Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Mark Zuckerberg: The Worst Person of the 21st Century (So Far)

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Maggie Mae Fish and Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Mark Zuckerberg. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Podcast! I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. Sophie is angry at me for that opening. This is the podcast where we talk about all the things you didn't know about terrible people, and we laugh sometimes too. We're talking about Mark Zuckerberg. This is part two, so you shouldn't need a normal intro.

If you're listening to part two, you saw in the title, this is part two. You know what's going on here. My guests, as always, on the podcast about Mark Zuckerberg are Jamie Loftus and Maggie Mayfish. Hi! We're nice and warm from part one, baby. Warm from part one, and from the delightful internal heating effect of burritos. I feel the furnace deep in my belly, right next to my uterus. The powder is coursing through my veins, clogging my bloodstream.

Like a diet any second. Not clogging, enhancing. People are dying right now. Now, oh god, that was a good burrito. Is there a bad burrito? No. No, there's not. Fantastic.

Y'all ready to talk about Marzok some more? Let's do it. Is that Marzok? It's Mike Marwin. I'm not a four. Welcome to Marzok! Welcome to Marzok for someone who gets beaten by a Facebook hate mob, which we'll be talking about in part three. It's welcome to Marzok, everyone.

So, the bloom is well and truly off the rows of Facebook in the wake of the 2016 election. Criticizing the social media company has become so common, as have articles declaring that young people have increasingly left the service behind, that it can be very easy to forget just what a darling Facebook was in its early days. True. I was a tech journalist in the wild and wooly era of 2010 when Facebook was cracking new number of milestones every couple of months. I remember when they hit half a billion and eventually a billion. We would all write articles about Facebook. There's many people around Facebook.

There's not much time they're spending. Look at all this great stuff. Now, there was a lot of excitement about what Facebook might mean for the future back then. For most of the tech media, it lasted right up until the election. I found a Business Insider article from 2015 that illustrates this pretty well. It's titled, The Fabulous Life of Mark Zuckerberg. To give you an idea of its tone, here's a line from the introduction. The Harvard dropout's current net worth is at about $33.4 billion,

putting him at number 16 on Forbes' ranking of the world's billionaires. Here's a closer look at the life of the simultaneously down-to-earth yet extravagant CEO. Now, if this report is opinion that no one worth $33 billion can never be considered down-to-earth. But hey, maybe I got some sour grapes. It is interesting to me that this seems to be a carefully concocted marketing ploy used by Zuckerberg. The first big book about Facebook's founding, the book that was the basis for the movie The Social Network, was titled The Accidental Billionaires. This is something he wants to push.

Yeah, they stumbled into it. Oops. You could be Zuckerberg, too. I wound up with more wealth than most of Africa. Oopsie-toodles. I can't be doing wrong if I'm this successful. If I just Mr. Magood my way into a pile of money the size of the Sears Tower. I can't even grow a beard, guys.

I'm just going to keep making fun of this. There's not actually as much cash in existence as I have in my bank account. Mark Zuckerberg. Now, the Business Insider article with all of its flawed and fawning prose still provides a decent little look at Zuck's early life. It makes a point of really, really going into Mark's bona fides as a legit smart guy. That... He seems to be very sensitive about his intelligence.

The size of his intelligence. Interesting. Fun fact, Maggie, I could taste the anger in your voice when you said that. It was almost like a Dorito. Oh, almost. I literally can't stop this compulsive. Of the things that I've noted, just having immersed myself in zuckerness, he is extremely protective of the idea that he is a genius on all things and not just Facebook.

I mean, he's not in Mensa. He's not in Mensa, like Jamie Loftus. How's that boob thread on Facebook going? Oh, I saw the update. Mensans love Facebook, to be fair. It's where they spread all their hate to. It is their platform that they need to have to do it. Oh, they earned it.

They paid $75 to take a test on a Sunday. Oh, IQ tests are a bastard. Almost as terrible as Mark Zuckerberg. But that'll be for our Stefan Mullenew episode. I'm going to read a quote from that Business Insider article about how Mark Zuckerberg is. Great, I'd love to hear. He wasn't just a computer nerd, though. Zuck loved the classics, the Odyssey and the like.

And he became captain of the high school. The Odyssey and the like. Yes, and the like. My picture of the writer being like, what's the second book? What's the second book? What's the second classic book? Well, there was an article that I read that was like, he loves the Greek classics. The Aeneid.

We'll be talking about that at the very end. That's a Latin classic. Yeah, it is a Latin classic. It's actually Roman propaganda written by Virgil so that he could make the case that Octavian had like a deep connection to like Roman history. Like it was literally a propaganda novel to rewrite Roman history in the image of Octavian after Octavian destroyed the fucking Republic. So, you know, the Greek classics.

The Greek classics. The Greek classics like this Roman propaganda novel. I hate Harry Potter culture, but there is a very like, like a disgruntled Hufflepuff vibe to Mark Zuckerberg. Like he wants to be in anywhere else. Mark Hufflepuff. Now, the article goes through some of the gushier, us worthy details of Zuckerberg's charmed life since starting Facebook.

For example, here's what it says about his wedding to Priscilla Chan. Green Days. No. Green Days, Billy Joel Armstrong performed and Mark designed Priscilla's Ruby Ring himself. What? They performed at their wedding. And he designed a ring?

And the accidental billionaires makes a point of when it's talking about like the place that everyone at Facebook lived in when they all first moved to California, that they were always playing Green Day because they're so into punk rock. Guys, you heard of this record called Dookie? Dookie? Fucking Green Day. Wait, what era? This has to be like post-American idiot.

It's gotta be, right? Yeah, it was like 2005. Oh, that's exciting. How exciting. Real exciting time to be a Green Day fan. Now, the few details about his life that Mark lets out into the public sphere are carefully curated. He's one of the many Silicon Valley CEOs who takes a token $1 a year salary.

You'll always hear that. Of course, that number ignores what he makes in stock and it ignores expenses like the $610,454 Facebook spent in 2014 to chart our private jets for Mark and his friends. The Business Insider article and many other Prozac pieces I have read make a lot of hay out of the fact that he doesn't drive a fancy car instead preferring a Volkswagen GTI that only costs $30,000. Now, if you've got the kind of money Mark Zuckerberg has, I don't think you should have it, but if you've got it and you're gonna buy a car, you're an idiot if you buy a car

that anybody can buy. Get a fucking blimp like that Google guy. At least be cool with that. I mean, yeah, it's even more sus to get like, hello, fellow kids, I am just like you. I drive Volkswagen like you. Those are all Volkswagen's, you have to tape the gas. Okay, where are the bodies? Zuckerberg.

They're somewhere. Now, while Facebook was expanding and the world was falling in love with Mark Isaac, there were signs that everyone's favorite new tech billionaire was maybe not the nicest dude to be around. Noah Kagan worked for Facebook for nine months in 2005, back when the company was first starting its meteoric rise to world dominance. Kagan later wrote an e-book that touched on his experiences there. In it, he recalled Mark Zuckerberg pouring water on an engineer's computer after a product

demo that he thought looked like, quote, shit. Here's a quote from Kagan's e-book. While I don't remember the feature we were working on, engineer Chris Putnam and I had spent almost a month building something we thought Mark would love. He walks to Chris's computer and we demo out the product to Mark. Mark thought it was shit. I know so because instead of giving product feedback, he screamed, this is shit, redo it, threw water on Chris's computer and walked away.

All of us stood around in shock. Kagan also claims that Zuck, like far-right gang leader Gavin McInnes, has a distinct fondness for samurai swords. Oh, don't they force me, I'm a gang sword guy. I remember my first sword guy, it was before I had the language to identify a sword guy and I was like, well, I know I feel unsafe, but there's more to it than that. Yeah. There's more than just a general unease that I have.

I also feel bad for this person who could so easily kill me with this sword. With his samurai sword that he bought for $45 at a gas station. Yeah. And bought a stand for it. And bought a stand for it. They always buy a stand. Well, they need you to see it. You got to display that shit.

The dick. Yeah. What is he going to hide it? No. No, no, no, no. He's like, I want you to know exactly what I'm like. Yeah. I'm like this.

What I would use to kill you. I know I look like this guy, but I'm also this guy. Yeah. Now, are you guys ready for the samurai sword story? Yes. Oh, look at this story. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

This is like when Gaddafi had his astronaut short story. This is the Mark Zeppelin quote. He'd walk around with a samurai sword, fake threatening to attack you for bad work. Where the hell he got that samurai sword? Who the hell knows? Luckily, no employees were harmed while I was there. He'd come around and pretend to cut you, joking if you take down the site, he'll chop your head off.

You have to remember you have a 23 year old uber nerd running one of the fastest growing sites on the web. As mature as he could be, he was also still immature. He had some great motivational lines. With love, he'd say, if you don't get that done sooner, I will punch you in the face. Or I will chop you with this huge sword while holding a huge sword in hand. But with love, guys. Oh, it's just loving how you're like, this guy is wild.

I'm going to cut you with this sword. Wow. Men in their 20s should have businesses. We're great at it. It really makes a lot of sense. Well, the thing is that he has stunted his growth. He doesn't realize this because he's living his own life, but from an outside perspective, you cemented yourself as a 22 year old inept at talking to people and connecting with people

and you've stopped your life. Well, as he learned from his later colleague, he should just lean in to that image. You will just go for it. Leading into a big pile of shit. The next paragraph starts with Cheryl Sandberg. Yeah! Let's get to it. I do want to share one story about me when I was 23 years old, just for fairness.

So I'm not judging Mark for immaturity. I vomited down an elevator shaft in between the shaft and the wall because I had to puke. I was super drunk and I knew, OK, I have to puke somewhere. If I puke in this elevator on other people, that's going to be bad. But when the door opens, I can vomit down the... I respect that. That's an innovative thinking. I didn't want to hurt too many other people, but I realize now as a sober man, I really

fucked up some repairs. This is bad. We can... No! Again, not a good person here, but better than Mark's. Which is a low bar. Yeah, and also you learned which... Let's not go that far.

Oh, OK. I'm totally stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulbs.

I'm stealing light bulbs. I'm stealing light bulb bandit. But I don't have a business. For good reason. Sophie manages the podcast. For good reason. In 2008, Facebook hired Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Lean In, and generally as slimy as a...

Like capitalism queen go off! Go off. Yeah! Hashtag girl boss. Oh, my gosh. The girl boss narrative is my favorite. There's a great podcast y'all should listen to. It's not on our network, but it's great.

It's called The Dream, and it's about MLMs, and it talks about an MLM that's all based on the hashtag girl boss lean-in shit. Super, super interesting. Yes, women can also destroy the world. Yeah, us too, us too, lady. We can eat the planet too. Yeah, we can be just as bad.

We're so go odd. Did you guys hear women are running the CIA now? I did. Hashtag feminist dexites, yeah. Oh, listen, give us a chance to buy into this power structure. We waterboard with LaCroix now. Oh.

But we still waterboard. Tons of people. We're guys gals, we still waterboard. Yeah, listen. I actually get along better with guys than I do with girls. It's really weird. I guess I'm just like a girls guy.

I waterboard them better too. Actually, I'm so sorry. I'm like, hey guys, I know, I'm gonna sound like one of those girls, but I actually think Mark is really nice, and he's just kind of misunderstood. You know what, I agree with that, and let's shun all other women

to disagree with us. They're kind of like bitchy girls. Yeah, we shouldn't hire them anyways. This podcast will not go into nearly enough detail on Miss Sandberg, but we will talk about her in the future, yeah. At the time, Sandberg's job was to be the adult in the room at Facebook, to reassure the investors

and the world that this broy frat robot suddenly harvesting data from millions of people was being managed by competent, thoughtful human beings who would act responsibly with the great power placed in their hands. Charles Sandberg does at least a very good impression of a human being. Super good impression.

Yeah, she does a really good job. The new dictator is a woman with a smile on her face. It's one of her strengths, yeah. Always a white woman with a smile on her face. Yeah, always a white woman. Oh yeah, and the whitest one. The whitest woman, and a big smile. The frontline interview, one of the representatives

that they sent, that's basically all she did was smile and say, oh yeah, we know, and we're listening. We know, and we're listening. We know we fucked up. We're listening. Corporate feminism by soap. Yeah, by soap. Now, in 2006, Facebook introduced the news feed,

that infinitely scrolling thingy that has replaced the way roughly 40% of Americans get their news. The timeline was programmed with a distinct preference for controversial content by virtue of the fact that people were most likely to chat about things that made them angry or scared. They were also more likely to share articles

that angered or scared them. Ooh, skanked. Skanked, yeah. Skanked them. Skanked them. I feel skanky reading this. Did you ever skank like in high school, like as the Scottians?

You know what, Scott is my favorite genre, but I've never been to a show or danced. I felt like for sure you had busted a skank. I was not a rude boy, no. But Streetlight Manifesto is maybe my favorite band. Fucking fantastic band. They're great. Hey, it's not too late.

It's not too late. Never too late to skank, no? Never too late to skank. Thomas Kalnaki, if you're listening, sponsored the show. I don't think you have any money because you're a Scott musician. I don't think you have any money. But you're great.

Hey, if you're listening, give us five stars on iTunes. We'll give you some money. Yeah, we're in a Dorito. Send us your Venmo. Send us your Venmo, you might. We feel like you could probably use the help. So when the news feed launched, Facebook also made a change to its privacy policies

in order to make the news feed work better. Here's the New Yorker. Quote, unless you wrestled with a set of complicated settings, vastly more of your information, possibly including your name, your gender, your photograph, your list of friends, would be made public by default. Now, that New Yorker article was published in 2010 after some of those unpleasant chats

between Zuckerberg and his friends about all of his weasel behavior. After all those chats and stuff went public, like this article came out. The author of the article is a guy named Jose Antonio Vargas, and he's a good journalist, I think. I think it's a good article. He spent some time with Zuckerberg,

and when the subject of privacy came up, this happened. And I'm going to quote the entire bit from the article because it's fantastic. Privacy, he told me, is the third real issue online. A lot of people who are worried, and this is Zuck talking, a lot of people who are worried about privacy and those kinds of issues will take any minor misstep that we make and turn it into as big a deal as possible,

he said. He then excused himself as he typed on his iPhone 4, answering a text from his mother. We realize that people will probably criticize us for this for a long time, but we believe this is the right thing to do. Zuckerberg and I talked about the first time I signed up for Facebook in September 2006.

Users are asked to check a box to indicate whether they're interested in men or women. I told Zuckerberg that it took me a few hours to decide which box to check. If I said on Facebook that I'm a man interested in men, all my Facebook friends, including relatives, coworkers, sources, some of whom might not approve of homosexuality,

would see it. So what did you end up doing, Zuckerberg asked. I put men. That's interesting. No one has done a study on this as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out, he said. We didn't create that.

Society was generally ready for that. He went on. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that's good. Then I told Zuckerberg that two weeks later, I removed the check and left the boxes blank. A couple of relatives who were Facebook friends

had asked about my sexuality, and at that time at least, I didn't want all my professional sources to know that I am gay. Is it still out, Zuckerberg asked? Yeah, it's still out. He responded with a flat, huh, dropped his shoulders and stared at me,

looking genuinely concerned and somewhat puzzled. Facebook had asked me to publish a personal detail that I was not ready to share. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting bit of insight there. That's a crossroads for Lil' Zack. For Lil' Zacky Zack. And I think it points to how stupid I think he is,

that he can't think of other situations until they're in his fate. Until his face is shoved into it. And also, it seems like a very straight white guy attitude of just like, I mean, I think we come up against this all the time. It's just like stuff that truly didn't occur to him, like not even malicious at this point.

Just like, I just, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. I still prioritize my money over your privacy, but that sucks, dude. That sucks a lot of what he says. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I found this particularly fascinating

in light of a Daily Beast article I read back in 2015, how Facebook exposes domestic violence survivors. The article is, as you'd expect, about a bunch of people whose abusers were able to get in touch with them and start harassing them again, because Facebook required those women to use their real names to start Facebook accounts.

Quote, of the major social networking services, Facebook alone requires users to use an authentic name listed on an acceptable form of identification, such as a driver's license, a passport, or a bill. LinkedIn's user agreement asks for a real name, but does not specify any required documentation. Twitter, Instagram, and as of 2014, Google Plus all allows pseudonyms.

This has also been an issue for transgender people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And sex workers as well. Yeah, sex workers. A lot of people who Mark never considered. Right. And because almost everyone working at Facebook

was another white guy, was not. No one there, because it never prioritized, yeah. And this will be a problem that will crop up when we start talking about the genocide being enabled by Facebook. But it's an issue when you run a company this big that impacts the lives of this many people, and you don't hire folks specifically to be like,

oh, I'm a member of this particular community, and this might be an issue for, say, gay men, because you, Mark Zuckerberg, don't realize that this is the thing we have to deal with. Yeah, yeah. It's an online nation, and he thinks that he can be the leader of it without caring about any of the people in it.

What don't you learn about the world as the son of a wealthy dentist who goes to Harvard? Oh my God, you're right. An ex of it. Oh my God, you're right. You're right. Yeah. You're right.

Yeah, he's woke. He's extremely woke. Yeah. It is crazy that, I mean, you would think the second that you have this wide of a reach, you would prioritize getting people with different perspectives in, or it's almost like your product will turn on you.

Yeah. Well, it's that ego that he has, that he is unwilling to confront and hide that all cost. Yeah. He plays the philanthroper, the like I care about the people when in actuality. Join my book club. Yeah, join my book club.

Let's learn together. Let me listen. Let me go across the world and listen. So you'll elect me for president. The only book club I'm interested in joining, Maggie, Jamie, is the Doritos book club. Oh, what is it this month? It's actually tribe by Sebastian Young,

our fantastic book. Oh wow. Oh. Really good book about PTSD. Oh, good. Doritos recommends it too. Thank you Doritos. That's a good suggestion.

Yeah. Ads, it's ads time. Oh, okay. That's what that was a lead in too. Predicts. Predicts. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI

had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy

to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man

who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called Nsync. What you may not know is that when I was 23,

I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space

with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic

and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science

on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Talking about podcasts, products, services. Facebook.

All right, let's get back into it. For the most part, up through the early aughts, Mark Zuckerberg's brand in most of the world remained quite strong. He was the genius who changed the way the world communicated and he seemed like such a humble, down-to-earth guy. In 2010, he was even given a guest star role

on The Simpsons. He played a bit part. Lisa is trying to convince Nelson to stay in school rather than drop out to focus on his business. They meet Mark Zuckerberg at some sort of expo thing and he goes on a little rant about all the great innovators in the tech industry dropped out of school, which is true.

Yeah. Now, I'll say this. I think this is another example where it's really easy for a guy like Mark. If you were a coder, thought college. Which I am. What do you need to go to college? Well, Jamie's a hacker.

You're a hacker and a coder. But yeah. It's the same thing, like as a writer, you can get a writing degree and get a journalism degree, but you could also just start writing and it's the nature of the business that if you get stuff published, that starts your career too.

It's not like that for everybody. If you're an electrician, kind of gotta get some training. If you're a surgeon, kind of gotta go to school. That's why we're in faker professions. Yeah. That's why we're in professions where you can be faker.

Yeah. In my experience. In my experience, someone could be like, so you have a degree in journalism and you go, aha. Aha. And then they're like, sounds good. Yeah.

You'll never look it up. Do you have a degree in journalism? No. Okay. Good. Then you're clearly a journalist. Yeah. Oh, good. So, anyway, a little rant there. Now, 2010 was a time in which Zuckerberg

and his ideas were the toast of Silicon Valley. And what did Mark believe? In 2010, he sat for an interview with TechCrunch. They pressed him on the matter of other people trusting him with their data. Quote, when I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, why would I wanna put any information

on the internet at all? Why would I wanna have a website? And then the last five or six years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable, not only sharing more information in different kinds,

but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. We view it as a role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are. I'm not pushing society.

I'm changing Facebook to adapt to the changing social norm of selling your data. Well, the funny thing, I've now realized that Zuckerberg says a lot like, I wanna bring the world together. That is code for I want the world's information. I want every single person to be on my website so I have their information, I have their context.

I gotta steal all of the Facebook pictures. Yeah, I gotta steal all of them. It is weird to me, how long, and I don't know at what point this occurred to you, it took me a long time to figure out what the concept of data mining and big data was and what it meant because when I was in college, I was like, well, who would want my data?

I don't have any money. Like all I have is student debt. Like who cares if they have my data because I have nothing to hide and I have nothing. So who cares? And I wrote, I was a copywriter for big data companies for six months, would write 10,000 words a day about big data and still couldn't understand

what I'm like, who gives a fuck unless you have money. But now I feel like now it's very easy. But this was like five years ago, I had no fucking clue. And it was my job to know. So I guess I'm bad at my job. It didn't make, you're a true journalist. Yeah, no, I do say there's a great frontline documentary.

You just look up frontline Facebook on YouTube. It's all up there that there's a journalist on there who's like the first person to like request a copy of his data from Facebook and realized how much was being logged. Another good journalist, solid play. Cause again, I was the same way. I didn't pay any attention to what was happening.

I did not care when I owed a shit going on. And when you're taking like, I don't know, like especially in that era that was super asinine where you're like, you've got bumper stickers and you're taking quizzes all the time. And you're like, well, what would people do with this information? And now I can't watch Bandersnatch

without being like, they're taking my opinions on Frosted Flakes and selling. Because this is the next, what's good, yeah. TV's now gonna sell me personalized ads. Well, and I do think Netflix is making a big mistake with like focusing on like, this many people watched the fucking Bird Box movies. Well, it's a successful Black Panther.

No, because nobody had to pay. Yeah, no one would have seen. Bird Box would have made $7 in the box office. They're not making money at Netflix yet. Yeah, 45 million people saw a cumulative 18 minutes of Bird Box where they were cooking, checking their phone and pooping. And wait, what?

What are the rules of this world? Why? They put birds in a box, guys. And I think that that makes it worth our time. I do think that that quote from the Tech Grunge interview maps out Marx ideology pretty well. The world wants to be more connected. His only job is delivering that connectivity.

And as long as Facebook is connecting more people, faster, he does not need to worry about anything else. This was mapped out even more eloquently by the company motto based on a quote by Mark himself. Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you aren't moving fast enough. Now, the title of this episode, part two, is Move Fast.

And the title of part three is Break Things. He does both. We'll be talking about that little genocide. That's the way I live my life, ha ha. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha. It's the way a lot of people have ended their lives now. Ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha.

Now, it is important to understand that at every level, Facebook, the organization, is programmed to work this way. I'd like to quote from a great CNBC article with the revealing title, Inside Facebook's coat-like workplace where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time.

Solid title. Really, really lays it all out. It sounds like one of those really long Fiona apples. Oh yeah, look, ooh. You're about to tell me a lot of stuff. Fiona. I'm ready. Quote, employees feel pressure

to place the company above all else in their lives, fall in line with their managers' orders and force cordiality with their colleagues so that they can advance. Several former employees liken the culture to a cult. This culture has contributed to the company's well-publicized wave of scandals over the last two years, such as government spreading misinformation

to try to influence elections and the misuse of private user data, according to many people who worked there during this period. They say Facebook might have caught some of these problems sooner if employees were encouraged to deliver honest feedback. She can't deliver honest feedback

if you're moving fast and breaking shit. Well, you can't deliver honest feedback with a fucking katana. Yeah, I got it there. Well, and also, why would you tell someone, I think this product that we're about to launch might break something if you're part of, half of your job is to break things.

Right, you're encouraged to, right. And Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, employees rate each other, and then managers give them final grades that determine whether or not they'll be promoted, fired, or given raises. Oh, they have a face! He never learns a lesson.

Never, ever, ever. Ever, ever, ever. I've quoted Bojack Horseman once before in the show, but another one of the truest fucking things that show ever pointed out. One of the characters is an agent saying that the age in which you get rich is the age in which your growth is forever stunted.

So if you're rich at 20, you're 20 forever. Yes, that is very true. 100% accurate. I believe that. Buy a shirt at T-Public so that I can stop aging at age 30 and buy my own blimp. That's reasonable. Yeah, that's a good age to stop.

Yeah, still optimistic. I'm mature enough. You want to have a light bulb fight after this? I've got some balls. You have to lose that light bulb steel in spirit. I'm not keeping the light bulbs. I just like the way they shatter when you throw them at people.

That's better, you're right, you're right. It's way better. I'm not taking these light bulbs. I don't want them. Cricket, cricket. Cricket. Cricket. I don't need your judgment, Maggie.

Robert, do you do this in groups or solo? Yeah, I do it in groups. Can we join them at friends? Yeah, it's a fun little bit. I'll come along next time. This could go a lot of dirt. If you're doing it alone, it's like. Just drunkenly throwing light bulbs at strangers.

No, I throw light bulbs at people I love. Oh, that's how you show people you love. It's a show of affection. Yes, this sounds very ethical. Just like at the ground next to them, so it like, it's like a little puff. It's fun. Like firecracker.

I didn't do this to be judged, OK? I'm not a judge. You did it to be judged. It's going to be a great behind the basket. You can be unethical and still be legal. That's the way I live my life. What if I prefer to be ethical but illegal? There you go.

Yeah, that's the right course. Treat people well. Break the law. Laws aren't people. Yeah. So employees rate each other. Managers get them final grades to determine whether or not they'll be promoted, fired, or given raises.

These grades are issued by quota. So managers are pressured to underrate perfectly good employees just because the quota of good employees has already been met. It sounds like a stressful mess. The article goes into substantial detail about the review process. This quote in particular stood out to me.

Quote, these twice yearly reviews encourage employees to be particularly productive around June and December, working nights and weekends as they race to impress bosses before reviews, which are typically completed in August and February. It's especially true in December. The half Facebook predominantly uses to determine which employees will receive promotions.

This rush causes employees to focus on short-term goals and push out features that drive user engagement and improve their own metrics without fully considering the potential long-term negative impacts on user experience or privacy, multiple former employees said, move fast, break the world. Wow, it sounds like a guy that's too dumb to run a company. Sounds like 20-year-olds shouldn't have much responsibility.

He was stunted at like age 20. Yeah, at age 20, something like that. Man, learn something all the time from that show about the sad horse. About the sad horse. The depressed horse show. The depressed horse show has some truth in it. It's true.

Yeah. And horses are inherently sad. You never see a horse living on land and looking happy. You never seen a horse die? Yes. Me too. Oh, no. Sad.

Woof is the same horse. Both they're holding hands. They're like, we killed a horse. Jamie Loftus and I murdered a horse. I have a light bulb. I'm not going to believe how it became a horse. In our defense, the horse started it. Yes.

Yes, correct. Very sad horse. So Mark Zuckerberg has never wasted much time worrying about the consequences of his actions. He's more of an ask questions later kind of guy. And as he aged into a tech titan, Mark Zuckerberg remained pretty cavalier about people's privacy.

This would all come to a dangerous head for the first time in 2007 with a Facebook product called Beacon. I'd like to quote from a book titled, Appropriately Enough, Move Fast and Break Things, which is a really good book about all of these monsters, but not just Zucky Zuck. Like all Silicon Valley growth?

Yeah, yeah. This was essentially an alert system that told your friends you had purchased something on a partner site. It was built as an opt-out system, so you had to actively tell Facebook each time you didn't want the site to broadcast your purchase to all your friends.

It was a total disaster from the outset, but Zuckerberg was so confident that he knew better than his users that he refused to turn it off for many weeks while the PR disaster escalated. Eventually, he relented and posted a mea culpa on his blog, saying, we've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them.

Despite Zuckerberg's regret and a payment of $9.5 million for a class action suit over Beacon, many who worked with him feel he doesn't really understand privacy. Charlie Cheever, one of his key programmers, told Kirkpatrick, who's some guy, I feel that Mark doesn't believe in privacy that much, or at least believes in privacy as a stepping stone

to radical transparency. Wow. The way he put out that press release is the same way he talked to the guy that he fucked over. He's like, I am so sorry. I did something wrong here. I did something wrong here. So go away.

So go away. Here's money. It means nothing to me. Yeah. Who cares? I've always been rich and always will be. We'll have it resolved within the year, parentheses, ear. Ear.

Ear. Ears. Ear. Now, radical transparency is a buzz term Mark brings up whenever he needs a high-minded ideological justification for doing precisely whatever the fuck he wants. In 2012, whatever the fuck he wants included fucking with people's emotions just

to see if that was possible. Here is a quote from the hilariously named PNAS Scientific Journal. And it's P-N-A-S, but what else could I call it? Bless their hearts. It's the PNAS Journal. It's a very serious scientific journal. It's the Big Dick Nerd Journal.

The big swing and dick of science. And which way is swing and dick of science today? We all got slapped with science and swing and dick on this one. If you don't go with the swings, you're going to get slapped. Here's PNAS. Oh, nice. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs

outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the newsfeed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts. When negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that the emotions expressed

by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive scale contagion via social networks. AKA, we used Facebook to see if we could make people sad. And we can. And we and it works. It works. Now, the researchers who carried out this study

had previously studied real-life social networks, to study the same sort of emotional contagion, but with actual groups of friends. Your buddy's sad. She calls you. He calls you. You get sad, too. This is the way people have always worked.

They then went to Facebook to see if the social network was down to play guinea pig with its users. Facebook totally was. They and their researchers found, quote, emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. In other words, they proved that emotional states,

like anger or hopelessness, could be spread via Facebook. Facebook proved this by determining what kinds of content got pushed to the timelines of each of its users, effectively manipulating their emotions just to see if it was possible. People got angry. Facebook responded with full regret, and Mark Zuckerberg kept pretty quiet about this whole thing.

But if you followed the guy's history and intellectual development, you can understand why an experiment like this would be pretty in line with his past behavior. Yeah. It's just another woman versus cow situation. Right. If one girl is deemed unhot, then other people will agree

unhot and then we'll just reshape what is hot. Yeah. So that's fun. What else is fun is products, also services, consumable items that you can spend money on, and then have in your home. The big swinging dick of capitalists. The big sticks of the swinging dicks.

Or the hanging labia. Yeah, the hanging labia of capitalists. The heavy labia of capitalists. Wonderful women CEOs who seem to love other women and care about people. If you want to support the heavy swinging labia that support this show, buy these products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans

suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person

to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down

on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science

you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days

after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Maggie Mayfish just said something through her mouth full of Doritos. I did. I'm about to do the same. Yeah.

Oh, man. Better than us, swinging labia. I'd rather lick these. Yes, yes. In June 2013, while Facebook was in the midst of playing with their users' emotions, Glenn Greenwald published an article to The Guardian based on Edward Snowden's releases.

The article revealed that the national security agency had been given access to huge amounts of data from Facebook, Google, Apple, and several other major internet companies. When Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Glenn Greenwald's article, he said, frankly, the government blew it and lamented that the state had done a bad job of protecting privacy. Pretty bold, Mark.

Pretty bold. Why swing? You know what? Just because it's so bold, I'll give him that one. I'll give him that one. Oh, yeah. Now, in March of 2015, The Guardian broke what would turn out to be a critically important story.

Millions of Americans' personal data had been harvested through a Facebook app without their knowledge and handed off to a little company called Cambridge Analytica. In an interview, Mark Zuckerberg gave with recode in 2018, he swore that as soon as Facebook was alerted to the harvesting of their user data by Cambridge Analytica's Alexander Kogan, quote, we immediately shut down the app,

took away his profile, and demanded certification that the data was deleted. However, further reporting from The Guardian showed that Facebook didn't suspend Kogan or Cambridge Analytica until March of 2018, like two or three months before the interview in which Zuckerberg swore they'd banned his ass back in 2015. Now, I'd say it has been proven beyond much doubt

that Mark Zuckerberg's attitude about the value of other people's privacy has not changed much since the days when he stole people's pictures to build an app where kids could vote on which of their female classmates was hotter than a cow. Thankfully, we know how Mark Zuckerberg and the other Facebook top brass really feel about the value of their user's privacy. Last year, the British government

released an enormous cache of internal company emails to the public. The data included this bit from 2012. I'm going to quote, recode's fantastic coverage. And Kara Swisher with recode has done some of the best reporting on Mark Zuckerberg and the best holding of his in the front line documentary. Oh, is that her?

When he's sweating and like that's, she's fucking great. Kara Swisher is a great journalist doing really good shit in the tech industry of the tech journalist. She's like, she's solid. Excellent. I'm going to quote, recode's coverage. In 2012, Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook charged some

outside developers for accessing and collecting data on users through the company's APIs, software that allows Facebook to share data with other apps. If we make it so devs can generate revenue for us in different ways, that makes it more acceptable for us to charge them quite a bit more for using the platform, Zuckerberg wrote. He suggested that developers could offset these charges

by spending money on Facebook ads. Now, Facebook said they didn't actually go through with that, but the fact that Mark Zuckerberg himself suggested doing the same thing Cambridge Analytica would do three years later, suggests he probably was not that much offended by the concept. Mark published a Facebook post to address this and other revelations, quote.

Like any organization, we had a lot of internal discussion and people raised different ideas. Ultimately, we decided on a model where we continued to provide the developer platform for free and developers could choose to buy ads if they wanted. This model has worked well. Other ideas we considered but decided against included charging developers for usage of our platform,

similar to how developers pay to use Amazon, AWS or Google Cloud, to be clear, that's different from selling people's data. We've never sold anyone's data. But it kinda sounds like that's exactly what Facebook did. Here's recode, quote. In some cases, Facebook granted other businesses like Netflix and Lyft special permission to access

information that other companies didn't have. So they didn't sell data directly, but people who paid Facebook a should load and add dollars got access to more user data, which they didn't pay for, but they got access to because they were paying more money to Facebook, which is different from paying for data, because a lawyer can argue that. Right, totally.

Well, when you lay it out like that, it makes perfect sense. It's legally distinct from selling access to people's data. And I'm sure it is in a court of law, until it's proven not, hopefully, when we get the guillotines up. Yeah, it's like until the laws need to be made to make the distinction clear. To make it a crime, what they did,

which I think is ethically, it's like a crime in the hearts of any decent person. But anyway. Yeah, well, we know how Zucky feels about ethics. Zuckie-zuck. Ha-ha! Ha-ha! We know how he lives his life, ha-ha.

So that article also revealed that companies that Facebook found threatening to their bottom line had their access to user data restricted. Quote, when Twitter launched the video service Vine in 2012, Facebook cut off access to its friend graph. That meant users who signed up for Vine with their Facebook account couldn't see and connect with all of their Facebook friends inside Vine,

an ability that would have theoretically helped Vine create a network much faster. Yeah. I don't feel that sorry for Twitter either, but you know, it's just crap. God, I mean, imagine, I mean, and Vine still managed to happen in spite of it all. The Paul brothers are threatening.

You know what, Vine is how Alex Jones finally flamed out, and I'm, I'll always be grateful for that. Oh, really? We get that he was binding when he was on Capitol Hill shouting at people. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That was very sad to see.

In a good way. That was a fun day. That was a fun day watching the news. Now, the emails that have been revealed make it clear that Zuck's issue was never with the selling of data. He doesn't give one fuck about that. He didn't seem to care a lot about the fact

that he wasn't able to charge people to steal his customer's data. In another email, Zuckerberg sent in 2012, he complained that, quote, not charging still means people will overuse and abuse our APIs and waste money for us. I think we should implement some kind of program where you have to pay if you use too many of our resources.

So by 2015, there was a lot of shady stuff out in the world about Mark Zuckerberg, but the lion share of the coverage of the man and his brain baby was still unfailingly positive. In that 2015 Business Insider article that I keep gleefully quoting is only one example of a big fat pile of similar content. Articles about Mark during this period

tended to emphasize his casual dress and down-to-earth personality. Many included a quote from Tyler Winklevoss, stating that Mark is the poorest-looking rich guy he's ever seen. Since Tyler Winklevoss was literally born a millionaire, I'm not super trusting that he's a good judge of how poor people look.

Yeah, what? This is, oh no. He wears a hoodie and that a $9,000 suit. Winklevoss. Winklevoss. Winklevoss is like, well, not to make too fine a point on it, but Mark Zuckerberg looks like shit. He looks like the guy who fixed my toilet the one time

that the rich person plumber wasn't available. Yeah. Yeah. Here's another quote from that fantastic Business Insider article. But despite his billions, Zuck seems incredibly down there. He can't despite his billions, he can't do that. He holds regular town hall style Q&A sessions

where he chats with regular people from all around the world. I want to show you guys a shot from one that took place in May. Maggie, I think you're the person to describe this. Do you just want a clip of me crying? He's just a man of the people. He's the man of the people, Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, my god.

He's just beating people to. He knows our struggles. Someone's doing a shaka. Someone's sure for sure doing a shaka. I did read during this time, he was like posting on Facebook about all his meetings. And there's a post where he realizes in real time that slavery still has lasting impacts.

Yeah. And you know. We really got to watch him grow up. Yeah, yeah, it's a result. How many of those people do you think are wax statues? He keeps plants. Just one, Mark Zuckerberg. I will note that there are not very many black men

in the audience, but one of the few is right next to Mark's arm around him. Yeah, the ones that. Yeah, I don't know how they asked that in the room, but somehow they got him to come to the front and surround Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, 2015 would be Mark Zuckerberg's last full year is being seen as mostly a good guy by the outside world.

The 2016 election brought questions of fake news and Russian propaganda being spread through the social network. I've wanted to ground these episodes as much as possible on Mark Zuckerberg the man before we get into the terrible consequences of some of his actions. Because the fact of the matter is that Facebook is a tool and a tool someone was going to build at some point.

There is no version of networked humanity where we don't end up with something like this at some point. But Mark Zuckerberg is the first guy who got it right. And as a result, his personal characteristics have had a huge impact on how this colossus has impacted the world. Now tomorrow, in part three, we're going to discuss exactly how Facebook, a Mark Zuckerberg

production, has changed our world. Throughout parts one and two, we've talked about him moving fast. In part three, we're going to talk about what he broke. So everybody, ready? Let's do it. You got to plug a pluggable. OK.

Oh, dear. Well, you can find me on Zuckerberg platform Instagram at JamieCarrieSuperstar. You can find me on Jack's website at JamieLabs.help and listen to the Bechtel cast on Tim's platform. Yeah. That's a lot of man's names, owning a lot of the internet. Yeah, you can also find me on all these male-dominated

spaces on Twitter and Instagram, MaggieBayFish. You can find me inside of any bag of Doritos you buy, because therein, my spirit resides. Haunting. You could find us on the gram, on Twitter, and at Bastardspot. You can find us on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com. Do that.

We're on every Tuesday. We sell t-shirts on T-Public. We sell cups. We sell posters, stickers. We sell. They're not technically living sentient beings, but they've been engineered to serve you. And they don't have any legal rights yet, so it's fine.

So yeah, all of that on T-Public. That sounds on the up and up. On the up and up, right? Yep. Episode tomorrow. Bye. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space

with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.