend of mine started a company

12:08

called Ranker. And so I had his dual

12:11

career. That started to blow up. It's about a hundred

12:13

percent company. It's not a giant company, but it's it's a decent

12:15

sized company. In LA.

12:18

And I, you know, I was working at Rinker, and I was

12:20

also working on polarization. And

12:23

I had a friend of mine who offered

12:25

me, you know, said, we're working on on

12:27

polarization of Facebook. There's a

12:29

great opportunity to you know, do some

12:31

good in the world, sort of bring your disparate careers

12:33

together, and so that's

12:35

kind of what made to that point. Yeah. So

12:37

Ranker is the kind of site that has best

12:39

songs about breakup. Facts about World

12:41

War two we just learned today that make us

12:43

say whoa. It's let's say very

12:45

populist. I don't think it causes

12:47

toxicity I don't know

12:49

exactly though how it dovetails

12:51

with the Jonathan Heights learning to

12:53

understand the love language of the

12:55

other tribes. I mean,

12:57

it does get a lot of its traffic from

12:59

social media. So I experienced

13:01

the incentives of social

13:03

media firsthand at Rinker. I

13:05

mean, it's less political, obviously, and and

13:07

that's part of the article is that, like, you know, maybe

13:09

there are some things that it's okay to sensationalize,

13:12

like, you know, your song or your

13:14

movie in a way that it's maybe not okay to

13:16

sensationalize your political views.

13:18

But I definitely learned a lot of record

13:20

just about You know, I would I I built

13:22

their initial algorithms. I I it

13:24

helped me, like, stay current in the tech

13:26

space. And you

13:29

know, I learned also about crowdsourcing. So

13:31

if you think about, you know, best songs I

13:33

don't know, best songs to work out too. Right?

13:35

Like like, where crowdsourcing signals are

13:37

anchor from people's list people's voting for trying to

13:39

get diverse opinions. At

13:41

Facebook, you're also crowd sourcing, like, what

13:43

kind of content should I show you? Right? Like, you're taking the

13:45

signals of people who liked it, people who

13:47

commented it. And there's similar

13:49

kinds of patterns where, like, for example,

13:51

diverse signals do better than narrow

13:52

signals. Right? So things that a narrow group of

13:55

people like are tend to be worse than things that

13:57

a large group of people like, which is something that holds

13:59

true across all algorithms, whether rank or

14:01

whether Facebook or or anywhere in

14:03

the world. The diverse versus narrow.

14:05

How might that play

14:06

out in terms of what

14:08

Facebook is to some extent rightly criticized

14:10

for, which is contributing to

14:14

extremism in politics

14:16

and people's perceptions of the

14:18

world. Yeah. I mean, I I think one

14:20

thing that social media. And we

14:22

made a little bit of progress on there, on this while I

14:24

was there, but I think there's a lot more to be

14:26

made. One thing that

14:28

true of social social media is that

14:30

it's easy for a small group of people to make

14:32

something go viral even though a

14:34

maybe a larger group of people don't like it. And

14:36

that's true in part because it's easy to

14:38

say you like something and it's really hard to say you

14:40

don't like something. Right? Like, so, like, if I want if

14:42

I like something that like buttons right there,

14:45

I can share it. If I dislike it,

14:47

I have to go, like, to this three dot menu

14:49

in the upper right, it's kinda hard to

14:51

tell that. It's kind of a pain. One

14:54

thing we did in our in my time there was

14:57

we made that a little bit easier to find. Right?

14:59

And so, like, now there's a little x on the

15:01

upper right in in many posts. And

15:03

that gives you a little more signal on things that people might

15:05

dislike. We had this c more

15:07

c less feature, which

15:09

helps people see, like, know, what they explicitly

15:11

want versus what they engage with. And so

15:13

those are those are things that that help.

15:16

There are sites like Reddit. Which do

15:18

that better. Right? Which have more negative signal. And

15:20

so so things like adding more negative signal. And

15:22

and so one thing that I'd like to do in my time

15:24

outside of Facebook is, you know,

15:26

think about how we could reimagine the platform.

15:28

You know, big companies, they

15:30

are always gonna move a little slower than

15:33

startups. And there's a lot of innovation in the space

15:35

as far as startups. Where people are

15:37

really experimenting with these reactions,

15:39

experimenting with, like, you know, there's a there's a

15:41

project the Narwa project that III

15:43

started playing around with. And they have, like, a

15:45

clarifying button or a new to me

15:47

button. Right? Like, if we really completely

15:50

reimagined the reaction so that we had

15:52

know, some amount of negative feedback, some amount of explicitly

15:54

positive feedback, how could we use that

15:56

in algorithms to shape our space to be better?

15:59

So I don't like this. Which is

16:01

negative feedback. You're

16:03

portraying it as rare and valuable,

16:05

but it's confusing to me

16:07

because I think that lot of, for instance, on

16:09

a talk radio, the people who hate

16:11

listen, are a major

16:13

driver and making that format

16:15

popular And also, I'm thinking

16:17

about the first time I encountered your

16:19

name was in an article. I think it was in the Washington

16:21

Post about the angry button.

16:23

Right? So Facebook had this

16:25

a bunch of emojis and one was

16:27

angry. Like, I don't like it. This makes me angry,

16:30

which wound up being

16:32

not the solution, but in fact, a source of

16:34

a lot of the problems

16:35

there. Right? Yeah. I mean, and and

16:37

it's all a question of you

16:40

know, the signals that you get. So I

16:42

mean, so some of the low hanging fruit at

16:44

when I work working there was just and,

16:47

you know, I give credit to

16:49

Facebook to some degree for this because they did this

16:51

without the Washington Post article. You know, we

16:53

we did this before the Washington Post article came

16:55

out. Right? And so, you know, originally,

16:59

love reactions, anger reactions

17:01

counted the same in the algorithm. Right? And so if

17:03

I anger at something or I love something, I would get more of

17:05

it. Now, logically,

17:08

like a lot of times people are angry acting

17:10

because they don't like something. Like, sometimes you're synthetically

17:12

angering something, sometimes you're I

17:14

don't like that angering something, but it's not a pure signal

17:16

that I want more of that thing. It's often a signal

17:18

I don't want more of that thing. Right. Right. So you're

17:21

saying, like, sometimes there's an article

17:23

about something that's supposed to make you angry in

17:25

the world. Let's just take something legitimate.

17:27

Like, for me, what the

17:29

Republicans are doing with the debt ceiling? I

17:31

might press angry because goddamn

17:33

what the Republicans are doing with the dead

17:35

ceiling, whereas a big fan of

17:37

Matt Gates might press angry

17:39

because they don't wanna see the critical article of the Republicans. Yeah.

17:41

Or they made, like, just like the framing or they

17:43

might think it's this information. Like, there's a lot of

17:45

reasons you do Right? And so it's not a great

17:47

signal. Understand, I think, but from what we've been told

17:49

about social media is they don't really care. They

17:52

just like intense emotions. That's what

17:54

drives traffic. To some degree, but I

17:56

think there's also a longer term

17:58

view here. So, you know, we did eventually

18:00

change it so that angry actions don't count in the

18:02

algorithm. Right? And so And,

18:04

you know, it's it's it's like baby steps.

18:07

Right? But, you know, if if

18:09

we had a perfect measure of

18:11

what would be long term in the

18:13

interests of users in society. You know, I

18:15

think platforms would do that. The hard part is how

18:17

do you measure that. And and It's really

18:19

easy to measure the short term stuff. It's really easy

18:21

to measure, like, I made a change. People use

18:23

the platform more. It's hard to

18:25

measure something, like, what's gonna happen in two

18:27

years? Right? Because you have to wait two years to

18:29

happen. There's an interesting article that Facebook

18:31

Analytics put out recently about notifications.

18:34

Right? And this is like a very, like, low hanging fruit case

18:36

where they reduced amount of notifications, and in two years,

18:38

they got more people to use the platform. If

18:40

they could some of these subtler things,

18:42

like optimizing for, you know, angry actions

18:45

is simple thing. Optimizing for comments. Like, you mentioned, like,

18:47

people hate listed. Right? And they write, like, something like,

18:49

I hate this. I don't want this. Right? Or this

18:51

is terrible. Right? And, you know,

18:54

optimizing for comments is something that

18:56

was done for political content. And in that

18:58

article you referenced is is was

19:00

taken out. And that's in part because of that. Like, a lot of

19:02

times, you know, generally a comment on

19:04

something like, you know, like, if we if we went out for

19:06

beers and we had a picture and, like, everyone was

19:08

commenting on it, like, that's probably something

19:10

that people are gonna wanna see. If it's

19:12

an article about, like, the debt ceiling and people

19:14

are commenting on it, like, a lot of times people are commenting

19:16

in more like that, you know, I can't believe what that guy did

19:18

or I can't believe that guy did. And

19:20

it's not great experience for everyone. Maybe for some people it is,

19:22

but not for everyone. And so, you

19:25

know, just taking these ambiguous signals

19:27

like anger reaction or comments out

19:29

of our incentive system is

19:32

a step. And then it it leads to thinking

19:34

about what more steps, what

19:36

take? How can we get more explicit signals of

19:38

people's positive and negative reactions as opposed

19:40

to relying on these ambiguous signals which often lead

19:42

us in the wrong direction? Are there great

19:45

signals? Are there gold standards of

19:47

signals that are good for the platforms, but

19:49

also at least neutral for

19:51

society? Yeah. I mean, you know, I

19:53

think, you know, anything where you get explicit,

19:55

like, a person really liked this thing.

19:57

Right? So, like, a love reaction. Right?

19:59

Like, it's not it's unlikely you love something and it was actually

20:01

something that was like a bad experience for you. Right?

20:03

You you can like something that's a bad experience in part

20:05

because it's like, You know, you people

20:08

like things because they agree with the opinion or

20:10

they they're trying to be nice to the person. But if if

20:12

you go the extra step to love something, like,

20:14

it's probably, like, explicitly a

20:16

good thing. There's a reason why the C More Less button, you know,

20:18

works well in part because it's explicitly.

20:20

It's like, I want to see more of that. I want to see less of

20:22

that. It's less it takes it disentangles the

20:24

social signaling. From

20:26

like I want more of that.

20:28

Doesn't the love signal though optimize

20:30

for cute cat videos, which I like,

20:32

but I don't want to replace my

20:34

idealized debt ceiling coverage? Yeah.

20:36

And and that's where, like, platforms that are experimenting

20:38

with other buttons. Right? Like, ideally, there'd be

20:40

an informative button or a clarifying button,

20:43

like, like the novel project is doing. Right? So, like, you need to

20:45

experiment with some of these things, and that's where I say, like,

20:47

you know, we have some nuggets, but we

20:49

didn't solve problem. There's a lot more to be done.

20:51

And and I'm excited for the fact

20:53

that, you know, I can talk to people, you know,

20:55

experimenting on top of mask it

20:57

on. You know, building all new platforms, there's like

20:59

a half dozen of these. Right? Like and and people

21:01

can build, like, a clarifying button or

21:03

an informative button. You

21:05

know, that that that can give you the idealized

21:08

debt ceiling content that you

21:10

want.

21:10

Francis Hogan, who

21:13

you appreciatively in your writing,

21:15

others have said social

21:17

media optimizes for outrage, full

21:19

stop. How true is that? I

21:21

think especially for political content,

21:23

and that's

21:23

why, like, you know, most

21:26

of the content on social media isn't necessarily a

21:28

political. And as the article states,

21:30

like, that's something that people are trying to

21:32

get out of. Right? So for political

21:35

content, there were definitely worse than

21:37

bad incentives, and that's why like,

21:39

that's why those changes were made. And

21:41

so, yeah, I mean, I think

21:43

you need different it it doesn't have to

21:45

be the case though. Right? Like like it's somewhat a

21:47

function of this

21:49

system that exists. One can imagine a

21:51

different system. One can imagine, like, you know, what they're

21:53

doing at front porch. Right? Like, one can imagine

21:55

different systems that are designed better And

21:59

so, it has historically

22:01

been true in the political space.

22:03

In the future, it doesn't always

22:05

have to be true. Right. So it doesn't have to be

22:07

true and there can be better systems. It

22:09

just happens to be that

22:11

our dominant social media, our

22:14

Facebook, to a lesser

22:16

extent Twitter, YouTube, which

22:18

emphasized or maximized for

22:20

outrage algorithms. It

22:23

it just Unfortunately, this was the case with

22:25

the ones that dominate our consciousness

22:27

right now. Yeah. I mean so

22:29

obviously, these platforms are

22:31

not optimizing for outrage. Right? They're optimizing for comments

22:33

or shares, and that happens to correlate.

22:35

They're optimizing for engagement,

22:37

which correlates to emotion,

22:40

which is

22:40

often out. Right? But that is changeable, though.

22:42

Like, and and and so that is, again What

22:44

is it? Trying to interrupt, but it's changeable to the

22:46

extent that if you are sitting atop a

22:49

massive billion dollar or potential

22:51

billion dollar empire, you would be

22:53

convinced, okay, we could change this without losing money

22:55

or even with making money. I know it's changeable, but

22:57

is it changeable and also

23:00

extremely profitable as the old way has been

23:02

so far. I mean, it's hard because

23:04

it might not be. I mean, and so and

23:07

and that's innovators moment. That's why I

23:09

changed. That's why I put my stock in some of

23:11

these, like, upstart companies because they don't

23:13

have to be responsive to

23:15

shareholders or profits. Even in on Musk, I, you know, I

23:17

see this kind of stuff he's posting and I'm and I'm,

23:19

like, he's probably looking at

23:21

his engagement. And, you know, it's it's clear that,

23:23

like, he's experiencing the same

23:25

incentives that many publishers say

23:27

that they experience towards, like, the more sensational, the

23:29

more divisive, and also the more engaging. So I I

23:31

do think that, like, it it'll

23:33

be harder for the big company now not

23:35

like the companies aren't willing to do it to some

23:38

degree. Right? Like, the article has

23:40

a change which led to reduce

23:42

usage and therefore reduce ad revenue.

23:46

But it's a baby step. And there is

23:48

more that could be done to reimagine the

23:50

platforms entirely. And, yeah, I I think it'll

23:52

be hard for the platforms with their profit

23:54

incentives to make the kinds of

23:56

big changes they need to make versus a lot of

23:58

these upstarts. So

24:00

is the big problem

24:03

that Facebook, YouTube, the dominant

24:05

social media, are

24:07

who they are. And so

24:09

you've talked many times about, you can

24:11

imagine a way or their other

24:13

sites massed on Reddit doing things a

24:15

little bit differently. So my question is,

24:18

is the big problem that the

24:20

huge dominant media are

24:22

so dominant it will be hard to

24:24

dislodge them just because they have the market

24:26

share they do, or is it more the

24:28

problem that the reason they're

24:30

so dominant is that they're

24:32

fueled by, you know, the

24:35

crack of interaction and

24:37

engagement. Right? Let me

24:39

make an analogy. Is it

24:41

the case that Exxon and BP

24:43

are such big companies, it's

24:45

hard to knock them off their

24:47

pedestal or is the problem or

24:49

the challenge with climate change, the

24:52

fact that we're all addicted to gasoline, and

24:54

they're the gasoline companies. I

24:57

definitely think that the

24:59

company's like, a lot of

25:01

a different world is possible. So the

25:03

company's will not

25:05

always be the dominant companies. And I think

25:07

they know that, you know, you see TikTok

25:10

rising, you see people experimenting with

25:12

other platforms. We're a phrase that John

25:14

Hite often says moral thinking is for

25:16

social doing. It's hard to get

25:18

people to use a platform, to

25:20

post pictures of their kids if they don't think it's if

25:22

they don't trust it, if they don't think it's good for the

25:24

world. And so I think the

25:26

companies realize that it's

25:28

not just a moral position

25:32

to try to make their platforms better. It's

25:34

actually like in it's in their

25:36

long term it's a long term

25:38

necessity to be

25:40

perceived as better for the world. I don't know if they can move

25:42

fast enough to get there, and so I think the

25:44

other companies might the small

25:46

companies, the upstarts might beat them. But I

25:48

do believe that moral thinking is for social

25:50

doing that people are not in the long term going

25:52

to use a platform that they

25:54

think is bad for the world. And the thing to

25:56

look at is, you know, maybe go on there

25:58

sometimes and, you know, just in case my

26:00

old high school friend posts something. So I might

26:02

use it occasionally. So I I don't

26:04

think, like, leadership or usage is

26:06

is the problem. I think posting is the

26:08

problem. So you like, are people

26:10

posting pictures of their kids anymore? Are people

26:12

posting their vacation photos

26:14

anymore? On Twitter. You you can see Elon Musk asking,

26:16

he's he's always bragging about how much engagement

26:18

he's getting, but he's sort

26:21

of intimating that people aren't posting. Right? Like,

26:23

these inviting people, post more. Post

26:25

more. And if people aren't posting, like,

26:27

that's the ballgame. Right? Like like,

26:29

it's it's then it's just Netflix. If it's just

26:31

like a bunch of people like, you know, making

26:33

viral videos, like social media

26:35

needs people to want to

26:37

post there. And if people think that this isn't a

26:39

safe place for me to post my

26:41

life, it's not gonna work. Ravi Ira

26:43

is managing director of the Psychology

26:45

of Technology Institute at the USC Neely

26:47

center is a former product manager at

26:49

meta, and I thank him very much. Thank you,

26:52

Robbie. Thanks.

27:04

In the beginning of the eighteen

27:06

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AND NOW THE SPEEL.

28:52

NEW Zealand HAS A NEW PRIME MINISTER, CHRIS

28:54

Hipkins, A NAME YOU WILL LIKELY

28:56

NEVER HEAR AGAIN. If he's anything like

28:59

other New Zealand prime ministers except the

29:01

last one. Through her charisma,

29:03

policies, biography, and savvy, Hippkins'

29:06

predecessor, Jacinda Ardern,

29:08

earned

29:08

Renown. And the reason that

29:11

Jacinda Ardern is no longer a

29:13

leader of that country is

29:15

according to Jacinda

29:16

Ardern. I know what this job

29:19

takes, and I know that I no longer

29:21

have enough in the tank to

29:23

do it justice. It's

29:25

that simple. Which was

29:27

interpreted as an awareness of a term that's very much

29:29

on people's minds these days, burnout.

29:31

Ardern wasn't just the second ever head of

29:33

state to have a baby in office, and

29:35

the young woman who steered her nation through

29:37

COVID with just about the world's lowest

29:39

death rate per capita, She

29:41

also became a self care hero, setting

29:44

an example to emulate New York Times,

29:46

Jacinda Ardern says no to

29:48

burn out Axios. Ardern's

29:51

exit after unprecedented

29:53

threats shows toll of burnout for

29:55

women leaders, Vogue. In her decision to

29:57

step down, Ardern is showing

29:59

her leadership in dinked until the end, trusting your gut, and

30:01

when the moment comes, doing what's best

30:04

for you. That actually seems quite the

30:06

opposite of leadership and something of a

30:08

definition of selfishness. Here's

30:10

L Magazine. It's an empowering move. One that

30:13

giving a power that is, one that allows us

30:15

to regain control, look at our lives

30:17

holistically and make positive change.

30:20

Be it in spending more with family as Ardern

30:22

plans to do, focusing on our well-being,

30:24

learning to put ourselves first,

30:26

go down an entirely

30:29

new route or even making the leap into

30:31

nothing. Now a couple of

30:33

caveats. Ardern is absolutely

30:35

absolutely within her rights as a person, as

30:37

a leader, to recognize that she's

30:39

a human being with frailty and

30:41

needs. And even if New Zealand

30:43

is compared to the US, a functional happy

30:45

society with the bonds of communities still

30:47

in place, Her job is

30:49

extremely stressful. She opted for

30:51

lockdown measures, and they saved lives, but

30:53

they also sparked protests and a

30:55

lot of pushback. She's

30:57

the head of state at a time of inflation.

30:59

She's getting blamed for that

31:02

unfairly. I don't think that burnout, a word

31:04

that she never said in her press conference

31:06

though, Best describes her decision. Basically, it's

31:08

that in a parliamentary system, a weakened

31:10

less popular head of government will often

31:12

bow out to make way for a more

31:15

plausible test her from within

31:17

her party, and she's done so

31:19

because she's good at reading the tea

31:21

leaves, not because she's desperate to curl

31:23

up with a chamomile beside

31:25

a snugly fire. Ardern's not

31:28

lying or even misleading. She

31:30

was a leader with diminishing

31:32

political options who correctly assessed

31:34

the situation. A situation

31:36

that also included job stress,

31:38

but also that stress was compounded

31:40

by her diminishing political options.

31:43

Alright. All this so far has been specific to Ardern. I

31:45

wanna get into a thought that I

31:47

think I shouldn't have had. A notion I

31:49

couldn't get out of my head I

31:51

kicked it around. What I do is I don't immediately opine. I talk

31:53

it over with loved ones. I do

31:56

this. I do this.

31:58

Often, I read things. But

32:00

I do have a daily podcast. It's called the gist. You know it? And

32:02

when no one else is really talking about

32:04

an issue, even if it's maybe treading

32:06

on grounds that will paint me as the great Santini

32:09

I kinda have go for I shouldn't, but I will. Here

32:11

it goes. The celebration

32:13

of Ardern's recognition of burnout,

32:15

the applause for her wisdom and

32:18

bravery We have to admit. Don't

32:20

we? It's just a little bit

32:22

intention with the loudest voices of

32:24

those approving of her who

32:26

also always tell us that the

32:28

stakes of activism

32:30

of being active of leadership

32:33

of fighting against the

32:35

forces of evil the

32:37

stakes couldn't be higher. That's why it's so

32:40

important to fight the good fight and do the

32:42

work. So I do sympathize

32:45

progressive or maybe progressive

32:47

signifying world leader boughs

32:49

out because of the stress

32:51

and the toll But

32:53

it's a stress and toll that's portrayed

32:55

as fighting really

32:57

nefarious forces that need to

32:59

be fought, the forces of

33:02

evil. And you know who doesn't engage

33:04

in self care or whoever takes

33:06

a me day as far as I could tell.

33:08

Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro,

33:11

Vladimir Putin, That guy is

33:13

always advancing, literally advancing,

33:15

never retreating. He does

33:17

not surrender. He does not go

33:20

on to live, what is it in a world that's living

33:22

holistically and making positive changes.

33:24

So if it's a pitched battle

33:27

between activists who

33:29

talk about the stakes and

33:31

malefactors who represent

33:34

destruction aren't the

33:36

activists acknowledging that they're at a giant

33:39

disadvantage and by removing

33:41

themselves from the battlefield, putting

33:44

their enemies at a much greater

33:46

advantage and aren't the forces of

33:48

light to take our token construction?

33:50

Aren't they showing their enemies that

33:52

they can be defeated and how

33:54

they can be defeated. You

33:56

know, Martin Luther King moved into

33:58

the Chicago projects to show the world how

34:00

terrible the Chicago projects were. He

34:02

did so while battling serious depression.

34:06

MLK struggled with depression his whole life.

34:08

Abraham Lincoln did too. Yeah,

34:10

I know. These are impossible moral beacons the

34:12

mere mortals around now.

34:14

Impossible to emulate them.

34:18

Only they actually are literally or were mere mortals before

34:21

their near deification. And we are

34:23

told about the importance of meeting

34:25

this this dire, this critical

34:28

moment with nothing short of the

34:30

resolve that it took to

34:32

win critical battles in

34:34

the past.

34:36

I don't hear anyone today saying

34:38

black lives matter, of course, we can't

34:40

fight as hard as they did during the civil

34:43

rights era. The notion is we have to fight just as hard.

34:46

I think they probably

34:48

do, but it's not fighting just as

34:50

hard if you also

34:52

celebrate bowing out to do

34:54

what's right for you. And like I said,

34:56

Trump's tank seems perpetually

34:58

full. Here's Here's a seventy

35:00

six year old obese man given

35:02

to fits of rage, but some

35:04

of he has no off switch. He doesn't

35:06

go in self

35:08

care I mean, take this example. Writing in the New

35:10

Yorker, Jill Lepore said in the work

35:12

of the January sixth Commission,

35:14

which quote, counted at

35:16

least two hundred attempts which a, meaning

35:18

Trump, made to influence state

35:20

or local officials by

35:22

phone, text, Post or public remarks. A

35:24

Trump campaign spreadsheet documents

35:26

efforts to contact more than a

35:28

hundred and ninety Republican state legislators

35:32

Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan alone. Wow, what a motor on

35:35

that guy? Sauron never took a day

35:37

off from creating works. Did he? You

35:40

know, after equity, the most common word used by activists is

35:44

exhausted. In May, Sadhvi

35:46

Mohan Kumar, undergraduate

35:48

at the College of New Jersey

35:50

gave a TED Talk called

35:52

we need to fight activism

35:54

fatigue. Here's a clip. Activism

35:57

fatigue is the feeling of exhaustion when you've been

35:59

learning every nuance of every issue, yet

36:01

it never seems to

36:04

be enough. And it's the

36:06

feeling when you tirelessly campaign for

36:08

change in your

36:08

community, but never reap the rewards

36:11

of

36:11

your hard work. And it's the feeling when you opened your news

36:13

app this morning and read about what's going on in

36:16

Ukraine. But then got a notification

36:18

about another school shooting, so we

36:20

should talk about gun

36:22

laws now. But did you hear about

36:24

that new law that's restricting

36:26

abortion access? Or the fact that

36:28

Syrian refugees are still

36:30

being relocated? Did you know

36:32

Flint still does not have access to clean

36:34

water? Unequal

36:36

access to education, child brides,

36:39

the Amazon rainforest is still

36:41

dying. There are concentration camps

36:43

in China

36:44

today, and no one is talking about them.

36:46

People are talking about it. That's how it came up on your app, which

36:48

maybe you should change the settings of.

36:50

Also, FLINT has had water

36:54

for going on three years now.

36:56

It'll be four in February. It's a horrible crisis.

36:58

The results are still

37:01

being shown in Children's

37:04

development there. But there's

37:06

water. Flint does have clean water, has

37:08

for years. So I don't

37:10

know, maybe

37:12

it's fatiguing when progress is made, but then is

37:14

ignored because untruthful

37:16

means are more powerful than

37:18

just looking into the facts. Alright.

37:21

That's one undergrad, but the sentiment is

37:24

everywhere. How exhausting it

37:26

is to advocate for change

37:28

compared to what? Compared to not

37:30

gluing your hand on an oil painting or

37:32

compared to the generally

37:34

hard work that so many people do of

37:36

improving the world with more targeted

37:38

and practical solutions. They're

37:40

less dramatic. They're less grandiose, but

37:42

they actually get the job done. Might

37:44

leave a little in the tank also. Alexander

37:46

Ocasio Cortez, from a lot of respect in

37:49

many ways, told the New York Times that

37:51

she thinks of quitting AOC.

37:54

I didn't even know if I was going to run for reelection this year. New

37:57

York Times, really why? Answer. It's the

37:59

incoming. It's the stress.

38:01

It's the violence. It's the

38:03

lack of support from your own party.

38:06

It's your own party thinking you're the

38:08

enemy. Well, you

38:10

get elected And then you told the

38:12

other Democrats they were on notice if

38:14

they weren't progressive enough, and then

38:16

you primary them or organize

38:18

primaries against them because you were

38:20

trying to pick off moderate

38:22

Democrats. You were successful in a few cases,

38:24

unsuccessful in more cases. But yeah,

38:26

that was your choice in executing

38:28

your theory of change, which I think is wrong,

38:30

but I know is going to get you marked as

38:32

something as less than a team player.

38:35

Again, I'm sounding like Robert Daval

38:37

in that movie. I don't want to just pick

38:39

on young or youngish women who've removed themselves

38:41

from the arena overstress. In New

38:43

York City, Corey Johnson decided against running

38:45

for mayor, citing mental health I've had

38:47

on Jason Kander who talked about bowing out

38:49

of electoral politics to care

38:51

for his PTSD. And another counterpoint to women who've exited

38:53

isn't just men who've exited. Let's talk about women

38:56

who stick it out. I think of Illinois senator

38:58

Tammy Duckworth

39:00

like Ardern had a baby while in office. The Senate

39:02

is not an institution that makes child care

39:04

easy and she doesn't live in a

39:07

country with maternal leave unlike Ardern,

39:10

Duckworth is doing this all as a double

39:12

amputee by the way. Again, it's tough

39:14

to compare real people to impossible

39:16

standards. But Tammy Duckworth's

39:18

real. And, yeah, if Tammy Duckworth said

39:20

I couldn't do it anymore, we'd have to be

39:22

understanding. But shouldn't the

39:24

celebration be of doing

39:27

it at least as much as of

39:29

not doing it, we

39:32

definitely, as a society, have undergone

39:34

a shift away

39:36

from insensitivity. We were so

39:38

ignorant of mental health.

39:40

We were so callous. We

39:42

didn't identify with the humanity of

39:45

everyone else. We were sexist. Absolutely. We still are

39:47

absolutely true. But the shift

39:49

isn't just from

39:52

insensitivity. To now a properly calibrated sensitivity.

39:54

Because when we favor

39:56

the virtue of sensitivity, we're

39:58

choosing against the virtue of

40:02

resilience, not always. Sometimes it's just proper sensitivity.

40:04

Sometimes that which is called resilience

40:06

is something like unrealism

40:09

or toughening it out. Or

40:12

cruelty on the part of the person

40:14

advocating it. And, you know, in

40:16

general it's counterproductive to paint the

40:18

world in absolutes. I

40:20

know Simone Biles wasn't a

40:22

coward for pulling out of a few Olympic

40:24

events. It is dangerous when you're

40:26

twisting in the air. But a

40:28

question whether she's more heroic

40:30

for pulling out of the Olympics than she

40:32

is for being the greatest gymnast of

40:34

all time. And that took more

40:36

sacrifice and pain than the average

40:38

person could possibly understand.

40:40

Again, it's not really about just into

40:42

art art. Go live, laugh, love, Jacinda, I say

40:44

to thee. But if this

40:46

is a fight, if this is the

40:48

struggle we're told

40:50

it is, the combatants

40:52

need to ask themselves, who has

40:54

the advantage? The sensitive or

40:56

the resilient? I'd say you

40:58

have to have some of both.

41:00

Keeping in mind that the enemies, their

41:02

tanks seemed to be perpetually on fault. And

41:10

that's it for today's show. Corey

41:12

Juarez is the producer of

41:14

the jist and Joel Patterson

41:17

is the senior producer of the

41:19

GIST. Michelle Peska is the prime minister

41:21

of New Zealand. The GIST is presented

41:23

in collaboration with Ipsen's

41:26

advertised cast For advertising inquiries, go to advertisecast dot com

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slash the just Oopoo g poooo.

41:30

Thanks for listening. When

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